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A journalist vanishes, along with our compassion

Graham Thom

by Graham Thom

14 Apr 05:40am

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Filed under: Amnesty International, Asylum Seekers, Border Protection, Refugees, Sri Lanka

31 comments

In light of last Friday’s announcement that the Australian Government has implemented a blanket suspension on the processing of new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals, it is worth going back to basics and taking a moment to consider the human rights reality for many people living in those countries. 

Disappeared: Sri Lankan journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda

It may not be pleasant to read, but it certainly places the government’s announcement in the international context in which it should rightly be considered, and gives an insight into the reasons people are fleeing.

On 24 January Sri Lankan journalist and political analyst Prageeth Eknaligoda disappeared shortly after leaving work at the Lanka-e-News office in Homagama, near the capital Colombo. He has not been heard from since. In the lead up to his disappearance, Prageeth Eknaligoda had been actively reporting on Sri Lanka’s presidential elections, had been critical of the Sri Lankan Government and had received threats.

Prageeth Eknaligoda’s is just one story to emerge from Sri Lanka in recent months that highlight the systematic persecution that continues in that country, despite last year’s bloody and brutal end to decades of civil war.

Situations for many groups in Sri Lanka, including activists, journalists and some Tamils, remain volatile and dangerous, according to Amnesty International’s research. Abductions, enforced disappearances and torture are serious problems, as are extrajudicial killings. Often they are not investigated and go unpunished. In many cases, there are allegations that extrajudicial killings have been carried out by state agents and Tamil paramilitary groups working for the Sri Lankan security forces.

Amnesty International’s investigations show that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is equally grave. Many individuals who have escaped Afghanistan, in particular minority groups, activists and journalists, have fled real threats from the Taliban or government-associated warlords. Women face widespread human rights abuses, including sexual violence and trafficking.

In the media release that followed Friday’s announcement, the Australian Government outlined its belief that “asylum seekers should only be granted the right to live in Australia if they are genuinely in need of protection.” This is a blatant statement of the obvious. It is also completely in line with existing government policy, the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and calls from human rights groups such as Amnesty International.

The statement gives rise to two equally obvious questions.  Firstly, how can a person prove they are “genuinely in need of protection” if the Australian Government refuses to assess their claim? And secondly, what will happen to the men, women and children who have genuine claims for protection while the suspension is in place?

In order to prove a genuine protection claim and be granted the right to live in Australia as a refugee, asylum seekers must demonstrate that they meet the internationally agreed criteria set out in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. This means they must show that they face persecution in their country of origin due to their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Often, as highlighted above, this persecution takes the form of torture, mass human rights violations and death.

Under Australian law, the procedure for proving such a protection claim is rigorous, and sometimes lengthy. Over 90 per cent of Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been found to be “genuinely in need of protection” over recent months. Targeting a suspension at these groups, who are overwhelmingly found to be people in need, is plainly unjustifiable. 

The short answer to the question of how a person can prove their protection claim when the government refuses to assess it, is that under the new policy they won’t be given the chance.

The answer to the question of what happens to these people, is that unless the government reverses the decision or recommences processing after the specified three and six month periods, people who have fled persecution, torture and other untold horrors will be arbitrarily detained. Including torture victims. Including victims of sexual violence. Including children. Perhaps indefinitely. And as we know from our past mistakes, the psychological impact of indefinite detention is irrefutable.

It is clear that asylum seekers are once again a big issue for all sides of politics in an election year. It is also clear that the government is under pressure on this issue. However, suspending the internationally protected human rights of some of the world’s most vulnerable people is not the answer. Nor is the opposition’s ‘whatever it takes to stop the boats’ approach and “core principle” of returning to the system of Temporary Protection Visas. Both these approaches are morally objectionable and fundamentally inconsistent with Australia’s international obligations.

It’s time for both sides of politics to stop using the world’s most vulnerable people as political footballs.

Most commented

31 comments

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    • John A Neve says:

      06:21am | 14/04/10

      Graham,

      The case you cite is a sad one, however we do not know how or why the man has “vanished”. People vanish very day in just about all countries including ours. Are you really suggesting this country should invove itself with all missing persons?

      Sri Lanka has had what amount to a civil war over many years, the hurt is still in the people. The only ones who can sort it are the Sri Lankan people.

      Reply

    • watty says:

      10:01am | 14/04/10

      The Sri Lankan people and Amnesty…..surely?

    • Disgusted says:

      11:21am | 14/04/10

      We are not solving the Civil War in Sri Lanka.

      We should recognise we have obligations under the UN Refugee Convention to house people who have a well founded fear of persecution in their country of origin.

      However I would go as far to say it’s more than obligation, we should have compassion for people who live in fear when the opposite is the case in Australia.

      We are the lucky country, and I thought a compassionate one until I became aware of this debate.

      It’s not rocket science to figure out what happened Prageeth Eknaligoda. A man standing up for what he believes in, in the midst of civil war.  I think you have touched on the central point here yes thousands of people go missing everyday, yet there is a difference between disappearances in Australia compared with Sri Lanka or Afghanistan. We are living in an area of peace, they are not.

    • Eric says:

      12:26pm | 14/04/10

      Disgusted, the people who arrive here in boats are not “living in fear”. They are living in safe havens, often in tourist resorts, in Indonesia and Malaysia.

      Compassion is one thing, stupidity is another. What you advocate is the latter.

    • Ben81 says:

      01:52pm | 14/04/10

      ‘Disgusted’-
      “We are not solving the Civil War in Sri Lanka.”.

      Well that’s ok, it ended about a year ago…

    • Eric says:

      08:09am | 14/04/10

      This is your silliest article yet. How is Australia responsible for what happens in Sri Lanka?

      We take genuine refugees - but most “boat people” are not genuine. They are not fleeing from a war-torn land, but sailing over from safe havens in Indonesia.

      As for Tamils in Sri Lanka, they have a safe haven just a few hundred kilometres away in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu; they don’t need to travel thousands of miles to Australia.

      Reply

    • Martin G says:

      12:36pm | 14/04/10

      Exactly right, Eric.

      Graham, I can’t see why Australia should be throwing the gates open to let in economic refugees, as it seems that is what they are, based on their choice of country to claim asylum in.

    • Adam Diver says:

      12:55pm | 14/04/10

      “It may not be pleasant to read, but it certainly places the government’s announcement in the international context in which it should rightly be considered”

      The international community does not care about Australia. No one does we are a tiny nation of unimportance to everyone else. Diplomatically no country does anything anyway and the individuals in this country wouldn’t even be able to find us on a map let alone know our politcal ideologies.

    • Amy says:

      03:32pm | 14/04/10

      I encourage Eric to go out and meet an Asylum seeker or refugee, talk to them for a while, feel their pain and suffering, hear their stories of persecution, loss, grief and absolute despair and still make the absurd accusations he has made above. Eric, it is you who is responding to this issue with sheer stupidity, as well as inhumanity. Most Asylum seekers don’t come by boat, and the ones that do, do so in extreme desperation.
      It may make you more comfortable remaining ignorant so that you can continue to express these misinformed (and ludicrous) opinions but there is a human cost, so your ignorance becomes harmful, hateful bigotry.
      Moral exclusion; it’s when we unjustifiably draw boundaries between who is deserving and undeserving of justice/ protection/compassion- The Nazi’s did it to the jews, we did (and do) it to Indigenous Australians and you (and the Aust gov) are now doing to Asylum seekers, who 90% of the time are found to be genuine refugees. Would everyone be so outraged if these people were white like us?

    • Casey says:

      05:50pm | 14/04/10

      Actually Eric, around 90% of ‘boat people’ are found to be geniune refugees.

      And Australia, like the rest of the developed world and those who have signed the UN Refugee Convention, has a moral responsibility to help.

      Most refugees do make the journey on foot to neighbouring states. Australia takes a pitiful 1% of the world’s refugees.

    • Ben81 says:

      07:44pm | 14/04/10

      Amy -
      “The Nazi’s did it to the jews, we did (and do) it to Indigenous Australians”
      Well there goes your credibility, why am I not surprised at a statement like that…

      And Casey, how is our intake “pitiful”?  We take in quite a high amount per capita compared to lots of countries.  We work out how far we can responsibly stretch our resources, and use that to come up with an idea of the number of people that we can let in and what we can do for them.
      Anyone who thinks letting in more will either solve any of the world’s problems and not cause any for us (socially and economically) has absolutely no idea of the scale of what they’re talking about. 

      One important part of making sure our precious resources are used on the right people is stopping people smugglers carrying in people who have disposed of any ID and who just have to repeat “they want to kill me” to our officials after coming through a few countries to get here.  We’re going to take in the same amount anyway, I want them to be genuine.

    • The Bastard of Canberra says:

      08:38pm | 14/04/10

      Actually Casey, 90% of ‘boat people’ are found to be genuine refugees wholly due to our scrupulous application of this wonderful Western legal devicel, benefit of the doubt.

      Under the letter of the Australian law, the onus of proof in refgugee status applications is on the applicant. He/she has to show that, on the balance of probaility, he/she has a WELL-FOUNDED fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of social group or political opinion.

      In the infinite wisdom of our actvist judges we reverse that onus of proof. In practice, the Australian Government is expected to either disprove tha applicant’s story beyond reasonable doubt, or give him/her refugee status. As a result, Australia operates the world’s first and only touch-the-post system of determination of refugee status.

      All that an applicant properly briefed by his people smuggler has to do is to patiently repeat “They will kill me”, and persist with this statement through all polite and patient questioning as to who ‘they’ might be, and why they would want to kill him. The standard answer, which guarantees permanent residence in Australia to anyone resilient enough to stick with it is : “I do not know who they are, but they will kill me”.

      Bu the way, please stop invoking the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. It is a hopelessly obsolete product of tortuous Cold War consensus, written to deal with the aftermath of WW2 in Europe. The relevance of the 1951 UN convention to the Sri Lankan asylum seekers in Australia today is approximately similar to the applicability of the Benedict XVI encyclicals to the theology of Buddhism.

    • Marilyn Shepherd says:

      02:52am | 15/04/10

      Eric, the Afghans who have come by sea have had their claims believed 99% of the time without ever seeing a lawyer.  The Iraqis 91% of the time, the Iranians 84% of the time and the Sri Lankans 80% of the time before last Thursday.

      Most on appeal will be allowed to stay.

      On the other hand 98.4% of the Indians who flew here and put in a claim for protection have been rejected, 80% of the Chinese were rejected, 93% of the Zimbabweans, 91% of the Fijians rejected, 95% of the Indonesians rejected, 81% of the Lebanese rejected.

      You figure out the reality you moron.

      And Indonesia has this small problem of not being in the refugee convention, of torturing and even shooting refugees, of jailing them for 40 years or so or just deporting them with no questions asked.

      Malaysia is worse - they traffic refugees as slave labour, steal children as sex slaves and then deport people without any hearing after locking them in hellish jails.

      To continue to claim that they could stay in either country shows your blithering heartless lack of commonsense and ignorance.

    • Matt Bowen says:

      09:03am | 14/04/10

      Dear John,
      I wonder if anyone would know if you went missing? Further, would they blog about it in an overseas country, citing it as an example as a ‘well founded fear of persecution?’

      Likely not.

      If you cannot rationally draw the correlation between a highly prominant Sri Lankan journalist speaking out about the government and he’s sudden disappearance then perhaps you should spend some time living in China and trying to voice your opinion, or perhaps jump in a time machine and see how you go living and working under the Pinochet regime in Chile.

      Graham, great article and I continue to support the work of Amnesty International.

      Reply

    • John A Neve says:

      09:33am | 14/04/10

      Matt Bowen,

      What correlation are we talking about?  Did you know the man, did he have enemies, owe money, use drugs, gamble etc, come on there are a million reasons he could have gone missing.  I repeat, people go missing every day.

      But do tell, how did China get into this act?

    • iansand says:

      09:57am | 14/04/10

      Mr Orwell would be proud.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      11:40am | 14/04/10

      This case appears difficult to reconcile, but i think the advantages of dissuading mass-migration to these shores via people-smugglers far outweighs any individual difficulty. Perhaps in exceptional conditions,direct representation to the Aust. Govt. by aid agencies may be of help.

    • John says:

      10:51am | 14/04/10

      The no matter how regrettable the disappearance of this poor fellow, we only know because an organization with a political agenda chooses it make know to us. This organization picks and chooses issues based on its worldview and in some cases may seek to promote illegal arrivals.

      Reply

    • James says:

      12:28pm | 14/04/10

      Eric, Tamils do not have a safe haven just a few hundred kilometres away in Tamil Nadu. Please see “Why don’t Sri Lankan asylum seekers just go to India” for more information:  http://www.amnesty.org.au/refugees/comments/22280/.

      No-one’s saying that Australia is responsible for what happens in Sri Lanka. We are however responsible for how we treat people arriving here fleeing persecution and possible death. A journalist’s disappearance in these circumstances - as well as the fact that Australia itself finds 90% of Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum claims to be valid - indicates that the persecution and danger is real.

      A little empathy is needed. If you or your family were fleeing persecution, I’m certain you would feel it was wholly reasonable to aim for Australia - a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention - rather than India or Indonesia - neither of which are signatories.

      Reply

    • Louisa says:

      02:24pm | 14/04/10

      Agreed James. Well put.

    • Ben81 says:

      02:42pm | 14/04/10

      The Tamils do have a “safe haven”, it’s called Sri Lanka. 
      Now that their militants aren’t getting away carrying out massacres on civilians and police and the Government has control of the land they don’t have anything to be running from, and have a real opportunity to make something of where they are.

      Allowing people smugglers to ship a few of them off to Australia when there’s other people who genuinely need our help won’t solve a damn thing.

    • GT SEIN says:

      09:45pm | 14/04/10

      Shouldn’t pressure be brought on India by the international community and Amnest International rather than on Australia? After all, this is a humanitarian crisis closer to their shores and of which India cannot claim to have had no part down the years?

    • Toni says:

      12:45pm | 14/04/10

      “What correlation are we talking about?  Did you know the man, did he have enemies, owe money, use drugs, gamble etc, come on there are a million reasons he could have gone missing. “

      Oh please! Thousands of people have been killed, lost their homes and ‘disappeared’ in this conflict - I think we can draw valid conclusions - but you think it’s personal problems, gambling or drugs!

      Maybe you should read up a little more on what’s happening in Sri Lanka, sure it’s not Australia’s fault, but belittling the real trauma and danger faced by some is just ignorant and arrogant.

      Reply

    • John A Neve says:

      01:47pm | 14/04/10

      Tony,

      I am always amused when people suggest that I “read up”.  Indicating they know more than any one else. You don’t know what I read or what I know, so please don’t show your ignorance.

      What is or has happened in Sri Lanka is their issue an internal issue. If a person goes against the government of the day, they are either a terrorist or a patriot, depending on which side of the fence you sit.  Tell us Tony how do you know which is which?

      Reply

    • Toni says:

      04:34pm | 14/04/10

      And the people caught in the crossfire? Those forced to negotiate their existence in areas that were controlled by the Tamil Tigers - now forced to flee as they are perceived as complicit.

      Those that question the actions of the government or military who are now ‘disappeared’ or under threat?

      Many of these people are neither terrorists or patriots - does not mean they are not at risk and I certainly do not put myself up as the person to judge who is what.

      We have methods of assessing whether people are genuine refugees,  we obliged to use them.

      Your suggestion that someone who stands up for their beliefs, at great personal risk, may have had a gambling debt and done a runner was flippant at best.

    • John A Neve says:

      07:55pm | 14/04/10

      Toni,
      At no time have I suggested anyone “had a gambling debt or done a runner”, to suggest that I have, is at best disingenuous.
      But then you are not one for the truth based on your posts. Twice now you have suggested your superiority, do you have some sort of problem?

    • Belinda says:

      05:57pm | 14/04/10

      A wonderful article Graham. It saddens me that many of the comments above which seemingly support the suspension of Afgahni and Sri Lankan asylum seeker processesing do so passionately but from a clearly uneducated background. Particularly in terms of their understanding of Australia’s obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, who is and is not a signitory (including Indonesia and Malaysia) and basic rights awarded to refugees in countries which are signitories.  A limited understanding of the Convention and the situation in in the countries of many of these refugees means that oversimplified responses, pertaining to refugees living it up in resorts, asylum seekers not being in danger in a country at war or in which one party, for example, the Sri Lankan Govt, has won and the aftermath, numbers of asylum seekers arriving on our shores by boat (4%- 90% of which are genuninely found to be escaping persecution.

      In terms of Sri Lanka, though the war has been declared to be over it muct be recognised that this statement was made by one of the parties of the conflict and thus must be treated with care and in context.

      Amnesty International, UNHCR and many other reputable NGO’s have research and data describing the dangers faced by ethnic Hazaras, women and others in Afghanistan and the Tamils, journalists, political activists and dissidents in Sri Lanka. To ignore these findings is simply willful undereducation which is often founded in racism.

      These comments are inherently xenophobic and based on unsubstantiated assumptions encouraged by Australian politicians on both sides in the election year. We, as Australian citizens must stand up for what is right- particularly within an international context and ensure that our politicians act and make policies based on substantiated facts, live up to our international responsibilities in the Convention and cease using refugees as a morally questionable political point scoring mechanism.

      We need to rediscover our empathy and consider how we would feel if we, our family and our friends were in the same situation as many of the asylum seekers coming to Australia. I know If I or any of my loved ones were facing persecution I would take any chance for survival- even if it meant paying a people smuggler and getting on a tiny overloaded boat for a chance of safety. I believe that the people in these countries genuinely face persecution if they are willing to take this dangerour trip.

      Reply

    • Your name: Amy says:

      07:09pm | 16/04/10

      Agreed Belinda. I fear that people who argue against asylum seekers do not have at hand the relevant information and are misinformed.

      I also fear that these discussions often turn into personal attacks, and I’d ask that for the sake of us being able to discuss these issues reasonably we stick to the discussion itself.

    • Jason says:

      11:05pm | 14/04/10

      Absolutely disgraceful actions by our so called LABOR government.

      Reply

    • John says:

      05:55pm | 15/04/10

      So why are we ignoring the evils and injustice in the lands these people are fleeing?  A better solution all round for all people would be to do something about that rather than taking the easy path of blaming the victims.  (Yes, I know that is easier said than done.

      Reply

    • Marilyn Shepherd says:

      12:10am | 16/04/10

      Why on earth do people go on and on about the non-existent people smugglers?  Who is being smuggled anywhere against their will?

      They catch transport in all corners of the world to escape torture, death and persecution and as we are the only morons on the planet who now label seeking asylum “people smuggling” surely even the dimmest bulb in the chandelier can understand that we are wrong.
      It is not and never has been the case of evil people smugglers running around war zones looking for refugees to exploit.

      The evil sods live in our cities and they traffic little girls and young women into the country as sex slaves.

      They are in our education system and work system and they traffic in workers and students for slave labour.

      All transport providers for refugees do is give them a ride one way.

      Sort of like an ambulance

      Reply
 
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