Category Archives: people smugglers

August 25, 2012 · 3:17 pm

Channel Seven’s Documentary on Asylum-Seekers from Lanka exposes New Angles but blunders with Kamahl

Michael Roberts

“Boat after boat after boat …. Tim Noonan has just returned from Sri Lanka where thousands of people are still trying to get to Australia illegally…. As we go to air tonight more boatloads are readying themselves for the perilous journey.”[i]These are the dramatic opening lines in the video documentary presented by CHANNEL SEVEN in Australia on its primetime “Today Tonight” 6.30 show on Sunday 19th August – indelible words set against an initial backdrop provided by the massed drummers and elephants participating in the dramatic Äsēla Perahära in Kandy [which had absolutely nought to do with the topic]. Viewers are also told at an early stage that so far 49 boats with 2369 Sri Lankans have reached Australia this year.[ii]

 Pic from Christian Science Monitor

Founded upon the film-work and investigations by Tim Noonan in Sri Lanka, Channel Seven’s documentary surpasses most of the previous media coverage in Australia in its relative comprehensiveness. Do watch the video on http://au.news.yahoo.com/sunday-night/video/. Continue reading →

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August 20, 2012 · 1:10 am

Alex Kuhendrarajah, where are you? Lessons to be learnt by Australian media

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Eurasia Review, 19 August 2012

Alex! Alex! Where art thou? We need you. Australia needs you. As a tale of “high drama” and alleged “piracy” surrounds the Wallenius Wilhelmsen and its detour to unload 67 male asylum-seekers at Christmas Island[i] hits the Australian headlines your experience and grandstanding would be beneficial to all sides. RECALL how you bestrode the Australian media waves during the last quarter of the year 2009 after the Jaya Lastari, with its 256 Tamil asylum seekers, was impounded at Merak off Java and all of you attempted to blackmail your way to Australia! Now, in August 2012 as another clutch of asylum-seekersrescued by the Wallenius Wilhelmsen has “threatened to harm themselves” and secured a passage to Christmas Island, thereby raising Scott Morrison’s ire (on behalf of the Liberal Party and Australia at large),[ii] your inside knowledge would be pretty handy. Continue reading →

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August 18, 2012 · 1:56 am

Aussies-in-a-Tizz, III: A new tougher offshore regime?

Chris Merritt and Lauren Wilson, in The Australian, 18 August 2012 with title “New offshore processing regime bars appeal on asylum.”

 Asylum-seekers arriving at Christmas Island this week. Source: Supplied

JULIA Gillard’s new offshore processing regime has effectively locked asylum-seekers out of Australian court appeals, legal experts declared yesterday, as four boats arrived in 24 hours in a rush to beat the new laws. Human rights lawyers said the new offshore processing regime had stripped back the capacity for judicial review of government decisions and eliminated many of the grounds for legal challenges by boatpeople. Continue reading →

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August 18, 2012 · 1:18 am

Aussies-in-a-Tizz, I: “Finger in the dyke can hold only so long”

Cameron Stewart, in The Australian, 18 August 2012

 A crowded asylum-seeker boat arrives at Christmas Island last month. The desire to stop the relentless flow of boats has elevated pragmatism over principle, utility over law and head over hearts. Picture: Stephen Cooper Source: The Australian .. note the name = Ineshgey Putha

THE initial euphoria in some quarters about a breakthrough in asylum-seeker policy is being tempered by the realisation that the grand plan unveiled this week by the Houston panel faces a series of potentially fatal obstacles.The devil in the detail is always less compelling than the grand vision, but it is the detail of the Houston plan that poses the greatest threat to its ambition of providing a historic circuit-breaker to the asylum-seeker crisis. The immediate risk to the plan – now enshrined as Labor policy – is that it was conceived as a complete package but only parts of it have any hope of being implemented in the short term.

While the new offshore asylum-seeker holding centres of Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea will be reopened quickly to provide an instant deterrent to boat arrivals, the second key plank of the plan – the pursuit of a rejigged Malaysia Solution, along with greater regional co-operation on asylum-seekers – is only a diplomatic dream. Continue reading →

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August 15, 2012 · 2:05 pm

Swimming against the tide – Australia’s new asylum-seeker package

Michael Roberts, Courtesy of Groundviews, 15 August 2012**

 Expert Panel –Pic by  Alex Ellinghausen

Though launched with much fanfare and media acclaim, Australia’s new raft of proposals embodied in the Houston package to handle the surge in asylum-seekers is simply treading water and will get the country nowhere. The flow of migrants to Western countries by both legal and illegal paths has increased steadily over the years. The large pool of migrants then encourages kinfolk and friends to migrate through information, good-luck tales and remittances. Thus one has a snowballing process of increased migration.

 Colour Pic from SMH

In brief, I assert that the main reason for the increased flow of illegal asylum-seekers is the impact of snowballing chain migration. It is an educated surmise on my part from anecdotal evidence from the Sri Lankan situation and my explorations of this topic in the recent past. Logically, this argument would apply to both the Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi migrant situations as well. Indeed, it is supported vividly by the opinions expressed in such a forthright manner today in The Australian by Ms Najeeba Wazefadost and Esmat Adine (25 yrs), both recent Hazara Afghan refugees who had secured entry earlier via Indonesia (Morton & Guest 2012). Continue reading →

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August 15, 2012 · 12:59 am

“Island of tears and fears” – says Hodge

Amanda Hodge, in The Australian, 15 August 2012

LIKE thousands of his countrymen, Palitha plunged deep into debt for a gruelling passage to a first-world job and the chance to buy land and a home for his family. A decade ago, a relatively paltry $2500 bought him a fake passport and a terrible 52-day boat journey from Sri Lanka’s west coast — not to Australia, but to Italy.”I went because of the economy. Everyone went to Italy then, but now Italy is closed so people go to Australia,” the 50-year-old Colombo-based driver tells The Australian.

 Sivanesaraghan, left, with other failed asylum-seekers after their rescue by a French supertanker last month. Picture: Amanda Hodge Source: The Australian Continue reading →

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August 12, 2012 · 3:16 am

Rohan Gunaratna on people smuggling networks and migration impulses

Rohan Gunaratna in Q and A with Manjula Fernando, Sunday Observer, 12 August 2012

Q: You were the first to raise alarm bells of a secret ship loaded with hundreds of Lankan illegal immigrants heading to Canada from Thailand in 2009. After a couple of ships the flow of sea migrants to Canada stopped but Australia is facing a bigger issue now. Hundreds of people are arrested every month by the Sri Lankan Navy while trying to set sail. Nothing has proved successful so far in discouraging these perilous sea voyages. Why?

A: The LTTE operated MV Ocean Lady and MV Sun Sea arrived in Canada with 76 and 492 Sri Lankans in 2009 and 2010. Launched from Thailand, both these ventures were organised by the LTTE leadership in Canada and the UK. The earned several million dollars from these two ventures. Since then the LTTE human smuggling networks operating out of Thailand have been disrupted by the Thai, Canadian and Australian authorities. The initial waves of human smuggling ventures were guided by the LTTE operatives in the West. Today, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lankan criminals are directing human smuggling ventures. With human smugglers charging Rs. 700,000 to Rs. 1.2 million, a boat with 50 passengers will generate US $ 500,000. Continue reading →

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August 10, 2012 · 12:44 am

Australia’s border patrol navy creaking at seams because of boat people

Cameron Stewart in The Australian, 10 Augsut 2012, under the title “Asylum demands breaking navy fleet as patrol boats crack up“

AUSTRALIA’S navy patrol boats are literally cracking up under the strain of intercepting the surge in asylum-seeker vessels, with one boat now banned from operations and structural cracks discovered in at least two others.Defence has ordered an urgent investigation into its overworked 14-boat fleet amid concerns that the problem could threaten the navy’s long-term ability to patrol Australia’s northern approaches.

The discovery of the structural cracks in the Armidale-class boats could not come at a worse time for the navy, which is being forced to intercept a growing number of asylum-seeker boats further out from shore. This trend has been reinforced by some people-smugglers employing bogus distress calls to secure naval assistance shortly after leaving Indonesia. Continue reading →

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August 7, 2012 · 9:29 am

STAR CHAMBER laws used in smuggler wars in Australia

Mark Schliers, in The Australian, 6 August 2012

THE Australian Crime Commission has been using its “star chamber” powers in special operations to target people-smugglers by interrogating recent arrivals. ACC executive director Paul Jevtovic told The Australian that the secretive organised crime fighting agency was using all its powers to help the Australian Federal Police investigate people-smugglers. Among the ACC’s powers are the ability to summon people for questioning and charge those who do not answer questions or lie to officers, with a maximum punishment of five years’ jail.

It is also illegal for someone who has attended an ACC “examination” – including lawyers – to disclose to another person information about the summons, the hearing or anything said during questioning. The AFP, which has been the lead agency investigating people-smuggling, but lacks coercive powers of its own, has repeatedly referred individuals to the ACC for questioning. Continue reading →

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August 7, 2012 · 4:54 am

To Italy! To Italy! Once upon a Time!

Bernardo Brown, courtesy of Groundviews, where it was posted on 2nd August with the title: “Undocumented Sri Lankan Migration to Italy: Its Rise and Fall”

While Australia is currently the preferred destination of these smuggled migrants, Italy was one of the major destinations in the past. While the points of departure of these boats also seem to be different today, there are some useful lessons to be learned from incidents of human smuggling in recent Sri Lankan history. Allow me to briefly sketch out the origins of Sri Lankan mass illegal migration to Italy. Towards the late-1990s, people from across the island and of all ethnic backgrounds considered Italy as a potential destination for labor migration. However, this transnational migratory flow to Italy had initially been almost monopolized by Catholic youth from the western seaboard. Virtually all of these young men who sought to relocate to Italian cities as an alternative to working with their families in the fishing industry came from smaller towns like Negombo, Wennappuwa and Chilaw, all located to the north of Colombo. Continue reading →

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