Did Australia pay people-smugglers to turn back asylum seekers?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/17/did-australia-pay-people-smugglers-to-turn-back-boats

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Has Australia paid people smugglers to return asylum seekers?

Explosive claims have been lobbed in the last week that the Australian government has taken a further step in its “stop the boats” policy and begun paying people smugglers to turn those boats around.

A boat ferrying around 65 asylum seekers from Indonesia, aiming for New Zealand, was reportedly intercepted by Australian authorities in May and forced to turn back.

Nazmul Hassan from Bangladesh – who said he was on board the boat – told Radio New Zealand that officials made payments to the captain and crew to take the passengers back to Indonesia.

Now Indonesian police authorities have backed the allegations, showing off money seized from people smugglers that they say was paid by Australian officials.

General Endang Sunjaya, police chief of Nusa Tenggara Timur province, said the cash – $31,000 in US dollars – was given to six crew members by an Australian official, who, he told reporters, was reportedly a spy, in civilian clothing, aboard a customs vessel.

Australian sailors then transferred the 65 asylum seekers – who had come originally from Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka – to two smaller boats and sent them back to Indonesia, said Endang: “We have given you the evidence. It’s now up to you and other organisations to demand an answer from the Australian government.”

In an interview conducted in front of international media in Indonesia on Wednesday, Endang quizzed the purported captain of the boat, Yohanis Humiang, who said the two wooden boats were unseaworthy, unsanitary and short on fuel.

Yohanis said the crew members were interrogated by an Australian official he called Agus:

Agus then came from the navy ship and told us, to our surprise, that we have to go back by boat to Indonesia.

We were very scared, some of the crew said they can’t do it, and I said I can’t work alone, I can’t do it, we can’t do it. But he said there’s no other option, you have to go back.

Mentally we were so helpless, we can’t do anything else.

On the return trip, he said, one of the boats ran out of fuel and the 65 asylum seekers and six crew were forced to continue their journey on one small boat.

They were rescued off Rote island, Indonesia, at the end of May.

What does the Australian government say?

Officially: not much.

The Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton initially denied the payment claims – as did foreign minister Julie Bishop – before defaulting to what has since been the stock government line: “It’s been a longstanding policy of the government not to comment on on-water matters.”

Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has refused to rule out the tactic, saying his government would do “whatever we need to do” and was determined to “stop the boats, by hook or by crook”:

I am proud of the work that our border protection agencies have done. I really am proud of the work that they’ve done and they’ve been incredibly creative in coming up with a whole range of strategies to break this evil trade …

There are all sorts of things that our security agencies do that they need to do to protect our country and many of those things just should never be discussed in public. Operational matters, when it comes to national security, are never discussed in public and that’s the way it should be.

Is it legal to pay people smugglers?

Abbott said he was “confident that at all times Australian agencies have acted within the law”. He said government actions were not only legal, but “absolutely moral”.

But others have pointed out that payments to people smugglers – if this has taken place – could have contravened Australian and international law.

Madeline Gleeson, of the Kaldor Centre for Refugee Law, told Guardian Australia:

If a state were to give money to smugglers and instruct them where to take people, it is possible that the state itself could be engaged in, or an accomplice to, a people smuggling operation. Whether or not such a payment would amount to a criminal offence would depend on the particular facts of the case.

At the very least, though, it would be inconsistent with the general duty to prevent and combat people smuggling, which Australia has committed itself to as a state party to the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air.

A complaint under the protocol would need to be lodged by Indonesia.

Any investigation into a possible breach of Australia’s Criminal Code outlawing people smuggling would have to be given the green light by the attorney general, George Brandis, who has already said that the government “has at all times complied with the law”.

Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the government needed to be open about whether payments were made:

Payments to individuals to turn a boat around and take asylum seekers to Indonesia may be highly illegal. The trafficking of people against their will is a serious crime.

The Australian government must give a full and accurate account of what has occurred.

And Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, said such payments could create a “pull factor” for people traffickers.

Where are the asylum seekers coming from?

The boats come mainly from Indonesia, which serves as a transit country from where migrants from various countries attempt to leave for Australia or New Zealand.

Many – as in the case reportedly involving payment – come from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma. The latter, in particular, has witnessed an exodus of Muslim Rohingya people – not recognised as citizens in Burma – and it is estimated that as many as one in 10 of the 1.1million Rohingya has fled by boat (though not all will head to Australian waters).

Others come from conflict-riven countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Related: Not seen, not heard, often not reported – the harrowing stories of Australia's detainees

And where do they go?

The Australian government says its “stop the boats” policy has worked and boatloads of asylum seekers are no longer making it to the country’s shores.

Some of those intercepted are sent to detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru, which have been beset by allegations of sexual assault and other abuses against detainees.

An agreement with Phnon Penh established a scheme to resettle some asylum seekers in Cambodia, but so far just four people have been moved there, at a cost of around $A40m.

The occupants of the boat reportedly turned back in May are now in a detention centre in Kupang, Indonesia.

So, has ‘turn back the boats’ been a success?

The current Australian government says 1,200 people died attempting to cross the ocean under the previous Labor administration and claims it has put a stop to those deaths with its “whatever it takes” policy.

Abbott has said the rest of the world – particularly Europe, which is facing its own migrant crisis – could learn from Australia’s hardline policies: boats of asylum seekers at sea will be turned away; they will be forced to live in detention centres offshore across the Pacific; and they are told that they will never be resettled in Australia.

If the measure of success is the number of asylum seekers making it to Australian shores, Abbott is probably right.

But critics point to the ongoing crisis in south-east Asia – including desperate asylum seekers left adrift at sea, refused safe haven by any country; and the grim discovery of dozens of gravesites in Malaysia in people-smuggling camps – to argue that a more holistic solution needs to be found.