What if? Security and asylum seekers

The classification is contestable, but is pushed remorselessly by the Sri Lankan Government, its agencies and embassies and remains accepted by a number of countries because of this pressure. The government of Sri Lanka maintains this pressure despite having won the war against the Tamil people in 2009. This pressure, with its attendant attitude of hostility toward the Tamils, is a strong statement about the bleak prospects for reconciliation on the part of the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka and members of the expatriate community toward the Tamil minority.

To rely on the Sri Lankan agencies as sole providers of information on asylum seekers under Australian protection is perhaps understandable but unfair. It allows an unacceptable bias to be built into the process of assessment.

Given that LTTE acts of terror over three decades were carried out inside the country, with the exception of the politically stupid murder of Rajiv Ghandi in India in 1991, and that the war is now over, it is probably time to drop the single source vetting of former members and associates of the LTTE as terrorists, particularly when all members of the Tamil community in the north of Sri Lanka were associates of the LTTE in one way or another.

ASIO have taken an unconscionable amount of time to vet and provide clearances for some Tamil asylum seekers and for some already granted refugee status but who remain in detention. In a horrible act of despair and frustration a Tamil, ‘Shooty’ Vikaden, who had been in detention for two years and was still in detention despite having been granted refugee status, committed suicide in Villawood detention centre on 24 October.

As the Sri Lankan Government and its agencies are the only source of information relating to the classification of terrorists from the LTTE, what if they were withholding information from ASIO relating to Shooty? What if the Sri Lankan High Commission had made representations that Shooty should not be released until after CHOGM was over on grounds that he constituted an unacceptable risk to visiting Sri Lankan VIP’s. Such a claim would have demonised him. It would also have fed into the ongoing campaign of vilification and racism being conducted toward the Tamil community by the Sinhalese.

What if representations were made to the Australian Government by the Sri Lankan Government through their High Commission in Canberra that on grounds of security Shooty and others in his category, that is they fought against the Sri Lankan army as members of the LTTE, should not be released from detention and that the Department of Immigration was advised to hold Shooty in detention despite his having been granted refugee status.

What if ASIO or Immigration were responding to informal pressure from the Sri Lankan High Commission? We know that the AFP had contact with the Sri Lankan High Commission in the past and has ongoing contact with the police, navy and army and presumably other agencies in Sri Lanka. What would prevent ASIO and Immigration having similar contact?

The flawed industry of security clearances needs urgent investigation, particularly with respect to Sri Lankan ‘clearances’