Australia offers Lanka aid to stem boat people

AFP/Colombo

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr announced yesterday millions of dollars in aid to boost educational opportunities in Sri Lanka, hoping it will help stem the flow of illegal immigrants from the island.

Carr told reporters in Colombo that $36mn will be spent over four years to help some 4mn primary and secondary schoolchildren in Sri Lanka and contribute to a “stable society with economic growth”.

“We’ve got an interest in a stable Sri Lanka ... with economic growth,” he said, adding that improving educational opportunities in Sri Lanka was in Australia’s interest in order to tackle problems of people smuggling and human trafficking.

Carr is on a three-day visit for talks with Sri Lankan leaders on measures to deal with the increased flow of illegal boat people attempting to seek asylum in Australia.

Sri Lanka’s defence ministry yesterday announced that nearly 3,000 of the country’s nationals had been stopped from illegally journeying by boat to Australia during the current year.

In the recent return, Australia on Friday sent back a group of 48 Sri Lankans, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship confirmed yetserday.

Five of the six men who left voluntarily were transferred from Nauru to the mainland before departing Perth for Colombo on a commercial flight. A sixth man who had been detained in western Australia had joined them. “The six men chose to return home voluntarily,” a departmental spokesman said.

Over the past weekend eight Sri Lankans, five from Christmas Island and three from Perth, returned to Sri Lanka.

According to the department, transfers of boat arrivals to Nauru have continued and more would be returned in the coming weeks.

The involuntary returnees - all recent arrivals from different boats - have been advised of their status and that they were subject to removal from Australia. They have raised no issues that engaged Australia’s international obligations, the authorities said.

With the latest return, 682 Sri Lankans have been sent back to Colombo involuntarily and another 85 voluntarily after August 13 when Australia announced that irregular maritime arrivals or boatpeople would be transferred to regional processing facilities in Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

The asylum seekers are required to stay in the offshore detention centres for a long time before they can get a visa.

Australia says the Sri Lankan boatpeople are getting the message that there is no visa on arrival, and there is no special treatment.

“Regular transfers to Nauru and more Sri Lankans returning home is further proof there is no advantage engaging with people smugglers,” the spokesman said.

Australia is struggling to deal with a record number of asylum-seekers, many from Sri Lanka, Iran and Iraq, who are paying people-smugglers to take them on the perilous journey, often on rickety, wooden fishing vessels.