Asylum seekers are genuine, says UN

LATEST NEWS-20:50 WAST

The United Nations Refugee Agency says some of the people on board an Australian customs ship off the Indonesian coast are genuine refugees.

The 78 Sri Lankans are refusing to leave the Oceanic Viking because they do not want to be transferred to an Indonesian detention centre.

The UN’s regional representative, Richard Towle, says some of the group have already been recognised as needing refugee protection.

“It’s difficult for us to say exactly who’s on board and what their background and profile is, but we understand there are a number of cases who are known to UNHCR – either as refugees or people who have some registration with our organisation in south-east Asia,” he said.

The agency has not been asked to go on board the customs ship carrying the asylum seekers.

Mr Towle says it has become a complex political issue.

“We haven’t been on board at this point because we haven’t received a specific request from the government of Indonesia and of course, their consent and request would be a prerequisite of us going on board,” he said.

Senior officials from the Australian and Indonesian governments are looking at ways to end the standoff.

Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor says productive discussions are underway.

“Those discussions will continue. It’s a difficult challenge,” he said.

“We are patient as the Indonesians are and we want to do this in a civil way and will continue to focus on that.

“Let’s remember, we rescued these people. They were in grave danger and now pursuant to the agreement reached, we want to have a peaceful transfer of these passengers onto Indonesian soil.”

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Asylum seeker issue erodes-PM’s support-Ratings Plung…

LATEST NEWS-17:00 WAST

Newspoll shows support for the Rudd government has slumped as the asylum seeker

issue drags on.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is standing firm despite clear signs the electorate is losing faith in his border protection policies.

Amid a stand-off between authorities and 78 asylum seekers aboard an Australian Customs vessel, voters have clearly indicated their disapproval of Mr Rudd’s “Indonesia solution”.

The 78 Tamils aboard the Oceanic Viking, anchored for more than two weeks off Indonesia’s Bintan Island, are refusing to disembark.

High-level talks between Australian and Indonesian officials took place on Tuesday in a desperate effort to resolve the situation.

But the damage had already been done.

The latest Newspoll shows support for the Rudd government has slumped over the past fortnight as the asylum seeker issue continued to dominate politics.

The poll, conducted at the weekend and published on Tuesday, shows support for Labor fell seven percentage points to 52 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.

It comes as the surge in asylum seekers took a deadly turn with at least one dead with almost a dozen still missing after their boat sank off the Cocos Islands.

Mr Rudd’s approval rating also fell by four percentage points.

However, the prime minister says he will not resile from his stance on asylum seekers, maintaining his policy is “hardline on people smugglers” and “humane on asylum seekers”.

“Polls go up, polls go down. My job is to govern in the national interest, because my job is to make decisions in the long-term national interest,” Mr Rudd told ABC radio.

“What the government is doing is ensuring that it implements its tough, responsible but fair policy, the one that we took to the people prior to the last election, and it’s the one which serves Australia’s long-term interests.

“I understand that it won’t necessarily be popular. People from the right of politics won’t like it, people from the left of politics won’t like it, but my job is to get on with the business of doing it.”

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said he wasn’t fazed by the polling slump.

But he admitted he might be worried if future polls showed a similar shift.

“If that is replicated in the next two or three polls, then that starts to become something of significance.”

The slide in support for Labor has seen the coalition claw its way back to 48 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.

But that has not translated into a lift in the polls for Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull’s approval rating was steady at 32 per cent.

The opposition leader responded by attacking the government’s asylum seeker policy, including the removal of the Howard government’s Pacific solution policy.

Mr Turnbull said if elected he would introduce tough measures to stop the people smugglers.

“We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again,” he said.

But he would not specify what action he would take over the 78 asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking because he said he wasn’t privy to all the detail.

Liberal frontbencher Tony Abbott described Mr Rudd’s border protection policies as a “comprehensive failure”.

Independent senator Nick Xenophon said the poll results represented a “confused” approach to the asylum seeker issue.

The voters wanted clarity, he said.

“They will respect you for standing by your principles and sticking by them but I think there is confusion as to what the government stands for.”

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Air Force plane hours from rescue scene- missing people

LATEST NEWS: 15:30 hrs WST

MISSING BOAT

Where are the missing people who were on board?

The Australian Government has marshalled three planes to search for passengers missing after their boat sank in the ocean hundreds of miles from the Cocos Islands.

Nineteen people have been plucked from the sea and about 20 are still missing, but it is still not clear whether the boat was carrying asylum seekers trying to reach Australian waters.

Seventeen of the rescued were picked up by a natural gas carrier and the Federal Government has confirmed they are all men aged between 20 and 40.

Another two people were collected by a Taiwanese fishing boat.

The Government says it does not know the origins of the boat that sank or its occupants, and it has not ruled out taking the survivors to Christmas Island.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority is coordinating the rescue operation in Australia’s vast search and rescue zone.

The capsized boat is 2,700 kilometres from the mainland and more than a day’s sailing from the nearest Australian government vessel, HMAS Larrakia.

And the Federal Government says a Royal Australian Air Force plane, a P3 Orion, is still hours away from the scene.

A Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) jet is flying from Perth and a Customs Dash 8 aircraft will also join the search.

“It’s just such a long way away it’s a matter of trying to get aircraft to the region as quickly as possible,” said Stephen Langford from the RFDS.

He says time is critical.

“It’s a fairly urgent task because there’s still people in the water and the weather is not fantastic,” he said.

Government rescue efforts

Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor says the Government has decided to work with the boats already in the region to carry out the rescue operation.

But he will not say where the rescued people will be taken.

“We’ll ensure that we do everything we can, firstly to rescue any remaining passengers that are at sea and provide whatever other support is required to assist the commercial vessels,” he said.

“That’s our focus at the moment, but of course we’ll look to the other issues about where the passengers should head as soon as we’ve done everything we can to save people that may be in the sea at this point.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it is too soon to consider where the people should be taken.

“Our priority right now has to be, as you would expect of any government, to deploy necessary resources to attend to lives at risk on the high seas,” he said.

Night-time accident

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority received a distress signal from the stricken boat about 11:15pm last night.

A spokesman for the Home Affairs Minister’s office says a small Taiwanese fishing boat nearby told the Safety Authority that the boat of asylum seekers was taking on water but was not sinking.

The Taiwanese fishing trawler was not big enough to take the people on board and it stayed alongside until a Bahamas-flagged merchant ship, the LNG Pioneer, arrived.

The ABC understands the merchant ship arrived at the very moment the boat started sinking.

The Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, has shed some light on what happened next.

“When the first ship got there, this vessel was still intact,” he said.

“Somehow or other during the process of the interaction between the ship and the trawler and also the stricken vessel, there has been a capsize and people have ended up in the water.”

All 40 people on board the sinking boat ended up in the ocean.

The Government said there was no moonlight and that made search and rescue very difficult.

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Kids destined for detention: Jakarta

SENIOR Indonesian officials have rejected outright a claim by Kevin Rudd that women and children asylum-seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking could be accommodated in regular housing, rather than behind razor wire in an Australian-funded detention centre.

“We’ve already got a detention centre (at Tanjung Pinang) and in it we already separate men and women,” the Foreign Ministry’s most senior official for international security, Sujatmiko, told The Australian.

“Indonesia does not need to be directed how to act. We’ve gotten the detention centre ready and we’ve already helped Australia for humanitarian reasons.

“There is commitment from both sides, and Indonesia has the commitment, but Indonesia is not your country.”

A spokesman for Mr Rudd said last night that the Prime Minister stood by his earlier comments.

On Wednesday, Mr Rudd told parliament: “The Indonesian authorities have advised the government that women and children will be offe

red the option of staying in a house near the Tanjung Pinang detention facility.

women and children will be offered the option of staying in a house near the Tanjung Pinang detention facility.”

The Prime Minister’s office did not respond to Dr Sujatmiko’s comment last night.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s most senior adviser on international affairs, Dino Patti Djalal, also refused to confirm claims made by Mr Rudd in parliament that the women and children among the 78 Sri Lankans would be housed separately.

After a brief silence in response to the question yesterday, Mr Djalal said simply: “I couldn’t comment on that. We’re waiting for Australian officials to go on board later today and convince them to come off, because that’s all they can do.

“They’re on Australian territory so we can’t do anything about it. We just hope Australia can get them off the boat.”

Mr Rudd’s “Indonesia solution” is facing growing opposition from Jakarta, with senior Indonesian officials saying they will not allow their country to become a processing site for Australia-bound boatpeople.

As officials continued to negotiate an end to the standoff with the 78 Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking, now in its 12th day, there were fresh signs the impasse was taking its toll on relations between Australia and Indonesia.

Yesterday, Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said talk of an “Indonesia solution” to intercept the boats had become a sore in Indonesia.

“We don’t want to be caught in the domestic issues in Australia,” Mr Faizasyah told The Australian.

“We don’t want to be the object of insults from your dynamic, political dynamic, in your country.”

Mr Faizasyah said Indonesia has a “bigger picture” when it came to bilateral relations.

“This will certainly irritate Indonesia to be associated with a new form of policy which in your country itself is still being debated,” he said.

Asked if it was likely Jakarta would agree to intercept and process more boats, Mr Faizasyah replied: “I don’t think so. We are not a country to process refugees because more importantly we are not parties to the refugee convention, so what we are doing (is) only based on our humanitarian perspective.”

But Dr Sujatmiko said Indonesian officials had responded promptly to Australian requests to supply food, water and other necessities to the Oceanic Viking, and in facilitating visa arrangements for an expected crew change aboard the vessel.

“We have helped with everything (possible) but we are not going to force (the asylum-seekers) to come off the boat,” he said.

Indonesian officials also revealed privately they were furious at the inactivity from Sri Lanka through the crisis, and were talking privately about making Colombo directly responsible for repatriating the next boat load of Tamils they intercept. Strategists in Jakarta believe this would send “one of the strongest signals … if next time one of these boats is picked up, it just gets sent straight back to Sri Lanka”.

Mr Djalal suggested that the move “should give some discouragement to them (asylum-seekers), after making all that effort to get here”.

Late yesterday afternoon the Sri Lankan ambassador to Indonesia agreed to visit the 78 Tamils on board the Oceanic Viking and make an offer of repatriation.

“If even half or a quarter of them could be repatriated, that would be a great thing,” Mr Djalal said.

Security on the Oceanic Viking was ramped up yesterday, with the Sri Lankans herded behind fluorescent tape and kept under guard by armed Customs officials.

The Customs officers confirmed they had been directed to prevent any communication between journalists and the Sri Lankans.

Fellow Tamil refugee “Alex”, on board the Jaya Lestari 5, a wooden cargo boat moored with 251 asylum-seekers at the port of Merak in western Java, said he could confirm that those on board the Oceanic Viking had had “at least one telephone communication with the outside world”.

“However, I can tell you that contact is waiting for a follow-up call, so whether it came from one person on board who had a phone but no longer does, I couldn’t say.”

The Sri Lankans appeared relaxed yesterday, washing on the top deck where they were being guarded early in the morning and then retreating under tarpaulins and below deck when a violent thunderstorm struck in the middle of the day.

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Australia could use force against asylum seekers

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has not ruled out the use of force by Australian officials against a group of asylum seekers who are refusing to leave a Customs ship, saying the Government is dealing with a “complex and difficult situation”.

As the 78 asylum seekers spend their 10th day on board the Oceanic Viking off the coast of Indonesia, Mr Rudd has faced a barrage of questions in Parliament from the Opposition over the stand-off.

Despite a deal made by Mr Rudd and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for Indonesia to take the group last week they are yet to leave the ship and local officials are resisting efforts to bring them ashore.

With the issue dominating Question Time this week, Mr Rudd was repeatedly asked by the Opposition to detail his involvement in continuing developments but Mr Rudd would not elaborate on any discussions which he said were of a “diplomatic nature”.

When asked whether Australian officials could use force against the asylum seekers, Mr Rudd replied: “We are dealing with a complex and difficult and challenging set of circumstances.”

“I have confidence that our men and women who are working in these professional agencies will discharge their professional responsibilities with the greatest degree of skill and tact and humanity that they can, but this is a very difficult situation,” he added.

The asylum seekers are due to be taken to a detention centre on the island of Bintan, but Mr Rudd says Indonesian authorities will not insist on locking up the women and children of the group.

“I’m advised by the Indonesian authorities that women and children will be offered the option of staying in a house near the Tanjun Pinang detention facility,” he said.

The Opposition insists the Government’s change in border protection policy is responsible for a recent surge in boat arrivals and Leader Malcolm Turnbull says the Government has “outsourced” the country’s refugee program to people smugglers.

“Not one question about the Oceanic Viking has been answered other than with a contemptuous, savage and sneering attack on the Opposition,” he said.

“The truth is that this debacle is a disaster entirely of the Government’s own making.”

Mr Rudd also also faced criticism from within his own ranks with Australian Workers Union boss Paul Howes saying the asylum seekers should be brought to Christmas Island.

“These are 78 people – can anyone really run any serious argument that this poses any threat to us whatsoever?” Mr Howes asked.

“The Prime Minister … has the opportunity to show leadership and actually inject some common sense and get a bit of the heat and rhetoric out of this debate.”

O.P.C. by: Emma Rodgers

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