SAADI has just lost three cousins and an aunt, drowned off Indonesia. There were no Iranian survivors from the leaking wooden boat that went down in theSunda Strait drowning 353 people.

Saadi said last night he pleaded with his aunt, Bhaji, and his three cousins, Ardish, Zimond and Ghadder, not to try to get to Australia by boat, as it was too dangerous.

“They had no choice,” he said. “They would have died otherwise. Their parents were already in jail.

“I sent money to get my aunt out of jail, but not to pay people- smugglers.”

Saadi and his family are part of a religious minority, the Mandaeans, a monotheistic religion believed to pre-date Judaism and Christianity.

There are fewer than 100,000 Mandaeans. Two thousand have found refuge in Australia. They have suffered since the drying up of their homeland, the Arab Marshes along the southern Iran-Iraq border.

Saadi’s family lived in the Iranian city of Aahwaz, where they were seen as untouchables, not allowed to go to university or to mix in any normal way with their Muslim neighbours.

Saadi, who owns his own shopfitting business in southwestern Sydney, came to Australia as a refugee in 1989 after first travelling to Pakistan and then contacting the UN.

“I want to tell all of Australia, that these people that died, they were genuine refugees, they had no choice,” he said.

“There was no other way or they would not have put their lives in danger.”

Along with other Mandaeans, Saadi believes that religious ferment in the Middle East, combined with the Howard Government’s hardline approach to asylum-seekers, led to the deaths of four of his family.

“They sank without protection,” he said. “I believe, stop them in Indonesia, don’t let them drown in the water and then say `bad luck’.

A spokesman for the Man daean community, Esselle Hattom, said there was no legal process by which Saadi’s family could have fled Iran.

“What precipitated this situation was the slowing down of immigration processes, Mr Hattom said.

“There is increased desperation amongst our people, leading to this tragedy. I don’t think that you can mince words as to what caused these deaths, they are thepolicies of the Australian government, policies made for political purposes, to gain popularity, which disregard the reality of the situation.”