Sri Lanka is where the problem is, Mr. Rudd!

Statement by People for Human Rights and Equality, Australia

(October 30, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) The arrival of 250 Sri Lankan Tamils in Indonesia bound for Australia has aroused renewed interest in the Rudd Government’s policy on asylum seekers. Amidst the Opposition’s accusations of being too soft on Asylum seekers, the government has expressed interest in discussing with its Indonesian counterparts ways to solve the problem before it gets to Australia.

It makes sense that the Prime Minister wants to talk to his friends in Indonesia about it. Not only the latest Tamil arrivals but also a huge proportion of those detained at Christmas Island has come via Indonesia. Mr. Rudd also knows that Turnbull and the rest of Australia will watch him as he does so. However the business of ‘boat people’ coming to Australia via Indonesia should not be considered a new challenge for Australia: it has been a trend for over decades. Since the surge of Vietnamese migration during the 70s and 80s – the original ‘boat people’, we have witnessed thousands of desperate people try and get to Australia. Most of the makeshift vessels they have used to get here have come via Indonesia. So yes, it makes sense that the PM is getting onto the Indonesians, but it appears that this policy response has a gaping hole in it: Sri Lanka.

In the PM’s own words…“this challenge, arising from Sri Lanka and the civil war which unfolded in Sri Lanka over the last 12 months - which has been violent and bloody - is causing an outflow of people from Sri Lanka right across the world. This is a problem for everybody. Therefore, that's why we're dealing so closely with our friends in Indonesia on these challenges”. So Mr. Rudd is aware of the wider causes of the problem. It’s just that his response doesn’t reflect this.

As a leader in the region, it is time that the Australian government took seriously the need to address the elephant in the room – the crisis in Sri Lanka. According to Amnesty International left more than 20,000 people dead and more than 250,000 people without homes. Australia has a strong claim to having key talks with the country where all these seemingly new ‘boat people’ are coming from, because it is not like Australia has not being doing anything about it. Over the years Australia has poured millions of tax payer dollars towards aid programs in Sri Lanka. According to the 2009/2010 budget report from AusAid, Australian taxpayers will have increased their contribution to Sri Lanka by almost a third, growing from 27 million AUD to 35 million dollars in three years. So it is not like we are not putting the money where the mouth is – we are just not opening our mouths to talk about it.

If the Prime Minister of Australia is serious about his commitment to keeping both a hardline approach to this crisis, as well as a ‘humane’ approach, he needs to be serious about engaging the 'right' people in the conversation, which is harder than you would think but not necessarily impossible. Indonesia is only a part of the problem; Sri Lanka is where it lives.

If the Prime Minister is genuinely interested in stemming the flow of asylum seekers in to Australia he needs to engage not only with the Indonesian government but also with the governments of the countries from which these desperate people flee. People for Human Rights and Equality urges Mr. Rudd to take this serious stand rather than naively expecting to settle a Sri Lankan problem in Indonesia.

-Sri Lanka Guardian