New Zealand government complicit in Australia’s persecution of refugees - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/19/asyl-j19.html
New Zealand government complicit in Australia’s persecution of refugees
By Tom Peters
19 June 2015
There is now substantial evidence that last month Australian officials paid six “people smugglers” about $US30,000 to take 65 asylum seekers, who were attempting to reach New Zealand by boat, back to Indonesia. The passengers and crew were intercepted by the Australian navy, which confiscated their boat, stripped them of their supplies and loaded them into two unseaworthy wooden boats without adequate fuel and supplies.
The entire episode illustrates the utter criminality and brutality of the Australian government’s “border protection” regime. The 71 people, mostly from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, reached the remote island of Latu only by an extraordinary stroke of luck after one boat ran out of fuel and the other crashed into a reef, forcing those on board to swim ashore. One Indonesian official accused Australia of sending the asylum seekers “on a suicide mission.”