“So, we should team up with Iran to
return the Baha'is; with Iraq to return Assyrian Christians to the villages
they were burned out of; with Burma to return the Karen; Uganda to return
homosexuals and albinos … We should return the Hazaras to Bamiyan to watch the
Taliban blow up their statues, and collaborate with China to deliver them their
Uighurs and Tibetans (no war there!). Going back a little, why didn't we think
of returning the Vietnamese, who, like the Tamils, fled post-war dangers? Or
dissident Russians and Czechs during the Cold War (it wasn't really a war after
all)?”
Gordon Weiss, September 2012.[1]
(In response to Julie Bishop’s [2]
desire to immediately return all Sri Lankan asylum seekers to Sri Lanka,
without processing their claims for asylum. Weiss was
the UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka for the final three years of the civil war,
and is the author of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of
the Tamil Tigers.)
More information from the International Crisis Group
Australia’s treatment of Sri Lankan asylum seekers
The documentary, No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka focuses on the final months of the 26 year civil war in that country. It examines the actions of government forces who, in their defeat of the Tamil Tigers, undertook the deliberate bombing of hospitals, and the rape, torture and murder of civilians. The atrocities outlined in the film fueled my interest in exploring the international community’s response to Sri Lanka. Here, I examine the extent to which Australia increasing ignores an array of evidence of both war crimes and ongoing human rights violations in Sri Lanka. Particularly insidious is Australia’s response to Sri Lankan asylum seekers who, under both Labor and the Coalition, are subject to processing methods that both ignore international law and Australia’s moral obligation to assist human beings fleeing persecution.
The final stages of the civil war
saw tens of thousands of civilians die in the crossfire between the Sri Lankan
government and the Tamil Tigers.
Particularly brutal is the revelation that civilians were encouraged to
gather in ‘no fire zones’, and then deliberately shelled by the forces who
assured their safety. The documentary implicates the pro-Sinhalese government,
including the country’s current President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, in war crimes
against the Tamil people. While
the Sri Lankan government has denied their involvement in such atrocities,
evidence has emerged that during the final months of the war, those in the no
fire zones were not only bombed, but deliberately denied food, medicine and
other aid. Since the end of the war in 2009, the United Nations and a range of
non-government organizations, journalists and international law societies
continue to call for a credible international investigation into war crimes, of
which the Sri Lankan President remains ultimately responsibility[3] [4] [5].
The Sri Lankan government’s own ‘Lessons Learnt
and Reconciliation Commission’ investigation into the war was welcomed by the
international community, but it has fallen well short of addressing the war
crimes allegations. Human Rights Watch, the International Bar
Association, the International Crisis Group and Amnesty International have
called for an independent investigation into the allegations and they have
reported extensively on continuing human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. The disappearance of journalists, clear
threats to democratic processes through the loss of independence of judiciary,
the crackdown on anti-government criticism in the press and the mistreatment of
asylum seekers who have been returned to Sri Lanka brings into question the
extent to which the war’s conclusion has solved the issues that precipitated
the conflict[6].
While, Australia initially
engaged in some criticism of the Sri Lankan government for their alleged
involvement in war crimes and ongoing human rights violations, this has always
been done in conjunction with the goal of attempting to stop asylum seekers
reaching Australia. This saw
Labor’s Stephen Smith visiting Sri Lanka in November 2009 to sign a memorandum
of understanding with the Sri Lankan government on legal cooperation against
people smuggling. Since then,
Australia has become increasingly complicit in the atrocities, ignoring
credible evidence in favor of Australia’s political and economic interests. Bob Carr, Foreign Affairs Minister under Labor, and Julie Bishop,
the recently appointed Foreign Affairs Minster, have been vocal in asserting
that Sri Lankan Tamils no longer face persecution in their country. In the last 12 months, both Ministers
visited Sri Lanka. Throughout his
stint as Foreign Minister, Carr deliberately over-emphasised the political
stability of Sri Lanka and ruthlessly claimed that many asylum seekers are
merely opportunist, economic refugees.
In February 2013, he told a Senate Estimates Committee, of Sri Lankan
asylum seekers, “since 2010 there has been no evidence of returnees being
discriminated against or arrested, let alone tortured”[7]. Carr’s assertion conveniently ignores
the array of evidence from non-government organisations that suggests
otherwise.
After her self-proclaimed ‘fact
finding mission’ to Sri Lanka in January, Bishop has been equally dismissive of
allegations of continuing human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.
“Sri Lanka
is making a significant effort preventing many boats from leaving their waters,
and we believe that those who make it through should be the subject of a new
arrangement to transfer back to Sri Lanka. Otherwise, the Australian [Labor] Government should explain
why they believe that Sri Lankans are being persecuted. That’s vermently denied by the Sri
Lankan government. The Australian government should set out the basis of their
assumption that Sri Lanka is persecuting its own citizens…I don’t believe that
people should be encouraged to get on boats, to make that treacherous journey
from Sri Lanka to Australia. We should be doing all we can to prevent people
getting on those boats. The Sri Lankan government has indicated that it’s
prepared to make a significant effort to work with Australia to prevent people
coming by boat. We should take up that offer and we should enter into an
arrangement with Sri Lanka whereby Sri Lanka will take back home people who are
seeking to leave by boat. I don’t believe that Australia should continue to
encourage people to come by boat.”
Julie Bishop
(an interview with ABC, 3 September 2012)[8].
Bishop makes it clear that the
Coalition are willing to rely on the word of, and cooperate with, the
war-crimes-accused Sri Lankan government, to prevent Sri Lankans from seeing
asylum. She ignores an array of
reports that are critical of the ongoing human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. She makes it clear that the Coalition
hoped to implement an agreement with the Sri Lankan government to return asylum
seekers to their country without assessing their claims under the Refugee
Convention. In doing so, Bishop is
complicit in the potential torture and persecution of human beings, in a
desperate attempt to ‘stop the boats’.
While Bishop
uses any opportunity to attack Labor’s ‘soft stance’ on asylum seekers, it is
worth emphasising that Labor has engaged in its own share of moral corruption.
In ‘Dark Justice: Australia’s indefinite
detention of refugees on security grounds under International Human Rights Law’[9],
Ben Saul discusses the bipartisan reliance on security information provided by
corrupt Sri Lankan government, which has seen a number of Sri Lankan asylum
seekers indefinitely detained in Australia. Both Bishop and Carr use their visit to Sri Lanka, despite
the multitude of sources claiming otherwise, to manipulate the Australian
public into thinking that Sri Lanka is a safe place for its Tamil population. The public is
inundated with claims by both the Coalition and Labor that post war Sri Lankan
asylum seekers are not fleeing persecution, but are economic migrants.
Over the
weekend, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon visited Sri Lanka, ending in her
detainment and interrogation. She
released a statement (with New Zealand Green MP Jan Logie) that tells a
different story about the conditions in Sri Lanka[10].
“Elected officials and
members of civil society in Sri Lanka have provided us with examples of massive
illegal land confiscation by the armed forces; people being gaoled and detained
with regular disregard for legal rights; violence, often involving rape, of
women and children with no police investigation of these crimes; and ongoing
intimidation of media workers. We
visited areas where the army is occupying people's land. The homes of the
displaced people are now tin shacks serviced by dirt pot holed roads. Many
people have been living like this for more than two decades. Large numbers of women regularly suffer
sexual abuse perpetrated by members of the Sri Lankan armed forces. One lawyer
described to us the evidence collected about these crimes. In one case they
have text messages from Major General Mahinda Hathurusingha to the 'comfort
women' he frequently abuses.”
Rhiannon, like many other
experts, highlights the complex reality of post civil war Sri Lanka, where
minority populations face: a military role in civilian affairs; military land
grabs; military run businesses distorting prices; systematic discrimination,
persecution or political disenfranchisement; fear of sexual violence, fear of
being arrested and detained; discrimination in the job market, poor employment
and inadequate educational opportunities; fear of war returning; harassment and
interrogation by security forces and fear of reprisals for political activity
or speech. Howie recognises that “the economic concerns that are motivating
people are themselves inextricable from the effects of war, post war struggles,
political problems, persecution, systematic discrimination and other forms of
injustice”.[11]
[12]. Australian politicians’ representations
of asylum seekers as ‘economic migrants’ are deliberately simplistic and I make
these politicians complicit in the persecution of human beings.
In the United Kingdom, in
February 2013, the High Court responded to evidence of ongoing human rights
violations in Sri Lanka. They ordered that Tamils who had been refused asylum were not to be
deported, pending an assessment of the risk such individuals face on return to Sri Lanka.[13]
The Canadian government have
addressed both ongoing evidence of war crimes, and continuing human rights
violations, by withdrawing from participation in the Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting (CHOGM), to be held in Sri Lanka next week.[14]
[15] Despite calls for Australia to do
the same, both Labor and the Coalition have asserted their commitment to attend
CHOGM.
Amid mounting evidence of war
crimes and ongoing human rights violations, the Australian government remains
primarily invested in stopping the arrival of asylum seeker boats from Sri
Lanka. In the early years of this
decade, Sri Lanka was one of the main source countries for asylum seekers
arriving in Australia. Emily Howie of the Human Rights Law Centre argues that
Australia has become increasingly reluctant to criticize Sri Lanka on human
rights issues, for fear of jeopardising border control partnership[16]. Some argue that compliance with Sri
Lankan has been seen as important by Australian politicians, amid suspicions
that the Sri Lankan government has a role in allowing boats to leave.[17]
The response of the Australian Labor government to Sri Lankan
asylum seekers reached a new low in October 2012, when Sri Lankan arrivals
became subjected to a new system of processing their claims for refugee status,
the ‘enhanced screening’ process.
This method was implemented by the Department of Immigration and
Citizenship (DIAC), and was used exclusively on Sri Lankans. Enhanced screening involves a very
basic assessment of the individual’s case for refugee protection. ‘Enhanced screening’ is anything but
enhanced, and can rule out access to the formal application process to seek
asylum, for those asylum seekers who ‘fail’ the screening. Many argue that enhanced screening
operates in an environment where the immigration department are under pressure
to reject asylum seekers. While
it has been denied by Labor, Former DIAC employee Greg Lake argues that DIAC
were under pressure from then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to ensure that a
particular number of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka failed. "The Prime Minister, as far as I was informed, had an
expectation that at least 200 a week initially, and then there was an
expectation of more like 400 a week would be returned from Christmas Island, or
Darwin, but preferably Christmas Island straight to Colombo in Sri Lanka,"
Lake said[18]. This process has seen 1035 asylum seekers
from Sri Lanka sent back involuntary.
A range of academics, non-government
organizations, and the United Nations have expressed criticism of the Enhanced
Screening process. Greg Lake
indicates that the enhanced screening process sometimes saw asylum seekers sent
back to Sri Lanka on the basis of one of two questions[19]. Under the process, asylum seekers are
interviewed with no legal advice, transparency or independent review. Without access to a rigorous examination
of an individual’s case, and an adequate review process, asylum seekers can be
sent back to Sri Lanka.
Since forming government, the
Coalition has continued to employ punitive methods toward Sri Lankan asylum seekers. The Coalition’s policy Operation Sovereign Borders, which
includes, “intercepting all identified vessels travelling from Sri Lanka (and
arranging immediate return of all passengers in accordance with safe transfer
arrangements to be established with Sri Lankan government)”[20]
indicates that the Australian Government will continue to be complicit in the
violation of human rights. ‘Safe transfer’ suggests that it is possible for
asylum seekers to be returned to Sri Lanka without facing possible persecution,
torture and death, amid a multitude of information that suggests otherwise.
[3]http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/The_Internal_Review_Panel_report_on_Sri_Lanka.pdf (A report
by the United Nations into the alleged war crimes)
[11] Howie p. 98
from Groundviews article ‘What is an economic migrant’ 17/9/13. Retrieved from:
[15] http://www.icj.org/icj-welcomes-human-rights-council-resolution-on-sri-lanka/ The
resolution was adopted in favor by 25 countries, not including Australia.
[17] Howie,
Emily, (2013) Sri Lankan Boat Migration to Australia: Motivations and Dilemmas. In Economic & Political Weekly. August 31, 2013.
Vol. XLVIII No. 35/
[18] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-10/asylum-seeker-enhanced-screenings-dangerous-former-official-says/4744628
[19] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-10/asylum-seeker-enhanced-screenings-dangerous-former-official-says/4744628
