As 108 drowned, they cried: 'Pray for us'

Natalie O'BrienJune 3, 2012



Lost ... Fatima Nekbakht and sons Mujtaba and Asif. Photo: Jessie Taylor

After a nine-month investigation, Natalie O'Brien reveals the true story behind the deaths of 105 asylum seekers and three crew - and the failure of Australian authorities to alert rescuers.

'There is a storm coming. There are big waves coming for us. Pray for us, pray for us.'' These were the terrified last words from among 105 Hazara asylum seekers as their boat sank in rough seas just hours into their voyage from Indonesia to Australia.

Passengers had called their friends back in Indonesia. They left the call open as they went to their deaths.
They called and called, but got no answers
Australia's bungles and cover-ups exposed

''There was just screaming and crying and the sound of waves crashing on the boat, as it went down, drowning the men, women, and children,'' said Nazir Hussein Rezai, whose sister and nephews were on board.
Advertisement: Story continues below


Lost .... the widow Golafroz with filmmaker Jessie Taylor. Photo: Jessie Taylor

''Some of the passengers had called their friends, and they did not switch off their mobile … Their friends had to listen to their dying moments. It kept going until the water silenced the phones.''

Nazir, now living in Rockhampton, learnt the fate of his sister Fatima nek Bakht and her sons, Mujtaba, 11, and Asif, 13, when he rang other asylum seekers in Indonesia desperately trying to find out why his family never arrived in Australia.

It was about midnight on Friday October 2, 2009, when the fishing boat slipped quietly out of an undisclosed Indonesian port and headed out to sea, bound for Christmas Island.

Also on board was Mirza Hussain Jaffari, 26, who called his family in New York from his mobile to say he was on the boat and on his way to Australia. He reassured them the boat was new. There was nothing to worry about. With him, he said, were three Indonesian crew and another 104 Hazara asylum seekers from Afghanistan, mainly families with children.

They sailed through the night down the Indonesian coast, trying to avoid detection. Little did they know their journey was being monitored by spies planted in the people-smuggling networks who were reporting to the Australian Federal Police. Their movements had already been the subject of intelligence reports to Australia for six days before they even boarded the boat.

By early the next morning, a secret report - now obtained by The Sun-Herald under freedom-of-information laws - was sent to the Customs and Border Protection Command headquarters in Australia. It advised that the boat, associated with a people smuggler known as Sajjad Hussein, had ''possibly'' departed and was heading for Christmas Island.

The weather in Jakarta that day was fine and 32 degrees. But the region had been rocked by devastating earthquakes and a tsunami in the two days before they left. Judging by the phone calls made from the boat that day, the further it travelled the rougher the seas became.

Scared and upset, some passengers phoned the boat's organiser in Indonesia, a man named Hijazi or Farman Ali, pleading with him to let the boat turn back. But the people smuggler ordered the captain to push ahead, passengers told their relatives in later phone calls.

As the boat was buffeted by the storm, there were many mobile phone calls made from the vessel indicating that it was still close to land. Among them was one from the boat to people on Christmas Island. A handwritten note, obtained under FOI from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, revealed that some of the calls were ''overheard'' and reported to the authorities. But it has never been revealed whether police were tapping those calls or someone on Christmas Island was informing the authorities.

An official timeline obtained from Customs shows it was some time just before midday that Saturday that disaster struck. One of the spies associated with the organisers called their AFP contact and said the boat was in trouble and taking on water.

Such an emergency, a sinking boat with more than 100 people on board, should have triggered an immediate response - a referral to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and a general call to any ships in the area to go to their aid. But it didn't.

Instead, as the FOI documents show, Australian Customs and Border Protection decided to ''commence usual SIEV [suspected irregular entry vessel] response to contact''. It added, in brackets: ''if it continues towards Christmas Island''.

Almost four hours passed before the potential tragedy was even flagged to maritime safety and a search-and-rescue mission was mounted. The nearest Australian navy boat at that point was 360 nautical miles away. It would be yet another three hours before an Indonesian navy boat reached the stricken boat's position - and apparently found nothing.

Among others aboard the fishing boat were two brothers, Mohammed and Karim. There was also a widow, Golafroz, and her son, 17-year-old Sajjad. They had been interviewed while they were still waiting to board a boat in Indonesia by the Australian lawyer turned filmmaker Jessie Taylor, for her documentary Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Golafroz told Taylor her husband and two other sons had died in Afghanistan. Fatima nek Bakht told Taylor the Taliban killed her husband and five of her children, so she had sold everything she owned to get out of Afghanistan and onto a boat that would take her and her surviving boys to safety.

While the passengers clung on, hoping they would be rescued, it was not until 3.32pm that the AFP and Customs agreed to tell maritime safety there was a life-threatening emergency and release the boat's co-ordinates. The almost four-hour delay was caused because the AFP and Customs did not know how to reveal they knew the boat was in trouble without revealing it was a tip-off from an AFP source in Indonesia.

The official timeline shows that when the maritime authority was told it immediately swung into action, emailing and faxing Coastwatch and the Indonesian search and rescue agency known as BASARNAS.

At first it was believed the boat was just 100 kilometres north of Christmas Island, but then the co-ordinates were given. They were very precise - 0655S 10458E. The position placed it in a three-square-kilometre radius near the Sunda Strait, and still just 17 nautical miles offshore from Java.

Indonesian search and rescue advised Australia's maritime safety that it would send an Indonesian navy boat to the location to search. But when it got there, seven hours after the AFP was tipped off, it sent a message back saying it ''could find no accident at that position''.

There was also a curious message sent to the Australian rescue co-ordination centre from Customs: ''Indons don't believe that situation is a SAR [Search and Rescue] situation, after investigations.''

However, by the accounts of relatives, passengers had sighted what they thought was an official Australian vessel. Not long before the boat appears to have sunk, relatives had received a call from passengers. They could see a ship and they thought it was the Australians coming to rescue them. The passengers said they were going to throw their mobiles overboard and would get in contact again once they reached Christmas Island.

It remains a mystery whose ship they saw and why it did not help.

That evening, the Australian embassy in Jakarta effectively called off the search by telling maritime safety it had been told by ''diplomatic channels'' the boat was no longer in a ''distress situation''. Border Protection aircraft flew surveillance flights from Christmas Island towards the boat's last reported position later that night and did report seeing ''numerous contacts [boats] detected in the search area, however no vessels detected in distress''.

But two days later, on October 5, and then again on October 7, the AFP again received secret information about the ''status of the venture'' and the intended arrival point and passed that to Indonesian police to try to find it. The AFP has never revealed what it was told. On October 27, the Indonesian police's people smuggling taskforce, known as SATGAS, detained in Jakarta the alleged smuggler Sajjad Hussein, also known by his nickname Pisshi. Last month the Australian case against Hussein collapsed. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew its application to extradite him. He was released by Indonesia and deported to Pakistan.

By early December, families were making frantic calls to the people smugglers, demanding to know what had happened to their relatives - only to be reassured that the boat had arrived safely in Australia and they should make the final payments. The network of smugglers then disappeared, and confused relatives began travelling to Indonesia and around Australia trying to locate the missing.

Back in Australia, says Taylor: ''Families and friends of passengers on the boat called me [from Indonesia] to say that a group of people had got on a boat which had never arrived anywhere, nobody had been heard from in weeks, and they'd heard rumours that it had been lost at sea … The worst seemed to be confirmed by the deafening silence from every passenger known to be on the boat.

''I found out the names of specific people who had been on the boat whom I'd met a few months earlier. … It just confirmed the arbitrariness of who makes it and who doesn't … It's a lottery, and it should not have to happen in such a terribly dangerous way.''

For Nazir Hussein Rezai, the nightmare of knowing what happened to his sister and nephews never ends. The Hazara, who fled Afghanistan leaving everything behind, only yesterday took email delivery of a photo of his sister and sons. It is at least something to remember them by.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/as-108-drowned-they-cried-pray-for-us-20120602-1zoix.html#ixzz1wi2Y1Oaco

A page from history; 10,000 Hazaras were sold

Shia man shot dead in Quetta

Mohammad Ali, who was targeted killed on Saryab Road, Quetta

QUETTA: A member of the Hazara community was gunned down and another shot injured near a bus stop on Sariab Road on Saturday. According to police, the victim, identified as Muhammad Ali, was travelling in a rickshaw when armed assailants, riding a motorbike, opened fire on him. Ali was killed on the spot while the rickshaw driver sustained injuries. Police rushed to the spot soon after the incident and cordoned off the area. Ali and the injured rickshaw driver were moved to Provincial Sandeman Hospital. The deceased was a Shia from the Hazara community. “The murder can be a case of sectarian target killing but it is very early to reach to conclusions. A case has been registered against unidentified persons and an investigation is underway,” a police official said. Separately, unidentified persons hurled three hand grenades at a house in Killi Geo area of Quetta. According to sources, the house is owned by Muhammad Rafiq. Windows of the house were broken and a car was also damaged in the attack. staff report

Daily Times

Hazaras at history's crossroads

Amir MateenFriday, June 01, 2012
From Print Edition

QUETTA: The dilemma of the Hazara's predicament is not that the solution is proving elusive, but that so far even the problem has not been fully understood. It’s a multifaceted issue. At a cursory glance, it appears a simple sectarian issue, but it isn’t. It is a critical element in resolving the larger Balochistan conundrum and one whose impact will be felt in Afghanistan, Iran and beyond.

The Hazara question is arguably a complex one. Hazara activists were asked at a seminar recently why they supported a separate province in the Hazara area of Pakhtunkhwa. It was difficult to explain to the supposedly learned members of the Islamabad elite that Hazara as a people had nothing to do with Hazara the area in Abbottabad.

Yet the human side of the issue first must be taken into consideration before delving into its strategic dimension. One cannot ignore the extent of the injustices that have been committed against the Hazaras in the last couple of decades.... Continue Reading... 

The victory of the void, a defeat for the Taliban

The Bamiyan Buddhas will not be rebuilt, says Unesco. The architect Andrea Bruno proposes a scheme that focuses reverently on their absence

By Anna Somers Cocks. Conservation, Issue 236, June 2012
Published online: 31 May 2012

The empty niche of the Great Buddha in 2010. “The void is the true sculpture,” says Andrea Bruno (inset), Afghanistan’s most seasoned conservation architect

When Andrea Bruno, an architectural consultant to Unesco for the past 40 years, went back to the Bamiyan Buddhas, blown up in March 2001 by the Taliban, he immediately scrapped all ideas he might have had about some sort of replacement. “The void is the true sculpture,” he says. “It stands disembodied witness to the will, thoughts and spiritual tensions of men long gone. The immanent presence of the niche, even without its sculpture, represents a victory for the monument and a defeat for those who tried to obliterate its memory with dynamite.” ...Continue Reading...

Born Pakistani, he died a Hazara

Amir MateenThursday, May 31, 2012
From Print Edition

QUETTA: Major Shafaat died a sad broken man. Abandoned by his institution. Betrayed by childhood friends. Forsaken by his hometown. His only fault was to have been born different. A man with a flat nose and chinky eyes. An ethnic Hazara.

He lived a rich childhood frolicking up and down the Quetta streets with his Baloch, Pashtun, Punjabi and Hazara friends from school. Ethnicity did not matter at all in those days. Friends were—well—just friends. He was lucky that he was able to fulfill his ambition to join Pakistan Army. There is a long tradition among his community to join army dating back to 1830s when Captain Jacob—of Jacobabad fame—recruited Hazaras for the First Afghan war. Musa Khan joined Hazara Pioneers Regiment in 1904 as a sepoy and rose to become Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff and West Pakistan Governor. Shafaat admired General Musa and Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Sharbat Changezi as his role models from his community.

Shafaat, now a major posted in Rawalpindi, volunteered to be posted to his hometown about three years ago. He thought he would be better off serving in Quetta—among dear friends and family. The city had changed drastically by then. He found his non-hazara bosom friends avoiding him. Some of them even showed hostility. “I felt it was just because I had a flat nose and chinky eyes like most descendants of Mongol Khan, “ he said visibly Irritated. Disheartened, he took a leave and got himself enrolled in Balochistan University’s Mass Communication Department. He found the antagonism there even worse. It was a double jeopardy: Pashtun students aligned to Sunni parties saw him as a Shia outcaste liable, as their posters suggest, to be killed; Baloch suspected him as an army infiltrator who had been sent to spy on them. Here is the heart-breaker: He was not trusted even by his army colleagues back at the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) offices. He was kept out of the local intelligence loop. A new commandant had issued instructions not to let him see even the army’s movement roster. He was absolutely dismayed.

Shafaat shared his pain with me while we were traveling the length and breadth of Balochistan during one of my earlier visits there a few months ago. In all we spent about 62 hours together but now it appears like an entire lifetime. I had requested the ISPR to give me an attachment so that I could visit army’s remote outposts to get their side of the story. To my luck—came along Shafaat who was part journalist because of his Mass Communication degree. A highly sensitive soul, he was definitely way more knowledgeable and objective than your typical army officer. We travelled through Bolan Pass, Sibbi, Dera Allah Rar, Kashmore to Dera Bugti and back exploring some of the most explosive places in Pakistan. We had all the time during our long travels, sometimes 13 hours straight, to discuss Balochistan, particularly Hazaras.

We stopped by at Kolpur just outside the Quetta valley where, he told me, his ancestors had come as coal miners to escape the excesses of Afghan King Abdur Rehman in the 1890s. Kol means a cap in which they received their days’ earning and Pur means abode—hence abode of the cap-wielding people. Even today, a majority of Hazaras works on menial jobs as miners and labourers. We saw in Mach coal mines down the way that they remain as sturdy and hard working as they were a century ago.

Shafaat was constantly receiving calls from his family. He laughed that his wife and children were worried not because he was travelling to such dangerous areas but because they feared he might be targeted as a Hazara. “I don’t blame them,” I remember him saying, “such has been our life lately; I also fear the same every time my daughter goes to school or my wife goes to bazaar.”

Hazara are an easy target because they are easily distinguishable from the other ethnic groups because of their Mongol features. Over 700 Hazara Shias have been killed in the last decade.

As many as 39 Hazaras died in the last 19 days. Last September, religious processions organized by the community were targeted twice killing around 50 people. Then came the Mastung carnage the same month. It is not just the staggering number of Hazaras killed but the brutality that was shown by killers.

A bus carrying Hazara pilgrims to Quetta was brutally assaulted. All the 26 men and boys aboard were taken out of the bus, lined up and shot, as their mothers, wives and sisters watched from inside. Unafraid, the assailants had insured that the highway was blocked on both ends when they conducted that ambush. Two more Hazara men were killed after being dragged out of their cars at a traffic light in Quetta the same evening.The total death toll for the day was over thirty dead and scores more injured. It was mourning for almost every other house among roughly half a million Hazaras as most of them are related through marriages.

Shafaat said he too was sometimes seen as a suspect as many in the community blame the army. The argument goes that if the ISI can kill dump hundreds of Baloch, why cannot they get hold of a bunch of religious fanatics. “I am a suspect for me colleagues, my friends and my community,” he said sadly. His family wanted him to move to Australia. Thousands of Hazaras have moved to Australia and Canada in the last few years. Some take grave risks. Hundreds have died in containers, crossing borders, others in ship wrecks. Over 300 people died off the coast of Java last December, most of them Hazaras. So desperate are people from this cruelty that they are willing to take every risk to get out of here.

Shafaat was not the one to leave. He was too much in love with the Community that had held him in suspicion, the army that had disappointed him and Quetta that had scorned him. He was a proud Hazara, khaki as well as a Quettawal. Shafaat got a call while he was explaining his affection for the three. He turned suddenly pale. Another attack on Hazaras had taken place. Six were shot dead execution style while drinking tea at one of the many roadside stalls in Quetta. One of them was his relative. He almost fainted, sweating profusely. Being a small expert in cardiac symptoms, I could see it was serious. I got him a doze of aspirins and brain relaxants and requested him to “take it easy.” Obviously, he was very sensitive about the whole thing. On my way back I also talked to his family to keep him calm and away from such news.

I got a call from his number 15 days later. A big ‘hello’ came out of my mouth, without realizing that it was his daughter. “So where’s your dad,” I chuckled. “He died today,” she replied.

He was only 32. A noble honest man, but born with a flat nose and chinky eyes. Maybe he deserved to die because he naively believed himself to be a Pakistani. But in today’s Pakistan, he was just a Hazara.

The News

SIYASI MAKTOOBAT | WEEKLY AKHBAR-E-JEHAN, URDU MAGAZINE

An interesting piece about CM  of Balochistan. Is it another another joke by CM  OR just some fun loving guys, making some jokes with CM? Who knows?

SIYASI MAKTOOBAT | WEEKLY AKHBAR-E-JEHAN, URDU MAGAZINE