Coatition to send back all Tamil asylum seeker

Details Created On Thursday, 18 July 2013 14:15 Category: General

The Coalition has re-iterated its 2012 declaration that it would send all Sri Lankan asylum seekers back home without processing their claims. The Coalition spokesman on Immigration, Scott Morrison, told ABC Radio today that our policy is to send them all back.

The Tamil Refugee Council joins with many other groups in condemning this Coalition policy which would see thousands of people sent back to the persecution from which they have fled and from which they have a legal right to seek asylum. Every day we see examples of shocking persecution against Tamils in Sri Lanka, said TRC spokesman Trevor Grant. Torture, beatings, jailings, disappearances, rape and murder feature regularly in conversations with Tamil refugees. These stories are real, and have been accepted by the Australian authorities. Let me cite the case of a Tamil refugee now living as a permanent resident in Melbourne, Kumara Devendrar. He survived torture in Sri Lanka and a frightening 19-day boat trip from India. He told me: After I was tied to a pole like a chicken and was kicked and beaten, I didnt think about anything but escaping with my life. A leaky boat will always be a better option than torture. Recently we helped a Tamil man who was brutally tortured in Sri Lanka in April this year during a trip back there to help in his uncles restaurant. Kumar is a 35-year-old father of three who has lived and worked in Melbourne for the past three years. He told me his interrogators would bash him on the body and feet with wooden poles, insert ice cubes into his anus and crush his testicles with their hands. Iron rods heated up on a gas stove in the room were smashed across his back, inflicting horrific burns and severe damage to discs in his spine. Kumar can no longer work and has applied for refugee status. What happens to people like this under this policy? Already the Australian Government is deporting hundreds of Tamils back to danger. As Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has said, this Coalition policy is illegal, dangerous and blatantly discriminatory. Refusing desperate people protection prior to having their claims assessed is cruel and breaches our obligations under the Refugee Convention, she said. The Coalition and the government claims that most asylum seekers are economic migrants, despite evidence showing that more than 90 per cent are granted refugee status under Australias laws and regulations.

Aran Mylvaganam, from the Tamil Refugee Council, said he had recently been in touch with relatives of one family -- a husband, wife and two children -- sent back from Christmas Island two months ago. The Sri Lankan authorities have permitted the children to live with their relatives. But the parents were taken to jail. They have been accused of links with the Tamil Tigers. I know their lives are in danger now, he said. Recently Mylvaganam spoke to several asylum-seekers on Christmas Island, who rang him to express their fears about deportation and ask for assistance. They all arrived there on May 1 on a boat from Indonesia, containing 40 Iranians and 145 Tamils. *Karan, 27, said he had previously worked for the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation for 18 months and received training with the Tamil Tigers for six months. He said he left Sri Lanka because of continuous harassment and torture by the CID. I fear I will be sent back because they have sent back so many others here. They have already threatened that we will probably be deported, he said. If this happens I know Sri Lankan intelligence will torture me. They have tortured me before. Thats why I escaped. Theyll punish me more for leaving the country. *Pari, 25, comes from Jaffna. His wifes brother is a refugee now living in the community.If I go back I will not be alive. Theyll kill me, he said. I lived in Vanni till May 16, 2009. My uncle, brother and another brother-in-law are all missing. I have been arrested many times on suspicion of being in the Tigers. I cant live there in peace because of my age. The Sri Lankan Government is suspicious of me because of my age. But because its single men they focus on, and Im married, I managed to escape. He said Australian immigration officials interviewed him for 10 minutes, asking him four questions: Why did you come to Australia? Where did you come from? Why do you fear for your life if you are returned back? Do you know anyone in Australia? I wasnt given an opportunity to prove that I am a genuine refugee, he said At the start of the interview immigration officials advised me that if I failed it, I would need to cooperate with whatever decision they make. They made me sign a paper without reading out the contents to me. *Durga is a widowed grandmother in her late 40s from Trincomalee, an area where the Tamil Tigers enjoyed strong support. Her three daughters and her nine-year-old grandson are with her. She said her husband was in the Tamil Tigers before they were married more than twenty years ago but he was not involved in combat after marriage. He was taken away in a white van in 1997 and is on the missing list, she said, adding that she was accused of organising remembrance events for Tamil Tiger war dead and has been harassed by CID officers. Last year, around October, the army took two of my daughters into custody for 24 hours and sexually assaulted them. When they came another time I told my daughters to hide. They took me instead. They slapped me and beat me but they didnt do any sexual torture. They just talked sexually to me. Im very scared about my daughters lives if they are sent back to Sri Lanka. I have seen many people being sent back whose lives are at risk. I dont trust the

Australian Government. It seems to me they are randomly sending people back without checking their background. * Names have been changed to protect identities. For further information contact Tamil Refugee Council : 0400 597