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| news.com.au |
SHE was sold a cruel lie by the
people smugglers. She would be travelling on a luxury ocean liner from
Indonesia to Australia. They showed her photos of the ship that would
transport her, her beautiful son and her brother to their new life in
Australia.
It was a superb vessel, with three storeys of cabins.
"I believed them," she says.
She
had dreamed of nothing else but being with her husband, who had escaped
to Australia four years earlier on a boat to build a new life in Perth
for his wife and unborn son, their first child. He had left Sri Lanka
when she was five months' pregnant.
He had cut up photos and built
a montage that depicted his family together, as one. He had never seen
his son. He never would - at least, not alive.
Wind back a few
days. We are in the village of Cidaun, on the southern coast of West
Java, at one of the closest points between Indonesia and Christmas
Island.
Two Sri Lankan women are weeping as they trade accounts of
their grief, but neither is able to offer comfort to the other. One
explains that her three children and husband are missing, lost at sea
after their smuggling boat sank. The second woman says her only son is
missing.
Someone calls the second woman's name. She turns, in horror.
She
knows that over where the voice came from is the makeshift morgue they
have set up in the clinic in the fishing village of Cidaun, on the
southern coast of West Java.
An ambulance has just arrived with another body rescuers have pulled from the water.
The
woman runs, then stops, not wanting to go closer, but compelled to do
so. She knows without doubt what she'll find. She begins to scream. She
rushes and grabs her small son's grey and wet body and clutches him, her
overwhelming lament unbearable to behold.
Local villagers circle her, staring at her pain. And then she and her dead boy are gone.
It
is midday on Wednesday. There are so many stories of loss after an
asylum boat, believed to be carrying 187 people, most of them Sri
Lankans and Iranians, broke down and sank soon after setting out from
this village for Christmas Island on Tuesday morning.
There are
also remarkable stories of survival. Most of the passengers somehow
escaped with their lives after the smugglers, with no regard for human
life, cruelly overburdened the small wooden cargo vessel in their
soulless pursuit of maximum profit.
Selvamalar tells her heartbreaking story to Paul Toohey. Picture: Rante Ardiles
When we ask, none of the Sri Lankans seem to know much about
the screaming woman. They have a nickname for her, Radha, and say she,
her son and brother travelled with, but were not part of, a bigger group
of Tamil asylum seekers.
By Thursday morning, we have tracked the
woman down. She is on the other side of Java, in Jakarta, at the police
hospital. She is with another young couple who have also lost their
son, a one-year-old.
The Disaster Victim Identification Unit wants to DNA--match the dead children to their parents.
The woman comes out a doorway in a daze. Her name is Selvamalar. She is 39. Her son's name is Darmithan. He was four.
She
speaks passable English. She says the police won't let her see
Darmithan. They took him from her when they arrived here in the
ambulance, the day before. "I want my baby, I want to see my baby," she
cries.
Selvamalar
tells how it came to this. Late last year she, her brother Rahulan, 25,
and Darmithan left their home in Vavuniya, in Sri Lanka's Northern
Province. She says her husband, Balamanokaran, faced serious ethnic and
political problems as a Tamil in Sri Lanka.
He is living in Perth
on a five-year visa. Selvamalar said she'd tried to join her husband
through legal means, but was refused a visa. "I don't know why," she
says.
In mid-November, feeling she had no alternative, she set off
from Galle, in the south of the troubled island nation, with her son,
brother and 43 other Australia-bound asylum seekers.
Each paid the
equivalent of around $7200 for passage to Indonesia. She says the
engine stopped as they got close to Indonesia in their 2000km journey.
"We
were 45 days in the boat," Selvamalar says. "After 25 days, there was
no food. Then a ship stopped and give us food. After 36 days, we got
more food from a New Orient ship. We just floated. On January 1, we are
rescued by a ship and come to Indonesia."
They were taken to
Medan, the capital of north Sumatra, and put in an overcrowded
immigration detention facility with other Sri Lankans, and Iranians,
Afghans and Burmese.
"On April 4, eight Rohingya (Muslim) persons
from Myanmar were murdered by Buddhists in the jail," she says. "I don't
know why. They were stabbed. My son saw this. My son is very afraid. We
are all very afraid."
A digital composite picture of a family who can never be together again thanks to the lies of people smugglers.
After more than three months, the International Organisation
for Migration secured their release into the community. Selvamalar
immediately found a smuggler who arranged for their three-day journey by
ferry and bus to Jakarta.
By April 22, the three were in Cisarua,
in central West Java, the place where most asylum seekers go to
register with the UNHCR in the hope of gaining legal resettlement in
Australia, or to make contact with the smugglers.
She and her
brother had no trouble finding the smuggler network. At least 40 brokers
operate on behalf of the kingpins in the area, looking for passengers.
The deal was that Selvamalar and her brother would pay $7200 each.
Darmithan would travel for free.
Selvamalar says she was shown a
photo of the boat she would be taking to Australia. "The smugglers say,
'Not a boat, a ship,'" she says. "We saw photo." The photo was of a
luxury ocean liner.
It seems hard to believe. She knew her husband
had taken a wooden boat four years ago; and surely her own recent 45
days at sea must have given her doubt. But she believed the closer she
got to Australia, the better things would get.
They were taken
from Cisarua to another town on the evening of July 22, where she said a
large number of Sri Lankans were gathered. They were driven down to the
coast, arriving on Tuesday morning.
"When we saw the boat, very shocked," she says. "But they are saying that this boat will take us to the ship."
They
motored to sea for two hours. Selvamalar began to realise there was no
ship. They were put on a boat that quickly began taking water through a
hole in the hull. "We are very afraid," she says. "The boat is in
danger."
The captain responded to passengers' pleas and turned
back for Java, limping on half power for three hours until the boat
swamped and began to quickly sink.
Selvamalar tells of something
strange, but something we have also heard from others, that a bigger,
more modern boat was just 50m from them as people began to struggle and
drown.
"They are watching our boat," she says. "We say, 'Please
help us.' We remove our life jackets and wave. They don't help our
rescue. They are watching, watching. We called out, 'Help us, save our
life.' They not help."
Selvamalar breaks off her narrative. "I
want to see my baby. Will you help me?" When we make an inquiry on
Selvamalar's behalf, the forensic police politely ask us to keep out of
their business.
Asylum seekers at Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island.
She tells what happened at sea. She had become split from her
brother (who would survive) and was floating, holding Darmithan. Each
had a life jacket, but she didn't know how to swim. She didn't want to
float further out to sea with her boy.
"A man came and took my
son," she says. "A Sri Lankan man. He could swim. I gave him my son to
take him to safety, to take to land." But Darmathin arrived dead.
What
happened? "I don't know, I don't know," she says, bursting into tears
again. "On Wednesday I see my son, dead. Very cute boy, very cute boy."
She does not know if the man who took her son made it back to shore. She does not know of someone stole her son's lifejacket.
When
we speak to Selvamalar in the police hospital, she says someone had
given her a phone so she could call her husband and tell him the news
about Darmithan. He was now urgently trying to get a passport to come to
Jakarta to be with his wife.
Darmasen died on the way to Australia.
Selvamalar cannot let go. She cannot accept her son is dead.
"My
baby was a good dancer, a very good singer," Selvamalar says. "Every
day he's saying, 'Mama, I want to see my papa. When will I see my papa?
When are we going to papa?'
"My baby is always saying to me, 'Don't cry mama, don't cry mama.' He was very cute, very cute.
"I wanted him to be a pilot. He was very intelligent, very intelligent."
She
doesn't know what will happen now. "I don't want to go to Australia,"
she says. My life is my baby. My future is my baby. I want my baby. I
want to see my baby."
Asked if she has heard of Kevin Rudd,
Selvamalar shakes her head. "What is that?" She said she knew nothing of
the government new Papua New Guinea policies, but her smugglers
certainly did.
Asked what she thinks of the people smugglers, she
says: "They are very cheaters. No life do they understand. Not babies,
not pregnant ladies, nothing. They not understand."
Balamanokaran Nagaraga in Perth with a picture of Darmasen. Picture Theo Fakos
Balamanokaran said he had planned to bring his wife and child
to Australia next year, when he expected to get citizenship. "I wanted a
life here with my wife and son," he said. "A good future, good
opportunities here."
Now he wants to see the son he never knew. "I
want to see my son's face because I've never seen him," he said. "I'm
asking the Australian Government to let me go to Indonesia. Send me to
Indonesia.
"I want to see my son and wife, if I can't do that,
please bring my wife and baby here to stay with me for a couple of weeks
and then send my wife back to Sri Lanka. I just want two weeks with my
wife and child."
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