Category Archives: people smugglers

May 30, 2012 · 9:28 am

Boat People: direct from Lanka to Australia with WHAT?

Paige Taylor, in The Australian, 30 May 2012, where the title reads “Tamils cut out middlemen and sail straight here” ….. SEE select bibliography at End.

SRI Lankans are again seeking asylum from Australia by boat in large numbers and they are bypassing people-smugglers in Indonesia, instead sailing direct to Christmas Island. Immigration authorities believe the 88 Sri Lankans offloaded at Christmas Island yesterday were the latest in recent months to embark on the perilous boat trip of more than 3000km from Sri Lanka to the Australian territory of Christmas Island.

 Pic from Australian

The number of Sri Lankans seeking asylum by boat in Australia so far this year is already more than double last year’s total; since January 1, 586 Sri Lankans have reached Christmas Island. Last year, there were 211. Continue reading →

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May 30, 2012 · 6:24 am

People-smuggling a Tamil propaganda plot: Sri Lanka

Paul Maley, in The Australian, 29 May 2012

THE Sri Lankan government has accused the remnants of defeated terrorist group the Tamil Tigers of funding the passage of asylum-seekers to Australia. Sri Lanka says it is part of a campaign to convince the world that Sri Lanka is not safe for Tamils.

The claim — dismissed by the Tamil community and doubted by the Gillard government — came as authorities in Sri Lanka detained 113 asylum-seekers and six organisers as they prepared to leave for Australia. Continue reading →

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September 20, 2011 · 11:13 am

Asylum-Seekers and Migration to Australia — A Timeline

IRIN News

BANGKOK, 20 September 2011 (IRIN) – Australia’s resumed push to swap asylum-seekers arriving by boat with refugees from Malaysia is the government’s most recent policy response to an issue that has preoccupied officials and the public for years.  Under the so-called “Malaysia Solution”, Australia would exchange the next 800 refugees to arrive by boat for 4,000 mostly Burmese, in Malaysia. On 31 August, the High Court ruled against it, declaring the proposal invalid, a decision welcomed by rights groups such as the Refugee Council of Australia. According to government figures, since 1976, more than 27,000 people have boarded boats and attempted to emigrate to Australia, a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. 
IRIN considers how the debate has developed:

27 April 1976: The first boat arrivals – five refugees from Vietnam – land in Darwin. Over the next five years, more than 2,000 Vietnamese boat arrivals are reported and the term “boat people” enters the Australian vernacular; Continue reading →

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September 11, 2011 · 11:31 pm

Australia-bound trawler intercepted by Sri Lankan Navy

ABC News

The Sri Lankan navy has intercepted a boat carrying 40 people headed forAustralia, as authorities inColombo crack down on illegal migration rackets. People smugglers in Sri Lanka charge about $5,000 for a risky, one-way journey to Australia, but the navy has stepped up patrols to stop migrants illegally leaving the island’s shores. “Those arrested are all Sri Lankans, who had set off on their journey in a fishing vessel from Negombo town just north of Colombo, said navy spokesman Commander Kosala Warnakulasuriya. Boats from Sri Lanka are believed to take around three weeks to travel to Australia, although some migrants travel by air to Indonesia and then take rickety wooden vessels to the Australian coast.

The Australian High Court last month banned the Federal Government’s plan to send 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia. Labor’s new border protection policy – which could include changing the Migration Act – will be put to Cabinet on Monday morning before it’s taken to a special Caucus meeting.

The Greens have accused the Federal Government of trying to bypass international law in a bid to process asylum seekers offshore. “What we are seeing here is Julia Gillard moving asylum seeker policy to the right to the nasty side of John Howard,” Greens leader Bob Brown said. “It’s very clear that Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are edging toward an unholy alliance on immigration to get around international law to allow offshore processing of asylum seekers coming to this country. It is very clear that’s illegal.” Continue reading →

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September 10, 2011 · 2:46 am

Lost in Transportation: Tamil Refugees in India and their Dangerous Gambles

Ben Doherty, in Tamilnadu, India,  from the Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Sept. 2011

Pic by Kate Geraghty

On the broad sands of southern India’s beaches lie thousands of wooden dhows and fibre glass skiffs, plied in trades, legitimate and otherwise, in the Bay of Bengal. On one of these boats, from one of these beaches, two years ago, Rathidevi’s son Dhuuaragan leftIndia, and his life in a refugee camp, bound for Australia. She has not heard from him since. She does not know whether he is alive or dead. Four months after her son left in October 2009, she received a phone call from a number and a voice she did not recognise, telling her her son was in an Indonesian jail. The line then dropped out. ”I do not know who called me.”

Brindha

Alex

Dhuuragan’s family invested everything in his trip. ”We had to pay 1½ lakhs [$A3100],” Rathidevi says. ”We sold all the jewellery we had, all the gold that I had. We sold everything to pay that money.”

With the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war two years ago, the movement of Tamil asylum seekers across the globe has slowed. But at least three times in the past three months, groups of Tamil asylum seekers have been arrested by authorities trying to leave for Australia, in one case caught standing on a beach in the early hours of the morning waiting for their boat. Last month, 147 men, women and children were arrested in Andhra Pradesh, about to meet their ”migration agent”. Continue reading →

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