CHAPTER 13
Niro Kandasamy
The story of the so-called Biloela family from Queensland is familiar to many people. The fate of Priya, Nades, Kopika and Tharnicaa Murugappan has become emblematic of the punitive refugee policy of successive governments since 2001. Less well known is the role that refugee advocates like Aran Mylvaganam, founder of the Tamil Refugee Council, are playing in the campaign for refugees like the Murugappan family to remain in Australia.1 Mylvaganam himself is a former refugee. He arrived in Australia in 1997 when he was 13 years old as an unaccompanied minor and was sent to Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, where he remained for three months. If policymakers are to design a more humane and responsive refugee policy, history suggests that they need to listen better to former refugees and refugee advocates like Mylvaganam. Mylvaganam repeatedly draws on his personal experience in his advocacy work, reminding both policymakers and the general public that refugees must be part of the process of formulating refugee policy reforms.
The Commonwealth government currently makes no provision for citizens of refugee backgrounds to be actively involved in policies that directly affect their families and others in their countries of origin. This failure to consult people with on-the-ground experience partly explains Australia’s harsh approach to refugees, an approach that attracts international ire and condemnation. In seeking more humane and effective policies with better outcomes for both refugees and Australian society, policymakers can draw inspiration from efforts to settle earlier waves of refugees. Those efforts reveal that structures that encourage consultation from those with direct experience as refugees in both the host country and after arrival in Australia lead to policies that effectively respond to refugees’ experiences of conflict, displacement and trauma. The angst of the Biloela family and thousands of others languishing in detention can be avoided. Involving citizens in policymaking is arguably one of the most important signs of a healthy democracy.
From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, the Commonwealth government responded to Tamils seeking permanent protection after the outbreak of the Sri Lankan civil war. The government had clear pragmatic processes to guide its engagement with its Tamil citizens. It did not readily accept narratives about Tamil persecution. Instead, the Australian government supported official versions which played down the atrocities against Tamils. In its consideration of options for refugee resettlement, the government put an emphasis on developing services that were suited to the particular needs of Tamil refugees, including establishing direct lines of communication between immigration officers and Tamil community leaders. This was possible because the government called on the knowledge of Tamils who had already arrived in Australia. In seeking to reform our desperately inadequate refugee resettlement services, today’s policymakers can draw inspiration from the actions of the Fraser and Hawke governments in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Taking a look at past responses to refugees, we find contexts for radically different ways of responding to the current refugee protection crisis.
Australia responds to the outbreak of conflict in Sri Lanka
In order to understand the circumstances that informed these earlier practices, we need to cast our eyes even further back, and examine the situation that led thousands of Tamils to flee Sri Lanka and seek asylum in Australia. After Sri Lanka gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948, successive Sinhala-Buddhist governments universally rejected the political aspirations and self-determination of Tamils. Anti-Tamil measures have tainted the island since. In 1949, the Ceylon Citizenship Act excluded Indian Tamils from Sri Lankan citizenship, and in 1956, the Official Language Act made Sinhalese the official language of the country, thereby excluding more than 20 per cent of the Tamil population, which did not speak Sinhalese. These exclusionary measures paved the way for the mass Tamil refugee exodus with the onset of war in the early 1980s.
By the 1970s, government aggression against Tamils had reached new heights. In July 1977, the general election was the first to be held under the new constitution of Sri Lanka, which had been enacted a month earlier. The new constitution, however, did not result in better political representation for the Tamils, who had overwhelmingly voted for the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) to advocate for a separate Tamil state in the north and east of the island. Less than a month after the elections, a Tamil massacre engulfed the island, sparked when Sinhala policemen attacked Tamils in the north. It was the third anti-Tamil pogrom since Sri Lanka had gained independence, and resulted in the looting of Tamil homes and shops, displacing around 75 000 Tamils, and killing 300. In 1979, the Sri Lankan president J.R. Jayewardene introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The new law was used to justify the widespread abduction and torture of individuals, particularly of ethnic Tamils suspected of being involved with Tamil militant groups.2
In 1978 the Australian-based Ceylon Tamil Association (CTA) was established by local members of the Tamil community, in response to mounting political conflict in Sri Lanka and the increased marginalisation of ethnic Tamils. In June 1981, the Jaffna Public Library, the epicentre of Tamil history and culture, was burned by Sri Lankan state-sponsored mobs. This act of violence marked a watershed moment in the conflict, and foreshadowed the exodus of Tamils from Sri Lanka throughout the 1980s. In July 1983, Sinhala mobs backed by the government destroyed, looted and burned Tamil-owned business and homes. Armed with electoral rolls, Sinhala mobs targeted Tamils across the island. They were raped, burned and hacked to death, causing 2000 deaths. Known as ‘Black July’, this anti-Tamil pogrom forced thousands more Tamils into refugee camps in Sri Lanka and neighbouring India. Against this violence and the beginning of the war, the only possible response for many Tamils was to search for better lives elsewhere.
Initially, host countries showed clear sympathy towards the plight of Tamil refugees. Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and his Labor successor Bob Hawke struck an admirable ‘balance between humanitarian concerns, domestic political considerations and foreign policy’.3 The CTA, together with members of the Tamil community, lobbied government to allow more Tamils to resettle in Australia. These advocates met with Australian politicians and exposed the widespread nature of attacks against Tamils, hammering the point that Tamil persecution was a state-sponsored project.4 Their advocacy proved not to be in vain, as the politicians in turn pressured the government to act on the matter.
Shortly after the anti-Tamil riots in July 1983, the recently elected Hawke Labor government processed Tamil people’s applications inside Sri Lanka under the Special Humanitarian Program (SHP). This program allowed those who were not eligible for normal migration entry or family reunion to be considered for entry into Australia. The specific implementation of the SHP for the Sri Lankan situation was a direct outcome of discussions between policymakers and Tamil refugee advocates. Significantly, it is the only instance of Tamil perspectives being taken into serious consideration by the Australian government on Tamil refugee matters.
Inclusive refugee policymaking
The CTA, like other ethno-specific organisations, has been crucial to addressing the immediate resettlement needs of refugees. By tackling gaps in government-run services, the CTA provided newly arrived Tamil refugees with furniture, translation services, access to housing, and other critical supports. With the escalation of violence in Sri Lanka, the association expanded its activities to include lobbying bureaucrats in the Immigration Department. After the riots of 1983
(which the Sri Lankan government downplayed, with President Jayewardene offering no sympathy to Tamils), the CTA led a transformative period of engagement between the government and Tamils in Australia.
The 1983 riots were not the first catalyst for Tamils to directly engage with policymakers in Australia. In June 1981, when government-backed Sinhala mobs had burned Jaffna Public Library, a Tamil community petition was delivered to Commonwealth parliament, explaining the devastating effects as the mobs went on a rampage: ‘killing innocent people, [and] set[ting] ablaze shops, homes and public library with historic Tamil documents, Tamil bookshops, newspaper offices and printery, presumably in an attempt to destroy Tamil identity and culture’.5 The burning of the library also sparked the first Tamil protest in Australia; at the Australian Labor Party conference in Melbourne, dozens of Tamils distributed leaflets about the political conflict. Crucially, the Tamils established working relationships with politicians, many of whom then went on to raise the political conflict in Commonwealth parliament. Working from a good understanding of each politician’s interests enabled Tamil representatives to shift from challenging the misinformation of the Sri Lankan government to framing solutions alongside Australian policymakers. Community representatives sought not merely to be consulted about policy, but to communicate to the government the best options for Tamils suffering persecution.
Why was connecting with politicians significant? For the CTA, it enabled them to connect with politicians through direct meetings, which in turn was an important precondition for their involvement in developing adequate policy responses to Tamils fleeing persecution. As one of the association’s founding members observed, meetings with key federal politicians such as Stewart West, Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, were formative for the implementation of the SHP in Sri Lanka in 1983. Upon hearing about the burning of Jaffna Public Library, West arranged a meeting with Bob Hawke to discuss urgent policy responses to allow Tamils to seek asylum in Australia. The significance of the initial meeting with West was not lost on the CTA founding member, who explained, ‘immediately they gave something called Special Humanitarian Program’.6
This meeting between the government and the Tamil community transformed refugee policy responses to Tamils in the early 1980s. West instructed his department to allow those who were not eligible for normal migration entry or family reunion to be considered under the SHP. Moreover, images of the looting, burning and mass displacement of the Tamils following the riots of 1983 fuelled the humanitarian concerns of politicians across political lines. Alan Missen, Liberal Party senator for Victoria and chairman of the Australian Parliamentary Group of Amnesty International, visited Sri Lanka in 1984. Described as a ‘small “L” Liberal’ by his parliamentary colleagues, Missen returned home ‘most concerned that the terrible breaches of human rights of 1983 could well be repeated’.7 A year later, Missen returned to Sri Lanka, describing ‘exhaustion on both sides’ and discounting the short, three-month ceasefire as a solution.8 After speaking to government officials and Tamil representatives, Missen left Sri Lanka convinced that the breaches of human rights against Tamils that had occurred in July 1983 would be repeated. While acknowledging the longer histories underpinning Tamil persecution and migration, historian Anna Arabindan-Kesson reflects that the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom led to a series of beginnings and endings.9 For Tamils in Australia, it marked the beginning of a new global awareness of the Tamil refugee plight that strengthened their refugee advocacy work:
That is the very first time that the truth started coming out. Before that, Sri Lankans were bluffing it, saying that it was a terrorist problem. But this is a different terror incident which was given much support. It changed the whole pattern of the situation from Sri Lanka.10
Community input clearly functioned as a necessary part of the government’s resettlement program for Tamils arriving in Australia through the SHP or other migration programs, including family reunification visas. The government’s broad definition of a family member also enabled Tamils in Australia to sponsor relatives. These government decisions reflected widespread Tamil concerns about the deteriorating conflict: ‘everyone had the feeling that we are being attacked because each and every person had one of their family members affected there’.11
The SHP was all the more imperative for opening new communication channels for Tamils to strengthen their involvement in future government refugee responses. Shortly after the program was implemented, the CTA organised a special committee to interact with immigration authorities on a regular basis to discuss resettlement approaches, needs and supports for Tamils seeking asylum. The respect and trust that had been established between the Tamil community and the government made this new initiative possible. But the interactions were not always harmonious. One point of contention arose from the fact that the SHP was not specific to Tamils. As the CTA founding member explained, ‘they didn’t say Tamils because of the Sinhalese objections’.12 Representatives of the Sinhalese and Burgher (European and Sri Lankan heritage) communities objected to Australia giving favourable treatment to Tamils over the other ethnic groups. This caused enormous problems for the government as it sought to balance refugee protection without inflaming intra-community tensions.
Balancing diplomatic and refugee interests
Not surprisingly, concerns expressed by the Sinhalese and Burgher communities echoed homeland anxieties – indeed their biggest fear was that giving Tamils special migration consideration would transport the inter-ethnic conflict to Australian streets. On 8 August 1983, Dr Quintus de Zylva, a member of the Sri Lankan Burgher community in Melbourne, wrote to Prime Minister Bob Hawke about ‘violence amongst Sri Lankan people [who had] recently [arrived]’ in Australia.13 De Zylva claimed to represent concerns held by the majority of the Sri Lankan community and argued that an intake of Tamil refugees would disrupt the ‘balance of migrants’, particularly in Melbourne, where there were significant Sinhalese, Burgher and Tamil communities.14 He went a step further and complained that the development of separate Tamil and Sinhalese organisations had increased intra-community tensions, which would intensify if Tamils were allowed entry into Australia. These fears were repeated by Dennis Pereira, the Sri Lankan high commissioner, who explained to the Department of Foreign Affairs that the Tamils in Australia were donating money to the Middle East region where military equipment was being purchased to support Tamil militant groups in Sri Lanka.15 In response to these aspersions on the Tamil community, the Immigration Department provided a steady stream of letters from Tamil citizens protesting against persecution in their homeland. The CTA objected vigorously and countered that the Sinhalese and Burgher communities were abusing the government’s special consideration for war-affected Tamils in order to enter Australia for economic reasons.16
But the concerns of the Australian government went much further than managing community tensions. In a rapidly changing geo-political context, the government also aimed to strengthen relations with its Indian Ocean Sri Lankan neighbour. Australia was becoming increasingly aware of the need to bolster this relationship, to secure its position in the Asia-Pacific region politically, militarily and economically. For this reason, the Department of Foreign Affairs chose not to criticise the Sri Lankan government for persecuting Tamils because it wanted to avoid being seen as supporting Tamils over other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. The department stated that the SHP ‘does not justify considering Tamils as having a prima facie case for refugee status or accepting [sic] under Special Humanitarian Program simply on the basis of their ethnic origin. Moreover, refugee status can only be considered once the applicant has left his [or her] country of origin.’17
In the end, the SHP in Sri Lanka lasted until 1988. During the first two years 720 people in total were accepted, with smaller numbers approved in the remaining years.18 It is unclear how many of these refugees were Tamil, as the government navigated a thin line between managing intra-community tensions and pursuing its own diplomatic concerns. Despite Australian officials frequently contacting their colleagues in Sri Lanka for ‘situation reports’ that clearly highlighted Tamil persecution and which should have justified their refugee status, Tamils who arrived during the 1980s were resettled not as refugees, but as migrants.19 In response, the Sri Lankan government and its officials repeatedly downplayed the violence, claiming the human rights abuses were acts of interrogation rather than orchestrated government policy.
In the face of official denials from the Sri Lankan government, Tamil diaspora organisations became crucial conduits of information about abuses for host countries. In the years after the riots, Tamils arrived in Australia not only as humanitarian entrants, but as part of skilled and family reunification programs, among other migration streams. But it was far from clear how distinctions between migration streams were made in resettling Tamils. While there were genuine displays of concern in parliament about the limitations of the migration program for Tamils seeking asylum, citizen engagement in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a new expression of community consultation.20 Given the effectiveness of these interactions between the Australian government and the local Tamil community, it is disappointing that this engagement with Tamils did not continue. Today, Tamil refugee advocates find themselves in a situation of complete alienation from refugee policymaking. And although the war in Sri Lanka may have ended in 2009, the continuous arrival of Tamils seeking asylum indicates that the protection crisis is not going to end. Significantly, then, the lack of Tamil community engagement in refugee policymaking risks perpetuating poorly constructed and internationally criticised refugee responses.
Tailoring policy to the needs of the Tamil community
As intermediaries between government and refugees, Tamil refugee advocates did more than fill the gaps in government welfare service provisions. They connected newly arrived Tamils to mainstream services and local knowledges in culturally appropriate ways – a critical set of skills, which government services did not have. This meant that newly arrived Tamils received material support, as well as information about cultural centres, Tamil language schools, Hindu temples, Tamil mass at churches, and social events. In other words, the success of ethno-specific organisations in meeting the immediate and long-term resettlement needs of Tamils suggests that involving citizens in government decision-making has immense benefits. The CTA founding member I interviewed illustrated this point when he recalled immediate supports that were provided to newly arrived Tamils as they resettled in the new land: ‘We managed to get things like furniture, beds, and all that and we used to take them in small trucks and deliver them free because it is very hard for them to start their life at that time after losing everything when they came here’.21
These organisations were especially crucial at a time when the Hawke government (1983–91) was considering shifting from ethno-specific resettlement delivery models to mainstream agencies. Yet, the government also understood the critical role played by ethnic communities in resettling new arrivals. The broader agenda of the Hawke government, however, was to locate multiculturalism within a national framework, with the ‘National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. Sharing Our Future’ in 1989 calling on newly arrived migrants to integrate into Australia. The increasingly nationalist strains of multiculturalism shifted further from the approach outlined in the report Migrant Services and Programs, commissioned by the Fraser government in 1978. This report had promoted ‘liberal multiculturalism’, which recognised that successful resettlement of migrants was a complex, long-term process: ‘its end point is the acceptance by and the feeling of belonging to the receiving society’.22
The results of this community-centred refugee response have extended well beyond the first generation. Since the 1980s, for example, cultural and religious institutions like the Tamil Language School and Hindu temple have played a vital role in helping the next generation build a sense of belonging in their new home. These Tamil spaces were crucial for young people who had experienced disrupted education due to the war. A young Tamil explained that connecting with other Tamils helped to establish a feeling of belonging:
Because I went to Tamil school I had met other people so I was able to hang around with them. I didn’t have proper education for two years, so from Year 8 to Year 10 I didn’t have it. So, I had to catch up in Year 10. Through Tamil school I was able to make some good friends who were also studying at the same high school.23
Even though interviewees left Sri Lanka at a young age and did not return, they were raised in settings that daily referenced an imagined Tamil homeland – ideologically, materially and emotionally. The distribution of Tamil community resources in the early 1980s was driven to a large extent by the government, including Tamil concerns in refugee policymaking: the power of migrant communities, trusting relationships with government officials, and recognising the long-term benefits of inclusive decision-making for contributing to successful resettlement. These community-driven supports demonstrate the value of citizens as being critical to humanitarian resettlement efforts in the host country. Involving citizens extends beyond changing policy, it has the transformative power to prioritise community-centred approaches to resettlement and demonstrate what it means to accept refugees based on the experiences and truths shared by those war-affected diaspora communities.
Lessons from history: Listen to former refugees
Today, it is almost impossible for Tamil refugee advocates to support newly arrived Tamils as a result of policies that prevent refugees from accessing basic welfare supports. International experts reject Australia’s refugee policy as an effective model for addressing the current global refugee protection crisis. The experience of Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka at the outbreak of the civil war and arriving in Australia shows that listening and engaging with war-affected communities is crucial to developing sound refugee policy. Put simply, such inclusive policymaking helps to address refugee protection crises; in this case, viewing Tamils not as problems, but as part of diaspora communities with longer histories of migration. By focusing on these historical agents, we can bring into focus experiences of war that might otherwise be undermined or erased.
When it comes to refugee policymaking, governments must ensure that they include war-affected communities in their refugee responses. Governments must take this local, on-the-ground knowledge seriously. This will not always be entirely successful, as indeed was the case with Tamils. The Australian government did not officially recognise that Tamils were being persecuted in Sri Lanka. Instead, it went to pains to avoid being seen as supporting Tamils by reassuring the Sri Lankan government that it was not giving Tamils special consideration for resettlement. Ultimately, the number of arrivals was small under the SHP.
At the same time, the government worked directly with its Tamil citizens to enact its humanitarian concerns while enabling the community to deliver critical resettlement supports to newly arrived Tamils. In order to respond to complex and longlasting crises, governments need to develop refugee policy in conversation with refugees themselves and their communities. It is simply not possible to construct refugee policies without working with the people who are directly affected by the crisis in their homeland. Community views challenge the dominant narratives of the government, but it is precisely these perspectives that need to be considered.