This is an excellent and outstanding article Bruce.

I have heard that the Sri Lankan Government has been harrassing Australian Tamils for quite some time. A friend of mine who is a Tamil said that Tamils who took part in the lawful protests against the violence in Sri Lanka in May 2009 were receiving death threats from Sinhalese extremists. A number of hate groups such as SPUR operate with impunity in Australia. This is a terrible state of affairs and a government committed to equality and the rule of the law would not allow a foreign government to behave this way to its citizens.

It beggars belief that the Australian Government could accept a security assessment from a government that has been credibly accused of war crimes.

Good article Bruce.

The description of AFP's and ASIO's reliance on third country governmental advice appears very accurate.

If a given third country is authoritarian then the information supplied to AFP/ASIO is all the more likely to be tainted in ways contrary to Australia's (legal and political) traditions of accuracy and fairness.

As an aside - on ANZAC Day this year our old diggers will stand for hours in the sun in front of the War Memorial, Canberra. While straining they might notice representatives of very active dictatorships remaining comfortably seated in the VIP area.

Australians at that august occasion can ponder at the precedence given to undeserving regimes (shady types) represented in Australia - over our diggers...

Pete