IANS
Sri Lanka’s military yesterday denied sending a boat to pick up 153 asylum seekers believed to have been on board a ship stranded in Australian waters, an official said.
No boat has been sent to pick up asylum seekers, military spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya told reporters, adding there are no plans to send one either.
“We have heard speculation of this and wish to state no navy vessel has been dispatched to collected asylum seekers. Moreover given the rough sea conditions, it is unlikely a boat could even reach the area,” Xinhua quoted him as saying.
His denial was backed by navy spokesman Kosala Warnakulasuriya who insisted there was no record of Sri Lanka receiving any asylum seekers from the Australian government
recently.
Confusion continues to surround the fate of a boat that reportedly set sail from India carrying 153 Sri Lankan asylum seekers to Australia.
The boat first came to public attention on Friday via refugee advocates who called on the Australian government to provide assistance as the boat was supposedly running low on fuel.
However, Australian government officials have refused to comment or confirm the
existence of such a ship.
A spokesman for Australian Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, said the government’s policy was that it did not confirm nor otherwise comment on reports of on-water activities in relation to
Operation Sovereign Borders.
Sri Lankan asylum seekers are subject to the “enhanced screening process” in Australia, which has been condemned by the UNHCR as an “unfair and unreliable” process for determining refugee claims as it involves short interviews, often without the presence of a lawyer.
In October, Morrison said he was “completely comfortable about the process”, adding: “If you’re coming here to try something on to get access to Australia from Sri Lanka, you’ll go straight back.”
Paul Power, Refugee Council’s chief executive, said on Tuesday that Australia would potentially be sending asylum seekers back to “persecution or worse” if the Tamils on board were returned to Sri Lanka.
“As a Refugee Convention signatory, Australia has a clear obligation not to send asylum seekers back to danger without giving them a chance to put their case for refugee protection,” he said in a statement. “Forcing people seeking refugee protection back to their country of origin without properly investigating their claims is the most flagrant of all breaches of the Refugee Convention and
international law.
“For asylum seekers, this is a matter of life and death, particularly in Sri Lanka which has a long history of political violence on a scale unimaginable to
Australians.”
Ian Rintoul, of the Refugee Action Coalition, who had been in regular contact with those on the boat until communication was lost on Saturday, said there were 37 children on board, some as young as a year old.
Despite the end of a three-decade war in 2009, the number of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka has increased pushing the Australian government to take tough measures to prevent them from reaching that country.
At least 1,500 people have been arrested by the navy while attempting to leave Sri Lanka by boat while the Australian government has returned around the same number as part of a stricter immigration policy.
The Australian government is working closely with the local navy to monitor and prevent boat people from Sri Lanka and have implemented awareness programmes to discourage locals from attempting to illegally migrate.
