CHURCH leaders must do more to help 25 Catholic Tamil asylum seekers aboard a boat intercepted by Indonesian authorities at Australia’s request last October, a Brisbane priest has urged.
Dominican Father Pan Jordan said it was important Church and government bodies around the world closely monitored the actions of the Sri Lankan Government to see why Tamils were fleeing their home country.
He said he had been speaking to various people aboard the boat, being held at the Javanese port of Merak, and had learnt Catholics were aboard and had limited medical help.
More than 240 Sri Lankan asylum seekers have spent more than three months on their boat.
Fr Jordan said he was in regular contact with Alex, a spokesman for the detained asylum seekers in Indonesia and had been channelling support to the Tamils through him.
Fr Jordan, who has a Tamil background, also said “for thousands of Tamils” the outcome of the recent Sri Lankan elections would mean little since the “one issue that really mattered was their rehabilitation after months in government-run camps”.
He also highlighted a rift between Brisbane’s Tamil and Sinhalese Sri Lankan Catholic communities.
Fr Jordan, who in the past has criticised the Sri Lankan government for detention of more than 250,000 Tamils caught up in last May’s final battle between the Tamil Tigers and government troops in the country’s north,
said the Church could help these and other asylum seekers in a variety of ways.
“To my knowledge, apart from a statement by the president of the Australian Bishops Conference, little else seems to have been offered in terms of leadership,” he said.
“The Catholic Church can play a big role by publicising the government’s ethical and moral duties and calling for Australia to accept the refugees and not burden Indonesia.”
But a Sinhalese member of Brisbane’s Catholic Sri Lankan community, Shanthie Goonetilleke, said governments from around the world, including Australia, were becoming over-involved in these and other issues relating to Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.
Mr Goonetilleke said ongoing reporting of the Sri Lankan situation was doing more harm than good to the country’s attempts to rebuild after the end of a civil war lasting more than three decades.
“Such stories are also causing rifts in Australia’s Sri Lankan communities including Brisbane archdiocese’s Catholic community,” the former engineer, who left Sri Lanka for economic reasons in 1979, said.
The disagreement came amidst reports that three refugee advocates – two Australians and a Canadian – had been detained by Indonesian police for visiting the group of Tamil asylum seekers locked in a stand-off with the Indonesian government.
The two Australians were later released and arrived back in Australia on Saturday January 30.
Fr Jordan said Australia needed to be pressured to take its UN obligations seriously.
“The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees obliges its signatories to ‘receive refugees in their territories and work in a true spirit of international cooperation in order that these refugees may find asylum and the possibility of resettlement’,” he said
“Instead of accepting the refugees when they were 140km away from Australia, the prime minister got Indonesia to intercept and take them to Indonesia which has not signed the refugee convention and will not resettle the refugees.”
The international community should work together to hold Sri Lanka accountable for continued persecution of Tamils, Fr Jordan said.
“Trade and sporting sanctions should be imposed until the minority Tamil community can live in freedom and independent war crimes investigation is carried out,” he said.
The ongoing Brisbane rift also comes as Sri Lanka deals with the outcome of its first presidential election since the end of the country’s civil war.
The country’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa easily won the election in a bitterly fought contest after standing against former army chief General Sarath Fonseka.
Mr Goonetilleke said the Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Ranjith had stated in a press release late last year that the Sri Lankan government should be allowed to rebuild the war-torn country without external interference.
“The archbishop stated that ‘It is time now for wounds to be healed through the fervent practice of the religious principles that constitute the soul of this country and it is our belief that the Sri Lankans are truly capable of achieving that by themselves without being pushed into it by external forces’,” he said.
The war between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil extremists has entered a new phase, Mr Goonetilleke said.
“The way those of us concerned for Sri Lanka’s future see it, the war of bombs and bullets has ended but has now taken a new shape as a war of words,” he said.
“This war is being fought around the world by supporters of a certain section of the Tamil society – those who wish to see a separate Tamil state in the north of Sri Lanka.
“However, this is not the case with all Tamils.
“There is another group who sees that Sri Lanka needs to stay unified to become strong and recover from ravages of decades of civil war.
“This group say the legitimate government should be supported.
“It’s a message many in the media, and in governments around the world, seem to be missing.”
