Antony Loewenstein

September 19th, 2011 in General

Duty to hold Sri Lanka to account for war crimes but Australia embraces the thugs

In some coun­tries, such as Britain, there is con­tin­ued pub­lic pres­sure on Colombo to hold those ac­cused of war crimes to ac­count. And rightly so.

The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment has a rather dif­fer­ent view?

Sev­eral of the Tamil asy­lum seek­ers caught try­ing to flee Sri Lanka for Aus­tralia this week are being held in de­ten­tion camps with­out charge under dra­con­ian anti-ter­ror laws.

Aus­tralia has praised Sri Lanka for in­ter­cept­ing a boat car­ry­ing 44 asy­lum seek­ers, in­clud­ing two chil­dren, with high com­mis­sioner Kathy Klug­man ap­plaud­ing the Sri Lankan se­cu­rity forces’ work.

But refugee ad­vo­cates have crit­i­cised Aus­tralia’s un­crit­i­cal sup­port for Sri Lanka and ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of ig­nor­ing war crimes al­le­ga­tions stem­ming from Colombo’s bru­tal civil war with the Tamil Tigers.

De­spite the praise for Sri Lanka, Prime Min­is­ter Julia Gillard this week cited past un­rest in the coun­try as a rea­son prompt­ing peo­ple to seek asy­lum in Aus­tralia.

Thirty-eight of the 44 Tamils ap­peared in a Colombo court after being stopped on Sun­day. They were re­manded until Sep­tem­ber 28, ex­cept for two boys aged four and seven who were re­leased into the care of their grand­par­ents on bail of 100,000 ru­pees ($A885).

Six of the asy­lum seek­ers are al­leged to be for­mer fight­ers with the Tamil Tigers, the sep­a­ratist group crushed in a bru­tal civil war that ended in 2009. They have not been brought be­fore a court but are being de­tained under the Pre­ven­tion of Ter­ror­ism Act at a de­ten­tion camp.

Sri Lanka has faced in­tense crit­i­cism over its broad use of the anti-ter­ror­ist laws, which crit­ics say are used to de­tain peo­ple in se­cret with­out charge or ju­di­cial over­sight. Sus­pects can be held with­out charge for up to 18 months.

Greens sen­a­tor Sarah Han­son-Young said yes­ter­day the Gillard gov­ern­ment had dis­missed Aus­tralia’s oblig­a­tions under in­ter­na­tional refugee con­ven­tions. ”Aus­tralia should be help­ing build pro­tec­tion frame­works in the re­gion, not prais­ing coun­tries for tram­pling on the rights of their own cit­i­zens,” she said.

A For­eign Af­fairs De­part­ment spokes­woman said Ms Klug­man was au­tho­rised to issue media state­ments with­out clear­ance from Can­berra.

A Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald ed­i­to­r­ial damned Can­berra for its ha­tred of Tamil refugees over any con­cern to­wards the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of them:

The Aus­tralian high com­mis­sioner in Colombo, Kathy Klug­man, has dis­played ap­palling judg­ment in prais­ing the Sri Lankan navy and po­lice after the in­ter­cep­tion of a boat car­ry­ing 44 peo­ple, ap­par­ently bound for Aus­tralia. What we know of this par­tic­u­lar case is lim­ited: the 44 Tamils, in­clud­ing two chil­dren, were picked up in rough seas off the east of the coun­try on Sun­day as they at­tempted to flee. The chil­dren are now in the care of their grand­par­ents, 36 oth­ers hauled be­fore a mag­is­trate and re­manded in cus­tody. The re­main­ing six have dis­ap­peared into a de­ten­tion camp in the coun­try’s south, ac­cused of being for­mer fight­ers with the Tamil Tigers.

We know much more about the broader con­text. Sri Lanka stands ac­cused of vi­cious abuses in the civil war – abuses that were cer­tainly com­mit­ted by both sides, but a mil­i­tary vic­tory does not ab­solve the gov­ern­ment of its moral cul­pa­bil­ity. Prime Min­is­ter Julia Gillard has ac­knowl­edged the con­flict was a major fac­tor in the in­creased num­ber of peo­ple seek­ing haven in Aus­tralia in re­cent years. The United Na­tions has recog­nised more than 140,000 refugees from Sri Lanka.

Yet Aus­tralia’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive has blithely ig­nored the cloud hang­ing over Sri Lanka’s se­cu­rity forces in what ap­pears an ef­fort to pre­serve of­fi­cial ties and warn of the dan­gers of a 5500-kilo­me­tre sea pas­sage to Aus­tralia. Of course the jour­ney is treach­er­ous. But it is a sour look that dam­ages Aus­tralia’s rep­u­ta­tion to ap­plaud the ring fence around Sri Lanka and pre-judge the mer­its of peo­ple seek­ing to es­cape.