Hoodwinking Australians
According to recent statistics of the Sri Lankan Navy, 3,286 people had been arrested by its patrols between January 6, 2012 and April 24, 2013. Of them, 2,403 were Tamils, 455 Sinhalese and 142 Muslims. According to the Sri Lankan government sources, Australia has deported 928 Sri Lankans since February last year up to April this year. Of them, 201 were Tamils, 23 Muslims and 704 Sinhalese.
In Australia, during the 2011-12 period, 299 Lankans have been granted asylum status and 45 refused. Standard and accepted international procedures are in place to determine legal compliance of asylum seekers, unlike Minister Peiris's way of political assessment of asylum status. Despite the allegations that Australia does not properly adhere to such international procedures, the number of genuine refugees from the above statistics, can be thought to comprise about 87 percent of original claims. This is a high percentage on any account.
Despite the Minister disputing 'the genuine nature of many asylum seeker claims made by people fleeing Sri Lanka', above data do not seem to support his position. The majority who tries to flee the island are of course Tamils, but most of those deported from Australia are Sinhalese. The number of claimants, who arrive by boat and assessed as genuine refugees has not decreased.
People in Lanka seem to be fleeing due to many factors including political persecution, fear, economic hardships and family reunion, etc. Many professionals who migrated here by different means since the forties arrived here to make use of the perceived economic prosperity in Australia and are therefore economic migrants. If there were fair opportunities in Sri Lanka they would not have moved. The gap between the haves and have nots are worse today. Unemployment is high. The GDP growth is high, but the results of this growth do not seem to reach the ordinary folk.
There have been, and there will be people from diverse ethnic and religious background leaving Sri Lanka for economic reasons, but at the same time we should not forget that there have been, and there will be people fleeing Sri Lanka due to human rights abuses and political persecution.
Australia and other countries that have ratified the UN Refugee conventions need to ensure that due processes are followed in processing asylum seeker claims. This does not seem to occur. In Australia, this issue has become an opportunistic footy match between the Liberals and the Labor, one upping the ante against the other to win power by hood winking the ordinary Australians.
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