Scores Missing After Australia-Bound Refugee Boat Reports Distress

By MATT SIEGEL-August 30, 2012
SYDNEY, Australia — Ninety or more people remained missing Thursday after a boat carrying about 150 migrants sank off Indonesia, in another disaster this year for asylum seekers from the Middle East and Asia trying to reach Australia by sea.

The Australian home affairs minister, Jason Clare, expressed grave concern for the passengers and said that a “massive” search-and-rescue effort was under way to locate survivors. At least seven commercial ships and one military vessel were combing the waters around 40 nautical miles south of the Indonesian island of Java, he said, where the boat issued the first of two distress calls early on Wednesday morning.

Thousands of asylum seekers try to reach the remote Australian territory of Christmas Island each year on rickety, overcrowded vessels, leading to accidents at seathat have killed more than 600 people since late 2009. Australia’s Parliament passed legislation this month to allow boat refugees to be deported to offshore detention centers in an effort to stem the record number of arrivals, but the policy has not yet had any significant impact.

Six survivors were pulled from the wreckage of the ship early on Thursday, and 39 more were rescued later in the day by navy and merchant vessels, Mr. Clare said. He had warned earlier that rescuers had a shrinking window to locate any additional survivors.

“Potentially dozens and dozens haven’t survived,” Mr. Clare said in Sydney.

The Associated Press reported that a total of 55 people had been rescued, and that the captain of a rescue vessel said he saw bodies in the water.

A Liberian-flagged merchant vessel, the APL Bahrain, was reported by The Australian, a daily newspaper, to have rescued the first group of six survivors, all of them men. The survivors reportedly told the chief officer of the ship that women and children had been on the stricken vessel, which Mr. Clare said was believed to have been carrying up to 150 passengers. It was unclear whether women and children were among the survivors.

Australia had initially handed over responsibility for the search to the Indonesian search-and-rescue authority, Basarnas, which stopped looking for survivors Wednesday after failing to find any during its initial sweep. A spokesman for Basarnas told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that it regretted calling off the search, but Mr. Clare defended the Indonesian agency’s actions.

“Don’t underestimate how difficult this task is; don’t underestimate how big the sea that we’re searching is,” he said.

This has the potential to be the largest disaster of its kind in terms of loss of life since at least June, when around 90 asylum seekers are believed to have drowned when their boat capsized during a similar journey from Java.

Australia has tried for years to come up with a policy that would deter would-be immigrants from trying to reach Christmas Island, a territory in the Indian Ocean that is Australia’s closest point to Indonesia. Prime Minister Julia Gillard had proposed sending asylum seekers to Malaysia for processing, but the plan was rejected by Australia’s highest court, and negotiations over a replacement plan broke down.