Following on from a MEDACT conference on asylum seekers last month, Tamils Against Genocide have analysed British Home Office policy documents and guidance for asylum caseworkers, attempting to explain why asylum claims from Sri Lanka continue to be dismissed.

Building on work by Professor Anthony Good, Professor Emeritus in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, TAG assessed Home Office policy, concluding,

“The guidance is flawed, the consequences horrible to contemplate."

Read the full post on the Free Movement blog here.

See extracts below.

"Why are asylum seekers so often disbelieved? How is it that clinical evidence of torture is oftentimes rejected on the grounds of ‘credibility’? Why has the UK judged so many Tamil asylum seekers not to be at risk, forcibly returning them to Sri Lanka where they have gone on to be tortured?"

"Tamils Against Genocide, made a submission to the UN Committee Against Torture for its 5th periodic review of the UK. In that submission we expressed concern regarding the UKBA’s record to date and its methodology. We noted:

• A tendency to dismiss torture claims and a refusal to give any weight to the presence of scarring by implying the wounds could have been self-inflicted in order to improve chances of securing asylum. Such claims are made without recourse to evidence. They display a distinct lack of sensitivity for the survivors of torture.

• The selective use of background material. Although corruption is endemic in Sri Lankan society, a fact accepted by the British High Commission, refusal letters frequently reason along the following lines, “It is therefore considered that if you were of any significant interest to the authorities, you would not have been able to depart from the airport. Therefore, this part of your account is not accepted.”

• A trend to backwards reasoning. For example, questioning the applicant on a factual point to only dismiss the applicant’s account since “the details could have been found on the Internet.”

• A tendency to extrapolate from what is judged ‘reasonable’ or ‘sensible’ and asylum applicants’ claims then judged against this artificial and subjective benchmark."

"The above were observations based purely on the many asylum cases that TAG has had access to and/or been involved in, in various capacities."