Children aboard boat headed towards NZ

A fishing boat carrying as many as 200 asylum seekers is understood to be on its way to New Zealand.

“It appears to be people who had been trying to go to Australia, could not do so and were languishing in Delhi and other places. They are now being mobilised with promises of New Zealand,” Sri Lankan refugee advocate Mr S.C. Chandrahasan, said yesterday. Picture: Gary Ramage

A fishing boat carrying as many as 200 asylum-seekers is understood to be on its way to New Zealand after leaving the southern Indian state of Kerala a fortnight ago, with Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian nationals believed to be on board.

Indian police have confirmed the boat left the Keralan port of Munamban, near the tourist town of Kochin, on January 12 and that a man arrested in New Delhi in connection with the investigation told them the boat was heading to New Zealand.

The vessel is understood to be carrying Indians and Sri Lankan Tamils, though it is unclear whether the Tamils were from the long-term refugee community in southern India or more recent Sri Lankan arrivals fleeing political turmoil there. Estimates of how many people are on board vary between 80 and 200, but it is known there are women and children on board.

Keralan police recovered more than 70 bags and 20 identification documents left behind on a beach. “The bags are full of dry goods and clothes, suggesting they were preparing for a long journey,” police officer MJ Sojan told Reuters.

‘The people and boat are missing somewhere in the sea. Many Indian agencies, including the coast guard, are trying to locate the boat.”

C.S. Chandrahasan, founder and director of the Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation in Tamil Nadu, told The Weekend Australian that people-smugglers had also recently been trying to lure refugees inside the camps on to boats with talk of a possible change of government in Australia, and a subsequent softening of immigration policies.

“You wouldn’t believe it, but they have been telling people there is a possibility of a change of government after the Australian elections,” he said yesterday.

“You would be very surprised how much the people-smugglers know. They are feeding so much detail into the refugee community — the possibility of what could happen after the election, and also the policy differences between the Australian government and the Labor Party on boats.

“They are telling them that if the Labor Party gets in next election there is a chance of getting a temporary-stay visa. There are things they are saying that even we don’t know about.”

Mr Chandrahasan, whose organisation helps run 107 Tamil refugee camps, added he did not believe any of the asylum-seekers on the boat were from the camps, or even from the long-term Sri Lankan refugee community living outside the camps in that state.

“We can safely say the people-smugglers didn’t succeed in luring anyone from the camps and also had little success in getting people living outside the camps in Tamil Nadu,” Mr Chandrahasan told The Weekend Australian.

“It appears to be people who had been trying to go to Australia, could not do so and were languishing in Delhi and other places. They are now being mobilised with promises of New Zealand.”

Mr Chandrahasan said he believed the boat had stopped in either Malaysia or Indonesia given there had been no reports of boats reaching Australian waters — the most direct route to NZ — and that further boats would likely be arranged to take those who have left from India, along with refugees stranded in Southeast Asia, onwards to Australia or New Zealand.

He said people-smugglers resumed efforts to sell boat passage to vulnerable youths inside India’s Tamil camps last year when Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and tried to replace him with former strongman president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The President was eventually forced to reinstate Mr Wickremesinghe last month after a majority of MPs refused to back the move, and blocked his efforts to dissolve parliament.

Sri Lanka is still recovering from a brutal civil war between the majority-Sinhalese Buddhist government and the minority Tamil Hindu and Muslim community, which has been long discriminated against there.

Tens of thousands of people died in the three-decade conflict but the worst casualties were inflicted in the bloody last months of the war in 2009 when the Sri Lankan military, under Mr Rajapaksa, bombed civilian targets and declared no-fire zones.

Stephen Vaughan, assistant general manager at Immigration New Zealand, told Reuters reports of an impending boat arrival were “concerning”.

“The message to anyone contemplating such a journey is simple: any attempt to reach New Zealand will put your life, and the lives of your family members, at great risk,” Mr Vaughan said.

He said the country’s laws allowed those who were part of a mass arrival to be detained for up to six months, and the detention can be extended for up to 28 days at a time.

“Although there has never been a mass arrival in this country, there’s no doubt that New Zealand is a target for people-smugglers, and a mass arrival at some stage is a very real possibility that we need to be fully prepared for,” Mr Vaughan said.

For an asylum boat to reach New Zealand, it would need to travel more than 11,000km through some of the roughest seas in the world.

Cyclones and storms are common in the straits between Indonesia and Australia, the most likely route for the boat.