The Court of Appeal on Tuesday heard a petition challenging the arrest, detention and forced deportation of Jingjing Liao, a Chinese national who was holding a valid tourist visa when she was taken into custody and held at the Welisara Immigration Detention Centre.
According to the petition, Liao’s lawyers spent the entire day on Friday, March 27 at the Department of Immigration and Emigration and at the Welisara camp attempting to obtain her signature on an affidavit and proxy. Court was told immigration officials denied them access to the detention camp until 4pm, leaving the legal team unable to file an action before her deportation went ahead.
Two days later, on Sunday March 29, Liao and 125 other Chinese nationals were flown out of the country on a special flight to China. The petition states her current whereabouts are unknown.
Liao maintains she had not violated her visa conditions and held onward tickets to Malaysia. She did not consent to being returned to China and the petition argues that such forced removal was unlawful.
The matter was first taken up on April 2. At Tuesday’s hearing, the Attorney General’s office, appearing for officers of the Department of Immigration and Emigration, told the court it would file documents to demonstrate that the arrest and detention were lawful. The case is fixed for support on June 2.
Counsel Hafeel Farisz appeared for the petitioner with N.K. Ashokbharan and Prashan Wickramaratne. State Counsel Prabhashanee Jayasekara appeared for the immigration department.
The case is the first court challenge to surface from a wave of Chinese-national arrests and detentions at Welisara that has run alongside BIA cybercrime busts and the 50-person Negombo safehouse arrest earlier in April.
