Last weekend Tamil asylum seeker Leo Seemanpillai committed suicide in Geelong. His colleagues are bereft as a result. They believe that he feared deportation back to Sri Lanka and would suffer persecution. Tamil refugee advocate Aran Mylvaganam said ’the particular area where Leo is from you are automatically branded as a Tamil Tiger sympathasiser if you get deported back to Sri Lanka and Leo had genuine fears of being tortured by the Sri Lankan army and possibly even getting killed … if he was sent back to Sri Lanka'.

The Human Rights Law Centre released a report last month in which it expressed serious concerns first about the actions of the Sri Lankan government, supported by Australia, to stop Tamils fleeing from Sri Lanka. The second concern was that Australia’s ’enhanced screening processes’ was denying Sri Lankans access to proper refugee status determination. The report by the Human Rights Law Centre can be found at this link:

John Menadue