Sri Lankans ‘panicked’ in rescue bid

Five Australia-bound Lankan asylum-seekers who perished at sea set themselves adrift in a fatal attempt to find a passing ship after their wooden fishing boat ran out of fuel, food and drinking water.

 

As the remaining 59 Sri Lankans from the boat arrived yesterday at Christmas Island after being rescued and the Australian Federal Police began investigating the incident, new details emerged about the tragedy.

 

The master of the vessel that rescued the 59 Sri Lankans, Oleg Chechulin, told The Australian he believed the passengers aboard the boat had panicked after spending more than 20 days at sea.

 

It also emerged last night that a defence search aircraft on Saturday spotted one of the missing men, lying motionless on a floating tyre tube, but lost sight of him.

 

Amid calls for an inquiry into the incident, Immigration Minister Chris Evans confirmed yesterday that the survivors would be subject to the three-month suspension of all new Sri Lankan asylum claims.

 

Their arrival on Christmas Island came as two more boats carrying a total of 122 asylum-seekers were intercepted yesterday. A navy gunboat intercepted one vessel carrying 36 passengers and crew yesterday afternoon north of Ashmore Islands; the other, intercepted near Christmas Island last night, was believed to be carrying 86 passengers.

 

Captain Chechulin, whose Liberian-flagged vessel, MV Postojna, rescued eight of the boat’s passengers before towing the remainder to the Cocos Islands, said the boat had run out of fuel, food and drinking water.

 

“It’s my opinion that they panicked because they can’t see the future,” he said.

 

The MV Postojna was loaded with coal and sailing from Port Kembla to India when it went to the boat’s rescue, west of the Cocos Islands, last Thursday.

 

The ship’s third officer, Smarven Demegillo, said the five men had fashioned a life raft from tyre inner tubes and taken to the water to try to find a passing ship to rescue their fellow passengers.

 

“From our interviews with the eight survivors on board, they say that these five people decided to go for a swim in hope . . . looking for any help,” Mr Demegillo told The Australian yesterday.

 

“They (were) hoping that they would drift far enough so they could see a merchant vessel or any help of any kind,” Mr Demegillo said. He was not aware of any ship in sight of the fishing boat at the time.

 

He said one of those taken aboard the Postojna was a young Sri Lankan man with a fish-hook injury to his face.

 

There were 12 children on board the fishing boat, including a 10-month-old baby.

 

Those taken aboard the Postojna included a two-year-old and a three-year-old child, as well as a woman who collapsed.

 

All were weak and some were seasick, the crew said.

 

Mr Demegillo said the vessel was seaworthy, despite the lack of fuel and provisions.

 

He said the Tamil-speaking passengers told the crew they had sailed directly from Sri Lanka, leaving about April 12.

 

A spokeswoman for Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said yesterday Australian authorities became aware of the vessel after a caller, claiming to be in London, rang the Customs and Border Protection Command hotline on April 30.

 

A Customs officer spoke to the boat’s passengers via a satellite phone and was told the vessel had run out of fuel.

 

A search was initiated and a Panamanian-flagged vessel provided food, fuel and water, but those provisions ran out and the satellite phone was subsequently lost, according to those rescued.

 

Three days before their boat was found, five male passengers left the boat wearing lifejackets and using tyre tubes for flotation, Defence said last night.

 

Searchers later recovered orange life vests and tyre tubes. But apart from the motionless person on the tyre tube, who on a later flight over the area could not be seen, no bodies were spotted.

 

Last night, Defence Minister John Faulkner’s office could not say how much time had elapsed between the flights or why the information had not been released earlier.

^{theaustralian}