By CASEY NEILL
AN asylum seeker set himself alight in his Noble Park home over the weekend.
Tamil Refugee Council spokeswoman Sri Samy said an ambulance took the petrol-soaked man, 40, to Dandenong Hospital late on Friday night.
She said his housemates doused the flames quickly, having been alerted to his plan. He suffered minor burns to his leg and was expected to be discharged on Saturday.
The man fled Sri Lanka for Australia by boat in 2012 after security police broke his legs, leaving behind his wife and young daughter.
Ms Samy said he was now on a bridging visa awaiting assessment of his claim for protection and last week learned his brother, who had been in jail for four years, had officially “disappeared”.
Ms Samy works closely with refugees and asylum seekers in the Dandenong area.
“I have had seven young men tell me in the past few weeks that they are thinking of doing this,” she said.
“They are fearful of being sent back to Sri Lanka and say they would prefer to die here than be sent back to torture, which is what the Australian Government is doing to many Tamil asylum seekers.”
The Noble Park incident followed two recent separate incidents of self-immolation by Tamil asylum seekers.
Leo Seemanpillai died after setting himself alight in a Geelong street on 31 May and another man in Sydney survived after receiving burns to 75 per cent of body in April.
“We are very lucky on this occasion that the man’s housemates were aware of what he was planning to do. Otherwise we may have had another death on our hands,” Ms Samy said.
