All at sea: Is Australia's fast-tracked asylum screening policy fair?

By Jane Wardell SYDNEY (Reuters) - At the heart of an unprecedented legal challenge to the return by Australia of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka is Australia's controversial testing of their claims in a brief interview on the high seas. Lawyers said the "enhanced screening" process involves asylum seekers being asked just four or five questions via Skype or teleconference on a boat with no access to independent legal representation. If the detainee does not raise a red flag by saying they want to seek asylum because they fear persecution, or if the interviewing officer does not believe their story, they are immediately screened "out". Human rights lawyers have denounced the fast-tracked process at sea as illegal under international law. The conservative Australian government has repeatedly declined to comment on the process in detail, leaving lawyers to piece it together based on reports from those who have been subjected to the process and returned. "These people, potentially in fear of their lives, are being picked up by armed naval personnel on the high seas and being submitted to a quick interview, with little privacy, over Skype or teleconference," said Mary Crock, a professor of public law at the University of Sydney. "It's gobsmackingly bad international legal practice," she said. "You can't possibly be satisfied that everybody on the boat wasn't a refugee." Controversially, rather than a lengthy, detailed interview to assess a person's claim for asylum, it is effectively a triaging method to gauge whether the immigration department thinks the person may have a valid claim. The four or five questions are believed to involve basics on name, age, birthplace and the reason for the asylum seeker's attempt to travel to Australia, lawyers said. Some of the people on the boat of 37 Sinhalese and four Tamil asylum seekers handed over by Australia to Sri Lanka at the weekend said they told Customs officials via satellite phone that they were attempting to reach New Zealand, not Australia. "I don't think they gave a proper opportunity to express ourselves," one man traveling with his wife and three sons said, on condition of anonymity. The man said he told Customs he was trying to get to New Zealand for personal reasons and had no problems with the Sri Lankan government, an answer that experts said would have screened him out immediately. A second man, who identified himself as N.A. Nilantha, said he told them he "intended to get a good job and enhance our family's economic situation" in New Zealand. TORTURE, RAPE AND VIOLENCE The responses potentially bear out claims by the Australian and Sri Lankan government that many asylum seekers are economic migrants, although rights groups say Tamils seek asylum to prevent torture, rape and other violence at the hands of the military. Only one person aboard the boat, a Sinhalese woman, was deemed to require further assessment of her claim. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said she was offered transportation to an offshore detention center but she elected to return to Sri Lanka with her travel companions, rather than proceed alone. "If the only option is 'we'll send you to Manus or Nauru by yourself' then that is surely coercion," said the University of Sydney's Crock, referring to offshore detention centers set up in Papua New Guinea and the remote Pacific island of Nauru. Australia's Tamil Refugee Council said of the 153 people on board a second boat, whose fate is currently before the High Court, some 48 are from India’s 60,000-odd strong, unregistered Sri Lankan Tamil refugee community. At least 11 of those had been tortured in Sri Lanka, the council said. The fast-tracked method of gauging whether a person has a valid claim to asylum was introduced by former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2012 for use on Sri Lankan asylum seekers. Morrison noted that "advanced screening" was simply a continuation of the previous government's policies. "This is how you stop the boats," Morrison said. "This is how it has to be done because this is what works." Lawyers, however, say the Sri Lankan cases highlight a key difference: the screening is now taking place on a boat on the high seas, rather than at one of the offshore detention centers. "The Migration Act authorizes the government to undertake offshore processing," said Ben Saul, an international law professor at Sydney University. "The argument is whether this move is circumventing that by creating some alternative process outside what's allowed by the Act." The criticism is supported by Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs. "It sounds as though three or four or five questions are being asked by video conference, snap judgments are being [made], and they're simply being returned," Triggs said. "There is an obligation with international law to have a proper process." (Additional reporting by Shihar Aneez in Galle, Sri Lanka; Editing by Jeremy Laurence and Paul Tait)