Deportations of refugees continue

The immigration department, Australia's detention centre operator GSL and the immigration minister Kevin Andrews are forcibly deporting asylum seekers who sought Australia's protection after having had the most heinous forms of torture inflicted on them", Western Australian human rights group Project SafeCom said in a media release issued on October 17.

It cited five separate deportations reported by Melbourne's Asylum Seeker Resource Centre's campaign coordinator Pamela Curr. In the most recent case, a Sri Lankan asylum seeker ("RJ") who had been tortured in his war-torn country was forcibly deported back to Sri Lanka on October 16.

Project SafeCom accused Andrews of having "blatantly breached the non-refoulement principle of the United Nations Refugee Convention, where signatories endorse the commitment to not ever return an asylum seeker to a country where they would fear persecution".

From GLW issue 729