Selvamalar knows her son is dead, but cannot accept the tragedy. Picture: Rante Ardiles Source: Supplied
SHE was sold a cruel lie by the people smugglers. She would be travelling on a luxury ocean liner from Indonesia to Australia. They showed her photos of the ship that would transport her, her beautiful son and her brother to their new life in Australia.
It was a superb vessel, with three storeys of cabins.
"I believed them," she says.
She had dreamed of nothing else but being with her husband, who had escaped to Australia four years earlier on a boat to build a new life in Perth for his wife and unborn son, their first child. He had left Sri Lanka when she was five months' pregnant.
He had cut up photos and built a montage that depicted his family together, as one. He had never seen his son. He never would - at least, not alive.
Meet Selvamalar, a refugee who left her home in Sri Lanka to travel 2000 kilometres by sea to Indonesia.
Wind back a few days. We are in the village of Cidaun, on the southern coast of West Java, at one of the closest points between Indonesia and Christmas Island.
Two Sri Lankan women are weeping as they trade accounts of their grief, but neither is able to offer comfort to the other. One explains that her three children and husband are missing, lost at sea after their smuggling boat sank. The second woman says her only son is missing.
Someone calls the second woman's name. She turns, in horror.
She knows that over where the voice came from is the makeshift morgue they have set up in the clinic in the fishing village of Cidaun, on the southern coast of West Java.
An ambulance has just arrived with another body rescuers have pulled from the water.
The woman runs, then stops, not wanting to go closer, but compelled to do so. She knows without doubt what she'll find. She begins to scream. She rushes and grabs her small son's grey and wet body and clutches him, her overwhelming lament unbearable to behold.
Local villagers circle her, staring at her pain. And then she and her dead boy are gone.
It is midday on Wednesday. There are so many stories of loss after an asylum boat, believed to be carrying 187 people, most of them Sri Lankans and Iranians, broke down and sank soon after setting out from this village for Christmas Island on Tuesday morning.
There are also remarkable stories of survival. Most of the passengers somehow escaped with their lives after the smugglers, with no regard for human life, cruelly overburdened the small wooden cargo vessel in their soulless pursuit of maximum profit.
Selvamalar tells her heartbreaking story to Paul Toohey. Picture: Rante Ardiles Source: Supplied
When we ask, none of the Sri Lankans seem to know much about the screaming woman. They have a nickname for her, Radha, and say she, her son and brother travelled with, but were not part of, a bigger group of Tamil asylum seekers.
By Thursday morning, we have tracked the woman down. She is on the other side of Java, in Jakarta, at the police hospital. She is with another young couple who have also lost their son, a one-year-old.
The Disaster Victim Identification Unit wants to DNA--match the dead children to their parents.
The woman comes out a doorway in a daze. Her name is Selvamalar. She is 39. Her son's name is Darmithan. He was four.
She speaks passable English. She says the police won't let her see Darmithan. They took him from her when they arrived here in the ambulance, the day before. "I want my baby, I want to see my baby," she cries.
Government says PNG can handle whatever smugglers throw at us
Selvamalar tells how it came to this. Late last year she, her brother Rahulan, 25, and Darmithan left their home in Vavuniya, in Sri Lanka's Northern Province. She says her husband, Balamanokaran, faced serious ethnic and political problems as a Tamil in Sri Lanka.
He is living in Perth on a five-year visa. Selvamalar said she'd tried to join her husband through legal means, but was refused a visa. "I don't know why," she says.
In mid-November, feeling she had no alternative, she set off from Galle, in the south of the troubled island nation, with her son, brother and 43 other Australia-bound asylum seekers.
Each paid the equivalent of around $7200 for passage to Indonesia. She says the engine stopped as they got close to Indonesia in their 2000km journey.
"We were 45 days in the boat," Selvamalar says. "After 25 days, there was no food. Then a ship stopped and give us food. After 36 days, we got more food from a New Orient ship. We just floated. On January 1, we are rescued by a ship and come to Indonesia."
They were taken to Medan, the capital of north Sumatra, and put in an overcrowded immigration detention facility with other Sri Lankans, and Iranians, Afghans and Burmese.
"On April 4, eight Rohingya (Muslim) persons from Myanmar were murdered by Buddhists in the jail," she says. "I don't know why. They were stabbed. My son saw this. My son is very afraid. We are all very afraid."
A digital composite picture of a family who can never be together again thanks to the lies of people smugglers. Source: News Limited
After more than three months, the International Organisation for Migration secured their release into the community. Selvamalar immediately found a smuggler who arranged for their three-day journey by ferry and bus to Jakarta.
By April 22, the three were in Cisarua, in central West Java, the place where most asylum seekers go to register with the UNHCR in the hope of gaining legal resettlement in Australia, or to make contact with the smugglers.
She and her brother had no trouble finding the smuggler network. At least 40 brokers operate on behalf of the kingpins in the area, looking for passengers. The deal was that Selvamalar and her brother would pay $7200 each. Darmithan would travel for free.
Selvamalar says she was shown a photo of the boat she would be taking to Australia. "The smugglers say, 'Not a boat, a ship,'" she says. "We saw photo." The photo was of a luxury ocean liner.
It seems hard to believe. She knew her husband had taken a wooden boat four years ago; and surely her own recent 45 days at sea must have given her doubt. But she believed the closer she got to Australia, the better things would get.
They were taken from Cisarua to another town on the evening of July 22, where she said a large number of Sri Lankans were gathered. They were driven down to the coast, arriving on Tuesday morning.
"When we saw the boat, very shocked," she says. "But they are saying that this boat will take us to the ship."
They motored to sea for two hours. Selvamalar began to realise there was no ship. They were put on a boat that quickly began taking water through a hole in the hull. "We are very afraid," she says. "The boat is in danger."
The captain responded to passengers' pleas and turned back for Java, limping on half power for three hours until the boat swamped and began to quickly sink.
Selvamalar tells of something strange, but something we have also heard from others, that a bigger, more modern boat was just 50m from them as people began to struggle and drown.
"They are watching our boat," she says. "We say, 'Please help us.' We remove our life jackets and wave. They don't help our rescue. They are watching, watching. We called out, 'Help us, save our life.' They not help."
Selvamalar breaks off her narrative. "I want to see my baby. Will you help me?" When we make an inquiry on Selvamalar's behalf, the forensic police politely ask us to keep out of their business.
Asylum seekers at Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island. Source: News Limited
She tells what happened at sea. She had become split from her brother (who would survive) and was floating, holding Darmithan. Each had a life jacket, but she didn't know how to swim. She didn't want to float further out to sea with her boy.
"A man came and took my son," she says. "A Sri Lankan man. He could swim. I gave him my son to take him to safety, to take to land." But Darmathin arrived dead.
What happened? "I don't know, I don't know," she says, bursting into tears again. "On Wednesday I see my son, dead. Very cute boy, very cute boy."
She does not know if the man who took her son made it back to shore. She does not know of someone stole her son's lifejacket.
When we speak to Selvamalar in the police hospital, she says someone had given her a phone so she could call her husband and tell him the news about Darmithan. He was now urgently trying to get a passport to come to Jakarta to be with his wife.
Darmasen died on the way to Australia. Source: News Limited
Selvamalar cannot let go. She cannot accept her son is dead.
"My baby was a good dancer, a very good singer," Selvamalar says. "Every day he's saying, 'Mama, I want to see my papa. When will I see my papa? When are we going to papa?'
"My baby is always saying to me, 'Don't cry mama, don't cry mama.' He was very cute, very cute.
"I wanted him to be a pilot. He was very intelligent, very intelligent."
She doesn't know what will happen now. "I don't want to go to Australia," she says. My life is my baby. My future is my baby. I want my baby. I want to see my baby."
Asked if she has heard of Kevin Rudd, Selvamalar shakes her head. "What is that?" She said she knew nothing of the government new Papua New Guinea policies, but her smugglers certainly did.
Asked what she thinks of the people smugglers, she says: "They are very cheaters. No life do they understand. Not babies, not pregnant ladies, nothing. They not understand."
Balamanokaran Nagaraga in Perth with a picture of Darmasen. Picture Theo Fakos Source: News Limited
Balamanokaran said he had planned to bring his wife and child to Australia next year, when he expected to get citizenship. "I wanted a life here with my wife and son," he said. "A good future, good opportunities here."
Now he wants to see the son he never knew. "I want to see my son's face because I've never seen him," he said. "I'm asking the Australian Government to let me go to Indonesia. Send me to Indonesia.
"I want to see my son and wife, if I can't do that, please bring my wife and baby here to stay with me for a couple of weeks and then send my wife back to Sri Lanka. I just want two weeks with my wife and child."
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