Asylum Horror
Via Tim, a Indonesian fishing boat over-filled with asylum-seeking Iraqis and Iranians lost power and smashed into the rocks on Christmas Island
A BOAT carrying asylum-seekers has smashed onto rocks in heavy seas at Christmas Island, with unconfirmed reports that many people have drowned.
Government sources told The Australian Online they believed about 70 people were aboard the boat and between 30 and 35 had been rescued, with the rest unaccounted for.
It is understood that most of those on board were Iranians and Iraqis.
The death toll is now pushing 50. More pictures here.
As with seemingly everything these days, there are strong political reverberations to this: under Howard and the Liberals, Australia turned away boats seeking asylum, which not surprisingly resulted in fewer and fewer making the attempt. Now, under the Labor governments of Rudd and Gillard, who have made it a specific point of their policy to accept these vessels, many more have made the attempt…and hundreds have drowned.
But Howard was the inhumane one.
People, Politics, World Stuff | Mr. Bingley | 
December 15, 2010 7:40 am
Subscribe
But they’re compassionate, they’re caring, they’re tolerant AND they feel good about themselves for caring. Why are you so hard on them? Intolerant grinch!
BLAIRITE!
“Asylum” is right. As in “insane asyum”. For the lefties that create the conditions that let this sort of tragedy happen.
I can understand turning away people in order to deter people risking their lives haphazardly… but I also understand the idea behind encouraging people to come to your country for freedom. It reminds me a lot of the Cubans who rigged their Chevy pickup with four 55-gallon drums as pontoons and tried to drive to Florida. They were stopped at sea, taken back, and their Chevy was sunk.
I’d have picked them up, brought them to the beach, told them “We never saw you, congratulations” – and I would have put the Chevy in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and then the Smithsonian. God bless their noble, courageous hearts for risking all they have to breathe free.
“Ok, folks, here’s a stumper: What is it that is said to be ‘paved with good intentions’?”
How did they get to Indonesia? Were they Christian or something?
I suppose they could have walked through India and gone down through Myanmar and Thailand to Malaysia and hopped a boat to Indonesia from there…
Nightfly, I agree on the Chevy. There were a LOT of very pissed off Floridians on that one. That’s the kind we WANT here.
As an Aussie I might be able to add something to the dialogue on this one. Under the previous Howard government a scheme called temporary protection visas was introduced and asylum seekers were processed on an island in the pacific called Nauru. This was done because once the asylum seeker made it Australian territory they were entitled to appeal decisions in our court system. Granting them temporary protection visas and processing them off shore meant that no obligation was transferred to Australia regarding the asylum seekers. Since coming illegally by boat now got you no greater chance of being granted access to Australia people stopped risking the journey.
To put it in perspective for the 5 years the policy was in place the average was 3 boats arriving per year, and the number of legally arriving immigrants was actually increased. (Which was possible because the public perception was that these were refugees coming through the front door rather than jumping the queue.) Since the policy changed, 6,400 have arrived illegally this year.
Sorry for the novel but I hope that provides some context.
Thanks for the backstory, evil.