Tragedy at Sea

30 people have lost their lives, 18 more are still unaccounted for, and 42 have injured in a horrific sea-disaster last week just meters from the shores of the Christmas Island, Australia. Heavy waves smashed their boat on rocks on the Island on Wed 15, December. They were Iranian and Iraqi refugees, 90 in total, on board of an Indonesian wooden fishing boat.

It is said the trip was arranged by an Iranian people-smuggler. These people believed to have paid thousands of dollars each, including number of children, to secure their passage to Australia.

While the blame game was on--as usual, the underlying reason behind the tragedy of this magnitude was untouched. Politicians regardless of their affiliations were all jumping into race to make some mileage out of it. The relevant policies, immigration and processing of refugees reaching Australia, which could or could not avoid this kind of tragedy were discussed.

What was not discussed, however, was the situations on the ground of countries where these people had come from, Iran and Iraq. Iran, a country under a militarised despotic regime in which, only since the last year uprising, thousands of people arbitrarily arrested, tortured, killed and disappeared. There are still thousands in prisons, and their family are being threatened and harassed. Iraq on the other hand, 7 years after its regime change, is still unstable. The country hasn't had a government in power since its last parliamentary election in March. The religious and factional killing are still going on daily bases. Only months ago its Christian population were threaten to either leave Iraq or facing death.

Therefore before jumping to the conclusion and label these may well be 48 dead people as illegal immigrants or queue jumpers ... etc; Australian politicians may need to take a matter of this kind to the UN and its relevant bodies such as the Human Rights Council and the Human Rights Committee for the investigation of those countries' human rights record.