Let's not forget the SIEV-X

In Australia Amal felt compelled to talk publicly about the story of the SIEV-X disaster so that the world would understand what had happened. Director Steve Thomas believes that it was the burden of surviving the SIEV-X disaster, when so many others had died, that moved Amal most strongly to speak out.

“When death strikes around you in a seemingly random way and you happen to survive, you feel guilty … indeed she didn't just come to see it as a responsibility to speak out but actually decided that was the purpose of her survival.”

Many unanswered questions still remain about the sinking of the SIEV-X. Should Australia accept any responsibility for the disaster? Where exactly did the boat go down? Did we have a duty of care to these people? To date it seems clear that investigations have not gone far enough, only fuelling speculation and theories that cannot be substantiated with the limited information available.

In the film Amal asks “Can I talk about that in the night I saw three lights, or it’s not good to say that? Because Australian government, they don’t like me to say that.”

Amal was not the only survivor to see the, still unexplained, lights of a boat as she drifted in the water that night, and Steve Thomas agrees that an independent inquiry is necessary:

I'm not a conspiracy theorist but in the absence of any thorough enquiry - the Senate committee was prevented from getting all the information it wanted - such theories proliferate. There were shady things going on in relation to the AFP’s people smuggling disruption program, and all the survivors talk of the lights that came in the night. Amal herself believed that the Australian authorities knew more than was acknowledged.

Without the whole truth these questions will remain unanswered and suspicions will inevitably continue without relief. Marg Hutton, who has researched and woven together the fragmented details of the SIEV-X tragedy on the www.SIEVX.com website since 2002, also believes an inquiry is needed:

The sinking of SIEV-X will always remain clouded in suspicion with the truth lost in a fog of myth, contested claims, obfuscation and denial unless and until there is a full powers independent judicial inquiry into this matter.

In the midst of an election campaign in 2001 the people who died on the SIEV-X were the “queue jumpers” the Australian government had spent so much time rhetorically degrading to the Australian public. Little wonder then that the incident has not been fully investigated or that public pressure for a full independent inquiry has been lacking.

With a new government in power it is surely time to put to rest the questions that will not go away. Those who have survived and those who died in the water in 2001 deserve the full facts, and as Australians we should ensure that no information can be withheld from public view.

Hope is a testament to the lives of innocent people who lost their lives, and their dreams, in the ocean, and to Amal Basry in her courageous and very personal struggle to ensure that we never forget a tragedy that happened right on our doorstep.

Steve Thomas spent a “roller coaster” 15 months with Amal making Hope, a film he believes is essentially “a contribution to ‘not forgetting’”.

That's what Amal fought for. That's what she would like her film to achieve - that we don't forget the SIEV-X, that we don't forget “the children who had nice dreams of Australia”. And that we don't make the same mistakes again.