SIEV-X sinking
| Date | 19 October 2001 |
|---|---|
| Location | Indian Ocean |
| Deaths | 400 |
SIEV X was the name assigned by Australian authorities to an Indonesian fishing boat carrying over 400 asylum seekers en route to Australia, which capsized in international waters with great loss of life on 19 October 2001.
Contents
Background
The sinking came during a period when Australia had declared people smuggling with boats as a national security threat. The head of the Australian People Smuggling Taskforce was Jane Halton, who two decades later ran the Australian part of Covid.
Official narrative
The Australian government claimed it had no prior knowledge of the unfolding tragedy.[1][2] The government had no intelligence on the boat leaving. Despite patrolling the area being a priority, the nearest navy ship was 150 nautical miles away. Radar and several flight patrols failed to discover the boat. A flight that hovered over the area after the sinking failed to discover anything.[3]
Problems with official narrative
SIEV X was a coffin ship, so unseaworthy that i could never have reached Australian territory. Former diplomat Tony Kevin proposed that:
- It is likely that the alleged people smuggler Abu Quassey was a police disruption or 'sting' agent. This is suggested by the sustained high-level of Indonesian and Australian protection before, during and after the sinking of SIEV X, as well as by subsequent Australian Federal Police (AFP) attempts to help minimise his sentence in his 2003 trial in Egypt and render him immune from further prosecution.
- The AFP have a history of involvement, under the people-smuggling disruption program, with a self-confessed Australian people smuggler and sinker of boats, Kevin Eniss.
- As Commissioner Keelty reluctantly admitted, the conduct of Indonesian police people-smuggling disruption teams - initially set up, trained, equipped and funded by the AFP - was out of AFP control, and criminality in Indonesian disruption operations (for example the deliberate sinking of boats) could not be ruled out.
- There was a pattern of disruption operations in Indonesia before SIEV X, involving frequent sinkings and voyage failures in Indonesian waters, and of the progressive elimination of autonomous people smugglers from the Indonesian market in order to clear the way for 'sting' operators in contact with the disruption program,
Related Quotation
| Page | Quote | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Jane Halton | “Leave your personal baggage [moral scruples] at the door.” | Jane Halton |
