Australia Fabricated Story To Stir Anti-Refugee Hatred

by Bob Burton

Claims by the Australian government that refugees on a fishing boat tried to blackmail Canberra into granting asylum by throwing children overboard were perpetuated long after they were known to be false, according to the navy officer.

Norman Banks, Adelaide navy commander, told a Senate inquiry that within days after the claims were made, Navy personnel had informed both the Defense Minister's office and the Prime Minister's office that the claims were untrue.

Those charges, along with supposed pictures of the throwing of young asylum seekers overboard, had crystallized public hostility toward asylum seekers in a racially charged election campaign.

Banks told the Senate committee of his dismay that after Oct. 11, when it was clear there was no evidence to support the claim, that no minister in the government of Prime Minister John Howard had set the record straight.

"I then felt that in the ensuing period that the issue of children being thrown overboard was now a media and political stunt," Banks told the committee.

In October last year, two days after an election had been called by Howard campaigning against asylum seekers being allowed to land in Australia, the then immigration minister Phillip Ruddock claimed that babies had been thrown overboard from a fishing boat in Australian waters.

"A number of children have been thrown overboard, again with the intention of putting us under duress (to take them in)," Ruddock told a media conference.

The following day Howard went further. "We don't want people who seek to come to this country illegally to be able to do so. I express my anger at the behavior of those people. I can't comprehend how genuine refugees would throw their children overboard," Howard said on a leading talk back program.

The executive director of the Refugee Council of Australia, Margaret Piper, finds disturbing the enthusiasm with which the government spreads misinformation about refugees.

"There is almost glee with which they are seizing upon things to paint an image of these people in the minds of the Australian public as being undeserving of any support, which then enables them to justify the actions they are taking against them," she said.

Three days after the original allegations, then defense minister Peter Reith responded to journalists' challenges to release evidence to support the claims by releasing photos showing asylum seekers wearing life-jackets in the water being rescued by Australian Navy personnel.

"The cruel sea: proof that boat people threw children overboard," screamed one headline.

"It did happen. The fact is the children were thrown into the water. We got that report within hours of that happening...we have produced the photos," Reith told a radio station.

However, after the election it was revealed that Reith and his staff had been informed both before and after the release of the photos that they were of children being rescued by naval personnel after their boat sank -- the day after the "baby overboard" incident was supposed to have occurred.

On Nov. 8, just two days before the election in an effort to deflect increasing skepticism from journalists, Reith released a video he claimed was proof that children had been thrown overboard. The video showed a man standing at the railing on the boat holding a child.

A subsequent internal government report on the saga revealed that Brigadier Michael Silverstone told Reith on Oct. 31 that the Navy video did not support claims that children had been thrown overboard. According to Silverstone, Reith said something to the effect of "well, we'd better not see the video then."

While the claims served the government's re-election campaign purposes, they have created deep resentment within the military. Brigadier Adrian D'Hage -- who served in the Australian military forces for 37 years before retiring -- is livid about the damage the affair has done to morale within the military.

"Some (personnel) will shrug their shoulders and say 'that's politics.' Many more are frustrated and angry. And disturbingly, some now view the political leadership within this country with something approaching contempt," he wrote in an opinion column in the Sydney Morning Herald this week.

The Refugee Council of Australia believes the claims have resulted in the increased harassment of refugees and migrant Australian citizens.

"We have people who are a part of our community who no longer feel secure here. A lot of it has got to do with the way the politicians have seized upon images to paint a picture without recognizing that the public at large take it as a licence to resent anyone who is different to them in our society," Piper said.

Piper says she takes what taxi drivers say as a good index of what society is thinking. "My taxi driver index is putting it (racial vilification) pretty high. I had a Palestinian taxi driver last Friday night. We were chatting about things and he said 'you are the first person to treat me with respect for months'," she said.