TONY KEVIN – FULL TEXT WITH ENDNOTES, FOR TALK AT CANBERRA SIEV X FORUM MEETING ON 18 OCTOBER 2003

 

See also text of talk as given, at

http://www.tonykevin.com/talks_sievx_canberra.html    

 

ABSTRACT

 

The Australian Embassy Jakarta reporting cable on SIEV X [1] sent four days after the sinking,  O.JA25691 dated 23.10.2001   and released to the Senate 16 months later in February 2003, started as a media brief to Ministers. It now has great evidentiary importance. 

 

Its text, and the answers given by Ministers and departmental officials to continuing Senate Questions on Notice about it, will be studied closely when the independent judicial inquiry demanded by the Senate into the Australian people smuggling disruption program and the sinking of SIEV X is set up.

 

My overall conclusions from a close study of this cable, along with other available information about the SIEV X voyage, are these:

 

·        It was a media briefing cable for Ministers, in a situation the Ambassador knew was already generating intense media interest and would therefore require careful information management by Ministers

 

·        It tells the SIEV X story in a way that only tells the elements the Australian authorities wanted told – overloaded boat, no safety equipment. It hides unwanted elements –  that the boat sank in international waters and the Australian border protection zone, that Indonesian police had assisted the people smuggler, that frightened passengers had been forced aboard at police gunpoint, that the boat had leaked from the start, that the engines and pumps had finally stopped leading to rapid water entry and capsize.

 

·        The Ambassador would not have approved a briefing cable of this importance, to the Prime Minister and six senior Ministers, on the basis only of one claimed telephone conversation with one survivor through an interpreter. Much of the precise information in the cable could not have come from any survivor. The Embassy must have had access to precise intelligence reporting on the story, which can only have come from people close to the named people smuggler Abu Quassey. This highlights Senator Faulkner’s unanswered question - what was the AFP’s people smuggling disruption program really doing in Indonesia?

 

·        The suppression for 16 months of knowledge of the cable and its contents, by most witnesses and providers of written information to the CMI enquiry, is a public scandal. I am saddened to see how so many Ministers and senior officials are failing in their duty to the Australian community to uphold the laws of this country, at a time when the Australian Senate is trying to investigate the deaths of 353 people.

 

Tony Kevin, Canberra 18 October 2003

 

 

FULL TEXT

 

I assume most of you are familiar with the SIEV X history and issues of government accountability it raises. This talk will discuss the significance of the SIEV X reporting cable sent from the Australian Embassy, Jakarta on 23 October 2001 –  a cable only released 16 months after it was sent , on  4 February 2003.

 

Since then, Opposition Senators have worked away in Senate Estimates committees,  questioning witnesses and putting Questions on Notice (QoN) to AFP, Defence, PM&C and DFAT. Some of the answers are quite startling. Today I will try to deconstruct this cable, analysing its text closely in the light of some of what we now know from other publicly available information sources [2] .

 

Once I started asking public questions in the Certain Maritime Incident  (CMI) Committee in March 2002 about the sinking of SIEV X,  this cable was seen as potentially damaging to whatever the government was trying to hide - or else there would not have been such huge efforts to conceal the cable. What keys to unlocking the SIEV X mystery might this cable hold?

 

I believe the Government hoped that this cable would never become public. It is clear that many of the government witnesses and suppliers of written evidence to the CMI enquiry in 2002 must have known of this cable. But most made no reference to its existence or contents.  Only two people, Jane Halton and Vice Admiral Mark Bonser then head of Coastwatch , alerted Senators to its existence [3] .

 

Labor Senators asked to see it, but the system kept somehow forgetting.  I think authorities may have hoped that after the CMI Report was tabled on 23 October last year, Opposition Senators might close the SIEV X file. Fortunately, they didn’t.  Even then, supply of the cable was delayed for four more months.

 

Note the cable headers. FIRST means it was a high priority read-soon cable;  RESTRICTED means it did not contain highly classified national security information. Most importantly, THIS CABLE CONTAINS SENSITIVE INFORMATION warned it was politically sensitive.  This header and the cable title would have alerted senior staff in addressee departments and Ministers’ offices – brief the Minister on this.

 

The third sentence of the Executive Summary reinforced this: “There has been close interest by the international media in the story”.

 

This cable, prepared under the direction of the Ambassador Ric Smith – now Secretary of Defence – was actually a carefully drafted media brief to Ministers . The cable really was saying to Ministers and their minders: “This sinking is becoming a big media story. Expect to be questioned on it. Here are some things you could safely say.”

 

The cable made little attempt to hide where the boat sank. The Exec Summary says: “in rough seas to the south of Sunda Strait within the Indonesian maritime search and rescue area of responsibility”. And para 6 says  “no further south than 8 degrees south latitude on a direct line from Sunda Strait to Christmas Island”.

 

On the same day as the cable, an Indonesian business magazine ran identical language on the sinking location [4] .  Don Greenlees of the Australian reported the next day (24 October) that the boat sank 80 km from land [5] . The Australian published an accompanying thumbnail map accurately depicting this sinking location, in international waters south of Sunda Strait. And Phillip Ruddock and others received a DIMIA intelligence note on 23 October reporting that the boat sank “approximately 60 NM south of Sunda Strait” [6] .  

 

So the Embassy cable did not actually lie. But you’d have to be an insider to know that “Indonesia’s maritime search and rescue area of responsibility” simply means that the boat could have sunk anywhere between Indonesia to south of Christmas Island.  The other statement - “no further south than 8 degrees south latitude on a direct line from Sunda Strait to Christmas Island” is more useful, because it gave coordinates which can be plotted onto a map. But why didn’t the cable simply say where the boat sank, as the DIMA Intelligence Note did? Because this was a media brief, and Australian authorities weren’t supposed to know where the boat sank.      

 

The cable could have accurately reported  “the boat sank in international waters and in Australia’s maritime border protection surveillance zone” – but it chose not to. The boat was certainly not in Indonesian territorial waters,  or the cable would have said so.  The cable was actually suggesting how Ministers might try to spin this.  By using the phrase “within the Indonesian maritime search and rescue area of responsibility”, the public might be induced to think the boat had sunk in Indonesia’s territorial waters.

 

John Howard, perhaps sensing all this was too complicated for radio talkback audiences,  simplified his public messages starting on 23 October  to “It sank in Indonesian waters – and Australia is not responsible”. He did not actually say “in Indonesian territorial waters” but that is certainly what he would have known that his listeners would assume  he meant. It was later suggested, implausibly,  that he might have meant to say “in the Indonesian search and rescue zone”. 

 

Howard’s misrepresentation of truth was retrospectively protected the day after by Jane Halton’s  briefing note of 24 October which was sub-headed “ Boat sunk in Indonesian waters” [7] . So Howard could say he had been thus briefed.

 

Finally in 2003,  the Senate established conclusively that Halton‘s note did not contain any evidence of this proposition  – her brief said only that the boat sank “south of the Western end of Java”.

 

This is not especially important in itself . It is not news that politicians , even this Prime Minister, sometimes lie. What is important and disturbing is how Howard’s initial lie generated a sustained big official lie during the Senate inquiry into 353 deaths on SIEV X, and how the Senate Committee was misled by that lie. This is all comprehensively set out in Marg Hutton's paper in May 2003. “SIEVX & the DFAT cable: The Conspiracy of Silence” [8] .

We now know that the Defence review of SIEV X intelligence, submitted to CMI in July by Defence Minister Hill [9] ,  spin-doctored information said to be available to Defence to make it look as if there was considerable uncertainty as to where SIEV X sank.

 

The Prime Minister’s lie was thus skilfully transmuted into a claimed official uncertainty. The Committee accepted this apparently authoritative Defence advice and wrote into their Report the now infamous para 8.5 , on which so much else hangs:

 

“The exact location where the boat sank remains in doubt, with speculation that it might have gone down in the Sunda Strait within Indonesian waters.”

 

Had the Committee known the contents of the Embassy cable, there is no way they could have reached that wrong conclusion.  It is deeply disturbing how comprehensively they were misled by so many Ministers and senior government officials. Why didn’t anyone blow the whistle to the CMI on what the cable had said?  Why did everyone sit on their hands ?

 

Even now , when we know of four independent multisource reports of where SIEV X sank – two of these Australian official reports, one the Jakarta Harbormaster’s record of the rescue coordinates [10] , one an Australian  media report [11] – with a sievx.com map now showing that all four mapped points are within a few miles of one another and all well inside the Operation Relex zone [12] , and with no strong counter –intelligence , it is still being claimed by some that evidence has not established whether the vessel sank in Indonesian or international waters. So the damaging effect of the originally accepted lie continues even now, when it is known to be a lie.  

 

Let’s continue deconstructing the cable.

 

A DFAT witness told Estimates that the initial five blacked out lines probably referred to sources and those involved in the preparation of the cable. DFAT later advised [13] that the cable was prepared  by DFAT [14] , AFP and Defence representatives at the Embassy,  under the direction of the Ambassador.

 

Separately, AFP gave the Senate detailed reporting on claimed information sources for each paragraph [15] . There is nothing worth blacking out in either reply. 

 

So it must be something else that led to these blacked-out lines. . Perhaps it was the name of the single survivor witness, on whom so much of this cable was claimed to be based? Perhaps it was information that might help identify an Indonesian police or military source of information ? We can only speculate. But it is probably important information.

 

Regarding the single survivor on whose recollection so much of the cable was said to depend, the AFP’s latest version of how this survivor was contacted was as follows [16] :

 

“On hearing of the sinking of SIEV X, an AFP member in Jakarta contacted the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), as the survivors had been placed in its care. The AFP member was advised that a survivor had indicated a desire to speak with Australian police. A subsequent telephone conversation, through an IOM staff member, took place where information about the vessel, passage and the sinking were provided to the AFP member. This conversation was informal and at the request of the survivor. That survivor has since been located and has provided a formal statement to the AFP.”

 

As we go through the cable, remember that all of it except in a few parts where noted is supposed to have come from this telephone conversation with one faceless volunteer survivor, brought to the phone by an IOM staff member. But would an Ambassador of Ric Smith’s standing and experience have really based a whole briefing cable to senior Ministers on one single unsubstantiated survivor speaking over the phone, without corroboration from any other source ?  I think not.  Yet that is the AFP claim, supported by DFAT.

 

Senator Collins asked this question on 10 February 2003 to AFP [17]   – just six days after the release of the cable:

 

“Is there intelligence in the cable regarding the SIEV X that relates to information other
than that of survivors once they had returned, so it may include surveillance detected by
INP but reported after the departure or after the return?” 

 

Here Senator Collins was giving AFP a chance to reveal from where they had really got the information reported in the cable - even if they had got it too late to save passengers’ lives.

 

But she got this remarkable AFP reply on 27 March [18] :

 

“ There is no "intelligence" contained within the cable. The information contained in the cable consists of a summary of details provided to the AFP by telephone by a survivor on 22 October 2001 (see response to QoN 113).

Paragraphs 1 - 5 consist solely of information provided by that survivor.
Paragraph 6 consists of information provided by the same survivor, with additional
information relating to the possible approximate location of the sinking being calculated
by Defence personnel at Post, based on that survivor's information.

Paragraph 7 consists of information provided by the survivor.
Paragraph 8 consists of information provided by the survivor.

The "vessel overdue" reference was included by Defence personnel at Post.

Paragraphs 9 - 11 are a summary of the pertinent points contained in the cable and some
commentary, including reference to information provided by the International
Organisation for Migration”.

 

Continuing through the cable, it is as interesting to see what it does not say as what it says.

 

Para 2 gives something close to the land itinerary as survivors report it. It leaves out that their night-time bus convoy  from the Bogor area to Sumatra was escorted by an Indonesian police officer Brigadier Agus Saguan, who travelled in a car up front with Abu Quassey; and that they stayed in a hotel owned by the local chief of police and guarded by police. Safuan who provided the laisser- passer  for the 250 km bus convoy and ferry crossing was reportedly arrested but has never been reported sentenced.

 

Para 3 – It’s hard to believe that AFP’s male survivor knew all this detailed information about the boat. The boat was moored out in the bay at night. People were being ferried out in launch-loads of 25. How would he have had opportunity on this grossly overloaded little boat with no room to move around the dark deckspace to measure it as 19.5 by 4 metres? How would he have recognised a recently added chipboard upper deck?

 

This chipboard added deck is key information because it points to the likelihood of planned intent to sink the boat through gross overloading. The voyage planners needed to build that extra deck in order to cram 430 people onto a 19.5 metre boat. As it was, people were being packed in like sardines. 

 

Everyone who read this cable in Canberra on 23 October 2001 would have remembered that sentence about the added deck. It leaps out at you. Yet not a single official witness ever told the CMI about it. I find this chilling. Had witnesses been instructed not to refer to it?

 

And who added the puzzling four words  “presumably to enhance seaworthiness” Was this an ironical in-joke? Because any reader would know that adding an upper deck to a boat would have precisely the opposite effect. Might these words have been code, put there to alert readers in the know that this was a disruption program sabotage operation ?

 

Para 4 ignores what was to become a major media story the next day, 24 October – that 30 armed Indonesian police had helped Quassey’s men force terrified passengers out to the grossly overloaded little boat at gunpoint [19] . The AFP’s survivor informant would have had to have seen this, being as a male one of the later people to board.. Did he report it? Was it deliberately left out of the cable?

 

Para 5 says the vessel had been at sea for (as the cable timings indicate) some 37 ½ hours when it began to take water and sank a hour later. This tells us that even at my estimated low speed of 4 knots, the vessel had already gone well beyond Sunda Strait when it sank. From Bandar Lampung to the Sunda Strait exit coordinates is only 70 miles. At 4 knots that takes 17 ½ hours, leaving many hours of travel to come.  Remenber all those ADF claims early in the CMI that the boat sank in or near the Sunda Strait? They were totally false, and this cable proves it.

 

What is also noteworthy about para 5 – the survivor reports that the boat “began taking water”. The cable makes no reference to engine failure or switching off. Yet many survivors report this.  The engine provided power to the pumps. When it failed, the pumps also stopped and the boat that had been badly leaking since departure – also reported by many survivors - quickly filled up with water and as a result lost stability and capsized.  AFP’s survivor does not report any of this.  

 

Para 5 does not mention any radio distress calls. Yet the IOM spokesman in Geneva who first broke the story, Jean-Philippe Chauzy, was reported by CNN on Monday night 22 October to have said [20]   that “the captain radioed that the engine had failed and the boat was sinking”.  No survivor has spoken of seeing any radio on board except the AFP’s informant who in para  4 of this cable reported a radio’s earlier use.  The issue of whether there was a radio on board and whether it was used to report the boat’s position or to send distress messages remains an important loose end in the story.

 

Para 6 glosses over the full horror of the sinking (indeed,  the whole language of the cable is totally lacking in humanity) .  The boat did not sink quickly after capsizing. It took several minutes for the holds to completely fill with water. The women and children trapped inside died agonizing deaths.

 

I have already in part addressed the issue of location of sinking. But I will also recall here that the AFP reply to QoN 119 noted the cable’s use of  “additional information relating to the possible approximate location of the sinking being calculated by Defence personnel at Post, based on that survivor's information”.

 

Now this is really implausible, because a few months later, Defence gave some more information on how this calculation might have been carried out [21] :

 

“There has been no Royal Australian Navy (RAN) investigation into calculating where SIEV X sank. RAN personnel in Jakarta at the time provided input to the AFP on where it was thought SIEV X might have gone down, based on timings given by the AFP of the most likely time and place of departure. No precise position was given because of the many variables involved, which include time spent offloading passengers, tidal stream, wind, the vessel’s speed and sea state”.

 

But this is a spurious claim. Because if all those variables are factored in, the AFP and RAN would really have no idea where the boat sank over a north-south range of at least 150 miles. . Take for example one mentioned key variable  – speed. I estimate 4 knots which fits departure time, sinking time, and distance between departure point and where the multisource evidence noted earlier indicated the sinking location. It is also intuitively right – it would be a prudent speed for a grossly overweight top-heavy unstable boat whose crew was trying desperately to keep afloat.

 

But applying the AFP’s  own earlier “realistic” calculation of the boat’s speed as being 8 knots [22] this would mean that in what the cable says is a 37 1/2 hour voyage the boat would have travelled up to 300 NM. That puts the sinking location almost at Christmas Island –  far south of the 8 degrees south latitude claimed in the cable as the southerly limit of where the boat might have sunk, and far south of the precise DIMIA Intelligence Note statement that the boat sank approximately 60 NM south of Sunda Strait.

 

So this claimed calculation by RAN personnel at the Embassy to produce this cable’s paragraph 6 estimate of where the boat sank is entirely bogus. Such a calculation could not have produced the information in paragraph 6 of the cable,  given all the variables claimed to be involved [23] .  According to such claimed methods of calculation, SIEV X could have sunk anywhere between Sunda Strait and Christmas Island.

 

All of these AFP and Defence answers are implausible cover-ups of what nobody in the system even now wants to admit – that the Embassy had by 23 October 2001 received accurate intelligence information on the coordinates of where the boat sank;  and that the last sentence of paragraph 6 was a safely vagued-up version of that information.

 

Where could this information have come from ?  I see five possibilities [24] :

1.                  Radio intercept by DSD of any final captain’s radio distress message (this has been denied)

2.                  Monitoring transmissions from a tracking device fitted to boat ( transmissions could have monitored by Indonesian police or Australian authorities – replies here have been evasive )    

3.                  Unadmitted Australian air surveillance detections of SIEV X [25] .

4.                  Long-distance (eg JORN) Australian radar detections of SIEV X. 

5.                  US defence satellite surveillance.

 

Para 7 notes that survivors  “were approached by” two fishing boats. This wording is at least consistent with my hypothesis that the boats were told where to go. And here I note another missing element in the cable – the military-type ships in the night that were reported by many survivors. Did the AFP’s informant not see them?

 

QoN 120 states that paragraphs 9 - 11  “are a summary of the pertinent points contained in the cable and some commentary, including reference to information provided by the International Organisation for Migration”.

 

We read in Para 10 detailed passenger information – 353 dead, 70 children, 70 lifejackets. Let’s assume this came from IOM and not the survivor. Where did IOM get the accurate figure of 353 dead, just a few hours after 44 survivors had returned to Jakarta? How could IOM have known that 353 had drowned ?  Once again, we see clear evidence of contact with the smugglers who had the passenger list .

 

Finally, what is said in the missing sub-heading and text – about five lines – of para 13? I assume it might be discussing policy implications or consequences. But I am only guessing. This final section could contain important clues.

 

Here then are my overall conclusions from a close study of this cable, in the context of some of our other information about the voyage of SIEV X :

 

 

·        It was a media briefing cable for Ministers, in a situation the Ambassador knew was already generating intense media interest and would therefore require careful information management by Ministers

 

·        It tells the SIEV X story in a way that only tells the elements the Australian authorities wanted told – overloaded boat, no safety equipment. It hides unwanted elements – that the boat sank in international waters and the Australian border protection zone,  that Indonesian police had assisted the people smuggler, that frightened passengers had been forced aboard at police gunpoint, that the boat had leaked from the start, that the engines and pumps had finally stopped leading to rapid water entry and capsize.

 

·        The Ambassador would not have approved a briefing cable of this importance, to the Prime Minister and six senior Ministers, on the basis only of one claimed telephone conversation with one survivor through an interpreter. Much of the precise information in the cable could not have come from any survivor. The Embassy must have had access to precise intelligence reporting on the story, which can only have come from people close to the named people smuggler Abu Quassey. This highlights Senator Faulkner’s unanswered question - what was the AFP’s people smuggling disruption program really doing in Indonesia?

 

·        The suppression for 16 months of knowledge of the cable and its contents, by most witnesses and providers of written information to the CMI enquiry, is a public scandal. I am saddened to see how so many Ministers and senior officials are failing in their duty to the Australian community to uphold the laws of this country, at a time when the Australian Senate is trying to investigate the deaths of 353 people.

 

 

This cable, which started as nothing more than a media brief, now assumes considerable evidentiary importance. Its text,  and the answers given by Ministers and departmental officials  to Senate questions on it, will be studied closely  by the full powers judicial inquiry into the Australian people smuggling disruption program and the sinking of SIEV X, if it is set up. And if it fails to be set up in reasonable time,  this same evidentiary material  may be part of a citizens’ brief to the International Criminal Court whose jurisdiction Australia fortunately recognises.

 

I hope it will not come to that – I hope we will have the courage to clean up this mess ourselves.

 

I am in a few days opening a personal website www.tonykevin.com   This site will be my own advocacy site on national issues of interest to me, currently mostly to do with SIEV X but not limited to SIEV X . I will continue to rely on Marg Hutton’s www.sievx.com as the indispensable SIEV X information archive.

 

My site will in no sense compete with sievx.com,  but it will offer my personal advocacy perspective on SIEV X and other issues of public concern. Its name is intuitively easy to search and remember. It will be a contrarian site, but I hope one that people of all political orientations will find interesting to read. Its philosophical basis will simply be that Australia needs to return to a morally accountable basis for our foreign and national security policies; that national security policies that undermine personal human security are wrong policies; and that, as SIEV X and Bali so tragically proved, “what goes around comes around”. 

 

Tony Kevin, Canberra 18 October 2003  

 

 

 

Attachment:  (photocopied cable text as provided to Senate is on www.sievx.com, see “Documents”). Here is my re-type:

 

Jakarta Embassy cable: O.JA25691   1049   23.10.2001   CLA  FIRST SENSITIVE

 

RESTRICTED

 

INDONESIA: SINKING OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT VESSEL

 

THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SENSITIVE INFORMATION

 

Start of summary

 

A suspected illegal immigrant vessel, (SIEV) carrying 397 potential illegal immigrants (PII) sank en route to Christmas Island during afternoon of Friday 19 October. The SIEV is believed to have foundered in rough seas to the south of Sunda Strait within the Indonesian maritime search and rescue area of responsibility. 45 survivors were rescued by two Indonesian fishing vessels and returned to Jakarta late on the afternoon of 22 October.

 

End of summary

 

[Five lines blacked out]

 

Chronology

 

2.                  Tuesday 16 October – approximately 430 potential illegal immigrants (PII) departed Cipinas (south of Jakarta) and travelled to Sumatra via Jakarta and Merak. The survivor said that on arrival in Sumatra, they then travelled 1½ hours by bus to a hotel. They remained overnight in that location (possibly Bandar Lampung) .

 

3.                  Wednesday 17 October – Abu Quassey informed the PIIs that they were to pack their belongings as they were departing that evening. Later that day they moved from the hotel to the point of departure only a few kilometres away. The vessel was waiting for them. The dimensions of the vessel were reported as 19.5 metres long with a beam of 4 metres. A makeshift upperdeck had been added,  with the afterdecks enclosed by chipboard ( presumably to enhance seaworthiness).

 

4.                  Thursday 18 October – the vessel departed Bandar Lampung at approximately 0130. At this time, due to the size of the vessel, 10 PIIs refused to embark, leaving 421 PIIs on board. Approximately one hour after departure, PIIs apparently became apprehensive about the ability of the vessel to remain afloat with the numbers on board. The vessel stopped approximately 5 kilometres from the point of departure, during which time the crew was in radio contact with Abu Quassey. The vessel then resumed its passage and about 0900 again stopped near an island “due to high seas”. A nearby fishing boat came alongside the vessel to remove 24 PIIs (397 PAX remaining).  

 

5.                  Friday 19 October – At about 1400 the vessel began taking water. The crew sought to reassure the passengers by telling them that this was a small problem. The PIIs assisted the crew to bail the vessel, using improvised scoops fashioned from the hull timber. At this time the vessel was out of sight of land.

 

6.                  At 1500 the vessel began to list heavily to port.  Within five minutes the vessel capsized. It sunk completely after momentarily remaining neutrally buoyant. Debris soon surfaced after the sinking. The majority of the PIIs drowned immediately, with some 120 initial survivors. There was a heavy sea running and it commenced raining after the sinking. The exact position of the vessel at time of sinking is unknown, but it is judged as no further south than 8 degrees south latitude on a direct line from Sunda Strait to Christmas Island.

 

7.                  Saturday 20 October – the survivors remained in the water for approximately 19 hours, with many of the survivors perishing during that period. At approximately 1000, the remaining survivors were approached by two Indonesian fishing boats. One vessel took on board 44 PIIs ( 41 adults and 3 children) with the second boat picking up 5 PIIs. Of these, 4 were already dead and the remaining survivor was a female

 

8.                  The crew of the first boat ( 44 PIIs) contacted their Chinese owner for instructions. They were subsequently directed to proceed to Jakarta with the PIIs. The time of arrival in Jakarta was approximately 1800 on Monday 22 October.

 

9.                  A vessel overdue alert message was issued by Rescue Coordination Centre Australia on Monday 22 October and forwarded to Indonesian Search and Rescue Centre ( BARSARNAS) in Jakarta.

 

General  

 

10.              Loss of life – 353 persons (including 70 children) .The safety equipment carried on board was entirely inadequate consisting of 70 non serviceable life jackets.

 

11.              It is assumed that the 10 passengers who refused to board the boat at Bandar Lampung remain in southern Sumatra. The whereabouts of 24 PIIs removed from the vessel prior to sinking are unknown.  The whereabouts of the 1 female PII on the second rescue boat is also unknown.

 

12.              The survivors have been taken by IOM to accommodation in Bogor area and are the subject of considerable attention by the international media.

 

[Heading blacked out]

 

[About 10 lines of text blacked out].

 

XC.           O.JA25691

[One line blacked out]

 

XC.

 

[Two lines blacked out]

 

ACTION:  DR A CALVERT  (DFAT)

                  DR A HAWKE   (SEC DEF)

                  ADM C BARRIE   (CDF)

                  MR W FARMER   (DIMCA)

                  MR M M-WILTON   (DPMC)

 

PRIME MINISTER                  MIN FOREIGN AFFAIRS                  MIN FOR TRADE

ATTORNEY-GENERAL         MIN DEFENCE                  MIN IMMIG+MC AFFAIRS

MIN JUSTICE + CUSTOMS   MR R CORNALL  (A/GS)   MR RICHARDSON (ASIO)

COMM M KEELTY (AFP)      MR L WOODWARD (ACS)  RADM M BONSER

MR P LEWINCAMP (DIO)      MR C R JONES (ONA)

 

ACTION   MR R SMITH (IOB)

 

{There follows a lengthy DFAT internal by name distribution]