The Australian government claims that the situation in both countries has improved, and has clearly stated that more and more asylum seeker applications will be rejected, and the refugees returned to their countries. There is well-documented evidence, not least from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, that these countries are thoroughly unsafe places. As such, the decision is completely unacceptable and indefensible.
The real reason is that the asylum seeker issue is being used as a political football to woo voters – a crude ‘anti-asylum seeker auction’. Asylum-seekers are being portrayed in alarmist terms by both major parties to generate fear and paranoia among voters..
Of serious concern is a sinister Bill that has just been passed, The Anti-People smuggling and Other Measures Bill. Cloaked in the garb of blocking “funds for people smuggling ventures” is the ability to block, discourage, or invoke fear in those who send money for those in desperate need of help. It enables the police to swoop down on them and accuse them of sending money to ‘people smugglers’ or even ‘terrorists’.
Irrespective of who wins the Election, asylum seekers will be a dominant problem in Australian politics, with both sides of politics accusing each other of being ‘too soft’ and hence ‘compromising border security’ – an alarmist term with no basis, which is being freely used.
The handling of asylum seekers will have to change, and the Bill, withdrawn. This will not happen unless there is widespread pressure on Australian politicians from within Australia and from outside. I am therefore calling for international protests to be lodged at every Australian Embassy, and also for protests to be sent to Australia.
.
The very least that can be done is to write a letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott (Parliament House, Canberra, ACT, Australia 2600), expressing your sense of outrage.
A protest outside the Australian Embassy in your country will send a powerful message, and I urge that this be done at once.
IF AUSTRALIA GETS AWAY WITH THIS, OTHER COUNTRIES WILL FOLLOW.
The problem that asylum seekers face with the dreadful Australian government might turn out to be the same problem faced by them with the government of your country, since dreadful regimes tend to be a role model for others to copy. Today it is an Australian problem, tomorrow it could well be a problem in your country.
If these are Australia’s policies, Australia needs new policy makers
The Decision of the Australian Government – 9 April 2010
for asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, with immediate effect. The suspension was for 3 and 6 months respectively. Once it expires (as has already happened to applications from Sri Lankans), what will follow is even more serious. Asylum seekers will be refused asylum and sent back to their respective countries. This is a clear violation of the UN Refugee Convention, signed by Australia and more than a hundred other countries, but not by Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, and several Asian countries..
Coupled with this suspension is legislation, just passed, The Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill. Supposedly to block funds for ‘people smugglers’, it is open to abuse, and has the possibility of being used to block and intimidate those who send money for refugees and others in desperate need of help.
This decision was released as a joint statement[1] by three senior government ministers[2]. From the comments made by the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and his recent[3] replacement, Julia Gillard, it was clearly their decision. Gillard was the powerful Deputy Prime Minister[4] when the decision was announced. She is now the Prime Minister, and has confirmed that there will be no policy change, and even a tightening of an already inhuman policy.
Tony Abbott, leader of the Opposition, says that if elected to power he will turn the asylum seeker boats back. In the state in which these boats arrive, turning them back will mean that they will sink, taking their human cargo to the bottom of the ocean. This is what I have called the “Indian Ocean Solution” to the refugee problem.
The statement:-
1). Is discriminatory (since it affects asylum seekers only from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan). It violates the UN Refugee Convention of 1951[5], and the 1967 Protocol, signed by Australia in 1954. This is the key legal document which defines who are refugees, their rights, and the legal obligations of States that have signed the Convention. Article 3: "The Contracting Parties shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin."
It also violates Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) of 1975. The RDA makes racial discrimination unlawful in Australia. It is based on section 51 (xxix) of the Australian Constitution and arises from the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination signed by Australia.
To suspend asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, while continuing to process those from other countries, is clearly discriminatory. If, for whatever reason, Australia cannot cope with any more asylum seekers (the reasons will have to be stated), then it must apply to all asylum seekers.
2). It denies asylum seekers the right to seek asylum from persecution.
There is extensive evidence, that asylum seekers fleeing Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are fleeing persecution or the fear thereof, based on sound evidence. As such, it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the core document on Human Rights, signed and ratified by Australia:- Article 14 (1): “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”
The (claimed) reason for this outrageous decision was the (claimed) “evolving circumstances” in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. It implies that conditions in these two countries have improved, i.e. it is safe for asylum seekers to return.
Since there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it is either a disingenuous lie, or an acknowledgment that Australian politicians are dangerously ignorant about countries which they should know better. Either way, it is completely unacceptable.
The evidence that these countries are dangerous places comes from Australia’s own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade that has issued clear warnings to tourists to these countries (see below). It is mind-boggling hypocrisy to state that it is too dangerous for tourists to visit these countries, but acceptable for refugees to return to them.
The real reason
As has been mentioned, the real reason for this irresponsible act is that both major political parties, struggling to win the election (Labor in power, and Liberal trying to regain it), are trying to outdo each other in claiming to adopt a ‘tough’ policy on asylum seekers. It is a disgraceful ‘asylum seeker political auction’.
This inhuman policy is portrayed to the Australian people in alarmist terms, “border protection”, “preventing Australia from being ‘swamped’ by refugees’”, “preventing ‘terrorists’ from coming here”, “preventing ‘queue jumpers’”, to fan hysteria and paranoia. Having done so, these political opportunists offer themselves as the ‘protectors of Australia’. These terms, which have no basis, and is no more than scare mongering, to win the support of the voters.
The fact that it is a violation of the UN Refugee Convention, signed and ratified by Australia, and a violation of Australia’s own Racial Discrimination Act, are conveniently ignored. The vast majority of voters are unaware of these Conventions and Acts.
Beyond the next Election
This bashing of asylum seekers is not going to end with the next election, whichever party wins. It is likely to be a political football in Australia for the foreseable future. As more and more asylum-seeker boats arrive, whichever party is in Government will be accused of being 'soft' on asylum seekers and 'border protection' by the Opposition.
The Media will continue to keep this on the boil:- “Here comes another boat, Australia is being invaded, etc”. The Opposition will jump on the band wagon and the Government will respond by toughening an already inhuman policy. Since there is no fundamental difference between the two major political parties in Australia on anyissue, a difference will be 'created' ie of being “tougher than thou” stance. “We would, if we had been elected, been tougher – to 'safeguard Australia's borders'”.
Not stupidity but a lack of integrity
Australian politicians are not stupid. It is not stupidity or ignorance but an absolute lack of honesty and integrity, and a determination to get into, or remain in power, taking political opportunism to an abysmal level. It is irresponsible and despicable politics, a game played by both major political parties, to use false claims to mislead the public to score political points, which, it is hoped, will translate into votes (as happened in 2001 – the ‘Tampa Election’ – see below).
This political opportunism is a mirror image of what has been going on in Sri Lanka since Independence (1948), which has prevented the building of a nation and has destroyed that country. The platform on which the two main Sinhalese (74%) political parties have fought their political battles is on how anti-Tamil (18.5%) they will be if elected to power[6]. However, Sri Lanka is a 3rd World despotic dictatorship[7], a Failed State. Australia is not such a country, nor one whose politicians should be getting into such destructive political opportunism. Australia can do better.
Déjà Vu
Australian politicians have been down this road before, bringing international condemnation, and even having Australia reported (by Norway) to the United Nations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the International Maritime condemnation, and even having Australia reported (by Norway) to the United Nations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the International Maritime Organisation, for failure to deliver its duties under International law.
I refer to the ‘Tampa crisis’ (August 2001) created by the then Prime Minister, John Howard (Liberal). It was, like the present problem, immediately before a General Election (November 2001), which has been called the “Tampa Election”. The election campaign, based on downright lies, fabrications, and the flouting of International Conventions, got Howard another term in office but heaped international disgrace on Australia. I will set this out in detail because it is about to be repeated.
Australia, under (former)) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (Labor), and now Julia Gillard (Labor), is going down the same road, with a General Election due on 21 August, 2010, in what will be an ‘Asylum-Seeker Election’.
The effect of the suspension was spelt out in the statement:-
- “The combined effect of this suspension and the changing circumstances in these two countries will mean that it is likely that, in the future, more asylum claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will be refused”.
Australia claiming to know what will happen in these countries “in the future”, and that this will determine future asylum claims, is unprecedented. I know of no other country that has had the presumption, or the recklessness, to do so.
As for ‘changing circumstances’ – they certainly are changing, but for the worse.
Asylum seekers and ‘people smugglers’
The announcement of the suspension of asylum procedures, jointly with the announcement of enhanced measures to stop people smuggling, is to insinuate criminality on the part of asylum seekers. While ‘people smuggling’ for profit might be a criminal act, seeking asylum is not, and never has been. To tie the two together is completely irresponsible for any government to do.
Who is a ‘Refugee’ or ‘Asylum seeker’?
Australia cannot make up its own definition of who are ‘Refugees’ or “Asylum seekers’. These have been clearly defined in the UN Refugee Convention and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
UN Refugee Convention Article 1. Section A - A Refugee
For the purposes of the Convention, the term “refugee” shall apply to any person who has:-
“a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.
This has been put into straight-forward language in the UNHCR summary[8] : -
“Refugees are forced to leave their countries because they have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution. Refugees run away. They often do not know where they will end up. Refugees rarely have the chance to make plans for their departure such as packing their personal belongings or saying farewell to loved ones. Many refugees have experienced severe trauma or have been tortured.”
It goes on to spell out the “Most important parts of the refugee definition” as:-
· Refugees have to be outside their country of origin;
· The reason for their flight has to be a fear of persecution;
· The fear of persecution has to be well-founded;
· The persecution has to result from one or more of the 5 grounds listed in the definition, that is race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion;
· They have to be unwilling or unable to seek the protection of their country.
Asylum seekers
An “Asylum Seeker” has been set out in the UNHCR Summary:-
“An asylum seeker is a person who has left his or her country of origin, has applied for recognition as a refugee in another country, and is awaiting a decision on their application”.
One way or the other, Tamils fleeing the murderous regime in Sri Lanka, are ‘Refugees’ or ‘Asylum seekers’, or both. So are the Afghanis. As such, they have Rights which the Convention is there to protect.
The full Press Release is on the net[9]. I will set out only a part of it. My comments are in parentheses.
THE PRESS RELEASE BY THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ON 9 APRIL 2010
“9 April 2010 Changes to Australia's immigration processing system
Effective immediately, the Australian Government has today introduced a suspension of the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
- This suspension has been made as a result of the evolving circumstances in these two countries.
(This is arrant nonsense. The Australian government’s travel advice valid up to the time of writing i.e. today, 30 July 2010, has a different message:-
Referring to Sri Lanka[10] , it says:
“We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to Sri Lanka at this time because of the volatile security situation. Sri Lanka remains in a State of Emergency. While the conventional conflict …… has ended…., there remains a high risk of politically motivated violence throughout the country. Travellers should exercise extreme caution and maintain a high level of personal security awareness. Attacks could occur at any time, anywhere in Sri Lanka. ….. Attacks have also occurred in crowded market areas and on public transport. You should avoid using public transport at all times and exercise a high level of caution close to train stations, bus stops and large public markets.
Incidents of violent crime occur in Sri Lanka, including sexual assault and robbery. Policing in remote areas is often hampered by a lack of resources and poor infrastructure. There have been incidents of kidnapping for ransom in Sri Lanka, including in Colombo. Due to the volatile security situation in Sri Lanka, you should take stringent security precautions at all times.”
There are more warnings on the website, regularly updated
Referring to Afghanistan, the recommendations are similar[11] :
“We strongly advise you not to travel to Afghanistan because of the extremely dangerous security situation and the very high threat of terrorist attack.
If you are in Afghanistan, you should consider leaving. Australians who decide to remain in Afghanistan should ensure that they have personal security measures in place. You should monitor local information sources for details about the safety and security environment.
The Australian government is speaking with a forked tongue. It is too dangerous a place to go to, but is a suitable place for refugee seekers/asylum seekers to return to!
There are no “evolving circumstances” in Sri Lanka. The gross violation of human rights of the Tamil people in the North and East under a politico-military fascist dictatorship continues. The claim that there are ‘evolving circumstances’, implying an improvement in the humanitarian concerns, is absolutely untrue.
The question that has to be asked is, “‘Evolving’ from what to what?’’ There has certainly been an improvement from May 2009 to May 2010 in that the mass murder of Tamils has ceased, but the gross violation of their human rights has continued, if not worsened. An important question is whether this ‘improvement’ is sufficient for Tamils to be sent back. The answer is an emphatic “No”.
The Australian government is simply repeating the line of the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) without looking at the extensive evidence to the contrary which is readily available (see below).
As recently as 8 March 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressedconcerns[12] about the lack of progress on political reconciliation, the treatment of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the setting up of an accountability process in Sri Lanka. He has just appointed an Advisory Panel to look into this (see below).
A bogus Commission
Under international pressure, the GoSL announced a “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission”. Like all previous human rights investigations, it is certain to be a whitewash. Rajapaksa has bitterly opposed any international inquiry, no matter how limited, despite a call from the UN Secretary General, and the Head of the UN Human Rights Council.
With the White House welcoming this phony inquiry, two senior Obama officials - Samantha Power, Special Assistant to the President on Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, and David Pressman, National Security Council Director for War Crimes and Atrocities, visited Colombo. It was mainly to advise Rajapaksa how to make this phony Commission appear more credible, and more importantly, to cement closer ties between Washington and Colombo, and sideline rival China, which provided substantial financial and military support for Rajapaksa's genocidal war.
UN Advisory Panel
The panel will be chaired by Indonesia's former Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, who was recently the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea, Yasmin Sooka, a human rights expert from South Africa, and Steven Ratner, a U.S. lawyer who advised the United Nations on how to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia.
If the panel decides to travel to Sri Lanka to interview witnesses and investigate the problem, it will need the permission of the government. This might not be forthcoming, given the arrogance of the GoSL, and protests in Colombo organized and led by Government Ministers.
- The combined effect of this suspension and the changing circumstances in these two countries will mean that it is likely that, in the future, more asylum claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will be refused.
(I have already commented on the absurdity of Australia claiming to know the future in these countries. I have also pointed out that the refusal of claims for asylum is a violation of the UN Refugee Convention, which Australia has signed and ratified, and Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act. It is a legal problem that has to be challenged legally.)
- Sri Lanka is a country in transition after two decades of conflict, with hopes for further improvement and stabilisation in conditions.
(There has been no ‘conflict’ as such in Sri Lanka. What there has been for fivedecades, are a series of increasingly virulent pogroms against the Tamil people by a succession of Sinhalese-dominated governments, assisted by Sinhalese political opportunists and ethno-religious chauvinists, in particular the Buddhist monks, and conducted by the Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese), and Police (95% Sinhalese), with a degeneracy of Sinhala society and its rapid descent to barbarism. There is now increasing evidence of the intention to commit Genocide[13] of the Tamil people by the Sinhalese-dominated government.
As for “hopes for further improvement”, decisions such as this cannot be made on “hopes”, they have to be made on documented achievements.
There is no evidence that there has been improvement, let alone ‘further improvement’, or ‘stabilisation’. There is evidence of a dismantling of democracy and the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, or worse, a totalitarian set-up. I will deal with this in a separate paper – Sri Lanka’s Totalitarian Regime).
- The UNHCR is reviewing country conditions in both these countries and related guidelines for refugee status determination.
(A damning report[14] on Sri Lanka, the CORI Report (Country of Origin Research and Information), commissioned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Division of International Protection, was released only a few days after the decision by the Australian government.
This was followed by one of the most irresponsible reports ever published by an important international organisation, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The Report[15] UNHCR Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection Needs for Asylum –Seekers from Sri Lanka. 5 July 2010.HRC/EG/SLK/10/03 claims that the human rights situation in the Tamil areas had “improved markedly”. It is an outrageous document that is at variance with several reports from internationally credible human rights organisations across the world e.g. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch etc, all of whom have been denied access to Sri Lanka.
The UNHCR states that the Report was “intended for the use of UNHCR and State adjudicators in the assessment of claims by Sri Lankan asylum-seekers.”
It is a thoroughly irresponsible document which will do immense damage to already brutalised people. It is, in fact, a collection of half-truths, untruths and frank lies based on hearsay, not from direct observation by visiting the Tamil areas and collecting reliable data. Almost every claim made can be challenged. This I will do when time permits.
The facts are that:-
1) In 2008, Sri Lanka was thrown out of the position it held on the UN Human Rights Council because of its poor human rights record.
2) The European Union has just (February 2010) suspended the GSP+ facility of trade concessions[16] which is tied to the human rights record of the recipient country.
3) UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon said that he is sending a group of experts to advise him on "The accountability concerns, possible breaches of international humanitarian law or abuses of human rights carried out during the conflict". As has been mentioned, this group has now been appointed. Their investigation in Sri Lanka can, and will almost certainly be blocked or seriously limited by the GoSL that has campaigned strongly against the appointment of this Panel. (They have to get the permission of the GoSL to even get into the country).
4) On 19 May 2010, Phil Glendenning, Director of the Edmund Rice Centre in Australia, who had just returned from Sri Lanka issued a Media release[17] (Appendix 1) that the country was not safe for the deportation of asylum seekers, and called on the Australian government to suspend such returns. It is unlikely that Mr Glendenning will be allowed to re-enter Sri Lanka.
- Given these developments, the Australian Government has suspended the processing of new asylum claims by Sri Lankan nationals for a period of three months and the processing of new asylum claims by Afghan nationals for a period of six months.
(There have been no ‘developments’ in Sri Lanka, except two rigged elections, one to re-elect the President, followed by the arrest and detention of his main political rival on unsubstantiated charges, and a Parliamentary Election which was so flawed that “The Program for Protection of Public Resources (PPPR)” conducted by the Sri Lankan Chapter of Transparency International said that it had received 200 complaints on the abuse of public resources during the General Election campaign. PPPR concluded (4.4.2010) “Therefore, it’s doubtful as to whether this election can be considered as a ‘free and fair’ election when taking into account the level of abuse of public resources”.
To claim that “given the recent developments’, implying an improvement in the abuse of human rights or governance, is simply incorrect.
The situation in Afghanistan, where there is an on-going war, is worse. The Afghan government and armed militants are killing civilians at random.
- These suspensions will be reviewed at the end of their respective periods.
(No, they will have to be withdrawn right now, if Australia is to retain what little credibility it has left. This will not happen without international pressure. Hence the absolute need for international pressure on the Australian government.)
- Asylum seekers currently on Christmas Island will continue to have their claims processed and will not be subject to the suspension.
(The entire problem of detention of asylum seekers in virtual prisons in Christmas Island and other so-called ‘detention centres’ in mainland Australia, is a serious breach of the UN Refugee Convention, signed and ratified by Australia. I will deal with this in a separate paper, Asylum seekers – Australia’s Illegal Action.
As for the comment about asylum seekers already in Christmas Island not being subjected to the recent decision, it is as absurd as is the decision to suspend asylum seeker claims lodged by the new arrivals. What exactly is the difference between asylum seekers already in Christmas Island and the recent arrivals? What if they got to Christmas Island a day earlier, two days earlier, or six months earlier? How does theduration of their stay in Christmas Island (or anywhere else) alter their right to have their visa applications processed? It is astounding that a supposedly responsible government should make these laughable statements.)
- The Australian Government will take into consideration the outcomes of the UNHCR's review of country situation in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan in the finalisation of information provided to decision-makers responsible for refugee status determinations.
(No, what the Australian government has done is illegal, whatever the findings of the UNHCR. The UN Refugee Convention has not stated that the UNHCR is the arbiter.
As I have pointed out, the UNHCR has published a damning report on Sri Lanka (The Country of Origin Research and Information – CORI Report[18]), the very month that the decision by the Australian government was made! The ‘lifeline’ thrown to the Australian government by the UNHCR in its most recent Report that the situation has ‘markedly improved’, will only be believed by those who are trying to justify the unjustifiable.
- The Australian Government believes that asylum seekers should only be granted the right to live in Australia if they are genuinely in need of protection.
(What the Australian government “believes” is not the issue. The issue is what the Australian government has signed regarding the handling of asylum seekers i.e. the UN Refugee Convention.)
- These measures will ensure that Australia's refugee processing system continues to recognise those genuinely in need of our protection.
(Australia is in no position to judge who is ‘genuine’ and who is not. There are people and groups with the necessary expertise to do this. Australian bureaucrats and politicians in Canberra who have vested interests and an agenda that has nothing to do with humanitarian problems, are hardly an alternative.
Let me clarify the ‘refugee processing system’ in Australia. An application for refuge is lodged by an asylum seeker who arrives by boat. It is looked at by an Immigration Officer. If he/she rejects it, it is looked at by another Immigration Officer, slightly more senior than the first. If he/she rejects it, that is it. Two Officers from the same office are hardly independent opinions. There is now only one more thing that can be done – a direct appeal to the Minister on humanitarian grounds. Whom does the Minister consult? The Immigration Officer! Not surprisingly, the Minister rarely, if ever, reverses what his officials have decided. It is a ‘home-and-home’ match, with not even the pretence of impartiality. That is ‘justice’ – Australia-style. It is not much different from President Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka.
The UN Convention does not distinguish between “genuine” and “non-genuine” asylum seekers. If they seek asylum, and have grounds for doing so, they are asylum seekers. As I have said, the UNHCR has set this out in the clearest possible language:- “Anasylum seeker is a person who has left their country of origin, has applied for recognition as a refugee in another country, and is awaiting a decision on their application”[19].
Asylum seekers are not doing anything illegal. On the UN Refugee Convention and on Australian Law, it is clear that it is legal to seek asylum.)
- Irregular maritime arrivals claiming asylum will continue to be subject to mandatory detention, including those subject to the suspension.
(There is nothing called “Irregular …. arrivals”. Refugees and asylum seekers flee repressive and dangerous regimes. “Irregular” implies that there are “Regular” arrivals. There is no queue when people are fleeing murderous regimes.
As for “maritime arrivals”, the mode of arrival of refugees is irrelevant. They can come by boat, or plane, or walk (if there is an adjoining land mass). It has no relevance where seeking asylum is concerned.
An important point about ‘maritime arrivals’ is that where unauthorised entry or residence in Australia is concerned, asylum seekers who arrive by boat or plane are vastly outnumbered by people who overstay their visas. For example, in 2007-08, there were 48,500 visa overstayers, and only 1,476 unauthorised arrivals, of whom only 25 arrived by boat. The difference is that most of the visa overstayers were not ‘brown’ or ‘black’. This raises the question as to whether the recent declaration by the Australian government is racist. If it is, then it must be challenged, since it violates Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act.
As for ‘mandatory detention’, taking the Courts out of the equation is illegal – a violation of the Refugee Convention. “Mandatory” means that a judge has no power to decide on the validity or otherwise, of a claim for refuge or asylum. To detention he/she must go. It is a travesty of justice, unworthy of a civilized/democratic country.
This thoroughly irresponsible interference with the judicial system was introduced by the dreadful Howard (Liberal) government. It was opposed by the then Labor Opposition, and now, with breathtaking hypocrisy, it is being pursued by a Labor government. That is politics – Australia-style, not much different from politics in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as it likes to call itself.
There is not a scrap of evidence that mandatory detention achieves anything other than traumatizing an already traumatised people. It is inhuman, cruel and degrading. As such, it is a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed and ratified by Australia which states:- Article 5:- “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”
All that mandatory detention had done is to damage the standing of Australia. There is certainly no evidence that mandatory detention prevented asylum seekers from coming here, any more than capital punishment prevented people from committing crimes that could result in execution. It is naïve to believe that it does. Incidentally, the new Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is a strong supporter of mandatory detention, however illegal it is. Amazingly, she is a lawyer!)
- The Government is also strengthening a range of law enforcement measures targeting people smugglers.
(People smugglers exist because there is a need for them – for people to flee barbaric regimes. People smugglers are not the problem; barbaric regimes are. It is governments that subject their people to gross violations of their basic human rights, and create people smugglers, that have to be targetted.
Ex-Prime Minister Rudd, says that “people smugglers are the scum of the earth” and “should rot in hell”. His vitriolic comments should be directed at those who createpeople smugglers, both in Sri Lanka, and right here in the country of which he was, till a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister. His vitriolic outburst is aimed at gathering some votes at the impending General Election – politicking – no more, no less, to show the voter how ‘tough’ he is on asylum seekers and in ‘protecting’ this country (from unarmed helpless people). I have often felt that some of these Australian politicians will be completely at home in Sri Lankan politics. The game is the same, just the setting is different.)
- The Australian Government will crack down on people smuggling by introducing measures to stop the flow of funds and support to people smuggling ventures.
(It is more appropriate for Australia to “crack down” on regimes that force people to get into unseaworthy boats, pay huge sums of money they can ill afford, and embark on notoriously dangerous trips. Getting into bed with such regimes, or acting as their mouthpiece, is simply unacceptable.
If the Australian government is that concerned about people smugglers, then it must look into the factors that make people flee these dreadful regimes i.e. the “push-factors”. It is clear that Australia is disinclined to do this, for geopolitical, economic, trade agreements etc seem to be what are ‘important – to hell with human rights.)
Stopping funds for ‘people smugglers
- Tough new powers will result in the deregistration of remittance dealers that facilitate access to funds for people smuggling ventures and other unlawful activities including money laundering.
A stronger regulatory regime for remittance dealers will ensure law enforcement agencies receive better financial intelligence, to enable disruption and deterrence of people smuggling.
The Government will also seek to expedite the passage of legislation that will significantly strengthen Australia's laws against people smuggling.
The Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill includes additional offences targeting those who finance or provide support for people smuggling activities as well as stronger penalties that recognise the seriousness of people smuggling offences.
(This is a very sinister decision. Under the pretext of blocking “funds for people smuggling ventures” is the ability to block, discourage or invoke fear in those who send money for the refugees. It enables the Police and others to swoop down on those who send money to refugees, asylum seekers and others in desperate need of help, and accuse them of sending money to ‘people smugglers’ or even ‘terrorists’.
The Bill is vague, to say the least. It is “The Anti-people Smuggling and Other Measures Bill”. What exactly is an “Other Measures Bill”? What other measures? It is open to a lot of abuse by the powers that be. It is similar to the notorious “Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA)” in Sri Lanka. “Terrorism” can be anything from violence to no more than being critical of the government.
I am therefore seriously concerned about this Bill, and the possibility, indeed probability, of abuse.
Let me give you a possible case scenario. A student of mine, now a doctor, is in one of Rajapaksa’s concentration camps in Northern Sri Lanka. He calls me and asks for $1,000 to feed his starving wife and children in Jaffna, in the Sri Lankan North. Do I send it, or do I tell him to let his family starve? If I send it and he decides to send half the money to his family and use the rest to pay a people smuggler to get him and his family on a boat to Australia, am I now, in the eyes if the Australian government, guilty of financing ‘people smuggling’? Would there be a knock on my door by the Australian Federal Police? I bet there will be, on what I have just gone through – which I will set out below.
There is even the ability to accuse people who have done nothing other than being critical of the Sri Lankan government and what it is doing to its people. As someone who has been critical of the human rights record of a succession of Sri Lankan governments for the past 60 years, I am a persona non grata, not just to Rajapaksa’s junta (about which I could not care less), but apparently to Australia, where I have been a citizen for 35 years. The latter is of concern to me. As an Australian citizen, I do have certain basic rights in this country.
I will present what I have been subjected to even before this sinister decision was made (and the Law that was passed recently). I will set this out in detail to show that it is not paranoia, but reality.
In 2009, I was nominated by a Canadian organisation “Canadians for Genocide Education” for their annual international award. In accepting the Award, I said that my acceptance speech would be on the “Genocide of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, its causes and remedies”. The Sri Lankan government objected strongly but could do nothing to stop the award or the meeting. In March 2009 I went to Canada to receive the Award.
Arriving back in Brisbane, Australia, where I have been a citizen for 35 years, a Senior Specialist Consultant Physician and an Associate Professor of Medicine, I was held up at the Brisbane International airport, questioned and searched for several hours. The customs official apologetically told me, “Please don’t hold it against us, we are only doing what we have been asked to do”. To the obvious question, “Asked by whom?”the response was a smile which said it all.
Two weeks later, two members of the Australian Federal Police arrived in my home, “just for a chat”. It turned out to be a little more than a chat. They were from the ‘Counter-Terrorism Unit’ and were there to investigate a complaint that I had sent money to the Tamil Tiger ‘terrorists’ (which, of course, I had not, simply because I had no money to send). When I realised why they were there, I asked them who had lodged the complaint: “The Sri Lankan High Commissioner in Canberra”, they said with a smile. I was not amused.
When I expressed astonishment, they ‘explained’ that coming as it did from a diplomat, they had to ‘look into it’. That a foreign diplomat from a 3rd world dictatorship (or from any other place, for that matter), would be able to step outside his diplomatic function and harass an Australian citizen is worrying, to say the least.
Steve Austin from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 612 Radio in Brisbane, heard about this and interviewed me on air. Determined to look into it, he called the Australian Attorney General, and then the Federal Police, who told him that I was most co-operative and open, and had done nothing illegal or wrong.
Did I get an apology from the Federal Police or from those who sent them? No, I did not. Was any action taken against the Sri Lankan diplomat who had stepped well beyond his diplomatic function and had lodged a totally false allegation against an Australian citizen? No, not that I am aware of. Bruce Haigh, a former Australian Deputy High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, who knows the diplomatic protocol well (as one would expect), when he heard about this outrage, told me that the Sri Lankan diplomat had breached diplomatic protocol, and should be on his bicycle back to Sri Lanka.
The message was very clear. If you are critical of the human rights record or any other feature of these dreadful regimes with which Australia has “friendly relations”, you can expect a ‘visit’ from the Australian Federal Police ‘Counter-Terrorism Unit’, as it likes to call itself. All that is necessary is for some bogus accusation to be lodged by anyone, and that is it. The Police are on your doorstep.
What I have related was before the proposed legislation, the ‘Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill’. If what I have described can be done by the Australian Police and others in authority with the powers they already have, one can imagine what it will be after these sweeping powers are increased by legislation. If Australia has decided to become a Police State or a Fascist State, protest we must, and will.
I am therefore urging all Australians to see the writing on the wall, which this recent decision by their Australian government is a sure sign of what Naomi Wolf[20] calls a “fascist shift”.
I will skip the rest of this section, because it contains absurdities similar to what I have dealt with, and get on to the next.
Sri Lanka: transition from conflict
- President Mahinda Rajapaksa was re-elected in January 2010 following the first nation-wide election for many years and parliamentary elections took place on 8 April 2010.
(No, it was not a ‘nation-wide election’. According to non-government election monitors, only 52%of the country’s 14 million registered voters cast a ballot. This is the lowest voter turn-out in any election in that country. In the war-ravaged Northern Province, only 20 percent voted. The Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CFFE) reported that thousands of Tamil civilians in the North had been prevented from voting. Near the military-run prison camps in Manik Farm where 90,000 civilians are still illegally held, many lined up in long queues only to be told that they were not registered voters. The BBC reported[21] that poll monitors had said that “Many war-displaced Tamils in the north had been denied voting rights.”
The Presidential Election (January 2010)
The International Crisis Group (ICG) stated that since the end of the ‘war’, “President Rajapaksa’s primary interest has been to consolidate his power”. ICG argues that this is reflected in the decision to call early presidential elections in January 2010[22].
The election witnessed a gross misuse of power by the government, and escalating violence, much of it unleashed by the governing (Rajapaksa’s) party. CNN stated that there were “more than 700 reports of violence ahead of the election”[23]
The New York Times[24] “election observers and advocacy groups have questioned the fundamental fairness of the campaign, accusing Mr. Rajapaksa of using state resources to run his campaign. State-owned news media all but shut out opposition candidates.”
To refer to Rajapaksa as “President Rajapaksa” indicates that Australia is not in touch with what is going on in Sri Lanka. Mahinda Rajapaksa has gone well beyond this. He is not the ‘President’ but a ‘King’, appointed by himself and his brothers. He certainly sees himself as a King. Colombo was plastered with cardboard cutouts (a photograph of which I have), of an ancient Sinhalese worrier, Dutugemunu, who, like Rajapaksa, came from the deep South. Dutugemunu fought the ageing and just Tamil king, Ellala, and killed him. Rajapakse fancies himself as the reincarnation of Dutugemunu, who fought the Tamils and ‘won’.
When the ruler is a king, there are no citizens; only subjects. Subjects are bound to obey the king unquestioningly since monarchical infallibility was a belief that premised absolute monarchies. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Rajapaksa is the “Tsar[25] of Sri Lanka” and his governance is “Tsarism”.
The Sri Lankan Executive President, with sweeping powers, has been replaced by the rule of one family – Mahinda Rajapaksa, his three brothers and some 38 relatives – (there are estimates which are much higher than 38). I will detail this in an article to follow, Sri Lanka’s Totalitarian Regime.
President Rajapaksa’s political opponent, ex-General Sarath Fonseka arrested
Soon after the Presidential election, military police arrested General Sarath Fonseka, the former Army Commander, who dared to contest him in the Presidential election. Al Jazeera cited[26] defence officials as indicating the arrest was “on charges of plotting to overthrow the country’s government”, of which there was no evidence. The BBC[27]stated that “just hours before his arrest, the General said he was prepared to give evidence in an international court on any war crime charges against the state.”
Richly though he deserved arrest for the war crimes that he had committed as the Army Commander, so is Rajapaksa’s brother, Gotabaya, the Defence Secretary, and President Rajapaksa himself, who is the Minister of Defence, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and the Executive President. What was done (and is still in progress), was to get the message across, loud and clear, that Rajapaksa was not to be challenged, and if he is, the consequences would be serious. Fonseka is still in custody, learning this the hard way. He has just issued a pathetic(!) appeal from his detention cell in the Naval barracks in Colombo. I am not about to offer my help to this mass murderer, who should be hauled up before an International Tribunal.
His former boss, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in a TV tirade aired internationally(!), said that Fonseka will be hanged if he testifies against the Government. He might well be, whether he testifies or not. Such is the murderous Rajapaksa regime.
Parliamentary elections 8 April 2009
The parliamentary elections were conducted with one of the candidates (Fonseka) leading a political party, incarcerated in detention.
The ‘election’ was a farce. The Guardian stated[28]:- “Local and international monitors have logged nearly 400 incidents of election-related violence. More than 50 have involved firearms. About two thirds of complaints are against the ruling UPFA. Opposition politicians accused the government of misusing state resources to gain an unfair advantage in the polls and said the media had been intimidated.”[29].
As would be expected, Rajapaksa’s party won 117 of the 225 seats in parliament and the main opposition party won 46 seats making it unlikely to give Rajapaksa the two thirds majority he needed to make ‘constitutional changes’ i.e. entrench himself even more firmly in power, but he has taken the steps to ‘correct’ this.
Ominously, Rajapaksa when asked at a Press Conference about the two thirds majority, said that there always were the opposition MPs, indicating almost certain bribery or intimidation for them to cross the floor as happened after the last election in 2005.
That is ‘Democracy’ Sri Lankan style. Australia describes this as:- "Given the evolving situation in Sri Lanka, a suspension in the processing of asylum claims from Sri Lankan nationals is appropriate”. “Evolving situation” it certainly is. An ‘evolving Totalitarian State’ is a more accurate description.
A new parliament
Yes, there is a new parliament in Sri Lanka, made up of people whom one of the widely read newspapers described more accurately than I can. The Sunday Leader in an editorial just before the Election set out what was on offer to the Sri Lankan voters.
“None of the individual contenders, political parties or opportunistic coalitions are worthy of our respect or our vote. Together they comprise the most mind-boggling array of crooks, thugs, conmen, hypocrites, unprincipled racists, rapists, drug dealers, money launderers, and general all-round scum that is without parallel elsewhere in the world. Other nations have their share of such undesirables, no doubt, but among them are a handful of honest, sincere, principled folk who have distanced themselves from the corrupt majority. Not so in miserable Sri Lanka.”
These are the parliamentarians who have been elected and the government they have formed. These are the people that the Australian government, and others, trust to ‘settle the problems’ in Sri Lanka! Are these the “evolving circumstances” the Australian government refers to? It has to be – since this is the reality in Sri Lanka.
President Rajapaksa has appointed 85 Ministers and Deputy Ministers, the world’s largest. There are 5 Muslims, 4 Tamils and 76 Sinhalese. Among the Tamils is Vinayagamoorthy Mularitharan,(‘Colonel’ Karuna Amman), a convicted criminal who arrived in Britain on a false diplomatic passport, allegedly issued by Gotabaya Rajapaksa, arrested, charged, convicted and jailed in Britain. In 1990 he had executed 133 (Sinhalese) police officers who had surrendered to him in the East, murdered Muslims in two mosques, and was responsible for recruiting hundreds of Tamil child soldiers. Amnesty International urged the British Police to prosecute him for war crimes. Instead, he was sent back to Sri Lanka where President Rajapaksa immediately made him a Minister.
In a Press release on 7 October 2008, AI stated “Sri Lanka: Karuna’s presence in Parliament a travesty of justice”. With no holds barred, AI stated, “Karuna should stand trial. The fact that a suspected war criminal should be entering Parliament sends an appalling message – that war crimes, rather than being investigated and punished, are actually rewarded”.
Australia has a well informed Embassy in Colombo and it is ridiculous to claim that the government does not know all this.
Moreover, Gordon Weiss, an Australian, who has been with the UN for 14 years, has just returned to this country. He was the UN Spokesman in Sri Lanka. He is clearly someone who has a detailed knowledge of what is going on there. He resigned from the UN and returned to Australia in early 2010. Interviewed by the ABC[30] much-respected ‘Foreign Correspondent’ program on 9 February 2010[31], he said that “The Sri Lankan government said many things which were either intentionally misleading or were lies”.
If the Australian government wanted to know what was going on in Sri Lanka, there could have been no better person than Gordon Weiss. Was he contacted? I doubt it, since if he was; there is no way he would have said that Sri Lanka was a safe place for Tamil refugees to be returned to.
This is the regime that Australia is in bed with).
The Statement goes on:-
• Progress is being made in tackling the challenging task of resettling hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens and rehabilitating their communities.
(No, progress is not being made. If it is, why is the GoSL so coy in letting all of us go and see the great work that is being done in ‘resettling hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens’? Why the strict censorship? Why restrict international observers, media and human rights groups from going to the area and checking out this wonderful job? The Australian government really needs to do some reading, unless, of course, it has a hidden agenda, which is barely ‘hidden’.
Let me quote the reports that were available, and also get some (mis)quoted figures right.
The UNHCR[32] estimates that when the military operations ended in May 2009, about 280,000 people were added to the existing population of 300,000 IDPs (Internally Displaced People i.e. refugees). So, there were more than half a million IDPs in northern Sri Lanka, not 280,000 as quoted by Amnesty International, and even by me in the numerous dvds I have recorded and released internationally.
The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) stated[33] that, “…the Sri Lankan government had transferred approximately 280,000 civilians from the former conflict areas to camps in the north of Sri Lanka.”
The same report stated that, “significant protection concerns” remain “for both displaced and returning civilians, as well as for at least 11,500 suspected ex-combatants to whom the ICRC has no access and who themselves have no access to due legal process regarding their detention.”
To get back to the UNHCR report I have just referred to, it states that the majority of the IDPs who fled the offensive:- “live in closed camps in Vavuniya district, as well as in camps in Mannar, Jaffna and Trincomalee…….The IDPs originate mainly from the Mannar, Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Jaffna districts in northern Sri Lanka, as well as from some areas in the east of the country.
UNHCR expressed its hope that, due to recent progress, “a substantial number of IDPs will be able to return to their places of origin in the latter half of 2009, but a large portion of new IDPs are also likely to remain in the camps and with host families until well into 2010.”
The UNHCR expressing “hope” is not good enough, certainly not in Sri Lanka.
The UNHCR should also answer the question as to when living ‘with host families’ constituted rehabilitation.
The International Crisis Group (ICG)[34] put this bluntly:- “the resettlement process has failed to meet international standards for safe and dignified returns. There has been little or no consultation with the displaced and no independent monitoring; many returns have been to areas not cleared of mines and unexploded ordnance; inadequate financial resources have been provided for those returning home; and the military continues to control people’s movements.
Sri Lanka has made little progress in reconstructing its battered democratic institutions or establishing conditions for a stable peace. Eight months later, the post-war policies of President Mahinda Rajapaksa have deepened rather than resolved the grievances that generated and sustained LTTE militancy.”
More concerns were expressed by the United States[35] about land seizures by the government:- “….in the north and east. Significant amounts of land were seized during the war by the military to create security buffer zones around military bases and other high-value targets which the government called HSZ[36]. The declaration of HSZs resulted in a number of displaced persons, particularly in the Jaffna Peninsula, and rendered inactive approximately 40 square kilometers of agricultural lands. While the government discussed reducing the size of these HSZs towards the end of the year, there was no action taken by year's end.
Paramilitary actors were often cited as being responsible for other land seizures. While a legal process exists for private landowners to contest such seizures, in practice it proved very slow, and many victims did not take advantage of it for fear of violent reprisals by those who had seized the property in question.”
In February 2010, the European Union declared its intent to:- “suspend Sri Lanka’s preferential trade benefits” due to “significant shortcomings in Sri Lanka's implementation of international human rights conventions.” This has now been done which confirms Sri Lanka’s failure to implement international human rights conventions.
In June 2010, a group of journalists in Colombo, many of them Sinhalese, took the trouble and the not inconsiderable risk of visiting the Tamil North to see whether what the GoSL claimed about rehabilitation was true. They found that it was completely untrue. Their very important publication (on the net) is cited later in this article.
We might well ask the Australian government from where it is getting its information that there are ‘evolving circumstances’, implying an improvement in human rights concerns in Sri Lanka, when serious concerns have been expressed by the UNHCR, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, European Union, International Crisis Group, the US Department of State, and even Sinhalese investigators in Colombo. Has the Australian government got some secret information that has not been disclosed i.e. that all of the organisations I have cited are wrong (or are lying) and that “Progress is being made (by Sri Lanka) in tackling the challenging task of resettling hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens and rehabilitating their communities”?
If this is what Australia is trying to do, it will have an up-hill battle. It is just absurd to suggest that the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, his Deputy Julia Gillard, now his successor, and their senior Ministers were (are) unable to access this information, when a doctor of medicine working with no facilities, no staff and only equipped with a computer was able to do so? This is the age of the internet, of mobile phones, of video devices, that can instantly transmit information, and break all barriers that existed some time ago. One does not need to go to Sri Lanka. To switch on the computer is all that is needed.)
- Of the nearly 300,000 civilians displaced by the conflict, nearly 200,000 have either returned to their own homes or are living with host families.
(No they have not. “Nearly 200,000” have not returned to their homes, because they have been destroyed by the GoSL, and even their lands taken over and given to Sinhalese ‘settlers’ from the South. The evidence is cited above and in that crucial report from Sinhalese reporters I have referred to, a part of which I will reproduce below.
The Australian government must answer the same question as the UNHCR has to answer :- “Does living with host families constitute ‘resettlement?” If it does, Australia and the UNHCR have an interesting concept of ‘resettlement’. Many of us are familiar with English.)
- The Sri Lankan Government and humanitarian agencies are providing support for returnees through the provision of basic needs such as shelter, as well as assistance to help rebuild livelihoods.
(No they are not. Australian politicians (and others) are simply being the mouthpiece of a regime that has perfected the art of lying. Let alone ‘providing support’, a number of International humanitarian agencies have been either denied access to the area, or have very restricted access. I have cited the necessary evidence to document this).
- Living conditions for around 80,000 internally displaced people remaining in camps continue to be difficult but reduced numbers have relieved the problem of overcrowding.
(It is not the ‘living conditions’ for 80,000 people that are relevant. What is relevant is that 80,000 people, including thousands of children, are being held illegally, in violation of International Conventions and UN Principles. This will be dealt with later when I set out the current situation in Sri Lanka. It will also be set out in detail in an upcoming paper, Concentration camps for Tamils in Sri Lanka, to be published shortly.
- We have responded generously to the humanitarian challenges facing Sri Lanka and continue to encourage the Sri Lankan Government to move down the path of peace and reconciliation.
(That is a downright lie. From a global perspective, Australia is one of the most ‘non-generous’. The number of refugees taken by Australia from Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, is abysmally poor. Only one refugee is taken for every 1,600 people in Australia (per capita GDP $35,677, the 13th highest in the world), while one is taken in for every 40 in a miserably poor country such as Tanzania (per capita GDP $1,263, 144 from the top). If Australia does not want to take in refugees, the least it can do is not to lie about it.
When did “encouraging” a fascist dictatorship “to move down the path of peace and reconciliation” ever work? The Australian government is joking, and the Sri Lankan government has worked this out. They are not stupid - just barbaric).
- Given the evolving situation in Sri Lanka, a suspension in the processing of asylum claims from Sri Lankan nationals is appropriate.
(It is not a question of whether it is “appropriate” or not. The question is whether it islegal – which it is not).
Opting out of the UN Refugee Convention
Australia can, of course, opt out of the UN Refugee Convention which is provided for in Article 44 of the Convention:- “Any Contracting State may denounce this Convention at any time by a notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations”.
That is certainly possible, but until that is done, the Articles of the UN Refugee Convention cannot be violated. If they are, protest we must, and will.
The possibility of taking Australia to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) must be explored. This is provided for in Article 38 of the Refugee Convention:-
Article 38 Settlement of disputes:- “Any dispute between parties to this Convention relating to its interpretation or application, which cannot be settled by other means, shall be referred to the International Court of Justice at the request of any one of the parties to the dispute”.
As is not unusual with these UN documents, they cannot be enforced. For example, Article 38 states “any dispute between parties”. Who are these ‘parties’? Australia is clearly one, but who is the other? The Refugees? But refugees are not a ‘party’.
It is a well known fact that individuals cannot take a country to the ICJ. It has to be another country that has signed the Convention. Moreover, it cannot be any country – it has to be one that is in dispute on the application of the Convention. Such a country does not exist. So, in effect, Article 38 is nonsense.
That said, the possibility of taking Australia to the ICJ must still be explored. Whether the case is lost or won is of little importance. The shame of being dragged before the ICJ is enough.
The Australian government can, however, be charged in Australian Courts for violating the Racial Discrimination Act. I am not a lawyer, but I will be surprised if that is not possible. If it was not, then there is no point having a Racial Discrimination Act.
Rules must be binding, violations must be punished, and words must have meaning. If they are not, then these Conventions and Acts will lose credibility, and the Rule of Law will descend to the Rule of the Jungle. The problem is that the wording of some of these Conventions is such that no one can be held accountable. Hence the Rule of the Jungle prevails.
Is it safe for Sri Lankan Tamil (or Afghan) asylum seekers to be sent back?
Of course it is not safe. As I have said, the evidence comes from Australia’s own travel advice to people going to these countries, issued from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, no less.
Most, if not all, of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers who are affected by the recent decision are Tamil males. Is it safe for them to be sent back? Here is what the US State Department reported in March 2010:-
“outside of the conflict zone the overwhelming majority of victims of human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings and disappearances, were young male Tamils[37]”.
The Report goes on, “Tamils throughout the country, but especially in the conflict-affected north and east, reported frequent harassment of young and middle-aged Tamil men by security forces and paramilitary groups.”
Is the Australian government claiming that the US State Department is lying? If it is, it will be an uphill battle to convince the rest of the world that Australia is right and that the Human Rights Reports of the US State Department, which has international credibility, is wrong. Australia seems to have an inflated opinion of its credibility.
Amnesty International (AI) comment on the 9.4.2010 Australian government action
AI, the Nobel Prize-winning human rights organization of international repute, got it right. Its Australian sector responded immediately (9 April 2010): -
“Don’t use asylum seekers as political footballs”
“The Australian Government has announced a blanket suspension on the processing of new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals.
This is an appalling act of political point scoring and fundamentally inconsistent with our obligations under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
The situation for many groups in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan continues to be tenuous if not downright dangerous. Activists, journalists, women and unaccompanied minors among others still face significant risks.
The Australian Government is singling out these vulnerable people simply to score political points - we need your help to end this outrageous discrimination and reverse this decision.
Take action now
Tell our government that it’s time to rise above political point-scoring and uphold fundamental human rights.
Call on the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Immigration and Citizenship to:
- Reverse their decision to suspend the processing of new asylum applications by Sri Lankan and Afghan nationals.
- Respect the rights of all refugees and asylum seekers regardless of where they come from.
- Stop over-riding the rights of the world’s most vulnerable people for political purposes.
What we want Australia to do
The Australian Government has a rigorous process of assessing asylum claims according to the internationally agreed criteria set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under that process, individuals who are found to be at risk of torture, persecution or death, are offered our protection. Those people who are not found to have genuine claims are returned to their country of origin. As Australia is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, that process should stand.”
A Legal / Humanitarian opinion
Julian Burnside AO. QC, an Australian barrister and a leading human rights advocate, said the move will leave applicants in limbo. This is what he said:- "The government it seems will now say people who arrive here by boat seeking asylum will not be sent back, their application for protection won't be processed, we won't determine whether they are refugees or not we'll just leave them to rot….,"
"Now these things aren't too difficult to authorise by statute but the human rights implications of them are terrible."
"Now these things aren't too difficult to authorise by statute but the human rights implications of them are terrible."
He condemned Tony Abbott, (the Leader of the Opposition and Head of the Liberal party) with no holds barred. He also put the record straight regarding the situation in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. (The Age[38], 9 April 2010):-
“Abbot ignorant on boat arrivals”
“Tabloid readers might not realise the numbers are tiny, but the Liberal leader should.
On Monday night's Q&A, Tony Abbott got his chance to market test some recycled refugee policies, but in the process showed himself to be profoundly ignorant about the subject. Sadly, his ignorance is reflected in some sections of the media, and provides a perfect excuse for bigotry to masquerade as logic.
Stripped to its essentials, Abbott's position comes to this: floods of asylum seekers are coming here by boat; they pass through other countries to get here; they can and should stay in those other countries but they come here because, after all, Australia is such a great country who wouldn't want to come here?
When he was asked how Jesus Christ would respond to boat arrivals, he sidestepped the sting in the question, saying that Australia cannot be a ''lifeboat to the world''.
The rate of people arriving here by boat has always been tiny. The largest number to arrive in any 12-month period over the past three decades is 4100. Compare that with about 200,000 new permanent migrants every year. Boat arrivals so far this year amount to less than three days' worth of ordinary migration.
To suggest that Australia is anywhere near being a lifeboat to the world is ludicrous. Perhaps Abbott was simply experimenting with novel ideas, as we have seen with his various attitudes to climate change and paid maternity leave. But more likely he spoke out of ignorance when he said that refugees who pass through other countries on the way to Australia should stop in those countries rather than continuing on. The problem with that solution is simple: Pakistan, India and Indonesia are not signatories to the United Nations refugee convention. Stopping in those countries affords refugees no protection at all.
Abbott mentioned the Hazaras from Afghanistan and suggested they would be safe in Pakistan. He is wrong. Hazaras have long been targeted by the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan. The Taliban are mostly Pashtun and have targeted the Hazaras mercilessly. The Taliban now control parts of Pakistan, especially around Quetta, where many Afghan Hazaras have fled for safety. Hazaras in Quetta fear to go into the street. Many of them have been shot on sight by Taliban.
To suggest that Hazaras are safe in Pakistan is either profoundly ignorant or profoundly cynical. It is equivalent to saying that German Jews could have found safety in Austria.
Indonesia does not harbour the Taliban, but it is not a party to the refugee convention. Any refugee who reaches Indonesia must live in the shadows, with no right to education or employment, and constantly at risk of arrest. Those assessed as refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have to wait decades before they can hope to be resettled in a country that offers them protection. If Abbott's daughters were refugees in Indonesia, would he advise them to wait to see what would come of it? Or would he encourage them to do what enterprising people have always done: flee for safety using whatever means are available.
Hazaras from Afghanistan are fleeing because the Taliban are increasing their control in Afghanistan.
Tamils from Sri Lanka are fleeing because they face genocide in Sri Lanka, after the collapse of their long-running attempt to establish a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka's north.
On the facts, Abbott's position looks heartless and cynical. Even at the current arrival rate, it would take 30 years of boat arrivals to fill the MCG[39]. Almost all of them are fleeing real and terrible persecution.
Abbott's arguments assume that Australians want a reason to fear and reject asylum seekers, an excuse to behave like racists. I do not share his bleak view. Australians are capable of much greater generosity and compassion than he gives us credit for. We can see that the tiny group of people who manage to get here are people with courage and initiative, fleeing in fear and asking for our protection.
Abbott grossly misrepresents the facts. If he is trying to recreate the hysteria of the Tampa episode, he should never be allowed to lead the country”
Hon Michael Kirby QC, AC, CMG
A former High Court judge, Justice Kirby is what human beings should aspire to be. Never afraid to say what has to be said, he has deservedly earned the respect of thousands. When he was recently asked in a radio interview what he worries about, he simply said, “Unkindness. Unkindness to minorities….” A Radio reporter summed him up, “If you are looking for a role model for your kids, you can’t really go past this fine man”.
Here in Queensland to launch a new journal Social Inclusion in Griffith University, he was interviewed by the ABC[40] on 29 June 2010. He hit the nail on the head, as he has so often done in the thirteen years as one of seven judges in the High Court, and even more so after he stepped down.
The Reporter asked him why asylum seekers continued to be such a hot button issue in the Australian electorate.
Justice Kirby:- “Well, we are an island. Islands trend to be very xenophobic. Japan has had Korean residents for generations and doesn’t give them citizenship. The United Kingdom used to think that all bad things started in Calais. People who live on islands tend to be a bit exclusive. They do not like people who come across the seas, despite our national anthem.
So we really need leadership to teach us that countries that are the most vibrant, that are the most successful, countries that are the most innovative in science, education, in the arts, are countries that have a big mix, and we have a big mix in terms of race but we’ve got to do better at thinking through acceptance of diversity and how it strengthens our country and doesn’t weaken it.
The Reporter, citing the new Prime Minister Julia Gillard saying that Australians wanted strong management of our borders and that she will provide it, asked “Have our politicians trapped themselves in a one way discourse on asylum seekers?”
Justice Kirby:-“Well, I don’t want to get into the politics of this. This is something that will be fought out in the hustings in time. It seems true, according to the Murdock press, that there is a red hot button issue in our community. What is needed is a sort of bipartisan truce so that our leaders stop being nasty and can think that they can get votes by bashing the refugee applicants…..We really haven’t made a lot of progress on the issue of refugee applicants. We accept, in Australia, a trickle, we accept a trickle, in comparison to countries in Europe.
“Whereas we have this small trickle, come ‘Election Time’, it’s always on the agenda, and we have just to grow up and get real and see how many of the people who came here as refugees have really enriched this country. Make a list of the people who came after the War as refugees. Well, we’ve just got to get a humane and compassionate approach and realize in the long run it’s for our nation’s benefit.
The Reporter:-“What about the role of the media in the debate?”
Justice Kirby:-“Good news is no news in Australia. It’s got to be conflict, and it’s got to be disagreement, and therefore you’ll play on it and you are very skillful and you know how to touch the buttons. I’m not saying that media shouldn’t deal with controversial issues, but I think media does wedge things and urges politicians on to be nasty on these issues. That’s something of a pity for civilized discourse in this country”.
Justice Kirby went on to say that this refugee bashing was determined by what the electorate would think in marginal seats i.e. whether refugees were seen as a ‘problem’ in these seats (and if so, politicians capitalize on it).
I can only applaud Justice Kirby (as I have done for years), and Julian Burnside.
Justice Kirby QC, AC, CMG, is a man who should be the Governor General of Australia, and someone who will lift this country. If it was an appointment by a nation-wide ballot, he will surely be elected.
Some extraordinary Australians, and ‘Others’
In a very bleak scene here in Australia, the outspoken people who have voiced their concerns about asylum seekers are few – Pamela Curr (Asylum Seeker Resource Centre), Ian Rintoul and Frederica Steen (Refugee Action Coalition), Julian Burnside QC, Australia’s leading barrister in human rights and asylum seeker issues, Justice Michael Kirby QC, one of Australia’s finest human beings, Andrew Bartlett, one of Australia’s finest politicians, (a former Senator and leader of the Democratic party, now in the Greens party), Senator Sarah Hanson-Young (Greens party), a rising political star, the Socialist Alliance and Green Left that have campaigned tirelessly, Labor For Refugees, Fr Jim Party, Fr Pancras Jordon and Peter Arndt (from the Catholic Archdiocese in Brisbane), Bruce Haigh (former Australian Deputy High Commissioner in Sri Lanka), and David Marr, the outstanding journalist from The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper who has written extensively on asylum seekers, and on the other side of the Tasman, Keith Locke MP, Greens party, New Zealand.
Outstanding work on refugees and asylum seekers has been done by the Edmund Rice Centre (Director Phil Glendenning). This work is focuses on Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and also has crucial evidence of what happens to asylm seekers sent back to their home country.
In a different category are people like Denise Ireland, a nurse who worked with me three decades ago. Now retired and almost crippled with serious rheumatoid arthritis, what money she can save, she regularly sends me:- “You can do what you want with this to help the people who need help in the refugee camps or elsewhere”. How do you describe people like this? They must surely be the “salt of the earth”.
In yet another category are Madhuni Kumarakulasinghe, a science teacher, who in the prime of her life, has put her job on hold to work on asylum seekers. She is in contact with detainees in Christmas Island (and earlier on in Merak), on a daily basis. She lives on love and air. So is Saradha Ramanathan, who has put her family on hold, to be totally involved. She is in continuous contact with asylum seekers/refugees in Christmas Island and detention centres in the mainland. How do I categorise these exceptional people? ‘Human beings’, as distinct from ‘others’.
As for the expatriate Tamils, the income of many being ten times, perhaps fifty times, more than that of Denise Ireland, to get five dollars from many of them to feed the hungry Tamil children in the North of Sri Lanka, or even to do something about their shattered limbs and lives, is almost impossible. I categorise them as “non-Denise Irelands”. They are part of the expatriate Tamil NATO (No Action Talk Only).
"This is a red-neck solution from Prime Minister Rudd, it is a quick fix, in time for election time and it proves that Prime Minister Rudd is irresponsibly dangerous when it comes to managing the issues, concerns and needs of the world's most vulnerable people who arrive on Australia's doorstep. He has proven that he is a coward when it comes to standing up for what is right. He's simply bowing to the pressure of Tony Abbott and the Opposition and following them down the low road of electoral politics that was so well laid out by John Howard."
David Marr’s absolute condemnation of Australia’s handling of asylum seekers is in his book, Dark Victory[41]. He has written extensively on the subject and fronted up on TV. His integrity, honesty and basic decency were there for all to see.
Australia, indeed the world, needs more of these decent people. If they are no longer being created, they will have to be cloned!
Australia’s shameful record, particularly at election-time
As I have said, Australians are some of the finest people on this planet who have made this country one of the finest to live in. That is why I came here 35 years ago, and stayed. I did not have to come here.
Australia has a shameful record where asylum seekers are concerned. In 2005, Monash University had a major Conference “Seeking Asylum in Australia 1995-2005”[42].
The title of Julian Burnside’s paper said it all: “What the Government Will Do If they Can Get Away With It”. He said “frankly it seems to me that this Government is prepared to do just about anything… if they can get away with it.” That also applies to the current government from the other side of the political divide.
The Australian Red Cross survey (21 June 2010)
Australian Red Cross has just released[43] (21 June 2010) the results of a survey of 1,000 people across Australia, released to coincide with Refugee Week (20-26 June). The CEO, Robert Tickner, said that, “The survey found that the community empathises with the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. Australians can relate, with 85% of people surveyed saying that they too would flee to a safe country if they lived in a conflict zone and were under threat.”
“94% of these people would use all their money and assets to get to a safe country”.
“83% agree that people fleeing persecution should be able to seek protection in another country.”
“83% are willing to assist a refugee in their community settle in Australia”
This is an important finding because it is clear that the dreadful politicians that this country has produced have misread the sentiments of the people i.e. they are not in touch with ordinary people, or how they feel. Doing dreadful things to refugees and asylum seekers, do not necessarily win votes, as John Howard (Liberal Prime Minister) found out.
The blot on this fine country is its political leaders, some of whom are dreadful, outdone only by those in Sri Lanka. Adding to this is the despicable scare-mongering media, another group not in touch with the people, who urge the politicians to be nasty.
Australia’s irresponsible Media
The Media have behaved in a thoroughly irresponsible manner to create this ‘border protection’ hysteria. “Here another asylum seeker boat coming in”: “This is the 5thboat this year” are banner headlines, with photographs, genuine, and on one crucial occasion, before the ‘Tampa Election’, fabricated. As Justice Kirby rightly pointed out it is the media who encourage these nasty politicians to do what they do, compounding the problem. In an outstanding interview a few weeks ago, which I have quoted at length, he told a Reporter that the media were “very skillful” and know “how to touch the buttons” that “urges politicians on how to be nasty on these issues”.
Australia’s dreadful politicians
Australia has some dreadful politicians in all the major parties – political opportunists, racists, or, as a Sri Lankan newspaper said of the Sri Lankan politicians, “the scum of the earth”. The worst of the Australian Prime Ministers was the last, John Howard (Liberal). His racism was not even thinly disguised. He went to the extent of using a fabricated photograph allegedly showing asylum seekers throwing their children overboard, asking with feigned concern, “Do we want people like that in this country?”
I refer to refugees rescued by the Norwegian ship, Tampa, and brought to Australia (The Tampa crisis) in August 2001. This supposed ‘border protection’, and “protecting the country from undesirable people”, based on a downright lie, got him another term in office.
The Tampa Crisis
When reading this account of what happened in 2001 (before the impending General Election in November 2001), one should keep in mind the current situation in 2010 (before the impending General Election due on 21 August 2010, 9 years after ‘Tampa’). I am going into this in detail because it is about to be replayed.
At dawn on 24 August 2001, a 20 metre wooden fishing boat, the Palapa 1, with 438 (369 men, 26 women and 43 children), mainly Afghan refugees, was ‘adrift’ in international waters about 140 km north of Christmas Island. The words ‘adrift’ and “stranded” are what the Australian authorities called it. If it is a wooden boat, falling apart (as was confirmed) in the middle of the ocean, the word is “shipwrecked”, not “adrift” or “stranded”. It is legally important to get the words correct.
Australian Coastwatch surveillance spotted the boat and informed the Australian Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC). RCC did nothing for two days, so much for “rescue”! What if it was an Australian family, indeed a single person[44], who had gone on some jaunt and got stuck in mid-ocean? Would RCC twiddle their thumbs for two days? I doubt it. However, the people we are dealing with are Afghanis, ‘lesser people’, whose lives are expendable. That they are all God’s children and their lives do matter, is something that this so-called “Christian country’ prefers to ignore.
While RCC sat on its hands, 438 people, among who were 43 children, could have gone to the bottom of the ocean, as so many boats have, ‘solving’ the problem. (As I have said, I call this Australia’s “Indian Ocean Solution” to refugees/asylum seekers).
On 26 August, RCC waking up from its slumber, requested all ships in the area to respond. Of the ships that did, the Norwegian vessel, Tampa, was closest to the site and began to proceed towards the distressed boat.
According to international law, survivors of a shipwreck are to be taken to the closest suitable port for medical treatment. That is the Law. However, Australia’s John Howard government (Liberal), contacted Indonesia (note the similarity with what happened in October 2009 – the “Merak boat crisis” – when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (Labor) personally contacted the Indonesian President and asked him to prevent a boat with 247 Tamil asylum seekers from Sri Lanka from coming to Australia).
Indonesia under pressure from Australia, ‘offered’ Merak, the Indonesian port (as it did again in 2009 under similar pressure, from Rudd). Merak was 12 hours away from the boat; Christmas Island some six or seven hours closer.[45]
There is no doubt that the Australian rescue authorities were aware of the vessel’s distress well before the Indonesian authorities. Instead of launching an immediate rescue operation, RCC tried for some time to get Indonesia to attend to the rescue. Morally, if not legally, RCC (and by extension the Australian government), was wrong. RCC had no right to do this, and I find it difficult to believe that it would have done so without the Australian government having been informed. This is not speculation, there is evidence – see below.
RCC faxed the Indonesian Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) on the night of 25 August but received no response. On Sunday 26 August, ‘The cat was out of the bag’ when the Australian embassy sent its naval attaché David Ramsay to visit BASARNAS, clearly indicating that the Australian government was well and truly involved.
By this time, Australian surveillance had observed that the ship's passengers had put up signs "SOS" and “HELP" on the ship's deck which were clearly visible.
Instead of responding to what was an obvious crisis with several hundred lives at stake, the shameful Australian government made further attempts to contact BASARNAS, first by fax and then through the defence attaché in Jakarta.
The Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural affairs (DIMA) had called RCC asking if “vessels that respond to Australian search and rescue broadcast can tow the stranded vessel to Indonesia'. I emphasize that this is a violation of international law, because, as I have said, the vessel had to be towed to the nearest port with medical facilities (ie Christmas Island, not Indonesia). It was a little more than “stranded” – a problem Australia is having with the English language.
A call to shipping was broadcast: "Subject: Distress Relay.A 35-metre Indonesian type vessel with 80 plus[46] persons on board adrift in the vicinity of 09.32.5 south 104.44 east ... vessel has SOS and HELP written on the roof. Vessels within 10 hours report best ETA[47] and intentions to this station." It was a little more than ‘adrift’ i.e. it was shipwrecked.
Captain Arne Rinnan, master of Tampa, responded to the mayday call: "We are on a voyage from Freemantle to Singapore via Sunda Strait ..... We have changed course and are headed for position of distress ... Please advise further course of action. A Rinnan, Master."
After an hour of setting course towards the distressed vessel, Rinnan received a direction from RCC attempting to disown the rescue operation: "Please note that Indonesian search and rescue authorities have accepted co-ordination of this incident." This was not only disgraceful and a failure to fulfil Australia’s obligation under international law, but a downright lie, since the Indonesians had done no such thing.
The Tampa reached the vessel at 2 pm guided by an Australian Coastwatch aircraft . The first (sick) child was lifted to safety at 2:30pm and the rescue operation continued all afternoon. Captain Rinnan later re-counted in an interview with Norway Today:
“They sent a plane to direct us to the sinking boat. When we arrived it was obvious to us that it was coming apart. Several of the refugees were obviously in a bad state and collapsed when they came on deck to us. 10 to 12 of them were unconscious, several had dysentery and a pregnant woman suffered abdominal pains”.
Note the words “coming apart”, a little more than ‘adrift’ or ‘stranded’. I guess Australia will argue that Rinnan is a Norwegian and his English is not crash hot, but having been a sailor since 1958 and a captain for 23 years, he knew when a boat was ‘coming apart’.
During the rescue, Rinnan received a call from Jakarta advising him to disembark the passengers at the ferry port of Merak.
Half an hour after Rinnan had set sail toward Indonesia, five asylum seekers visited the bridge to demand passage to Australian territory, specifically Christmas Island, or any western country.[48] The group was quite aggressive and agitated and Rinnan agreed to alter course for Christmas Island[49].
The ship requested the Australian government's permission to unload the asylum seekers at Christmas Island, arguing that the ship could not sail to Indonesia, because it was unseaworthy — the ship was not designed for 438 people, only its 27 crew; and there were no lifeboats or other safety equipment available for the asylum seekers in case of an emergency.
Australia refused permission for the ship to enter Australia's territorial waters, and threatened to prosecute Captain Rinnan as a people smuggler if he did so.[50] (It is of interest that when a friend of mine, Sarada Ramanathan, visited the Merak boat with Tamil asylum seekers in December 2009, she went to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, before she left. She saw David Holley, an official there, who told her to take “Off-shore Humanitarian Application Forms ” for Australiaand to give them to the asylum seekers. However, when she did so, she was called a ‘people smuggler’. So, the language is the same, only the players are different. Coming to the rescue of desperate people in absolute need of help is, according the Australian government of either major political party, “people smuggling”).
The Australian government denied any obligation under international law. That was a lie, and they knew it.
Faced with Australia's threats of prosecution, Captain Rinnan agreed to turn slowly back towards Indonesia in the hope that the asylum seekers would not notice the turn. He was wrong. About half an hour into the turn, they did notice the change in direction, and again became agitated. Captain Rinnan, concerned that if the ship continued to sail to Indonesia the asylum seekers could jump overboard or riot and harm the crew, decided to head back towards Christmas Island.[51]
As the ship approached Australia's territorial waters (12 nautical miles (22 km) from the island), Captain Rinnan pleaded for permission for the ship to dock at Christmas Island. He reported that several of the asylum seekers were unconscious, and others were suffering from dysentery. The Australian government went on to lie about medical facts, claiming that the asylum seekers were in relatively good health. This was a downright lie, the evidence coming from Australia’s own military doctor (see below).
With Australian still refusing permission for the ship to enter Australian territorial waters, on 29 August, Captain Rinnan, having lost patience with the Australian authorities, and increasingly concerned for the safety of the asylum seekers and the ship's crew, declared a state of emergency and proceeded to enter Australian territorial waters without permission. The Australian government still maintains that it was illegal.
Australia then decided to flex its military muscle (probably picking this up from Sri Lanka – when faced with a humanitarian crisis, the answer is military action. This is why I have maintained that human rights violations are ‘infectious’, and what countries such as Sri Lanka do in the violation of human rights, is packeted and exported, ready for import to Australia and elsewhere.) So, Australia dispatched its troops - the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) to board the ship and prevent it getting to Christmas Island. The aim was to stop any of the asylum seekers from applying for asylum, which they could legally do as soon as they set foot on Australian territory.
Getting back to the Tampa, Australia’s own SASR doctor who boarded the ship, confirmed that many of the rescuees were dehydrated, malnourished, and 24 had gastroenteritis. Further confirmation came from New Zealand (which took some of the asylum seekers) that by the time they arrived there, some were very ill.
Captain Rinnan anchored four nautical miles off Christmas Island. The Australian troops instructed Rinnan to move the ship back into international waters. He refused, claiming the ship was unsafe to sail until the asylum seekers had been offloaded. The ship-owners agreed with his decision, and the Norwegian government warned the Australian government not to force the ship to return to international waters against the captain's will.
Australia then tried to persuade Indonesia to accept the asylum seekers; Indonesia refused. Norway also refused to accept them because of the distance between the ship and Norway, and reported Australia to the United Nations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the International Maritime Organisation for failure to comply with its duties under International law.
Then came some typical Sri Lankan politics, this time from Australia (note the ‘export’ from Sri Lanka and the ‘import’ by Australia).
The Border Protection Bill 2001.
Late on the night of August 29, Prime Minister Howard introduced an emergency bill - the "Border Protection Bill 2001". This Bill would have provided the government with the power to remove any ship in the territorial waters of Australia (section 4), to use reasonable force to do so (s. 5), to provide that any person who was on the ship may be forcibly returned to the ship (s. 6), that no civil or criminal proceedings may be taken against the Australian government or any of its officers for removing the ship or returning people to it (s. 7), that no court proceedings are available to prevent the ship from being removed and from people being returned to it (s. 8), and that no asylum applications may be made by people on board the ship (s. 9).
The bill was intended to enter into force at 9:00 am 29 August 2001 (s. 2). Thus the bill would have been retroactive. It also attempted to ensure that action taken prior to the legislation being passed to remove any ship and return people to it would have been treated as legal.
Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), and Emergency Regulations are similar. This is yet another example of human rights violations being ‘infectious’. The PTA in apartheid South Africa ‘infected’ Sri Lanka, which later ‘infected’ Australia.
The Opposition Labor Party announced they would not support the "Border Protection Bill 2001"; nor would the Greens, Democrats or Independent Senator Brian Harradine. The Bill quickly passed the Lower House of Representatives, but was rejected by theSenate later that same sitting day.[52] The Government attacked the Opposition for refusing to pass the legislation, but indicated it would not reintroduce it at that stage!
The Labor Party opposed the Bill. With breathtaking, but expected hypocrisy, this same Labor party now (2010) in government, has rushed through a Bill, “The Anti-people Smuggling and Other Measures Bill” which is even worse, since it will, under the guise of blocking funds for ‘people smugglers’, in effect prevent people from sending much-needed help for refugees. This is what politics has degenerated to. The exceptions are few – the Greens, Democrats (what is left of them), and the miniscule, but absolutely honest, Socialist parties.
Excision
It is important that this extraordinary act by Australia be understood, since the Liberal party, currently in Opposition, says that they will go down this path if elected to power in 2010.
After the Tampa crisis, the Howard (Liberal) government (2001) acted to ‘excise’ Christmas Island and a large number of other coastal islands from Australia's migration zone. ‘Excision’ effectively means that asylum seekers who did not reach the Australian mainland would not be able to apply for refugee status. The Labor party supported the excision of some islands that it viewed as acting as a "magnet for people smugglers", but not others. The other parties opposed excision of any islands.
Political effects of the Tampa incident
The Tampa crisis had an enormous effect on Australia both at home and abroad. Internationally, Australia was criticized by many countries, particularly Norway, who accused it of evading its human rights responsibilities[53].
In the Federal election campaign following the arrival of the Tampa, the Liberal Party, in general, Prime Minister Howard, in particular, campaigned vigorously on the issue, using the asylum seeker issue as a ‘vote getter’. John Howard declared, "We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come."
In July 2007, a biography of John Howard claimed that he had received advice from the Attorney-General's Department that refusing asylum seekers entry into Australia would breach international law, but that he did so to gain public support in the then upcoming election.[54]
In a re-run, the identical thing is happening today (2010), a decade after Tampa. Tony Abbott (Liberal) has just announced that the 2010 Election will be fought on ‘border protection’.
Fate of the refugees
Most of the refugees from the Tampa were taken to the tiny Pacific country, Nauru, as part of what was known as Australia's "Pacific Solution," and held in two detention camps. The rest, about 150 people, were diverted to New Zealand, where they were subsequently granted asylum and progress to citizenship. In 2004 following the war in Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq the New Zealand government began to reunite theirfamilies[55]. New Zealand is much less prosperous than Australia, but is a far more humane and compassionate country. Australia is way behind, and the gap is increasing.
When those refugees not claimed by New Zealand arrived in Nauru, many of them refused to leave the boat, realising that they were to be held in detention camps. (This same scenario was replayed by Kevin Rudd who closed Nauru and reopened it in Indonesia, which, incidentally has not signed the UN Refugee Convention and can do what it wants with refugees/asylum seekers).
Temporary Protection Visas
Those eventually found to be genuine refugees were granted three-year Temporary Protection Visas (TPV), by which they could be returned to their places of origin in Afghanistan and Iraq at a time of the government's choosing. It is important to know what a TPV is, because Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal party, says that if elected to power in 2010, he will re-introduce this completely unacceptable entity.
Holders of TPV do not have access to the same services as normally recognized refugees (for example, free English language lessons and help with job search).
Australia under Howard made direct cash payments to New Zealand for accepting those refugees it did accept. (Australia under Rudd made direct payments to Indonesia for illegally capturing a boat with Tamil asylum seekers in the high seas in an act of international piracy, and holding the occupants illegally in dreadful detention centres in Indonesia). The game is the same, just different perpetrators and victims.
Tampa Election’
The Tampa crisis was followed by what is known as the “Tampa Election” (10 November 2001) based on downright lies, inhuman behaviour and the violation of the UN Refugee Convention. John Howard won another term as Prime Minister. That Australia’s name was dragged in the dirt was of no importance to him or his lying cronies. He won again in 2004.
However, the sheer inhumanity of what was going on with the asylum seekers in Nauru became street talk in Australia. The result was that in the General Election on 24 November 2007, Howard not only lost the election but even his seat in parliament, only the second Australian Prime Minister to be so dealt with.
Howard’s replacement by the young and ‘decent’ (so we thought), Kevin Rudd, was greeted with a sigh of relief and much expectation. I have known Kevin Rudd personally for more than a decade. For a start, he is my Federal Member of Parliament. As such, I greeted his ascent as the Australian Prime Minister, replacing the despicable John Howard, with delight.
Rudd did the ‘right thing’ for a while. He closed Nauru, apologized to the Aborigines for 200 years of trauma, signed the Kyoto climate change protocol, and more.
Then he fell off the perch. He reopened ‘Nauru’ in Indonesia, and took the same hard-line stance on refugees – expanding the razor-wire prisons in Christmas Island, not much different from President Rajapaksa’s concentration camps in the Tamil North in Sri Lanka.
In December 2009, I published a booklet (with help from Paul Benedek – Green Left) on the asylum seekers off Indonesia. “Sri Lankan Asylum seekers in Indonesia. Australia’s disgrace. The Merak boat-people crisis”. In a ‘message’ to the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, a much-advertised Christian[56], I said, that “it was a most un-Christlike Christian who disregards the “when I was homeless you took me in” provision, when the people in need of a home have a brown skin”. In his article, Rudd quoted Rev Jim Wallis: ”God is not partisan….”. As someone who worships the same God, I can tell Rudd that God is not racist either.
In my booklet I pointed out that Kevin Rudd, John Howard, and the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa (a former human rights activist), are glaring examples of what Barack Obama said in Cairo:
“… there are some who advocate democracy when they are out of power: once in power they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others”.
My booklet was published only a week after Tony Abbott, a devout Catholic, became the Leader of the Opposition. I had no clear idea of his stance, which I now have. He and his shadow Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, are worse, an opinion that is entirely justified by Julian Burnside’s comments (see above).
Using asylum seekers as a political football to score political points, started well before the 2010 Election in an attempt to stack up some ‘Brownie points’ for the elections.
The Oceanic Viking and the “3-minute visa”
An unbelievably absurd situation arose in November 2009. It was not just absurd but an absolute betrayal of trust which reflects poorly on Australia.
On October 16, 2009, a boatload of 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, all ethnic Tamils, were rescued from their sinking boat by the Australian ship, Oceanic Viking, but in Indonesia’s search and rescue zone.
Initially, Indonesia refused to allow the boat to dock at an Indonesian port, but after negotiations between Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia took the boat “on humanitarian grounds” because there was a sick child on board.
However, the asylum seekers refused to leave the Australian ship, demanding they be taken to Christmas Island for processing by Australian authorities.
For more than a month, Australian officials carried out near-constant negotiations with the asylum seekers, guaranteeing them speedy processing in detention and additional resettlement help including language lessons and family reunifications.
Those carrying UN refugee papers, of which it is understood there are several on board, were promised resettlement in Australia within a month.
They got off the boat and were taken to an Australian-funded detention centre in Indonesia. The Indonesian authorities carried out health and security checks, and those who passed the checks were issued Australian visas and put on a flight to Christmas Island. Soon after they landed in Christmas Island they were told by Australian Immigration that it was only a “3 minute visa”! There has never been a 3 minute visa anywhere in the world (Someone remarked that it could be called a “Noodle visa” – similar to packets of 2-minute noodles).
Unsurprisingly, the 260 asylum seekers who came in the next boat which was, in an act of international piracy, intercepted by the Indonesian navy on the high seas (on the orders of the Indonesian President, who had been directly contacted by the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd), and taken to the Indonesian port of Merak, refused to get off the boat – the “Merak crisis” – which I have already referred to. They were there for six months in outrageous conditions which resulted in the death of a young man and untold suffering of men, women and even children. It is a clear violation of the UN Refugee Convention by Australia. They were then (literally) dragged off the boat by the Indonesian Navy and taken to an Australian-funded 'detention centre', a heel-hole, in Tanjun Pinang, Indonesis, where they have been left to rot.
Australian ‘detention centres’
There are a number of detention centres (prisons) for refugees in Australia, some open, some opened and closed, some opened, closed and reopened!. It is about as chaotic as is Australia’s policy (if there is one), on handling asylum-seekers.
Some of the most notorious have been in Baxter, South Australia, Curtin in the remote north of Western Australia, and in the even more remote tiny Pacific Island, Nauru. All of these have been closed, due to public pressure,. However, Curtin has just reopened, and, Tony Abbott (the Liberal leader, a clone of John Howard), says that if elected to power in the up-coming election, he will reopen Nauru.
Others are open. There is one in Christmas Island, the “Immigration Reception and Processing Centre (with about 1000 Sri Lankan Tamils at time of writing), Villawood Immigration Detention Centre (Sydney), Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre, (Melbourne), Port Augusta “Residential Housing”, (South Australia)), Perth Immigration Detention Centre, (Western Australia), and Darwin Immigration Detention facility – (Northern Territory).
I will deal with these dreadful places in a separate article. Here I will deal with Christmas Island, because it is involved in the current mess, Nauru (because Abbott says he will reopen it), and Curtin (because Rudd, backed by Gillard have reopened it for those affected by the recent ‘Suspension’). All these politicians are dreadful people like the dreadful places they have reopened or say they will.
Nauru Detention Centre
Nauru is a phosphate rock island[57] in Micronesia, in the South Pacific. It is the world’s smallest island nation, covering just 21 sq km (8 sq miles).Raped of its phosphate by England and Australia; it is now devoid of any resource. In 1989, Nauru took Australia to the International Court of Justice for failure to remedy the environmental damage caused by phosphate mining.[58]
With 90% of the people unemployed, and desperate for money, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre. The latter ended under pressure from the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF).
Nauru then became an international street-walker, willing to sell body and soul to anyone. It did to Russia by recognizing Georgia ($50 million), then to China (for many millions of dollars), then to Taiwan ($130 million), and back to China (more millions). It even offered to house the US prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
This is the international street walker that Australia under John Howard (Liberal), decided to get into bed with. In 2001,Peter Reith, Howard’s Defence Minister, paid $20 million, adding another $10million, to open and run a detention centre in Nauru to keep asylum seekers trying to enter Australia.
Initially, asylum seekers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Burma were sent there. Then came the Tampa crisis and the Howard government decided to send 83 from Christmas Island to Nauru.
Under tremendous pressure from concerned Australians such as Elaine Smith (Rural Australians for Refugees), and Senator Andrew Bartlett, they were gradually released to Australia, with the last lot leaving in November 2005.
I am not going to detail the situation in Nauru because Elaine Smith’s comprehensive report to the Senate inquiry, complete with photographs, is on the net.[59].
The main problems with this hell-hole are that there is no water – even the resident population has only access to rain water (which is irregular), and a single ageing desalination plant, and its absolute remoteness. When I checked with the airlines today, I was told that there was one flight a week from Australia, but even that could not be guaranteed.
As I have said, the treatment of detainees in Nauru was so bad that the Australian voters decided to throw out the Howard (Liberal) government, Howard even losing his seat in parliament.
The incoming Kevin Rudd (Labor) decided to close Nauru (2008) – but open it in Indonesia!
Tony Abbott (Liberal) says that if he replaces Rudd’s successor Gillard, in the 2010 Election, he will reopen Nauru. This ‘Howard- clone’ seems to have learnt nothing from the past.
Christmas Island Detention Centre
In 2007, the Department of Immigration finished the construction of an Immigration Reception and Processing Centre on Christmas Island. The centre, which contained about 800 beds, cost over $400 million to build and at least $30 million a year to run.
A facility built to house about 800 people, now has more than 2,000, with the numbers increasing as more arrive to accommodation that is simply not there. In a telephone call to Christmas Island last week, I gathered that new arrivals are now housed in tents with about 35 in each, and in a large number of ‘metal boxes’ “lorry tents”, for lack of a better place.
The overcrowding in Christmas Island (which has been known for months), has suddenly been noticed by the authorities, and some of those whose applications for ‘processing’ have been put on hold in the new ‘Statement’, have been moved to the (re-)opened Curtin Air Force base, now a detention place yet again.
Curtin detention centre
Located 40km from Derby, West Australia, where temperatures in summer average are a sizzling 42˚C, it is more than 2,000km north of Perth. This remote facility will house the hundreds of Afghan and Sri Lankan men whose applications for refugee status have been suspended for six months and three months respectively. The first batch is already there.
Curtin was a hell-hole. The man in charge was a psychopath. There were allegations of severe bullying by staff and evidence that some detainees were kept in darkened isolation rooms. Adults and children sewed their lips together in protest. When it shut in 2002, Curtin's chequered past included a string of riots, self-harm, assaults, fires and even a mass escape.
After visiting Curtin in 2000, the then Human Rights Commissioner Chris Sidoti and Sydney University law lecturer Mary Crock said aspects resembled a concentration camp.
Refugee workers and many others across the human rights spectrum were appalled by the decision to reopen Curtin. Amnesty International immediately reacted, stating that “Curtin was closed for a reason”.
Perth-based advocate Jack Smit from ‘Project SafeCom’ said, "Curtin was a torture centre under the Howard government. We are unbelievably nervous today." He said reopening it for people whose applications weren't even being progressed was a recipe for trouble and "gravely in breach of human rights law":- "It raises the notion of rejects being bundled together -- and Derby happens to be the hellhole of all detention centres where torture and abuse happened, as found by the Human Rights Commission".
Pamela Curr from the Asylum-Seeker Resource Centre said that Curtin was so isolated that it was difficult to monitor:- "This is a tragedy. We remember Curtin last time, and even with a different government and a different service provider, it will still be 28 hours from Perth and about as isolated as you can get, They could have chosen Darwin, but they have deliberately chosen the most isolated, the most rundown and the most horrible place in Australia. That a Labor government would do that is shocking."
The reason why Curtin was chosen when there were more accessible and humane places in which to put the asylum seekers, was to show the Australian voter how ‘tough’ the Rudd government was with asylum seekers. The unstated boast is – ‘what (dreadful things) you in the Opposition can do to asylum seekers, we in government can do worse. Just watch us. We will send them to the Curtin detention centre’.
Here is the evidence. Immigration Minister Chris Evans (one of those who signed the recent decision) said that the isolation of Curtin was one of the reasons it was ideal. It is political opportunism of a disgraceful degree.
While politicians are moving human beings as though they were inanimate objects to score political points, basic human rights of people whose only crime is that they were born Tamils or Afghans are being violated, as are International Conventions which Australia has signed, and the name of Australia is being taken to the gutter of moral irresponsibility.
It is of significance that the recent Australian Red Cross survey of 1,000 people I have referred to, revealed a lack of understanding about the law concerning refugees. This will be explored further in later Red Cross surveys.
The boats will continue to come, since the source of the problem, the barbarism in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, has not been looked into, let alone challenged.
The situation in Afghanistan
I have no direct knowledge or expertise of the situation in Afghanistan. However, people like Julian Burnside QC, do, and his detailed description given to the media has been quoted above in full.
What I have setout here is what has been researched by others (eg Human Rights Watch) and confirmed by those I have met from that country.
The Australian government’s claim (in the Statement) is patently untrue that:-
"The Taliban's fall, durable security in parts of the country, and constitutional and legal reform to protect minorities rights have improved the circumstances of Afghanistan's minorities, including Afghan Hazaras"
The reality is that the human rights situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, with a growing insurgency, continued impunity making justice elusive for vast numbers of Afghans, and egregious violations of the human rights of women.
The armed conflict in Afghanistan continues to intensify, and despite more efforts to reduce civilian casualties by international military forces, the presence of large additional numbers of foreign forces and increased military operations has resulted in higher civilian casualties.
The Afghan government (like the Sri Lankan government) itself is responsible for serious human rights violations, including the use of torture in detention, particularly at the hands of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the intelligence service.
Given these documented findings by internationally renowned human rights groups, it is astounding that the Australian government should adopt the position it has on Afghan asylum seekers.
The situation in Sri Lanka
The Tamil North
(I have added a photograph of the houses that the GoSL have given its Armed Forces and their families to permanently settle in the area. This was from a GoSL Armed Forces website. At the rate the resettlement of the Tamil areas by Sinhalese is going, my projection is that by 2020, there will be no Tamil representatives in Parliament).
WSWS reporters visit the devastated Sri Lankan town of Kilinochchi
“One year after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan government claims that life is returning to normal in the war-ravaged Vanni[61]region. But as our reporting team found during their recent visit to Kilinochchi, that is far from the case. Tens of thousands of civilians who lost everything during the fighting have been “resettled” in the area with little government assistance…..…….When the area was finally overrun in May 2009, the army rounded up more than a quarter of a million civilians, many of whom were injured, sick and famished, and herded them into detention camps.
The internees were only released from last (2009) December onwards in response to international and domestic pressure. In the meantime, the military had turned Kilinochchi into an army town with plans for a permanent occupation and the construction of major permanent bases. Former residents found the town devastated and have been forced to eke out an existence as best they can.
Our reporters visited Kilinochchi town and the villages of Poonahari, 26 kilometres to the west, and Vattakachchi, 15 kilometres to the east. They conducted their work under difficult circumstances, as the media generally cannot operate freely in the town. The photos are taken from a bus, but give an indication of the makeshift conditions under which people are living in the Vanni.
The first thing that strikes you about the situation in Kilinochchi is that you find more soldiers than civilians in the town. They are in uniform and civvies, carrying weapons or just moving here and there. People can only travel to Kilinochchi….. by passing through military camps, checkpoints and patrolling soldiers.
Soldiers ….keep a close eye on everyone’s movements.
The buildings in Kilinochchi town were destroyed last year. Heaps of debris have since been removed about 50 metres from the main road. The traders who have returned are renovating or rebuilding their shops, which were damaged during the war, at their own expense. These are small shops and there are only a few customers. Most of the eating houses are run by the army, catering for people travelling through the town.
People’s land and buildings that were previously occupied by the LTTE are now occupied by the military. A vast area in the southern section of the town has been fenced with barbed wire. Residents think it will be used to erect a military complex.
Former detainees have been sent here almost without any assistance. One person explained: “We are living here abandoned by all. The government said it would provide us with houses, employment and other facilities. It has not even given us clean drinking water, apart from what the relief agencies have supplied. Nobody has come to see our plight. There is no difference between staying in the detention camps and living here. The conditions are the same in both places.”
Many of the resettled people live in 10-by-10 feet huts with tin sheets provided by some non-government organisations. Other people are living in tents that are the same size. There are no separate rooms for sleeping or getting dressed. The floors have been leveled with mud. As there are no toilet facilities, people are using open spaces. Some families have used tin sheets to make roofs for their damaged houses.
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People have been able to survive without going hungry only because the World Food Program (WFP) is providing food[62]. Many people don’t have even instruments like knives, equipment to clean their hands, or lamps for daily use. They have to look for bottles to make kerosene oil lamps, and search for water because the wells are not cleaned.
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This is what I have inserted, from the GoSL website.
By contrast – these are the houses built and given to the Sinhalese
Army families. 5,000 houses constructed along the A9 road in the Vanni with international funds donated for resettlement in the Vanni. There are 12,000
more coming. The first 5,000 will be occupied in August 2010.
The Kilinochchi district was famous for agriculture and fishing. The large Iranaimadu tank (artificial lake) mainly supplied irrigation for several thousand acres of agricultural land. The tank is now under the military’s control. Water has not yet been fully released for farmers. A few farmers have begun cultivation but they do not have tractors or other basic equipment. Many do not have even a mammoty (a type of spade). Fishermen are not allowed to fish in the tank.
Poonahari village has been devastated, like other areas in the Vanni. The debris from destroyed houses, such as bricks and wood, has been used to erect military checkpoints that monitor the local coastline. One resident commented: “The military checkpoints are made out of the wood and sheets from our homes.”
Students are generally attending schools but there is a serious lack of teachers and equipment. Teachers have to travel a long distance from Jaffna or Vavuniya. At Poonahari, the Vikneswara School, which previously conducted classes up to the advanced level, is now occupied by the military, so students must walk to another school five kilometres away.
The military has also occupied Poonahari’s government hospital. As there are no longer any hospital facilities, people have to beg someone in the army camps to take any seriously ill patients to Kilinochchi in a military vehicle for treatment.
In Vattakachchi village there is no hospital and no school, and the people live in tents. The houses were destroyed during the war. The Vattakachchi and Ramanathapuram schools remain occupied by the military.
Billions of rupees are urgently needed to rebuild the Kilinochchi district for proper human habitation. But the Colombo government is not interested in rebuilding the conditions of ordinary people. Its treatment of war-devastated people is a continuation of decades of discrimination against Tamils”. (End of Report)
I have not the slightest hesitation in accepting this Report from people who have no axe to grind or a barrow to push. I am more than confident of their integrity and reliability.
The conclusion is that what the GoSL says is happening in the North – reconstruction and rehabilitation - is a downright lie.
In the country as a whole
What has been established in the country as a whole is a fascist dictatorship, run by President Rajapaksa, his brothers and relatives.
Nothing has changed. It is ‘business as usual’.
Media censorship
There is a strictly enforced media censorship, and a silencing of criticism. Since 2006, hundreds of people, including politicians and journalists, have been killed or made to ‘disappear’ by pro-government death squads. Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places for independent journalists. Sri Lanka was ranked 165th out of 173 countries in Reporters Without Borders 2008 Press Freedom Index. This is the lowest ranking of any democratic country. The situation is getting worse, as the regime has more things to hide.
If asylum seekers are returned to Sri Lanka and they ‘disappear’, get arrested or get killed by the GoSL or its agents, it will certainly not be reported by the Sri Lankan media.
Emergency Regulations
For nearly 39 years, Sri Lanka has had serious repressive Laws and Regulations – the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the Public Security Ordinance and several Emergency Regulations (ERs). Amnesty International in a series of publications, has expressed serious concerns about these, the ERs in particular.
Emergency Regulations give the President extraordinary powers - to ban public meetings and protests, censor the media, outlaw strikes, sack workers, detain people without charge and mobilize the military in strike-breaking operations, and much more. President Rajapaksa used these powers last October (2009) to ban industrial action by petroleum, electricity, water and port workers.
ERs have to be passed by Parliament every month. What is very worrying is that despite the end of the war, ERs are still in place, and even extended. In the past year, the Rajapaksa government has used these Regulations to crack down on journalists, political opponents, trade unionists, and anyone who is critical of the government
“Emergency Regulations” have just been renewed, a year after the ‘war’ ended. The question is “What is the ‘Emergency’?
The Australian government has conveniently decided to ignore the fact that these highly repressive Acts, Laws and Regulations are in place in Sri Lanka, putting Australia’s credibility on the line.
Where returning refugees are concerned, the GoSL can do as they please using ER’s, which cannot be challenged in the law courts.
A Military / Police State
The Sri Lankan Armed Forces (99% Sinhalese), 170,000 strong, is larger than the combined armed forces of Australia, Malaysia and the Philippines. After the ‘end’ of the war, this massive Force was increased to 200,000, and now to 230,000, with a demand from the military that it be increased to 300,000. The question is why an increase in the Armed Forces is needed if there is ‘peace’. It is clearly to run a military/police State under the dictatorship of President Rajapaksa.
The whole security apparatus has been kept in place, despite the end of the fighting. No troops have been demobilised. In fact, a permanent military occupation is being established in the North and East of the island.
The government has also maintained all of the police state measures built up over a quarter century of war. This apparatus is being kept in place not just to suppress the country’s Tamil minority but the Sinhalese poor, as the Rajapaksa government prepares to impose far-reaching austerity measures after the 8 April 2010 parliamentary election.
During the past four years of war, Rajapakse has used his sweeping executive powers to create a ruling cabal of relatives, aides, generals and incompetent bureaucrats. He has flouted the constitution and the Supreme Court on several occasions, including failing to appoint a Constitutional Council to oversee government appointments.
Rajapaksa’s ruling coalition claims that it wants “a strong government” to create economic prosperity. Why a ‘strong government’ is needed to create prosperity, of all things, is unclear. It is more likely that what is being sought is to entrench a police state to ram through a devastating assault on the living standards of working people.
For Tamil refugees to return to a Police State is ridiculous. Indeed, it might not be even safe for Sinhalese, if they have been critical of the Rajapaksa regime.
The economic crisis
In order to appreciate the nonsense that Australia and many other countries are claiming about Sri Lanka, it is important to know the economic situation and the major contribution that foreign aid makes to enable this totalitarian regime to do what it is doing to its citizens – Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims.
The country has been heavily in debt for years, but insists on having one of the largest military forces, per capita, in the world. The reason for maintaining, indeed expanding, this massive military and police force after the end of the armed conflict, is sinister. I will set this out later in this paper.
The Rajapaksa government (elected November 2005) went on a spending spree to finance the war on the LTTE, crushing it, and also slaughtering upward of 40,000 Tamil and Muslim civilians – a massacre that ended in May 2009, and the President announced “victory” and the end of the war.
As I have said, and I repeat it here because it is so important, a year later after the end of the conflict, the Armed Forces have gone from 175,000, to 200,000, to 230,000 with a declared intention of getting this up to 300,000. The question is why the military should be substantially increased when there is no war.
The Defence budget in 2010, a year after the end of the armed conflict, to ‘defend’ the country from a non-existent enemy, is Rs 202 billion ($US 1.8 billion), 21 % of the total expenditure of Rs 974 billion to government ministries.
In 2009, with the government facing bankruptcy, Sri Lanka was forced to beg for an IMF loan of $US 2.6 billion, to ward off a balance of payments crisis, having earlier boasted that it never would! The vote in the IMF was delayed for weeks because of concerns about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. At the vote July 2009), five countries-the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Argentina made the highly unusual move of abstaining from the vote in a show of disapproval of Sri Lanka's human rights violations. It was awarded.
The IMF released two installments but withheld the third in February 2010 because the government failed to indicate how it would rein in the budget deficit, which reached 9.7% of GDP in 2009. The IMF demanded a reduction to 7% in 2009 (which was not met), 6% in 2010 (which will not be met), and 5% in 2011 (which will certainly not be met).
There has been a marked increase in public debt with repayments in 2010 of Rs 767 billion, 44 % of the total budget expenditure of Rs 1,780 billion.
Last year (2009), government debt reached an incredible Rs 4.1 trillion, of which Rs 1.8 trillion was foreign debt, a 22% rise. Sri Lanka’s Central Bank annual report stated:“The ratio of debt service to government revenue increased further to 117.5% from 90.5%”. Total debt servicing rose by 39% to Rs 825.7 billion in 2009, including a massive interest payment of Rs 309.7 billon which comprised 26% of total expenditure.
Recently, (June 2010), Ernesto May, the World Bank Director of South Asia launching the Economic Update 2010 in Colombo said that Sri Lanka’s debt was the second highest[63] in South Asia, increasing from 81% of GDP in 2008 to 86% in 2009.
Unable to implement the IMF austerity measures without facing a massive anti-government backlash from voters, Rajapaksa repeatedly delayed the budget for 2010 (due in November 2009) till he was safely re-installed as President (January 2010), and his government re-elected (April 2010).
Finally in early June 2010, the government presented to Parliament the expenditure estimates as part of an Appropriation Bill for 2010. The two largest budget items were Defence and Debt repayment. The necessary cuts will be made elsewhere, in particular, a freeze on wages, cuts in pensions and welfare benefits, and a slashing of funds for health and education. This will be seen when the budget is finally brought down on 29 June, 2010.
There is already evidence for this in the recent presentation to Parliament. The allocation for the Rehabilitation Ministry was slashed from Rs 4 billion to Rs 2 billion. The result will be that thousands of refugees in the North and East will continue to lack homes and essential services.
It is therefore arrant nonsense for the Australian government to claim in the 9 June 2010 Statement that “progress is being made in tackling the challenging task of resettling hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens and rehabilitating their communities”.
Allocations for Health and Education were Rs 52 and 46 billion respectively, a total of Rs 10 billion less than for 2009. (The allocation for 2009 was itself Rs 12 billion less than for 2008). Is this the ‘evolving situation’ that the Australian government refers to?
In May 2010, Sri Lanka gave an undertaking to the IMF that it would considerably reduce recurrent spending by cutting government subsidies to the Ceylon Electricity Board, Petroleum Corporation, Central Transport Board, Railways, and Postal services. This can be achieved only by axing jobs, cutting wage and increasing prices.
Well aware that such measures will provoke massive opposition and even strikes by working people, Rajapaksa has retained the huge Police State apparatus to crush any form of opposition. This is what a Police State does to its people irrespective of ethnicity.
In addition to the Government’s fiscal profligacy, there is rampant corruption all the way to the very top, waste and absolute incompetence in governance.
This is the country that Australia claims is “a country in transition after two decades of conflict, with hopes for a further improvement and stabilization of conditions”. This is not only arrant nonsense but downright lies in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
Facing an economic collapse, large areas of Sri Lanka are ‘up for sale’ to foreign investors, especially from China and India. Most of these areas are in the Tamil North and East, whose rightful owners are in detention centres or are refugees, who are, as a consequence, unable to return home. Is this where Australia intends to send back Tamil asylum seekers?
Sri Lanka, in particular the Tamil North and East, is being divided up and sold
Unknown to many, there is a ‘fire-sale’ in Sri Lanka, particularly the Tamil lands in the North and East which international economists have stated, have the highest developmental potential. The buyers are China, India, and the Arab States, to name but a few. This is exactly what is happening in India which that outstanding Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, says in her outstanding book The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire. Here she is:-
“The two arms of the Indian government have developed the perfect pincer action. While one arm is busy selling India off in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is orchestrating a howling, baying chorus of Hindu nationalism and religious fascism”.
So also in Sri Lanka. While one arm is selling off the country or borrowing heavily from international lenders i.e. the IMF and China, getting the country deeper and deeper into debt, the other is cheering the ‘victory’ over the Tamil militants and how the country has at last been freed from ‘terrorism’.
Arundhati Roy goes on :-
“The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed and efficiency of a Structural Adjustment Program. While the project of corporate globalization rips through people’s lives in India, massive privatization and labour ‘reforms’ are pushing people off their land and out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers are committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of starvation deaths are coming in from all over the country.
While the elite journeys to their imaginary destination somewhere near the top of the world, the dispossessed are spiraling downwards into crime and chaos. This climate of frustration and national disillusionment is the perfect breeding ground, history tells us, for fascism”
That is precisely what is happening in Sri Lanka. Democracy is most certainly being dismantled at an alarming rate. (Tamil) people are being pushed off their lands into concentration camps or just into the jungle, and out of their jobs (fishing and agriculture). Hundreds (of Tamils) are committing suicide (I gather Sri Lanka has the 2nd highest suicide rate in the world). Starvation (of Tamils in the North, and now the Sinhalese poor in the South) is being increasingly reported.
Starvation is widespread. A Demographic and Health Survey by Sri Lanka’s Health Ministry, published in the state-owned Daily News on 29 May 2010, revealed that acute malnutrition is rife among Sri Lanka children and women. Child malnutrition is more than 50% in the Tamil North and East, with a national figure at 29% (which itself is staggering). In Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Amparai in the Tamil East, child malnutrition was 53%, 45% and 44%, in Vavuniya and Jaffna in the Tamil North, 51% and 43%.
The elite (in particular the Rajapaksa family) are journeying to the top of the world (it is not an imaginary destination), the rest are in grinding poverty with an inflation rate of nearly 30%, and fascism has already been established, proving that history repeats itself.
It is from this area that asylum seekers are fleeing. There are no prizes for guessing what will happen to them if they are returned to Sri Lanka.
Tamils in the North and East
In the ‘concentration camps in the North, 80,000 Tamil civilians (men, women and children) are still being held without charge or trial behind razor-wire fenced ‘detention centres’ (which the Government of Sri Lanka calls “Welfare Villages”), but in reality are ‘concentration camps’. It is in violation of important International Conventions and UN Principles, signed and ratified by the GoSL. These are:
1. The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
2. The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (UNGPID)
3. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
4. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons
from Enforced Disappearance
5. The Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture And Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
6. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
It also violates Sri Lanka’s own Constitution and Laws. I will deal with this in a separate article since it is a very serious situation that the world seems to have forgotten about.
Here is what Amnesty International stated in its most recent Report[64](17 May 2010)
- “Some 80,000 people remain in camps and funds for their support are running out.
- The rest of the 300,000 displaced civilians who have tried to resettle remain vulnerable and struggle to survive in communities where homes and infrastructure were destroyed”.
In March 2010, President Rajapaksa declared (gazetted) that the extensive network of army camps established during the war with the Tamil Tigers, will be made permanent. This indefinite military occupation of the northern and eastern provinces is aimed at the forcible suppression of the basic democratic rights of the Tamils.
The number of army camps in these two provinces, which have a population of about 3 million, has increased to 147, with two major Security Force headquarters in Kilinochchi and Mullaithivu, formerly held by the Tamil Tigers. Apart from the new military camps, at least a dozen new police stations will be established in this area.
As well as acquiring land for the new army camps, the government is planning to establish large High Security Zones (HSZ) around important installations such as the new Army headquarters referred to earlier. Such areas are out of bounds to civilians and have previously resulted in the forced displacement of residents.
In the Eastern province, the army established a HSZ in the Trincomalee area and prevented thousands of people from returning to their homes, farms and businesses.
The government later declared a portion as a HSZ to be a Special Economic Zone, offering military protection to investors.
In the northern Jaffna Peninsula, 15 HSZs have been established since the 1990s, covering 160 sq km or 18 percent of the peninsula’s land mass. Around 130,000 people have been unable to return to their homes as a result.
I stress again, that it is from these areas that the Tamil asylum seekers are fleeing and to which the Australian government intends to send them back.
“Disappearances”
Sri Lanka has the 2nd highest rate of ‘disappearances’ in the world, second only to Iraq. Most of them are Tamil men, in particular, youths. To return Tamil men to that country, as Australia is proposing to do, will simply increase this rate.
I draw attention to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report: Sri Lanka: “Disappearances” by Security Forces. A Recurring nightmare: State Responsibility for “Disappearances” and Abductions, a 221 page detailed analysis published in March 2008. There is no evidence that the situation has improved.
The most recent HRW Report[65](27 January 2010) only stated that “The vast majority of the hundreds of new "disappearances" and politically motivated killings from the past few years have never been seriously investigated, and none of the perpetrators have been punished.”
So also the most recent AI Report[66] (17 May 2010). It said that the UN must investigate Sri Lanka rights violations, and did not state that they have decreased.
The recent US State Department (March 2010):-
“outside of the conflict zone the overwhelming majority of victims of human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings and disappearances, were young male Tamils[67]”.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s conclusions[68] on Afghanistan and Sri Lanka (and of his successor Prime Minister Julia Gillard) are wrong
Rudd and Gillard say that parts of Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are now more peaceful than they used to be and that would be taken into consideration when considering asylum applications. They say more and more applications were likely to be rejected as the security situation continued to improve.
Rudd said Australia was basing changing processing arrangements for asylum seekers claiming (falsely) that "Large parts of it are more secure. Some parts are not. Therefore, it depends where the people come from. The same with Afghanistan."
He said parts of Afghanistan were now more stable than before:- "Therefore, you have got to make a decision which fairly reflects where people come from, not just from the country but from the parts of the country."
Rudd said the government had suspended processing of asylum applications from people from Sri Lanka as the security situation unfolded:- "If it continues to improve, we will find more and more of those applications rejected and more sent back home."
As has been set out in detail above, what Prime Minister Rudd claims is at best, a misconception, at worst, a deliberate lie. In either case, it is irresponsible. The same holds for his successor, Julia Gillard. If they want to be the mouthpiece of President Mahinda Rajapaksa (as it appears to be), then the people of Australia and the rest of the world, must know this.
Australia’s misconception
As I have said, the Australian government refuses to accept that the humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka is as bad as it was. There is overwhelming evidence from credible international human rights groups to confirm this. The Rajapaksa regime has penetrated the entire system of policing and has eroded the authority of the courts. ‘Legality’ is a farce in Sri Lanka.
It is also the result of a Constitution, enacted in 1977 by J.R.Jayawardene (from the other side of the political divide), that places the executive president over the parliament and judiciary. The incumbent, Mahinda Rajapaksa, told a public rally in March 2010, that constitutionally he is above the law. Contrary to the Australian government’s view that circumstances are ‘evolving’, Sri Lanka is a Presidential dictatorship, or worse – a Totalitarian State. The supposed “end of war” does not restore rule of law. The holding of elections does not signify respect for civil and political rights. Nothing justifies Australia suspending claims for asylum from those from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Nick Cheesman put this succinctly.[69]
“Under these conditions, the claims of Sri Lankan officials that their country is safe are absurd. Where can someone go to have a grievance heard? To whom can anyone turn for security? Without the rule of law, guarantees of safety are worthless.
If Australian policymakers really think that things are improving in Sri Lanka, then Australians need new policymakers. If Australian politicians think that acting tough on asylum seekers will win a few more votes, then they must count those votes against the lives of people whom they have endangered, people whom they have the legal and moral responsibility to protect”.
If the Australian government believes that circumstances in Sri Lanka are evolving, then it must explain why thousands of people being held under arbitrary or tenuous charges, many of whom are routinely tortured or threatened with torture.
The Australian government must explain how it reconciles this state of affairs with Australia’s duty under international law not to repatriate anyone to a place where he or she is at risk of torture. It must explain why attacks on journalists, lawyers, activists and other citizens that continue unabated in Sri Lanka have never been investigated, or the perpetrators brought to justice.
Above all, the Australian government must explain why Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even Sri Lankan observers, including Tamil members of parliament elected by these people, are not allowed free access to what is now, a government-controlled area – the Tamil North and East.
A question for the Australian people
I have a question for those who have supported Howard, and now Rudd and Gillard, in their handling of asylum seekers. “If you were in the dreadful humanitarian situation that these refugees have been in, what would you do? If there was someone who is able to get you out (be it a people smuggler or someone else), would you or would you not, try to get out?”. That is a question that has to be answered honestly, since thatis reality.
Normalcy
To claim that ‘normalcy’ has been established in Sri Lanka, and it is safe for Tamil refugees and asylum seekers to return to Sri Lanka, is arrant nonsense. This is the claim of the GoSL, desperate for foreign investment and tourists. The very fact that independent human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have been denied access to the North and East, and most certainly the ‘detention centres’, is clear evidence that there is something to hide. So also independent observers and the media, who either have no access, or very restricted access, to this entire area.
Action
The Australian people will have to be informed what their parliamentarians are doing, dragging the good name of Australia into the gutter of moral irresponsibility, to say nothing of the gross violation of the UN Refugee Convention signed by Australia.
Public protests are mandatory to salvage the name of Australia. Protests will have to be lodged with both leading political parties which have got Australia into this mess. This country can do better than sink to the level of Sri Lanka.
Christmas Island and the other (illegal) detention refugee centres (prisons), must be closed, and the recent outrageous decision to put on hold asylum seeker applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan must be withdrawn immediately.
If public protests fail, the Australian government will have to be forced to reverse the recent thoroughly irresponsible decision. If it does not do so, then legal action is the only answer. As I have said, there is provision in the UN Refugee Convention to take Australia to the International Court of Justice. Leading human rights lawyers such as Geoffrey Robertson QC, an Australian, now a British subject, and others in this country such as Julian Burnside QC, AO, and outstanding concerned people such as (retired) Justice Michael Kirby QC, AC, CMG, must be contacted about this. I have already contacted Mr Robertson’s office in London, and I know he will act if he gets the necessary support.
Whatever legal problems there might be in taking Australia to the ICJ, I can see no difficulty in taking the Australian government to the Australian Courts for violating the Racial Discrimination Act, and sections of the Constitution on human rights. After all, the detainees in Australia's detention centres, whether they are 'illegally' there or not, are on Australian soil, and their treatment cannot violate Conventions and Laws on basic human rights.
If we do not act, we become part of the problem instead of the solution.
Australia will have to answer some hard questions that will not go away. We will see to it that they do not, as long as international conventions are being flouted, by this or any other Australian government. If Australia’s name is being dragged into the gutter of moral and legal irresponsibility, protest we must, and will.
If to be critical of what the Australian government is doing is unpatriotic, so be it. I, for one, will not allow my own patriotism to Australia to be defined by how close I stand to the Australian flag, drenched with the tears, and now even the blood, of asylum seekers.
I am calling for an international protest.
1. Protest at the Australian Embassy in your country
2 Send a letter of protest to the Australian Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and the Australian Media.
Write, do not email
I urge you to write a letter, not take the easy option of sending an email. The latter can be wiped by a flick, leaving no trace. A letter has to be physically destroyed which creates more problems for the receiver. If it ends in a dustbin, let us fill the dustbins of those responsible.
That has been the strategy of AI all these 60 years – to write letters, to the most tyrannical regimes on earth. AI has persisted with this – because it works.
I urge you to lodge your protest with Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott, a letter of appreciation to Senator Sarah Hanson-Young and to David Marr.
A copy to the media might well be crucial.
The Hon Julia Gillard MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
(do NOT email her)
The Hon Tony Abbott MP
Leader of the Opposition
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
(do NOT email him)
The Hon Senator Sarah Hanson-Young
30 Pirie St, Adelaide SA 5000
Or Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600
senator.hanson.young@aph.gov.au
Copies to the media are important.
The Australian
GPO Box 4245, Sydney, NSW, 2001, Australia.
The Sydney Morning Herald (David Marr)
GPOBox 506
Sydney NSW 2001
Sydney NSW 2001
The Age
PO Box 257
Melbourne VIC 3001
Melbourne VIC 3001
newsdesk@theage.com.au
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation(ABC)
ABC Ultimo Centre
GPO Box 9994;
Sydney NSW 2001;
GPO Box 9994;
Sydney NSW 2001;
Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)
Locked Bag 028, Crows Nest NSW 1585
comments@sbs.com.au
I have drawn your attention to what is going on in Australia. It is now in your hands to decide whether or not to do something about.
Brian Senewiratne Brisbane, Australia. 30 July 2010
