A naval frigate, HMAS Arunta, raced north ready to force the Tampa back into international waters. At the end of the week-long standoff, Australia's rulers belligerently announced it was sending four more warships and four P3 Orion long-range patrol aircraft for "saturation surveillance" and rapid response in the region.

The Norwegian government accused Canberra of coming close to "piracy." The conservative Norwegian paper Aftenposten editorialized that Australia had "won a reputation for being an international bully." Some calls to boycott Australian products like wine also arose.

Standing reality on its head, Howard claimed the refugees were trying "to intimidate us with our own decency." Under cover of a claimed "refugee crisis," the Australian government in Canberra has rapidly escalated its military presence directed at what pro-imperialist commentators call the "arc of instability"--from the Indonesian archipelago to the Pacific islands across Australia's north.

Although Howard was initially snubbed by Indonesia's new president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Jakarta has now agreed the Australian naval flotilla can refuel at its ports. Sharing the same nationalist framework, Labor leaders have proposed setting up a coast guard force.

These aggressive war moves have built on the sensationalist and racist campaign in the capitalist media against "people smuggling" and an alleged "flood" of refugees about to "swamp" Australia.

Last year about 5,000 people arrived without papers on boats to the shores of this affluent country. Canberra quietly deported almost twice that number of so-called illegal immigrants in the past 12 months. By contrast, the impoverished countries of Pakistan and Iran are together home to about 3.7 million Afghan refugees.

On August 26, the Tampa, en route from Fremantle, Western Australia to Singapore, was diverted by Australian Search and Rescue to answer a distress call from a leaking wooden ferry headed southeast from Indonesia. Captain Arne Rinnan and his crew took aboard everyone from the slowly sinking boat.

After starting on his original course, the captain was pressured by the refugees to divert to Christmas Island, the closest port and an Australian territory. The remote island, about 200 miles south of Java and 1,000 miles from the Australian continent, is the closest Australian landfall for refugees coming via Indonesia. The imperialist strategic outpost was sold by London to Canberra in 1958, as Singapore gained self-rule.

On August 27, conservative prime minister John Howard and his cabinet ordered the Tampa to stay out of Australian waters. The ship initially stopped at the 12-mile nautical limit. Canberra began trying to pass the buck for the rescued people onto Oslo and Jakarta. Meanwhile the Australian Defence Forces rushed planeloads of troops and military equipment to the island.

As conditions on the rescue ship worsened with hundreds crowded on deck between containers, with meager food and medicine, with two women pregnant and some ill, Rinnan headed to Christmas Island's port, citing human necessity.

The moment the Tampa entered Australian waters, Howard launched the boarding party of 50 SAS commandos. They occupied the ship, ostensibly to prevent docking or any refugees jumping overboard, while Canberra contemplated its next moves. However the captain refused to move his ship, demanding the refugees be put ashore. Christmas Island harbor was then closed off, even to the island's fishing boats. A wide media exclusion zone was imposed around the Tampa to prevent any human portrayal of the refugees that could elicit sympathy.

Christmas Islanders kept up protests in support of the right of the refugees to land throughout the crisis, backed by the island's trade union, shire council, Islamic council, women's group, and Chinese cultural association. The island's 1,300 people are an ethnic mixture, with 60 percent of them Chinese, 25 percent Malay, and 15 percent European.

Writing in the September 11 The Bulletin magazine, Tony Wright summed up the crisis as "Howard's own peculiar imitation of Thatcher's Falklands," a reference to the 1982 war against Argentina over the Malvinas Islands by then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

"Australian sovereignty over a tiny and remote island would be invoked," he went on, "a significant military action would be mounted, the Australian government would be assaulted by outrage from the international community and from pulpits across the land, the nation would become divided, tens of millions of dollars would be spent and an indefinite 'fortress Australia' military buildup to Australia's north would begin. And Howard, facing an election while weighed down with negative opinion polling, yet certain of overwhelming support from Australian voters on the matter of confronting illegal immigrants, would refuse to bend."

Muted bipartisan support was given by opposition Labor leader Kim Beazley to Howard's warlike stance. Most of the capitalist media backed the government's course, although some worried about an impasse or damage to external relations. The warmongering headlines of Sydney's Daily Telegraph, August 30 blared "Iron Fist" and the next day "Warning Shot" and later "Boarding Party."

David Penberthy, in the August 31 Daily Telegraph, reported on the recent Queensland election campaign meetings by ultrarightist politician Pauline Hanson and the popular response to her demagogic call for closing off immigration and for naval action to force boats with "queue-jumpers" away. "Ms Hanson wanted the ships turned around and now her policy is John Howard's policy, Kim Beazley's policy, and the vast majority of voters appear to be pleased," he said. One Nation scored a million votes in the last federal election, and could decide the outcome of the polls later this year.

The governing Liberal and National parties then tried to ram a new law, the Border Protection Bill, through parliament, which would eliminate many criteria for refugees to enter the country and grant the military sweeping powers and immunity from prosecution to remove boats from Australian waters. A dissident Liberal MP said the bill would have excluded refugee status for Jews fleeing persecution in prewar Nazi Germany. It was defeated in the upper house by a majority of Labor, Democrat, and Green senators. In Melbourne, a federal court case was launched by civil libertarian lawyers seeking to win the refugees' right to asylum in Australia. A letter from the "Afghan refugees now off the coast of Christmas Island" via the Norwegian captain was read out in the court appealing to the government and the Australian people for asylum and wanting to know why they had been deprived of their rights.  
 
Protests at government action
As the crisis unfolded, small but significant protests were organized around the country demanding that the Tampa refugees be allowed to land. About 100 marched in Sydney on September 1 with a protest reported in Melbourne as well. As their Norwegian ship left Sydney Harbour, Australian seamen, with the backing of national officials from the Maritime Union of Australia, joined Norwegian seamen around the world in flying their flag at half mast in protest at the government's action discouraging rescues at sea.

During the tense week-long standoff, Howard and his ministers scrambled to find countries willing to accept the refugees and defuse the crisis, including East Timor, still occupied by Australian-led imperialist and other troops. On September 3, the refugees were transferred to a navy troop ship for a long voyage to Papua New Guinea. From Port Moresby, 150, including the 21 women, 44 children, and their immediate family members, will be flown to New Zealand and the rest to the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, which is economically dependent on Australia. Accommodation and processing of the asylum-seekers will be fully funded by Canberra. Only the four Indonesian crewmen from the foundered boat were taken directly ashore on Christmas Island to be charged with "people smuggling."
 
 
Related article:
Open the border to the refugees!  
 
 
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