Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to congratulate the SBS Dateline team for the special investigation that aired last night, on allegations that some Tamils who sought asylum in Australia were returned to Sri Lanka by the Australian government, and have since been abducted and abused by Sri Lankan security forces on their return. I would like to urge all members of the Australian parliament to watch this Dateline documentary. This is an excerpt from SBS reporter Dr David Corlett's blog. Dr Corlett is also an expert on asylum seeker and refugee issues. In the blog, he writes about his investigation for Dateline, and his thoughts on Australia's asylum seeker policy. Dr Corlett states:

Last month, I travelled to Sri Lanka and spoke to people who had been returned from Australia.

One woman, who says she had political problems in Sri Lanka, said the Sri Lankan military raped her before she eventually boarded a boat and fled.

On her second attempt to escape, Australian border officials intercepted her vessel.

After days at sea, as she was kept on an Australian vessel, she was subjected to "enhanced screening," consisting of a 30-minute satellite phone interview, through an interpreter, with an immigration department decision-maker back on the mainland.

With three or four of her fellow passengers in the same area who she was unsure she could trust, she said that there was no privacy for her to tell her full story.

On the basis of this brief interview, Australian officials determined that it was safe to send her back.

When I met her in a secret location, after an elaborate process involving a lawyer, a "safe" driver, and various phone calls in which I was instructed to go from one place to the next to get further directions, she was terrified of being picked up again by Sri Lankan authorities.

She was living out of a suitcase and moving from house to house.

She has since told me that she has fled her homeland for a second time.

Another man I spoke to, as part of research on those sent back to Sri Lanka, told me he had been subjected to brutal torture after Australian officials rejected his refugee application and he was returned.

After months of monitoring by Sri Lankan security forces, he was abducted and taken to a secret location. He says that for more than two months, he was tortured, including having his fingernails torn out and being hung upside down and beaten.

He was accused of being associated with the defeated Tamil Tigers.

Later, he says he was picked up again and taken to the notorious fourth floor of the Criminal Investigations Department in Colombo.

This time, he says his wrists and ankles were tied behind his back and he was hung from a pole between two chairs.

These stories may seem paranoid or unbelievably brutal, but they are consistent with credible international research.

I would now like to read an excerpt from an article in The Guardian published on 23 September by Julian Borger:

The UK continues to deport Tamils seeking political asylum to Sri Lanka, despite strong evidence that the security forces systematically use torture against those suspected of dissident activity five years after the end of the country’s civil war.

A new report by the Freedom From Torture advocacy group, based on medical evaluations of victims, found that many were subjected to branding and two thirds of those examined suffered rape or other sexual torture.

I was recently invited to speak at a forum in Newcastle about Tamil refugees fleeing to Australia and the ongoing atrocities in Sri Lanka being committed by the Rajapaksa regime. On the speaking panel was a young man from Melbourne called Aran, who works with the Tamil Refugee Council. I found his speech haunting, brutal and most distressing. I would like to read it to you. These are Aran's words:

I am a witness to the Sri Lankan Government's genocidal acts in the 1990s.

In the 1990s the Sri Lankan Government propagated a war for peace campaign in which they aimed to inflict massive casualties on the Tamil population.

I am from a small village called Nagarkovil in northern Tamil Eelam.

I have witnessed deliberate bombings of churches, schools and civilian settlements.

Sri Lankan army would come and drop leaflets via helicopters asking us to stay in schools and churches for safety and they bombed us.

I was studying at Nagarkovil high school. Over 750 students studied there.

On 22nd of September 1995, my school was bombed seven times by the Sri Lankan airforce. The first bomb was dropped nearby our school. All 750 students in plain white uniforms started running outside. That is when they dropped six bombs. On that day my 14 year old brother was cut in half and killed by the Sri Lankan Air Force.

I witnessed my classmate Gopi hanging on a tarmarind tree by his intestines.

My six year old cousin was found in pieces.

Two other cousins died as well.

Tens of children were murdered on that day.

Few weeks later Sri Lankan army attacked our village again. This time from their military base targeting the fish market. Only a new born baby survived.

After that attack, we internally displaced to Vanni and lived in a refugee camp for more than a year.

Tamil Tigers Civil administration looked after us. They provided us with three meals a day and built a cottage for us to live in that area.

In 1997 I fled the refugee camp due to Sri Lankan army's air attacks and came to Australia as a 13 year old refugee, as an unaccompanied minor. I was detained at Villawood detention centre for few months and released into the community.

I have come here today to share this experience because I can't sleep at night when our government is easily sending back victims of oppressive regimes, back to their ill fates.

I can't sleep at night when the Labor party and the Liberal party members continuously speak out in support of the brutal rajapaksa regime. This needs to change and the change will only come through people like all of you who are here today.

Earlier this year three Victorian Labor MPs visited Sri Lanka and called Mahinda Rajapaksa a man of courage. Liz Beattie, founding member of EMILY's List called a man who uses rape as a weapon of war as man of courage.

In NSW we have couple of Labor MPs who have spoken in support of Tamils. These politicians have used the Tamils to hold onto their marginal seats. Same politicians have come out to defend politicians like Bob Carr who has threatened human rights organisations for speaking out against Sri Lanka.

We will no longer be fooled by the empty words of these so called friendly Labor party parliamentarians. They are all complicit in the genocide of the Tamil people.

Sri Lankan Government carried out the first genocide of the 21st century with the help of the Australian Labor Government. History will never forget that.

Ladies and gentlemen, what is happening in Tamil Eelam today is an unimaginable psychological torture for our people, apart from the physical harm they are subject to with impunity even as we speak.

It is hard to imagine the brutality of it all.

Everything that is happening against Tamils within the Sri Lankan state is happening with impunity and covert support from outside forces including Australia.

As a member of the UN Security Council, Australia should act responsibly.

Unfortunately Australian government, despite evidence given by its own parliamentarians and refugees with horrible experiences, has chosen to take sides with Sri Lankan regime.

Recently I acted as an interpreter for a Tamil refugee who fled Sri Lanka. This is for a book called Sri Lanka's Secrets: How the Rajapaksa Regime Gets Away with Murder written by Trevor Grant.

This refugee from Northern Sri Lanka was sexually assaulted by the Sri Lankan army for six months at the end of 2012. Every time he refused to have sex the Sri Lankan army men they would come and insert PVC pipe through his anus and they inserted a barb wire through the pipe to torture him.

When he finally managed to flee Sri Lanka his wife was taken by the army.

She was gang raped by the army men in June 2013. 12 months on she is in a refugee camp outside of Sri Lanka, still struggling to live a normal life.

Australian authorities know this. They have seen the evidence. But they are blinded by the Sri Lankan lobby groups.

As an Australian Tamil, I say it with great pain that the Australian Government and the opposition do not care about the lives of the Tamils.

They are strong words but I ask that all politicians consider them carefully.

These accounts from Aran, Julian Borger and Dr Corlett detail the enormous injustice and systematic sexual violence against Tamils. It truly pains me to speak about this and to know that Australia is sending Tamils back to a country in which there is very real and continuing persecution.

Whether it is Labor or the coalition, the response to the Tamil struggle for freedom and justice, sadly, has been very similar. The crimes against humanity occurring in Sri Lanka are now known to us. Australia is complicit in many of these crimes. It is time Australia stopped sending Tamils back to Sri Lanka and stopped ignoring the crimes of the Rajapaksa regime. We need to take action to support the people of Sri Lanka to live in peace and safety. Surely it is time that we consider this.

Senate adjourned at 20:00