Sri Lankans sent back home say they have been tortured, writes Ben Doherty.
"He was on the floor, they were kicking and punching him’’ ... above, the family of Sumith and Indika Balapuwaduge. The brothers have been in jail for two years with a trial yet to take place. Photo: Ben Doherty
Sumith Balapuwaduge knew he was being watched, and suspected police would come for him one day. Some months earlier, he had been forcibly returned to Sri Lanka from Australia with his brother Indika, their claims for political asylum having been rejected.
Indika never even made it out of Colombo airport and was jailed straight away. So when the police van came and parked on the sandy road outside his home, Sumith came - peaceably, his wife insists - to the front door.
"They took him inside this house, and they beat him," his wife Leena tells the Herald as she sits on the porch of the brightly-coloured bungalow that was their family home.
Incarcerated ... Sumith Balapuwaduge. Photo: Suhas Samindhu Sathsara
"He was on the floor, they were kicking and punching him. They hit him with batons. His son Suhas, who was four, was upset, and ran into the kitchen to get a weapon, a knife, to stop them hitting his father."
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The police took no notice of the boy and took his bloodied father away. Nearly two years on, he and Indika are still in jail. They have never had a trial. Police say they are part of a people-smuggling racket, but that case has never been made before a court.
Leena says their only crime was running from threats against their lives, their only mistake choosing to flee to Australia.
Their case is not unique, nor an anomaly. Sri Lankan asylum seekers rejected by Australia and sent home say they have been arrested, imprisoned without trial, and tortured.
With about 150 Tamils now in the Australian detention system facing an involuntary return to Sri Lanka, a Herald investigation has uncovered instances where people sent home from Australian soil, or stopped by the Australian government from ever reaching the country, have been sent back to systematic state-sanctioned abuse.
One man said he was arrested at Colombo airport and held, without trial or charge, for 55 days. During his interrogation, he says he was hung upside down and beaten with batons in an effort to extract a confession that he was a member of the separatist terrorist organisation Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, better known as the Tamil Tigers.
A Sri Lankan police spokesman has denied all allegations, saying claims of maltreatment are politically motivated and that there is no torture.Sumith and Indika Balapuwaduge, who are Sinhalese, had fled to Australia in 2008, claiming political persecution. The pair had quit the local branch of the ruling coalition, the United People's Freedom Alliance, and joined an opposition party.
They say they were beaten by their former colleagues, and told they would be killed. They paid 200,000 rupees ($1465) each for passage on a people smuggler's boat and reached Australia, but after nearly a year on Christmas Island they were forcibly flown back to Sri Lanka.
After their ordeal, it took more than a year before they were charged - they now face only minor immigration offences for leaving the country irregularly.
The Herald was in court in Marawila last week when the brothers appeared before a judge. They seemed healthy, but Sumith's wife Leena says their incarceration, and the continuing uncertainty over their case, has destroyed their family.
"[Sumith's son] Suhas is especially traumatised by all of this. He saw his father beaten and taken away from him, and now he only sees him behind bars in the prison cells in court," she says,
"Financially, the situation of our family is very poor. The breadwinners of our family are not here, and we have to keep finding money for the lawyers to try to get them out."
Appearing in court might be seen as progress but Sumith and Indika have been through these machinations many times before.
Called to the dock, their case lasts barely five minutes - a representative of the Attorney-General's department is not present in court - and is adjourned again, until October. They do not speak.
There are other cases, too. A 29-year-old Tamil man, whose name the Herald has chosen not to reveal, says he also lives in fear of being arrested and tortured again.
In October 2009, Sarath* was one of 254 asylum seekers on board a 30-metre wooden cargo boat headed for Christmas Island when the former prime minister Kevin Rudd telephoned the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, asking the Indonesian navy to stop the boat.
It was taken to the Indonesian port of Merak, where the asylum seekers staged a sit-in protest. With a gravely ill mother at home, and seemingly no end to the impasse, Sarath got off the boat and was returned to Sri Lanka.
He, too, says he was arrested at the airport, and interrogated by the Criminal Investigation Department. Because he was from Sri Lanka's north, he was accused of being a member of the Tamil Tigers.
Sarath says he was never a member or supporter of the Tigers. After questioning by police - including on the notorious fourth floor of the CID's Colombo headquarters - Sarath claims he was handed over to the defence ministry's national intelligence bureau.
"They hung me upside down with ropes and put a pole behind my arms, then they hit me with batons. They hung me upside down at 11am and they took me down at 3pm. They hung three of us up, but only two of us came down alive. The other man died."
Upside down and bleeding, Sarath claims he was repeatedly asked to reveal where the LTTE had hidden their arms caches at the end of the war. He told them he did not know.
He was released after 55 days, but remains, he says, under constant supervision. On the day we met him, we were forced to change plans at the last minute, because plain-clothes police were watching his home.
He still suffers crippling headaches, "from where I was kicked in my head", and walks with a limp because of injuries inflicted.
The accounts detailed given to the Herald are in accordance with the findings of human rights groups, and the UN, which said in a recent report it was concerned by allegations of "widespread use of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of suspects".
The Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director, Elaine Pearson, says her organisation has uncovered more than a dozen cases of asylum seekers tortured after being returned from Britain.
"We've documented cases of at least 13 people who've been returned to Sri Lanka, all Tamils, and who've faced arbitrary arrest, torture, in some cases rape, by government officials upon their return."
She says countries such as Britain and Australia should not be deporting Sri Lankan Tamils back to the country where they continue to be persecuted.
But Sri Lankan authorities deny torture is condoned by the government, or ever used against returned asylum seekers.
A spokesman for the police, Ajith Rohana, says the Tamil diaspora is trying to damage Sri Lanka's reputation around the world and foment unrest within the country.
"These people are told to give a bad image of Sri Lanka, by the people smugglers who make money taking people across the ocean. They are told to pretend they are being ill-treated and discriminated against. It is not true."
The Australian government says it does not return anyone whom Australia is obliged to protect under international laws.
"However, all irregular maritime arrivals found not to be owed protection will be removed from Australia, and we are satisfied that the removal of failed Sri Lankan asylum seekers in those circumstances does not breach Australia's international obligations," a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says.
He says it is not unusual for returned Sri Lankan asylum seekers to be interviewed at the airport by authorities, but that a member of Australia's immigration department, or of the International Organisation for Migration, is usually present.
"Australia condemns all forms of mistreatment by law enforcement authorities. We have a well-established and robust dialogue with Sri Lanka on human rights issues."
The Immigration Department moved a Tamil man into detention in Melbourne last week, in preparation for his deportation to Sri Lanka. In Colombo, the human rights campaigner Ruki Fernando says Australia must stop returning Sri Lankans until their safety can be guaranteed.
"This is still happening. Sri Lanka is a country where people who are returned are likely to be tortured. Australia cannot run away from its obligation to protect the people it sends back here."
*Sarath is not his real name.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/asylum-seekers-return-to-living-hell-20120723-22kq6.html#ixzz21XwXLM6z
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