Sri Lankans hearing message - Aussie FM; Six Lankans abandon asylum claims to return home

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr leaves on Thursday for visits to Dili and Colombo, and says Sri Lankans are getting the message that economic migrants will be sent home.

Carr says Sri Lankans are getting the message that economic migrants who arrive in Australian waters will be swiftly sent home.

“Every time we send a plane load back, a message goes out to the villages of Sri Lanka,” he told Sky News on Thursday.

“You can pay what is, in Sri Lankan terms, a fortune to a people smuggler, but you will only be sent back, you won’t get to make it to a new life in Australia.”

More than 600 Sri Lankans asylum seekers have been returned involuntary since September.

“Sure that has cost a bit of money, but it has asserted Australian sovereignty and Australian control of irregular immigration,” Senator Carr said.

The foreign minister leaves Australia on Thursday for visits to East Timor and Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile another group of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers decided to return home rather than wait to have their claims processed on Nauru.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship confirmed six more Sri Lankan men returned home voluntarily on Thursday.

Five of the men were transferred from Nauru to the Australian mainland before departing Perth for Colombo on a commercial flight. They were joined by another Sri Lankan man who had been detained in Western Australia.

It follows the voluntary return of eight Sri Lankans at the weekend, five from Christmas Island on Saturday and three from Perth on Sunday, and brings to 767 the number of Sri Lankans who have returned home - both voluntarily and involuntarily - since August 13 when the government announced it was reopening processing facilities on Nauru and Manus Island.

A department spokesman said transfers of boat arrivals to Nauru have continued and more would follow in coming weeks.

“Regular transfers to Nauru and more Sri Lankans returning home is further proof there is no advantage engaging with people smugglers,” the spokesman said, Australian media reports.