Saturday 28th of December 2024

a nation governed by smear ....

 

a nation living by smear .....

 

Intelligence agency ASIO has made startling allegations - of plots to kill, training of militants, forged documents and people smuggling - to justify the indefinite incarceration of dozens of refugees as security threats to Australia.

But ASIO has given no detailed explanations to back up its assertions, raising doubts about a new review into the cases and a possible escape from what has been dubbed a ''legal black hole'' of indefinite detention.

A carefully worded summary of secret ASIO assessments has finally been sent to most of the 55 refugees branded a risk to national security and held in immigration detention without charge - some for up to four years.

Fairfax Media has compared several of the letters outlining the ASIO claims - but stripped of any secret intelligence - and agreed not to name the individuals held in detention.

Most are Tamils, including women and their children, who fled the Sri Lankan government's bloody civil war with the separatist Tamil Tigers.

All of the 55 are said to be ''likely to engage in acts prejudicial to Australia's security'' but for reasons that are varied or vague.

In one case, ASIO makes a broad accusation against a man of engaging in ''people smuggling activities'' and helping Tamil Tiger fighters obtain false identities.

''ASIO assesses he is associated with individuals involved in organising and facilitating irregular maritime ventures to Australia,'' the letter says.

It goes on to claim, ''he is likely to continue involvement in people smuggling activities in Australia should he be granted a permanent visa''.

The man has not been charged with criminal offences and, despite ASIO alleging he gave misleading information in his refugee claim, he was formally recognised to have a well-founded fear of persecution.

The Australian government, a signatory to the refugee convention, cannot return the man to Sri Lanka, but other countries will not accept him with a negative security assessment.

Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor has refused to grant a visa to any of the refugees with adverse assessments from ASIO, even to live under strict control orders, preferring to leave them in indefinite detention.

Jane Dixon, of civil liberties organisation Liberty Victoria, said the aftermath of the Boston Marathon attacks made it a difficult time to get the community to empathise with the 55 refugees. But she said there was ample scope under existing law to either charge the group or release them on conditions similar to bail.

''If [the authorities] have reliable evidence of connection to a terrorist organisation, why wouldn't they be charging them and putting them up before the courts?'' Ms Dixon said.

The Tamil Tigers were never classified as a terrorist organisation in Australia, although reports in 2007 indicated the Howard government considered such a ban.

Australian citizens or permanent residents can challenge an ASIO finding in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal - with the agency permitted to keep its reasons secret - but the refugees have no right of appeal.

A group of 27 men with adverse assessments who are locked in a Broadmeadows detention centre ended a 10-day hunger strike last week that was intended to draw attention to their plight.

ASIO had resisted providing any information to the group of 55, fearing to do so would compromise sensitive intelligence sources.

But a review system introduced after a High Court challenge last year has allowed the refugees to request that former Federal Court judge Margaret Stone examine their case.

All 55 have since applied for review and in recent weeks been granted the first insight into the suspicions against them.

ASIO has given 53 summaries of its reasons, with the remaining outlines expected by the end of this month.

Justice Stone heard the first oral evidence on Monday from two of the refugees.

But although the refugees will be told the outcome of the review, ASIO cannot be compelled to change its assessment.

The refugees and their supporters fear unless the impasse is broken the group may never be released.

The Coalition, tipped to win the federal election, has flagged it does not believe any review of the ASIO assessment is needed.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis told ABC radio the group had ''no one to blame but themselves''.

Sydney University international law specialist Ben Saul - who is pursing a case against indefinite detention with the United Nations - said not to outline detail of the allegations against a person made it impossible to effectively challenge a case.

''You can have an argument about just how much disclosure is required to give someone a fair hearing … but to just make a bald assertion someone is a threat to national security goes nowhere near meeting that standard,'' Professor Saul said.

An ASIO spokesman said the summary of reasons for adverse security assessments was ''limited to information that can be provided to the eligible person without prejudicing the interests of security'' but that Justice Stone had full access to the information - including classified material.

''Disclosing classified national security information to the subject of a security assessment would jeopardise ASIO's ability to provide advice to protect Australia, its people and interests,'' the spokesman said.

ASIO director-general David Irvine told a parliamentary hearing last month that it was not the intelligence agency's job to make a judgment whether a person might be a criminal.

''That is for someone else to do,'' he said, adding ASIO was charged with assessing whether someone was likely to be a threat to national security, which could include espionage, sabotage or politically motivated violence.

ASIO is not known to have made any adverse assessments of refugees since last October, when the review system was introduced.

A spokeswoman for Justice Stone said it was not possible to give a time frame for completing a review of a case.

''The time frame for individual cases depends on a number of factors, including the amount of material to be reviewed, the timeliness with which written submissions are received and oral submissions can be scheduled, and other factors beyond our control,'' she said.

ASIO Links Refugees To Kill Plots, Militant Training

 

a very sorry people we seem to have become .....

So, ASIO would have us believe that untested allegations made by the Sri Lankan government against Tamil refugees is a sufficient basis for them to be incarcerated indefinitely.The fact that these refugees fled Sri Lanka in response to the acts of genocide & torture, perpetrated by that same government, seems conveniently lost on both ASIO & politicians on all sides of the debate in this country. And whilst no-one is surprised that the coalition supports ASIO’s position, given its past record of engaging in human rights abuses, I think that most Australians would expect better from a government allegedly representing labor principles.That the treatment of refugees who seek shelter & protection from this country should be determined solely in response to cynical political imperatives, rather than human rights considerations, says everything about our current political class however, the fact that the majority of Australians seem willing to silently tolerate our government’s torture of those less fortunate than themselves also says a great deal about the very sorry people we seem to have become.

memo ASIO .....

''Kumar's'' scars are real and are only just beginning to heal - the result, he maintains, of four gruesome days of torture in a dark room, somewhere outside Colombo, barely two weeks ago.

''I thought I was going to die,'' he says, before his captors allowed him to dress, then blindfolded him, and dumped him beside a road.

To the Tamil Refugee Council in Australia, the scars are proof that those suspected of supporting the defeated Tamil Tigers are still being persecuted in their homeland.

To the Sri Lankan government, they are a ''fabrication'' designed to undermine confidence in a reconciled nation and give succour to those ''defeated terrorists'' still seeking a separate Tamil state.

What seems beyond question is that Kumar, not his real name, was un-scarred when he left Melbourne in March to return to Sri Lanka to run the restaurant of a hospitalised uncle - and very badly scarred when he returned on April 11.

Kumar admits he accepted money to carry some parcels for the Tamil Tigers while working as a bus driver in Sri Lanka in 2006. He says he left the country two years later and entered Australia on a student visa before completing a course in cooking and being granted a 457 visa in January last year.

Twice, he says, he returned to Sri Lanka to visit family before his wife and three children were able to join him. Each time, he says, he kept a low profile, staying in the family home, and had no trouble.

This time, he suspects he was spotted by Sri Lankan intelligence officers while working front-of-house in his uncle's restaurant.

He was riding home from the restaurant on a motor bike with his brother when they were intercepted. Kumar says he was bound, blindfolded and driven to a room and tortured for four days.

Early on, he says he saw a stove in a blood-spattered room, discarded women's underwear and an iron bar in a bucket. The ordeal reached its climax on the fourth day, when he says his back was beaten with the scalding bar.

''They wanted me to admit that I'm a LTTE [Tamil Tiger] and I said, 'No. How can I admit? I just delivered some parcels for some money','' Kumar told Fairfax.

''On the last day I begged them not to kill me, [saying] 'I've got family, I've got kids'. They showed me a blank sheet of paper and wanted me to sign.'' He claims that 30 minutes after signing the paper, he was released by a roadside.

Now he is seeking asylum, saying he fears that his back injuries will prevent him returning to work at a suburban Indian restaurant - and leave him liable to deportation.

Sri Lankan high commissioner Thisara Samarasinghe said the story is ''exactly a fabrication for vested interest … if he has reasonable and admissible evidence, bring it up to the authorities and be assured [they] will treat it with absolute seriousness''.

Greens leader Christine Milne called on the federal government and Coalition to stand up to Sri Lanka ''end the cosiness of the relationship'' with the country.

''Justice and decency demand Australia stands up to what has become a democratically elected dictatorship engaged in abuse of its people, particularly the Tamils,'' she said in a statement on Thursday.

Senator Milne said there was increasing evidence of torture, persecution and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

''It is clear that instead of recognising that Tamils are leaving Sri Lanka to seek asylum because of ongoing persecution and white van disappearances, the Gillard government and Tony Abbott prefer to demonise the victims and not condemn the perpetrators.''

Scarred By Sri Lankan Torture