Many Sri Lankans in danger if sent back, lawyers warn Ninesh Sivansammaddi fled Sri Lanka after witnessing police shoot six villagers. Hundreds of Sri Lankan asylum seekers are being sent home to face persecution because Australian authorities are rushing through refusals of their protection claims, human rights lawyers say. Research conducted in Sri Lanka by Melbourne's Human Rights Law Centre has found immigration authorities are grossly underestimating the country's ongoing danger. Despite the end of a three-decade civil war, it found increasing erosion of the rule of law, reprisals against dissent and one of the highest numbers of "disappearances" in the world - about two a month - second only to Iran. Almost 80 Sri Lankan asylum seekers who arrived by boat on October 11 were flown home last week, bringing the number of people returned to Sri Lanka to nearly 1400 since mid-2012. A young Tamil asylum seeker living in Braybrook, in Melbourne's west, says he fled Sri Lanka after witnessing police shoot six villagers, killing two. He fears he will be killed if deported. Ninesh Sivansammaddi said he hid at a relative's house while police hunted him. The 21-year-old said he boarded a boat bound for Australia when police officers threatened and bashed his father to find his whereabouts. Mr Sivansammaddi felt he was unable to tell immigration authorities his full story after being ordered to keep his answers short during his first interview in Perth, and his claim was rejected. Although he was permitted to challenge the ruling, the Refugee Review Tribunal rejected the appeal, partly because he came to rely on facts he had failed to mention during the first interview. "They don't believe me ... they don't believe me about my dad or that the police are chasing me still," he said. I am too scared to live in my country. They will definitely kill me. And they will be even more angry I came to Australia. In a move that will further speed deportations, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has ordered "enhanced screening" of Sri Lankan boat arrivals that would allow for rejection after a single interview without legal advice. Under Labor, a similar screen-out policy applied to Sri Lankans, but it was not enforced on those arriving in Australia from third countries. "Australia is able to determine fairly quickly whether there is a genuine protection obligation ... and the matter is finalised and the action is taken and then people were removed as appropriate, and that's how it works," Mr Morrison said. People should understand if you come to Australia on a boat, particularly if you come from some place like Sri Lanka, then you will face that. Human Rights Law Centre research director Emily Howie has slammed the use of the screen-out policy, saying there was "no room for short cuts" in processing the life-and-death decisions of Sri Lankans' asylum claims. "The government has said it will endeavour to turn people around within 48 hours, and that's really worrying when we're talking about a country like Sri Lanka that has ongoing persecution," she said. People might be at risk when returned, so we need to provide them every opportunity to have their cases heard and to be heard properly.