From: John Beckett 

Perhaps my comments have been a bit mysterious. To clarify, I don't like
John Howard and I don't like the "get tough on the asylum
seekers" policies.

However, I still believe that there are no know cases where Australia has
known, or should have known, about a sinking boat and has not rescued the
occupants. Your URL descrubes one boat that sank where many deaths
occurred. The event was a *long* way from any civilisation. There have been
several other catastrophes like that, but none where the occupants had the
necessary distress equipment to notify authorities.

The media here would go into a frenzy if there were a known group of people
dying offshore.

John

Phil Payne  wrote in message
news::
> > Well, yes - that's an embarassment too. For the record, our PM would point
> > out that there are no known cases where Australia has actually not rescued
> > people from a sinking ship.
>
> He'd be lying:
>
> http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jul1999/imm-j22.shtml
>
> "Fourteen refugees from Sri Lanka are missing, believed drowned, in the
> Indian Ocean about 80 kilometres from the Australian territory of Christmas
> Island, after their vessel, an overcrowded Indonesian fishing boat, sank on
> Monday. The boat had been drifting since last Thursday when its engine
> broke down."
>
> I think being allowed to drift with a broken engine within 80 miles of
> Australian territory equates pretty well with not being rescued.
>
> --
>   Phil Payne
>   http://www.isham-research.com
>   +44 7785 302 803
>   +49 173 6242039

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