Australia calls for refugee deal after boat tragedy
SYDNEY — Australia's government Sunday renewed its call for a
refugee swap deal with Malaysia after an asylum seeker boat sank off
remote Christmas Island leaving up to around 90 people dead or
unaccounted for.
Canberra clinched a deal last year to send 800
boatpeople to Malaysia in exchange for 4,000 of that country's
registered refugees in a bid to deter people-smugglers from the
dangerous maritime voyage Down Under.
But Prime Minister Julia
Gillard's fragile coalition government was unable to pass the required
legislation through parliament without the support of the opposition and
asylum-seekers have continued to risk the voyage, mostly via Indonesia.
"Without
the Malaysia solution you've got a cobbled together Indonesian solution
that is wholly unsatisfactory, it's not protecting the borders, it's
not saving lives," Foreign Minister Bob Carr told the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation.
Carr's comments came after Australia
suspended the search for more survivors from a people-smuggling boat
which capsized in the Indian Ocean between Indonesia and Christmas
Island three days ago.
Rescuers reached 110 people in the hours
after the boat sank some 109 nautical miles (202 kilometres) south of
the Sunda Strait in Indonesia on Thursday but despite an extensive
search, no survivors have been recovered since.
While 17 bodies
have been found, an exact death toll may never be known because there
were no firm figures on how many had been on board the ship.
Customs
officials believe there were about 200 people on board when the boat
went down, bringing the total dead and unaccounted for to around 90.
"I
think it really underscores why people should not set off on this
incredibly dangerous passage," Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said as she
urged opposition leader Tony Abbott to negotiate a compromise on the
Malaysia deal.
"I don't think we can keep seeing these sorts of human tragedies occurring."
Abbott,
who favours offshore processing of boatpeople on the tiny Pacific
island state of Nauru, poured cold water on any kind of compromise.
"The Malaysian people-swap is not offshore processing, it's offshore dumping," he told journalists in Melbourne.
"What's needed here is not compromise for compromise's sake but policies that work."
The
sunken boat is believed to have originated in Sri Lanka and to have
been carrying male mostly Afghan asylum-seekers. Authorities said nine
of the survivors were under the age of 18, including a 13-year-old boy.
Authorities warn of the dangerous journey asylum-seekers face when they
pay people-smugglers to bring them to Australia, often on overcrowded,
wooden boats.
The latest accident is the worst since 2001, when a
boat known as the SIEV X sank, killing 353 of the more than 400 people
on board.
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