Extract from ABC News
The situation facing Nades and Priya Murugappan and their Australian-born daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa remains uncertain.
The Tamil family from Biloela have been moved from Christmas Island to community detention in Perth.
But Immigration Minister Alex Hawke has said that if the family's current legal bid to stay in Australia fails, they will be deported to Sri Lanka.
Vashini Jayakumar, a Tamil refugee and family friend of the family, told the ABC: "I believe Tamil[s] still face danger in Sri Lanka."
So, who are Tamils and is Sri Lanka really safe for them?
Who are Tamil Sri Lankans?
Tamil refers to both an ethnicity and language that has its origins in the southern parts of the Indian subcontinent.
Unlike Sri Lanka's majority ethnic Sinhalese, who are primarily Buddhist, Tamils are largely Hindu or Christian.
Other minorities in Sri Lanka, such as Muslims, also speak Tamil.
An estimated one-third of all Sri Lankan Tamils now live outside of the island nation, with large diaspora communities in Canada, the UK, India and Australia.
At the last census in 2016, there
were at least 109,849 Sri Lankan-born people in Australia, around 25 per
cent of whom said they spoke Tamil at home.
Why do Tamils flee Sri Lanka?
Tamils have experienced marginalisation since Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948.
The 1978 constitution enshrined Buddhism as having "the foremost place" in Sri Lanka, paving the way for discriminatory policies that gave the Sinhalese majority more rights over minority groups.
It was the 37-year civil war, which officially ended in 2009, that saw huge numbers of Tamils seek asylum overseas.
The brutal conflict was fought between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers.
An estimated 100,000 people were killed — mostly Tamils — and both sides were accused of committing war crimes.
"While the war ended 12 years ago, what we are continuing to see now is militarisation of the north-east of Sri Lanka," said Charishma Ratnam, a researcher at the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre.
Trent Zimmerman, a government MP who has expressed support for the Murugappan family, said their case was "complicated by the fact" that Australia had already sent back some 1,500 families to Sri Lanka.
Amnesty International reports that Sri Lanka has one of the world's highest numbers of enforced disappearances, with between 60,000 and 100,000 since the 1980s.
Some international law experts, including Francis Boyle, go as far as arguing that Tamils are victims of genocide.
Is Sri Lanka safe for Tamils now?
The UN, EU, US and human rights groups continue to express concern over the situation facing Tamils and other minorities in Sri Lanka.
The 47-member UN Human Rights Council in March this year boosted the resources and powers of the UN human rights chief to investigate war crimes and other human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.
The EU's representative specifically highlighted "increased marginalisation" of Tamils and Muslims, which it said had been "exacerbated" by Sri Lanka's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The government response [to coronavirus] was led by the military and the lockdown was enforced more severely in Tamil-majority areas," Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told the ABC.
Just last week, a European Parliament resolution expressed "deep concern over Sri Lanka's alarming path towards the recurrence of grave human rights violations".
The European Parliament "deplores the continuing discrimination against and violence towards religious and ethnic minorities and communities in Sri Lanka, including Muslims, Hindus, Tamils and Christians", it continued.
Observers say the risks for returned Tamil asylum seekers are heightened.
A 2020 report by the US State Department cited, "long-standing, systematic discrimination in university education, government employment, housing, health services, language laws, and procedures," against Tamils.
"Tamils reported security forces regularly monitored and harassed members of their community," it said.
What does the Australian government say about the treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka?
The
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's (DFAT) latest country report
from 2019 says Tamils in Sri Lanka "face a low risk of official or
societal discrimination" and "a low risk of torture overall" — an assessment starkly at odds with those of the UN, US and EU.
Clive Williams, a former senior Defence official, told the ABC that Australia, "regarded the Tamil LTTE as a terrorist organisation and put its support behind the Sri Lankan government and disregarded the atrocities committed by government forces".
"It seems to have believed [the Sri Lankan] government assurances about the wellbeing of the Tamils and chosen not to sympathise with the Tamils, possibly to discourage boat people coming to Australia," he said.
Refugee lawyers say DFAT's country report is an important document for Australian authorities in making determinations of refugee status for people like the Murugappan family.
Critics say that the report's conclusions are not cited or backed up by clear evidence.
"When
we have a DFAT report from 2019, relied upon in a 2021 setting, that
leaves our team having to do a lot of research in regards to more
current information," Sarah Dale, director of the Refugee Advice
and Casework Service (RACS), told the ABC.
A British court recently rejected the Australian and UK country reports as a basis to determine asylum applications for Sri Lankan Tamils.
Neither Home Affairs nor the Sri Lankan High Commission returned the ABC's request for comment.
DFAT did not provide comment on the record.
So, is it safe to return Tamil asylum seekers to Sri Lanka?
Former home affairs minister Peter Dutton has repeatedly said the Murugappan family are not owed protection and should thus be deported.
But many are concerned about the risks Tamils face if forcibly returned to Sri Lanka.
"Tamil asylum seekers in the past have faced ill-treatment after they were deported," Ms Ganguly of Human Rights Watch said.
Ms Dale of RACS said there were concerns over people forcibly returned to Sri Lanka, as well as other countries Australia has deported asylum seekers to including Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"It is very reasonable for us to say we do not have enough information to be certain as to what happens if people are forcibly returned," she said.
George Newhouse, director of the National Justice Project, recently said Australia would be in breach of international law "if we continue to use unreliable country reports to determine the fate of so many Sri Lankan refugees".
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