Tamil Justice

SMH – ASIO checks unreliable: former immigration officer

ASIO’s security checks are open to political interference and should not form the basis of rejecting refugees from Australia, a former immigration official says.

…’The UN Refugee Agency does not grant refugee status to anyone who has committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. It determined all 78 Sri Lankan Tamils who refused to get off the Oceanic Viking in Indonesia to be refugees.

The Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, said he did not know what the security concerns surrounding the five Tamils were. The Tamils were not discussed by the border security committee of cabinet, which met in Canberra yesterday.

”Those decisions are made by ASIO and they don’t discuss the detail of those things,” he said.

A refugee lawyer, David Manne, said secrecy was part of the problem. People suspected of being a risk were never told why. ”ASIO gets information but it never puts it to the person,” he said. ”These people are stuck in indefinite detention but it’s impossible to find out what the concerns are.”

The process had to be made transparent and subject to independent scrutiny. ”ASIO has made serious mistakes in the past,” he said. ”It’s crucial that we don’t revert to the previous situation where these people’s plight became a political football.”

ASIO draws on classified and unclassified information to evaluate a person’s activities, associates, attitudes, background and character. The agency takes into account the credibility and reliability of information available, the ASIO annual report says. Where sources contradict, ASIO seeks to interview the person.

According to Ms Steen, repeated interviews, without disclosing the nature of the suspicions, bordered on harassment. ”ASIO got leant on. Its re-interviewing of the two men on Nauru was a result of political interference from the top.” ASIO declined to comment.

ABC Radio AM – Opposition says Oceanic Viking deal compromised national security

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: ASIO never publicly releases its security assessments so it’s not clear what risk the group pose but most commentators believe it’s to do with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

ROB STARY: To now arbitrarily say that the Sri Lankan Tamils shouldn’t be here because they’ve sided with one side or the other, I think is extraordinary.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Defence lawyer Rob Stary is currently representing members of the Tamil community who’ve been accused of providing financial help to the Tamil Tigers.

That case is before the courts in Melbourne.

ROB STARY: ASIO should not be the final arbiter as to who should represent a security risk. The process should be firstly transparent and it should be open to further scrutiny.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: We can only guess that these people were linked in some way to the Tamil Tigers?

ROB STARY: Yeah but that’s true of many, many political refugees in this country – the same way that many Kosovars fled the conflict in Serbia. It’s the same as historically the Irish Fenians in the mid 19th century fled Ireland.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Doctor Martin Mulligan is from RMIT University.

MARTIN MULLIGAN: Most of the people who have lived in the north-eastern region of Sri Lankan and even in the south-eastern province could easily have had some kind of contact, like linkages to the Tamil Tigers over a period of time and often that was against their will.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: He believes the Tamil Tigers should no longer be treated as a terrorist organisation.

MARTIN MULLIGAN: We really have to show a little generosity here and understand the past in where these people may have lived in situations where the Tamil Tigers may have been in control of a whole area, territory.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Two young children are among the group being detained.

The Greens want the family brought to the Australian mainland.

But the Government says the children and their mother won’t be held behind the razor wire.

It now faces the difficult task of finding a third nation to take the Tamils who can’t be sent back to Sri Lanka because they have been found to be genuine refugees.