Author Archives: thuppahi

Michael Roberts

On the long haul back by plane from London to Adelaide from the 22 to 26th July I was sketching a list of articles on migration from Lanka since the 1950s with a focus on the tendency of reporters to look only at (a) Tamil migrants and (b) the recent influx of boat people – with almost total neglect of

• the deep past dating from the 1950s if not the 1940s;
• the considerable flow of Sinhalese, Muslims and other non-Tamil ethnic minorities from Sri Lanka  over  the last twenty or more years – by legal means as well as some foul;
• the considerable impact of snowballing chain migration in cumulative force from way back;
• the illegal entry of asylum seekers to Western countries by air and land routes; and
• the existence of forgery networks sponsoring the latter process.

DayanAnthony in Sri Lanka

Well, lo and behold! The Dayan Anthony sob story sensationally portrayed by the Sydney Morning Herald with such dripping pathos [an item I posted earlier today] has revealed that forgeries were part of the process –confirming my gut feeling arising from a reasonably definite tale relayed to me by M. Sathiyamoorthy of the ORI regarding a middle class SL Catholic Tamil family, refugees from a middle class background who owned a flat in the same apartment building in Chennai where his apartment was, who suddenly decamped [without informing Sathiyamoorthy despite the assistance he had continuously given them] and went abroad by air with the aid of the eldest son, a priest. His understanding was that forged papers were deployed. This, and some comments from the indomitable Muttukrishna Sarvananthan in Colombo and Point Pedro, had alerted me to the likelihood of forgeries being an important aspect of the out-migration pathways. Continue reading →