SRI Lankan asylum-seekers with links to Tamil terrorists pose a dilemma for Canberra.
IN October last year a Sri Lankan mother packed up her two small children and a few belongings, paid her savings to a people-smuggler and boarded an unseaworthy boat in Indonesia, bound for Australia.
Shayana (not her real name) hoped it would be the final leg of her family's long journey to escape the bloodshed and tumult still wracking their homeland after 26 years of civil war.
But it was not to be.
On October 18 their boat foundered off the coast of Sumatra and, after sending out a distress signal, they were rescued by an Australian Customs ship, the Oceanic Viking, and taken back to Indonesia for processing by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Shayana and her children were assessed to be legal refugees, at risk of persecution if they returned to Sri Lanka.
But when their files were examined by Australia's domestic security agency ASIO, they were deemed a security risk and barred.
The apparent reason for the adverse assessment was Shayana's links to the militant separatist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which is classified as a terrorist organisation in many countries. Shayana was a lawyer who had worked for the judiciary run by the LTTE, which held administrative power in the northern district of Vanni where she lived, her brother told The Australian in March.
Shayana and her children were flown to Christmas Island, where her husband was already in detention, having also been deemed a security threat. They remain there, awaiting a final decision on their fate.
The question now vexing Australian authorities is whether Shayana and other former Tamil Tiger members, fighters and supporters should be accepted as refugees in need of protection, or rejected as potential terrorists and sympathisers.
It's a pressing issue after the Gillard government last week lifted the freeze imposed in April on the processing of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers, and after claims this week by an Australian Sri Lankan security analyst, Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe, that up to half of the Tamils seeking asylum here are connected to the LTTE.
DeSilva-Ranasinghe says two government ministers told him during a recent visit that they believe 25 to 50 per cent of Tamils fleeing to Australia are former combatants, operatives, members or supporters of the Tigers.
"You've got people here who've essentially been radicalised and who've fought and [may have] committed terrorist acts, and come here without any sense of being rehabilitated," he says.
The claims by DeSilva-Ranasinghe, who is ethnic Sinhalese and a defender of the Sri Lankan government, have sparked vehement denials from the Australian Tamil community.
"The Sri Lankan government says every Tamil is a Tiger. You can't rely on anything the Sri Lankan government says because it's all lies," says Sydney-based Tamil activist Saradha Nathan.
She says many Tamils have Tiger connections by virtue of having lived and worked in areas where the LTTE held administrative power.
"Anyone who worked for the police or public service or judiciary [in those areas] is branded a Tiger," Nathan says.
Some non-Tamil commentators share her scepticism. Bruce Haigh, a retired diplomat who served at the Australian high commission in Colombo, says information provided by the Sri Lankan government is "biased and unreliable". The Australian Tamil Congress says it's part of a smear campaign orchestrated from Colombo.
"The Sri Lankan government, now facing a potential war crimes investigation, has systematically sought to label Tamils as Tigers or potential terrorists in order to justify their collective punishment of a persecuted minority," congress spokesman Sam Pari says.
The presence of former Tigers among those fleeing to Australia is a highly sensitive issue for the Tamil diaspora. Australia is home to more than 50,000 Sri Lankan Tamils, most of whom live in Sydney and Melbourne. Ninety per cent came as skilled migrants from the 1950s, while 10 per cent came as refugees in more recent years.
Last October an official of the Australian Federation of Tamil Associations was reported as saying he is "certain" there are Tigers among the asylum-seekers arriving in Australia.
AFTA subsequently released a statement saying the assertion is "entirely unfounded", while also saying it is "unaware of the identities, history or past activities of any of the asylum-seekers".
The official's original observation stands to reason. The Sri Lankan government's brutal onslaught that crushed the Tigers in May last year prompted an exodus of refugees. A Tamil politician was reported saying that "hard-core LTTE cadres had escaped the camps and fled the country". Australia is the closest Western country to Sri Lanka, and among the few nations that has not outlawed the LTTE. And Australia is relatively easily to reach by boat via Indonesia.
In May, The Jakarta Globe newspaper quoted an Indonesian community worker who had interviewed a group of Tamil asylum-seekers as saying, "They confessed that they are members of the Tamil Tiger guerilla fighters. They left their country to seek political asylum in Australia."
The LTTE's involvement in people-smuggling is well documented, including in the UNHCR guidelines on Sri Lankan asylum-seekers issued on July 5.
Singapore-based terrorism specialist Rohan Gunaratna has previously claimed Tamil Tiger ships that were used to transport weapons are now operating out of Indonesia as people-smuggling boats. DeSilva-Ranasinghe says the Sri Lankan authorities ignore the practice, which they view as a "condoned attempt to export troublemakers".
If there are former Tigers on the boats bound for Australia, the next question is whether that should disqualify them from being granted asylum. Clive Williams, head of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, argues it should not.
"It may well be that some of the people who come here were linked to the Tamil Tigers, but I think that's a reason for taking them. Most of those people would probably want a fresh start and would face certain risk if they stayed in Sri Lanka. On humanitarian grounds, I certainly think we should err on the side of compassion."
The UNHCR guidelines say that while security in Sri Lanka has improved sufficiently since the war so that Tamils no longer require automatic protection, anyone with links to the Tigers merits special consideration for refugee status. The guidelines say former Tigers are at risk as there are still reports of enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and torture of people with LTTE links.
The UN rules say senior LTTE leaders or those guilty of criminal acts or war crimes may be refused asylum, but adds:
"LTTE membership is not a sufficient basis in itself to exclude an individual from refugee status, particularly in light of the well-documented practices of forced recruitment, particularly of children."
DaSilva-Ranasinghe responds: "The UN says we should give Tamil Tiger fighters asylum, which is ridiculous. They wouldn't say that for al-Qa'ida, and in my view there is no difference between the Tamil Tigers and al-Qa'ida. If anything, the Tamil Tigers are far more ruthless than al-Qa'ida."
Australia is in a minority among Western countries in not outlawing the LTTE, which is designated as a terrorist group in the US, Canada, Britain and the European Union.
The FBI describes the Tamil Tigers as "among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world". It lists their achievements as including perfecting the use of suicide bombers, inventing the suicide belt, pioneering the use of women in suicide attacks, murdering about 4000 people in the past two years alone, and assassinating two world leaders - the only terrorist organisation to do so.
In 2006, then foreign minister Alexander Downer said the government was "seriously considering banning" the Tigers. However, it did not.
Williams says the prevailing assessment is: "They've never done anything here except collect money and they've never posed a threat to Australia. It's always been very much a support activity for the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
"Organisations should only be on the list if they pose a particular danger to Australia. I don't know anything [the Tigers] have done that would warrant it."
The federal government has resisted lobbying from the Sri Lankan government - most recently during Foreign Minister Stephen Smith's talks with President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Singapore in November - to add the Tigers to its list of proscribed terrorist groups.
The defeat of the LTTE last year has undercut arguments in favour of a ban. Some analysts believe it's a victory for the Tamil lobby.
"The large numbers of Tamils present in the country and the political and electoral influence they wield in certain constituencies has precluded effective action against the LTTE [in Australia]," writes Ajit Kumar Singh, a researcher at the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.
Tamil communities around the world have faced scrutiny over their support and funding of the LTTE.
The FBI says on its website that the LTTE "placed operatives" in countries such as the US to raise money for its "bloody terrorist campaign" overseas, including the purchases of weapons and explosives. In 2007 the Sri Lankan foreign secretary estimated the Tigers were raising $US10 million to $US30m a month, and claimed 20 to 30 per cent of this came from Australia.
In March three Tamil community leaders in Melbourne pleaded guilty to sending $1.03m to the LTTE, along with 500 electronic components that were capable of being made into bomb detonators. Even though the LTTE is not banned in Australia, it is an offence to give it funds as it is proscribed by the UN.
DeSilva-Ranasinghe says despite the LTTE's military defeat, it still poses a threat. "There's an element in the Tamil Tigers trying to revive terrorism. So the question for Australia is will these fund-raising activities contribute to the revival of LTTE terrorism?"
In the surge of boat arrivals since the beginning of last year, 1129 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers have arrived in Australia. Of those, 85 have been denied visas and sent home, 329 have been given refugee status and settled in the community, while the remaining 700 or so are still being processed.
Shayana, her husband and two children, and three other men judged a threat to security, remain on Christmas Island while the government tries to find somewhere else to send them.
As the election draws closer, the debate about the Tamil asylum-seekers' future will no doubt intensify, with equal passion on both sides of the argument.
"I don't think any of the people here qualify for asylum," DeSilva-Ranasinghe says.
"If they were former members of the LTTE, they represent no threat," Haigh says.
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