Video tragedy Asylum on Australian island Thousands risk Christmas Island voyage : CHRISTMAS Island is 2650km northwest of Perth but just 380km south of Java, usually an easy voyage for the clapped-out fishing boats used by people smugglers. Navy and customs vessels intercept most of them well away from Christmas Island, then escort them into Flying Fish Cove.
Some make it a lot closer. In December last year, a vessel carrying 60 passengers and three crew made it almost to the cove, raising questions about the adequacy of border surveillance. And today, a vessel carrying some 70-80 asylum seekers broke up on Christmas Island rocks in heavy seas, with a heavy loss of life though the exact number is unknown.
Almost all the events in Australia's dealings with asylum seekers over the past decade have been played out on or around Christmas Island. The boat arrivals have peaked and fallen several times since the late 1970s, when asylum seekers sailed the entire distance from Vietnam aiming for northern Australia.
No boats arrived between 1980-88. Another surge came in 1999-2002 with more than 10,000 arrivals, with none sighted in a few of the succeeding years. Arrivals so far in 2010 have exceeded 6700 on more than 100 boats.
Some have sailed from Sri Lanka, but most boat arrivals in Australia have flown to Indonesia from the Middle East and South Asia, then paid people smugglers for the voyage to Christmas Island. Once intercepted, passengers are transferred to the Christmas Island detention centre, which reached its capacity of just over 2000 detainees in April.
Many have since been transferred to facilities on the Australian mainland, and the government is looking to East Timor for a new offshore processing centre.
Although Christmas Island was first recorded by passing mariners in the late 16th century, its forbidding limestone cliffs deterred visits until 1887 when HMS Flying Fish discovered a usable anchorage, christened Flying Fish Cove. Rocks from the island turned out to be very pure phosphate of lime, and Britain annexed the island in June 1880.
The island was occupied by the Japanese during World War II. In Britain's post-war shakeout of colonies, Christmas Island was ceded to Australia, which paid 2.9 million pounds compensation to Singapore for foregone phosphates.
As well as the detention centre, Christmas Island hosts two other significant landmarks - a derelict casino and resort and a partly developed spaceport.
The casino was developed in the late 1980s and opened in 1993 to attract Asian high rollers. After an initial boom, it steadily lost money and closed down in 1998.
The Asian financial crisis and the cessation of regular airline services to the island were the final nails in the casino's coffin.
In 2001, the federal government announced a proposal for a commercial space port on the island using Russian rockets to launch commercial satellites. Significant planning was undertaken and the first launch was planned for 2004. It might happen one day.
Christmas Island's 135 sq km area is 63 per cent national park. The annual mass migration of its red crabs each November has been described as one of the wonders of the natural world.
But Christmas Island is associated most strongly with asylum seekers. The former coalition government established a temporary detention facility on the island in late 2001 which has been progressively expanded.
It was the Tampa affair of August 2001 that brought the island into the national spotlight.
The Norwegian container ship MV Tampa had taken on board 438 asylum seekers from a floundering boat and was sailing towards Christmas Island.
Prime Minister John Howard, heading into an election campaign, directed soldiers of the Special Air Service Regiment to take over the vessel to ensure none of them made it ashore.
From that move came the "Pacific Solution" whereby asylum seekers were to be processed on the Pacific island state of Nauru and Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea. The government also moved to excise Christmas Island and other islands from the migration zone.
The step was intensely controversial, but in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, it was popular electorally, and the coalition was comfortably returned at the November 2001 federal poll.
That was the election campaign that gave us the enduring expression "children overboard".
After an asylum seeker boat was intercepted by a navy destroyer off Christmas Island on October 6, 2001, allegations emerged that refugees on board had thrown their young children into the sea in hopes they would be rescued and taken to Australia.
The claim, repeated by the prime minister and others, was electoral dynamite - showing the depths to which some asylum seekers would sink to ensure they got to Australia.
But it never happened. Labor has since cited the incident as proof of the depths to which the coalition will descend for electoral advantage.
The danger of open sea voyages on crowded, barely seaworthy vessels was tragically underscored on October 19, 2001, when a rickety fishing boat, subsequently labelled SIEV-X (suspected illegal entry vessel - unknown) sank in international waters about 70km south of Java.
There were just 45 survivors from the estimated 400 on board.
More recently, tragedy struck again after another asylum seeker boat, known as SIEV-36, was intercepted near Ashmore Reef off northwest Western Australia on April 16, 2009.
As navy personnel inspected the vessel, it exploded and sank. Five passengers died and 51 were injured, including several Australian sailors. A coronial inquest concluded the fire was deliberately lit by someone on board.
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