Flotilla of asylum seekers heads to Oz
By Charles Miranda
The Daily Telegraph
April 12, 2010
A LARGE flotilla of boats is expected to sail from the Indonesian archipelago within days as people smugglers urge asylum seekers to leave now or risk not getting into Australia.
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"The advice I have this morning is that capacity remains on Christmas Island,"
“My name’s Kevin, I’m from Queensland and I’m here to help”
People smugglers, who use the internet to keep up with Australian immigration changes, are duping refugees by claiming they can beat visa changes if boats leave now.
An undercover people smuggler confirmed to The Daily Telegraph that hundreds of refugees were rushing to organise boats for the journey to Australia.
Yesterday two more boats arrived, carrying a combined 55 passengers and six crew, the third and carrying a combined 55 passengers and six crew, the third and fourth boats intercepted since the suspension of visas came into force last week.
The arrivals come as The Daily Telegraph can reveal a bidding war between people smugglers has seen the price of passage to Australia drop 50 per cent to about $US4000 a head for passengers.
Authorities have identified at least 15 people-smuggling gangs in Malaysia and Indonesia, who have mobilised hundreds of refugees, predominantly from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka.
Other refugees have been hiding out in the Cipanas mountains outside Jakarta as well as among high immigrant populations in Puncak in Jakarta's south and Sarina in the north.
But they were now rushing to organise boats off islands about Sumatra, following internet reports of the visa freeze. About 80 per cent of asylum seekers heading to Australia by boat are either from Afghanistan or Sri Lanka.
There are genuine fears the rush will lead to overcrowding on unseaworthy boats which may not make the already perilous journey to Christmas Island off Australia's mainland.
Yesterday an Iraqi-born former people-smuggler turned Australia police informant said the visa freeze was too little too late and the dash had already begun.
The man, who calls himself Shadi, told The Daily Telegraph people-smugglers were internet-savvy and were using the visa changes to direct the people-smuggling market.
"That is why so many people [are] coming now," he said.
Shadi, who worked undercover for police in Indonesia until the end of 2002, when people-smugglers wanted to kill him and he was brought to Australia as a protected witness, continues to provide critical intelligence to authorities on the movement.
He identified five Iraqi or Pakistani-born smugglers operating in Indonesia and Malaysia and said they were preparing boats. "Your laws are not strong enough to stop them," he said.
An Iraqi Kurd is being hunted by the AFP and local police in Indonesia as the king-pin of the human trafficking misery. The number of so-called illegal entry vessels stopped in Australian waters this year now stands at 42.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott doubted the processing freeze would stop the boats.
"Certainly, the people smugglers, I think, will remain in business because they suspect, as I do, that this is an election fix. It's not a solution," Mr Abbott said.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he stood by the visa changes: "Our obligations are to deal with genuine asylum seekers, and those who are not genuine asylum seekers, to send them back to their countries of origin."
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Christmas Island isn't full: Rudd
By national political editor Simon Kearney
The Sunday Telegraph
April 04, 2010 12:01AM
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd says there is more room on Christmas Island for the increasing flow of asylum seekers.
Another boat of 79 asylum seekers is reportedly being taken to Christmas Island today and it is understood the air shuttle service between Christmas Island and mainland Australia was ferrying another 63 asylum seekers to Brisbane last night.
The 63 were understood to have been granted asylum and were to be placed in a Brisbane motel last night for a medical check-up and to undergo some more processing formalities before being released.
Speaking at The Lodge yesterday Mr Rudd left open the option of altering the policy on asylum seekers as international and regional security circumstances changed. "It's important that we place this in its context," he said.
However he continued to deny detention facilities on Christmas Island had exceeded capacity despite some reports more than 2000 people were in the facility which has a maximum capacity of 1200.
"The advice I have this morning is that capacity remains on Christmas Island," Mr Rudd said.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said it was clear asylum seekers were being drawn to Australia, not pushed by international and regional conflicts.
Easy money in a desperate trade
Exclusive Investigation by Charles Miranda
The Daily Telegraph
April 12, 2010
ALONG Jalan Jaksa, the men move suspiciously from cafe to cafe, boarding house to hotel.
"You want to go live in Australia, we have a big boat and it's ready to go now," says one Iraqi-born man to some of the illegal immigrants hiding out on the busy Jakarta street.
There is no need to wait or prepare, to plot or plan for the hundreds of desperate illegal immigrants in Indonesia of Afghan, Iranian, Sri Lankan and Iraqi origin.
"It really is that easy," says former people smuggler "Shadi".
He clicks his fingers.
"I could go now, today, and get 50 passengers for Australia just like that for you and you can get half a million dollars US, not Aussie, just like that."
Shadi should know. He tried to make it to Christmas Island but when things didn't work out he became a people smuggler himself and for three years helped send more people to Australia than he can remember. The number is in the thousands.
But in the third phase of his three years walking about Jalan Jaksa he became one of the Australian Federal Police's most significant covert agents and later one of the first to be given a protected new life in Australia - a thanks from a grateful nation.
He not only exposed the men behind the smuggling but single-handedly stopped dozens of boats from coming to Australia, testified against some of the biggest people-smugglers in South East Asia and, more importantly, laid out a detailed map of the routes for thousands plotting to come to Australia.
Today he is again helping authorities hunt the smugglers and track the boats preparing to make the voyage.
Shadi yesterday agreed to speak with The Daily Telegraph to reveal the true extent of the problem and how and why it is about to get a lot worse.
His story is common. He went to Jordan in 1997 with a plan to be smuggled to Sweden.
After a three-year wait for Swedish passage Shadi decided instead to go to Australia and immediately flew to Jakarta to prepare. He made one failed voyage with 300 others and just remembered the huge waves and the dread he would die at sea. It put him off but he felt sorry for his fellow passengers, abandoned by the head smuggler after two failed attempts to cross the straits, and decided to help them leave. He also spoke English - a bonus in Jakarta - so he became an accidental people smuggler.
He was the moneyman and recruiter. He was the quartermaster buying the supplies for the voyages, including life vests and essentials such as bags of sugar, tea, bread and water. He even had a collection of rubber stamps to put fake entry and exit visa marks in passports.
The would-be Aussie asylum seekers generally flew into Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia first from Iraq or Jordan. They would stay at a specific hotel off Jalan Tun Sambanthan before being flown to Jakarta. At Jakarta International, a corrupt airport official would be paid $1000 in US cash to open a side door to the airport and the mostly Arab men would slip out to a waiting bus without having to pass through the border gates. Their passports would be stamped on the bus or later at a hotel with a fake Customs stamp and entry/exit visas, used should they be stopped by local police at a later time. They would then be bussed to Sarina in North Jakarta where they would congregate at the local McDonald's waiting for orders. Others would be taken to Cipanos in the mountains or Puncak, another staging post, before setting sail from Lombok or Sumatra or even Cambodia. Intelligence points to these haunts being used today.
There are no special pitches, no facts, no planning or training. People are ready to just go. For the smugglers it was easy money. A boat cost on average $US20,000, the local Indonesian fisherman crew and corrupt airport officials would cost another $US20,000 but each passenger would pay between $2000 to $10,000, according to market demands.
"I know how to sell it, I know the places to talk to people, where they are. I know how to get a passenger to get his hand in his pocket and give it to me. It's very easy," Shadi says.
"You don't need to sell this, or say things like government will pay you money if you go, no one says that. It's just that everybody knows Australia is much better than their own country. That is it. We know by TV, newspaper, internet, you know what the life is like here, Western life. We give you promise to get there and we will try again and again and again until we get you there. We give you promise to leave in two weeks and if it's longer than two weeks we will pay for your hotel, accommodation, whatever."
Some people smugglers left when they had 60 passengers. Others waited for a minimum 200.
It costs about $US50,000 to organise a boat but with just 100 people $500,000 can be made.
It's a trade and the best boat, price and reputation gets the lion's share. One chief smuggler would go on the asylum seekers' boat as far as international waters, to assure them all was well, before a second shadowing smaller boat would take him off and he would leave them to their fate.
Meanwhile, the flood of asylum seekers now rushing Australia was a direct result of the Labor Government's policies, according to the men who are dispatching the boats.
For weeks, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has denied that the sharp rise in the number of refugee boats entering Australian waters had anything to do with his softening of his Liberal predecessor's hardline Pacific Solution doctrine.
Mr Rudd said the 29 per cent rise in arrivals was a worldwide phenomenon with other Western nations experiencing similar rises.
But according to a former smuggler now living in Australia, those coming know the change in policy now meant quick entry to the country and a strong likelihood refugee status would be granted within three monthinstead of years.
"The immigration rules in Australia were changed and everyone knows it and that's why so many are now coming," the smuggler, who can be identified only as Shadi, said yesterday.
"Before, the reasons it stopped was John Howard absolutely, he deterred some boats by force and Nauru Island where they [boat people] knew they could get stuck for one or two or three years. We and the passengers would check the internet daily to see what Canberra was doing and we all knew these things.
"This is very hard for everyone to imagine being in a camp like a jail. The idea is to get in quick, get a visa then return home to see family and then bring them all to Australia. No one wants to be without family for years under old laws. Now [with] new laws it's easy and quick, maybe weeks or a few months. You can call people on the mobile, you stay two or three weeks at Christmas Island then they call others."
Shadi said when the rules changed, the snake heads - leaders of the human smuggling operations - cut the price for a seat on their boat from $US10,000 to about $US4000.
