http://news.smh.com.au/national/aust-to-compensate-indonesian-fishermen-20080515-2esq.html

Australia will compensate a number of Indonesian fishermen after 55 men caught last month were cleared of illegal fishing.

The compensation is for the wrongful destruction of boats belonging to some of the fishers.

The men were caught during a blitz on illegal fishing in the waters north of Australia in late April, when 33 boats were apprehended.

Federal Fisheries Minister Tony Burke said that nine of the boats and 55 fishermen had been found not to be involved in illegal fishing.

Mr Burke said a number of the fishing boats had been destroyed, mainly due to their lack of seaworthiness.

"Four of those vessels were destroyed at sea because they presented serious risks to safety had they been towed," he told parliament.

I agree with AN.  Burning their boats is supposed to be a deterrant and the boats that were destroyed because they weren't seaworthy are being replaced by us, so these fishermen can get around and illegally fish more safely.

Obviously many of these people are poor, but most of these boats are supposed to be owned by rich Indonesian businessmen who don't care what sort of end their workers meet in these dilapidated old boats.

It shouldn't be up to us to compensate them.

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Huh!!!  What do you mean?  We're talking about illegal fishing,  not refugees. 

Stay with the subject neferti, if it's not too difficult for you.

Firstly, you should know that the politicians never speak the truth. If they claimed the boats were not seaworthy and a danger to tow, what this can be translated to mean is "We burnt their boats and asked questions later, now we know we're in the wrong, but we can't tell you that, even though we have to buy them new boats, so we'll kill two birds with the one stone and buy the boats, but make it look like we're just too nice for our own good to our sheeple, cos they won't know the difference and it will increase their anti-foriegner sentiment, which is really good for us".

Secondly, The Australian government wouldn't be compensating unless they really had to, there's obviously a lot more to this than they're letting on.

Thirdly, ummm, nope actually two points is enough.

Acid Monkey wrote on Aug 4^th, 2008 at 11:52pm:


Burn the boats regardless of what condition they were in, if they are fishing vessels in Australian waters, regardless of whether they have started fishing or not is irrelavent.

Can't argue the fact of the Oz government ripping off the East Timorese though. Spot on there Acid Monkey.

We let the poor bastards be murdered by Oz trained and Oz supplied Indonesian troops until there was a monetary reason to demand their autonomy.....notice we did not extend this to Western Papua who the Indonesians have absolutly no historic or cultural claim to other than it was once also a Dutch colony. It is probably the finest example of a Muslim nation involved in a protacted 40yr effort to murder and exterminate another people.

This is part of the mistake the west made and continues to make. Supporting anyone who was anti-communist, regardless of how revolting their regime might be.

Churchill and Patton were on the right track. 1945..Rearm the Germans and take Russia while you got everything there. The anti-communist trump card may have cropped up less in the stacked deck of brutal dictators, Suharto being one.