With the arrival of 76 illegal immigrants aboard the Ocean Lady, Canada joins a global smuggling pipeline where thousands of Tamils, Afghans or Iraqis risk their lives in the waters between Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.
In this shadowy world, millions of dollars are secretly exchanged, staffers at the Indonesian embassy in Kabul take bribes, Tamils transit through jungle camps in Malaysia and luckless Afghans die when their boat explodes as it is boarded by Australian sailors.
From a beat-up wooden ship moored in a Javanese port, comes the story of 254 Tamil migrants who, according to a passenger calling himself Alex, couldn't afford the $45,000 (all figures U.S.) to board the Ocean Lady to Canada.
Instead, they paid $15,000 each for a boat to Australia - but were caught by the Indonesian navy.
Now, they can only envy their 76 fellow Tamils who are poised to seek refugee status in Canada.
"Many people on board were upset and ... the first thing that caused the depression was the fact that we chose this ... vessel that was headed to Australia," Alex told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"The second part of the depression was the fact that countries like Canada have accepted these asylum seekers who have arrived by boat and have taken them into their country."
The smugglers would have grossed nearly $4-million from Alex's group and $3.4 million from the B.C.-bound passengers.
Police arrested the skipper of Alex's boat, Abraham Lauhenapessy, also known as Captain Bram, the alleged Indonesian kingpin behind the smuggling of 1,500 people into Australia in the last decade.
Mr. Lauhenapessy is free after spending nearly two years behind bars after a Jakarta court sentenced him in 2007 for human smuggling.
Growing violence in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka have fuelled the exodus, but asylum seekers also come from Iraq, Pakistan or Myanmar.
They are on the move, and officials in Malaysia and Indonesia say they do not have the resources to police their long coastlines.
This year the Australian navy has intercepted 33 boatloads and more than 1,000 refugees are awaiting processing on Christmas Island, an Australian territory near Java.
Alex told ABC that his boat had been five hours from Christmas Island but Mr. Lauhenapessy missed the pickup vessel that would take him back to Indonesia.
The smuggler turned the boat around rather than face 20 years in an Australian jail.
"We were so close to freedom," Alex said.
The passengers, he said, had been contacted by agents in Sri Lanka and flew alone or in small groups to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
Then they waited in a transit camp in the Malaysian jungle for up to two months before boarding the ship on Oct. 1.
Alex said his wife, who was eight months pregnant, wasn't allowed on the boat and he hasn't heard from her since.
The pipeline extends all the way to the Indonesian embassy in Kabul where there are allegations that staffers sold visas for $1,500.
Earlier this spring, 55 Tamils washed up on a beach at the tip of Sumatra after their boat sank. Some thought they had arrived on Christmas Island.
Around the same time, police called to the scene of a road accident in Sumatra found 30 illegal Afghan immigrants on a bus carrying them to Jakarta after they had arrived on a boat from Malaysia.
Off the Australian coast meanwhile, a boat carrying 47 Afghan men burst into flames after it was intercepted by the Australian navy.
Five passengers died in what officials suspected was a deliberate attempt to prevent the vessel from being turned away.
One survivor, a 16-year-old from Afghanistan's central Ghazni Province, said he was fleeing persecution by the Taliban.
Another, a member of the Hazara minority, said he had paid smugglers $10,000.
No comments:
Post a Comment