The Boys in the Boat — Jo Tuscano Writer

In 2018 I was invited to Indonesia along with an Australian and Indonesian legal team, a BBC news crew, a ferocious social justice advocate, a logistics genius and a cast of assistants. Over one hundred and forty young Indonesian men were about to sue the Commonwealth government of Australia.

How did a thirteen year old boy end up spending two years in an adult prison in Perth living with the worst murderers, rapists and paedophiles in Western Australia?

On 27th April 2010, Colin Singer got out of a taxi and walked towards the Perth prison. He was about to begin his regular visits to the prisoners as part of his Official Visitor role. On that day, the Superintendent of the prison, the Deputy Superintendent, and the prison chaplain were waiting for him at the gate. This was unusual. Something was wrong.

‘Colin,’ the Superintendent said, ‘we have a problem.’ The three men took Colin to see the Medical Director of the prison. The director handed Colin a list. On it were the names of all the Indonesian prisoners. The director’s face looked stricken. ‘These are kids,’ he said. ‘Some of these are prepubescent.’ He put his hand up to his forehead, creased with stress. ‘The youngest one is thirteen. This is ridiculous.’

Colin was shocked. Kids? Locked up with murderers, rapists, and paedophiles. How could this have happened?

Had it not been for Colin Singer, the boys may have lingered even longer in prison. Colin never set out to be a social justice agitator. His life before the boys had been vastly different. In 2000, Colin was in a limousine on his way to Beijing Airport when he experienced a strange sensation. A high-flying corporate with the oil and gas industry, he put it down to a hectic week. He was reading the Financial Times when the nausea began. He felt off-balance like he was sea-sick. The sensation didn’t go, and by the time he reached the airport, he couldn’t stand. He got out of the limo but soon had to hold onto a baggage trolley to steady himself. The world was spinning. Everything was unfamiliar. I’m not on a boat, so how can this be happening, he thought. On board the plane from Beijing to Singapore and from Singapore to Perth he drugged himself up, hoping the episode would fade into the background with sleep.

Back in Perth, Colin was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear, the classic symptoms being vertigo, progressive loss of hearing and tinnitus. Most episodes last from twenty minutes to a few hours. Colin was used to the high life. He’d lived and worked all over the world. As an expert in seismic exploration, he’d worked for some of the world’s top companies. It was common for him to receive one hundred emails a day. He stayed in the best hotels, met dignitaries, and socialised with those at the top of the business world. He met people who are household names. He still retains his strong Scottish accent. He’s a talker, a storyteller. He likes a beer and watches the soccer. He’s a minefield of information on Indonesian politics and economics. He has no time for restaurants that advertise they have chicken and then say they’ve run out. He then runs out. He has similar feelings about the ‘do-gooders’ that come to places like Bali and Rote and run interference on certain issues. As for those who go on about Indonesians eating dog, they’re hypocrites, he declares. They go home and eat cows and sheep.

In 1992 he married Aat, his Indonesian wife, and converted to Islam. It wasn’t a wrench, he says. He was a lapsed member of the Church of Scotland. His parents were supportive of his conversion and of his marriage to Aat who they welcomed into the family. He gave up smoking at Aat’s insistence, and they settled in Bandung, where they still live. In 1993 their son Gavin was born. Colin learned Indonesian but never learned to love the food, preferring meat and potatoes cooked the western way, the more Scottish, the better. Up until Beijing, he’d never had a serious illness.

Colin now had a real problem. Under international oil and gas law, Meniere’s is considered a permanent disability and those who have it cannot work in the industry. Those in the industry often have to go up in helicopters, go by boat and drive to sites. The risk of having an attack is simply too great.

‘It would have been criminally negligent for me to keep working,’ he says.

The diagnoses itself was bad enough but a successful career cut short hit him hard. Drugs were available, but the side effects were something he didn’t want. He slumped into a depression. Physically he was changing; psychologically, he was still in corporate mode with nowhere to channel his energies. His wife was incredibly supportive, but she told him that he had to find something to do. He says it was as if someone had just switched off his life. He’d gone from corporate never-ending busy to nothing to do in a short space of time, with severe headaches, nausea and skeletal problems that affected his gait.

In a conversation with his lawyer about what he was going to do with his life, he learned that the Department of Justice in Western Australia was desperate for volunteers to visit inmates. It didn’t require him to drive a car. Colin phoned the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services, and an interview was set up. That interview lasted three hours, and soon he was offered the job. The security clearance took five months, and when he was cleared, he started at Casuarina Maximum Security.

This was a whole new experience for Colin who had never been inside a police station in his life. He began his new job and threw himself into it with as much enthusiasm as he had exerted in his last career. He found it mentally stimulating and thought-provoking. He was interested in the plight of the Aboriginal kids in the juvenile justice system and made many visits. At Banksia Hill Detention Centre, eighty-five percent of the inmates were Indigenous. At first, Colin says they were suspicious of him, but over time the barriers were broken down, trust was gained and once the kids had decided that they could trust him a whole new world opened up. Being a talker, he built up a rapport with the inmates. He’s a great storyteller; his relative is the well-known Scottish poet, Burns-Singer. His easy way of communicating had both positive and negative effects. The same people requested to see him, but he became disillusioned that perhaps he wasn’t making a difference. He requested to visit Hakea and Banksia, the latter being the juvenile prison. He was the only Official Visitor for Banksia. While there he became a Justice of the Peace and this tied in with his work as a visitor. Eventually, he gave up visiting Hakea and focused solely on the juveniles in prison. He’d noticed that there were Indonesian prisoners in the adult prison.

On the day that he found out there were Indonesian kids in an adult jail in Perth, the medical director had been doing physical examinations on the inmates and asking them questions. One of the boys was just thirteen. Colin and the director started trying to locate the boys, going by the list. The first boy they looked for was Ali Yasmin. They found him leaning up against a fence in the yard. The boy was terrified. He was shaking and wouldn’t talk. They realised how traumatised he was and lowered their voices. They told him not to be scared and that they were there to help. Colin spoke to Ali Jasmin in Indonesian, and gradually Ali Jasmin opened up.

Little did he know it, but Colin Singer was about to become the face of advocacy for the kids in prison because the Australian authorities didn’t care less. Ali Yasmin, tossing in his cell at night, had no idea what a chain of events had been put in motion the day he met the big man with the Scottish accent. He missed his mum. He just wanted to go home.

Colin returned home, and at 4 pm, he phoned the Inspector of Custodial Services. The Inspector, Professor Morgan, used to drama of prisons, was calm. He said he'd look into it. That day Colin also filed a confidential OICS report as he was bound to do after an official visit. Colin informed the Inspector in writing about what he had found out. Next, he phoned the Indonesian Consul General who also said he would investigate it.

Aat Singer, Colin's wife, an Indonesian national, was just as shocked as her husband was to find out about the children in prison. She was confused. How did this happen? And who allowed it to happen? Aat Singer, in contrast to her husband, is quiet and measured but she is also fiercely determined to see justice done. Colin says of his wife, 'She is not one of those 'ibu-ibu bling-bling.' She's more comfortable in jeans and a tee-shirt. She, like Colin, believed that after the phone call to the Inspector had been made that the boys would be taken out of the adult prison. Colin got angry, and then he got busy. Whether it's dogs in Bali, corrupt police, dealing with the government or indifferent Australian politicians, Colin rights a wrong if he can. The image of Ali Yasmin, thirteen years old, terrified, slumped against the fence burned into his soul. The boy wasn't a people smuggler. He wasn't a refugee. He was a cook on a boat full of desperate people seeking refuge in a new country. How many more children were there, Colin wondered, stuck in Australia's adult jails? Do their parents know they're here?

By Friday, days later, when he had heard nothing, Colin went to see the Indonesian Consul General and his staff but came away disappointed.

'Perhaps you might send someone to visit them?'

'No, we can't. It's the weekend. The prison won't be open for visitors.'

The prison was open to visitors all weekend.

Colin was frustrated. He had thought that the fact that noticeably young boys were in an adult prison with violent men would have been enough to get the boys out straight away. Aat was perplexed. She didn't understand how the Indonesian Consulate wasn't responding with the shock and concern for the boys that she and her husband were feeling. She felt strongly that it was the Consulate's duty to step in and help their own countrymen.

'And like an idiot, I thought I would wake up the next morning, and it would be all fixed. If someone had told me it would take two years, I would have thought they were on drugs.'

The Australian Federal Police were next on Colin's list. He soon received a text message from a senior member of the AFP. The text read: There are no Indonesian kids in adult prisons here. The person who sent that text later was promoted. No one seemed to be doing anything. Colin was angry. If Australian children were incarcerated within an adult prison, it would be a vastly different matter.

Colin contacted the Child Commissioner of Western Australia only to be disappointed with the lack of interest. Amnesty International said that the problem was one to be solved by the Australian legal system. The Ombudsman's Office replied saying there was no funding for a cluster of people. The Indonesian Consul General didn't seem to be interested. Colin kept up the pressure on the Embassy, but they fobbed him off with declarations of 'looking into it.' Australian politicians showed no interest either. Ross Taylor, the president of the Australia Indonesia Institute, and a writer for the Herald in Western Australia, wrote a piece about it, but still, nothing changed. Colin then contacted every media outlet, both large and small, but nobody showed any interest. He flew to Bali to attend a conference where he knew several Indonesian dignitaries would be in attendance. He tried to get them interested but was given the usual promise that they would investigate it. From time to time, he would receive emails to say that his email had been read and would be responded to in due course. Nothing happened. Colin and Aat decided to try the Indonesian channels. They tried the KOMHAS ANAK, the Indonesian Commissioner for Children but the Commissioner wasn't interested. They contacted SCTV, Surya Citra Televisi, Indonesia's second biggest privately owned station. They weren't interested.

Over the next few months, they continued to contact both Australian and Indonesian organisations, human rights groups, politicians, and media in both countries. Nobody was interested. During this time Colin kept up his visits to the prison. He told the Indonesian kids that he and his wife were trying to get them some help.

By now, three months had gone by.

'I was totally honest with them,' he says. 'I did not want to get their hopes up.'

Hope came, however, in the form of BPN2TKI – the Indonesian government organisation for overseas workers. A delegation was organised to meet with four of the boys, the Commissioner of Police, and the Attorney General. Finally, something was about to happen. That day, representatives from BPN2TKI faced the group of Indonesian kids and began their talk.

'You boys are a disgrace to Indonesia. You are to keep your mouths shut and stop embarrassing our country. Plead guilty, do your time and then you can go home.'

The delegation then cancelled all their other scheduled visits and meetings and went off to enjoy the sights of Margaret River. The kids were left shocked and scared. They didn't understand why or how they had embarrassed their country. They were bewildered with the way that their countrymen had spoken to them. There was, however, an explanation as to why the delegation had treated them with such derision. This was the year that Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited Australia. On 10 March 2010, he became the first Indonesian president to address both houses of the Australian parliament. Behind the scenes, there were whispers that nothing was to disrupt the relationship between the two countries. The less said about children in adult prisons, the better. Yudhoyono, it appeared, was not partial to children who didn't do the right thing and perhaps not partial to children at all. On 12 September 2012, Indonesian Children's Day, he spoke for hours, and two children in the front row fell asleep during his speech. He stopped speaking and angrily berated them. It was no surprise to some that he would not be interested in one hundred and eighty hapless boys from poor fishing villages who had ended up in Australian prisons.

Yudhoyono's speech spanned many issues. It is inconceivable that the president was unaware of the plight of the children in Western Australia's prisons. He mentioned names of Australians who had helped Indonesia, soldiers, diplomats, trade officials and journalists. These are ordinary names, he told his audience. They belong to heroes. There was no mention of the ordinary names like Ali and Mohammed and Idris, all children, who were working in the prison laundry alongside paedophiles, rapists, and other violent criminals. Conservative commentator Piers Ackerman suggested that not only should the boys be in prison, but they should receive longer sentences.

Colin found out that the boys had been given some advice by the Indonesian Consul General. They were told that the Indonesian government would provide no financial assistance. They were on their own. They needed to keep quiet, not embarrass Indonesia and simply do their time. They would have to rely on legal aid in Australia.

The subject of the boys' ages was never far away. The age determinant factor was done using a wrist x-ray, based on the theory that age can be measured by an examination of the bones. Being sceptical of this procedure, Colin contacted the University of Western Australia's Department of Anthropology. He spoke with the Emeritus Professor Ian Dadour, head of the Anthropology department, and with Dan Franklin of the same department. The academics were outraged.

The method that the Australian government had used to determine the boys' ages was over ninety years old, an outdated, totally discredited methodology. This method had been used by the Nazis. It had no relevance anywhere, and certainly no relevance to Indonesian children whose muscular and skeletal development would be different from Caucasian development. In 2000 the United States of America banned the method. Prior to this, it had been used to determine the age of illegal immigrants. Colin informed the Inspector that the x-ray method was deemed completely inappropriate by the anthropology department. The Inspector told him that he would send staff to the university for a meeting. Colin never heard anything back. Despite cries from the boys' supporters that the method was outdated, the Australian Federal Police refused to use any other method. As the weeks went by and the boys languished in prison, Colin and Aat grew increasingly frustrated and angry at the lack of response.

The boys had to wait twenty weeks for a special authority number that was given to them so that they could make phone calls. However, many of the boys' families did not have mobile phones or landlines. Messages were sent by friends of friends over the phone in the hope that they would reach the remote villages where the boys lived. Many of the boys were illiterate, so could not write. Many had only finished primary school and had then gone straight out to work. A common factor in their lives was the death of their fathers. With no income to support a family, mothers sent their sons out to work, often in the fishing industry.

One of the boys had asked his family in Indonesia to send documents to the prison that proved he was a minor. He told Colin that he had never received the documents. Colin made enquiries and found out that the documents had indeed arrived and had been sitting in a property office for months. The young boy would do two and a half years before he saw his homeland again. He didn't understand why the x-ray machine was so wrong, and he put it down to the fact that from an early age he had been doing manual labour, and so perhaps had the bone growth of a mature man. It didn't matter what he told them; the AFP insisted he was lying. Like the rest of the boys, he was in handcuffs, in a foreign land, had little English, no guardian to help him and had already experienced harsh treatment by the navy when his boat was intercepted. The AFP worked on instilling fear into the boys, and many simply capitulated, telling the authorities they were eighteen.