Record for Sri Lankan arrests

[Jonas Profile]

Record for Sri Lankan arrests

http://www.smh.com.au/national/record-f ... 236eo.html

SRI Lanka's navy arrested a boatload of people heading to Australia and raised the number of would-be illegal immigrants detained this month to a record 500, according to an official.

A fishing trawler carrying 31 people was intercepted off the island's western coast on Saturday, and another 20 were arrested on shore ready to board the boat, the navy official said.

''We had the highest number of arrests this month,'' said the official, who asked not to be named. ''We stopped eight trawlers off the eastern coast and three off the western coast as they set off for Australia.''

The official said that compared with 200 people arrested between May and June, the July arrests were the highest on record over a month.

Advertisement Most of the would-be illegal immigrants had paid up to 300,000 rupees ($A2220) as an advance for the perilous journey and were to give an additional 400,000 rupees on reaching Australian shores, the official said.

The boat people had been handed over to the police Criminal Investigations Department for questioning.

Most wanted to claim political asylum in Australia, the official said.

[Jonas Profile]

Tamil activists would pay to ship refugees

http://www.smh.com.au/national/tamil-ac ... 236es.html

COMMUNITY activists would pay for United Nations sanctioned refugees to be safely shipped to Australia and deprive people smugglers of customers under a radical pitch to the Gillard government's expert panel on border protection.

The plan, aimed at ethnic Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka, comes as a boat carrying 15 people slipped past navy patrols on the weekend and put out a distress call about 150 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia. Another boat with 49 passengers was later spotted near Cocos Island.

The Coalition seized on the rare arrival near the mainland to criticise Labor over the strain on border patrols. The tally of asylum seeker arrivals over the past two months is among the highest on record, with boats increasingly calling for rescue after two vessels sank in June, leaving about 90 dead.

The plan to fund ''free, safe transport'' was presented by Tamil organisations to Prime Minister Julia Gillard's hand-picked experts charged to find a circuit-breaker to the impasse around asylum seekers.

Advertisement The panel, led by former defence chief Angus Houston, will be hard-pressed to move all political sides beyond the deadlock, with little sign of common ground despite negotiations in recent weeks.

[Jonas Profile]

Sri Lanka arrests 103 men on trawlers

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/wo ... 6439782060

SRI Lanka's navy says it has arrested 103 men who were attempting to migrate to Australia illegally in three fishing trawlers.
A navy statement said on Tuesday that two trawlers were intercepted on Monday off the island's western coast and another was detained off the eastern coast.

It says those arrested were Sri Lankan men. They have been handed over to police who are investigating.

It is a pity Indonesia did not do as much and they get aid