Asylum seekers on wrecked boat drown off Australian island

SYDNEY, Australia — At least 30 asylum seekers drowned after their boat ran onto rocks on reaching Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island, officials said Wednesday.

Officials confirmed 41 of the estimated 80 people
thrown from the boat had clambered up the rocks or had been picked up
by customs and navy vessels.

Kamar Ismail said he and fellow locals watched
helplessly as the wooden fishing vessel, which appeared to have lost
power, drifted for 45 minutes before being dashed against the rocks in
the swell.

“We were maybe 3 meters from the cliff, but we just
couldn’t help. … It was just too dangerous,” he told the national
broadcaster ABC.

Local electrician Michael Foster said it was heartbreaking that the huge seas made it too dangerous to help those being battered against the rocks.

Residents were alerted to the unfolding tragedy at dawn by the screams of those in the water.

“With the horrendous seas as they are, the only
thing that people could do from the mainland was really throw life
jackets back into the water or just advise them to swim away from the
rocks,” Foster said.

Locals said those aboard the boat — men, women, children and babies — were either Iraqis or Iranians.

In recent months, more than three boats a week have been landing on Christmas Island, loaded with mostly Middle Eastern asylum seekers paying people smugglers for their passage across from Indonesia’s Java Island.

More than 2,000 asylum seekers are in the Christmas Island immigration detention center and 3,000 more are held on the Australian mainland.

Arrivals this year are expected to be the highest on record.

Opposition Liberal Party immigration spokesman Scott Morrison faulted the government for not doing enough to deter people smuggling.

He said the tragedy “highlights once again how very
dangerous this business is of people coming by boat and why it’s so
important again that we do everything possible to ensure that these
boats don’t come in this way.”

Paul Power, head of the Refugee Council of Australia lobby group, urged the government to counter people smuggling by making it easier for asylum seekers to enter Australia.

“It’s well known how difficult and dangerous this
journey can be, but so many asylum seekers continue to make this
journey because they feel they have few real options open to them,” he
said.

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