UK Deportation Flight To Include Tamil Women & Men Who Say They Were Raped & Sexually Abused
Frances Harrison
Among a group of about fifty asylum seekers due to be deported from Britain to Sri Lanka on Thursday afternoon is a young woman who’s already been subjected tosexual abuse in custody and has been declared a suicide risk. Doctors who’ve examined the asylum seeker have declared her unfit to travel because of the risk she will try to kill herself again.
The woman, who was a student in Britain, says she was detained on a visit to Sri Lanka in 2011 and taken to a police station in the capital. There she describes being beaten, kicked, striped naked, burnt with cigarette butts several times on her thighs and back and having her head put inside a plastic bag full of chilli powder, before being made to sign a statement in a language she couldn’t understand. She says her interrogators wanted information about members of the Tamil diaspora and her brother who had been a member of the Tamil Tiger rebel group, defeated militarily by the Sri Lankan army in 2009.
Court documents describe this woman as very distressed and tearful, with persistent nightmares. A letter from a forensic specialist confirms she has eight burn marks on her body, which she says were made by the lit cigarettes.
Kulasegaram Geetharthanan of Jein Solicitors, which is representing some of the cases due for return, said among those facing deportation were at least two women and two men who’d been raped as well as another woman who’d suffered sexual abuse.
On Tuesday Human Rights Watch issued a shocking report detailing seventy-five cases of rape in Sri Lanka – mostly by the security forces and significant numbers well after the end of the country’s civil war. Since this data was gathered from among asylum seekers, the likelihood is this only represents the tip of the iceberg since most women are unable to flee the country. Among the cases cited by Human Rights Watch were two Tamils who’d been deported from Britain and then said they’d been subjected to sexual abuse upon return to Sri Lanka.
For more information see ch4 blog & The Independent
Courtesy Still Counting The Dead
24 Hours To Stop Flight To Hell – Sign The Petition Urge Campaigners
By Colombo Telegraph -
“Tomorrow 65 Tamil refugees will be deported from the UK back to Sri Lanka. This is despite a report published yesterday which showed that Tamils who are forcibly returned are often raped – and that we know this happened in two cases from the UK” says the Sri Lanka Campaign.
In 24 hours, a flight will take nearly 65 people into a potential torture chamber in Sri Lanka. A few have managed to get their deportation postponed through the courts – and if we all raise a massive outcry now, we can ground this whole charter plane!
Torture of Tamils is rife in Sri Lanka, despite the civil war having ended in 2009. The UK Border Agency has given asylum to a few Sri Lankan nationals who have reached the UK after being tortured. Yet the Agency is now trying to expel this unlucky 65 as fast as possible – before a tribunal ruling which might allow them to stay.
If we politicise their plight we can help to keep them in the UK until their case is fully heard.
Time is ticking — let’s tell Home Secretary Theresa May to stop this week’s deportations to Sri Lanka. When 20,000 of us sign, we can work with leading Sri Lankan activists in the UK to protest outside the Home Office and demand a meeting with the Home Secretary. Sign now and share widely!
Sign the petition here 24 hours to stop flight to hell
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