The current situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka, the impact of the civil war and how this affects Tamil claims for Asylum
| by Fr Pancras Jordan OP
”I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters”. Ex 3.7
(January 14, 2013, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) I would like to express my appreciation to the Bishops’ Conference for inviting me to speak. My subject is Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers: why they seek refuge in Australia, how they arrive here and how Australia is dealing with the issue.
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All Tamil areas are now under military occupation and Sri Lanka is effectively a military/police state. The military can do what it wants with no accountability.
It is not possible to discuss this topic without examining the realities in the North and East of Sri Lanka, the place of historical habitation of the Tamil people for over two thousand years.
There is an immediate problem in doing this, because the armed conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and the Tamil people (not just the armed Tamil militants) was conducted with few witnesses.
The United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) appointed an Expert Panel to report on the conflict but even after the end of it, no independent observers have been allowed into the country, let alone into the traditional Tamil areas.
This includes internationally credible human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Crisis Group who have, nonetheless, produced detailed reports on breeches of human rights and humanitarian laws both during the war and afterwards. These are available in the public arena.
The Sri Lankan government has offered no explanation.
The question is ‘what is being hidden’? and why ?
First among a small group of brave people able to provide first hand, credible accounts is the Most Rev Dr Rayappu Joseph, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Mannar in the North East. He has published a number of very disturbing reports, including those to the UN Human Rights Council, and, in November, spoke via Skype to the recent UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) that has just reviewed the human rights situation in Geneva.
In a submission, January 2011, to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), established by the Government of Sri Lanka (GSL) the Catholic Diocese of Mannar made a shocking revelation. Based on a census before and after the conflict from the Vanni district it determined that 146,769 people were unaccounted for. The government of Sri Lanka and the Commission have remained silent.
In August 2012, the Commission for Justice and Peace of the Catholic Diocese of Jaffna, published a paper, “Eluded Peace, Denied Justice: Bare facts and naked truths” which reveals the grim conditions prevailing in the north of the island, even today.
The detailed statements from these two Catholic dioceses expose the ruthless repressive state policy that has long been the hallmark of the Sri Lankan regime. The two documents are available at the conference and clearly show why people are seeking refuge outside Sri Lanka.
On 30 August 2012, the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the Hong Kong based Asian Human Rights Commission released a Report:
“Sri Lanka: Enforced disappearances have become a permanent weapon in the arsenal of suppression of dissent.”
It stated that Sri Lanka has the highest number of unresolved disappearances reported to the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary ‘disappearances’ and that repeated requests over four years for the UN Special Rapporteur to visit Sri Lanka have been ignored by the Sri Lankan government.
The International Committee of the Red Cross in its 2012 Annual Report stated that the Red Cross was trying to trace 15,780 people (to 31 Dec 2011), the vast majority were missing Tamil males from the north and east, 494 were children and 754 were women. Of the total, only 136 have been found. It is little wonder, therefore, that people flee this area in search of asylum, yet the Australian Government (and others) are ignoring the risks and are forcibly returning genuine refugees to their country of origin.
The Background
Sri Lanka is a multilingual, multiethnic and multi-religious country. At the time of Independence from the British in 1948, just over 60% were Sinhalese. A further 40% were made up of Tamils (both indigenous and those brought from India around 1850 to work in the plantation sector), Moors (descendants of Arab traders) and Burghers (mixed descendants of Colonialists and local population). At the time of Independence the power was transferred by the British to the majority Sinhalese.
Contrary to the practice adopted in other commonwealth countries, the plantation Tamils were disenfranchised and there was a campaign mounted by the Sinhalese majority against the Tamil community in general which resulted in a large-scale emigration. This altered the demographic over a number of years so that the Sinhalese have come to make up 70% of the population.
There are religious differences too: the Sinhalese are mainly Buddhist and the Tamils, Hindu. About 7% of Sinhalese and Tamils follow Christianity. The Moors follow Islam. The emergence of the Sinhala-Buddhist group as the dominant group entrusted with political power in a unitary system of government resulted in the imposition of majority will against the minorities.
Very real discrimination has occurred in language, education, and employment. In particular government jobs – all of these favour the Sinhalese.
The Tamils protested against this discrimination non-violently for more than 20 years from independence to the early 1970s. When peaceful protests did not get them anywhere, Tamil youths resorted to an armed struggle to force the Government to share administrative power with the Tamils.
These protests were met with repeated systematic violence against Tamils and the first wave of migration started in 1958. The government presented the armed uprising in the late 70’s as nothing but “Tamil terrorism”. Anti-Tamil riots orchestrated by the ruling government of the time took place in 1958, 1977 and 1983. Numerous other massacres of Tamils occurred from 1983 – 2009. After the September 11 attacks in the USA, the branding of all armed national liberation movements as “Terrorists” became the norm and the Western allies condoned all actions against national liberation movements in the name of “fighting terrorism”.
After the Presidential Election in November 2005, Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa became the President of Sri Lanka and his brother Gotabaya, his Defence Secretary.
In the name of “fighting terrorism” the military assault on the Tamil North and East began unleashing K Fir bombers, battle tanks, multi-barrel rocket launchers, and heavy weapons of every kind. The damage has been disastrous - massive loss of innocent life, destruction of already established infrastructure and the deliberate targeting of schools, hospitals, temples and churches
The excessive use of military force against the civilian population was condemned by world leaders during the conflict but this was ignored by the Sri Lankan government.
This onslaught by the Sri Lankan Government resulted in the crushing defeat of the militant Tamil Tigers but. At the same time innocent civilians were targeted and were maimed and killed. Importantly few people realise that the violence and intimidation of civilians has continued unabated.
The reason we continue to have more boats coming to Australia now, three years after the end of the civil war, is because every day Tamil youths are being “rounded up” by the military, arrested, detained, physically assaulted and tortured. This is happening right now especially in remote areas far away from the media spotlight. Only bribery will secure a release from detention.
In their final report submitted on 31 March 2011, the Panel of Experts, appointed by UNSG, estimated that about 40,000 people would have perished and that a wide range of serious violations of International humanitarian law and human rights law had been committed by both government forces and the Tamil Tigers in 2009. However the number of deaths in the conflict in recent studies has been revised to about 100,000. This will come close to accounting for the number of missing people given by the Catholic Diocese of Mannar. The Lessons Learnt report was submitted to the President of Sri Lanka, on 16 December 2011 but fell very short of the expectations of the International community. Nevertheless, United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution in March 2012, to implement part of the report found to be acceptable. So far this has not been implemented and will be considered again in UNHRC session in March 2013.
The Sri Lankan government has categorically refused to allow any such investigation. It has also refused to consider allowing independent observers and human rights groups into the area even today, more than three years after the end of the conflict.
The current ground situation
Due to the government -imposed exclusion of independent reporters and observers into the area, strict media censorship and regular threats, information about the current situation is always limited. Reliable information is only available from a few sources such as Bishop Joseph and his clergy. Tamil ‘Civil Society’, a detailed paper tabled in the Sri Lankan Parliament by the elected representatives of the Tamil people, the Tamil National Alliance and publications from internationally reputed human rights groups also provide reliable information.
A summary of these Reports which are in the public domain on the net, are deeply disturbing. The International Crisis Group expressed grave concern for the numbers of rapes of Tamil women and girls by both the military and Sinhalese civilians who are being resettled in large numbers into traditional Tamil areas.
There are also accounts of “round ups” of young Tamil men by the military in remote areas, brutal assaults, torture and indefinite detention. There are also accounts of Tamil men being rounded up for “slave labour” to clear jungle areas for the encroaching Sinhalese settlements.
This constant brutal intimidation is designed to fragment the Tamil communities and drive them away from their traditional ancestral lands, thus depriving them of their means of growing food and their livelihoods
All Tamil areas are now under military occupation and Sri Lanka is effectively a military/police state. The military can do what it wants with no accountability. Every human rights group in the world including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Geneva-based International Crisis Group, has called for an independent international investigation into the atrocities committed.
Also the western provinces are controlled by the military and Navy ensuring total government control of the western seaboard. Families in this area have been fishermen for centuries and now the Navy refuses to allow them to fish except occasionally when they want to benefit from a load of free fresh fish. Some communities have no young men left.
Large areas of land previously owned by the Tamils and Muslims have been taken over by the Government and declared “High Security Zones’ and ‘Special Economic Zones’ now inaccessible to the rightful owners.
So far about a million Tamils have already been driven out or have voluntarily left – some as asylum seekers and refugees. While some 300,000 are virtually “non-people” in the North and East, unable to return to their own homes and villages to resume their own livelihood
The Sri Lankan Government cannot claim that what is going on in Sri Lanka is ‘an internal problem’ and that external ‘interference is in violation of the sovereignty of the country. The world community has come to see that serious violations of human rights are not an ‘internal affair’ which is why the world eventually acted against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
In short, the civil war has left the Tamil population decimated:
Many thousands have lost their lands and therefore their means of support.
Families have been depleted by deaths and disappearances
Widows and orphans left behind
Women shamed and outcast by rape
The surviving children traumatised by years of war
Asylum Seekers: What should be Australia’s Response?
Christians of many denominations and organisations in civil society have championed the cause of refugees through many years of repressive, fear-driven government policy. Our Church has taken a lead in this on many occasions.
Australia signed the United Nations Convention on Refugees in 1951 having had an active part in formulating it. Our obligations under that Convention and that on Human Rights and the Rights of the Child should dictate our obligations. People fleeing oppression and danger have the legal right to seek asylum. They have done nothing wrong. They are not “illegals” or “queue jumpers”. Australia must decide: do we fully honour our obligations under those Conventions or do we publicly withdraw from them ?
I know unequivocally where I stand on this issue and believe my Church does also.
The Australian Government continues to focus on “people smugglers” who are usually opportunists cashing in on a human tragedy. Whatever the motivation, the problem is not the people smugglers, who have existed since time immemorial, but the injustice, persecution and killing which drives people unwillingly from their own land.
Sri Lankans are often described as “just economic refugees” looking for a “better life in Australia”. However, given the situation I have described: the deaths, disappearances, torture, loss of traditional lands and means of livelihood, it is clear that the vast majority are indeed genuine refugees fleeing persecution in their own country. It is my experience that people leave their own country only when they are forced to. An excellent example is East Timor, a desperately poor country on Australia’s door step. There has been no flood of refugees from East Timor. People would rather stay in their own country, even a poor one, rather than in a rich foreign land. That is not an opinion to be debated but a fact to be faced
Neither are the Tamil asylum seekers “queue jumpers” because, in Sri Lanka as in many other countries, there is no queue as there is no means of applying for refugee status within the country. There are indeed some thousands of asylum seekers in Indonesia waiting for assessment by the United Nations or for placement in a country after assessment. Instead of going after people smugglers and vilifying genuine refugees, Australia could work more closely with Indonesia and the UN on this build up of people.
New legislation deprives those released into the community on a Bridging Visa the right to work, thus condemning them to poverty. At the same time Australia has spent 2.4 billions in detention centres on the mainland, Christmas Island, Manus Island and Nauru.
Australia has refused to confront the human rights tragedy which has unfolded in Sri Lanka over the years since Independence. It has confidently hidden behind “terrorist” labels as an excuse for not criticising the Sri Lankan Government. It has welcomed Sri Lankan Government officials and embassy staff to Canberra. The Australian Government has refused refugee status to a number of Tamils and sent them back to almost certain torture, detention and possible death. There are currently number Tamil men languishing in inhuman conditions on Nauru and many more in detention on the mainland and others in the community, living in fear of being returned.
I respectfully request this Conference that we find the will and the courage to address the pain and suffering of my own people: both in Sri Lanka and those languishing in detention in Australia.
I call on the Church to renew its commitment and advocacy for refugees everywhere. Unless there is the will to come together to address the causes, nothing will halt the surge of asylum seekers around the world. We need to address the causes at source. A new resolve is needed worldwide, to isolate and punish those countries with demonic and wicked systems and a brand new paradigm is desperately required – one that has zero tolerance for the subjugation and oppression of minorities. The Church should call upon all governments throughout 2013 to sign up to this with a resolve to become a part of the solution and not continue to be a part of the problem.
We all call upon our loving Creator to continue to guide and help us to work towards the end of fear and persecution which leads directly to the asylum phenomenon in this world.
