Two decades ago, an Indonesian vessel given the name SIEV X sank with loss of life that should have caused a flood of tears and a surge of compassion. Instead of being seen in humanitarian terms, the deaths of 353 people became a form of rich political capital, placed in the bank of opportunism to be amortised at a federal election.
The Howard government had already ushered in a new chapter in Australian border policy in sending SAS troops to repel the 438 individuals on the Norwegian vessel, the MV Tampa, in August 2001. Refusing to let the ship dock at an Australian port in accordance with international maritime law and the Refugee Convention became a clarion call for border protection advocates.
In many respects, the SIEV X remains less known. But it was no less significant in firming up the proposition that those making their way to Australia to seek sanctuary, and those aiding them doing so, were to be demonised and criminalised. The vessel itself, originally overladen with 397 asylum seekers, sank in the waters between Java and Christmas Island on October 19, 2001. A good number of those on board hoped to eventually reunite with partners on Temporary Protection Visas in Australia.
Many perished instantly; a hundred clung on for the next 20 hours, succumbing to exhaustion. 44 were found alive by two Indonesian fishing boats. The location of the sinking was important for taking place in Indonesia’s area of search-and-rescue responsibility. But, contentiously, it also took place in Australia’s aerial border protection surveillance zone.
On October 23, news of the drownings made it into the public domain. Labor opposition leader Kim Beazley suggested that this episode, were it to be confirmed, pointed to ‘the failure of policy.’ This failure was due to a lack of agreement between Indonesia and Australia on how to prevent people getting on leaky boats to seek passage. This was hardly a glowing endorsement of the right to asylum, and Beazley, in subsequent clarifying remarks, insisted that he was not blaming Howard but the ‘appalling evil’ of the people smuggling trade.
Howard, in turn, suggested that his opponent was profiting from the drownings for political advantage. That he would make such a ‘despicable’ slur showed Beazley’s ‘opportunist political character’. The debate duly descended, and Howard, in turn, could insinuate that the SIEV X was an example of how Australia needed to police borders with ever greater vigilance.
'The language towards the SIEV X was one of inhumane reservation, of hearts hardened and unmoved.'
On October 28, at the launching of his re-election campaign in Sydney, the Prime Minister declared that ‘we decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come’. Howard took aim at Beazley as one soft on border protection while praising the Royal Australian Navy for not only protecting borders ‘but saving lives in the process of doing so.’ As the New York Times put it at the time, the only question to be asked in that election was which Australian candidate had the harder heart.
The SIEV X, like its victims, would have perished from memory but for the efforts of former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin, who was convinced that the vessel had sunk in the Australian maritime surveillance zone. He urged the Senate to take up the reins investigating the issue. An angrily defiant Rear-Admiral Geoffrey Smith was adamant that Australian authorities had no forewarning of the vessel’s sailing ‘until we were told it had foundered’.
Survivors, such as the late Amal Basry, suggested a different story. In 2002, Basry alleged ‘military-style vessels’ had approached at night, only to then depart. Kevin, for his part, claims that SIEV X was a ‘coffin ship’, designed to sink as part of an Australian smuggling disruption program.
What is certainly known is that Smith’s testimony was vastly at odds with other government accounts. Admiral Mark Bonser, head of Coastwatch, rang the Navy in April 2002 to warn that his own Senate testimony would contradict Smith’s claims. In a letter of ‘clarification’ to the Senate, Smith admitted that the Department of Defence had received intelligence on several occasions: October 14,18, 20 and 22. On October 20, the navy was informed that SIEV X had ‘400 passengers on board, with some passengers not embarking because the vessel was overcrowded’.
Bonser’s own testimony was also, in parts, incomplete. He denied, for instance, that Jane Halton’s People Smuggling Taskforce had any knowledge of SIEV X prior to October 22. But on October 18, as the minutes of the task force reveal, the members received ‘multi-source information with high confidence level’ that there was ‘some risk of vessels in poor condition and [needing] rescue at sea’. The SIEV X was making its way to Christmas Island. But on October 22, the task force noted that the vessel had not, as yet, been found, was ‘missing, grossly overloaded’, with ‘no jetsam spotted’ nor ‘reports from relatives’.
From the start, the language towards the SIEV X was one of inhumane reservation, of hearts hardened and unmoved. The boat, a ‘suspected illegal entry vessel’ in official jargon, remained undesignated. Knowledge of the state of the vessel, or the number of those on board, was denied. The Senate Select Committee inquiry established to investigate the ‘children overboard’ scandal, after it broadened its focus on the fate of SIEV X, found it ‘extraordinary that a major human disaster could occur in the vicinity of a theatre of intensive Australian operations and remain undetected until three days after the event without any concern being raised within intelligence and decision-making circles.’
Even here, however, the committee’s language seemed less concerned by the status of the victims and reasons for journey than the operational nature of their alleged non-detection. Committee members found it, for instance, ‘particularly unusual that neither of the interdepartmental oversight bodies, the Illegal Immigration Information Oversight Committee and Operational Coordination Committee, took action to check whether the event revealed systemic problems in the intelligence and operational relationship.’
By 2011, Marg Hutton reflected how Howard’s ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’ had turned to ‘We will protect those who seek refuge in this country by ensuring that they never come’.
Across the globe, we see examples of this policy replicated. Instead of compassion and understanding, refugees and asylum seekers find themselves used as weapons of political blackmail, chance and advantage. The Belarussian regime of Aleksander Lukashenko has relocated them to the Polish border to harry a government sympathetic to the Belarussian opposition. Poland, in turn, has repelled individuals who have a right to asylum and sanctuary and has promised to build a US$400 million wall on the Belarus border. Lithuania, for its part, accuses Belarus of conducting ‘hybrid warfare’ in using refugees as ‘human shields’.
The Johnson government in the United Kingdom has taken heart and interest in advice given by former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on how to deal with cross channel arrivals. The UK’s Home Secretary Priti Patel is advancing her own version of Australia’s ‘turn-back-the-boats’ policy claiming that Britons are sick of ‘open borders’, ‘uncontrolled immigration’ and ‘a failed asylum system’. In Denmark, the centre-left Social Democrats have made agreements with third countries in Africa to ensure that those seeking to venture to Europe are kept away. All of these policies are taking place in the shadow of SIEV X’s victims — and thousands of others who have seen the right of asylum negated by faux compassion in favour of border protection. The hardened heart continues to win out.
Dr Binoy Kampmark is a former Commonwealth Scholar who lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Main image: Siev X Memorial, Weston Park, Canberra. (Wikicommons)