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Sally Neighbour From: The Australian November 16, 2009

LATHA'S brother was in his late twenties and recently married when Sri Lankan soldiers came knocking one night at his door. His wife begged them not to take him, but the soldiers assured her they only needed him to help them find another house. The young woman never saw her husband again.  Another of Latha's brothers had already met a similar fate. A fisherman, he was captured at sea by the Sri Lankan navy and never returned to his family. Latha's family lived in a village on the Jaffna Peninsula, a stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in their 25-year separatist insurgency against Sri Lanka's government.

Tamil families such as Latha's were automatically assumed by the security forces to be Tamil Tiger supporters or sympathisers.

"They're targeted just because they're Tamil," says Sarah Nathan, a co-ordinator with the Australian Tamil Congress.

"The stories I have heard consistently are that anybody in their 20s, if you're a male and you're a Tamil, you're targeted. There's no two ways about it."

Latha feared her husband, also a fisherman, would be next. So earlier this year they packed up their baby daughter and a few belongings and, after travelling via Malaysia, boarded a rickety boat with 30 other people, bound for Australia.

The boat was so small and the seas so high they were thrown from one end of the vessel to the other and were constantly sea-sick during the month-long voyage. They slept on deck and shared a single toilet that consisted of a gaping hole in the hull.

Finally, they arrived at Christmas Island where the family remains in detention while their asylum claim is processed, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees having already confirmed their status as refugees.

The story of Latha (not her real name; she wouldn't give it, afraid Australian authorities would refuse her a visa as punishment for speaking out) and her family is typical of the tales recounted by the Sri Lankan boatpeople who have recently arrived in Australia to escape the humanitarian and human rights crisis facing Tamils in their homeland.

The insurgency ended in May this year, with a final offensive by the Sri Lankan army crushing the Tamil Tigers once and for all.

More than 400,000 people were displaced during the last few months of fighting. The UN says more than 7000 civilians were killed and more than 13,000 injured, while the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations says the non-combatant death toll was closer to 20,000.

About 250,000 civilians are now stuck in overcrowded camps, many of which lack clean water and basic sanitation. Amnesty International reported last month that early monsoon rains had left camp residents wading through overflowing sewage and facing a "humanitarian disaster".

After inspecting the camps earlier this year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared: "I have travelled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far the most appalling scene I have seen."

The situation for many Tamils outside the camps is little better. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have documented systemic use of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearances and attacks on union organisers, lawyers, aid workers and religious leaders.

Journalists are also frequent targets. In the past five years, 34 media workers have been killed, most of them Tamils and more than two-thirds of their deaths attributed to the state security forces or paramilitary groups working with them.

A report from the US State Department last month documented evidence of war crimes perpetrated by both government forces and the Tamil Tigers during the war, including army attacks on hospitals and other civilian targets, and the LTTE's use of child soldiers as human shields.

In December last year, the New York-based Genocide Prevention Project identified Sri Lanka as one of eight red-alert countries where genocide and other mass atrocities were under way or risked breaking out.

An estimated 10,000 former LTTE fighters are now held incommunicado in separate rehabilitation camps where they are at risk of torture, killings or disappearance, according to Amnesty International.

Disappearances have been a feature of the Sri Lankan conflict for years. Between 1987 and 1991, known as the period of terror, about 30,000 people were officially recognised as having disappeared. In 2007, a former government minister estimated that one person disappeared every five hours in Sri Lanka.

In recent months there's been another surge. Anyone, including businessmen and journalists, under the pretext of having alleged links with the LTTE, could disappear any time, says Raga Ragavan, chairman of the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations. He describes disappearance as a form of censorship and enforcement used by the Sri Lankan government to silence the Tamils during and after the war.

"It is to escape this dire situation that Tamils in desperation are fleeing the island," he says.

The Sri Lankan authorities often resort to extreme measures to stop them.

A joint statement released earlier this year by 166 non-government organisations calling for the protection of displaced people says: "Sri Lankan asylum-seekers are frequently criminalised and turned away at the border, prevented from accessing basic humanitarian assistance, subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, separated for extended periods from family members, denied health care and the right to work, rendered stateless and, in some instances, forcibly returned to persecution in Sri Lanka."

Of those who do succeed in leaving, a few have ended up in Australia. AFTA says about 10 per cent of the Sri Lankan Tamils now in Australia came as refugees. Most of the rest came under the skilled migration program.

"Sri Lankan Tamils have really done well in this country," Nathan says. "None of us have been caught for any crime whatsoever, we're not in jail, no one has a criminal record. There's a lot of doctors, engineers, actuaries, they're professional, they're high achievers. They don't go on the dole, most of them have contributed to this society."

In 2007-08, 434 Sri Lankans were given onshore protection visas in Australia, making up the highest single nationality granted asylum, according to figures compiled by the Refugee Council of Australia. (The statistics do not record ethnicity, only nationality, but the RCA says Sri Lankan refugees are overwhelmingly Tamils.)

In 2008-9, 364 Sri Lankans were given asylum, the second highest after China. Unlike this influx of Sri Lankans, the Chinese gained little media attention because, as with 85 per cent of asylum-seekers coming to Australia, they arrive by plane rather than boat.

The numbers have risen this year. Of the 1890 people on 39 boats that have washed up this year in northern Australia, almost half are Sri Lankan Tamils, Ragavan says.

The Refugee Council of Australia says 95 per cent of asylum-seekers who arrive by boat in Australia are found to be genuine refugees, compared with 45 per cent who arrive by plane.

The numbers are still tiny compared with elsewhere. According to figures compiled by AFTA, Britain is home to between 400,000 and 500,000 Sri Lankan Tamils, most of them taken in as refugees. France hosts as many as 300,000, Germany 100,000, and Switzerland about 55,000.

"Australia is one country where it's very difficult to get refugee status," Nathan says, citing the comparison of Canada, which is now home to about 300,000 Sri Lankan refugees.

"That's because Canada is much more welcoming," she says. "You can't come to Australia on a plane without a visa, and it's very difficult to get a visa. That's why they get on boats."

Concerns that some boats might contain fugitive terrorists were recently voiced by federal MP Wilson Tuckey, and Singapore-based terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna, who says former LTTE gun-running boats are now operating as people-smuggling vessels.

Those fears were heightened when an AFTA spokesman was reported in The Australian last moth saying it is "certain" that former Tamil Tiger fighters are among the asylum-seekers.

AFTA has since released a statement saying these reports are unfounded. Ragavan rejects the assertion that the Tamil Tigers are now running people-smuggling boats. "After the government defeated the Tigers, I doubt the LTTE would have the capacity," he says.

Nathan says there is no evidence of Tamil Tiger activity in Australia.

"A lot of people support the Tamil Eelam, a separate country (for Tamils) which is what we used to be before the British came, but there's no support for an armed struggle," she says.

"That chapter is closed. The only way we can go forward now is through diplomacy and politics in the international community."

Many of the most recent boat arrivals in Australia have already been processed by the UNHCR and deemed to be legitimate refugees. The 109 people on the boat now waiting at Merak in Indonesia after being intercepted on its way to Australia are carrying refugee cards issued by the UNHCR. Some have reportedly been waiting in Indonesia for resettlement for up to five years.

Paul Power from the Refugee Council of Australia says a significant part of the problem is a bottleneck in refugee processing in Southeast Asia. More than 36,000 UNHCR-approved refugees are in Malaysia awaiting resettlement, with another 9000 still being processed. In Thailand there are 113,000 who have been approved, and 12,000 still pending, all in need of new homes in third countries.

Typically, resettlement of refugees, even after they get their UNHCR cards, can take up to 10 years. And those awaiting resettlement often face persecution and harassment.

An RCA report released in June says refugees in Southeast Asia "are living in constant fear of arrest and deportation and regularly experience harassment and exploitation . . . Conditions varied from country to country, with refugees who lived in Malaysia telling of being arrested, detained and mistreated and then being forced to pay large bribes to secure their release".

Activists say the recent surge of boatpeople is merely the symptom of a much larger problem, which must be tackled, and not by simply turning boats away.

"I don't think they understand the implications of turning back boats at sea, it would mean people losing their lives in Australian waters," Power says.

"These people are genuinely fearful for their lives," Nathan says. "By just trying to stop the boats coming, we're not meeting our international obligations."

Nathan recites the words of the Australian anthem: "For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share".

Sally Neighbour is a senior reporter with The Australian and ABC's Four Corners.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/test-of-stamina/story-e6frg6z6-1225797967508