Sri Lanka: Deported asylum seekers face torture, jail

(By Lee Yu Kyung,greenleft) “Mum’s dead”. The gloomy faced Sujendran Gunesekaram greeted me, as we met in person for the first time. His mother died of a heart attack on September 5, after suffering for three years.

Sujendran is a 27-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil originally from Muttur in Trincomalee, the war-hit town in the east. He was one of 254 asylum seekers on the Australia-bound boat Jeya Lestari that moored off at the port in Merak, Indonesia in October 2009.

The Indonesian navy intercepted the boat after Australia’s then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to request it.

Sujendran wanted to reach Australia at any cost. But he returned to Sri Lanka in November last year solely because of his ailing mother. “I would have not returned at all, unless my mother was not greatly ill”, he said.

However, on arrival Sujendran couldn’t go straight to his mother. He didn’t expect what would happen next.

Taken to the ‘4th floor’

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/46304