On Monday morning Australians learnt that two boats of Tamil asylum seekers had been intercepted off Christmas Island. Now there are unconfirmed reports that Australia is handing them over to the Sri Lankan navy without assessing their claims for protection.
At least one of the vessels intercepted in high seas contained 153 Tamil asylum seekers, originally from Sri Lanka. These included 37 children, one of whom was only aged three months and was sick. The Tamils had been almost two weeks at sea in their 22-metre boat. A Tamil asylum seeker on-board told the ABC: ‘We are refugees. We come from Sri Lanka — we stayed in India and we are unable to live there. That’s why we are coming to Australia’.
These Tamils previously sought refuge in India from Sri Lanka’s 1983-2009 extremely brutal civil war. In 2011 a UN expert panel identified war crimes such as abductions, torture and disappearances, in which high government officials were implicated. Over 100,000 people were killed and one million displaced. Tamils were exposed daily to air strikes and atrocities, forcing many to flee to India.
India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Refugees have no right to freedom of movement. India’s Foreigners Act 1946 and Citizenship Act 1955 define all non-citizens who enter without visas to be illegal migrants, with no exception for refugees or asylum seekers. Possession of a UNHCR refugee certificate does not protect refugees from detention.
More than 100,000 Sri Lankan Tamils live in between 115 and 130 refugee camps in Tamil Nadu State in India. Aid workers say that some refugees live in thatched huts, others in small cement blockhouses. There are no proper toilet facilities, bathing facilities or adequate drinking water. There is no rubbish collection, and only some camps have medical facilities. Electricity is provided in some locations, but usually only between 6 am and 6 pm. In some camps there is no electricity for many inmates. Six houses at Thiruvadhavur collapsed in monsoonal rains recently, killing a girl.
The camps are of two types: general camps and so-called special camps — which Indian NGOs say are really concentration camps. People can go out of the general camps, but require three levels of police clearance. They are subject to constant surveillance by security forces and face travel restrictions. NGOs are generally barred from working in the refugee camps. Even UNHCR officials are not permitted access.
An Amnesty International investigation found that general camp inmates potentially face great oppression from security authorities. ‘The Q branch (the anti-terror wing of the state police) has forced labourers at the Goomidpoondi camp to pilfer steel from the factories where they work’, one refugee told Amnesty. Amnesty reports that refugees were made to rob banks in 2008 and 2011, ‘and the Q branch were involved’. If refugees caught up in such abuses complain they may find their young relatives packed off to ‘special camps’.
Many Tamils have returned home after the war to discover that their land had been stolen. Indeed, Tamil NGOs report a ‘Sinhala colonisation’, of predominantly Tamil areas. A Tamil refugee told Amnesty: ‘My brother went back to check on his property and found that nearly 100 percent of our areas are still under Sinhalese military occupation’.
Years after the supposed end of the civil war, allegations of torture in police custody persist. UN human rights commissioner Navi Pillay warned in 2013 that Sri Lanka was becoming increasingly authoritarian. Tamils face the risk of sexual violence, torture, murder, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance. Juan Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, concurs.
Since March 2014 Sri Lankan authorities have intensified security operations in Tamil areas. There have been scores of arrests and several deaths in these regions and freedom of movement has been restricted in these areas. According to an estimate by The Sentinel Project, ‘the overall risk of genocide in Sri Lanka is medium to high’, as ‘conditions point to a likely renewal of conflict in Sri Lanka that could escalate to mass atrocities including genocide’.
Sri Lankan human rights lawyer Lakshan Dias says that in the past 12 months Australia had deported numerous formerly India-based Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers to Sri Lanka. He adds that these forced returnees are sometimes ‘held and interrogated, some are questioned or beaten, and they are unable to return to India’. In 2011, ABC1’s Lateline reported the severe beatings of two forcibly returned Sri Lankan asylum seekers, who claimed that Sri Lankan police beat them in the presence of an Australian Federal Police officer.
Oppressed in India and facing new genocide in their homeland, our latest arrivals have nowhere to go, and seek Australia’s mercy. The full High Court has ruled that refusal to give refugees permanent protection visas is invalid.
Dr Paul White lectured at Australian universities for some years, in the fields of political science and Middle Eastern studies, and delivered papers at scholarly conferences in several countries. He is widely published internationally, including both critically acclaimed books, as well as papers in refereed journals.
Image: Tamils Against Genocide