REFUGEE advocates say they will form a human blockade at a Victorian detention centre to prevent Australia's second deportation of a failed Tamil asylum seeker to Sri Lanka.
The Refugee Action Collective started asking people to physically block entrances and exits to the Maribyrnong detention centre, where the man was being held, on Tuesday night, using social media networks and text messages.
''We have no idea what will happen but there's nothing else we can do but try to stop it,'' the group's spokesman Benjamin Soloway said.
The Tamil man, in his 40s, arrived in February 2010, and had said his brother was a separatist Tamil Tiger fighter in Sri Lanka. He exhausted legal appeals for protection, and had refused to sign the removal orders.
He lost his application for an injunction to the Federal Court on Tuesday almost a week after he was given orders to leave the country. He is expected to be deported on Wednesday.
Mr Soloway said about 12 people attended a vigil outside the detention centre on Tuesday night. ''We fear that if he's deported he will face either imprisonment, torture, persecution. Previous Tamils who have been sent back to Sri Lanka have even lost their lives,'' he said.
Tamil Refugee Council spokesman, Aran Mylvaganam, who revealed the news to the man, said he was in disbelief and distressed along with other Tamil asylum seekers.
''He told me, 'I don't know what to do, I will be dead if I'm sent back','' Mr Mylvaganam said.
A Department of Immigration and Citizenship spokesman said: ''People have the right to protest. We encourage them to protest peacefully.''