Scott Morrison calls renewed asylum seeker burning claims ‘baseless’
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Version 0 of 1. Scott Morrison has dismissed the “baseless” account of an asylum seeker who claims Australian navy personnel deliberately burned his hands, saying the “matter is closed”. The immigration minister’s comments follow a report broadcast on ABC’s 7.30 on Monday evening, in which one of the three asylum seekers whom witnesses say were burned by the navy spoke publicly for the first time. “I was going to the toilet. [Navy personnel] were standing in the toilet. They told me I not to go. We insisted to go, and those people, they won't let us. When we insisted, those people hold us and put our hands on the engine and burnt us,” the Sudanese asylum seeker, Mustafa Ibrahim, said. He added: “One [officer] came out this side and the other one came out the other side and they put my hand on the exhaust. Put it like that and one of them came and held it down and I slipped it out. I thought they wanted to tie me. And then after they burnt me, I just pulled my hand. The exhaust was very, very, very hot and it burnt all my hand and I ran away.” Ibrahim said he received treatment for the burns in Indonesia, and that he was unable to close his hand for days. Another asylum seeker told the ABC that the three men were burned as a warning to other passengers, who were allegedly told: “If anyone try to go to the toilet again, we will punish them like this one.” Speaking on ABC radio on Tuesday morning, Morrison again said the claims were not credible. “The government stands by all its rejections of these insulting and insensitive claims,” he said. “If the ABC just wants to keep repeating and recycling these claims, well they can, but the government will continue to strenuously deny them." Morrison said he stood by the navy's original assessment of the allegations, and not "what I saw last night". "I don't find what was said last night any more credible than what was said two months ago,” he said. “Nothing's moved on. I suggest the ABC should.” Allegations that Australian navy personnel had tortured asylum seekers first aired in January, when footage emerged showing people receiving treatment for severe burns that Indonesian police said were caused by the Australian navy. The incidents allegedly occurred after Australian authorities were called to assist an asylum seeker boat that ran aground on an island near Darwin on New Year’s Day, and towed back to Indonesia, as part of the Abbott government’s policy of “turning back the boats”. The claims have been the subject of strenuous denials by Customs and the navy as well as Morrison, who has said the claims are fabricated and amount to “malicious and unfounded slurs” against the Australian navy. The ABC has come under fire for broadcasting the story. Passengers to whom 7.30 spoke repeated claims that asylum seekers were physically and verbally abused by officers and prevented from freely accessing the bathroom after sabotaging the boat’s engine, which navy engineers were working to repair. As in earlier reports, witnesses said the alleged torture occurred when frustrated asylum seekers attempted to force their way into the bathroom. One passenger, Yousif Fasher, claims tensions boiled over when a young woman was denied access to the toilet. “When she start crying, the young people, they say, ‘No, we have to go by force to the toilet,’” he said. An asylum seeker also claims that passengers were punished for leaping into the ocean by being forced to sit under the blazing sun, allegedly told: “Now, as a punishment you have to stay here five hour. The sun is shining from the sky on you. This is punishment." Several witnesses, including Fasher, say the boat was intercepted by Australian authorities after asylum seekers called for help when four passengers were washed overboard by an enormous wave. But Australian Customs authorities have questioned whether any asylum seekers fell overboard, saying “the claims were rigorously assessed and acted on at the time they were made”. “The Joint Agency Task Force is confident that they were not true.” It said the ABC’s report offered “no new evidence … which would warrant further action”. “Recycling unsubstantiated and false allegations does not make them any more true than when they were first alleged.” |