The Tampa affair, 20 years on: the ship that capsized Australia’s refugee policy

When a Norwegian freighter rescued 433 asylum seekers from a sinking vessel en route to Christmas Island, it sparked a crisis that led to hardline border policies and indelibly shifted the response to boat arrivals

Even to Abbas Nazari's disoriented seven-year-old mind, the faint upside-down triangle" on the horizon represented one thing: salvation.

Weakened by dehydration and illness, battered by the terrifying storm that had incapacitated the small boat carrying him and hundreds of others, Nazari remembers staring over the sea at the ship that would rescue them.