The asylum seekers' ordeal finally ended on December 2-3. For more than three years the group – which included 16 children – had been held on Diego Garcia, one of the world's most remote islands in the Indian Ocean, where they were taken after being rescued at sea. 

Their situation there had been so bad that there had been repeated attempts at suicide and self-harm by as many as 20 members of the group.

Upon their arrival in the UK, the asylum seekers were greeted by the lawyers who had fought for their release and transfer to Britain. Later, after they were taken to a hotel on the outskirts of London, some of the children were seen running around excitedly, The Guardian reported.

"We cannot believe we are finally in the UK. We feel we have reached paradise," one man was quoted by the paper as saying. 

"If our lives had been good in our home country we would never have set off on a dangerous journey across the ocean in a leaking boat," said another man. "I thought we would all die at sea."

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'Rat-infested' conditions

Diego Garcia forms part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. Since the early 1970s the island has hosted large numbers of US military personnel. The UK recently returned it to Mauritius.

In October 2021, the Tamil asylum seekers had set out for Canada on a fishing boat, which got into trouble in the Indian Ocean. They were rescued by the British Navy and brought to the island, where they claimed asylum.

Unable to be returned to Sri Lanka, as this would have violated the law of non-refoulement, they remained in a fenced camp on the island "the size of a small cricket field," said a statement from Matrix Chambers, barristers (legal representatives) for the asylum seekers. Security at the camp was run by G4S, a British multinational company which was at the center of the Brook House immigration detention scandal.

For the first six weeks the Tamils had no means of communication with the outside world, lawyers said, adding that the tents in which they lived were "rat-infested". The UN refugee agency UNHCR said that keeping the group in the camp amounted to "arbitrary detention" in conditions that "fail to provide the necessary standards of privacy, safety and dignity."

In May 2022, some members of the group began a hunger strike over the conditions. Almost a year later, a number of the asylum seekers were transferred to Rwanda for emergency medical care after they tried to take their own life. Some remained in Rwanda until their transfer this week.

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Legal battles

The asylum seekers fought for years, with the help of British lawyers, to be tranferred to the UK. The legal battles included disputes about their entitlement to legal aid support, threatened deportation to Sri Lanka, and the obligation to protect children from harm under British law.

The Home Secretary finally conceded after they issued legal proceedings in the High Court. A government spokesperson said Monday (December 2) that the move to transfer the group to the UK was a "one-off," The Guardian reported.

Tessa Gregory, a solicitor at the legal firm Leigh Day, said she was delighted at the result. "This vulnerable group which includes 16 children have spent 38 months detained in the most squalid of conditions on Crown land... The only sensible solution to end the humanitarian crisis was to bring them here. We hope our clients will now be able to seek safe haven and begin to rebuild their lives."

Six-month horizon

Eight of the Sri Lankan Tamils were reportedly granted international protection while on Diego Garcia. Another three remain on Diego Garcia – two who have criminal convictions and another who is under investigation. The rest have been granted six month’s entry to the UK, during which they are not allowed to work.

One of the group told The Guardian: "I was born the day my parents arrived in a refugee camp in India and have spent my whole life either in the refugee camp in India or in the camp in Diego Garcia. To be a refugee is to lead an incomplete life. The reason we went through this difficult journey is in the hope that our children do not have to be refugees." 

It is not clear what will happen to the group when the six months expire next May.