Whenever I’ve wanted to learn something about a culture I’d read the stories the people told each other. Not the stories others tell about them, or what’s been written about them in history books, but the ones which have been passed down from generation to generation. They could be anything from myths to family histories, but they all contain elements of what a people believe in and their view of the world’s history. The more stories you read the clearer a picture you begin to develop of how a people live and what matters to them.

In this era of globalization and cultural homogenization I think its even more important than ever to understand the things which distinguish various peoples from each other. It’s become far too easy to make pejorative statements about an entire race or creed because we’ve not taken the time to understand the various nuances and distinctions among the wide variety of people who make up the population of a country let alone a religion. In the West we are especially guilty of making these types of generalizations when talking about countries outside North America and Europe. One of the most glaring examples of this is Afghanistan.

If ever a country has been the plaything of Western powers it’s been this remote country bordering Pakistan and Iran. From the British and Russians manipulating its rulers back in the 19th century to the Russians and Americans using it to fight the Cold War in the 1980s and today’s supposed ongoing war on terror being conducted by occupying NATO troops, peace is something that breaks out between what has been an almost constant state of war in the country for almost two centuries. Yet in spite of our countries’ direct involvement with the affairs of this nation, we know little or nothing about it.

In the hopes of learning more about the country and its people I requested a copy of The Honey Thief written by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman published by Penguin Canada. Mazari immigrated from Afghanistan to Australia in 2000 escaping the Taliban. Technically speaking this book isn’t about the people of Afghanistan, mainly because there is no one group of people who can be said to be Afghanistan. The country is divided along ethnic lines both geographically and socially, and Mazari is Hazara. The Hazara now live, predominately, in the central mountainous region of the country known as the Hazarajat.

While the Hazara are the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, one of the first things we learn from Mazari is they have been one of the most persecuted. From the 19th century well into the 20th century they were the victims of what amounts to systematic genocide by the ruling Barakzai family of Afghanistan. When whole villages weren’t being exterminated by government soldiers their land was been taken from them. When the members of the royal family weren’t busy plotting against each other, they were buying the loyalty of their soldiers and friends by giving them Hazara land.

While the history of persecution obviously colours and shapes the lives of the Hazara people it’s only one thread running through the narrative of the people. The stories in The Honey Thief are filled with details which will never find their way into history books. We learn about their ingenuity and their will to survive in spite of what the world throws at them. In “The Snow Leopard,” a British photographer is taken into the mountains by a Hazara guide in search of Snow Leopards to photograph; we are given a guided tour of the environment they live in. We learn how the valleys in mountain ranges are used to grow food and how if a valley doesn’t have good soil, they will carry soil from other areas into the valley in order to grow crops.

We also learn a little of their philosophy regarding the world around them. In the book’s title story, “The Honey Thief,” a young man is apprenticed to a bee keeper to learn the delicate mysteries of collecting honey. His new master tells him how he became a bee keeper after he was caught stealing honey by the young man’s grandfather. It was thought, he explains to his new apprentice, since he was able to steal honey from the bees without being stung he would make a good bee keeper because bees hate it when people steal the honey they’ve worked so hard to collect. The bee keeper goes on to explain to his young charge that bees, like all domestic animals, are slaves to men, and we steal from all of them.

This tale isn’t meant as a morality lesson, rather a lesson in the realities of existence. Be aware of exactly what it is you’re doing in order to survive, and you will understand why others act they way do in response. Is it any wonder chickens will attempt to hide their eggs or bees attempt to sting us when we keep them enslaved and steal from them as well? This is quite a bit more sophisticated and honest understanding of the relationship between man and the beasts we use for food and domestic work than we hear expressed by most people.

While the stories are both profoundly beautiful and moving they also serve to fill in the details of everyday life among the Hazara people outsiders would only learn after years of observation. While they might have a natural mistrust of strangers, especially those from other ethnic groups, once a person has shown his or herself to be harmless they will be accepted. Or, unlike other subsistence people whose lives depend on what they can produce from their fields or by the labour of their own hands, they understand the value of education. If the chance arises they will send their children, both boys and girls, to school.

While every Hazara child learns from their parent basic precepts of respect and obedience for their parents and their God, they also recognize there are exceptions to every rule. In the story “The Music School,” a mute teenager learns how to give voice to his thoughts with a musical instrument. He is desperate to tell the young woman he loves how he feels about her, but his teacher has forbidden him to play in public until four years have passed from when he began his lessons.

Fearing she will have found someone else in that time he disobeys his teacher, plays for the young women and wins her heart. When he goes to return his instrument to his teacher’s house he fully expects to be punished and probably be forbidden from studying anymore. Instead his teacher gives him six gold coins to help him start his new family and tells him to take the instrument home and bring it back the next day for another lesson. As the young man is leaving, stunned by his good fortune, his teacher says to him “God is patient with the obedient, but he treasures the disobedient.”

Trying to write out stories which have only previously been told aloud is one of the hardest tasks facing a writer. However Mazari and Hillman have done a remarkable job with this collection of capturing the immediacy which exists between the storyteller and his or her audience. In fact, there are times when reading these stories you can hear them being told to you in your mind’s ear. There’s something about the writing style they’ve employed which makes them read like they’re being spoken aloud to you. The more you read, the more this world comes alive until you can almost picture yourself amongst a community as they gather to hear their stories.

Mazari finishes the book off with a collection of recipes for various Hazara dishes. The instructions for preparing the dishes are stories in of themselves as the various asides offer us even further insights into the people’s attitudes towards life. The Honey Thief goes a long way towards belying the impression we’ve been given of the people of Afghanistan as either savages or ignorant peasants desperately needing to be saved by the West. Stories like this collection should be required reading for every journalist or politician prior to them making public statements about Afghanistan.

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KARACHI, Pakistan — Stranded in a dingy hotel in the heart of this port city, waiting for the smuggler’s call, Hussain felt at once trapped and poised for freedom.

Behind lay his hometown, Quetta, the city in western Pakistan that has become a killing ground for Sunni sectarian death squads that hunt Shiites. So far this year they have killed almost 200 people, and Hussain was nearly one of them. Lifting a pants leg, he displayed an eight-inch scar from a bomb blast in January.

But great danger also lay ahead. Hussain was headed for Australia, where thousands of his fellow ethnic Hazaras, Shiites who have borne the brunt of the recent violence, have sought refuge. The illegal journey — across Southeast Asia by air, ground and sea at the mercy of unscrupulous human traffickers — would be long and perilous. Several hundred Hazaras had died on that route in recent years, most when their rickety boats foundered at sea.

For Hussain, it was worth the risk.

“I’d rather die in the boat than in a bomb blast,” he said, twisting a cup of coffee nervously in a restaurant near the hotel. “At least this way, I get to choose.”

Hussain, 25, is part of a growing exodus of young Hazara men who are fleeing Pakistan as it has become apparent that their government and military cannot, or will not, protect them from violent extremists.

In Quetta, where most Pakistani Hazaras live, the attacks are led by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a fanatical group that views Shiites as heretics. With their distinctive Central Asian features and historical links to anti-Taliban forces, the Hazaras make an appealing target. After a decade of intermittent attacks, bloodshed is suddenly surging: two Lashkar suicide bombings this year killed almost 200 people, up from 125 in 2012.

That toll set off a long-overdue security crackdown, but the attacks resumed last Tuesday with a suicide attack on a Hazara politician that killed six people. To young men like Hussain, whose family runs a clothes shop, the next bomb is only a matter of time.

“We can live without the basics of life — gas, electricity and so on,” said Hussain, who asked to be identified by just part of his name in the hope of avoiding arrest on his journey. “But we can’t live with the fear.”

Hussain’s older brother was shot and killed by militants in 2008. His own brush with death came on Jan. 10, after a powerful blast ripped through a snooker hall near his house. As Hussain rushed to help, he was caught in a second explosion that killed rescue workers, police officers and journalists. He blacked out.

“I don’t remember the sound of the blast,” he said. “Just the feeling, like a sort of sonic pulse.” He awoke in the hospital with 36 stitches in one leg and learned that three of his closest friends were among the 84 dead.

It was becoming clear that the Lashkar killers could operate with impunity. “They take their time. They select. Then they shoot,” he said.

The final straw came on March 7, when the military summoned Hussain and other Hazara traders to a meeting in Haideri bazaar, a popular market. As soldiers stood guard outside, an army colonel offered the merchants some sobering advice: they needed to buy handguns, he said.

Some people reacted angrily, and began berating the military officers, demanding better protection, Hussain recalled. But he went home to make a phone call. Two years earlier, his younger brother had left for Australia, where he had gotten a job in a fast food restaurant. Now Hussain needed to hear his voice.

“Just come,” the brother said.

Three days later, Hussain had agreed to pay $6,000 to a trafficker and was on a flight to Karachi, on the first leg of a journey across Asia that would be as emotionally wrenching as it was sudden.

In the plane, he found himself comforting a weeping 16-year-old boy, also Hazara, who said he had been forced to leave by his parents. In the shabby Karachi hotel, he shared a room with “Master,” a 41-year-old shoe trader from Quetta, also bound for Australia.

With thinning hair and a quick grin, Master, who would give only his nickname, had an avuncular manner. But when conversation turned to the three bewildered daughters, aged 7, 9 and 13, he had left behind in Quetta a day earlier, the smile faded and his eyes welled up.

“I will bring them to Australia,” he said in a cracking voice. “This country is no longer for us Hazaras.”

As with many other Hazaras aiming for Australia — from Afghanistan as well as Pakistan — their starting point was Karachi. From there, the journey is arduous and uncertain. Refugees first fly to Thailand or Malaysia, often via Sri Lanka, after their agents bribe immigration officers and Pakistani border officials. The trek continues by land and sea across Malaysia and Indonesia, in cars and trains, dodging police patrols, overnighting at flophouses.

Some migrants are arrested by police officers and border guards along the way and deported back to Pakistan; others are extorted or abandoned by the traffickers, or robbed on the roadside. In many cases, they end up paying thousands of dollars more — in bribes to crooked border officers or supplemental fees to smugglers — so they can keep pressing toward Australia.

The last leg is the most treacherous. In Indonesia, migrants buy tickets aboard small, overcrowded boats bound for Christmas Island, a small Australian territory about 240 miles off the Indonesian coast, where they apply for political asylum. There, they join other boat people — Sri Lankans, Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis.

Safe arrival is by no means guaranteed. Between late 2001 and last June, 964 asylum seekers and boat crew members from various countries are known to have lost their lives on this passage, said Sandi Logan, a spokesman for the Australian government’s Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

Habibullah, a 22-year-old student from Quetta, was nearly one of them. Last October, he joined 34 Hazara men on a boat bound for Christmas Island. Within 24 hours, the boat had sunk in a storm. Mr. Habibullah, who has only one name, says he was the sole survivor, picked up by an Indonesian fishing boat after three days clinging to floating debris.

In a harrowing written account of those events sent by e-mail, and in a phone interview from Indonesia, Mr. Habibullah described a traumatic ordeal.

He spoke of long hours in the water, whipped by waves and fearing sharks, desperately calling out to distant passing ships. But most anguishing, he said, was the sight of fellow passengers slipping under the waves, some calling out to their wives or parents.

Mr. Habibullah, suffering extreme thirst and sharp kidney pain, sustained himself by thinking of his home in Quetta. “I remembered my past, surrounded by my parents,” he wrote. “And I realized they were with me.”

It is impossible to confirm Mr. Habibullah’s account independently. But Hazara community leaders in Quetta confirmed that several men accompanying Mr. Habibullah had died, and some of their photographs have been published on blogs.

Mr. Habibullah sounded despondent. Conditions at the government detention center in Indonesia were grim, he said, and he was struggling to gain an asylum hearing from the United Nations refugee agency. Nine months after leaving home, and having spent $15,000 on bribes, transportation and smuggler’s fees, he had not reached Australia.

Still, he understood why other Hazaras wanted to make the journey. “It’s worth it,” he said.

The Australian government has tried to deter the boat people. Last year, it began transferring asylum seekers to detention centers on two remote Pacific islands while their cases are heard. Human rights groups and United Nations officials have condemned conditions at the camps, and Australian news media have reported several suicide attempts there in recent months.Responding to the criticism, Australian officials say they have increased their humanitarian refugee quota to 20,000 this year, a 40 percent increase. At the same time, in countries like Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, the Australian government has started an advertising campaign seeking to persuade potential refugees to stay at home.

Yet still they keep coming. In the first weeks of April, according to official figures, the Australian Navy intercepted 10 boats carrying 760 people, most bound for Christmas Island. The majority of cases from Afghanistan and Pakistan were ethnic Hazaras, whose numbers have grown to about 25,000 people in Australia, officials say.

Before leaving Karachi, Hussain and Master took a stroll along the beach, dipping their toes in the Arabian Sea and meandering among the young families on the sand.

Hussain stressed that if not for the extremist threat, he would not be leaving Pakistan. Ten months earlier he had married his sweetheart, a local teacher, whom he had left behind. His family made a good living from its clothes business. And patriotism ran in the family — his grandfather had served in Pakistan’s army.

“This could be the last time I see Pakistan,” he said, staring out at the waves.

His younger brother had warned him of a daunting journey ahead — “Expect it to be hell,” were his words — and so he was relying on the religious items around his neck: a small leather pouch containing two folded Koranic inscriptions, from his father and his wife, and a black pendant inscribed with the words “Y’Allah Madaat” — “Oh God, help me.”

Over the following weeks, he sent several messages: from Bangkok, where he was staying in a cramped room with 16 other refugees (“Waiting, waiting, and so on,” he wrote), then, in late March, from Indonesia.

Master had been arrested in a car headed for a port in Malaysia, Hussain said. But he had managed to escape, and had arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, where he would seek a boat to Australia.

This month, a boat carrying about 90 people, most of them Hazaras, sunk en route to Australia. Hussain was depressed, but undeterred. “I’m looking forward,” he wrote. Then he added: “May God help me.”

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The boat was carrying as many as 72 people when it hit rocks off the coast of West Java.

According to Indonesian search and rescue agency BASARNAS due to lack of information aerial search was not possible. However, Some asylum seekers were rescued by local fishermen.

Survivor Habibullah Hashimi, 29 year old, said that at least five people had drowned but he was unable to pinpoint the location of the sinking.

The boat was reportedly carrying ethnic Hazara from Afghanistan, and had been heading for Christmas Island.

In August last year, BASARNAS was criticised over its response to the sinking of an asylum seeker vessel in the same area.

More than 100 asylum seekers drowned on that occasion and it was later revealed that an aerial search was not launched until six hours after the first distress call.

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“The Government also indicated that it plans to return some of these asylum seekers to Islamabad, where they will likely end up in Quetta.

“The continued targeting of Hazaras in Quetta, including the two bombings in recent months with over 100 people killed, shows just how dangerous the situation is for them.

“Amnesty International has worked closely with Hazara asylums seekers who are now facing imminent return to Ghazni province, and has serious concerns that the decisions are based on incorrect or outdated country information.

“The constantly evolving situation in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan must be taken into consideration in Australia’s asylum review process, especially when the risk of returning people to such volatile and uncertain circumstances has consequences too severe to ignore,” said Pagliaro.

Amnesty International urges the Australian Government to review its country information when assessing cases to ensure that asylum seekers are processed in the fairest and most humane way.

“Australia has an obligation under international law to prioritise the safety and dignity of these vulnerable individuals and unfortunately we have not seen evidence that their protection is currently the top priority,” said Pagliaro.

Source Amnesty International

The Immigration department says the men’s claims for refugee status have been denied and they will be forcibly removed and there are other asylum seekers who could be about to meet the same fate.

Correspondent: Simon Lauder

Speakers: Pamela Curr, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre; Sandi Logan, spokesman for the Department of Immigration

SIMON LAUDER: Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says four Hazara men who were on bridging visas and living in the community attended routine meetings with the Immigration Department in Melbourne yesterday hoping to have their visas extended. Instead they were sent to the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre.

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More than 1100 Hazaras have been killed over last one decade in Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, by Al-Qaeda-cum-Taliban linked militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Jangvi (LeJ) and its affiliates under the very nose of the government and it’s law enforcement agencies.

The state of Pakistan; the elected government, law enforcement agencies and an otherwise hyperactive judiciary, has blatantly failed to protect the ethno-sectarian minority in Quetta. Inaction of the security forces against the terrorist outfits has resulted to a serious perception that they are complicit in the genocide of Hazaras in Balochistan. Such concerns have been raised by a number of human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International.

The acting Governor of Balochistan province, Nawab Zulfiqar Magsi, has confessed that “the terrorist attack on the Hazara community in Quetta is a failure of the intelligence and security forces”. However, we believe that terrorists groups such as Lashkar-e-Jangvi (LeJ) operate under the patronage of the country’s military establishment and it’s intelligence agencies which is evident from the fact, among others, that a handful of killers succeed to launch terror attacks on Hazaras repeatedly without being apprehended or even chased. We, therefore, stage a world-wide hunger strike unless our demands are met:

1: Declare a state of emergency regarding the Hazara state of affairs, as authorized by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
2: Apply diplomatic pressure on Pakistani government to immediately cease acts of discrimination against the Hazara and to stop supporting terrorist groups who commit violent acts against them.
3: Ask the Refugee Convention’s state parties to protect Hazara asylum seekers and grant them asylum.
4: Establish an international truth Commission to investigate crimes against the Hazara.
5: Open comprehensive cases concerning genocide and gross human rights violations in international courts such as the ICC.
6: Appeal to international media to investigate and report on activities against the Hazara, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/connect-asia/australian-police-accused-of-racially-profiling-pakistans-hazaras/1063906

We feel strongly that it is time to re-set the policy direction to ensure that Australia is not violating of basic human rights and breaching the UN Refugee Convention.

Hazaras are the most prosecuted people in the world and have been suffered systematic crimes such as genocide, slavery, forced displacement, war crimes and discrimination. We strongly believe that UN Refugee Convention completely fits to Hazaras situation, not only the Hazaras in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and Iran.
If government members of Australia want to decrease the number of Hazara asylum seekers, the best option is to put pressure on Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian governments to respect the Hazara rights and insure that they are not under systematic attack and discrimination. In this case, Australia should work closely with international organizations and institutions including UN, European Commission, Amnesty International and International Criminal Court.

In the past, Australia has been recognised as a global leader in terms of human rights. Many Hazaras have been granted asylum and now they are active members of their new society. However, the current policies aimed at deterring people from exercising their right to seek asylum are compromising this, and will erode Australian credibility in terms of advocating for human rights more generally.

The current policies are clearly intended to remove all hope from desperate and vulnerable people who have both a legal and human right to seek protection from Australia. The punitive nature of the policies of deterrence gives lie to the assertion that the Government is motivated by compassion. Drownings at sea are tragic, and additional measures need to be put in place to ensure better surveillance and rescue capabilities to prevent further drownings. Condemning people to indefinite detention in remote island camps with only rudimentary facilities, and denying all hope of family reunion, is not compassionate. Allowing people to live in the community with the same uncertainty about their future, and without the opportunity to support themselves is just setting up an alternative form of desperation.

It is very clear that the misguided policy of off-shore detention on Nauru and Manus Island is quickly becoming a debacle, drawing sharp criticism from human rights groups for the inhumane conditions, and the sense of hopelessness that this approach is designed to produce. The damning report on Nauru just released by Amnesty International is cause for Australian’s to feel deep shame. This report calls for the immediate closure of Nauru, and the immediate recommencement of processing for all asylum seekers who have arrived since 13 August 2012. See detail at: http://www.amnesty.org.au/images/uploads/news/NauruOffshoreProcessingFacilityReview2012.pdf.

The Australian Government can and should put decent asylum seeker policies in place. It is time to abandon the deterrence approaches and adopt new polices which:

• Are based on the premise that people have every right to seek asylum in Australia, irrespective of their means of arrival
• Are proactive in offering immediate protection and support for asylum seekers in the community while their claims are being assessed- to all asylum seekers irrespective of their country of origin
• Focus on processing and reviewing claims in a reasonable time period, and in ways which maximise fairness and transparency
• Provide permanent protection to all those found to be refugees
• Provide resettlement support to all refugees, including employment support to assist their settlement into the community
• Respond to the circumstances in the region which are resulting in larger numbers of people fleeing their countries of origin in search of peace and safety.

The proposed legislation to excise the mainland from the Migration Zone is ludicrous, and should be opposed. If passed, this legislation will draw further adverse international attention to Australia.
Given the circumstances in our region, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is clear that significant numbers of people will continue to arrive on Australia’s shores seeking asylum. Australia should not be turning these people away, or punishing them – they are entitled to fair treatment, legal processes to assist them with their claims for asylum, and resettlement in the community when found to be refugees.
Australia is a country of migrants, and it has the capacity to assist much larger numbers of asylum seekers. Australia needs not be fearful of this prospect. It is not about to succumb to ‘invasion’, as the constant rhetoric of ‘border protection’ would suggest. The claim that Australia is generous to refugees is largely overstated. Comparative figures show that Australia ranks 60th in terms of number of refugees resettled relative to GNP, by population ranks 32nd. Reference The Age editorial 24 Nov 2012 http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/cynicism-mars-the-debate-on-refugees-20121124-29zhm.html

Currently a very large amount of money is spent on denying people their human rights in detention centres on the mainland, and more recently in off-shore centres on Nauru and Manus Island. It would be both financially efficient and morally responsible to close the detention centres, and use these savings to provide for processing claims and resettling refugees in the community.

It is also important that people are not deported where there is doubt about whether they have had the benefit of fair and through assessment and review processes. The threatened deportation of Hazaras to Afghanistan and Pakistan who have not had access to proper assessment process must stop.
Australia can and should adopt a more mature and responsible approach to responding to the human suffering arising from conflict and political oppression in countries is our region. It is time for Labor to show moral leadership on this issue, and provide hope, not despair for asylum seekers, and all those who care about human rights in Australia.
Again, Australia should works closely with international community to insure the safety and security of the Hazaras in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

We implore you to do all within your power to agitate for policy change on this important humanitarian issue.
Yours sincerely

An investigation by journalist Aubrey Belford quotes Pakistani officials confirming that Australian Federal Police officers have been encouraging a policy of racially profiling people from the Hazara community who they suspect may be preparing to flee the country.

Hazaras are Shia Muslims and often face persecution Sunni death squads in Pakistan, their distinctive east Asia facial features making them an easy target.

Presenter: Liam Cochrane

Speaker: Mustafa Qadri, Pakistan researcher, Amnesty International

Click here and listen to this radio program

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Lone survivor ‘floated for three days’
An asylum seeker says he clung to a rubber tube and drifted helplessly for three days before rescue as the sole survivor of a boat that sank en route to Christmas Island.

Habib Ullah, 22, of Karachi, said he was among 34 Hazara from Afghanistan and Pakistan aboard a rickety boat that left Indonesia on October 26.

Speaking from Jakarta’s Kuningan Detention Centre, an emotional Mr Ullah said the engine failed and the boat started taking on water in treacherous conditions after about one-third of the voyage.

He described the horror of watching friends, many who could not swim, drown around him as he clung to the tube he took aboard with him.

“One by one they were drowning before my eyes,” he said. “I could not do anything but watch. I witnessed about 18 to 20 people drown.”

He said he was in despair as his hopes of rescue faded fast.

“I saw very big oil tankers but they were too far from me,” he said. “I was at the mercy of the ocean and very scared.

“My face was burnt, my legs were sore and my whole body was in a critical condition.”

He was semiconscious when fishermen picked him up and nursed him for five days before handing him to Indonesian officials.

Mr Ullah told his story to send a message to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

“Please accept asylum seekers because it is too dangerous to go back to our homeland,” he said. “We Hazaras are very grateful to the Australian Government and people for their generosity that is willing to accept us into their society.”

But he did not see offshore processing as the solution.

Mr Ullah said Hazaras in Pakistan and Afghanistan gambled with their lives just walking to the markets. “I want to complete my education in a safe environment where there is no prejudice or religious violence,” he said.

Refugee advocate Victoria Martin-Iverson said it was the second boat lost in the past four months with neither reported in the media.

Shahin Tanin, of Brisbane, has grave fears for his cousin Mohammad Jawad, 40, who left Jakarta on August 13.

Mr Tanin said none of the 26 Hazara passengers, including women and children, has been heard from. “I fear he has drowned or why wouldn’t one of them contact us,” he said.

He said Mr Jawad was forced to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban threatened to kill him when he refused to join them.

Ms Martin-Iverson said she wondered how many lives were lost at sea without the public knowing.

In June, it was reported a boat with 67 asylum seekers disappeared en route to Christmas Island.

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