"Closing the National Mind: The SIEV X tragedy and Australians’ thinking about Boat People"

- a talk by Tony Kevin at the Migration, Mental Health and Human Rights Conference, Wentworth Hotel, Sydney 2 October 2003

 

I gave this talk on 2 October 2003 at the invitation of Mary Crock, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Sydney. It was a departure for me. Rather than yet again trying to recount the increasingly complicated saga of the officially blocked SIEV X investigation, I set out to give this talk a different kind of focus - to pose the question, what is the SIEV X cover-up doing to our society and its mental health ?

Suppression of a story as big and conscience-wracking as this, I argued, does not come without real social costs.

A reworked version of this paper may appear in the conference volume. Meanwhile Mary Crock has kindly given me permission to run my delivery text, with my endnotes, on this site.

TK 18.11.03

 

"Closing the National Mind: The SIEV X tragedy and Australians’ thinking about Boat People"

- a talk by Tony Kevin at the Migration, Mental Health and Human Rights Conference, Wentworth Hotel, Sydney 2 October 2003

My paper relates to many other things heard today in this conference: Derrick Silove’s eloquently expressed concern that if asylum-seeker policy is not humanised, "the ultimate loser will be the moral fabric of our society"; Savitri Taylor’s discussion of how, because so much of our practical approach to human rights stems from people’s rights as citizens of states, we need to "close the gap between man and citizen" if refugees’ human rights are not to fall between the cracks; Camilla Cowley’s memorable remark by the young Afghan asylum-seeker on a boat who was so determined to live, because "if he had died, his family’s sacrifice would have been in vain". All those themes are found in the tragic history of SIEV X (1)

This conference is looking closely into the effects on people of Australia’s cruel present "border protection" system – Temporary Protection Visas, mandatory detention including of children, Pacific Island detention, forced towback of boats to Indonesia by the Australian Navy. If Australia had any involvement in the sinking of SIEV X, that would be the worst cruelty of all because it involved the taking of life. Life cannot be given back. The surviving victims from the sinking of SIEV X and the bereaved families will live with this grief all their lives.

The sinking of SIEV X is serious unfinished public business for Australia. And the guilt of SIEV X will eat away at us until justice is done. This story is not "over". It won’t be over, until it is solved and its perpetrators and accessories brought to justice.

The SIEV X official cover-up by Australian authorities was an early warning of the deeply flawed governance culture that now afflicts us. We should have heeded its significance then. It is not too late to do so now.

The SIEV X story raises three questions. First, how could 353 people drown in Australia’s border protection surveillance zone, victims of what appears to have been a well-organised act of people smuggling disruption ? They were not invaders. They were refugees, mostly Iraqi women and children, trying to rejoin their menfolk in Australia. They were people just like us - all they wanted was peace, safety and the possibility of family happiness.

Second, how could investigation of this alleged crime be blocked by Australian Government agencies, contrary to their public accountability obligations? How can the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Departments of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Immigration, and the Australian Defence Force (ADF), protected by their respective Ministers, continue to refuse to answer legitimate Senate questions? All of them are now implicated, if not in the clandestine disruption programs in Indonesia that I believe led to the sinking of SIEV X, then certainly in its cover-up afterwards.

Third, why doesn’t our society demand answers? How do we just push SIEV X out of our minds? And what is this denial doing to us?

My task of seeking truth and justice for the SIEV X victims gets harder as it goes on. But this work is essential: for the bereaved families, and because Australia's failure to account honourably for this tragedy puts into question the integrity, and also the collective mental health, of our society.

At the height of John Howard’s planned pre-election border protection war against boat people, aimed at winning back one million One Nation voters, an overloaded 19 meter boat capsized and sank on 19 October 2001 on its way to Christmas Island (2). (See Figure 1, general map of the area of the SIEV X journey). Reportedly, about 420 people had been forced on board this tiny boat by Abu Quassey, assisted by 30 armed Indonesian police (3). It sank 33 hours later in Indian Ocean international waters, 60 miles south of Java, well inside Australia’s border protection surveillance area (4). Only 45 people survived.

Howard said the boat sank in Indonesian waters and disclaimed any Australian responsibility (5). His claims were accepted at the time.

As a result of the tragedy, Indonesia acceded to Australia’s demand that our Navy tow asylum-seeker boats back to Indonesia, and to Australia’s demand for a people smuggling conference. The sinking of SIEV X was the final deterrent to unauthorised voyages. Demand dried up. The boats stopped coming. Howard won re-election through winning his border protection war. But it was not a just war, and Australia did not wage it honourably. (See fig 2 – cartoon in "Sydney Morning Herald") .

In 2002, I asked the Senate Committee investigating the children overboard affair, to also examine this sinking. The Committee heard official witnesses and received written evidence on SIEV X.

There were manifest official misrepresentations and outright refusals to provide information. However the Committee’s report exonerated the ADF. It accepted Defence’s false evidence that it was speculative where SIEV X sank (6). But the Committee questioned the AFP’s previously secret "people smuggling disruption program" in Indonesia (7). AFP Commissioner Keelty had revealed disturbing evidence on this program's mode of operations (8).

John Faulkner made four powerful Senate statements on the disruption program (9). He said on 25 September:

"And what about the vessel now known as SIEV X, part of the people-smuggling operation of the notorious people smuggler Abu Quassey? That vessel set sail on 18 October 2001 and sank on 19 October 2001, drowning 353 people, including 142 women and 146 children. Were disruption activities directed against Abu Quassey? Did these involve SIEVX?

I intend to keep asking questions until I find out. And, Mr Acting Deputy President, I intend to keep pressing for an independent judicial inquiry into these very serious matters. At no stage do I want to break, nor will I break, the protocols in relation to operational matters involving ASIS or the AFP. But those protocols were not meant as a direct or an indirect licence to kill." (My italics)

In December 2002 the Senate Opposition majority passed two strongly critical motions (10). One called for Quassey to be brought to justice for his alleged role in the 353 deaths. The second called for an independent judicial enquiry into the disruption program including the circumstances of the sinking of SIEV X. The Government has treated both motions with contempt. It took no steps to set up any judicial inquiry. It never tried to bring Quassey to trial, in Australia or in Indonesia, for murder or manslaughter. The only alleged crime ever of stated interest to Senator Ellison and AFP was people smuggling - it was as if the 353 deaths on SIEV X deaths had never happened.

Major new evidence came to light this year. On 4 February, Foreign Affairs released a previously withheld Australian Embassy Jakarta reporting cable, sent to a wide inter-agency distribution in Canberra on 23 October 2001, four days after the boat sank and 16 hours after survivors arrived back in Jakarta (11) ( See fig.3 – page 1 of this cable) .

This cable contained crucial details on the boat and its voyage that had been concealed by officials from the Senate CMI enquiry, but that they must have known at the time they were giving oral or written evidence. Information in this cable – and the very fact of the cable - was deliberately covered up by official witnesses for as long as possible. And the cable included many details of a nature that could not possibly have come from survivors.

In July, the "Canberra Times"’ published dramatic new maps charting the four multi-source items of evidence that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that SIEV X had sunk in a well-defined small area of international waters within the Australian border protection surveillance zone; and that officials had known this all along, but had failed to advise the Senate enquiry (12). ( See fig 4 – map © sievx.com).. Defence authorities simply shrugged off this new material - it was never responded to in substance.

Opposition Senators continue in Estimates questions to probe inconsistencies and gaps in the official SIEV X record. Government Ministers and senior officials continue to answer evasively, or simply decline to answer on grounds that Senators cannot dispute. This continuing blocked questioning goes unreported.

At this stage, I clearly see from my close study of named, multi-source material on the public record the following things (13). A history of sustained official Indonesian and AFP high-level protection of Quassey, before during and after SIEV X; a history of similar compromising AFP involvements with people smuggler and sinker of boats, Kevin Enniss; AFP Commissioner Keelty’s statement to CMI that the conduct of Indonesian police disruption teams trained by AFP was out of AFP control; early detailed official reporting soon after the sinking that could not possibly have come from survivors, but can only have come from sources close to those who worked to sink SIEV X; reports of radio messages and tracking devices and military-type boats that appeared in the night but did not rescue survivors; implausible reasons given for the arrival of rescue boats; suspiciously well-managed rescue and news management operations; official Australian photographs of SIEV X taken before it sank; exact official knowledge of the boat’s size, structure and fuel capacity, and the exact passenger manifest, that cannot have come from interviewing survivors.

It is clear from my close study of the public record on these matters that there was from the beginning an undeclared "back channel" of information which ran, possibly through intermediaries, between the Indonesian police disruption teams who I believe worked with Abu Quassey, and the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. This cannot be admitted, because it would renew the question of whether Australian agencies could have prevented these deaths? As Senator Bartlett observed (14), the answer to that question probably lies buried in the blackout ink in documents, and in the blocked answers to the Senate.

My forthcoming book will discuss such issues in detail. Yes, I could be wrong – but how will we find out, if there is no full-powers judicial enquiry, and if the AFP and other agencies continue to block legitimate Senate questions ?

There is now a great public silence on these matters in the mainstream political process. Is the quest for SIEV X justice running into the sand ? Even the phrase SIEV X – which in June-July 2002 was headline news – has been all but forgotten these days.

Abu Quassey, who flew home to Egypt in April, is now on trial in Cairo for SIEV X-related manslaughter (under his legal name Mootaz Muhammad Hasan) (15) . If representative testimony is obtained from among the 38 survivors resettled as permanent refugees in humanitarian countries (seven are in Australia under Temporary Protection Visas), this trial might expose some of the hidden links between his operation and people smuggling disruption programs. I am currently making representations to six embassies in Canberra, trying to generate international interest in informing SIEV X survivors now living in countries outside Australia of their rights to testify in the Quassey trial if they so wish, and in giving those who might wish to do so logistic and financial support to go to Cairo.

By blocking public transparency on SIEV X , Australian government agencies are shielding a possible major capital crime. They might respond that no crime has been legally established. But this misconstrues public accountability obligations. "You can’t prove it" would not be a proper response from any government agency to well-based public questions about possible association with criminality in a matter of 353 deaths.

At this point, incredible as it may seem, responsible government agencies just don’t seem to care to investigate the extent of their responsibility for SIEV X. Yet many ordinary Australians do care. Many of us care, but we seem to have little impact either on the people who set political agendas or on those who make a living discussing politics.

SIEV X is bigger than just another John Howard political lie – the official cover-up of unexplained mass deaths is a systemic problem for all of us. It is about an apparent betrayal by our governing elites of their responsibilities to the people.

Seeing this has deeply shaken me, as a former senior public servant who worked for 30 years in two sensitive national security departments. I always assumed, perhaps naively, some honour and moral limits on what government agencies do, administrative safeguards, implicit community-based understandings that certain kinds of official conduct would be seen as intolerable and quickly exposed.

After SIEV X, I believe that pretty much anything is possible at the national security level. There are no longer any real checks and balances if a Prime Minister, his Ministers, and their unaccountable advisers, are ruthless enough to manipulate the resources of the national security system to achieve their political goals.

Prime Ministers now have huge power over their own party, and over senior officials in federal government agencies. People who lead federal agencies now are vulnerable to pressure because of their passionate engagement in their careers. National security agency executives can no longer always be relied on to draw lines of principle in the sand that Ministers cannot cross. Canberra does not necessarily work like that any more.

The executive power extends to influencing opinion-makers formally outside government – senior media commentators, senior university, research institute and think-tank executives, the professional and service associations, and so on. More and more people are tailoring their contributions to what they judge the government will accept. The rules have changed. The main rule now is, "Don’t rock the boat".

When did you last see SIEV X discussed on any commercial or ABC Television current affairs programs? When did you last see any serious newspaper analysis of it? Or academic articles on it? It seems the government has pretty successfully buried the story, despite all the Senate’s valiant efforts.

In such a context, the imagined protections of our traditionally informal plural system of governance become weaker. The unthinkable becomes thinkable.

The sinking of SIEV X and its cover-up were like the dead canary in the coalmine. They were an early warning of the poisonous gases seeping into our system – of the other abuses of executive power that were to come.

Since SIEV X we have seen many other successful abuses of Government power – the curious failures to make public clear pre-Bali bombings intelligence warnings of possible terrorist acts there , the manipulation of intelligence about Iraqi weapons, the misuse of the ADF in the internationally unlawful invasion of Iraq, the acceptance of American control over our country’s security, the manipulation of phoney international terrorism threats within Australia to try to frighten us into docility, the incremental undermining of our civil liberties and multicultural values. SIEV X was the precursor, yet SIEV X is still seen by many in the political mainstream as a fringe issue. Why ?

Once government agencies start down the slippery slope of a blocked investigation, it becomes harder for them to turn back: because to do so would be to admit if there was any initial wrong-doing. Corruption of public institutions starts small, and then grows as more people become incriminated and compromised. And it is harder to resist down the line if it comes from near the top.

The authorities’ blocked investigation of so many things to do with SIEV X now extends even to concealing the names of the dead. Here is how AFP Minister Chris Ellison replied recently to a Senate Question on Notice from Senator Bob Brown (16):

" ….A list [of the dead] was provided to the AFP from a confidential source after the vessel sank. Provision of any details of that list would compromise that source. It may also compromise a current ongoing investigation in Indonesia. The list purports to contain some details of passengers, but its veracity has not been tested. The AFP believes it is unlikely that a full and comprehensive list of those who boarded SIEV X or those who subsequently drowned will ever be available".

Imagine the outcry if Australians were told that the names of Australian dead at Bali might be withheld for ever, for such spurious offered reasons. But the AFP has another reason. It knows that to release the full list of names could raise awkward questions as to how and from whom AFP was able to obtain such a full and accurate list. Hence the verbal gymnastics of the Ellison answer.

With every such craftily worded reply to Senate questions, that conceals truth while not quite lying, our ADF and AFP and government departments dig themselves in deeper. Technically they may think they are winning, yet many decent people working in these organisations must know by now that serious public questions are being evaded. Sooner or later, this will out, and a large price will be paid.

Perhaps you now understand the great silence in Australia on SIEV X? I think we are silent about it, because it would shame too many of us too much now, to face the probable truth of it. Sooner or later, as we now acknowledge the truth of aboriginal genocide and the stolen children, our society will acknowledge the evil that was done to the people on SIEV X. The longer we delay it the harder it will be. Guilt suppressed is guilt magnified.

Part of the SIEV X denial mechanism is the claim that Australians couldn’t do such bad things – that "we’re not like that". So it is important for me to say this: Evil-doing does not require evil intent. The writings of Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman and others who studied the nature of evil in complex modern societies showed how evil deeds can grow out of ordinary people just doing their jobs as part of the machinery of state (17). There would not need to have been evil intent by any individual Australian for the sinking of SIEV X to have in some way grown out of the Australian people smuggling disruption program, or for its later investigation to be officially blocked.

Finally, how did engaging in this story affect me ?

Authorities have not taken legal action against me, I think for several reasons. I have a record of 30 years’ loyal public service. I am asking legitimate questions about the public and private conduct of government agencies, but I am not libelling individuals. I do not reveal official secrets. My SIEV X campaign is trying to defend important Australian values – actually, they are universal values - of justice and accountability.

But there have been more subtle sanctions – efforts to discredit my career achievements, and a quiet undermining of my public standing in my field as a foreign affairs writer. That is a personal challenge to me and my family, but we are dealing with it.

The other day someone I admire greatly in the refugee protection movement publicly introduced me as a person who was bravely tilting at windmills. I hope my friend was referring to my courage and persistence, rather than to my capacity for self-delusion! Don Quixote mistook the windmills for enemy knights, but I don’t think I am mistaking what was done to the people of SIEV X.

Our struggle – yours at this conference, and mine - is still being waged for the restoration of a decent and accountable public society in Australia. Everyone fights on their own front. My front is SIEV X. But it is all part of the one war.

This conference focusses on the evils being done to asylum-seekers in our midst and the terrible challenges to their mental health. I can’t claim to have gone through a small fraction of what they go through. But I feel for these living victims, and for their separated and traumatised families wherever they are. My SIEV X struggle is also for them.

Australians can no longer tolerate such deep moral dysfunctions at our political centre, which are straining the mental health of our society. What do we tell our children about the forgotten dead mothers and children on SIEV X, or about the living children growing up behind razor wire ? How do we teach our children that our society is based on a belief in justice when they see these realities ? If our own children see that we think such abuses are acceptable, what message does this send to them? If we shrug off these 353 deaths, why should we care about murder in our cities and suburbs?

So we have got to clean up the mess. In such matters of life and death, we have got to demand a return to truth and honour from our governments. ENDS

Tony Kevin, Canberra.

List of proposed illustrations:

Figure 1 - general map of area of land journey and voyage.

Figure 2 – cartoon in "Sydney Morning Herald"(uncaptioned).

Figure 3 – page 1 of released Jakarta Embassy cable of 23 October 2001 .

Figure 4 – map © sievx.com, showing evidence of the sinking area.

(1) "SIEV X" is a term that I first coined and is now common usage. It means "suspected illegal entry vessel, unknown". This was my name of convenience for the, even now officially nameless, asylum-seeker vessel that sank on 19 October 2001 on its way from Indonesia to Australia’s Christmas Island, drowning 353 people. "SIEV" was the acronym used by official witnesses to the Senate Select Committee enquiry (conducted in 2002 ) into a Certain Maritime Incident (for convenience this committee is referred to hereinafter simply as CMI), in presenting evidence on 12 asylum-seeker boats that were intercepted by the Australian Defence Force during Operation Relex, the Australian Government’s military border protection operation conducted in waters between Australia’s Christmas and Ashmore Islands and Indonesia in the period September-December 2001. I asked the CMI to investigate this sinking and it agreed to do so. I first used the name "SIEV X" in my article "Twisting tale of dog that didn't bark", Canberra Times, 25 March 2002 (CT)

(2) See Australian Embassy Jakarta cable O.JA25691 of 23 October 2001, released to Senate on 4 February 2003 – text on www.sievx.com , under "Documents"

(3) While not mentioned in the Australian Embassy cable of 23 October 2001, the forced loading of SIEV X at gunpoint by alleged people smuggler Abu Quassey with assistance of 30 armed Indonesian police was reported in many international media reports of around 24-25 October 2001, and in subsequent survivor accounts. See media reports in www.sievx.com under "Articles – The Disaster and Aftermath". See also, under "Articles – Challenging", "The Five Mysteries of SIEV X", by Ghassan Nakhoul, 28 August 2002 (English transcript of SBS radio documentary, in the SBS Arabic program). Nakhoul won a Walkley Award in 2002 for this fine program.

(4) The evidence that SIEV X sank in the Operation Relex zone, but that this fact is still being covered up, denied or ignored by Australian government authorities, was fully set out in a comprehensive paper by Marg Hutton, in 'SIEVX & the DFAT cable: The Conspiracy of Silence', published on 22 May 2003, www.sievx.com Homepage. A subsequent article by me published two maps (© www.sievx.com) setting out the evidence for the sinking location , "New Holes In SIEV X Story", Canberra Times, 17 July 2003. "New Maps Expose Further Holes In Government's SIEVX Story", on www.sievx.com Homepage, 17 July 2003, is a URL-linked version of my article.

(5) References in Hutton. op.cit

(6) See CMI Report paragraph 8.5, page 196. See also Executive Summary, pages xl-xlii.

(7) See CMI Report pages 8-12, and Recommendation 1, Executive Summary, page xx. The CMI called for a full independent enquiry into Australia’s people smuggling disruption activity that occurred prior to the departure from Indonesia of refugee vessels.

(8) In Keelty’s oral and written evidence to CMI, and to Senate Estimates Committees. Keelty’s evidence and Australian Federal Police replies to questions on notice about Australia’s disruption program in Indonesia are fully referenced on www.sievx.com

(9) Senate Hansard, 23-26 September 2002. On www.sievx.com

(10) Motions passed on 10 and 11 December.

(11) See endnote 2

(12) See endnote 4

(13) All these points are addressed in detail in my forthcoming book, now in preparation. In the total media reporting, there are accounts sourced to around 25 named survivors, recalling aspects of their journey. Collectively, these accounts and the accompanying journalists’ reporting and commentaries, which clearly did not come from talking to survivors, offer a weight of historical evidence which would be essential data for any future judicial enquiry.

(14) At a SIEV X meeting in Adelaide in December 2002, at which Senator Bartlett and I spoke.

(15) "Egypt tries man over Siev X deaths", ABC News (Lead Story), abc.net.au,
7 September 2003 (Reuters)

(16) Senate Hansard, 11 August 2003, pp.13041-2. Reply to part 3(b), Question on Notice no. 1229, Senator Brown to Minister for Justice and Customs, 27 February 2003. To supply this answer took six months.

(17) See "Evil in modern thought" , Susan Neiman, Princeton University Press, 2002, and a review article discussing Neiman’s book and earlier work by Arendt and Bauman, "In the presence of evil", Mark Lilla, "New York Review of Books," reprinted in Australian Financial Review "Review", 25 July 2003