Tamil ‘refugees’ who holiday in Sri Lanka

Pro-LTTE asylum seekers in Australia cannot be enjoying the indecisive result of the Australian national poll paving the way to the first hung Parliament in the country since World War II. It is not the stability of the Canberra Legislature that worries them but that either candidate who scrapes through to form a coalition has stood firmly against unlimited freedom to asylum seekers, especially from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan

Prospective migrants to Australia from Sri Lanka, riding Goat Class in heavily funded but creaky vessels, now face the prospect long stays in East Timor, Christmas Islands and such holding places, possibly prior to finally being sent back to Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, the debate on the ‘asylum seekers’ in Canada gets more interesting. Influential sections of the Canadian media are posing good questions about the genuineness these asylum seekers, and producing interesting studies about the behaviour of those who had already obtained refugee status there, claiming to be persecuted in Sri Lanka.

Not surprisingly, we see James McDonald, the Sri Lankan Country Specialist at Amnesty International U.S.A, wading into the Canadian debate.

In a letter to The Washington Post of August 9, he states that an August 4 news story of US monitoring Sri Lankans aiming for North American asylum that quotes a Pentagon official who advocated summarily sending the approximately 200 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers, on a boat heading towards North America, back to Sri Lanka, as being a dangerous and ill considered position.

It is necessary to state that this is the same AI Country Specialist who stated that the Sri Lankan Armed Forces were using cluster bombs in the fight to free Tamil civilians from the LTTE; a blatant lie that was never retracted, and not corroborated even by those who uttered so many other lies about the Sri Lankan Security Forces.

James McDonald uses a cluster bomb of his own, in support of the asylum seekers approaching Canada. He states, “the asylum-seekers could be at risk of harm if returned to Sri Lanka. Thousands of Tamils suspected of being members of the Tigers are being detained there without charge; some have reportedly been tortured or have died in custody.”

The facts fly in the face of this malicious user of untruth. There is no record of any asylum seekers returned to Sri Lanka being at any risk of harm. The facts, as we will show here, prove the contrary.

Also, the statement about thousands of Tamils suspected of being members of the Tigers being detained without charge, and some having been reportedly tortured or died in custody is largely unacceptable hearsay, and ignores the reality of the terror that Sri Lanka went through at the hands of the LTTE for nearly 30 years.

Neither James McDonald nor AI or the likes of such persons or organizations, warn against Americans who seek asylum in Canada or any other country, for being opposed to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, being returned to the US, despite well documented facts about hundreds of alleged terrorists held without any trial and subject to torture such as water boarding and other cruel methods at Guantanamo Bay; and to a country where former child soldiers can be tried by military tribunals, unlike in Sri Lanka where they are retrained and rehabilitated into society.

The facts

Here is a very interesting fact about Sri Lankans who seek asylum or refugee status in Canada who are returned to Sri Lanka, which James MacDonald could not have missed.

“In December 19, 2006 correspondence, an official at the Canadian High Commission in Sri Lanka indicated that ‘since 2004 ... no returnees from Canada have been arrested or experienced negative repercussions at the airport or after exiting the airport grounds in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan authorities who have dealt with the returnees have carried out their duties in a professional manner in compliance with international norms’.

The above observation is from a report on “Sri Lanka: Treatment of failed asylum seekers returning to Sri Lanka (2004 - 2006)” by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada dated December 22, 2006, cited LKA102038.E, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/45f1476c7.html

What is important is that this absence of any threat or harm to those who have been sent back from Canada having failed to obtain asylum was at the height of the conflict with the LTTE, when it was unleashing terror throughout the land. If there was no danger to failed asylum seekers at that time, how is one to believe AI’s Cluster Bomber’s claim of such threats existing today?

Once that lie about Sri Lankan asylum seekers in Canada has been exposed, it is interesting to know of the behaviour of those who have obtained citizenship under refugee status in Canada, in the past few years, which will indicate the conditions that actually prevailed and still, remain in Sri Lanka.

The Canadian ‘National Post’ of August 24, 2010, commented editorially that: “Over the weekend, the Sun newspaper chain (The Toronto Sun) reported the findings of a ‘secret government report’ suggesting that nearly three-quarters of Sri Lankan Tamils previously granted refugee status in Canada have returned to their homeland for visits or vacations, casting doubt on their claims that they faced persecution, or even death, in their homeland.

The ‘secret report’ turns out to be a collection of 50 refugee-applicant case studies, plucked at random from government files.

That is a small sample size, and it’s not clear that even these 50 individuals are entirely representative of the larger Canadian-resident Tamil community. Still, the results are worrying: Of the 50 refugee applicants, 31 had been granted asylum. Of those, 22 had made trips back to Sri Lanka.

If applicants feel safe enough to return to Sri Lanka, they are putting the lie to their pleas for sanctuary here.

“For many years, Canada has been regarded as a soft touch by Tamil migrants - which is the main reason that the Tiger terrorist group is seeking to use Canada as its base of operations as it regroups in the wake of its 2009 routing by the Sri Lankan Army. The overcrowded boat full of Tamil migrants that arrived in British Columbia this month likely will not be the last of its kind,” the National Post states.

This must be a worrying fact to many a Canadian and others in North America, too. The fact that asylum seekers who claimed torture and persecution have returned to the place of the alleged threat, persecution or torture, raises a whole new question of the honesty of these ‘asylum seekers’, and gives much more credence to the suspicions of their being fund raisers for the pro-LTTE organizations abroad, especially the Trans-national Government of Tamil Eelam, and such fronts for future terror.

The National Post editorial concludes that: “Whether as refugees or immigrants, new Canadians who do not genuinely wish to embrace this country as their own, or who seek to short-circuit our immigration procedures, must not be allowed to exploit our goodwill.” It is a note of sanity in the midst of a massive propaganda campaign supported by AI, Human Rights Watch et al to show that Tamils in Sri Lanka who have been liberated from their LTTE captors are somehow living under the worst conditions of fear and threat in Sri Lanka.

The truth is coming out at last, slowly but surely. More strength to those investigative journalists in Canada, who are digging out the facts of about human smugglers making huge profits to fatten the already bulging coffers of LTTE terror.

Also visit - http://www.info.gov.lk/news-update/Current-Affairs/ca201008/20100823tamils-playing-us-for-fools.htm

 http://www.info.gov.lk/news-update/Current-Affairs/ca201008/20100823weve-been-duped-by-the-tamils-editorial-comment.htm