A group of 56 asylum seekers who were due to be deported from Australia have applied for an injunction halting their deportation, stating the Australian government has ignored pleas that they face persecution upon their return.
Whilst the injunction has not been granted, the asylum seekers will see their case return to court on Thursday.
Ian Rintoul, a campaigner with the Refugee Action Coalition slammed the Australian screening process for asylum seekers as "entirely unaccountable, non-transparent, non reviewable", stating,
"We don't know the criteria on which these decisions are made; but they are clearly life and death decisions,"
"We are quite sure that people have what in other circumstances would be a request, and an explicit request, for protection from Australia on the basis of risk of persecution, but they are being ignored".
Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre also commented,
"I am really concerned that the Australian Government has made a decision that they wish to deter Tamils coming from Sri Lanka from seeking asylum in Australia, and in order to deter them they are sending vast numbers home."
"The most serious and basic tenet of the Refugee Convention is non-refoulement, a French word meaning that people cannot and must not be returned to persecution.""What this says is that the Australian Government is breaching that most basic tenet of the Refugee Convention."
"When they sent people back to Sri Lanka, and they're imprisoned and beaten - and I have contacts in Negombo who have reported to me that people are being beaten in that prison - then we are sending them home to be persecuted and we know that."
Over 500 people have been deported involuntarily to Sri Lanka since August 2012.
