An Australian frigate repulsed a boat of around 200 asylum seekers who in their desperation yesterday threw several children into the sea and jumped in after them.
Navy officers from the frigate HMAS Adelaide boarded the boat after it entered Australian waters about 220km off Christmas Island, a remote Australian outpost south of the main Indonesian island of Java.
In their apparent desperation to seek asylum in Australia, some of the group of mainly Iraqi boat people at one point threw several children overboard and jumped after them into the water, according to a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock.
They were rescued by HMAS Adelaide, which, after a tense stand-off, later escorted the boat out of Australian waters.
The group is the latest in a stream of predominantly Muslim boat people whose fate has turned illegal immigration into a major issue ahead of Australia's Nov. 10 general election. The ruling conservative coalition, attempting to win a third term in office at the elections, condemned what it described as little more than child exploitation by illegal immigrants.
"It doesn't speak volumes for some of the people on the vessel, suggestions that children were being thrown overboard," Prime Minister John Howard told journalists following him on the campaign trail.
"That is a sorry reflection on their attitude of mind. But our policy remains quite resolute. We are not going to be intimidated out of our policy by this kind of behavior."
Ruddock said the government was informed by the navy that children on the vessel chartered by an Indonesian-based people-smuggling syndicate were deliberately thrown overboard.
He said the action was a calculated move designed "with the intention of putting us under duress."
"A number of people have jumped overboard and have had to be rescued. More disturbingly, a number of children have been thrown overboard," Ruddock said. "People would not come wearing life jackets unless they planned action of this sort."
It appears the asylum seekers were attempting to force Australia to acknowledge responsibility for them, hence improving their case under international law to have their claims for asylum processed on Australian soil.
A spokesman for Defense Minister Peter Reith said the intended next destination of the boat people was not known but they were steaming slowly north, possibly headed for Indonesia.
Christmas Island is around 400km south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and 2,300km northwest of the nearest main Australian city of Perth.
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