Lankan refugees paying huge sums to be smuggled to PNG
Hong Kong-based agents are charging US$11,800 to smuggle Sri Lankan refugees to Papua New Guinea, the Post-Courier reports.
This revelation came from the country s national security advisers after 13 Tamil refugees who entered PNG illegally were sent back to their home country, Sri Lanka, and banned from coming here again.
Sri Lanka has been caught up in a virtual civil war for many years with Tamil extremists wanting to split from the majority Sinhalese rule. The intelligence officers, in confirming the deportations, warned that human smuggling kingpins and facilitators based in Hong Kong were communicating with agents in PNG and collecting about K30,000 from each of these people, promising them jobs in PNG.
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