Refused asylum seeker killed after deportation
FCUKBA | 09.05.2012 18:18 | Migration
It is impossible to keep track of what happens to all the refused asylum seekers deported each week from the UK. It was already known however, that Tamil deportees were being tortured on return.
In one case documented by Freedom from Torture, a refused asylum seeker was detained and severely tortured after he was deported early last year:
“After I arrived in Sri Lanka and tried to leave the airport, two men stopped me, asked for my
passport and asked me to come with them. They showed me their IDs – two people from CID
[Criminal Investigation Department]. They took me out of a different entrance and pulled me
inside a van....I was taken to a building. They asked questions like ‘why have you come back again?, ‘what did you do in the UK?’, ‘where is your brother?’ [an LTTE member]. I said I had no contact with him.
They tortured me inside the room by removing my clothes and hitting me with burning irons. I was feeling a burning sensation all over my body. They kept me for two days and I found my body was all swollen. On the third day they put me inside the van. I thought they were going to shoot me. Later I realised that my family had given them some money and because of that I was released.”
After his release, according to the report*, he was able to make it back to the UK.
Despite the clear evidence of appalling human rights violations there, in the past year the UK has carried out four mass deportations to Sri Lanka under the name 'Operation Tetyra', involving more than 50 people each time.
And now terrible, but not unexpected, news has emerged that one refused asylum seeker - at least, one that we know of- has been killed after he was forcibly deported back to the country:
'Reports from Trincomalee confirmed that a Tamil civilian recently refused asylum in the U.K. and deported to Sri Lanka, was found killed on the 18th April. The killing occurred amidst arrests by the Sri Lanka military of more than 300 Tamils in the east, many of whom were refugee returnees from other countries, reports said.
Tamil activists say systemic issues such as lack of information on asylum application procedures and sources of funding, a lack of affordable advice in the refugee's own language, combined with out-of-date, biased or inaccurate 'official' country information relied on by immigration officials and judges have resulted in many potentially vulnerable refugees being returned back into the waiting hostile hands of Colombo.' (Tamil.net, 06.05.12 [2])
How much more suffering must there be before we stop deportations to Sri Lanka?
[1] The Freedom From Torture report is available here:
http://www.freedomfromtorture.org/feature/out_of_the_silence/5980
[2] http://tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=35137
“After I arrived in Sri Lanka and tried to leave the airport, two men stopped me, asked for my
passport and asked me to come with them. They showed me their IDs – two people from CID
[Criminal Investigation Department]. They took me out of a different entrance and pulled me
inside a van....I was taken to a building. They asked questions like ‘why have you come back again?, ‘what did you do in the UK?’, ‘where is your brother?’ [an LTTE member]. I said I had no contact with him.
They tortured me inside the room by removing my clothes and hitting me with burning irons. I was feeling a burning sensation all over my body. They kept me for two days and I found my body was all swollen. On the third day they put me inside the van. I thought they were going to shoot me. Later I realised that my family had given them some money and because of that I was released.”
After his release, according to the report*, he was able to make it back to the UK.
Despite the clear evidence of appalling human rights violations there, in the past year the UK has carried out four mass deportations to Sri Lanka under the name 'Operation Tetyra', involving more than 50 people each time.
And now terrible, but not unexpected, news has emerged that one refused asylum seeker - at least, one that we know of- has been killed after he was forcibly deported back to the country:
'Reports from Trincomalee confirmed that a Tamil civilian recently refused asylum in the U.K. and deported to Sri Lanka, was found killed on the 18th April. The killing occurred amidst arrests by the Sri Lanka military of more than 300 Tamils in the east, many of whom were refugee returnees from other countries, reports said.
Tamil activists say systemic issues such as lack of information on asylum application procedures and sources of funding, a lack of affordable advice in the refugee's own language, combined with out-of-date, biased or inaccurate 'official' country information relied on by immigration officials and judges have resulted in many potentially vulnerable refugees being returned back into the waiting hostile hands of Colombo.' (Tamil.net, 06.05.12 [2])
How much more suffering must there be before we stop deportations to Sri Lanka?
[1] The Freedom From Torture report is available here:
http://www.freedomfromtorture.org/feature/out_of_the_silence/5980 [2]
http://tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=35137
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