Posted on 05/19/2005 12:06:26 AM PDT by Stoat
Fishermen released after court fails to find translatorCharges against nine Indonesian fishermen have been withdrawn in the Darwin Magistrates Court because an interpreter could not be found to translate their obscure sea-faring language. Nine Indonesian fisherman were apprehended in the Australian fishing zone almost five nautical miles from the Ashmore Reef. They have been in custody since late March. But in court today all charges against the fishermen were withdrawn because an interpreter could not be found in Australia that spoke a discrete sea gypsy dialect, called bajo. While only six of the fishermen spoke bajo the Crown Prosecutor said it would be unfair to only prosecute the three remaining men. The fishermen will be flown back to Indonesia on a charter flight. Charges against the skipper of the boat were withdrawn several weeks ago because he was a juvenile. |
The fishermen will be flown back to Indonesia on a charter flight.
Charges against the skipper of the boat were withdrawn several weeks ago because he was a juvenile.
Maybe it's just me, but I found this out of the ordinary. Perhaps it happens all the time......
They had to charter the flight because no commercial airline shows movies in bajo.
ROTFLMAO!!
I would imagine that a special bajo-speaking Indonesian chef was found to cook the in-flight meals as well :-)
Ahh!!!!!!! the old days of under age poaching!
This is only a guess, but it may well be that Australian law only provides for prosecuting the juvenile as a juvenile, and once it was realized that he was a juvenile the charges (as an adult) were withdrawn. Then, for whatever reason, they declined to charge him as a juvenile (or they did charge him as a juvenile, but the article doesn't say so, which wouldn't be a surprise considering the article doesn't even bother to tell us what they were charged with in the first place..)
I wonder if a catapult might qualify for a "chartered flight".. :)
I guess that in Indonesia, the thing to do when you're a kid is to (somehow) make enough money to buy your own fishing boat and then hire a bunch of older guys to actually do the fishing for you. If you're caught, it doesn't matter because you'll get a free plane ride home.
I wonder what happened to the boat? If they couldn't prosecute the fishermen, then they have no grounds to seize the vessel. I guess they will get some court-appointed master seamen to sail the boat back to Indonesia, and then there will be another flight to take them back to Australia.
I wonder how much fish are we talking about here to begin with?
Stoat wrote:
I wonder how much fish are we talking about here to begin with?
--> Probably all skeletons by now, all rotted away in the bottom of the vessel. Yeuck!
Sounds good to me, and I'm sorry that the article is so sparse. Perhaps the writer was laughing so much he couldn't write any more?
I wonder if a catapult might qualify for a "chartered flight".. :)
It would certainly dissuade them and other 'gypsy fishermen' from violating Australia's territorial waters again.....
Either that or the customs agents had a nice party, throwing the fishies on the barbie :-)
I'd say three months in the pokey and loss of their boat is punishment enough. I remember a National Geographic article of thirty or so years ago about them. Didn't know they were still around. It's made clear that they were only fishing where they shouldn't have been, albeit I wouldn't be surprised if these people did a little smuggling on the side. I find it difficult to believe these legendary, far-ranging seafarers could only speak their own obscure language however. The charter flight may have been necessary if they were operating out of one of the more far-flung islands of the vast Indonesian Archipelago. Perhaps there is some law requiring their repatriation or something.
There are accounts by early british naval explorers of encountering Malay (perhaps Bajo) shellfishing fleets who had been working the reefs and putting in regularly on the remote Northern Australian coast in this exact same area for water and provisions since ancient times. It was also Malay seafarers who first colonized Madagascar, the Comoros and the Maldives and who probably brought the dingo to Australia.
Thanks very much for your insights....things make a bit more sense now with this story.
As was mentioned earlier, I wish that there had been more detail to this story, because for me at least it serves to create more questions than it answers.
You are a virtual font of information.
I just found this, it goes into greater detail. It appears there are a whole lot of these small boats working the area and the traffic is escalating with mainly sharks (fins) being the target fish. The aussie fishermen are starting to raise a ruckus. The main complaint seems to be that between the Customs, the Navy, State Fisheries and local police there is no organized, co-ordinated effort to aggressively patrol the Gulf of Carpentaria so little has been accomplished to date. Furthermore most of these Indonesian boats are suicide specials that a Cuban Balsero would hesitate to get into.
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PM - GOVT TO STEP UP GULF OF CARPENTARIA PATROLS
PM - Monday, 18 April , 2005 18:44:30
Reporter: Ian Townsend
MARK COLVIN: The Federal Government is planning to beef up its patrols in the Gulf of Carpentaria to try to stop Indonesian fishing boats slipping into Australian waters.
The number of such boats has been increasing recently, and commercial fishermen have for weeks been asking the Government to stop what they say are now brazen incursions.
The Royal Australian Navy seized another boat off Cape York last night but fishermen in the Gulf of Carpentaria say scores are still getting away.
Ian Townsend reports.
IAN TOWNSEND: It seems to be happening a couple of times a week now. An Australia Customs or Navy patrol nabs an Indonesian fishing boat. Whether it's off the northern coast of Western Australia, the Northern Territory or Queensland, the story's similar.
The skipper's arrested, the crew of less than a dozen men is taken into custody, a number of shark fins is found drying on the deck. Last night, for instance, a 15 metre Indonesian fishing boat was seized off the west coast of Cape York with more than 50 bull sharks and a two-metre groper aboard.
But what worries Gary Ward, the Chairman of the Gulf of Carpentaria's Commercial Fisherman's Organisation is that the number of Indonesian boats now fishing illegally in Australian waters still seems to be increasing.
GARY WARD: In the last six months or twelve months, we've found that there's a larger number of these smaller boats coming through. They're only about 45 foot, they're very low profile boats. They've got about 10 crew on them. They're a bit of a rough looking thing but they travel around about 14 knots. So, they can certainly get along pretty quickly.
The last couple of months we've had an escalation of sightings of these vessels and it certainly wouldn't like to have another 30/40 boats fishing there every year.
IAN TOWNSEND: How many do you suspect are coming in at the moment?
GARY WARD: In the last three months or four months we know of seeing 20, over 20 of the boats in quite close, some 20km off the coast, some even 5km off the coast.
IAN TOWNSEND: Customs do seem to be picking up the occasional fishing boat. Are they doing enough? Obviously it's not enough to deter these fishing boats.
GARY WARD: I can appreciate, I mean I'm not happy with the apprehension numbers, but you must take into consideration it's a tremendously large area, the Gulf of Carpentaria, and our local patrol officers haven't really got the vessels to get out there and get them. They're more or less on the in-shore policing. And the Customs boats cost a lot of money to run.
So, I can see a lot of problems there but I think eventually what the authorities, whether they're State or Federal or whether they can get their heads together is put a boat either in Karumba or Weipa or both and just hammer them for about 12 months and just take them and confiscate the vessels and maybe they'll get the message.
IAN TOWNSEND: And things are about to change, it seems. The Federal Government's now going to employ its own fisheries officers, says Fisheries Minister, Senator Ian Macdonald.
IAN MACDONALD: We have in the past relied on State Fisheries officers to support the Commonwealth. That arrangement hasn't been working. So what we've said is look, rather than having to rely on State Fisheries officers the Commonwealth will get our own. And they're being recruited at the moment.
IAN TOWNSEND: And there's talk of beefing up Australian Navy patrols across the Top End, and it's not just for the protection of Australia's commercial fishery either. Indonesian fishing boats sometimes wash up along the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria without anyone aboard. What's happened to the crew is a mystery.
Gary Ward from the Gulf Commercial Fisherman's Organisations says many of these Indonesian boats are just plain dangerous.
GARY WARD: It's quite frightening. When you get our vessels you've got to have survey and all the safety equipment, EPIRBs and all that sort of stuff and rightly so, but these people have got nothing, nothing at all. They've got a bucket. One bucket in a vessel to bail it out. They're really a horror ship.
MARK COLVIN: Gary Ward, a commercial fisherman from the Gulf of Carpentaria with Ian Townsend.
Thanks for the follow-up :)
Hmmm, wonder if there are any Predators designed for maritime surveillance?
That would be cool! Or predators disguised as sharks...."Hey this is no shark AAAAARGH!"
So what is Bajo for AAAARGH?
This is the part that's really lame! It's the thinking of a child, really. The three remaining men broke the law and can be fairly tried. Therefore it is unfair to society to release them. What happens to the other six is irrelevant.
Sometimes Australians can be too generous in their actions.
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