‘Sri Lankan Asylum Seekers’ was the number one news item in Australia for three weeks.

Sri Lankan government’s position on its asylum seekers was totally absent in the debate. Except once when specifically asked by the ‘West Australian’ newspaper was there a comment from our High Commissioner that the asylum seekers are economic migrants and they could return home and that there is no persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka. This was hardly ever reported elsewhere. There was no position statement from the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry or the High Commission as was widely expected.

Other than a few letters to the editor from patriotic Sri Lankan expatriates, the Australian media did not disseminate background information on the LTTE terrorist war, the origin of the IDP camps and opportunism of the boat people.

The perception in Australia is that the asylum seekers cannot return home and that they await dire consequences. The public sympathy is therefore very high for the boat people and this is coupled with a growing resentment against Sri Lanka. Various interest groups in Australia are maximising the situation to attack Sri Lanka and paint it as a repressive regime from which innocent civilians are fleeing, risking death in the high seas. The human rights lobby, backed by the LTTE Diaspora is hell bent destroying Sri Lanka by pushing for economic sanctions worldwide capitalising onb the issue of the boat people.