REFUGEE

KUNAM has been a civilian for the past five years but he will be branded a Tamil Tiger for the rest of his life by the bullet and shrapnel wounds that scar his body.

The 34-year-old former rebel soldier, who says he cannot stay in one place for more than a week at a time for fear of assassination by government security agents or rival Tamil paramilitary gangs, is waiting in an ever-growing queue to take a direct boat trip to Australia.

He knows nothing of Kevin Rudd's Indonesia solution. In any case for Kunam and many others like him biding their time around Sri Lanka's east coast fishing communities, it doesn't matter: they want to go directly to Australia. As long as they stay out of Indonesian waters, the Indonesian solution is powerless to stop them.

Those operating the boats stay on the high seas to avoid Indonesian territorial waters on the trip to Australia. Their aim is to get caught by Australian authorities, in our area of operation. Organisers in this part of the country refer to the direct Indian Ocean crossing between Batticaloa, on Sri Lanka's east coast, and Christmas Island as a 13-cylinder trip because one cooking cylinder is used up every day feeding the 30 or so asylum-seekers on board before they reach their ultimate destination.

Kunam - using his Tamil Tiger name rather than his real name - missed the last boat that left Batticaloa on October 18 because he was at least 90 minutes' drive from the departure port, and paid-up asylum-seekers were given only 60 minutes' notice to get to the boat before it sailed.

If the 13-cylinder yardstick is accurate, that boat should wash up in Australian waters on the last day of this month, giving Kevin Rudd an unpleasant Halloween surprise.

The first boat to leave this province in recent times arrived in Christmas Island last week carrying 32 mostly Tamil Sri lankans claiming refugee status because of alleged political persecution under the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government. But Kunam says another boat is leaving any day and he is determined to be on it. He is currently in training for the trip, by regularly accompanying a fisherman relative into the "mid-seas" to get his sea legs.

"I have proposed marriage to 20 different women and each one has turned me down because they say they are worried I won't live to see the next day," he tells The Australian in the coconut-strewn backyard of a safe house in Batticaloa province.

He shows me a large puckered bullet entry and exit wound on his right calf, the result of a Sri Lankan government ambush on his eastern province Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam platoon in 1997. He also has shrapnel scars on the front and back of his head, on his back and his hand.

The eastern province was a stronghold of the LTTE until August 2007 when the Sri Lankan military recaptured it.

It finally seized the Tamil Tigers' last northern territory in a bloody climax to the country's 26-year civil war in May.

While crippling security restrictions in the northeast have been lifted in recent months, Kunam says life is still difficult for all Tamils there and impossible for those who once fought with the enemy.

He says he is open to migration to either Britain, Italy or Australia. But the 13-day trip from Batticaloa to Australia's west - which appears to be a new smuggling channel opened up in response to a security crackdown on the traditional Sri Lankan west coast route - is both quicker and cheaper.

"My main intention is to go by boat but I need to go by December. I was told this is peak season now. This is a new channel so it's the right time," he says.