Refugees = terrorists
01 May 1994
As part of its efforts to define the world as "safe" for refugees (as opposed to trying to make it safe) the Home Office has recently devised some new formulae.
The Indian government, and in particular the Punjab regional government, has come in for a lot of severe criticism for human rights abuses by the security forces and police. An estimated 22,000 Sikhs are in prison, and another 50,000 have been killed in the last decade, many in false "encounters" with the security forces (where they are captured, shot, and claimed to have fired first). But if the victims of such abuses make it to Britain, they are increasingly being told that they are not refugees: either they are ordinary civilians, in which case they have nothing to fear from the security checks carried out by the authorities to protect them, or they are supporters of terrorist groups.
The logic of the position is now being applied to Kurds from Turkey: if they are supporters of the PKK they can't be refugees as they're terrorists by definition; if they are not supporters of the PKK they have nothing to fear. Same with Tamils from Sri Lanka, 11,000 of whom, according to the Guardian, the Swiss government is about to deport after sewing up an agreement with the Sri Lanka government (Guardian 20.4.94 and see Statewatch vol 4, no 2). This despite a series of recent (February 1994) Amnesty International reports condemning waves of arrests, detentions and torture of young Tamil men in and around Colombo, and the continuing civil war engulfing the north of Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, thousands of police manned checkpoints to prevent protests when 13 Kurds went on trial in Munich charged with occupying the Turkish consulate and seizing hostages in June 1993. There has been strong criticism of German arms sales to Turkey totalling £400 million in the past three years, amid persistent allegations that the arms are regularly used to suppress the Kurds rather than for any external defence. The recent ban by Germany on the PKK was warmly welcomed by the Turkish government as symbolising the removal of any German support for the Kurds. The Bavarian government announced that it would deport Kurds who take part in violent protests such as those which brought German motorways to a standstill in recent weeks.