The sinking of SIEV X: new book reveals scandal

November 17, 1993
Issue 

BY SARAH STEPHEN

If you try to recall the Coalition government's most outrageous attacks on asylum seekers, chances are you would recall the Tampa Affair, the children overboard incident, and the isolated, madness-inducing, detention centres. But who remembers the 353 asylum seekers who drowned trying to reach Australia aboard the SIEVX?

Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel (unknown) set out from Indonesia on October 18, 2001. Like many of the other boats carrying Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers at the time, it was grossly overloaded and unseaworthy. Some 400 asylum seekers were forced onto a boat at gunpoint. It reached international waters before it sank.

In his book, A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X, former diplomat Tony Kevin points to an elaborate cover-up of government involvement in this grim event. Kevin hopes that the book will increase the pressure for a judicial inquiry into how much Australian authorities knew about SIEVX, and whether they failed in their duty of care to prevent the tragedy from occurring.

The book was launched at the beginning of August in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. In Melbourne, the book was launched on August 2 by prominent refugee lawyer Julian Burnside QC. The Sydney launch at Gleebooks on August 6 drew a capacity crowd of more than 150 people. Some of the SIEV X survivors attended both the Sydney and Melbourne launches, offering a moving reminder to people of the human suffering that the SIEV X disaster caused.

It took a little time for Kevin to find someone willing to publish a book on this "controversial" subject, but Scribe's founder and publisher Henry Rosenbloom regards A Certain Maritime Incident as perhaps the most important book he's published.

Another of Kevin's supporters is Noam Chomsky, who gives the book significant praise, noting "Treatment of refugees is one of the great scandals of the modern age. With impressive courage and determination, Tony Kevin has unearthed the grim and deeply moving story he recounts in this remarkable book. [A story that] must find its way to the hearts and consciences of many others if these persistent and shocking crimes are to be brought to an end."

In May 2002, Kevin appeared before the Senate committee investigating the "children overboard" lies, where he raised his concerns about the SIEV X story and urged the committee to investigate further.

He observed with disbelief as witnesses gave misleading answers, lies, or straight-out refusals to answer questions asked by senators on the committee. According to Kevin, "most of my life I didn't believe something like this was possible". It wasn't immediately apparent to him, but Kevin explained that over the course of 12 months, he realised that the circumstantial evidence pointed to a "systematic cover-up of a possible crime of state".

A Certain Maritime Incident is the culmination of almost three years of piecing together a mountain of inductive, circumstantial evidence from the public record. Kevin has described his role as "more of a coronor" than a prosecutor. "There are so many smoking guns — there is a burning case for a judicial inquiry."

Kevin told a gathering at Berkelouw Books on August 11 that he regarded the SIEV X incident as "the worst example of how Australian governance has gone off the rails in recent years".

Kevin said he believes that people have difficulty grappling with the possibility that the Australian government contributed to the deaths of 353 asylum seekers because it is difficult for us to believe that our government is capable of evil. "A film like Fahrenheit 9/11 has made my task a lot easier", he said, "because it shows how our democratic societies can create governments which have a callous indifference to life."

Kevin noted with disgust: "The government is prepared, at the drop of a hat, to set up a judicial inquiry into office rents for a building in Canberra which happens to be owned by the ALP, but it has ignored the Senate's repeated calls for a judicial inquiry into the sinking of SIEV X."

[Green Left Weekly will review A Certain Maritime Incident in coming weeks.]

From Green Left Weekly, August 18, 2004.
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