"Asylum boat" sinks off Indonesia

Posted: 18 December 2011 0712 hrs


JAKARTA: A wooden boat reportedly carrying 250 asylum seekers from the Middle East sank off Indonesia's Java island Saturday en route to Australia, state-run news agency Antara reported.

"The boat sank Saturday evening, and the national search and rescue team has already moved out to sea to start the search," search and rescue team member Brian Gauthier told Antara.

"It is somewhat difficult to go on with the search because extreme weather has caused reduced visibility," he added.

Thirty-three people have been rescued and are receiving assistance in the town of Prigi in eastern Java, around 30 kilometres from where the boat sank, Gauthier said, adding the rescue team believed some passengers were still alive and were likely suffering "severe dehydration".

"They must be evacuated as soon as possible. They can't stay for long in the middle of the sea," he said.

However, he added that it is "somewhat difficult to go on with the search because extreme weather has caused reduced visibility."

The boat is believed to be a traditional fishing vessel with a capacity of around 100.

A survivor from Afghanistan, 24-year-old Esmat Adine, gave rescuers an estimate of how many passengers were on the boat.

"He did not know exactly how many passengers there were, but he said that four buses with around 60 or more adult passenger each had turned up to the port where they set off," a translator for Adine said.


(read in the Asia Pacific News)

The Jakarta Post Sun, 12/18/2011 6:29 PM


The ship carrying hundreds of migrant workers that sank in waters off Prigi, East Java, on Saturday, lacked safety equipment, resulting in a mad scramble for just 19 available life vests on board, the head of the search and rescue team dispatched the accident said on Sunday.

The Surabaya Search and Rescue (SAR) team said the doomed ship had 25 life jackets on board, but six of them taken by the ship's crew, leaving the hundreds of panicking passengers to fight amongst themselves for the remaining 19 life jackets.

According to Surabaya SAR III office chief Sutrisno, the lack of safety equipment on board the ship made it difficult for the victims to survive the accident. He said the passengers had held onto the sinking remains of the, he said.

"They did not have much safety equipment," he said on Sunday, as quoted by tempo.com.

He said that the accident, which was initially thought to have been caused by rough seas, might have also been caused by the fact that the ship had too many passengers aboard.

A spokesman of the Trenggalek administration, East Java, confirmed that the ship’s maximum capacity was 100 passengers, but that the subk ship had around 250 people on board.

East Java Police deputy chief General Brigadier Eddi Sumantri said earlier that the ship sunk after being struck by a huge wave 20 miles off the Prigi shore on Saturday morning.

“They [the bodies of the victims] were found by fishermen after six hours floating in the sea,” he said.

A rescue team from Trenggalek said that it had so far found 33 dead bodies floating in the sea, consisting of 31 men, 1 woman and 2 children.

Survivors are currently being treated at the Watulimo clinic in Trenggalek and Bhayangkara Hospital in Tulungagung.

A preliminary police investigation revealed that the immigrants were from Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, and were headed for Australia in search of work.