Survivors in shock after refugee boat tragedy

Forty-four survivors were recovering in an Indonesian refugee camp today after their boat sank off Java island, drowning several hundred people.

The vessel was said to have been carrying 421 people, said Kemala Ahwil, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Jakarta.

‘‘They are traumatised,’’ Ahwil said.

The boat, which was reportedly carrying illegal immigrants to neighbouring Australia, sank on Friday.

Underscoring the clandestine nature of people smuggling and the difficulties Indonesian authorities have in controlling it, spokesmen for the police and navy could not confirm reports of the sinking.

In the Wisma Palar refugee camp in Bogor, a town about 38 miles south of Jakarta, dozens of people were milling about, many of them still dazed by their experience.

Bahram Khan, from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, said he had lost four brothers in the disaster. He said the 19-metre vessel had set sail from a fishing port in southern Sumatra after the refugees had paid dlrs 4,000 (£2,500) each for the journey.

‘‘About 2pm the hull sprang a hole. The mechanic could not fix it and the boat sank,’’ Khan said. He spent 20 hours clinging to a piece of wood before being picked up by Indonesian fishermen.

The International Organisation for Migration reported in Geneva that most of the immigrants were Iraqis, but that there were also Afghans, Palestinians and Algerians on board.

It was uncertain where the boat was heading, but thousands of migrants head for Australia every year from south east Asia. Leaky, unseaworthy vessels overloaded with passengers and cargo routinely leave Indonesian ports without working radios or enough lifejackets.

The ship left on Thursday, IOM spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy said. Later that day 21 passengers asked to get off the boat and were put ashore on an Indonesian island.

Early the following morning, the captain announced that the engine had stopped and the ship, with 400 passengers aboard, was taking on water.

‘‘The boat sank in 10 minutes,’’ Chauzy said.

Maritime disasters, with large loss of life, are common in Indonesia, a chain of more than 13,000 islands between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Sea safety is often lax and shipping laws are ignored and rarely enforced.

Criminal gangs with links to corrupt Indonesian authorities routinely pack hundreds of people into leaky fishing boats for the one-way run to the nearest Australian territorial waters, about 220 miles south of Java.

Sinkings are frequent and hundreds of people are believed to have perished in recent years.

Meanwhile, in Australia, tempers flared after the Government’s Labour opposition claimed the drowning was due to a failure of Government policy.

Asylum seekers have been a central issue in the Australian election campaign after the government’s decision in August to refuse entry to boat people coming from Indonesia won wide community support.

Labour supports the policy, but says the government has failed to provide a full solution because it has not negotiated an agreement with Indonesia to stop the boats departing.

The news Tuesday that only 44 people survived the sinking of an Indonesian fishing boat led to heated exchanges between Prime Minister John Howard and Labour leader Kim Beazley.

Speaking to reporters, Beazley described the drownings as a human tragedy born of the ‘‘appalling evil’’ of the illegal trade in people smuggling, but also due to a policy failure on the part of the government.

‘‘We have not got the agreement we need with Indonesia in order to be able to ensure that those who put themselves in such danger are not encouraged to do so,’’ he said.

But an incensed Howard said the sinking had nothing to do with his government.

‘‘It is a huge human tragedy and it is a desperately despicable thing for the leader of the opposition to try and score a political point against me in relation to the sinking of a vessel in Indonesian waters,’’ he told a Perth radio station.