Lanka to welcome failed asylum seekers from Australia, says PM
canberra — Sri Lankan asylum seekers held on Pacific island camps who could potentially find new lives in the United States are free to return home without fear of persecution, Sri Lanka’s prime minister said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe made the comments during a visit to Australia in which he discussed with his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull cooperation on combating people smuggling. No Sri Lankan asylum seeker has reached Australia by boat since 2013.
But Sri Lankans, Iranians and Afghans are the largest national groups among more than 2,000 asylum seekers living on the Pacific islands nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Australia pays the countries to house them. Australia refuses to resettle any of them and President Donald Trump has agreed to honor an Obama administration deal to take up to 1,250 of them. Trump added that they will undergo “extreme vetting.”
Officials from the US State Department’s Resettlement Support Center left Nauru last week after initial interviews with refugee candidates, and a team arrived on Papua New Guinea’s men-only camp on Manus Island on Tuesday to commence interviews there, refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said.
The US Embassy in Canberra later confirmed that the interviews had begun on Manus this week.
Behrouz Boochani, an asylum seeker and journalist from Iran who has been detained on Manus since 2013, said around 10 refugees were interviewed by officials from the resettlement agency on Wednesday.
The interviews lasted four hours, and the refugees were told they will have just one further interview, with the Department of Homeland Security, as part of the vetting process. None of the refugees were told when that interview will take place or how long it will be until a decision is made, Boochani said by text message from Manus. Many of the men have already languished on the island for nearly four years, and are consumed with worry over their futures, he said. —