On 18 October 2001, a small, unnamed 19.5m by 4m Indonesian fishing boat departed Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, illegally with 421 passengers onboard. On the 19th the boat sank in a storm in geographically Indonesian waters about 70km south of Java. The area was legally international waters but within both Indonesia's EEZ and Indonesia's internationally-designated zone of search and rescue responsibility. It also fell inside a temporary Australian border protection surveillance area around the Australian exernal territory of Christmas Island (which is some 1700km from mainland Australia). This latter designation was an internal planning and operational tool used by the Australian authorities to deter people smuggling. It had no legal validity, and conferred no responsibility, in international law, although any Australian ships and aircraft operating there would have acted to save lives if they had known SIEV X was in peril of sinking and where it might have been. At the time no Australian aerial reconnaissance flights were mounted because of the storm, the nearest Australian vessel was hundreds of kilometres away, there was confusion about various people smuggler boats, and it was thought this particular SIEV had probably returned to Indonesia.
Approximately 146 children, 142 women and 65 men died. On the 20th 44 survivors were rescued by an Indonesian fishing boat, the Indah Jaya Makmur. A 45th survivor was rescued about twelve hours later by another boat, the Surya Terang [1].
Some survivors claimed that some passengers refused to board in Bandar Lampung when they saw the state of the boat, but were forced aboard by Indonesian police in the pay of the Middle Eastern and Indonesian people smugglers involved. Other survivors spoke of having lights shone on them by boats, when in the water, with the boats then sailing away. It has been proven that no Australian navy ships were anywhere in the vicinity so the supposition is that these vessels, if they existed, were Indonesian naval or police craft.