HRA media release: All three major political parties caused the drownings off Java - and more - they must stop criminalising humanitarians

I believe it's interesting to have the conversation, for interested readers and to give rise to this conversation here is what one very good journalist wrote to me, and what my reply is:

Received: Tuesday, 20 December, 2011, 5:10 PM

Gerry,
I think you have got this one wrong, people smugglers deal in human misery, they are not humanitarians working to assist people, they are money grabbing king pins who have scant regard for human life. If they cared for the people they put on boats they would not send overloaded vessels with ill trained crew, few lifejackets or rafts and not so much as an emergency beacon.
Xxxx

Xxxx,
I know where you're coming from - and your argument is well put and I understand it. I've been to
places in our world so poor that I've sat on boats with no life jackets - and everyone with kids on their knees,
overcrowded, and if we capsized many of us would have perished - just to cross a gulf, a daily thing for them.
Poverty and desperation. However, coming from where we come from, here, I wouldn't overcrowd a boat, I wouldn't
let anyone on without a life jacket, I make a big deal of not starting my car without everyone buckled up, however
in the poorest of countries this is not something they do... anyway, we're fortunate to be Australians, I don't expect
most folk to agree with me, Gerry

Received: Tuesday, 20 December, 2011, 5:44 PM

Hi Gerry,
I've been to the same places and on the same boats but I never paid $5000 for the priviledge. The people smugglers are making big bucks and drowned asylum seekers are simply collateral damage. If they had a humanitarian bone in their bodies they would make sure the passage was cheaper and safer. The simple act of placing an emergency beacon on a boat could potentially save many lives as could life rafts but these guys are like drug dealers and arms dealers they go where big money can be made and they trade in desperation, death and cruelty. They are simply organised criminal syndicates.
I'll get off my soapbox now but this one isnt a winner for you or the HRA,
Xxxx

Xxxx,
That's a very relevant point, about the amount of money paid. I know of perceived people smugglers who have taken no payments. It's very difficult to argue down the cost of passage. However I do know that significant amounts of money are spent on bribing officials to turn a blind eye - and yep I don't argue against the fact that surely there are profiteers involved, however I don't think the small number of them, because it is not a big number of organisers in the scheme of things, that most of them don't make as much money for themselves as assumed, it's become more of a development - they are frontline, can be easily traced, identified and arrested, and in do what they do almost openly. Ali Jenabi, is he a criminal? He was a refugee, an asylum seeker, his family is now in Melbourne, however he worked in sending folk over by boat to raise funds for his own families, three different trips - he has assisted many for free, he faces possible imprisonment, yet to Iraqi people he is a hero! Most Asylum Seekers have told me they understand the payments, they needed the organisers, and they view them as heroes, well that's what they've said to me.

Yes there should be beacons and navigational equipment, radar and all of that, however they do this under cover, and if it wasn't under cover surely they'd go for better boats, etc.. I am appalled that they allowed 250 on the boat with only half that capacity, and for this they have to account, however it's the Asylum Seekers who outpace demand and urge to make the trip, investing faith in only the fact that it's not a long voyage... They're all unseaworthy boats, just like in 1979 and 1980. Don't you think our governments' policies have induced much of what is?

I don't think they're organised crime syndicates, as much as ex refugees/refugees who instead of doing it easier in Australia or elsewhere in the world with a visa are taking enormous risks in lieu of the way they're perceived to do what they do, albeit I accept that some profiteering occurs, however I am not aware of any of them living it up in expensive dwellings or the high life in Indonesia.

Me, I just want to see the migration walls go down, the need for boats disappear, more humane understandings in terms of resettlement and other policies.

BTW, you're not on any soapbox, and I'm all for listening... Gerry

Received: Tuesday, 20 December, 2011, 7:53 PM

(from Xxxx, the journalist)

I think one of the really worrying things is that if they stop asking for exorbident fees the smugglers will instead make "loans" and keep asylum seekers in indentured labor for years paying off their passage, there is evidence that this is already starting to happen, so Im pretty sus of those who say they don't charge. As for former refugees working as smugglers, that is a bit like duped sex workers from Eastern Europe recruiting others into the trade that impacted them as a way out to save themselves. I cant buy any of this as humanitarium, just as I cant buy the arms trade or the sex trade as humanitarian although some argue the case of work for improverished female workers and guns for "freedom fighters". I dont know what the answers are but making excuses for the people smugglers wont help anyone.

What I would like to do though, if I could in some way and that is to provide these emergency beacons to every boat leaving Indonesia, just like providing needles to herion addicts, somehow tap into the trade without judging it and get these beacons and life jackets to those that need them, that way at least a few lives might be saved. I was really disturbed last year covering the loss of the 97 asylum seekers in the mystery boat that never arrived. There was nothing ever done about it, no one held to account and the families still have no news of the fate of these people. Jack Smit had a go at me at the time saying it was a false report and that a boat had arrived in Australia on December 2. The boat did not arrive alhtough another did on dec 2. I think his criticism of me is still online but his arguement at the time was that people smugglers are doing a good thing. I have spoken to some of the families from the missing 97 and their relatives never turned up. Even my own paper refused to acknowledge the loss in a recent article on losses at sea..........

Xxxx,

Shit, it's massively disturbing that the paper wouldn't cover it. Jack was wrong about it arriving December 2. I'd like to know more about the occurrence of loans, I am not aware of it, anecdotes I have heard, facts I haven't. However I would not like to see this as a development, by no means. It defeats the purpose of some of it being needed in the immediate to pay as bribes, though the kitty bit can be argued.

I can't accept the comparisons here in terms of the sex slave/prostitution and arms trades. I can't compare the sex trade with fleeing from persecution and my bias comes in here as an opponent of legalised prostitution, having devoted years in bringing hundreds out, and I know the damage it does, there's not much worse. However I'll stop there with the judgments on this.

I just see these folk as desperate people fleeing persecution and risking family and all for a shot at a better life, and others having the capacity to help them. It takes six months to walk from Afghanistan to Thailand or Malaysia for those that go by that means. I don't see the organisers dealing in human misery, although we can argue that we all deal with human misery in one way or another, rather that in effect it is the political rhetoric of our country that deals in human misery.

I'm like you, I'd like to see the beacons and life jackets on the boats at all costs, whatever it takes, and demarcated from the judgments. So I agree wholeheartedly.

Once again it is devastating that the 97 are not recorded as missing at sea - they should - and for the paper or government and surprisingly for Jack not to acknowledge them well that's reminiscent of the way it was and still is - under Ruddock, Vanstone, they were aware many boats went missing at sea however didn't record them, just acknowledged that it happens.

(from Gerry)

More from my journo friend:

Hi Gerry,
The paper covered it at first, I wrote it up and it went to press last Christmas Day with a page one story, but no one reads the paper on Christmas day. It is just that after that there was very little and when the time came this week in recording the death toll, the November missing 97 was simply left out. I pointed this out to the COS and he did agree it should have been included, someone hadnt done a decent file search, or simply followed the line put out by jack. It haunts me that these people vanished with no trace. Jamal Daoud did his best to get the story out and I understand is still keen to solve the mystery.

Anyway perhaps there is something we can do to get these beacons in every boat...let me know if you can think of a way
If I dont speak to you beforehand have a great Christmas, hopefully you can take some time off and there wont be any more disasters. Im off for a few weeks after Christmas and in the meantime will keep plugging away.............,
Xxxx

Xxxx,
I do remember reading something about it in XXXXXXXX, and I do remember you
doing quite a few stories on a number of immigration and asylum seeker related topics prior
and after last Christmas. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, I thought XXXXXX
coverage was very good. I do remember Jamal trying to get it out. I think it's a story in itself.

In terms of the beacons, well maybe I'll come up with something, what and how well I don't know, however
it's something that may leverage a myriad of positive outcomes and you've put the thought in my
head now - we'll see................
(Gerry)

Gerry,

I think you are right. The problem is the government and that even the Greens will not lead from way out front like you put it. We have not written about why there are migration walls as you put them and why we have detention networks and what the difference before onshore and offshore means. Many have neglected that under Howard the Pacific Solution resettled 95% of refugees to Australia. If you went to Nauru you pretty much had the visa. Most of them would now be Australian citizens.

I think you are right about parliamentarians being responsible for defining what a people smuggler is.

Regards,
Xxxxxx

Xxxxxx,

Thanks, however you with your capacity in one of Australia's lead newspapers could write up a few articles exploring what is and what is not a people smuggler and how and why migration walls came about and their impact upon everything.

You could interview Bowen, Clare, Morrison, Brown, Hansen-Young, and Abbott and Gillard during this exploration and dissemination.

You could be leveraging the saving of lives.

Kindly, Gerry

Gerry,

Immigration is not my area but it maybe it's a question I can put to some of the others to ask them. I do think it is important to ask these questions and if I can find a way to include it in my political coverage I may do so.

Regards,
Xxxxxx

Xxxxxx,
I hope so, I think the issues here for now are more important, and lives at stake, than for instance Australians reading about perceived and manifest concerns of some 28 year old in North Korea.

Kindly, Gerry

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3741412.html