Australia aiding and abetting Sri Lanka’s war crimes - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 November 2009, 00:25 GMT]
“Australia is a contracting party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees as well as to its related 1967 Protocol. Thereunder Australia has an absolute obligation to provide meaningful and humane asylum procedures, regulations and hearings to all Tamils fleeing from Sri Lanka,” said Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, in a note sent to TamilNet Friday.

“To the contrary, this Australian agreement with the GOSL to cut-off Tamil Asylum seekers violates this 1951 Refugees Convention and its 1967 Refugees Protocol as well as the peremptory norm of customary international human rights law set forth in Article 14(1) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

"As such this "Agreement" between GOSL and Australia is void ab initio. It is not entitled to any legal significance or recognition whatsoever.

“In addition, by means of implementing this agreement Australia will now become an aider and abettor to GOSL's war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Tamils in violation of Australia's own solemn legal obligations under the Genocide Convention, the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Two Additional Protocols of 1977, among others,” Professor Boyle said.

“Of course it comes as no surprise that the White Racist Australian Government would criminally mistreat Tamils of Color after its longstanding history of criminal mistreatment of Australia's own Indigenous People of Color for which Australia has not yet properly atoned, rectified, and compensated,” Boyle further said.

"This agreement between Australia and the GOSL is similar to the agreement between the United States and the military dictatorship then ruling Haiti to cut-off Haitian refugees then fleeing governmental persecution in Haiti by ship to the United States in gross violation of their international legal rights.

“That U.S.-Haiti agreement was condemned by every human rights body and human rights organization that considered the matter, which would be too numerous to list here. But that same body of international law and human rights decisions, jurisprudence, principles, and condemnations would also apply here," Professor Boyle added.

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