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November 3rd, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Relief … Hamid Ranjbarian swam with his daughter for six hours from the capsized vessel. Photo: AFP
It was a night of sheer terror, a tragedy that unfolded just as the asylum seekers suspected it might after they first set eyes on the vessel for which they had each paid thousands of dollars to take them to Australia.
As the three small outriggers brought them to their 2am ocean rendezvous, the 70-odd asylum seekers saw before them a nine-metre wooden fishing boat that was already listing and taking on water.
“We were shocked. We told them it was too small, there were too many people. They [the Indonesian crew] got very angry and said no questions about this. They just said sit down, you can do nothing about it,” said Kamran Haider, a 17-year-old Pakistani.
Boat of death
Indonesian boys walk past the salvaged wooden boat that sunk off the coast of Java. Photo: Tom Allard
“We were still arguing when the boat tipped to one side and it started to sink.”
Less than 30 minutes into their journey, pure mayhem ensued. Most of the passengers were crammed below decks, choking on petrol fumes as the water rushed in.
Hamid Ranjbarian, a muscle-bound Iranian, took the lead and smashed a wider hole in the boat’s hull with his fists.
“I just had to get out of there. It was a small hole but I smashed it open and I passed my daughter to another boy [already in the water]. I said: ‘Take my daughter.'”
Hamid said time slowed as he searched for his own way out. Amid the screams and shoving, the waves and the buffeting winds, he found an exit and his three-year-old daughter, Tara, still with the boy.
“I had no life jacket. I had to swim around for six hours. Six hours holding my daughter up. I saw the police boat lights but they didn’t come to get me. It was a fisherman [who rescued us].”
While Hamid and his family survived, eight are confirmed dead, including three children. At least 15 are missing, and there are few hopes they will turn up alive.
Sajid Hussain says he will never forget what he saw as he held on to a piece of wood, tossed by the seas.
“There was a little child hanging on to a mother. She was in trouble. The father said ‘save your life, leave him’. She did, she let him go,” he said.
“Everyone was screaming. I thought I was in a dream. A terrible dream. There were children, mothers … this boy just sank under the sea.”
Forty-five people survived, Iranians, Afghans and Pakistanis, who all say they were fleeing persecution. Many say they came to Australia because they thought it wanted to take refugees. Some were very knowledgeable about the asylum seeker debate in Australia and decided to come after the Malaysia refugee swap deal was scuttled.
“Yes, I know about this Malaysia agreement and Julia Gillard in June,” says Kamran, a student from the Kurram Valley on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan where Pushtans and Taliban-linked militias are attacking the Shia Muslim minority.
“It was decided by the High Court on September 1 … I left on October 6.”
The rebuff from the court actually came a day earlier but Kamran insists that “many people in my village hear about Australia. A lot of people in my village will go to Australia.”
He said another boat taking asylum seekers from Malaysia to Batam, off Sumatra Island, had sunk less than two weeks ago.
Kamran paid $US5500 to get to Australia via Malaysia, the Iranians paid $US7000 and flew straight to Jakarta after bribing immigration officers at the airport $US500 for a visa.
“The immigration [at Jakarta airport] knew we were going to Australia,” says Mojgan Rajabali, 22, adding she had been shown a picture of a handsome vessel by the people-smuggling agent in Tehran and told she would be on Christmas Island two days after leaving Indonesia.
“We sold everything. My sister sold her house, clothes, furniture, everything to find the money and now we lose the money and we are here in Indonesia. It is very dirty, the police are liars. It’s no suitable for us,” she added.
“Australia, please, you must help us.”
At the hospital in Pangandaran, a scrappy port on the south coast of Java, the survivors walk around in a daze, or slumped with their heads in their hands.
There is no more heart-wrenching sight than Manyam Seyed Alizadeh, utterly bereft as she lies on a basic metal cot, a friend sitting on the bed, holding both her hands tenderly.
Her husband died two years ago and the widow decided to take her children – Mahdieh, a 14-year-old daughter, and Mahdi, her nine-year-old boy – to Australia to start a new life.
“I was feeling sick and I was asleep [on the boat]. They woke me up when it was sinking. I said ‘I can’t see my daughter, my people,'” she said, trembling.
Somehow she found a life jacket that fitted her and dropped into the sea. But she never saw her children again.
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