Bob Carr: no danger in sending back the Tamils

[nero_bolt]

  Seems its OK for Labor/green and the left leaning to send them back but not OK for the LNP 

 1,270  sent back to Sri Lanka by Labor...... BUT thats OK...... 

Even their own in Bob Carr is saying that its a Labor/Left/Green lie oll of this and in his own words a MYTH... 

  Claims of Tamil persecution in Sri Lanka a myth, says Bob Carr 

LABOR’S last foreign minister, Bob Carr, has ridiculed refugee advocates’ “urban mythology” about endemic persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka, saying the previous government (Labor) “couldn’t find a single case” of returned asylum-seekers being abused by authorities.

Mr Carr, who retired from politics last October, accepted Sri Lanka’s recovery after 35 years of civil war was not “a perfect exercise”, but rejected former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser’s likening of the Abbott government’s policy to returning Jews to Nazi Germany.

Mr Carr’s comments come as the Abbott government determines the fate of 153 Sri Lankan nationals being held aboard an Australian Customs vessel after their interception at sea.

Forty-one asylum-seekers, mostly belonging to Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority, have already been returned and face charges of leaving the country illegally.

Mr Carr said Sri Lanka was “not doing badly” given its decades-long civil war with the “bloodthirsty” Tamil Tigers, whom he compared with genocidal Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.

The idea that there is entrenched apartheid in the country like old South Africa or the West Bank just cannot be sustained.

“You’ve got 12 per cent of the population of Sri Lanka of Tamil background and they are heavily represented in the leadership of the country. You’ve got Tamil political parties sitting in the parliament, Tamil judges, Tamil doctors and engineers, a Tamil business leadership.

“There’s a great danger in this that we accept one side in this narrative … It’s not just a Tamil Tigers’ narrative; it’s a narrative about a complex society rebuilding itself after 35 years of vicious violence and not doing badly

Mr Carr said the Labor government returned a boatload of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers about August 2012, none of whom were treated inhumanely. Rather, they were interviewed and then released.

“There were only four issues raised with returnees by the High Commission, their position was carefully investigated and there was no mistreatment confirmed,” Mr Carr said.

“There was extraordinary urban mythology promoted about their treatment. I had it put to me in a meeting with NGOs at DFAT once that there were hundreds of returnees from Australia held in detention; now that was pure myth

Mr Carr said the international community “looked the other way” during the Tamil Tigers’ “bloodthirsty” insurgency.

“This is a country that recovered from three-and-a-half decades of the most vicious civil war.

If the Tamil Tigers had won, if they’d carved out their own republic in the north of Sri Lanka, there are good reasons for thinking … it would have ended up being very similar to Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia. It would have been bloodthirsty.

This was an insurgency (the Tamil Tigers) that pioneered the use of suicide bombings that blew up religious monuments, children, killed people on a huge scale while the rest of the world looked the other way.

“The country is recovering from three-and-a-half decades of a vicious civil war and it’s not going to be a perfect exercise, and it isn’t, and we should keep our eye on human rights abuses. But I’ve got to say a lot of progress has been made.”

In fact, Labor once boasted how it sent back Tamils, too. From last June:

Australia announced the return of 22 more Sri Lankan irregular maritime arrivals who had failed to meet the country’s international obligations…

Their return takes the number of Sri Lankans sent home to 1,270 – 1,057 of them involuntarily since August 2012.

Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Brendan O’Connor, said returning the group to Sri Lankans sends a powerful message.

The government is making it crystal clear that those who pay smugglers are throwing their money away and risking their lives in the process", O’Connor said.

"We are committed to breaking the evil people smuggling trade, deterring people from taking dangerous journeys by boat and saving lives at sea", a statement issued by the Australian Ministry of Immigration and Citizenship quoted the Minister as saying.

Yep its OK for labor to send 1270 back to Sri Lanaka ........   How do you spell hypocrites

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/claims-of-tamil-persecution-in-sri-lanka-a-m...

[nero_bolt]

So no thoughts or opinions on Bob Carr saying that there is no problem sending them back?  

No comments I see as well on the fact that Labor sent 1270 back, it does seem thats OK in the left world.

[i-need-a-martini]

Perhaps everyone (except you and the Telegraph) registers the difference?

The Sri Lankans that would have been sent back during the previous governments time would have been processed and screened thoroughly by the various departments and refugee groups on Australia soil.

These 41 were not.

Also, I find it odd that Carr would say the previous government (Labor) “couldn’t find a single case” of returned asylum-seekers being abused by authorities given that the Labor Government officially declared that Sri Lankan govt was complicit in civil rights abuses towards Tamils. As far as I understand, the Liberal Government have not rebuked this since they have come into power.

[nero_bolt]

THE outrage over the forced return of 41 Sri Lankan boat people has been exposed as a fraud by the “asylum seekers” themselves. 

Here’s conclusive proof that our “refugee lobby” is motivated by deceit, self-preening and insane hatred of the Abbott Government.

These 41 were on one of two boats of Sri Lankans intercepted by our Navy over the past fortnight, and were sent back this week.

Greens leader Christine Milne was apoplectic, describing the passengers as victims of a Sri Lankan tyranny and the evil Tony Abbott: “Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been returned to Sri Lanka: the persecuted to the persecutor.”

Refugee lawyer George Newhouse and former prime minister Malcolm Fraser even likened returning boat people to Sri Lanka to returning Jews to Nazi Germany.

And journalists of the Left competed to be the most horrified. ABC host Fran Kelly, won, gasping: “Since when does our Government disappear people?”

Bad luck for Kelly. The 41 have now appeared again, back in Sri Lanka where they spoke to reporters.

So were they “refugees”? Were they truly the “persecuted”, fleeing a Third Reich in the Indian Ocean?

Let me quote every single one who talked to reporters. You judge.

Punchi Banda Podinilame, speaking for 10 relatives on board, told Fairfax “they had all gone to Australia to find employment”.

Manushika Sandamali, wife of another passenger, admitted: “My husband went to Australia to get a job.”

M.G. Sumanadasa said he was a stone mason who “got on board to earn more money and to have a family house in New Zealand”.

Anthony Fernando said: “I have gone to Australia by boat to find employment.”

The only human rights abuse Fernando reported was our Navy feeding him old muesli bars: “Australian authorities have ill-treated us; they have given expired food, which had a date of May 22.”

Passenger Bhamith Caldera refused to say if he really “had a case for asylum”.

Kasun Hemantha Jayasekara said he was actually “very happy to be back in Sri Lanka”, given “the alternative was an island prison” like Manus.

Sujeewa Saparamadu came closest to claiming some passengers feared persecution. She said a Special Task Force commando accused of helping to organise the boat “has a political problem”, which she did not identify.

She also claimed she’d been harassed by Sri Lankan authorities after giving an interview to the ABC two years ago, leading her family to decide “to go to another country like New Zealand that offered better economic circumstances”.

In fact, that ABC interview had merely recorded her husband admitting his four brothers had themselves just been returned by the Gillard government after trying to find work in Australia.

(And, yes, Labor returned more than 1000 Sri Lankans against their will, yet the Left waits until Tony Abbott does it before protesting.)

The only human rights abuse Saparamadu complained of this week was Australian officials confiscating her iPhone 5, her daughter’s digital camera and her husband’s gold credit cards.

So how could the Greens claim it a crime to have sent back economic migrants? How can so many journalists — and the Human Rights Commission — scream we’ve breached our human rights obligations?

But don’t expect a sorry. No, the Left is now screaming about the second intercepted boat, this carrying 153 passengers now believed to be in Australian custody at sea.

Newhouse and barrister Ron Merkel, QC, have persuaded the High Court to issue a temporary injunction against returning these 153 to Sri Lanka, and the same superheated rhetoric is heard about torture, the “disappeared” and Nazis.

But are these boat people any more likely to be true refugees?

Answer: no, even though these, unlike the first 41, are mainly of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority.

In fact, Merkel has already conceded most — if not all — sailed from India, where they presumably lived in the safety of the established refugee camps.

So why did they try to come here?

As yet, they are still held incommunicado, but Ragajini, the 32-year-old wife of one passenger, told The Sydney Morning Herald from India’s Aliyar refugee camp that “her husband had crippling debts and had needed to escape to a country where he could earn money”.

So not needing our asylum. Just our jobs.

Sure, the 153 might not want to be returned to Sri Lanka but I’m guessing the plan is to send them back to India, where they were always safe.

So if a crime against morality has been committed it is surely this: that so many atrocity-mongers and moral poseurs have inflicted upon us a gigantic fraud.