REFUGEE

MELBOURNE: A Sri Lankan refugee has revealed how a professional human trafficker in Malaysia gave him false travel documents that enabled him to get a protection visa upon arrival in Australia.

The 23-year-old Tamil man, who asked to be identified only as Sanjay, told The Australian newspaper that he fled his home in Sri Lanka’s Jaffna peninsula in 2007 at the height of the conflict between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Sanjay, who claimed to have no connections with the Tamil Tigers, said he was detained in 2007 for 20 days, during which time he was kept blindfolded and handcuffed to a pillar, beaten with rifle butts and batons and burned with cigarettes. He fled Sri Lanka in mid-2007 for Malaysia.

He said early this year that he was introduced to a Malaysian human trafficker who told him the fee to travel by boat to Australia was US$15,000 (RM50,641), while air travel would cost double the amount. Afraid to send their only son on the perilous sea voyage, Sanjay’s family, who owned a transport business in Jaffna, sold their fleet of vehicles to raise the money for his escape to Australia.

The US$35,000 (RM118,146) was paid directly to the agent in Malaysia, and Sanjay was handed a one-way air ticket to Australia and a false Canadian passport containing a forged Australian visa.

He flew to Australia on April 12. Having been told by the trafficker that he would be immediately deported if caught with false documents, he tore up his passport on the plane and flushed it down the lavatory.

Sanjay presented himself at the immigration desk at Perth airport and announced, “I am a Sri Lankan refugee”. He spent six months in Villawood detention centre before being released with permanent residency status a few weeks ago.

Figures from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship show the number of asylum seekers who arrive by plane dwarfed the numbers who arrived by boat, the report stated.

A spokesman said in 2008/09, some 206 people were granted protection visas after arriving in Australia by boat, while 2,172 received protection after arriving by plane.