40 refugees caught trying to sail to Oz

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Even as hundreds of Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu perished at sea in recent months undertaking the perilous journey to the faraway Christmas Islands and Cocoa Islands, in the hope of winning asylum in Australia, a fresh ‘catch’ of 40 boat people just off the Marina lighthouse has jolted the police headquarters just across the road.

The 40 refugees from different refugee camps had paid up huge money to an agent who brought them to the Marina for boarding a boat that would take them to Puducherry, from where they were to be transferred to a larger trawler-type vessel for the arduous trip across the ocean. They were arrested just as the boat was getting ready to take off from the beach behind the lighthouse on July 16 night, police said.

Such desperate fortune-seekers had been hitherto sent back to their refugee camps but this time the police decided to remand them to jail. “Earlier they were simply warned and sent back to the camps, and planned the next adventure on sea. Now we decided to jail them, hoping that would discourage these refugees from falling prey to unscrupulous traffickers and undertaking perilous boat trips”, Abash Kumar, inspector general of police, intelligence (internal security), told DC.

He said he had sent circulars to all the refugee camps in the state—there are about 111 housing over 68,000 inmates—“to tell them it is very difficult getting asylum in Australia and the trip is terribly dangerous as sometimes the crew abandon the boat midsea and escape in another vessel”. Sometimes the human cargo perish because they choke inside the sealed fish-storage or the worthless boat breaks.

The Australian government has acknowledged that at least 604 asylum seekers drowned since October 2009. There have been more fatalities during the last two years.

The Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation (OfERR), which has been working among the refugee camps since mid-80s, has initiated awareness campaigns to save the refugees from getting cheated by the agents. “We have got in touch with the missions of Australia and Canada here to send their representatives to talk to these refugees on how impossible it is to try going to their countries through such illegal methods”, said S.C. Chandrahasan, OfERR chief.