Sri Lankans quickly repatriated on reaching Australia

By Dilrukshi Handunnetti

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka

Days after a boat suspected to be carrying around a dozen Sri Lankan asylum seekers evaded border patrols and arrived in Australian waters, its inhabitants were bundled onto a plane and flown to Sri Lanka's capital Colombo for questioning.

A Sri Lankan police official told Anadolu Agency on Sunday that the 12 people who arrived on Australia's Cocos Islands on Monday had had their refugee claims assessed and it had been determined that they were not asylum seekers.

“They were not fleeing for safety, but [fleeing] for economic reasons,” said the official, who did not wish to be named as he was not authorised to talk to media.

He added that the group -- which included at least one woman and an infant -- was flown back to Colombo on Thursday following detection by Australian border protection personnel.

They were then transferred by airport security to the Criminal Investigations Department.

Under Australia's immigration policy, it refuses to accept asylum seekers who arrive by boat, instead detaining them at offshore detention centers, where conditions have been described as appalling by rights advocates.

However, an apparent change in the status of Sri Lankans arriving in Australia allowed those onboard Monday's vessel to be quickly returned.

Speaking to a Sri Lankan English-language weekly last month, Maj. Gen. Andrew Bottrell, the commander of 2013 Australian border protection initiative "Operation Sovereign Borders", noted that there had been a "situational improvement" in Sri Lanka since the end of the country's 25-year war in 2009.

He underlined that the profile of unauthorized Sri Lankan arrivals had subsequently changed from asylum seekers to economic refugees.

According to Australian statistics, prior to 2013 Sri Lankans accounted for nearly one fifth of undocumented people attempting to reach Australia -- of 53,000 undocumented arrivals, over 10,000 were Sri Lankans.

In 2012, some 122 boats were detected trying to reach Australia, but on the implementation of Operation Sovereign Borders in 2013, the number had dropped to 14.

“Since this initiative, no Sri Lankan boat has reached Australia. All were diverted,” Bottrell told the Sunday Observer weekly.

Monday's boat was the first vessel reported to have entered Australian territory since mid 2014.

After more than 25 years of violence, Sri Lanka's brutal civil war ended in May 2009, when government forces seized the last area controlled by Tamil Tiger rebels.

A 2013 United Nations panel estimated that around 40,000 civilians died in the war, while other independent reports have estimated the number of dead to exceed 100,000.

Rights groups have claimed that abuses continue on both sides.