All at sea: Is Australia's fast-tracked asylum screening policy fair?

By Jane Wardell SYDNEY (Reuters) - At the heart of an unprecedented legal challenge to the return by Australia of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka is Australia's controversial testing of their claims in a brief interview on the high seas. Lawyers said the so-called "enhanced screening" process involves asylum seekers being asked just four or five questions via Skype or teleconference on a boat with no access to independent legal representation. If the detainee does not raise a red flag by saying they want to seek asylum because they fear persecution, or if the interviewing officer does not believe their story, they are immediately screened "out". Human rights lawyers have denounced the fast-tracked process at sea as illegal under international law. The government has repeatedly declined to comment on the process in detail, leaving lawyers to piece it together based on reports from those who have been subjected to the process and returned. "These people, potentially in fear of their lives, are being picked up by armed naval personnel on the high seas and being submitted to a quick interview, with little privacy, over Skype or teleconference," said Mary Crock, a professor of public law at the University of Sydney. "It's gobsmackingly bad international legal practice," she said. "You can't possibly be satisfied that everybody on the boat wasn't a refugee." Controversially, rather than a lengthy, detailed interview to assess a person's claim for asylum, it is effectively a triaging method to gauge whether the immigration department thinks the person may have a valid claim. The four or five questions are believed to involve basics on name, age, birthplace and the reason for the asylum seeker's attempt to travel to Australia, lawyers said. On the boat of 41 Sinhalese and Tamil asylum seekers handed over by Australia to Sri Lanka on the weekend, only one, a Sinhalese woman, was deemed to require further assessment of her claim. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said she was offered transportation to an offshore detention centre but she elected to return to Sri Lanka with her travel companions, rather than proceed alone. "If the only option is 'we'll send you to Manus or Nauru by yourself' then that is surely coercion," said the University of Sydney's Crock. MAIN PARTIES IN AGREEMENT The fast-tracked method of gauging whether a person has a valid claim to asylum was introduced by former Labour Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2012 for use on Sri Lankan asylum seekers. Morrison noted that "advanced screening" was simply a continuation of the previous government's policies. "This is how you stop the boats," Morrison said. "This is how it has to be done because this is what works." Lawyers, however, say the Sri Lankan cases highlight a key difference; the screening is now taking place on a boat on the high seas, rather than at one of the offshore detention centres. "The Migration Act authorises the government to undertake offshore processing," said Ben Saul, an international law professor at Sydney University. "The argument is whether this move is circumventing that by creating some alternative process outside what's allowed by the Act." The criticism is supported by Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs. "It sounds as though three or four or five questions are being asked by video conference, snap judgements are being [made], and they're simply being returned," Triggs said. "There is an obligation with international law to have a proper process." (Editing by Jeremy Laurence)