<nettime> Australia's Watergate ?

["Ozi Media-Junkie" <ozmediajunkie@hotmail.com>]

353 Dead: This Could Be Our Watergate

By Tony Kevin* (May 10 2002)

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/09/1020914030024.html

Human tragedy is the stuff of news. A boat sinking and the death by
drowning of 353 men, women and children is a big story in anybody's
language. That this tragedy happened to a leaky, overloaded asylum-seeker
boat on its way to Christmas Island on October 19 last year, at the height
of Operation Relex, a major and forceful Australian military operation to
detect and repel asylum-seeker boats, makes it an Australian story.

So it is particularly important for our self-respect as Australians that we
try to understand how and why this tragedy happened. 

But in fact, after the initial three-day sensational media coverage, the
story quickly died. There was no investigative Australian journalism.
Compare this to the exhaustive and sustained media coverage of, say, the
Thredbo landslide disaster.

But on this story, our media unquestioningly swallowed the Federal
Government's spin: that this was an Indonesian maritime disaster, in
Indonesian territorial waters, and solely the result of a greedy people
smuggler overloading his boat. The media bought the government's convenient
line: that what happened to this boat had no connection at all with
Operation Relex; that this maritime disaster was nothing to do with us.

The desired lesson having been spelt out - that the tragedy starkly
illustrated the dangers of people smuggling - the Howard Government quickly
"moved on". Asylum seekers, who had been very briefly acknowledged as
victims and fellow human beings, went back to being dehumanised as faceless
alien invaders. 


The moral sickness at the heart of our ugly election campaign took hold
again. The human tragedy to our near north - which has left hundreds of
bereaved and grieving families, including many living here in Australia -
was forgotten.

>From the beginning, I had a strange foreboding about this dreadful event.
Somehow it seemed too conveniently timed

In at least three ways, this tragedy strongly benefited the government's
border protection agenda. Overnight, Indonesia abandoned its previous
opposition to hosting a people-smuggling conference, for which Australia
had been pressing.

Indonesia also from now on quietly accepted the forced towback of
asylum-seeker vessels by the Australian navy to the Indonesian territorial
waters boundary - something Indonesia had previously said it would resist.

And finally, the tragedy dealt an enormous setback to the people-smuggling
industry in Indonesia: it sent a powerful signal to asylum seekers that it
was no longer safe for them to try to reach Australia by this means.

If the challenge of people smuggling has now been defeated, I am sure that
this event was the turning point in achieving this outcome.

Since January, I have independently researched the story. So far, I have
uncovered glaring inconsistencies or discrepancies in the official
Australian public record. But the story still has a long way to go. 

I am neither a whistleblower from within the defence system nor a Woodward
and Bernstein-style young investigative journalist. Basically I am a
retired old fart, with some analytical skills from my previous profession -
within the Department of Foreign Affairs - and some ability to smell a rat.

What we do know is that by mid-October, Operation Relex was efficiently
detecting and intercepting suspected illegal entry vessels (SIEVs).

Its success rate was 11 out of 12. It was a three-stage system: timely and
accurate intelligence reporting giving place and time of embarkation,
intended destination, and number of passengers; aerial surveillance up to
as close as 50 kilometres from Indonesia of ''windows" of sea where boats
were expected to appear; naval interception in contiguous zones (40
kilometres north of Christmas Island and Ashmore Island).

For Operation Relex to succeed, information had to flow promptly around the
command and information chain in Canberra. But information about SIEV X
(the boat that sank), which Coastwatch had from intelligence, and which
thus should have also been passed to Operation Relex, was not so passed. As
a result, crucial information that could have saved 353 lives did not reach
the Australian navy.

I am now satisfied that no navy ship was present at the scene of the
sinking, and that the nearest ship, HMAS Arunta, was 150 nautical miles
away. I am also satisfied that neither Arunta, nor the navy as a service,
knew on October 19 about SIEV X's emergency on that day. I am satisfied
that if they had known, they would have tried to rescue survivors.

But other specific questions remain.

Most importantly, we don't know why information that Coastwatch got from
intelligence sources about SIEV X's embarkation on October 18 or 19 was not
passed to Operation Relex and the navy at the same time that Coastwatch
first got it. We don't know yet when Coastwatch got this information. Don't
all these organisations depend on the same central intelligence
coordination headquarters? Did not Operation Relex require timely and
accurate intelligence about SIEV boats coming down from Indonesia? What was
different about this boat - why was it treated so differently from all the
other SIEVs?

There are two issues about which I raise questions: my concerns about what
happened to information on this boat in Canberra, and my concerns that, in
the absence of a detailed account, the sinking itself could be seen to have
possibly been a managed event.

On the second issue, we await further public information from Indonesia,
which I hope will sooner or later emerge.

On the first issue, I hope that the Senate committee into the "children
overboard" affair will try to throw further light on the inconsistencies in
what ministers and officials have said.

Let us suppose that a timely intelligence report had come down from
Indonesia to Canberra on Thursday, October 18, saying that a boat had left
Bandar Lampung early that morning in a grossly overloaded and unseaworthy
condition, and that it was not expected to reach Christmas Island. It is
reasonable to expect any intelligence report on the boat's departure would
have also contained that information.

If such a report had immediately gone to Operation Relex, I expect that one
or more of the following actions would have been decided: informing the
Indonesian search-and-rescue organisation of an expected emergency,
directing air surveillance of international waters where the boat might
first appear, moving HMAS Arunta into a position to be ready to effect a
quick rescue if necessary, once the boat crossed the boundary of
Indonesia's contiguous zone.

If those things had been done, many lives might have been saved when the
boat sank - some 30 hours after its departure.

This is not what the Senate's "children overboard" committee was first set
up to examine, but it might in the end prove to be the committee's most
important task. This could become an Australian Watergate.

* Tony Kevin worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs between 1968 and
1998. He was Australian ambassador to Cambodia from 1994 to 1997. This is
an edited extract of his speech in Canberra last night to a refugee action
committee.


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