Monday, 3 October 2011, 11:04


Great news! Following on from our email on Wednesday it appears that at least some of the asylum seekers due to be returned to Sri Lanka from the UK have been granted a stay of execution.


But the stay is only temporary – so we need your help to keep up the pressure. Particularly now the Britsh government has confirmed that they are doing nothing to monitor the safety of those who return.


The British government is employing circular logic. It claims that asylum seekers can be safely returned to Sri Lanka because it claims there is no evidence to the contrary – but then it refuses to look for such evidence.

The United Kingdom has a policy of not sending failed asylum seekers back to countries where they might be subjected to political violence or abuse of their human rights. Regardless of the merits of their individual cases, we at the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice know that these people will not be safe once they are back in Sri Lanka.


According to the US State Department‘s most recent (2010) report “the government and its agents continued to be responsible for serious human rights problems. Security forces committed arbitrary and unlawful killings … Disappearances continued to be a problem … Many independent observers cited a continued climate of fear among minority populations… Security forces tortured and abused detainees; poor prison conditions remained a problem; and authorities arbitrarily arrested and detained citizens”.


Please take 30 seconds to send an email to Damian Green MP, Minister for Immigration, asking him to halt the deportations. His email address is Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk and a suggested email is below:


Subject: Sri Lanka – pause the deportations.


FAO Damian Green MP, Minister of State (immigration)


Dear Mr Green,


Human Rights abuses and political violence are widespread in Sri Lanka. This is an opinion shared by the US State Department, the British Foreign Office, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and countless other organisations. Sri Lanka is not a safe place, especially if you are identified as being an opponent of the current regime by your attempt to claim asylum in another country.


Yet the British Government is still intent on sending asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka on a charter plane. Every passenger on that plane will be identifiable to the Sri Lankan Government as an asylum seeker. This is a government which “committed arbitrary and unlawful killings” (US State Department), and about which the World Organisation against Torture has ““received credible testimonies of torture from across the country” (FCO).


The Home Office’s own operational guideline states that “applicants perceived to be active or influential in opposition to the Sri Lankan Government may be at risk of persecution by the state.” But this does not go far enough, the endemic cases of disappearance and torture show that all people perceived as opponents of the Sri Lankan government are at risk.


Your government has not used its full influence to get the one thing which might make it safe for people the Government of Sri Lanka defines as its opponents – namely an international inquiry into war crimes by all sides – finding reason after reason to give the GoSL more time. In this context, your decision to send these people home is particularly objectionable.

Please use your power of Ministerial Discretion to halt mass deportations to Sri Lanka until you and your Foreign Office colleagues can be fully confident that they will not become yet further victims of the Sri Lankan government. If you fail to do this you will be making yourself responsible for their fate.


Yours sincerely,

Your Name


Thanks for your help,


The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice.

PS. Running this kind of campaign is expensive. To help us continue to campaign for Sri Lanka, please donate to our campaign here

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The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice

http://srilankacampaign.org


You can donate to the campaign here

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