| by Damien
Kingsbury
( October 24,
2012, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Among the many claims that about ‘boat
people’ that are made in order to fulfil particular political agendas, one is
that when a war is officially concluded then people who live in the once
afflicted area have nothing more to worry about. As a result, they do not have
a legitimate claim for protection against persecution.
If people flee
such an area, the assumption is that they are ‘economic’ refugees, hoping to
‘queue jump’ in order to secure a better life for themselves. This has been the
claim made about refugees fleeing Sri Lanka. This claim is morally wrong and it
is wrong in fact.
From 1983 until
2009, a number of Tamil groups, eventually coming under the banner of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers), fought a bitter, bloody and
often ruthless war to establish a separate ethnic Tamil state in Sri Lanka’s
north and east. The war was a consequence of earlier anti-Tamil rioting.
Many Tamils
believed that, as a consequence of their structural exclusion from Sri Lankan
society, through the imposition of a discriminatory language policy, job
opportunities and education, they had no choice but to establish a separate
state. Now many Tamils they have no choice but to leave.
It is true that
the Tamil Tigers developed (if not quite invented) the idea of suicide bombing,
that they attacked civilian as well as military targets and that they were
ruthless in their own internal policies. As such, in keeping with the post-9/11
rhetoric, they were eventually declared as a terrorist organisation.
It is also true
that the Sri Lankan government, its army and its militias, also attacked
civilian as well as military targets and that they were brutal towards Tamils.
Since the end of the war, the government has even become oppressive towards
majority ethnic Sinhalese. But, as a government, they were spared international
opprobrium even as, in the last stages of the war, they engaged in what can
reasonably only be described as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In the last
phase of the war, some 40,000 Tamils, mostly civilians, were killed by
indiscriminate government fire into the Tamil Tiger’s last stronghold. The
survivors were imprisoned and, while most eventually released, many were also
summarily executed.
Many of those
who were released have been unable to return to their homes and land, much of
which has since been occupied by the army or an increasing number of previously
landless Sinhalese settlers moving north. Tamils are under constant
surveillance, have to inform the police of where they live and, worst of all,
the ‘disappearances’, though reduced, are now routine.
To say that Sri
Lanka’s war has ended is, nominally, correct. But to say that the state no
longer persecutes Tamils is, at best, intentionally blind.
As the once
liberal Sri Lanka state becomes increasingly authoritarian, even ethnic
Sinhalese and other minorities who speak against the limitations on once
cherished freedoms, often find themselves being jailed, disappearing or showing
up murdered. Sri Lanka’s journalists are a particularly vulnerable group, along
with human rights activists.
This, then,
helps explain why some of the desperate Sri Lankans now getting on boats are
Sinhalese, as well as Tamil. Many are in genuine fear of their lives in what has
descended into an authoritarian state. Sri Lanka is a democracy, but it is one
in which a militant majority can openly persecutes anyone who does not agree
with their increasingly nationalist chauvinist views.
People become
refugees for many reasons, but desperation is always the driver. No-one
willingly gives up their home and their community and then attempts to
undertake a life-threatening journey for any reason other than they believe
their future is under threat.
In terms of the
criteria for being granted refugee status, refugees from Sri Lanka’s post war
oppression easily meet that. What is morally reprehensible, though, is the
insistence that if the war is over then all is well, so it is okay to return
asylum seekers to certain prison, perhaps worse. It is also morally bereft to
not acknowledging that victors can continue to behave in ways that continue the
atrocities of the war they have won.
Compounding
this, Australia has been working closely with the government of Sri Lanka to
thwart the departure of refugees, for Australia and elsewhere. This is not
because these people do not meet the criteria for being refugees, but because
it suits a narrow domestic policy agenda that is driven by disinformation,
ignorance and, underlying it all, the dog-whistle call of racism.
As a country
that claims to respect human rights, Australia should join in the international
condemnation of Sri Lanka’s persecution of its own citizens. And, if there is
no change, we can continue to reasonably expect more Tamils, and other Sri
Lankans, to want to come to our shores seeking protection.
• This is an edited version of a talk
given by Professor Damien Kingsbury to the Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project
Discussion on 17 October 2012.
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