The Rudd government’s decision to freeze asylum applications for Sri Lankans and Afghanistan nationals is, it says, based on the view that political and social conditions in both countries are improving. But a recent decision by the Refugee Review Tribunal (the RRT), the independent arbiter of asylum claims, casts some doubt on that claim.
In a decision handed down on March 11 in Sydney, RRT member Christine Long found that a Sri Lankan woman (who, like all applicants in migration cases, is not identified by name) who is a Tamil was a “person to whom Australia has protection obligations under the Refugees Convention”.
The woman had fled Sri Lanka after being accused of supporting the Tamil Tigers and was told by paramilitaries never to come back to Sri Lanka. She and her husband gave evidence to the RRT about the risks of returning to Sri Lanka.
The woman told the RRT that she and her husband are on a wanted list drawn up by paramilitaries. When asked by the RRT why she feared being harmed if she returned to Sri Lanka today, the woman said that “…they will kill her if she goes back because she has been detained and beaten and this will come to their attention if she goes back. She said she is branded as a Tiger”.
The woman’s husband told the RRT that in “Sri Lanka paramilitaries are everywhere. Those paramilitaries were once with the Tigers and then they left the movement”. He told the RRT “paramilitaries are stationed to catch Tigers but they abduct Tamils and extort money”.
Long found that the woman “has a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of her imputed political opinion and her race if she returns to her country now or in the reasonably foreseeable future”.
Of course, the RRT’s view about Sri Lanka in this case has to be seen in the context of the woman and her husband’s personal circumstances. What this decision also shows is that it is essential that every Sri Lankan person who makes a claim for refugee protection in Australia should be entitled to have their claim fairly assessed.
The RRT’s decision also suggests that foreign minister Stephen Smith’s claim over the weekend that conditions are improving in Sri Lanka is a sweeping generalisation that ignores the reality for each person.
This is not the only case of verbal overreach by the Rudd government on this issue. Smith and Immigration Minister Chris Evans claimed last Friday that other countries had also begun to suspend processing asylum seeker claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Not so, says the UNHCR regional chief Richard Towle, who The Australian quotes this morning as saying, “I am not aware of any other countries in the industrialised world which have suspensions in place for asylum claims for people from these countries.”
Is this any surprise? Rudd doesn’t want to lose his first election, what a legacy that would be after being the most popular PM in history, and looking at the possibility of losing the unlosable election. He would sell his soul to stay PM. No guts, no integrity and no spine.
The notion that Afghans could have a 99% success rate on application on Thursday and a zero success rate on Friday is frankly disgusting.
And in Britain the courts have ruled even Tamil Tigers are entitled to protection.
Marilyn, using the UK courts as some sort of justification for activities here is tenuous at best, given how far the two countries political, social and judicial systems have drifted apart.
No Michael the refugee convention is the same in all 147 nations who ratified it.
“A refugee is a person outside their country with a well founded fear of persecution who is unwilling or unable to go home”.
That is not allowed to be changed by any country.
@Michael James – sadly you are right but sadder than this is the drift toward American style political, social and judicial systems under a a supposed Government. When the dummy in the window that is Labor is undressed it looks pretty much like naked conservatism to me. From Crikey today ‘aged care – the opportunity to spend less (when EVERY civilised person know we should be spending considerably more)’, ‘genuine asylum seekers dropped like a hot spud to pander to middle class institutionalised and endemic racism simply because Abbott played the card early in an election year and the cynical use of old style Queensland tactics to attempt to get Victoria (providers of the best health system in Australia) ‘back in line’ to the detriment of the health of the people.
When a majority of us bought the spin of 07 how many realised just how quickly we’d actually be getting that which was in the manifesto of the Liberals? Am I now a political right winger if I admit to having voted Labor?