Paul Farrell theguardian.com, Thursday 16 January 2014
Passengers rescued from 'unseaworthy' vessel in Indonesia claim Australian navy shot into the air to scare them
The immigration minister says "no shots have been fired at any time by any persons involved in Operation Sovereign Borders". Photograph: Flickr
The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has denied that gunshots were fired during an operation to turn back an asylum seeker boat from Indonesia.
Fairfax Media reported on Thursday that Australia had turned back a boat carrying 25 people which Indonesian authorities thought was unseaworthy and that local villagers had to rescue asylum seekers from the ocean.
The asylum seekers said Australian navy personnel had fired shots into the air to scare them, according to sources in the Indonesian authorities cited by Fairfax.
But the minister released a statement on Thursday denying that shots were fired.
“Without commenting on any specific alleged incident I can confirm that no shots have been fired at any time by any persons involved in Operation Sovereign Borders since the operation commenced,” the minister said.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said the government’s secretive approach to operations was leading to confusion that defence personnel were now being caught up in.
"Because there's this culture of secrecy, I don't want to see Australian servicemen and women pull up as the meat in an Abbott-Morrison secrecy sandwich," he said on Thursday.
"We've got all this confusion and have the defence forces caught up in it."
The turnback is the third reported instance since December. The minister is refusing to confirm whether asylum seeker vessels have been turned back to Indonesia and does not provide updates about “on-water” matters.
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young cast doubt on the minister’s denial that shots were fired because of the policy of not commenting on the operations.
“If [the minister] wants us to believe his denial, it's time for him to come clean and release the details of the incident," she said in Adelaide.
The latest reported turnback follows comments by the Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, expressing concerns about Australia’s purchase of lifeboats with which to send back asylum seekers.
“Developments of the type that has been reported in the media, namely the facilitation by way of boats, this is the kind of slippery slope that we have identified in the past,” he told the ABC.
