UK told to stop deportation of Lankan refugees-India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

The United Kingdom should immediately suspend deportations to Sri Lanka of ethnic Tamils who have engaged in activities which the Sri Lankan authorities might view as anti-government, Human Rights Watch officials have said. According to a press release, the next scheduled deportation of Tamils from the United Kingdom to Sri Lanka is due to take place on September 19, 2012. Investigations by Human Rights Watch have found that some rejected Tamil asylum seekers from the United Kingdom and other countries have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and torture or other ill-treatment upon their arrival in Sri Lanka . It has therefore issued a document to the UK immigration minister, detailing 13 cases of alleged torture of failed Tamil asylum seekers on return to Sri Lanka , the press release said. "In its haste to be tough on failed asylum seekers, the British government is turning a blind eye to compelling evidence that Tamils deported to Sri Lanka risk torture on arrival," said David Mepham, London director at Human Rights Watch. In an instance, one Tamil man who returned from the UK in 2005 made another attempt at fleeing Sri Lanka in 2008 and was returned to the country in January 2010. He told Human Rights Watch about his torture at the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department in Colombo and at an army camp in Vavuniya in northern Sri Lanka where he was subsequently transferred. "I was hung upside down and beaten with truncheons and hot metal rods. I was stripped naked in both detention sites. I was sexually abused on two or three occasions in Vavuniya. The perpetrators were uniformed army personnel," he said. The Sri Lankan security forces have long used torture against people deemed to be linked to the LTTE, and growing evidence indicates that Tamils who have been politically active abroad in peaceful opposition to the government may be subject to torture and other ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said. "The UK government has not explained why it condemns Sri Lanka 's use of torture but rejects evidence before the UK Border Agency that demonstrates the danger of torture to Tamil deportees. It is time for a serious rethink so that what the UK says in its foreign policy is reflected in how it acts in its immigration policy," Mepham said.

Human Rights Watch asks UK to stop deporting Lankan refugees