Doomed: One of the asylum seeker boats that vanished with all passengers lost. Photo: Supplied
The other asylum seeker boat that capsized, killing all on board. Photo: Supplied
In Italy – where asylum seekers vastly outnumber the pitiful few who make the perilous journey to Australia – a National Day of Mourning for lost asylum seekers is declared: ABC: Italy mourns after scores of African migrants die in boat sinking off island of Lampedusa. In Australia the lost ‘Illegals’ go to silent watery graves, faces blanked out … ‘for privacy reasons’. SMH: Pleas fail to avert boats tragedy.
• Robert Fisk, The Independent: A tragedy off the coast of Indonesia that should shame Lebanon’s neglectful government The migrants’ boat sank – but the blame must start in Beirut This is the story of how the Syrian war reached out 5,000 miles across the globe and destroyed at least 29 Lebanese lives in the Indian Ocean. It is a story of tragic irony; the destitute Lebanese families who wanted to live in Australia and left their arid villages in the hills of the northern Akkar plateau had been warned by their relatives not to leave their homes, and they died just off the coast of Indonesia. And it is a story of a country whose authorities take no responsibility for the deaths of their own people.
