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| Subject: Yet another tragedy caused by the statists: Migrant boat sinks off Indonesia with 250 on board Sun Dec 18, 2011 1:57 am | |
| A heavily overloaded boat packed with around 250 Afghan and Iranian migrants seeking asylum in Australia sank off Indonesia, with bad weather and high seas hampering rescue efforts, according to officials.The fibreglass vessel was following a well-worn, and occasionally disastrous, route from the southern coast of Java to the remote Australian territory of Christmas Island when it sank on Saturday, officials said. Fishermen and rescuers have so far plucked 33 people -- 30 men, a woman and two children -- from the sea despite strong currents and waves of up to five metres (16 feet), said a search and rescue official in Trenggalek district. The boat was carrying around 250 people when it sank 40 nautical miles (74 kilometres) off Prigi beach in eastern Java on Saturday, said the official, Kelik Purwanto. Survivors were floating in the sea for six hours before fishermen rescued them, survivors and officials said. Purwanto said that around 150 rescue officials had been deployed to comb the sea to look for the passengers still missing from Saturday's disaster, which occurred 640 kilometres (400 miles) southeast of Jakarta. One survivor, 17-year-old Afghan student Armaghan Haidar, said he was sleeping when a storm came up and began to rock the boat. "I felt water touching my feet and woke up. As the boat was going down, people were panicking and shouting and trying to rush out," he told AFP. "I managed to swim out and hang on to the side of the boat with about 100 others. (There were) about 20 to 30 others with life jackets, but another 100 people were trapped inside," he said. "There was only water around us, no island, nothing. The huge waves swept away 20 people," he added. Yoso Mihardi, a spokesman for the Trenggalek district government, said that the boat had a capacity of 100, but was overloaded with 250 people. "That, combined with heavy rain and high waves, might have caused the boat to tip over and capsize," he said. Australia Sunday called the incident "a terrible tragedy", but activists pointed to Canberra's refugee policy as partly responsible. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j-lHim-zCkOwLmAeyTogoYC6Q3CQ?docId=CNG.f20b4240ddfb7fb679fc13254a5dadcb.2e1 |
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