50 Sri Lankan UK asylum seekers to return home

A group of 50 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, mostly Tamils who were deported from Britain, will return to the country tomorrow, immigration officials said here today. A group of 50 Sri Lankans are heading home on a special chartered flight arranged by the UK Border Agency (UKBA), they said. The deportation takes place despite a protest from the London-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW), which accused the UKBA of turning a blind eye to the conditions faced by the returnees. ‘In its haste to be tough on failed asylum seekers, the government is turning a blind eye to compelling evidence that Tamils risk torture on arrival,’ a HRW release said. A large majority of failed asylum seekers are from the Tamil minority community who fled the island at the height of the civil war.