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Video: Abbott donates patrol boats to SL

17 Nov 2013 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Australian government will donate two retired patrol boats to the Sri Lankan Navy today in a gesture aimed at securing the sustained co-operation in operations against people smuggling of a force long rumoured to have had a hand in the illegal trade.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott will announce the gift during a visit to Colombo’s naval port today, where he will meet the country’s feared Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa and personally thank Navy commander, Vice-Admiral Jayanath Colombage, and navy sailors for helping to stem the flow of asylum-seeker boats to Australia.

Mr Abbott, in Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, said last night that co-operation with Sri Lankan authorities had been “well-co-ordinated and highly effective, with at least 12 on-water interceptions by the Sri Lankan Navy in 2013”.

“Sri Lanka provides strong support against people-smuggling operations and Australian agencies work closely with their Sri Lankan counterparts. Only 14 boats have travelled directly from Sri Lanka to Australia in 2013 compared to 120 boats in 2012," the Prime Minister said.

“Australia appreciates its strong cooperative relationship with Sri Lanka in countering people smuggling.”

The Sri Lankan government had also effectively spread the message in Sri Lankan communities known to be people-smuggling “hot-spots” that taking an asylum boat to Australia would never lead to resettlement there.

“The central message of Operation Sovereign Borders is that illegal maritime arrivals will not be settled in Australia. There is no point in attempting to reach Australia by boat,” Mr Abbott said.

Sri Lankan Navy officers have long argued they cannot deliver the level of assistance Australia requires to counter the historically-rampant people-smuggling trade in Sri Lanka because of a dearth of ocean-going vessels capable of navigating the Indian Ocean high seas outside its territorial waters.

But the gift comes at an awkward time for both countries, given the recent arrests of two Sri Lankan Navy sailors and a naval officer stationed at the east coast port of Trincomalee on people-smuggling charges.

The senior naval officer, who claims to have briefed Australia’s Border Protection Command chief on people- smuggling activities, has protested his innocence but said that other navy sailors were involved in the lucrative trade.

Boat arrivals to Australia are said to have declined by almost 90 per cent since the recent arrests of 31 men, including the navy personnel, on people-smuggling charges.

The arrests appear to support persistent rumours that elements within the navy were complicit, if not heavily-involved, in people smuggling.

Australia already provides several million dollars a year in material support and training for the Sri Lankan Navy.

But after campaigning relentlessly on the former Labor government’s poor border protection record, Mr Abbott’s political credibility depends on his success in stamping out boat arrivals.

Sri Lankan government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said yesterday a memorandum of understanding would also be signed between the two navies to heighten co-operation in preventing (asylum boats) from leaving Sri Lanka.

“The MOU has not been signed yet but all the details have been discussed and once they’re finalised it will be a public document,” he said.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is credited as the military brains behind the final defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, a brutally determined campaign which the UN estimates cost as many as 40,000 civilian lives though the government insists the civilian death toll in the final months was 7700.

As of January this year, 47 per cent of all detainees in Australian asylum seeker detention centres were Sri Lankan nationals.

But more than 1000 Sri Lankans have been returned to the island nation since the former Labor government initiated the first in a series of progressively tougher crackdowns on asylum-seekers. (The Australian)
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Camera by Pradeep Pathirana

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Video: Abbott donates patrol boats to SL

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