MALAYSIAN PAID US$35,000 TO SMUGGLE SRI LANKAN TAMIL TO AUSTRALIA

By Neville D'Cruz

MELBOURNE, Nov 25 (Bernama) -- A Sri Lankan refugee has revealed to a
newspaper here how a professional people-smuggler in Malaysia gave him false
travel documents that enabled him to get a protection visa after arriving by air
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 on 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 (LTTE).

Sanjay, who claims to have no LTTE connections, 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 that early this year he was introduced to a Malaysian Tamil
people-smuggler who told him the fee to travel by boat was US$15,000 (RM50,641),
while the cost to travel by air was more than double that.

Afraid to send their only son on the perilous sea voyage, Sanjay's family,
which 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.
Sanjay was handed a one-way airline 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 people-smuggler
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 dwarfs the numbers who arrive by boat, the
newspaper said.

An Immigration spokesman said that 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.

-- BERNAMA