ORANGE LIFEBOAT PLAN FOR TAMIL ASYLUM-SEEKERS

03 August 2014

Melbourne, Sunday – Australia was planning to use its controversial orange life-boats to send back to India 157 Tamil asylum-seekers held on the high seas for three weeks, the Tamil Refugee Council has learned.

One of the Tamil asylum-seekers taken secretly to Nauru on Friday night told the council today he and eight others had been instructed on how to drive the life-boats while forcibly detained on the customs ship, Ocean Protector, for three weeks last month.

He said the belongings of the entire 157 asylum-seekers had been put on “about six” life-boats, each of which held between 60-66 people. They were told by customs officers to prepare to be put on the boats “at any time.” He said the plan was to send them off in the Indian Ocean, five hours from the Indian coast.

In a phone call to the TRC from Nauru, the 34-year-old man, now in Nauru with his wife and two children, along with the other 153 asylum-seekers, detailed a story of hunger, sickness and misery for the asylum-seekers while being held on the ship, and also revealed that men and women had clothing torn away, including underwear, as they tried to resist being put on a plane to Nauru from the Curtin detention centre.

“I am 34 years old and I’ve never heard of refugees being treated like we have been anywhere in the world. We have been treated like animals,” he said through an interpreter.

He said he discovered the plan to send them back by life-boats two days after the asylum seekers had been informed of a High Court challenge to stop their return. (The Australian government had promised at the hearing not to send back the asylum-seekers without giving 72 hours’ notice.)

“We learned of the court move on a Friday. Then, on the Monday, nine of us were taken out of our rooms and given training on how to drive the life-boats that were on the ship,” the man said.

“They showed us a map of Sri Lanka and India. They pointed at a city in south India called Kanyakumari. They told us that in five hours you’ll see the shore. They said that any moment you will be put on the boats and you must be very careful driving them. We were all very scared. We refused to eat after that.

“We never thought in our lives that a country like Australia would treat refugees like this.”

The man said the asylum-seekers were held in three rooms below deck on the ship. “There were 78 men kept in one room and the women and children were in the other two rooms. We were able to see our children only every three or four days,” he said.

“We had very limited food on the ship. When the children cried out for milk, the officers would come and lock the door and give them nothing. The children were always crying out for food. They would cry throughout the night. We couldn’t do anything. We were hungry as well.

“Initially, there were no extra clothes for us. When the women had their periods they were struggling and crying out. They had no sanitary pads or anything to help them. Many of the children were sick. A little girl, Febrina, was very sick. She had a fever the whole time.

“Only in the last day or so, when we were being taken to the Cocos Island, they gave us clothing, more food and treated us better.”

The man said they had no contact with the outside world, apart from brief calls from lawyers. Customs officers seized their mobile phones as soon as they were taken off their boat and placed into custody on the customs ship. “They came and asked: ‘who were the two people communicating with the media?’.

They took my phone away, “ he said. “From then on, we knew nothing about what was happening. We didn’t even know when the sun rose and when it set. Only later, when we got calls from the lawyers, did we find out anything.”

The man, who is one of the plaintiffs in the High Court action against the Australian government, said when they arrived at Curtin detention centre, the refugees were asked if they would speak with Indian consular officials. “We said ‘no’ because we are not Indian nationals,” he said.

“Last Friday they took three families who were involved in the court action into a room at Curtin, where we spoke with the lawyers by phone for about an hour. The lawyers told us that by Monday or Tuesday this week one of them would be coming to Curtin to meet with us. As soon as that call finished we were taken to another room and locked in. They asked us to sign a paper agreeing for us to go to Nauru. We refused. But despite this, they forced us on to a plane.

“Many of us tried to resist the officers from taking us. Two or three women had their clothing torn away. Their bras were torn. They had to travel on the plane holding towels to cover themselves. Men also had their clothing torn.”

After a day on Nauru, the man said: “This is a very bad life. There is no privacy, no doors on the tents. Women can’t change their clothes without fear of someone coming in. I cannot believe a country like Australia would treat people like this.”

For further information contact Tamil Refugee Council on 0400 597 351.