Australian government charging thousands for repatriation of dead Tamil asylum seeker

by Abi
Oct 2, 2017

The Australian government is demanding thousands of dollars to return the body of a dead Tamil asylum seeker to his family in Sri Lanka.

The cousin of 32-year-old Rajeev Rajendran, who took his own life on Manus Island after four years in detention, said he was told by the Australian High Commission in Colombo that the family would have to pay 9 lakh rupees, around 6000 USD to repatriate the body to Sri Lanka.

“We don’t know how we will find this amount of money,” the cousin, Mathy, said. “Why would they do this to us? They have taken our dear Rajeev from us – is this not enough? But now they demand a fortune as well.”

The Tamil Refugee Council in Australia has slammed the Australian government’s behaviour and called for the repatriation of Mr Rajendran’s body at no cost to his family and for accountability for his death.

Read more on JDSLanka.

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button