More Australian refoulement

Australia is sending refugees back to persecution again:

At least a dozen Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been forcibly deported back to Sri Lanka, having been put on a specially chartered jet that left Perth at 2am on Tuesday.

Some of the men deported had been in detention for more than six years in Australia, while others still had challenges before Australian courts pending. The majority were Tamil, but at least one was Sinhalese.

Guardian Australia has been provided with details of some of those returned but has chosen not to name them out of concern for their safety. Several had reported to Australian authorities they had previously been abducted and tortured by security forces in Sri Lanka.

The asylum seekers were transported from detention centres across Australia and taken to Perth, from where they were flown out on a charter flight run by Skytraders. The flight left at 1.57am.

The group landed in Colombo on Tuesday but has not made contact with family or legal representatives. Returned asylum seekers are, without previous exception, interviewed, arrested and charged by Sri Lanka police on arrival.

Deporting people when they still have challenges before the courts seems to violate the rule of law. But more importantly, deporting people to persecution is illegal under international law. As noted above, Sri Lanka persecutes people who have fled, and tortures its opponents. But I guess Australia doesn't care about that anymore. All they care about is preserving a white Australia by throwing out brown people.

Enjoining refoulement

Yesterday Australia refouled 41 refugees to Sri Lanka, where they are now facing prosecution and possibly torture for attempting to leave the country. Fortunately, last night Australian lawyers enjoined the government from refouling any more:

The High Court has issued an interim injunction preventing the transfer to Sri Lanka of 153 asylum seekers who are missing on a boat bound for Australia.

The injunction, granted late on Monday in Sydney, applies at least until a hearing resumes on Tuesday afternoon at 2.15pm.

The asylum seekers are represented by Ron Merkel, QC, who argued to Justice Susan Crennan that the transfer was illegal because the asylum seekers had been deprived the ability to have their claims properly assessed.

But it was not clear whether the transfer has already taken place because Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has refused to comment and his lawyers told the court they had not received instructions.

I'm glad to see the law reasserting itself. At the same time, I'm boggled that the Australian government would even consider refouling people to torture (and in the case of the people they just refouled, creating a risk of torture by refouling them). Decent governments don't do this. But I guess its been a long, long time since we've been able to regard Australia as "decent".

Australia returns refugees to persecution

Non-refoulement is a key principle of international law, which forbids the return of a victim to their persecutor. Its encoded in both the Convention Against Torture and the Refugee Convention. But in its efforts to shut out refugees, Australia is now abandoning it:

Tamil asylum seekers believed to have been intercepted on astricken fishing vessel off Christmas Island might be forcibly returned directly to south Asia by the Australian government.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday night the government was prepared to talk with any country to enforce its policy of stopping boats from reaching Australia.

If the asylum seekers are in Australian custody, they are being held without communications. The last contact made by satellite phone was at the weekend.

Removing the asylum seekers from Australian territory would be illegal under international law.

Sri Lanka is a torture-state whose government committed numerous war crimes during its civil war. The government use rape and sexual violence to brutalise the Tamil population. Returning people to a government which does this is a clear violation of international law, and makes Australia responsible for these refugees' subsequent treatment. But Australia's racist government doesn't care.

I wonder what they talked about?

Yesterday, I blogged about the British government's policy of deporting Sri Lankan Tamils to torture, and in passing mentioned the presence of Sri Lankan head of state Mahinda Rajapaksa at the jubilee celebrations in London. So, guess who Rajapaksa got to sit next to at the Queen's jubilee lunch?

Rajapaksa was seated on the table directly to the Queen's left with Babli Sharma, wife of the Commonwealth secretary general; the Namibian president, Hifikepunye Pohamba, and his wife; and New Zealand prime minister, John Key, and his wife.

I wonder what they talked about? Did Key get any hot tips on how best to asphyxiate dissenters in plastic bags full of petrol? Or maybe whether it was better to hang them by the arms or the feet? Inquiring minds want to know.

A decent person would have refused to have anything to do with the head of a torture-state. But pretty obviously, Key is not a decent person. He's too obsessed with greasing up to the monarch to take a stand for kiwi values.

British government deports people to torture

The Guardian reports that the British government is deporting people to torture:

The British government is forcibly deporting asylum seekers who are then tortured in Sri Lanka, according to the testimony of one victim who was left scarred and suicidal after a brutal two-week ordeal.

The victim told the Guardian he was tortured over the space of 17 days after being deported from the UK last year. His torturers accused him of passing on to British officials information about previous beatings at the hands of state officials and other human rights abuses, to ruin diplomatic relations between the two countries.

[...]

Speaking through a translator, the victim, who wants to be identified only as Hari for fear of further retribution by Sri Lankan authorities, said that six months after he was deported, security personnel arrested him and beat him with rods, put petrol-filled plastic bags over his face and hung him by his feet with a nylon rope. Hari's back displays a welter of scars and the Guardian has seen medical reports supporting his claims.

There is a full interview with the victim here.

This is of course unlawful. It violates the Refugee Convention (not to mention the Convention Against Torture), both of which are given effect in UK law. But the politically-driven rush to kick out asylum seekers (lest they disturb racist Britons by being different) means that unfair decisions are made, and people are sent back to persecution and torture. As for the decision-makers, well, its not as if anyone is holding them to account for what happens to the people they deport. Morally, they're complicit in the crime.

And just to add insult to injury, Sri Lanka's head of state Mahinda Rajapaksa has been invited to the monarch's jubilee celebrations, and will be enjoying lunch with the Queen. You know people by their friends. And in the monarchy's case, their friends are torturers.

No freedom of speech in Sri Lanka

J.S. Tissainayagam is a Sri Lankan journalist. He has just been sentenced to 20 year's hard labour on charges of inciting terrorism and racial hatred. His "crime"?

Tissainayagam's indictment was based on passages from two articles which expressed critical opinions about the government's treatment of Tamil civilians affected by armed conflict. A July 2006 editorial headlined, "Providing security to Tamils now will define northeastern politics of the future" concluded: "It is fairly obvious that the government is not going to offer them any protection. In fact it is the state security forces that are the main perpetrator of the killings."

A second article published in November 2006 addressed the humanitarian situation in the eastern town of Vaharai, where warfare included attacks on civilian areas. It accused the government of starving and endangering civilians to further political and strategic military objectives.

Expose war crimes, go to jail. That's the modern Sri Lanka.

This takes the cake

Chandrasiri Bandara is a Sri Lankan astrologer. Last week he was arrested by the police and questioned for three days. He is currently in the custody of the country's Criminal Investigation Department. His "crime"? Using astrology to predict the downfall of the government. Yes, really:

Police told the AP news agency that Mr Bandara told an opposition meeting that the prime minister would take over as president on 9 September and the opposition leader would become prime minister.

[...]

The astrologer predicted that a planetary change on 8 October will be inauspicious for parliament and the government may not be able to contain rising living costs - a forecast which correspondents say has already been made by private economists.

It would be absurd, if someone wasn't in jail for it. But apparently Sri Lanka is so superstitious that they take such "predictions" seriously. In which case you wonder what benefit they see in arresting the predictor...

Back in the Middle Ages, it was treason to cast the monarch's horoscope, as this supposedly gave knowledge of their death. It seems that Sri Lanka is still stuck there.