Tamil Justice

The Lowy Interpreter : Labor’s asylum policy continues to sink

Gobie Rajalingam is co-convenor for the University of Sydney’s Sri Lanka Human Rights Project and a researcher at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Last month, Immigration Minister Chris Evans and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith justified the suspension of Sri Lankan asylum seeker claims on the basis that the country is transitioning towards a state of normalcy.

This claim stands in sharp contrast to DFAT’s travel advice, which continues to warn that the north and eastern regions of Sri Lanka are perilous for Australian travel. Evidently, what is perilous for Australians is somehow safe for persecuted Tamil refugees.

Nor is there much ‘normalcy’ among Sri Lanka’s oppressed Tamil population, who constitute the vast majority, if not all, Sri Lankan asylum seeker arrivals. Their fears of individual persecution have been compounded by reports of ethnic ‘colonisation’ as new Buddhist shrines and permanent garrisons spring up on sites flattened by government bombing in the country’s north.

Worse still, the Edmund Rice Centre has revealed disturbing evidence that returned asylum seekers have in the past been detained on arrival, and some later killed. For the 76,000 internally displaced Tamils already languishing in illegal internment camps, exposure to rape, mysterious ‘disappearances’ and extra-judicial killings are a real and ever-present danger.

Having failed so far to reconcile its divided multi-ethnic population, the Sri Lankan Government may have won the war, but it has certainly not won the peace.

Canberra’s decision to freeze applications for asylum is an embarrassing and cynical election year fix-up. By aiming to deter uninvited arrivals rather than enhance their protection, Australia has pandered to the worst kind of populist xenophobia.

Australia’s Minister for Immigration must be held accountable to his promise that detention centres only be used ‘as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time.’ Moreover, as a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Australia should lift its selective suspensions and comply with Article 3 which provides that ‘the Contracting Parties shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin.’

Beyond humanitarian pragmatism, Australia has a mandate to protect refugees, and this must be respected as the current restrictionist climate intensifies.

The Australian : Panglossian picture

WHAT extraordinary efforts are underway to airbrush the grim realities of post-war Sri Lanka. Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe (“Beware of asylum-seekers bearing tales of woe”, Commentary, 7/4) makes a series of misleading claims, distorting evidence or withholding chunks that do not fit his Panglossian picture.

More than 76,000 internally displaced people languish in illegal internment camps where even the country’s own oppressed media regularly report complaints of rape, mysterious “disappearances” and extra-judicial killings. Where reporters have managed to gather evidence from on the ground, it directly contradicts DeSilva-Ranasinghe’s account. And, of course, he ignores the Sinhala colonisation of Tamil areas, as new Buddhist shrines and permanent garrisons spring up on sites flattened by government bombing.

Far more Sri Lankan Tamils have sought refuge in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu than come to Australia, but the Indian government, which is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, has no international obligations towards them, so restricts their movements and access to proper housing. Above all, there is no meaningful move towards prosecuting those responsible for war crimes.

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A defeated population, cowering in fear, would recognise no part of DeSilva-Ranasinghe’s travesty.

Jake Lynch and Gobie Rajalingam, Co-conveners, Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney

An initiative of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project (Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Sydney) and Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine.

Associate Professor Jake Lynch is Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Convener of the CPACS Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, and is an adviser to the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice

Transcend Media Service – Peace and Justice

“Peace is not the absence of war”, Martin Luther King told us: “it is the presence of justice”. King’s legacy transmitted itself directly into the mantra of African-American activists, outraged over the beating, by LA police officers, of the black motorist, Rodney King, in 1991: “No justice, no peace”, they chanted. It’s an important answer to a familiar question: what is peace? Of course, another, equally tricky question nestles within it, like matryoshka dolls: what is justice?

A Reverend Mpbambami told the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission a story about two friends, Peter and John, who fell out when Peter stole John’s bicycle. Later, Peter said to John: “Let’s talk about reconciliation”. John’s reply resonates still: “We cannot talk about reconciliation until my bicycle is back”.

It so happens that providing bicycles is the aim of a significant ‘people-to-people’ aid effort, now underway here in Sydney, to bring relief to the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, where they are used for the simple but vital job of transporting fish to market; but in Peter and John’s story, the machine is more important for its symbolic value, of course. It captures the sense of restitution that is a precursor to the willingness to live in peace.

In the Sri Lankan case, an unofficial court, set up in Dublin and conducted by the Milan-based Permanent People’s Tribunal, has just delivered its verdict: the Sri Lanka Government is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The tribunal also concluded that the charge of genocide warrants further investigations. Eye-witnesses included several escapees from the final week of the Sri Lankan offensive in the Mullaitivu ‘No Fire Zone’, at the end of the civil war in May last year, where more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were allegedly slaughtered by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) using heavy weapons on them.

This chimes not only with evidence provided by outsiders, but also allegations that have been exchanged between candidates in the Sri Lankan election, due to be held shortly. A top aide to President Mahinda Rajapakse disclosed recently that Colombo ordered a halt to the use of heavy weapons only in April, two months after a UN envoy was promised that such armaments would not be used.

Former foreign minister and key opposition leader Mangala Samaraweera seized on the disclosure by the aide, Lalith Weeratunga, who said the use of heavy weapons was eventually stopped as part of a political deal with the Indian government.

The disclosure “indicates that despite claims to the contrary, both to the public of this country and to (the) UN… in February 2009, in fact the government had sanctioned the use of heavy weapons until April, when the Indian general election was in full swing,” Samaraweera said in a statement. More

Associate Professor Jake Lynch is Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Convener of the CPACS Sri Lanka Human Rights Project and is an adviser to the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.

Israel is using a panoply of legal and administrative measures, backed by the ever-present threat of force, to squeeze out Palestinian families who’ve lived for generations in East Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Centre for Women is a Palestinian NGO helping and empowering women to access their rights and resist the ethnic cleansing of their communities.

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Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Sri Lanka Human Rights Project
About the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project
Primary Goal
This project advocates human rights norms as Sri Lanka’s post-conflict situation rapidly deteriorates. In doing so, the project seeks to raise awareness about the country’s censored emergency and help work towards a peaceful and just solution for the multi-ethnic people of Sri Lanka

Objectives
* Establish relevant links with grassroots organisations, concerned NGOs, academics and parliamentarians in Australia. The resulting networks will serve as a conduit for the dissemination of public information and as a voice for Sri Lanka’s marginalised population.
* Raise public awareness of Sri Lanka’s post-conflict situation with an emphasis on its human rights emergency and
* In fostering awareness amongst the constituents of the Australian public, the project seeks to create a medium for dialogue and understanding between Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups

Project description

In light of the continued abuses committed in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the project aims to raise awareness about the country’s human rights disaster, which remains unrecognised by the greater international community. In highlighting the appalling conditions faced by Tamil people in government internment camps, the project raises calls for the Sri Lankan government to find a workable solution for the Tamil population. By encouraging the international community to develop a just environment, much needed peaceful dialogue can be further promoted amongst the multi-ethnic people of Sri Lanka. More

Sri Lanka Human Rights Project Press Release on Asylum Seekers

Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney

For immediate release 22/10/09

Asylum Seekers – The Tamil Solution

There is a simple solution to the Tamil crisis.

If all the citizens of Sri Lanka, including the 300 000 indefinitely and illegally detained in government run internment camps, are accorded their universal human rights, the need to flee Sri Lanka let alone risk a boat journey to Australia would cease.

Australian politicians should advocate this solution and cease their familiar resort to fear and loathing of vulnerable people as a main plank of their policies.

It may be acceptable politics to bash up the ‘deplorable people smugglers’, but the real issue has to do with innocent civilians who have been failed by their government and ignored by Australia.

The fleeing asylum seekers are people – children, pregnant women, mothers and fathers – who should be protected by their Commonwealth neighbours.

The Australian Government must find the vision and courage to address such a major human rights emergency in this region. It must not keep repeating the old mantra that Australia enjoys a ‘warm’ relationship with the Government of Sri Lanka. Such a cosy relationship can only continue at the expense of 300, 000 lives.

In November the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting will take place in Trinidad and Tobago. At that unique occasion the Government of Sri Lanka must be held to account for its serious human rights abuses. This will also be a very public opportunity for Australia to display its leadership by insisting on the ‘Tamil solution’ .

From Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Univ. of Sydney

For media interviews please call
Stuart Rees 0434930134 or 9351 4763 (Sydney Peace Foundation)
Jake Lynch 042 098 0010 (Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies)
Gobie Raja 0401154799 (Sri Lanka Human Rights Project)
Brami Jegan 0433054712 (Sri Lanka Human Rights Project)

UYSD Center for Peace and Conflict Studies – Sri Lanka Human Rights Project

Previous links to the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project

Article by co-convener of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Jake Lynch

Article by patron of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Bruce Haigh

Blog post by co-convener of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Gobie Rajalingam

Lowy Interpreter Blog -  Boat people a symptom of Sri Lanka’s dark side

Gobie Rajalingam is co-convenor for the University of Sydney’s Sri Lanka Human Rights Project and an intern at the Lowy Institute.

In the months following the Sri Lankan Government’s declaration that the 26-year civil war was officially over, footage of alleged extra-judicial killings by Sri Lankan soldiers* trickled out. The living conditions of some 280,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), forcibly held without justification in the country’s northern provinces, also rapidly deteriorated.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the 260 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers who were intercepted en route to Christmas Island last night showed preference for suicide rather than return to a country that has no regard for justice.

With the imminent monsoon season threatening to worsen the spread of infectious disease among IDPs, with forced disappearances and rape in the internment camps continuing unabated, and with the Sri Lankan Government showing little interest in releasing civilians, the urgency surrounding the humanitarian and political fate of Sri Lanka’s Tamil refugees remains heightened.

Although Sri Lanka continues to censor its human rights emergency, holding its rank in the bottom ten countries for press freedom, the Australian Foreign Minister has previously raised concerns over Sri Lanka’s human rights situation. But Kevin Rudd’s latest offer of ‘micro-loans, free volleyball nets and fishing nets’ to quell the number of asylum seekers does little more than add insult to injury for Sri Lanka’s marginalised population.

The increase in asylum seekers does not indicate a weakness in Australia’s immigration policies, but is instead a creation of Sri Lanka’s unacceptable human rights record and lack of protection for refugees. Australia must accommodate human rights in its national interest if it is to uphold its responsibility to protect.

* Ed. note: the link takes you to a UK Channel 4 story about the footage. The footage itself contains extremely disturbing images.

Photo, of a Sri Lankan IDP camp, by Flickr user Foreign and Commonwealth Office, used under a Creative Commons license.

Previous links to the USYD Sri Lanka Human Rights Project

Article by co-convener of the USYD Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Jake Lynch

Article by patron of the USYD Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, Bruce Haigh