Lawyers say 153 asylum seekers are being kept in rooms without windows, and denied legal help.

 UPDATE: 153 asylum seekers held on customs vessel, in rooms without windows.

Fairfax has reported that approximately 153 asylum seekers – the Sri Lankan Tamils whose boat was intercepted by Australian authorities near Christmas Island two weeks ago – are being held on an Australian customs ship.

The rooms the asylum seekers are being held in reportedly do not have windows, and the people on board have not been informed about where they are positioned geographically nor told where they will be taken next. The passengers can only leave their rooms if they are accompanied by a guard.

The asylum seekers’ possessions have reportedly been taken from them, including mobile phones. Lawyers further claim that they are not being allowed “reasonable access” to legal advice.

These updates come from a document lodged with the High Court; the first news of the asylum seekers since the government said they were being held on a customs vessel weeks ago. The document was lodged as part of a case to determine whether the government has the power to intercept boats and take asylum seekers where it decides. The lawyers representing the asylum seekers are arguing that the government does not have the power to take these people to any country other than Australia, against their will.

UPDATE: The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is reporting that the 41 asylum seekers handed back to Sri Lanka by the Australian Navy last week have been charged and could face up to two years in jail.

This from the The Asylum Seeker’s Resource Centre Facebook page:

In 2006, the man who would one day be President of the United States, Barack Obama, asked a group of graduating university students to consider their  community’s empathy deficit.

He worried that we were losing our ability to “put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room”.

Today, Australia is suffering from an empathy deficit. A deficit so great that I fear we may never repay it.

Our Government has confirmed that last week they intercepted a boat of 41 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, who were attempting to make the journey to Australia. Those on board had their refugee claims processed with questionably fast speed, assessed based on only a handful of questions and in all but one case, were rejected. This all happened while they remained on the water.

Every single person on that boat is now being returned to Sri Lanka, including the individual who was determined to possibly have a legitimate claim. The Australian Government says this individual chose to return voluntarily.

A second boat carrying 153 Tamil Sri Lankan asylum seekers, believed to have departed from a refugee camp in India, is currently unaccounted for in the public arena. Those on board made contact with human rights and refugee groups in Australia last week but the Australian Government has not made any comment about where the boat might be now. It is missing.

Frustrated and afraid in the wake of the Government’s silence, a group of refugee rights activists have today filed for and been granted an interim injunction by the High Court. If these 153 asylum seekers are in the custody of the Australian Government, the injunction will prevent them being handed over to the “Sri Lankan government, its military or its agents,” for the next 24 hours.

This system of on-sea processing is a historic and abominable first for Australia.

Or at least, it’s the first time that the Government has openly admitted this is what has happened.

It points directly to the deficit of empathy that President Obama spoke of. A complete inability – or worse – an unwillingness, to put oneself in the position of someone who isn’t exactly like us.

It feels cold. It feels calculated. And it feels deeply unkind.

Because when faced with the facts of Australia’s international obligations, of the UN’s condemnation, of the current conditions in Sri Lanka and of what these 41 people are returning to – what compassionate person could make the decisions our Government has?

To answer that, let’s begin by canvassing those facts, because they are important and all too often lost in the heat of emotionally and politically charged debate.

Fact #1: The UNHCR have expressed concern that the so called ‘streamlined’ at-sea screening processes being used by Australia may be “unfair and unreliable.” Some media reports today claim that those on board were asked as few as four questions each, before their non-refugee status was determined.

The Guardian, who have been expansive in their coverage of this issue, note that according to the Government’s own data “more than 50% of Sri Lankans who arrive by boat have a legitimate claim for protection”. And point out that this “throws serious doubt over the minister’s claim that almost every person on board the boat did not engage Australia’s protection obligation”.

It is these fact, which led former (Liberal) Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to observe on Twitter that: “Handing AS [asylum seekers] back to SL [Sri Lankan] navy at sea redolent off handing Jews to Nazis in 1930s.”

Fact #2: It is highly likely that Australia has breached international law, specifically the principle of non-refoulement which says that you cannot return the persecuted to their persecutor. Australia has voluntarily signed up to international conventions against torture and for the protection of refugees; both of which incorporate this principle.

At least one asylum seeker on board the boat of 41 was found to be a refugee – which means he or she had a well founded fear of persecution in Sri Lanka. Now, according to the Government, that individual ‘voluntarily’ chose to return. But were the Australian Government found to have encouraged this choice in any way, Australia would have contravened its international obligations.

Fact #3: Sri Lanka has spent 27 of the last 31 years in the midst of a brutal civil war. Torture, rape and abductions were commonplace and often linked to government officials. Between 1983 and 2009 more than 100,000 people were killed and a further 1 million displaced from their homes.

While the war formally ended in 2009, Sri Lanka remains a dangerous place. The Sentinel Project, warns that “the overall risk of genocide in Sri Lanka is medium to high” and international organisations have documented multiple cases of abductions and torture taking place in Sri Lanka since the end of the war. Amnesty International ranks Sri Lanka as 5 out of 5 on the political terror scale.

Fact #4: When the 41 people who were processed at sea return to Sri Lanka, an uncertain fate awaits them. At best they’ll be arrested because Sri Lankan law prohibits its nationals from leading the country from a non-authorised port. At worst, they’ll be abused and possibly tortured.

Australia – please don’t allow your concerns to narrow to your own little circle.

Because all of this is happening in Australia’s name and in contravention of the things that were promised in Australia’s name.

And surely the collective empathy of Australians is enough to demand that it stops.

Please share this post if you agree that Australians need to stand up and demand empathy from our leaders. 

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