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Sri Lanka + 1 more

Sri Lankans flee horror for poverty, safety in India

By Simon Denyer
MANDAPAM CAMP, India, Sept 1 (Reuters)

  • Fisherman Chinnathambi Ravikumar was returning home from a fishing trip when a sea-battle broke out between the Sri Lankan navy and Tamil Tiger rebels.

A bullet hit Ravikumar in the arm. As he was taken to hospital, thousands of civilians took refuge in the local church in the small town of Pesalai on Sri Lanka's northwestern coast.

That was when the reprisals began.

Men in shorts and t-shirts -- locals say they were naval soldiers -- walked through the town firing at random. A grenade was thrown into the church killing an old woman, fishing boats were burnt, and four fishermen shot on the beach.

"Even today people still sleep in the church," said Ravikumar. "There is fear everywhere."

Ravikumar is one of more than 10,000 Sri Lankan Tamils who have abandoned their homes, their fishing boats and their fields, and made for the safety of Indian shores this year.

Many of them tell of a life of constant fear.

Again and again, the refugees relate the horrific murder of a family of four in the village of Vankalai in northwestern Sri Lanka on June 9.

Moorthy Martin had fled to India in 1990, marrying another refugee there and learning a new trade as a carpenter. His wife worked as a teacher in the refugee camps in India.

In 2004 he flew home, taking advantage of a ceasefire.

But Martin was not used to the horrors of war in his homeland. After three nights sleeping in the church, his family decided they had done nothing wrong and made their way home.

It was a fatal mistake.

FEAR OF THE TIGERS

Men came to his home at night, killed him with a chisel and left his body hanging from the rafters. Again the locals blamed the Sri Lankan army, an accusation it denies.

Martin's wife was allegedly raped and killed. His daughter, 8, and son, 6, were killed, disembowelled and left hanging.

"The army's behaviour is unpredictable," said 42-year-old Pushpam Miranda, a friend of the Martins. "I have young sons and they are not safe when the army is doing the rounds."

Spend a little longer with the refugees, delve a little deeper, and another chilling aspect of the war emerges.

It is not just the Sri Lankan army which they say is terrorising them -- many are also desperately scared of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels who claim to fight on their behalf.

"The LTTE come and force people to join them," one young man told Reuters in Mandapam Camp in southeastern India, before his father gave him a swift nudge in the ribs to shut him up.

"Mostly fear," said another, when asked what Tamils think of the Tigers. "People are caught between the LTTE and the army."

S.C. Chandrahasan has been organising relief for his fellow Sri Lankan refugees in India since fleeing the country in 1983. The Tigers, who are particularly ruthless towards Tamils who do not support them, have tried to kill him several times.

He says many people flee because they fear that an escalation of the conflict will bring the Tigers to their doors looking for fresh recruits.

"It is not generally said -- partly because they don't want to let the side down, and partly out of fear -- but if you penetrate into the question of why they left, most people don't want their children fighting (for the Tigers)," he said.

A TOUGH LIFE IN INDIA

When they arrive in India, the latest batch of Sri Lankan "boat people" find security but a life of poverty.

They join more than 50,000 of their compatriots who have fled previous rounds of fighting in Sri Lanka's two-decade civil war and who are spread across 100 camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Most share the Tamil language and the Hindu religion of their ethnic Tamil brethren in India, but they find themselves occupying society's bottom rung.

The 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber turned many people here against Sri Lankan Tamils, and refugees have faced discrimination and mistrust.

"Today 'refugee' is a pleasant word for many people but 'militant' a very unpleasant word," said Chandrahasan. "But it took us years to make people understand the difference."

Children are educated in the camps, but they have long struggled to be admitted to government-run colleges.

"We get jobs other people don't want to do," said Chandrahasan. "White-collar jobs are not given to us."

Male family heads get a meagre 400 rupees ($9) a month besides subsidised rice and kerosene for cooking.

In Mandapam, they are crammed together in weather-beaten concrete blocks by the sea. Space is fast running out and there is a shortage of water and toilets as new recruits arrive.

Yet, most refugees are philosophical.

"It was a tough decision to leave our boats, our belongings, our property, everything behind and come to a situation that is so uncertain," said Rupamalar, preparing her family's meal by candlelight in one corner of a bare room. "

"But what was important was to be alive."