By detaining the Papua Five for a minor border infringement, Indonesia is sending a clear message to Fisheries Minister Tony Burke: stop treating our fishermen as criminals and burning their boats.
Actually it is a message to the rest of us too. We have all have sat and watched “authorities” burning boats on the evening news in passive agreement for years. We accept that vessels that have fished the same waters for hundreds of years are suddenly a threat to sharks, turtles … all the charismatic species we like to watch on TV but that other people rely on for food.
As the Brisbane Times’ Tom Allard reports, “last financial year 1232 illegal fishermen were caught in Australian waters, held in detention centres here, and had their boats destroyed.”
So who knows how many — up to 1232 — Indonesian families are now waiting for the return of their loved ones. And it’s more than just the detentions. The destruction of the boats, often the only assets of entire fishing communities, is not even always legal or justified.
“The three men (fishermen)were put on trial and had their boat destroyed after Australian authorities claimed they caught them fishing illegally for trepang in April this year.
“But there was no trepang on board and last week a Supreme Court ordered a jury to acquit them because of lack of evidence.”
Australia’s northern waters were extended from three to 200 nautical miles or more after 1989 — effectively stealing traditional fishing grounds of tens of thousands of fisherfolk — claiming fishing grounds Australia has never fished historically and is still barely fishing today.
Without a significant population or market, Australia’s northern waters have miniscule fisheries by Asian standards with the lowest commercial catch rates at 17.0 kg per square kilometre per annum according to researcher Walter Starck who also states:
“Elsewhere, over a wide range of Pacific reefs, the annual harvest averages some 7,700 kg/km2, (Fig. 2) and these reefs are generally considered by fisheries biologists to be sustainably harvested (Adams et al., 1996). Because in actual practice this level of catch is ongoing, expert opinion in this instance is consistent with observable fact.”
The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) has grown to a massive bureaucracy and set up a trade in “future rights in the catch specific volumes of fish” — better known as quotas. By making fish “private property” to catch fish without a quota or licence becomes theft.
The cost of protecting these “Australian Fish” is high, many of times the value of the Australian northern waters catch. The Ocean Viking — a floating prison — is leased and a major portion of customs and navy work in northern waters is directed to illegal fishing. Then there are costs of private prison companies for detention, the costs for courts and the costs of AFMA’s enforcement role.
The abhorrent treatment of Indonesian fishermen has been an issue for more than a decade with articles in Inside Indonesia by Jill Elliot highlighting the issue in 1996:
“In the past decade, 140 Indonesian fishermen drowned in Australian waters, a further 400 were imprisoned. Many drown still because they have to fish in zones without the benefit of motors, GPS or any equipment more modern than the mid-nineteenth century — a sadistic attempt to limit fishing.”
Hopefully Tony Burke and the rest of the Australian community will listen now that Indonesia has made an obvious example of Australians who created a similar minor territorial infringement. At least Indonesia is allowing the five Australians to go home and did not burn their plane.
http://www.themonthly.com.au/node/493
Lest we forget that two fishermen died on their boats in Darwin harbour where they were detained becasue they could not get medical care. Barefoot Marine a company owned by Senator Scullion then his wife were contracted to provide food once a day.
It took two deaths over two years before the boat detention regime was replaced.
So Lionel is a naturalist? This obviously doesn’t equate to being an environmentalist or he would not be making such ridiculous statements as: ” We accept that vessels that have fished the same waters for hundreds of years are suddenly a threat to sharks, turtles … all the charismatic species we like to watch on TV but that other people rely on for food.” Sharks and turtles are both endangered species. Anything done to prevent their killing is a worthy undertaking. As for these families relying on sharks for food – please!!! Are you trying to tell us that these people subsist on shark’s fin because the awful truth is that the fishermen cut only the fins off the sharks and throw the bodies back in, still live, for them to die an agonising death. I think you might find these fishermen sell the fins to the chinese for the outrageously expensive “delicacy” of shark’s fin soup.
To Brian Kelly
Very interesting attitude. It looks that the sharks have more rights to look for feed than any humans have. And sharks’ lives are protected and no humans deserve their right to live.
But Mr. Brian Kelly, have you ever heard about the LAW and any concept of right and wrong?
The oceans do not belong to Australia and sorry to say, Indonesians are definitely more civilised than many Australians.
I am in no way condoning the burning of the boats. It is reprehensible that our government feels it has the right to take away the livliehood of Indonesian villagers. Similarly, it is reprehensible that Indonesian food-gatherers think they have the right to come into our territorial waters to profit from taking endangered sharks, not for food, but to mutilate and take only their fins to sell to the Chinese. Traditional food-gathering for subsistence should override any modern law enacted to take away those traditional rights. We recognise this with the exemptions given to Aboriginal food gatherers. We do not recognise the right of people from other countries to come within our borders to make money in the same way they do not permit us to come within theirs, unless due immigration process has taken place. I do realise that Australians are on shaky ground when we try to take the high moral ground on conservation of species, but we have moved on from the wholesale slaughter of species simply for profit or to protect our own resources.
Despite your rather novel interpretation of my initial comment, I do believe in Human Rights and am currently involved in the formation of a charter for such in Australia. One must remember though that with every right there is a concomitant responsibility to exercise that right responsibly