The Australian government agreed not to criticise Sri Lanka's alleged human rights abuses in order to secure cooperation on stopping asylum-seeker boats headed to Australia, Sri Lanka's new prime minister said in an interview published on Monday.
The Australian government agreed not to criticise Sri Lanka's alleged human rights abuses in order to secure cooperation on stopping asylum-seeker boats headed to Australia, Sri Lanka's new prime minister said in an interview published on Monday.
Australia has been criticised at home and abroad for its tough immigration policies, including sending asylum seekers to camps in impoverished Papua New Guinea and Nauru, where they face long periods of detention.
Conservative Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2014 agreed to a controversial deal allowing Australian naval ships to send asylum seekers intercepted at sea directly back to Sri Lanka.
The United Nations has launched an inquiry into war crimes allegedly committed by both Sri Lankan state forces and ethnic Tamil rebels in the final months of South Asian country's 26-year civil war that ended in 2009, saying the government has failed to investigate properly. Sri Lanka rejects such allegations as interference in its internal affairs.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was elected in 2015, told The Australian newspaper that members of the former government were personally involved in the people- smuggling trade but stopped after receiving assurances Australia would not criticise its rights record.
"It was being done by people with Rajapaksa connections, but once this deal was done between Australia and the Rajapaksa government, where you looked the other way, then secretary of defence got the navy to patrol," he told The Australian. "You could not have got anyone out of this country without someone in the security system looking the other way, the police or the navy," Wickremesinghe said.
A spokeswoman for Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the report. Under former Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Australia came under fire for toning down its criticism of Sri Lanka's rights record, while at the same time greatly stepping up cooperation on asylum seekers.
While Sri Lanka says many asylum seekers are economic migrants, rights groups say Tamils seek asylum to prevent torture, rape and other violence at the hands of the military. They say some of the majority Sinhalese ethnic group who criticise the government are also at risk.
Wickremesinghe said Australia would not find the new government in Colombo receptive to a similar deal, and criticised Abbott for turning a blind eye to rights abuses in order to accomplish its domestic political agenda. "When human rights were being trampled, and democracy was at bay, these countries were silent. That is an issue for Sri Lanka," he told the newspaper.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}