It is true that 'only' two people died in Monday's apparently mishandled Border Protection Command (BPC) interception at sea of an unnamed asylum seeker boat. But there are questions to be answered nonetheless.
The Australian Customs vessel Ocean Protector made physical contact with the boat, reportedly carrying around 95 people, in early daylight on Monday morning, at a location 14 nautical miles off Christmas Island. It had responded to a distress phone call made 13 hours beforehand from the boat to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. It had monitored the boat by technical means through the night.
The distress call had reported the boat was lost. But it had engine power and kept heading in the general direction of Christmas Island. Ocean Protector met the boat in the customary BPC interception zone, between 12 and 24 nautical miles off the island. There was no sign of damage to the boat and it was moving under its own power, so the event was handled as a standard border violation interception rather than as a rescue at sea.
Ocean Protector sent boarding parties in two or more tenders (small operational boats) towards the asylum seeker boat. Somebody on the asylum seeker boat apparently switched off the engines, assuming the Australians wanted it to stop so they could board it. It is not clear if it was ordered to stop. The boat started to rock in the swell.
During a lengthy media conference on Monday afternoon, BPC commanding officer Rear Admiral David Johnston described the state of the sea at that time as 'sea state three', which implies 'around 15 knots worth of wind and swell height that could be around about a metre' but also the possibility of larger waves, which 'appeared to have occurred in this circumstance'; he suggested the waves may have been up to two and a half metres.
Customs and Border Protection Minister Jason Clare added that 'when a vessel stops motoring along its stability is significantly reduced', and that when this particular vessel stopped for the boarding party to board and 'was hit by two waves' the vessel 'took on water and a number of people entered the water'.
We are told that within two minutes after the first two members of the boarding party (Customs officers, it seems) boarded the boat, it was either swamped or capsised by two large waves. A number of people — by some media reports, everybody on board — finished up in the water.
We are told