Tampa affair

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Tampa Affair and Political Statements in English on Australian Broadcasting Corporation video (October 2001)

The Tampa affair occurred in August 2001 when the then Australian coalition government of Liberal Party and National Party under Prime Minister John Howard refused, 438 boat people take that the Norwegian freighter Tampa from the no longer seaworthy wooden boat Palapa 1 from Indonesia within international Rescued waters not far from the Australian maritime borders. The incident resulted in Australia adopting strict immigration detention that continues to this day.

Not only did the eight-day incident develop into a diplomatic confrontation between Australia and Norway, but the Tampa affair was a central topic of the 2001 parliamentary elections in Australia , so that the "Tampa election" was even reported in the Australian press on various occasions (" Tampa Election ”). Other scandals such as the Children Overboard Affair in October 2001, in which the government at the time was demonstrably untruthful, and the shortly afterwards sinking of the refugee ship SIEV X in October 2001 with 353 drowned boat people, led the discussion about the migration and asylum policy of Australia . Presumably this was a major factor in the liberal-conservative government under Prime Minister John Howard winning the November 10, 2001 election.

prehistory

There is a historically inherited racism in Australia that assumes that the white race is morally and intellectually superior to other non-white races. This form of racist policy is known as the White Australia Policy and is primarily directed against Asians and Aborigines . The White Australia Policy was given legal status by the newly formed Australian nation state on December 23, 1901 with the Immigration Restriction Act . The consequences of this restrictive policy were expressed in a shortage of workers after the Second World War . The Labor Government of Ben Chifley then enabled immigration from the continent of Europe as well as limited immigration from other continents, which merely modified the White Australia Policy and not repealed it. The relaxation was partially repealed in 1966 by the conservative Harold Holt government and the subsequently ruling conservative Gough Whitlam government repealed it entirely with the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975. As immigration increased, Bob Hawke's Labor administration passed a new law, the Migration Legislation Amendment Act 1989 . This law made immigration detention in Australia possible for boat people . Labor Party's Paul Keating , who was named Prime Minister in 1991, passed the Migration Amendment Act in 1992, and since 1992 nearly everyone who arrived on boats without a valid visa has been detained in immigration custody and detention centers. In the course of the Tampa affair, the government of John Howard succeeded on August 29, 2001 in an urgent legal procedure to pass the "Border Protection Bill 2001" in both chambers and thus enforce a further tightening of the migration and asylum policy in Australia. This enabled boat people to be locked away in camps outside of Australian territory.

Sea rescue

The Tampa (2009)

On August 24, 2001, the fishing boat Palapa 1 , coming from Indonesia, with 438 people (369 men, 26 women and 43 children) about 140 kilometers north of Christmas Island in international waters came into distress. Other representations assume 433 people. On the morning of August 26, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Australian Maritime Rescue Center asked nearby ships to come to the rescue. The Tampa as the next positioned ship was able to find the palapa after four hours with the support of the coast guard aircraft Coastwatch 583 and save the people from the sinking boat. The rescue operation took place in international waters about 75 nautical miles from the Australian Christmas Island and 250 nautical miles from the Indonesian port of Merak . The Indonesian rescue control center to which the sea rescue area formally belongs could not be reached by the Australians until then.

With the additional 400 people and 27 crew members, a scheduled onward journey to Singapore was not possible due to the construction of the overcrowded ship ( RoRo ship for a maximum of 50 people), lack of basic medical care and lack of food. The ship and people on board would have been endangered. According to the international law of the sea (including the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea ), rescued shipwrecked persons must be transported to the nearest port immediately. This was Christmas Island in Australia.

After rescuing the broken sea, Captain Arne Rinnan was able to reach the responsible Indonesian sea rescue center and was given permission to call at Merak. After the Tampa had rescued the boat people, most of whom belonged to the Afghan Hazara minority , they headed for Merak. Shortly thereafter, five boat people came on the bridge and aggressively demanded that the Tampa should turn towards the closer Christmas Island. In order to avoid conflicts and the endangerment of the ship and people, the Norwegian captain changed course to Christmas Island, four hours away, after consulting with the Australian maritime emergency control center and was allegedly told that the port police there would come on board. Shortly before reaching Australian waters, the Australian migration authority intervened in Canberra and announced that the ship would not be allowed to enter Australian waters because the captain would otherwise encourage illegal migration and thus make himself liable to prosecution. Captain Rinnan therefore stopped outside the 12 mile zone. From August 27th, controversial political discussions began between Norway, Indonesia and Australia. Captain Rinnan sent pan-pan calls for help from August 28th . Although Australian ministers pledged to help in public comments, it did not arrive on the Tampa and on August 29, the captain declared the Tampa a distress at sea and entered the territorial waters in disregard of the Australian prohibition to find a place of refuge .

Christmas Island

Captain Rinnan informed his shipping company , the Norwegian Wilh. Wilhelmsen , and the Australian Coast Guard and asked for permission to bring the castaways ashore on Christmas Island. This was refused to him by the coast guard and he instead asked to change his course back to Indonesia. The Australians threatened the captain that if he continued with his ventures he would run the risk of being arrested and charged with human trafficking in Australia. Then Rinnan changed course again, which the castaways soon noticed. They again urged him to change course. Rinnan feared that there would be resistance to staying on this course. He also feared attacks on his crew or that shipwrecked people would jump overboard in their desperation. So he changed course again.

Arrived off Christmas Island, the Tampa anchored at a distance of 14 miles in international waters. The Australian government continued to refuse to accept the refugees, but it provided the castaways with medical help, food and drinking water on the ship.

On August 29, Rinnan himself declared his ship a distress at sea and asked for help. Despite his distress at sea, he was denied access to the territorial waters and the Flying Fish Cove harbor and requested medical assistance was not provided. Thereupon he entered the Australian waters off Christmas Island without a permit. In the meantime the Australian government had brought a special unit with 45 soldiers from the Special Air Service to the island. After the Tampa entered the Australian Zone, the soldiers intercepted the ship with rubber dinghies and entered it. The inflatables did not carry a national flag, but the soldiers carried Australian insignia. The boat people transported them in these boats to the Australian troop transport ship HMS Manoora . With this measure, the boat people had not entered Australian territory and thus had no opportunity to apply for asylum. The troop transport then dropped off the boat people in the small island state of Nauru (see below).

deportation

Troop carrier HMAS Manoora (2006)

On August 29, 2001, the government passed the "Border Protection Bill 2001" in both chambers in an urgent procedure . This enabled them to remove all ships with asylum seekers and the people on them from national waters or to take them into domestic and foreign immigration detention. The political opposition was in the minority in the chambers. A human rights organization sued the Border Protection Bill ; the lawsuit was dismissed.

The Australian government had ordered the HMAS Manoora to Christmas Island. The ship with a transport capacity of more than 400 people was supposed to pick up the asylum seekers and drop them off the country. On September 2, the Australian government reached an agreement on admission with the governments of Nauru and New Zealand .

On September 3rd, the boat people were brought from the Tampa to the Manoora within three hours . Since the castaways were not supposed to set foot on Australian soil, because this would have triggered an automatic asylum application, they should first be brought to Papua New Guinea on the Manoora . From there they wanted to be brought in groups by air to New Zealand and Nauru. This was not done because the boat people would obtain a right to asylum there after landing in Papua New Guinea. The Australian government therefore decided to transport them directly with the Manoora to the small island state of Nauru, 7,000 kilometers away.

Whereabouts of the refugees

131 of the boat people were flown from Nauru to New Zealand and housed in the Mangere Refugee Center in Auckland , the others stayed in the Nauru Regional Processing Center on Nauru.

A year later, through a publication by Amnesty International on August 24, 2002, it became known that 130 of the boat people brought to New Zealand had been granted permanent residence there. In the internment camp in Nauru, seven Afghans returned to their homeland shortly before the release. A 2016 newspaper report - 15 years after the event - reported that of those Tampa asylum seekers who were granted five-year residency in Australia, fewer than 30 ended up staying there.

Honors

The crew and the captain of the Tampa were honored for their behavior in 2002 with the Nansen Refugee Prize, awarded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Captain Arne Rinnan was awarded the highest civil medal in Norway. He was named Captain of the Year in Lloyd's List . He was also given this honor by the British Nautical Institute .

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Virginia Trioli: Reith rewrites history to hide the shame of children overboard lie , from 1 September 2012 to the Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved December 4, 2012
  2. ^ White Australia policy , on National Museum Australia . Retrieved November 20, 2019
  3. Janet Phillips, Harriet Spinks: Immigration detention in Australia , April 2, 2013, on aph.gov.au. Retrieved November 20, 2019
  4. Jason Burke, Matthew Brace, Sandra Jordan: All Australia can offer is guano island
  5. ^ A b Australia ships out Afghan refugees , September 3, 2001 on bbc. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  6. ^ Peter Mares: Borderline: Australia's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Wake of the Tampa . UNSW Press 2002, ISBN 0-86840-789-5 , p. 121 f.
  7. Hartmut von Brevern, M. Bopp: Seenotrettung von refugees . In: Journal for Foreign Public Law and International Law. 2002, p. 845.
  8. ^ Peter Mares: Borderline: Australia's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Wake of the Tampa . UNSW Press 2002, p. 122.
  9. a b Tampa Affair , n.a., National Museum Australia. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  10. ^ Peter Mares: Borderline: Australia's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Wake of the Tampa . P. 122 f.
  11. David Marr, Marian Wilkinson: Dark Victory. 2005, ISBN 1-74114-447-7 , p. 31.
  12. ^ David Marr, Marian Wilkinson: Dark Victory 2005, ISBN 1-74114-447-7 , p. 33.
  13. Hartmut von Brevern, M. Bopp: Seenotrettung von refugees . In: Journal for Foreign Public Law and International Law. 2002, p. 841.
  14. ^ Sovereignty and refugees (I). Chapter 5. Refugees between Pasts and Politics. Sovererignty and memory in the Tampa crisis , o. A., on anu.ed.au. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  15. Border Protection Bill 2001 '' , dated August 29, 2001, on Parliament of Australia. Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  16. "Tampa". The boat refugees left the ship on September 3, 2001, on Spiegel Online . Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  17. AUSTRALIA-PACIFIC Offending human dignity - the "Pacific Solution" , pp 39-40, dated August 24, 2001 at Amnesty International. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  18. AUSTRALIA-PACIFIC Offending human dignity - the "Pacific Solution" , page 42, of 24 August 2001 to Amnesty International. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
  19. AUSTRALIA-PACIFIC Offending human dignity - the “Pacific Solution” , p. 2, of August 24, 2001, on Amnesty International. Retrieved March 27, 2017.
  20. Cindy Wockner: These are the people Australia didn't want - the controversial Tampa refugees reveal life now ' , June 29, 2016, on News Corporation Australia. Retrieved November 29, 2019
  21. ^ Nansen Award for captain, crew and owner of 'Tampa' , March 25, 2002 on UNHCR . Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  22. Årets kaptein , October 17, 2001, on Dagbladet . Retrieved March 25, 2017.
  23. Honoring the mariners' finest traditions at sea. November 3, 2016, on Naval Today. Retrieved March 25, 2017.