A Sri Lankan court on Monday gave permission to authorities to send back
scores of
Pakistani asylum seekers, after the government said
they were a threat to the island's security and public health.
Deputy Solicitor General Janak de Silva asked the Appeal
court to lift an earlier suspension of deportations, saying
there was evidence Pakistanis were committing crimes and
bringing malaria into the country, which was otherwise virtually
free of the disease.
"Interim relief was vacated and the court has dismissed the
application. Now all the asylum seekers are exposed to
deportation if government wants," said Lakshan Dias, lawyer of a
38-year-old Pakistani woman who complained after her husband,
brother and father were detained pending deportation.
The court on Aug. 15 ordered authorities to temporarily stop
deporting the Pakistanis, after the woman said her family was
being forcibly sent home without having their claims properly
assessed.
The United Nations refugee agency says 88 Pakistanis have
been deported since Aug. 1 in what is has called a breach of
international law.
The agency has called for an end to the deportations and
demanded access to another 75 detained people who are awaiting
deportation.
The Sri Lankan government says the Pakistanis are part of an
influx of economic immigrants in the past year who have become a
burden on the country's resources and potentially compromised
state and regional security.
Most of the Pakistanis are from the Ahmadiyya Islamic sect.
The Ahmadi consider themselves Muslims, but a 1984 Pakistani law
declared them non-Muslims and many Pakistanis consider them
heretics.
In July, a mob killed an Ahmadi woman and two of her
granddaughters in Pakistan after another sect member was accused
of posting blasphemous material on Facebook.
According to UNHCR guidelines, members of religious
minorities may need protection and require particularly careful
examination of their asylum claims.
Sri Lankan authorities deny violating any international
laws, saying the country is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N.
Refugee Convention.
The number of refugees or asylum seekers rose by 700 percent
in the year through June 2014 from the previous year, says the
foreign ministry. That included 1,562 asylum seekers and 308
refugees.
REUTERS