Sri Lankan authorities arrested another 131 would-be asylum seekers heading to Australia and seized a fishing trawler used for the people-smuggling operation, police and naval officials said yesterday.
The navy detected the trawler carrying 109 people off the island’s eastern coast on Saturday and it was being escorted to the port of Trincomalee, 260km northeast of the former capital, Colombo.
“The men on board were heading for Australia,” a navy official said asking not to be named. “We are handing over these people to the police for further investigations and necessary action.”
Police spokesman Ajith Rohana said 22 other people thought to be preparing to leave the island illegally aboard a different trawler were also arrested on Saturday.
The number of Sri Lankans detained on charges of illegally trying to leave the country has reached more than 250 over the last week.
SUNKEN VESSELS
The latest arrests come after a number of vessels have sunk at sea as illegal immigrants head to Australia from various poverty-hit countries, including Sri Lanka.
Some 94 people are believed to have drowned after two boats sank in recent weeks.
Australia is facing a steady influx of asylum-seekers arriving by boat, many of whom use Indonesia as a transit hub, boarding leaky wooden vessels there after fleeing their homes countries.
NEW ORIGINS
While most boats originate in Indonesia, there has been a recent spike in attempted crossings from Sri Lanka.
Australia wants to deter boatpeople by transferring them to Malaysia for processing, in exchange for accepting thousands of Malaysia’s registered refugees for resettlement.
However, the minority government has been unable to pass the necessary legislation because of opposition in the Australian parliament.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema