We now have another distressing and perplexing case of possible Australian failure to use intelligence information to save lives in one or two (it is still not clear) asylum seeker boat sinkings in the southern Sunda Strait, on 10 and possibly 12 April. The boat (or boats) was on route to Christmas Island, sent by a people smuggler.
I have studied and cross-referenced 12 available Australian media reports — AAP, ABC, SMH/Age, News Limited, and SBS, dated between 12 and 14 April. These are the main unresolved questions at time of writing this essay. More clarifications may, or may not, emerge in coming days.
The case raises similar questions to three of the fatal incidents I analysed in my 2012 book Reluctant Rescuers — two boats that went missing in the Sunda Strait area in 2009 and 2010, and the Barokah which foundered off south-eastern Java in December 2011 — and two later boats that sank in June 2012.
There are two conflicting versions of when the boat sank last week.
First, AMSA briefed media on Friday 12 April that it had informed its Indonesian counterpart BASARNAS that 'a people-smuggling vessel may have sunk in or near the Sunda Strait around 3am AEST today' (Friday 12 April — i.e., midnight 11/12 April, local time), and that 'some passengers may have been rescued by a fishing vessel'.
Michael Bachelard (in Jakarta) and Bianca Hall reported in Fairfax on 13 April that an AMSA spokeswoman said 'yesterday' (12 April) that 'they had been informed by another agency, which she would not name, that the boat needed assistance'. AMSA says it told BASARNAS all it knew. But BASARNAS complains that, because AMSA did not give it any search coordinates, BASARNAS could not undertake any search. It did not do so.
Second, there is a separate, quite well-based, stream of media reporting from 12 April on, of a reported sinking in the same area at around 11am local time on Wednesday 10 April — a full 37 hours before the event reported by AMSA. This reporting stems from a 29-year old survivor Mr Hashimi who appears to have been directly interviewed on 12 April in Bogor, where he was recovering, by Bachelard for Fairfax and