Tamils say they won’t resist removal
January 14 2010 – WA Today
Indonesia has denied it is planning to force ashore 240 Sri Lankan asylum seekers who have spent the past three months holed up on their boat in a Javan port.
While some senior officials are losing patience with the Tamils, Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah on Thursday disputed reports Indonesia was planning to force them into immigration detention by the end of next week.
“We are focusing on how to get them to leave the boat with persuasion,” Faizasyah told AAP.
A Foreign Ministry-led taskforce set up to deal with the crisis had not made any decision to abandon the “persuasion approach” in favour of force, he said.
The Tamils, intercepted by the Indonesian navy at Australia’s request and taken to the Javan port of Merak in October, do not want to come ashore because they fear they will be forced to wait years for resettlement.
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Police search Sunday Leader
January 14 2010 – Daily Mirror
The Sunday Leader office located in Ratmalana was search by armed police officers who had come in a bus a short while ago. The police officers searched the printing press of the office saying they had information that defamatory posters were being printed at the premises.
However staff members at the office said that the police, which included the OIC of the Mt. Lavinia police, did not search the editorial section of the newspaper. The police had a search warrant.
The police had also videoed the printing press of the newspaper. Sunday Leader Editor Federica Janz confirmed to Daily Mirror that the Sunday Leader printing press was searched.
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Canadian Government drops secret detention hearings for migrant Tamils
January 14 2010 – The Globe and mail
All 76 of the Tamil boat people could be freed in the coming weeks
Less than a month after Ottawa announced that it would launch rare, secret hearings to argue for the continued incarceration of 25 Tamil migrants, the federal government has suddenly abandoned the plan.
Instead, a government lawyer told a meeting with the migrants’ lawyers yesterday that it will no longer argue for the continued detention of the migrant men, who arrived on a freighter last October claiming they were refugees fleeing postwar Sri Lanka.
The Canada Border Services Agency, the government body investigating the migrants, was unavailable for comment yesterday, however, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Refugee Board confirmed that the applications were withdrawn.
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Sri Lankan editor is granted bail
A Sri Lankan journal editor jailed for 20 years has left prison for the first time since March 2008 after a court ordered him to be freed on bail.
JS Tissainayagam, a Tamil, won his liberty at the Court of Appeal on Wednesday morning. He denies publishing articles aimed at inciting violence.
His lawyer, MA Sumantharan, told the BBC that bail had been set at 50,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($440).
Mr Tissainayagam also had to surrender his passport.
Mr Sumantharan said he expected his client to remain out of prison until an appeal against his conviction is heard.
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ASIO rejects four Viking Tamils
January 12 2010 – The Australian
FOUR of the Tamil asylum-seekers rescued by the Oceanic Viking and offered a special deal by the Rudd government will be refused visas after ASIO determined them a threat to national security.
The government lobbied furiously to resettle the 78 Sri Lankans swiftly following their stand-off aboard the Australian Customs boat, but The Australian can reveal that four of the Tamils being held at Christmas Island have been issued with adverse security assessments by Australia’s chief domestic security agency, ASIO.
In a further complication for authorities struggling to manage a fresh wave of boat-borne asylum-seekers, it is believed one of the four is a woman who travelled to Australia in the company of her two young children.
The situation presents a conundrum for the government, which cannot return the four to Sri Lanka without exposing them to potential harm from the Sri Lankan government, which in May crushed the decades-old Tamil insurgency with a comprehensive military offensive. Australia would also be in breach of its legal obligations if it returned the four, as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has designated all 78 of the Sri Lankans as legal refugees. However, people subject to adverse security assessments are by law ineligible for an Australian visa, which means the four have no hope of coming to the Australian mainland.
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