Asylum-seekers 'ordered onto' rotting boat

Alexander Downer, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia, urged authorities in Jakarta to investigate claims by survivors of a shipwreck – in which more than 350 asylum-seekers drowned – that they were ordered onto an overcrowded boat at gunpoint by Indonesian police in league with people smugglers.

Survivors told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation yesterday that police armed with rifles threatened to beat up those refusing to board the vessel who they thought it looked unsafe.

One alleged that a number of people had been beaten, and said that the "people smuggler" who organised the voyage struck two others while waving a pistol. The alleged smuggler was named yesterday as a Jakarta-based Egyptian, Abu Quassey, who – according to the Australian government – has been involved in previous similar operations.

Mr Quassey is alleged to have packed 418 asylum-seekers, mainly Iraqis, on to a rotting fishing boat that had a normal capacity of only 150. Just 44 people survived the sinking after the Australia-bound vessel sank off Java last weekend. They had to cling to wreckage for 19 hours.

The survivors, recovering in the Indonesian town of Bogor, say that at least 10 people refused to board the boat and another 21 had demanded to be put ashore on a small island shortly after departure.

Allegations of involvement by the Indonesian police and military in people-smuggling have been made in the past. Mr Downer said that the latest claims should be investigated. However, he added that he did not believe it was official Indonesian policy to abet such smuggling operations.

Philip Ruddock, the Australian Immigration Minister, asked Indonesia to extradite Mr Quassey, saying that Australia was prepared to put him on trial. "We've passed it [Mr Quassey's name] on to Indonesia already on a number of occasions," he said.

Indonesian-based representatives of the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, said yesterday that 30 people on the boat had already been assessed as genuine refugees and had waited in Indonesia for up to a year to be resettled elsewhere.

Australia, which recently began turning away boatloads of asylum-seekers, said it would consider accepting 40 refugees who were in Indonesia awaiting resettlement – but not survivors off the sunken ship. That, Mr Ruddock said, would send the wrong signal to people considering making the same perilous trip. The offer was made after the UNHCR asked Australia to share the burden of an international solution to the refugee crisis.

The Indonesian government said yesterday that it planned to host an international conference in Jakarta next month to discuss ways of stemming the flow of Middle Eastern migrants through the region.