LET'S GET SERIOUS ABOUT TALKING TO THE NEIGHBOURS

 A BETTER  SERVICE MAY NEVER  BE TRANSMITTED    

                 

The Indonesian government's TVRI channel is supposed to have negotiated an MOU   with the ABC  to swap programmes.  A great idea - benefits all. That’s the initial reaction.

However, if there's no catering for the two nations' grossly different values the scheme could collapse through fear, distrust, inertia  and censorship.

On TV screens in Indonesia puffy clouds escape weather forecasts by floating onto re-runs of classics Westerns where the women wear flouncy dresses with a mild hint of decolletage.

Into this minor gap drop the clouds ignoring the science of meteorology.  If the plot’s character darts around the kitchen or stable to reload the Winchester the clever cumulus follows jerkily.

When the bored censors take a break the skies clear and the lady can display her charms while shooting the black hat baddies.

All this nonsense is supposed to ensure the nation’s imagined modesty standards are upheld, though in Javanese villages public breastfeeding is hardly noteworthy.  But the bosoms on the screen are white - quelle horreur.

Meanwhile, the kids with smartphones (is there any other type of child?) use VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to watch what they like from anywhere on the globe, porn, violence, hate speech - the lot.

Indonesian free-to-air TV got underway in 1962.   In 1976 it launched one of the world’s first domestic satellites operated by what was then called ‘a developing country.’

With a dozen transponders, signals reached every nook of the archipelago while Australian watchers were confined to terrestrial transmitters.

The president was then the autocrat general Soeharto and his decision to saturate the nation with telecasts was a political strategy.   It was based on Roman poet Juvenal's aphorism of give ‘em bread and circuses and they’ll never revolt.

Only one station was allowed - TVRI.  It showed what it was told and that didn't include recent history. Apart from short-wave radio broadcasts (the most popular and informative came from Australia) Indonesians were raised on one truth - Soeharto's.

A popular joke at the time told viewers not to fret if they missed the news one evening because the same bulletin had already been shown a day earlier and would reappear the next.

Like TV in North Korea, broadcasts praised the dear leader and his latest ribbon-cutting at the site of a new dam that might never be built.  Docos usually featured village potters and weavers.

Indonesians aren’t great readers - no surprise as books were also limited and censored - so eyeballing screens became part of the culture with sets ablaze in government offices.

It wasn't till the 1990s that commercial competition was allowed;  Jakarta allocated the licenses and ensured free-to-air didn't mean free expression.

There are now 15 major telecasters plus 671 licensed subscription services that bring a score of foreign programming to the Republic including ABC Australia.  The idea is to promote the Oz outlook, lifestyles and values - and also sport.

Pearls & Irritations has been in the front row of complainants about the paucity of the service, and it seems the ABC has taken note. Last month it signed an MOU with TVRI claiming:

“Both broadcasters will collaborate across content exchange in news and current affairs, sports, music, culture, lifestyle and general interest stories.

“The MOU also supports the sharing of key learnings from each broadcaster’s audience research and feedback, in addition to technical information assistance and capacity building under international development activities.”

Fine words, but meaning what?  Indonesian news in nightly ABC bulletins?  Oz docos on Indonesian screens?  

Although TVRI has this century gained some independence the image of a propaganda service showing worthy but boring material remains.

Unsurprisingly the latest stats show the channel is watched by only 1.4 per cent of the audience, so if a marriage with the ABC does occur there’ll be few onlookers.

Why the scepticism?  An MOU carries little weight in Indonesia and any agreement will have to be ratified at ministerial level.

The sort of campaigns growing in Australia against foreign media could well sprout in Indonesia if a xenophobe gets traction in the upcoming new ministry: bikinis, gays, free-thinkers, agnostics getting screen time? Armageddon approaches.

When the MOU was announced the ABC invited media inquiries.  We sent these on 29 May:

What approvals have to be given before this arrangement starts?

What ABC programmes are of most interest to TVRI?

What TVRI shows might appear on ABC TV in Australia?

Do you have a start date?

Does TVRI have the right to edit out any material from ABC programmes it uses?  As you probably know, TVRI often smudges overseas film scenes that censors think show too much flesh.

Are you aware that TVRI used to be the RI Government's PR factory and consequently suffered a credibility problem?  It currently has only 1.4 per cent of the national audience.

Any other factors in the MOU that might affect viewers' right to the full programme as originally made?

On 4 June came a textbook reply in splendid corporate guff. With 163 words it answers no questions but gargles lines about being consistent “with the ABC’s charter remit with regards to international broadcasting.”

It would insult readers' intelligence to provide more waffle but students of the black arts of the deliberately abstruse can find the full copy here.

The response suggests the plan is superficial, has been poorly considered and will have to be endorsed at ministerial level in Indonesia. That’s going to be tricky.

Unless there's huge enthusiasm from TVRI and ideological determination by the ABC to make the agreement work, it's unlikely that Australian viewers will be better informed about their vast and important neighbour - and vice versa.

That’s sad.  And bad.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 7 June 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/a-better-service-may-be-transmitted/

ABC REPLY

  

The ABC has a number of MOUs with public sector and state-funded media across the Indo-Pacific region.  

 

These complement the content distributions agreements under which the ABC Australia TV channel is distributed.

 

The MOU program is consistent with the ABC’s charter remit with regards to international broadcasting and with the ABC’s international strategy.

 

The MOUs provide a framework under which we can find points of commonality, to enhance mutual interests, to promote the ABC’s approach to best practice public interest journalism, and so that we can work with organisations to roll out our media capacity building and journalism training programs.

 

Content sharing is one possible activity that can take place under these MOUs.  In all instances, any content that the ABC may take from the partner organisations would have to be compliant with the ABC’s editorial standards.  

 

In the case of the TVRI MOU, it was enacted on signing and we are in discussions about ABC content which TVRI may be interested in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOING RIGHT - OR BEING RIGHTEOUS?

HOW TO DO THE RIGHT THING

Duncan Graham originally wanted to be an Anglican priest. Then he was rescued by journalism. Now in mainly Muslim Indonesia with the call to prayer bouncing off nearby buildings five times a day, he's been led to a mountain of questions.

Would a child raised by a machine or even animals - such as the wolf mums of mythology - turn the littlie into a baddie because she or he had been denied the upbringing of a legacy faith?  

If so today’s  most brutal dictators must have been suckling a dry she-wolf in her lair instead of kneeling before an altar as they claim, professing piety to mask villainy, blessing armaments.

Morality and  compassion can't have been in the colostrum.

Stories of feral kids cared for by wildlife may help recharge a tabloid's slow-news day;  though never authenticated they're philosophically useful.

Do we instinctively know what's wrong or are religious teachings essential to show us the correct way?  The dirty doctrine of original sin much loved by barren fundamentalists and challenged by every loving parent is now in the nappy bucket.

Long before Jesus and Mohammad, the Greek philosophers used reason and logic to teach morality, what we Australians call  'doing the right thing'.  It's undefined but obvious, like trying to stop a crazed stabber in a supermarket.

Is a boy from a religious family more likely to grow into a ‘good bloke’?  Does that widely used term mean steering away from dobbing-in a mate even though it’s known he’s a wife-basher?  

If those raised reciting a ‘holy’ book are lauded as righteous how do we handle the behaviours of paedophiliac priests?  

If the broad teachings of morality are ignored in local examples do they have lasting worth?

Nations, religions, leaders, teachers, organisations, and individuals often try to write a set of rules of life - how to behave in a way that suits them or their vision of a society they'd like to impose.

Why bother?  The Greek philosopher Plato (427 - 348 BC) reportedly observed that: ‘Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.’

He’s also credited with saying: “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”  

This reads like the latest trendy education philosophy from Finland yet written about 2,350 years ago.  Maybe modernity doesn't always equal wisdom.

Most rule-makers seem to be powered by the need to control, to keep the crowd quiet and themselves safe.

Apart from North Korea and other totalitarian states that doesn’t mean their commands are followed, only that they exist. But what to do when those ordered not to commit murder instead indulge in mass murder in the name of their beliefs?  Should the killers then be killed?

The usual solution is to say the script is flawed and there should have been exceptions.

The Bible's Ten Commandments, aka The Decalogue, is the order on how the Israelites, then camped at Mount Sinai should behave.  It's now supposed to be the foundation for Christian belief.

To give the tablets credibility among the doubting mob, like most tricksters Moses had to work out of sight. That meant climbing the misty mountain.

When he came back after 40 days and nights he told the crowd the words had been written on rock and God had helped guide the chisel.

The first version is in Exodus 24:

It’s a list of DO NOTs based on how Moses' people behaved.  Based on the admonitions they weren't friendly folk, but jealous killers, thieves, fornicators and fickle worshippers, particularly of golden calves, and needing to be brought into line.

As things turned out it might have been better for the world if Moses’ catalogue had been a MUST DO shopping list;  sadly it’s prohibitive, not inspirational:

If you find this modern Oz journalist's terse interpretation unacceptable fear not - there are scores of others and yours is most definitely right.

No other gods … no image . . no name insults… rest on Sunday . . care for your parents   …  don’t kill, have affairs, steal, lie and be jealous.

You can find three different versions in the Bible. Some have more than ten edicts, implying elders couldn’t count beyond the sum of their fingers.

 Here’s a longer one full of ‘haths’, ‘thees’ and ‘shews’ to make it feel more authentic.

Scottish theologian and journalist William Barclay 1907 - 78  wrote that the Commandments are “a summary of fundamental principles … that apply universally, across changing circumstances. …Their precise import must be worked out in each separate situation.”

In brief, pick ‘n choose what suits and move on.

Better than all the wordy jargon is the Golden Rule ascribed to Jesus but so saturated by common sense any dinkum seer might have spoken the words: "Treat others like you want them to treat you".

Fortunately, it's too pithy for theologians to dissect or embellish, though not cynics:  "He who has the gold makes the rules".

The created-in-secrecy principle is also used in Islam where Muhammad is said to have received instructions in a dream from Allah via the angel Gabriel.  These became the Qur'an.

At the time illiteracy was common so few could read the words and criticise. Soothsayers interpreted, and not all had the appropriate certificates and codes of ethics to do their job impartially.

That no others were present to verify the tale hasn't stopped the religion from becoming number two in the world with 1.9 billion adherents.

Much of the teachings follow Christianity and Jesus is recognised as an earlier prophet.  At the time such people who reckoned they had foresight (now they’d be discredited as charlatans or stock advisers) were followed for their alleged ability to foresee the future.

Armageddon and the return of the Messiah were regular topics, not the cost of living and internet scams.  A pity - early warnings would have been helpful.  

Allah’s instructions to his scribe cleverly included the revelation that there’d be no more prophets and this was the final word, slamming shut the door on clairvoyants.

The five pillars of Islam start with the profession that  "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God" - a sort of reference for the tale-teller.

Then come the obligations - to pray five times a day, to give alms, fast and go on the hajj - a pilgrimage to Mecca. Airlines now profit greatly from this instruction.

In Islamic law, there are prohibitions (haram)  on killing, stealing lying, eating pig meat, drinking alcohol and missionising. These rules get stretched by scholars according to the politics of the day.

In Indonesia (where 88 per cent of the population allegedly follows Sunni Islam), the founding president Soekarno helped create Pancasila (five principles) as the soul of the Unitary State after declaring the former Dutch colony a Republic.

The  ideologies are:

Belief in the one and only God.

A just and civilized humanity

The unity of Indonesia

Democracy led by wisdom in deliberation/representation

Social justice for all the people of Indonesia.

All are wrapped in the national slogan Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, old  Javanese for Unity in Diversity.

It comes from Kakawin Sutasoma, (poem about Lord Sutasoma) written in the 14^th century Majapahit Era by Mpu Tantular and promoting tolerance between Hindus and Buddhists.

More specifically Pancasila is supposed to be the soul of the Indonesian nation, its personality, way of life and the basis of law and ethics.

To give it the sort of mystique enjoyed by the Commandments being located on a mountain and Al Qur'an in a dream, Soekarno said he'd dug them up while working his garden and contemplating under a breadfruit tree.

The metaphor has now become the myth. He was then in Ende on Flores Island sent into exile between  1934 and 1938 by the Dutch colonial administration that feared his influence and demagoguery.

The founder of the nation was less interested in religion than women -  he had nine known wives. But he had to placate his less carnal comrades threatening a theocracy by allowing belief in the one and only God as the number one billing.

How this fits with multi-deity Hindu beliefs, most openly held in Bali, and the millions of animists have yet to be convincingly explained.

The late British mathematician, pacifist and intellectual Bertrand Russell followed no mainstream religion so devised rules for life published in his Principals of Philosophy:

Be tolerant of others.

Do your best to understand people.

Be true to yourself and face your problems head-on. Try to work out your own problems before trying to solve those of other people.

Remember that everything is relative; everyone views things differently.

Accept yourself and what you have (or don’t have).

Avoid being too attached to material things.

Be patient and tolerant, even with people who frustrate you or seem unfair; this will help you to avoid anger and bitterness in your own heart.

None of these suggestions includes recognising and being loyal to god, which is a keystone to Christianity and Islam.

Back to the Greeks and theologian  Xenophanes (560-478 BC) for a slice of logic.

“If cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw / And could sculpt like men,

‘Then the horses would draw their gods like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape / Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.”

Meaning?  You picture your god, your good, and try the Golden Rule.  Also, stay clear of lactating wolves.

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A POLICY BASED ON INTOLERANCE

 THE MILITARIST AS MILKMAN       

          

ABC TV’s Landline programme has declared that “Australia's dairy industry is licking its lips at the prospect of increased demand from Indonesia.”

The cow cockies’ cliched hopes are based on the applauded pledge by Indonesia’s incoming president and former general Prabowo Subianto to give 83 million school kids free feeds and milk.

The salivators are also assuming locals can’t meet the huge extra demand.

Why should they?  Till now there's been no clamour and little wonder.  Pearls & Irritations finds no joy in playing spoiler, but  here's an awkward fact:

Up to 90 per cent of  Indonesians can’t drink milk because they're lactose intolerant. Academic studies in Indonesia show  users can get struck by RAP - recurrent abdomial pain - aka diarrhoea -something Prabowo and his team should have known.

The condition isn't nation-specific.  One report asserts it’s “a common disorder caused by a deficiency of the lactase (correct spelling) enzyme in the digestive system. Lactose intolerance is three times more common in South Asians than in other populations.”

Prabowo’s detail-free notion snitched from an Indian poll promise during the election campaign earlier this year, has now been costed at Rp 120 trillion - around $13 billion annually.

Costs will explode should the idea shift from promise to performance: Collection, refrigeration, quality control, distribution and other essential factors have yet to be calibrated.   

Some economists are concerned massive spending might be illegal by exceeding fiscal caps.  Republic law prohibits the budget deficit from exceeding three per cent of the  GDP - currently around  Rp 5,288 trillion - $2,000 billion.

 Then there’s KKN - Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme - all terms borrowed from English.

 A UN agency reports that “corruption remains a serious problem and overall, progress has been slow” blaming a “deeply embedded institutional culture of patronage.”

If local businesses and regional governments are to be involved in buying and distributing the freebies, the graft will be enormous without strong policing.  This slanderous assessment is based on past performances of fraudulent administrations involved in big-scale projects that make Robodebt losses look like chook feed.

Could Australian  farmers get into the market?  They’ll need to be red-blooded investors aware of the graft dangers.  Canberra says dairy is our third largest rural industry exporting about a third of the 8.8 billion litres generated, usually powder to make commercial products like pastries, lollies and other tempting sweetmeats.

Above all is the big threat from Aotearoa.  Almost half of NZ's dairy exports go to Indonesia.  The trade name Anchor has become a synonym for butter wherever its found,  in hotels and shops with fridges.

The Kiwis have marched through the mire since last century and are now well shod  running Indonesia's largest integrated dairy farm and milk processing factory.  

A venture involving NZ and Indonesian investors, Greenfields started in 1997 by importing heavy-yield Holsteins and high-quality Jerseys from Western Australia into East Java.

Dairy farming is one of the toughest slogs in agriculture - seven days a week whatever the weather and personal mood, early rises, abundant muck and despite the alliterative aphorism about inseparability, not much money.

So little wonder few kids want to inherit their parents’ commitments to a business infamous for burnout, fickle prices and ruinous natural disasters.

Despite these miseries, the industry body Dairy Australia reports production will “grow slightly …. confidence in the Australian dairy industry is currently in its most stable period in a decade.”

If Prabowo's vote-winning rhetoric is honest, the policy could make positive changes;  it should help reduce living costs for the poor and cut the national curse of stunting.

About a quarter of Indonesia's toddlers suffer because they aren't breastfed and lack access to clean foods and decent toilets.  They don't grow properly and neither do their brains.

Wasting caused by non-nutritious meals affects more than 20 per cent of youngsters.  The Australian rate is less than two per cent.

Older readers would remember lugging steel crates of half-pint bottles of warm milk into classes,  a 1950s government scheme for all kids to get enough calcium (and farmers to make quids), a policy borrowed from Britain and lasting for two decades.

One result is that Australians drink more than 300 litres a person every year.  Indonesians consume 15 litres and no wonder.  Apart from the inability to digest, the price is out of the average buyer's range.

In villages and suburbs across the tropical archipelago, itinerants sell warming and sometimes diluted milk from a churn on a bike carrier. Where the thinner comes from is a worry - drinking tap water can lead to the runs.

The Indonesian industry is slowly modernising and driven by large-scale NZ farming businesses, but smallholders with a few cows in stalls remain major suppliers.  Come dawn owners bike to roadsides to scythe sacks of grass and weeds to feed the barned beasts.

There's a widespread government artificial insemination programme boosting herd quality and making owning bulls and imported stock unnecessary.   It started last century because the second president Soeharto liked bovines.

Milk goes to local depots where it is strained, tested, cooled and packed in one-litre plastic bags that wholesale for less than one Oz dollar.

The big factories make the so-called long-life product using ultra-high temperature technology and retailed in cartons for double to triple the price.

For an insight into a nation’s culinary culture check shop shelves.  Australian supermarkets give ample space to milk and bread, products hard to find in Indonesian supermarkets and rarely in the open public markets where rice, noodles and veggies dominate.

Will the Prabowo plan make a difference?  If the school brekkies are really free, consistent and nutritious - yes.  

If milk is included megalitres will go down the gurgler.  So will General Prabowo's self-proclaimed reputation as a social problem fixer without using firearms.

First published in Pearls &Irritations, 1 June 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/the-militarist-as-milkman/

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PEOPLE SMUGGLERS ADAPTING

 THE X GANG AND A GHOST BOAT           

    

They’re among Australia’s most wanted, but what police call the ‘X gang led by HR’ is unlikely to be caught Down Under. Yet this is the destination for which  the criminal syndicate has been advertising packages on line and risking buyers’ lives.  

The clients - some of them apparently Chinese - are gullible.  They’re, desperate enough to chance drownings and jailings, also ambitious enough to buy the high-price tickets and ignore persistent warnings that they’ll be arrested and never able to settle in Australia.  

Boat people numbers today are minuscule when measured against those  getting to Australia early last decade.  Eventually the dirty trade was crippled by the Coalition government’s military-style Sovereign Borders policy in 2013.

That was the year when numbers peaked with more than 20,000 people on 300 boats.

That wave’s been dumped. Last year there were 74 people on four boats. At the same time about 23,000 arrived by air, applied for asylum and stayed free working  in the community, a racket rarely aired in the scare campaigns.

 They’ve been well dressed mainly from Commonwealth-member Malaysia and didn’t look bedraggled, desperate and consequently threatening. Most claims fail and they eventually get deported sometimes years later

Boat people bad, plane people allowed.

The turn-backs, deportations and jailings seemed to deter sea travel but the cost to our reputation as impartial administrators is a worry..  

The Refugee Council claims Australia’s policies ‘are now among the most punitive in the world’. They’re being used as a model for anti-refugee laws in Britain which got 84,425 asylum applicants last year.

In Australia between 1 May 2022 and  30 March this year, twelve  boats carrying 247 people have been caught and sent to a detention camp in Nauru.  Indonesian crew have usually been deported.

This upturn in arrivals under the present government and the inclusion of a few Chinese has refueled the Opposition's allegation that Labor is soft on security and encouraging boat people. In response the government has hardened the Morrison-era line of ‘we stopped the boats’.

The people smugglers wanted in Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia are most likely skulking in Surabaya, the Republic's second-biggest city and capital of East Java.

That’s the theory of Indonesian police commissioner Aria Sandy (left, below) who claims recent attempted illegal sailings of economic refugees to Australia have been thwarted by local fishers spotting and reporting newcomers to Kupang.

This is the former Portuguese city (population now 445,000), the capital of the Indonesian section of Timor Island.

It’s 950 km east of Bali. Closer is the Kimberly coast of WA, about 800 km south, the destination for the economically desperate.

The ABC has reported that recently caught men, now held on Nauru, have been driven by need having failed at businesses in their homelands.

Aria told Michael West Media that Kupang has become the new hub for people traffickers selling complex package deals to Australia for 30,000 Malaysian ringgits ($9,570).

“The men hear about the trade through messages on TikTok,” he said.

“They transfer their money into an account run by an Indonesian woman called Fika.  She’s the kawin siri (de facto) Indonesian wife of the Mr Big “HR” whose real name is Habibu Rahman.  He’s from Bangladesh.”

 (A man with that name was reportedly held as a suspected asylum seeker in Darwin’s detention centre in 2011 where he was involved in protests.  Although it’s not known if it’s the same person the fact that both are allegedly in the smuggling business is curious.)

"There's also another man involved with HR and Fika called Sahib but we don't know much about him.  

“We’ve gathered the information from some of the people we’ve caught.  We don’t have photos of the smugglers but know how they operate.

“Their customers are illegally in Malaysia and told to get into Indonesia through Medan (a port on the coast of Sumatra close to Malaysia).

"They're moved to Jakarta and then Surabaya using a hotel to hold the men till they have enough for a boat they'd bought in Sulawesi. (MWM has chosen not to name the hotel because the owners may not be involved in any illegality).

“The smugglers have close ties to Indonesian trepang fishers who work the border with Australia and know when they’re not likely to be caught.”  The trade was reported on this website  here.

In April, a boat or boats with ten Chinese men made it to the Kimberley without the Australian Border Force or other agencies being aware.  Last month one man wandered unchallenged onto the unfenced Truscott air base.

Two months earlier 39 Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indian citizens also reached WA with Indonesian people smugglers.

There’s confusion about numbers and nationalities. The term ‘Chinese’ can mean a citizen of the People’s Republic or an ethnic Chinese born and living overseas.

The men have been sent by the ABF to Nauru for processing.  The agency which could clarify the situation has not given information to the media claiming its "long-standing policy" is to keep quiet.

Consequently taxpayers stay ignorant of how and where their money is being spent.  State police forces are far more open about their criminal investigations.

Despite a paucity of leads, Aria is confident HR and his gang will be caught because so many countries and agencies are looking for them - though not all with the same enthusiasm.

A search of this gravity requires cooperation and coordination - not always present when national and departmental rivalries are rife and the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.

A few dozen asylum seekers, economic refugees aka boat people may set Australian electors trembling and politics aflame, though not elsewhere.

The NGO Human Rights Watch  estimates 180,000 refugees and asylum seekers—including 100,000 Rohingya - are in Malaysia: “Unofficial estimates of undocumented migrants range from 1.2 to 3.5 million, and none of them have status.”

Refugees caught in the Republic and its waters can’t be sent to Nauru.  That’s Ozzie business.

Indonesia hasn’t signed the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, nor does it have a system to determine their status. So the national government has flipped problems to the UN High Commission for Refugees, which is supposed to ‘identify solutions for refugees in the country.’

This usually means they live on handouts as working is illegal.  About 14,000 refugees are languishing in Indonesia hoping for resettlement in another country.  Some have been waiting for more than ten years.

Aria said that the latest group of illegal venturers (some reports claim they are Chinese, others that they’re from Bangladesh) were held in Immigration detention and getting care from the UNHCR.

However, the detention centre said it hadn't seen any boat people. Another UN body, the International Organisation for Migration which does have an office in Kupang, confirmed the UNHCR is no longer in the province.

Aria referred inquiries to see the boat used by the HR syndicate to the Fisheries Department because their staff arrested the crew.  He said the police were not involved.

Yet the craft is held by the water police about 20 km outside Kupang.

The smugglers' land operation may have been sophisticated, but its on-water plan was not. They used a 12-metre dark  ghost boat elusive at night and carrying no name or numbers.

The local fleet flaunts gaudy colours, lights, high masts,flags and names, so  a standout, rapidly attracting attention.  It’s tied  up on an isolated rocky shore below a police ecumenical church. The low-profile craft has been fitted with powerful new motors making it ideal to drop passengers, flee and outrun pursuit.

Much like its owners, the X syndicate.

First published in Michael West Media, 26 May 2024: https://michaelwest.com.au/boats-asylum-seekers-few-but-people-smugglers-active/

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