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Whatsapp Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse during a Victory Day parade in southern town of Matara on May 18, 2014.

Tamil asylum seekers have been at the heart of Australia’s immigration debate in recent years. What exactly is the situation for Tamils in Sri Lanka when it comes to human rights, torture and the rule of law? Muditha Dias investigates.

As Tamil asylum seekers continue to make headlines in Australia, members of the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil diaspora have disputed the the status of human rights and the rule of law in the country today.

According to Dr Dayan Jayatilaka, the former Sri Lankan ambassador to the United Nations, there is no evidence that the Sri Lankan government engages in torture of anyone who has been returned to the country.

He says that there are no mass arrests and no martial law. However, he admits there is disaffection among the Tamil people.

Dr Jayatilaka, who is also former vice president of the UN Human Rights Council, says the country’s decades-long civil has an ongoing legacy.

The Sri Lankan government very correctly defeated the terrorist movement, and I think most Tamils, including Tamil politicians, would now like to settle down to a greater political autonomy within a united Sri Lanka.

President Mahinda Rajapakse’s regime faces allegations—which it denies—of deliberately killing civilians during the final assault on Tamil Tiger rebels that ended the four decade war between the government and the LTTE. The Tamil Diaspora, mostly in Australia and Canada, argues that it is still unclear how many Tamil civilians were killed during the final stages of the war. Figures range from 7000 to more than 60,000. With foreign journalists and the UN forced to leave the country in 2009, human rights violations on both sides are yet to be accounted for.

Dr Jayatilaka says that Tamils are not fleeing mass persecution, but they are unhappy, and feel a significant degree of alienation from and dissatisfaction with Sri Lankan government. They take any chance offered by people smugglers to leave the island.

The Sri Lankan navy has prevented a number of boats from departing Sri Lankan shores. More than 1000 of those who have sought asylum in Australia have returned to Sri Lanka, with cooperation from Sri Lankan authorities.

The recent arrival of 157 Tamil asylum seekers, who were held on an Australian vessel for a month while Canberra tried to negotiate for India to take them back, were flown out to Nauru this week. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has said that they will never be resettled in Australia.

Read more: After Sri Lanka’s civil war

Dr Victor Rajakulendran, chairman of the Australian Federation of Tamil Associations, who has lived in Australia for three decades, believes that life is intolerable for Tamils in Sri Lanka. He says that the victorious Sinhalese army, which is now subject to international war crimes investigations, is still present in large numbers in the north and east of Sri Lanka.

‘They have taken over every aspect of civilian life, including the fertile land that belonged to Tamil civilians who can no longer cultivate on this land,’ he says.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says that people in Sri Lanka who are genuinely fleeing persecution could go to India, rather than risk the dangerous journey to Australia. However, Dr Rajakulendran says many refugees have been in Indian camps for many years, and they have no way of earning a livelihood there. ‘A second generation of kids have come up [in refugee camps] and they can't find university education in India,’ he says.

Dr Rajakulendran agrees with former Australian PM Malcolm Fraser, who has likened the return of Tamils to Sri Lanka to handing over Jewish refugees to Nazi Germany. He says that transferring these asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka is ‘equivalent to piracy in the deep seas’.

For his part, Dr Jayatilaka feels that by making references to Nazi Germany, Malcolm Fraser was trivialising the Holocaust.

‘There are no concentration camps,’ he says. ‘What you have are a succession of elections in the north, which does have a very high concentration of the military, and at every one of those elections the anti-government Tamil National Alliance has won. I really don't think Nazi Germany is the right parallel.’

Dr Rajiva Wijesinghe, a Sri Lankan MP and former secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, is more interested in the question of whether Tamils in the north of the country are suffering the way they did during the civil war.

Dr Wijesinghe, who travels regularly to the north for reconciliation committee meetings, says that there were many complaints by the Tamil population in the area between 2009 and 2011.

‘I don't think we are doing enough to develop human resources, develop employment, and develop entrepreneurship in these areas, but certainly the government has done infrastructural development which has made the place much easier to live in,’ he says. ‘In fact, Jaffna actually has a much higher per capita income than elsewhere in Sri Lanka.’

According to Dr Wijesinghe, there is a lot of political resentment and this can be seen in the diaspora’s belief that those who leave are trying to escape torture. ‘This is absolutely untrue,’ he says. ‘The investigations, both by the Australians and the British, have suggested that there is no question of torture or abuse.’

Related: An extraordinary journey and an unusual family

Dr Wijesinghe admits that there is a large military presence in Tamil areas and says that one of the country’s biggest problems is a lack of trust.

‘The Sri Lankan government very correctly defeated the terrorist movement, and I think most Tamils, including Tamil politicians, would now like to settle down to a greater political autonomy within a united Sri Lanka,’ he says. ‘But there are still elements in the diaspora that hanker after a separate state ... but many of them speak from massive ignorance.'

‘They talk about the situation as it happened earlier on. Therefore, they are trying to create further separatism, which of course makes the security forces more concerned.’

Critics of President Rajapakse have accused him of being an authoritarian leader who is increasing his own power base, but Dr Jayatilaka says that while the president does have occasional authoritarian moment, he chose to have an election for the Northern Provincial Council, which none of his predecessors was willing to do. The Tamil National Alliance won 78 per cent of the votes.

‘In a place crawling with the military, they could have rigged the election if they wanted to, but they didn't. I really wouldn't say we are talking about an authoritarian leader. We are talking about a leader who seems to have a free run because the main opposition in the south, the United National Party, has been led by the same person, Ranil Wickremesighe, for 20 years.’

All guests agreed that further international scrutiny in Sri Lanka is a good thing.

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