Christmas Island Heads
Heads of Christmas IslandIsland - Katherin Timeoni
Adventures together with the gifted, youthful vocalist Mandy Barrington as she learns what most people only imagine. In order to get away from the stormy winters, Mandy is prepared to spend the holiday with her families and boyfriends in a lush tropic world. You can enjoy the light-hearted island lifestyle as well as the adventures of the yearly Christmas Cannonball Run motor races, the off-shore motorboat races and walking and camping in the jungles.
Apart from abandoning the very stubborn pararazzi, the tropic hideaway is exactly what Mandy had in mind. No.
Impossible refugee boat lift to Christmas Island
From the Indonesian capitol Jakarta to the Java south shore it usually is two and a half hours. One of the many lorries carrying refugees from the Middle East and Central Asia every months is taking a little longer. Every refugee had a small pocket with extra clothing and food.
There was a second lorry behind us from which humans emerged. The Indonesians toasted them when the humans tripped in the darkness. Seventy-seven of the refugees were on the verge of the jungles. All of a sudden, the Indonesians began to push the humans to the seas. All at once, two of the refugees lifted their pockets over their heads and padded them out.
They took us to a small fisher boat: a bigger one than the Skiff' s, though not much. When I noticed the lack of cabins, bridges, Scotsmen and banks, I asked myself if anyone else was sharing my blinded hope: that there was another, bigger craft lying somewhere further out at anchor, and that this sorry craft was just supposed to take us there.
The tarpaulins stuck over our heads and pinned their sides to the dolls. Tightly wrapped in the mature breeze under the tarpaulin, our knee pressed against our chest, we could hear the motor starting and felt the ship begin to dive and climb. We were aiming for an Australia area, more than 200 kilometres across the Indian Ocean, known as Christmas Island.
In good weathers, when the vessel stops, the cruise usually takes three whole-day. Often the wheather is stormy and the ship is sinking. More than a thousand refugees are said to have sunk in the last ten years. A number of vessels have crashed since June, costing the life of more than a hundred men.
This is the first time I have been told about the Indonesian-Australian transit to Afghanistan, where I am living and where a acid test for the US military victory, which is now coming to an end, is the present outbreak of civilian warfare. The first" boatmen" who sought refuge in Australia were in the mid-70s Viet Namese, who were forced into the sea by the consequences of the US retreat.
In the past year, almost 37,000 Afghans have sought refuge abroad, most of them since 2001. However, at the end of 2009 - with Afghans discouraged by their bullishness and once again escaping - immigration to Australia was escalating. During 2010, a suicide bomber murdered more than 70 persons at a Shia demonstration in Quetta. At Dari, next to a picture of a destitute fishermen's ship in Indonesia with Hazara asylants, you' ll find the words:
"against Afghans. "It was part of Australia's far-reaching efforts to prevent fugitives from reaching Christmas Island. "Years of my whole lives were spent there until my request for political asylum was denied. "As well as the message writing campaigns (and the tough guidelines it refers to), Australia has worked to break up trafficking chains by working with Pakistan's infamous secret agencies, bringing in Indonesian secret service workers and up to $180,000 for information that led to the arrests of a trafficker.
This most dramatic deterrent was launched in July of this year, when then-Australia' s Premier Kevin Rudd said that from now on no fugitive reaching Australia by ship would be located there. Instead, they would be held in poor Papua New Guinea and finally relocated. A few wks later, the relocation policies were expanded to a small island state in Micronesia, the Republic of Nauru.
At the end of September, a ship broke up soon after departing Indonesia, and tens of refugees - from Lebanon, Iran and Iraq - sank. It would be inconceivable - or just insane - that Australians are prepared to risk their lives at sea, even though Australia has sworn to ship them to places like Papua New Guinea and the Republic of Nauru.
However, every refugee who thinks these things are a lie will believe them because he wants to. I had the dilemma that every Afghani I talked to who was in Indonesia was insisting that no westerner would ever be permitted on a boat: As we were prepared, Hakim called an older man from Afghanistan who lived in Jakarta and stuck to the honorable Hajji Sahib.
Sahib, who never questioned our history, consented to take Joel and me from Jakarta to Christmas Island for $4,000 each. Afghanistan, where many live abroad and have no banks, the hawaiian system usually makes it easier to make legal transfers. And Mohammad would keep the cash from his Jakarta neighbor until we arrived on Christmas Island.
It' also make sure he wouldn't get it if our ship went down or we drown. The majority of refugees flying to Australia are arriving in Jakarta. For about an hours we silently went to the north outskirts of the town, where guarded villages competed for the promenade with dilapidated shore shantytowns at the Jakarta Bay dumps.
While Youssef simply wasn't enthusiastic about having new flatmates (there were only two of them, one of them a small twin), Shahla and Youssef competed against each other with hospitableness. Congratulating Shahla Joel and me on our "beautiful beards", Shahla Joel and I went on to make us a luncheon with immediate chicken-flavoured pasta.
And Youssef seemed to deplore that. Approximately 30 other asylums were located on different levels of the high-rise building. It was Rashid who had the sickish, anaemic look that I would soon connect with aspirants languishing there for two month or more - a mixture of malnutrition and mental sleep.
Rashid said to me after a months in Jakarta, he boarded a ship to Christmas Island. Humans could have succumbed to desiccation if the flood hadn't taken them to a secluded island. On the telephone while we were in Kabul, Hajji Sahib pushed us to come to Jakarta as quickly as possible and said the next vessel was waiting to leave.
"I said our bootlegger said we were going to leave in the morning. The majority of those seeking political asylum who are also afraid of the authorities have never been out. Youssef, Anoush and Shahla were sharing one of the two bunks to go to sleep, while Joel and I switched between the other and a thin underblanket.
Though many of the applicants had babies in the refugee centre, only Youssef had his. It is hard to believe how Anoush and Shahla worked through all the time. They had a Muslim Mosque, a Catholic Orthodox Cathedral, a Buddha School.
When Shahla used her improvisational talent, he found a used dishcloth they could both use for a hand towel, while Anoush used a cooking knive to remove a hose from the back of our A/C system (which was already broken) and use it as a snake. As Youssef made the tour through the rooms, Joel and I saw her at the swimming pools.
Both of us were desperate to see that neither Anoush nor Shahla could really go swimming. It wasn't long after we agreed with them that Youssef had no cash, and if Joel and I didn't buy groceries and bottled milk, they would just give up. Youssef would sit by the windows and stare at the fire - light isles of flames and eerie coloured fumes - where the people of the slums burned rubbish whenever the heat or the fleas woke me up at nights.
Everybody was under stress, but the burden of two children and no money made Youssef particularly nervous. In Anoush, as with the other aspirants, many of whom were avoiding him, he could get angry with the least outrage. Bright with delight, Youssef jumped into the sky and began to chant and perform.
And Anoush and Shahla ran from store to store swaying sacks of cakes. As he saw us, Youssef demanded that we sat down and then cried out vociferously for more beers. But Youssef didn't realize. It was Youssef nodding grumpily. And Anoush and Shahla came asking Youssef for moneys. So Youssef took out a bunch of notes and tossed some in her face.
Australia in Papua New Guinea or the Republic of Nauru only exacerbated the fear of everyone. "It' a falsehood to frighten the public not to come," Youssef said when I mentioned it. "A third applicant for political asylum shrugged his shoulders.
"It' a politic game," he said to me. It' s difficult to exaggerate how controversial a topic boatmen are in Australia this year. What makes Australia special, however, is the separation between the importance of boatmen in domestic dialogues on the one side and the real extent of the problems on the other.
In the last four years, most EU member states have taken in more applicants per head than Australia - some of them, such as Sweden and Liechtenstein, sevenfold as many. For more than a century, however, Australia's government has been focused on the boatmen, making them a key part of their agenda.
The MV Tampa, a cargo vessel from Norway, saved 433 refugees, almost all Afghans, from a beached fishermarine. Instead of taking her back to Indonesia, Tampa master Arne Rinnan agreed to her requests to be taken to Christmas Island. The Australian government banned the vessel from entering its territories and the resulting stalemate threatened Australia to sue Rinnan and Norway at the United Nations.
In the middle of a re-election process, John Howard, a right-wing premier who ran after his adversary in most surveys, said: "We remain very determined not to let this boat or its passengers end up in Australia. "When Rinnan, worried about the well-being of the asylums on his boat, approached the island anyway, Howard sent Australia's commands aboard the Tampa to stop them from proceeding.
This deadlock was only solved when New Zealand and Nauru declared their willingness to take in the refugees. He was re-elected in July when Rudd ruled out the chance that a bosun would ever settle in Australia. "The other, relating to CO2 emission fines, was "Axe the tax!") and declared the inflow of boatmen a "national emergency", Abbott suggested an even harder system than Rudd's, called "Operation Sovereign Borders".
" In addition to other pro-active actions, this militarist plot demanded the use of military ships to send back refugees at sea before reaching the coast of Australia. Much less than a fortnight after the Youssef and Rashid drank in the quad. No matter which of the candidates won, one thing was certain: neither Youssef nor Rashid, nor Anoush nor Shahla came to the place they thought they were going.
Anoush would never become an Aussie police officer; Youssef would never see his kids "getting a job" there; Anoush would never become an Aussie police officer; Zhahla would never profit from a worldly, occidental upbringing. Instead, what they had to look forward to - after the dangerous journey and after month, perhaps years, imprisoned in an insulated prison camp - was the relocation to the sparse cadaver of a disused open pit mine, of which more than 70 per cent are deserted (Nauru), or the relocation to a poor and criminally shaped island country, which is known for its high rate of murders and sex ually motivated acts (Papua New Guinea).
We walked along the cove, where a dozen of slum dwellers had assembled to dig the garbage out of the shoals on swimming barge and leave it on the shore when Youssef phoned my cell phone and yelled at us to come back to the lighthouse - we went.
We found two young iranian ladies, Farah and Rima, who sat at the dinner footing with big rucksacks, while Youssef rushed to put date and lemon - which should relieve the sea sickness - in a courier pocket on film. Also, I noted that he brought the inflation ring Anoush and Shahla had found at the swimming pools.
A man from Iran called Ayoub came and said that our vehicle was service. Through the respectful way Youssef and the ladies handled him - and through his self-confident self-control, as opposed to our rather panic-stricken excitment- I learned that Ayoub was a sneak. Shahla and Anoush were thrilled. When we went on the motorway, they couldn't stop to talk about the ship and the ocean.
farah pulled anoush in her laps while rima wanted to braid shahlas fierce hairdry. I was reminded that since their arrival in Jakarta they have not only been without a mum but also without a mum. A number of the officials photographed the licence plate numbers and aspirants, while others joked friendly with the driver.
Soon, the aspirants got out of their vehicles. Approximately 30 refugees left Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan when the coach pulled over. Youssef, the kids, Rima, Farah, Joel and I talked a commuteer with a mini van into taking us back to the building for $20.
I had Youssef light a pan of pasta casserole. "Ayoub said to me, "Get your pockets and the keys to the flat," he dropped a poultry bones on his dish and sucked the fat off his finger, one by one, from your thumbs to your finger. He didn't seem convinced and didn't make a move to packing.
When I got back to the flat, I found Youssef by the cooker. He' s put Shahla in the showers. I think Anoush saw a cartoon. It was Youssef who shaken his mind. No objections or accusations were raised when I said Joel and I had to go alone without her; however lamentable, Youssef was at peace with what happened, and I realised that he had to see it comin.
SHAHALA was still in the showers. Anoush hadn' miss anything. So we took a cab to a much more beautiful edifice on the other side of Jakarta. She asked us to put our mobile phones on the desk and said that we should not use them anymore.
"He asked who said to come here." Him and Sami, a chubby 9-year-old with spectacles, were two of the most friendly guys I ever encountered in Jakarta. All of us were very happy when our chauffeur drove a few kilometres down the motorway into an aisle, behind the lorry and said to get off.
When the two Indo-Palestinian crews withdrew the tarpaulin they had pinned over our heads it was still darkness. It was so squishy that every goddamn thing that the ship fell into a cave from a summit or struck a shaft head-on, large quantities of rain splattered against us.
A few folks were leaning over the wheeled shelves, others puking in a bag. When they rushed under the barge and took off into the sky, the show rejoiced everyone, grown-ups and children both. At the first daylight, despite lack of rest, desiccation, seasickness and dirt, the aspirants were aroused by the fact that according to the Indonesians we would probably arrive in Australia before the night.
Some of the guys desperately looking for a breath of cool breezes shredded the crate with the empty jugs and made sights out of the carton. Bug - the only part of the vessel with a cover - stank of puke and mucus. Previously, asylumships often made it all the way - but the landings can be tricky (when a ship crashed on the rocks in 2010, 50 men drowned), and now it is customary to ask for a "rescue" before arriving on Christmas Island.
There was an Irishman man who knew some English - the one who said he was an engineering man in Jakarta - who talked to the embassy. Indonesians had a portable G.P.S. unit, but neither they nor the aspirants knew how it worked. "Farah said to me, so they can't dump you."
Instead of just dropping them, the aspirants tore out each side, wrinkled them into a football and cast it into the outwind. The first time they saw the aircraft and the vessel, all those seeking refuge thrown their mobile phones over board, following Siya's example. "It was four or five after we contacted the first vessel when a second, smaller Patrolship appeared.
Immediately this one they got on the ship, brought the men to the side and drove everyone forward. If it is not their second offence or someone is dying, there is often no criminal prosecution of those who carry them. We would have keeled the ship a few early nights. It was full of custom and migration officers, federation policemen and staff of a privately owned business operating the island's prisons.
We were greeted in Australia with a welcome drink, a cup of tea and a trip to a luxury city. Late in the afternoons when I went into the city I saw our little ship being tugged out to the ocean. That'?s where the policeman said there was a fire. Neither of the applicants would remain in either place for long.
When I was on the island, almost every single flight every single flight was full of prisoners to Papua New Guinea and the Republic of Nauru. Meanwhile most, if not all, of our crew have been moved from our ship to one of the two island states. When sent to the prison camp in Papua New Guinea, they probably live in the camp that was built there in the course of enlargement.
When sent to the Nauru prison camp, they probably live in the tented camp that was built there after the aspirants burnt down the building in July. As Nauru and Papua New Guinea are unable to deal with applications for refugees - they are still being trained by Aussie civil servants - applicants for political refugees have a long waiting period ahead of them.
A few may not be able to stand it: already tens of Iranians, after seeing the terms in Papua New Guinea, have asked to be sent back to their state. In contrast to Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, there is also no treaty between Iran and Australia that allows forcibly returning applicants for political refuge es whose claims have been rejected.
That means that Iranians refused shelter by Nauru or Papua New Guinea and who refuse to volunteer to go back to Iran will find themselves in a kind of a limbo where they cannot be relocated to these Isles, sent to the continent of Australia or sent home. Without another way these individuals could be returned to Christmas Island and held for an indefinite period of time.
After Tony Abbott was appointed premier, we arrived in Australia one in three. Since then, in line with his Sovereign Borders operation policies, Abbott has instructed the Marines to return to Indonesia the ships of refuge that had been caught at Sea whenever possible. This has been done twice so far, at the end of September, when two shipments of ships carrying refugees off the coast were handed over to the Algerian state.
Sukabumi, the town of Indonesia, whose policestation Joel and I briefly frequented, was less than a hundred metres off the Java coastline on the same date as a ship full of refugees from Lebanon disintegrated. An asylock who could swimm to a safe place was losing his sister-in-law, his brother-in-law, three of her kids, his spouse and all eight of his kids.
As I returned to Afghanistan, I encountered several men who were getting ready to go to Australia. Qai said to me that he was very good for years, while Afghans from the province came to town on a regular basis. It was Qais who said he was expecting to see if his buddies were doing well - in which case he would leave.