Tirumagal is sweeping the yard. The yard of an ordinary house in the palm trees.

She, her husband and their three-year-old daughter are back home in Trincomalee from their war-time suffering and from Menik Farm.

The largest and most controversial of Sri Lanka's refugee camps, Menik Farm holds about a quarter of a million Tamils who fled the war zone in the final weeks as the government finally vanquished the Tamil Tigers or LTTE.

No-one is automatically allowed to leave the camp. But Tirumagal's family were among the first few hundred sent home by the authorities in early August to four districts in the east and north.

Like others at Menik, they had earlier been caught in the Tiger-held zone during the war's final spasms - a shrinking sliver of land between a lagoon and the sea.

Life in the zone of hostilities was a nightmare.

Hospital shelled

"One day I was getting ready to get some high-nutrition food for my daughter," she told me.

"Then I changed my mind and didn't go that day. But I saw people queuing up to get it from the clinic, several hundred of them.

"They were shelled. Just in that shelling 75 people were killed and many more injured. I only escaped because I'd changed my mind."

For many Tamil people, the past few months have been highly traumatic

The UN says that the Tigers forcibly stopped people from leaving and that the army shelled civilian areas.

The dignified young woman says she does not know who did what. She did, however, hear stories of the Tigers shooting people and of a hospital being shelled.

She looks calm throughout our interview but her voice constantly breaks with emotion, betraying her trauma.

"Because of the fighting and shelling we moved into the no-fire zone. But we got shelled there.

"People got killed and injured. We wanted to get back to the place we'd come from. We just moved from place to place, taking nothing but the tent and a few utensils and some rice to cook, if possible.

"We started digging bunkers. But where the sand was too soft we couldn't."

Out on the beach near Trincomalee, Tamil fishermen prepare their nets for the day's outing, the sun's rays fierce even at 7am.

Their colourful boat is heaved into the water.

It is a reassuring everyday scene, not very far down the coast from the former war zone where catastrophe reigned until May this year.

'Terrible'

We meet another refugee who also left Menik Farm last month, 61-year-old Sadasivam.

He and his wife were trapped in Tiger-held land while visiting their children there back in 2006. As the war restarted, the rebels would not give the family a pass to leave.

We all lived under their [the Tamil Tiger] regime, you couldn't avoid having some kind of participation in their activities Tirumagal

"Life there was terrible," he recalls. "We had no idea what would happen."

From January onwards, constant shelling forced them to move their shelter five times.

"Wherever we dug bunkers, there was the smell of dead bodies."

In April their injured grandson and his mother were evacuated in a ship by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Then, on 9 May, Sadasivam was wounded.

"A shell landed. There was fire. My son-in-law's auto-rickshaw was parked and it caught fire.

"Then I saw the blood on my thighs. I was injured.

"I managed to come to the place called Mullivaikkal with the help of others. We started digging another L-shaped bunker and we put up a tent and stayed there.

"As we were putting up our tent, I saw dead bodies lying around. I saw the wounded people being loaded into a tractor and taken somewhere to be treated."

Extraordinary exodus

In mid-May the army arrived. It evacuated them in the endgame of the war.

Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in makeshift camps

Tirumagal had left a month earlier when the armed forces breached a Tiger rampart.

The extraordinary exodus of thousands across the lagoon was captured by cameras on unmanned air force planes, the images beamed around the world.

On the ground, outlandish rumours were swirling around, says Tirumagal.

"There was one story that men and women would have to walk naked for one kilometre before they got into the hands of the military. Hearing all this we were scared to cross over.

"But on 20 April we heard an announcement: 'Come to our area.' We weren't sure who was saying it but we decided to leave.

"There had been continuous shelling for two days. I wondered whether we would be able to cross the lagoon and get to the government area alive. We were lucky. Three of us managed to leave and cross the lagoon."

At the house in the coconut grove, Tirumagal's kindly elderly relatives - who themselves were war refugees earlier - give us tea.

Life is getting more normal. She tells the BBC about Menik Farm, the vast complex of camps to which she, Sadasivam and countless other Tamil refugees were taken.

'Things improved'

"When we came to Menik Farm there was no water. Then my daughter had diarrhoea and she and I both had flu for six weeks.

Trincomalee was once at the centre of the Tamil Tiger insurgency

"I used to stand in the queue every day but there were thousands of people queuing up for the hospitals. I couldn't get a number for a doctor."

Tirumagal says that for the last two days in the war zone there was nothing to eat. At the camp, the army fed them but food remained in short supply at first.

"But later on we were given cooked food, then vegetables and rations to cook. So things improved."

Sadasivam agrees that is true, but only from a starting point where there were no basic facilities.

There have been uncorroborated accounts of some refugees being "disappeared" or abducted from the camps by shadowy paramilitaries. But he says he has not heard of any such thing happening.

I asked him about the screening process. The government says it has weeded out 10,000 former rebels and is still working on the exercise.

"When we all came to the big camp they made announcements, saying that if anyone had connections with the LTTE we should be separated and queue up separately," the elderly man says.

"They wanted to register those people and gave them numbers. They got separated."

Since July the Red Cross has had no access to these people, or indeed to Menik Farm. It is not clear how many of those detained are alleged fighters or those who, in the government's words, are simply "mentally" connected with them.

Tirumagal says it is a fact that many were entangled with the Tigers - but not necessarily through choice. For instance, her own husband was severely injured years ago in an LTTE bomb.

"So he's disabled. But we also had to pay money to the Tigers saying we couldn't take up arms or be part of their operations because he's disabled.

"When we all lived under their regime, you couldn't avoid having some kind of participation in their activities."

As screening continues, hundreds of thousands remain inside Menik Farm.

Many of those who have left still have close relatives inside and are not sure when they'll get out. They live in hope.

After years and months of indignity and trauma, Sadasivam and the other returned refugees display dignity above anything else.

They have returned to their homes in a still volatile corner of an unstable island.

At least the war is over, and they are no longer fugitives.

CHENNAI: Colombo’s post-war assurances of peace notwithstanding, most Sri Lankan refugees living in Tamil Nadu prefer not to return to the island nation — and are keen to make TN their home.
Factors such as total military control over all Tamilmajority territories, improper rehabilitation of those who have gone back in the last few months and increasing activities of different armed Tamil groups in the wake of a decimated LTTE are dissuading them from returning. The recent rearrests and unannounced detention of Tamil youths who had been released from IDP camps in Lanka have added to their worry.

An inmate from Ramanatha puram’s Mandapam Camp says, “My three young relatives were recently released from Manik Farm, but were re-arrested by Lankan policemen in the Mannar district few days ago. I feel really fearful.” Says another inmate from Sivaganga district: “We came here as children and have now acquainted ourselves with the place. Relocating to a place where we have to start from scratch won’t be wise.” At Puzhal camp, a group of youngsters say that they are optimistic about the future because of the state government’s promises to improve their living conditions.

Nearly 1.7 lakh Tamil IDPs have been resettled in their native places, a Sri Lankan minister has said, adding that the process of rehabilitation is being hampered by the ongoing demining operation in the country's northern part.

"A total of 1,69,938 IDPs have been resettled in their native places within a short period providing them along with provision of health, shelter, sanitary, education, water, electricity and other facilities in their villages," Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights Mahinda Samarasinghe was quoted as saying by the state-owned Daily News yesterday.

The number of IDPs in welfare villages has come down to 1,12,062 from 2,82,000, he added.

Samarasinghe said the government will resettle most of the remaining IDPs by December 31.

Sri Lanka's government freed hundreds of thousands of Tamils from vast internment camps in the north of the island Tuesday – prompted as much by upcoming elections as concerns over human rights, say analysts.

In May, when the Army finally routed the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from their northern stronghold, much of the population of that area – close to 300,000 people - was imprisoned in overcrowded camps. Tuesday morning, fewer than half that number were thought to remain.

As conditions deteriorated, international pressure mounted, along with warnings that continued detainment would make reconciliation between the island's Tamil minority and Sinhalese majority increasingly elusive. That ethnic conflict was the root of the LTTE's long war against the government.

But internal politics are likely to have done more to secure the freedom of the northern Tamils than foreign pressure.

"[For] the first time in a long time, the government has been forced to focus on the minorities," says Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

That change was ushered in last month, when Sri Lanka's Army chief, Gen. Sarath Fonseka, stepped down as head of the military and announced he would run as the opposition candidate against President Mahindra Rajapakse in general elections in January.

President Rajapakse had called an early election to take advantage of the popularity garnered by his historic defeat of the LTTE. But analysts say General Fonseka's bid threatens to split the president's Sinhalese voter base – forcing Rajapakse to court the vote of the Tamil minority.

Fonseka, an ardent Sinhalese nationalist, has also sought to play to Tamil and moderate sentiments, voicing concern over the current situation of the refugees. In his letter of resignation as head of the Army, he criticized both the "appalling conditions" in the camps and the president's failure to reconcile Sri Lanka's Tamils and Sinhalese.

Mr. Perera says it is questionable whether minorities will back Fonseka, who led a brutal military crackdown on the LTTE in which thousands of civilian Tamils were killed, although "my own belief is that they will be prepared to back someone new," he says.

"His standing for the polls is good for the country, because he has strengthened the opposition," he adds.

FREED TAMILS: TOUGH JOURNEY HOME

Many of the newly freed Tamils face a difficult task returning to their villages hundreds of miles away from the camps in which they have lived for months.

Mr. Perera said their journeys home would not be as easy as the government had suggested, as roads were blocked and there was little public transport. He added that the government's handout of 5,000 rupees ($43) per household was entirely inadequate for people returning to homelands decimated by war, with ruined buildings and patchy sanitation.

Experts also say that with much of the north still dangerously mined, many Tamils will choose to remain in the camps for now.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's government still has to prove that it is serious about bringing lasting peace by giving Tamils some form of political autonomy.

Over the weekend, Sri Lanka was blocked from hosting the next meeting of Commonwealth leaders in protest of Colombo's military repression of Tamils during the last phase of fighting.

Australia and Britain united to block Sri Lanka's bid for the 2011 summit, which it had formally submitted in 2007. That meeting will now be hosted by Australia.

––

ABOUT 130,000 Sri Lankan Tamil war refugees held in guarded camps have been allowed freedom of movement for the first time since the civil war ended more than six months ago.

The military officer in charge of the giant camp at Manik Farm, Major-General Kamal Gunaratne, told the Herald yesterday it had been ''declared an open camp''.

''There are no restrictions on freedom of movement,'' he said. ''They can go out, they can visit their friends and relatives then they can come back.''

Thousands of Tamils were taken to Manik Farm after they fled fighting between government troops and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

At the end of the 25-year civil war in May, about 280,000 people were kept under guard behind barbed wire fences at the camp.

The Government said this was necessary while security forces screened the refugees for former combatants and cleared war-ravaged villages of mines and other contaminants. But the United Nations and human rights groups condemned the camps.

As the months have passed, the Government has come under increasing pressure to give residents more freedoms.

Most Tamils at Manik Farm will remain there for now while they await resettlement in their home villages. Officials estimate about 128,000 are still waiting to be returned home.

The Herald was given rare access to the camp last month and heard many refugees say they were tired of living in tents and wanted to leave as soon as possible.

But much of the north was devastated by the fighting and littered with minefields, and basic services such as transport, health and education are yet to be fully restored.

''Until such time that their respective villages have been declared cleared, many of them will have to stay at Manik Farm,'' General Gunaratne said.

''There is no restriction on their freedom of movement [but] they should come back until their respective villages are ready to be occupied.''

The Government, which faces elections in January, has stepped up the process of returning people in the past two months.

Last month local officials told the Herald that about 4000 people were being returned to their villages each day. Many of those at Manik Farm have also been allowed to leave the camp to live with relatives in towns such as Jaffna not affected by recent fighting.

General Gunaratne said authorities would ensure all those displaced by the war were resettled by the end of January. Those who leave Manik Farm are given a modest government grant and provisions including food, tarpaulins and corrugated iron to assist with their resettlement.

Many return to badly damaged homes and poor employment prospects. And some Tamils, especially in the north, fear discrimination and harassment following the Tigers' defeat.

Since the end of the war there has been a sharp rise in the number of Tamils trying to reach Australia by boat in the hope of political asylum.

If Sri Lanka's postwar reconstruction falters, more disaffected Tamils might attempt a voyage to Australia.

In a sign of Canberra's concern about this prospect, the Prime Minister's special envoy to Sri Lanka, John McCarthy, visited Manik Farm and several villages being resettled in the region last month.

Sri Lanka asked the United Nations for help resettling civilians displaced by the country’s civil war as a UN envoy visited camps where mainly Tamil refugees have lived since the defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels in May.

The number of displaced people is “declining on a daily basis due to the rapid pace of the resettlement process,” Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama toldJohn Holmes, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, in Colombo. The country needs help clearing mines from conflict zones and building infrastructure in the north, he said late yesterday.

Holmes said the government should work on the process of reconciliation, according to the Defense Ministry Web site.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government says more than half of the 280,000 displaced people have left the transit camps where they were held after the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated, ending a 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in September that prolonging the detention of the civilians risks increasing bitterness in the Tamil community.

The government has cited the need to clear mines and ensure security in the north as a reason for delaying the release of people from the camps. The government said at the weekend that 137,000 people remain in the centers.

January Deadline

The settlement program may be completed by the end of January next year, the government says. About 28,000 civilians have been returned to homes in the Kilinochchi district in the north, an area that was heavily mined as the LTTE had its headquarters in Kilinochchi town. Civilians are also returning to areas in Mullaitivu district on the northeastern coast, the site of the last battle between the army and Tamil Tigers.

More than 1,000 health workers are operating in the transit camps and surrounding areas, Bogollagama told Holmes. Special attention is being paid to rehabilitate child soldiers and former Tamil Tiger combatants, he said.

Holmes is scheduled to meet with Rajapaksa in Colombo tomorrow, according to the UN.

The government yesterday eased security controls for people traveling from the north to Colombo in the south, the Defense Ministry said. The move “fortifies the reconciliation efforts undertaken,” it said.

Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake said last week that state of emergency regulations will remain in force in the country because the “shadows of terrorism” still exist after the LTTE’s defeat.

Travel Alerts

Japan relaxed a travel alert for its citizens planning to visit Northern Province, the embassy in Colombo said in an e- mailed statement today. A recommendation for people to “defer all travel” is now changed to a recommendation to “consider whether or not to travel,” it said.

The U.K. still advises its citizens against all travel to Sri Lanka’s north, according to the Foreign Office Web site. The State Department’s alert“specifically warns Americans against travel to the Northern Province,” citing the presence of mines and the possibility of renewed insurgent attacks.

Government ministers have told Western nations to stop criticizing the slow pace of settling civilians and highlighting alleged human rights abuses in the civil war and help the South Asian country’s development and security.

Countries criticizing Sri Lanka are expecting changes “to happen overnight,” Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa said at the weekend.

Sri Lanka’s central bank forecasts the island’s $41 billion economy will grow as much as 6 percent next year after expanding about 3.5 percent in 2009, helped by rebuilding efforts after the war. Colombo’s All-Share Index hasoutperformed all other benchmarks in Asia this year with a 98 percent gain, buoyed by the end to the conflict that killed about 90,000 people.

UN c

UN aid chief John Holmes says those who have returned are glad UN humanitarian chief John Holmes has confirmed that more than half the Tamils who were in refugee camps in northern Sri Lanka have now left them. The camps were set up to house Tamils who fled the final stages of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war, which ended in May. Mr Holmes, who has just visited the area, said fewer than 135,000 people now remained in the camps. The government had been under pressure to speed up their resettlement. Mr Holmes said it was clear those who had been able to go home were glad to be going back to their villages. "I welcome very much the recent paces of releases and returns of internally displaced people from the camps. It's very good to see that the number of people in the Menik Farm camp, the main camp, is now just under half what it was at its peak," he told the BBC. "That process of releases and returns is continuing and… that's extremely welcome." 'Lack of consultation' He expressed the hope that the issue of freedom of movement for those remaining in the camps would be tackled soon - and said the Sri Lankan government had indicated some flexibility on this. And he still had concerns about the nature of the returns process; there had been some lack of consultation with the Tamils themselves, and with the UN. It has been a difficult year for relations between Sri Lanka and the UN Mr Holmes said the safety of the returnees, and their access to basic services, had to be ensured. "They face major problems in terms of shelter. Most of the houses I think which people have left, they find in ruins when they return so there are big issues there," he said. His trip has taken in the areas most scarred by the conflict and its aftermath - including the displacement camps near Vavuniya, and Jaffna, once held by the Tamil Tiger rebels. The rebels started fighting in the 1970s for a separate state in Sri Lanka's north and east, arguing that Tamils had been discriminated against by successive majority Sinhalese governments. Resettlement from the camps has been so rapid that the Tamil National Alliance, a pro-Tiger party, has accused the government of abandoning people without proper infrastructure. Schools and other facilities in Vavuniya town are now reported to be overcrowded. The BBC Colombo correspondent says this has been a difficult year in UN-Sri Lankan relations and Mr Holmes is sticking to quiet diplomacy so far, with meetings with top officials on his agenda after he returns from the north.

Responding to a young journalism student this week, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd maintained that his Government's actions on the Oceanic Viking abided by the letter of the Refugee Convention. Perhaps. But what about its spirit?
Last week in Bambalapitya, a middle-class suburb in the heart of Colombo, a mentally ill Tamil boy was beaten to death in the sea by a group of men with wooden sticks. Hundreds of people watched. The boy had been throwing stones at a police station before he jumped into the sea. His agonising death was captured on video in what Sri Lanka's former ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Dayan Jayatilleka, described as ''our Rodney King moment''.
On the citizen journalism site Groundviews, Marisa de Silva made the crucial connections: ''If cold-blooded murder can take place in the heart of Colombo in broad daylight, in front of a crowd, we can only wonder what happened on bloody battlefields in the Vanni, with no one left to tell the tale.''
She describes Sri Lankans as living in a spectator state, a people so inured to and benumbed by brutality and violence that they contemplate in silence the spectacle of people being disappeared (the ''white van syndrome'' refers to people taken away in unmarked white vehicles and neither seen nor heard from again); the attacks on journalists, lawyers and academics of all ethnic groups who dare voice dissent; and the horrific fate of those ensnared in the refugee camps in the north-east of the country.
It is only a few months since Australian James Elder, UNICEF's chief of media and external relations, was expelled from Sri Lanka for his comments on the camps. Other human rights observers and independent journalists too have been turned away. This is the place to which Rudd dispatched Foreign Minister Stephen Smith to work out a collaborative arrangement to ''stop the boats''. Is there no moral threshold our leaders are unwilling to cross to feed the manufactured panic they themselves have created?
The Age reported last month that Australian funds will be used to install surveillance cameras at Colombo's international airport to deter asylum seekers. The measure suggests the extent of our Government's willingness to collude with a violent and vindictive regime. At the same time, it indicates a confused policy approach, as this is surely an encouragement for people who fear persecution to clamber onto a leaky boat.
The Rudd Government's declaration that new pathways for ''unskilled migration'' will be opened up further contributes to the possibility of persecution by sustaining the fiction that those on the Oceanic Viking and the Jaya Lestari are ''economic migrants''. In fact, many are highly skilled migrants and are, as we know, already UNHCR-certified refugees.
The streets of Bambalapitiya are very well known to me. For a short while my family lived not far from there. It was on Galle Road that a man I can only assume was a Tamil ultra-nationalist slapped me on the head one day for behaviour unbefitting a Tamil woman - I was dressed in jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt. Perhaps he knew, too, that I was married to a Sinhala man. Anti-Tamil violence marked the week of our wedding. I left Sri Lanka later that year, first to live in the US as a student, and later to live in Australia.
Unlike the members of my extended family, I escaped the anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983. Some of my cousins and friends lost everything they owned and were lucky not to be burned along with their houses. During the long years of the war, I supported neither the murderous Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam nor the murderous Sri Lankan government: I had the prerogative of choice, a luxury many Tamils, especially in the war-torn north and east, could not afford.
That luxury to choose, perhaps the greatest of our prerogatives, is one that some Australians, too, are exercising in the face of the ethical dilemma that confronts us. The Maritime Union of Australia, whose members have worked on the frontline aboard the Oceanic Viking, collected a $10,000 donation to be presented to the refugees, as a gesture of solidarity and empathy. With demonisation of asylum seekers once again a popular sport, this gesture sends a strong signal that counters the fearmongering of our official leaders and casts doubt on the claim made by Piers Ackerman on the ABC TV Insiders program that asylum seekers put the lives of Australian sailors at risk.
As we celebrate the images of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the rush of East German refugees to freedom, what of the refugees at our borders, of the children still aboard the Jaya Lestari, a boat turned back by the Indonesian navy at our PM's request? The Refugee Convention of 1951 was agreed on by world leaders to prevent the situation all too common in the lead-up to World War II: boatloads of Jewish refugees from Germany, turned away from successive European and American ports.
To what lengths are Australians willing to be led by a historical anxiety over invasion and the ''natural right to secure borders'' to which our leaders lay claim? Is it time to face this fear for what it is - a form of aggression against the most vulnerable to shore up our own sense of power? Unless we begin to question the imperative that we must stop the boats at any price, might we too be in danger of becoming our own kind of ''spectator state''?
Suvendrini Perera is an academic at Curtin University, and author of Australia and the Insular Imagination. With John Stratton she recently edited a special issue of Continuum, ''The Border, the Asylum Seeker and the State of Exception''.
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One of the 76 Sri Lankans onboard a migrant ship intercepted off the West Coast last month was a key player in a Tamil Tiger network that transported weapons from North Korea to Sri Lanka, says a terrorism expert who is advising Canada on what to do with the men.

Rohan Gunaratna, whose credibility is under fire from lawyers for the migrants, made the assertion in a recent telephone interview. He also defended his claim that many of the migrants are Tamil Tigers – not refugees – who came to Canada to regroup after their defeat in a decades-long civil war with the Sri Lanka government.

Lawyers for the men have criticized Mr. Gunaratna, who heads a think tank in Singapore, as anti-Tamil. Others point out that he rarely identifies his sources. But he is a widely sought-after expert on terrorism, and is the chief adviser to Canadian authorities who are trying to determine if the 76 migrants are refugees who would face persecution in post-war Sri Lanka or defeated terrorists seeking a haven in Canada.

His views on the men, their ship and their rationale for sailing to Canada are outlined in a 109-page document submitted to the Immigration and Refugee Board, which is holding detention hearings for the 76 migrants. To date, all but one remain in custody in a Vancouver-area detention centre.

In the interview, Mr. Gunaratna said he looks forward to the cross-examination at the Immigration and Refugee Board, and reiterated his assertion that many of the migrant men are members of the Tamil Tigers, which is listed as a terrorist organization in Canada.

In fact, he said, one of the passengers was a key player in the Tamil Tiger shipping network that for years transported weapons and explosives from North Korea to the Tiger militants. Many of those ships were destroyed by the Sri Lankan government in the war, he said.

Another man, who is wanted by Interpol, was a Tiger intelligence officer who helped procure electronic equipment such as GPS devices and night-vision equipment for the separatists, Mr. Gunaratna said.

The individuals can't be named because of a publication ban imposed by the Immigration and Refugee Board.

The migrants arrived on Oct. 17 off the West Coast aboard the Princess Easwary. Mr. Gunaratna said the ship was owned and operated by the Tamil Tigers and was one of the few to survive the war.

When the rebels were defeated last spring, they decided to use the Princess Easwary to move former Tamil Tigers from Southeast Asia to Canada, he said. Other ships carrying Tamil migrants have showed up off the coasts of Indonesia and Australia, but the Princess Easwary was always destined for Canada, he said.

“They [Tamil Tigers] want to reorganize and regroup themselves,” Mr. Gunaratna said. “They see Canada as a place where they can do that. There has been a tradition in Canada of being soft on terrorism. There is no better place for Tamil Tigers to reconstitute than in Canada. They chose Canada as their destination.”

Lawyer Lorne Waldman, who represents at least 15 of the migrants, questioned Mr. Gunaratna claims. “In my view, given his background, he is very closely connected to the Sinhalese government,” he said. “Undoubtedly, he is providing information that was provided by the Sinhalese government and in my view, anything that comes from them is highly suspect.”

Mr. Gunaratna's assertions have been submitted to the IRB, which is trying to determine the identities and motives of the migrants. The men, many of whom have relatives in Canada's large Tamil community, have made refugee claims.

Reports from some human rights groups and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have documented abuses by the Sri Lankan government against its Tamil population, especially in the final months of the war. Today, hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians are in internment camps.

However, other security experts agree with Mr. Gunaratna and believe the 76 migrants may be the first wave of defeated Tamil Tigers fleeing to Canada.

“The LTTE needs a place to reorganize and they need it quickly,” said Tom Quiggin, an Ottawa security expert and senior fellow with Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. “This means Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK. Given the generous reception that terrorist groups such as the LTTE have received in the past in Canada, it makes sense that they would try again here. Canada in the past has been identified as a safe haven for terrorist fundraising and organizational work.

Sri Lanka said 164,000 civilians displaced by the civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels remain in camps in the north and the government intends to reduce the number to less than 50,000 by the end of January.

“We are now moving with incremental swiftness” to settle people from the camps, Rajiva Wijesinha, the secretary at the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said late yesterday, according to the government’s Web site.

More than 280,000 mainly Tamil civilians have been held in the camps since the army defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in May, ending the group’s 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka’s north and east. The U.S. and United Nations are leading international calls for the swift release of the displaced people.

The need to ensure security in the north, the slow pace of clearing mines from former conflict zones and a lack of infrastructure as a result of the war are delaying the program to settle the civilians, Wijesinha said.

“The pressure from the West was quite extensive” to get people out of the camps, he said, adding that countries such as India, Pakistan and China understood the security concerns of the government in Colombo.

“These countries also had questions about the refugees and their rehabilitation, and a political map for the devolution process, but they did not pressure us,” Wijesinha said.

Caught in Fighting

The army defeated the last LTTE forces in a battle on the northeastern coast in May. Tens of thousands of civilians were caught between the rebels and army units.

Sri Lanka rejected comments in September by Navi Pillay, the UN Human Rights commissioner, that the Tamils are being held in “conditions of internment.”

Last month, more than 10,000 people were resettled around Kilinochchi, the northern town where the LTTE had its headquarters. The area was heavily mined and had to be cleared, the government said at the time.

An estimated 1.5 million mines and unexploded ordnance contaminated 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of the north when the war ended, Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka’s army commander, said Oct. 27.

While army units in the north will be reduced in time, they “cannot be removed” because of the danger of the LTTE’s possible resurgence, Wijesinha said. The group’s revival is unlikely without foreign intervention, he said.

The conflict left about 90,000 people dead between 1983 and this year, the secretary said.

Separatist Threat

Sri Lanka is still threatened by separatist forces, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a speech Oct. 19. The government’s war on terrorism was based on achieving an “undivided country, a national consensus and an honorable peace,” he said.

Tamils make up almost 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 20 million people. Sinhalese account for 74 percent, according to a 2001 census.

While the government is committed to devolving some power to minorities, federalism is ruled out, Wijesinha.

“There is a danger of legitimization of separatism” in a federal structure in a country like Sri Lanka, he said.

Rajapaksa last week named a five-member committee that will investigate a U.S. State Department report on alleged human rights violations in the last weeks of the war, including the shelling of civilians by the army and the LTTE using civilians as hostages. The team consists of lawyers and a university chancellor, the government said at the time.

Sri Lanka has already responded to 99.9 percent of the allegations, Mahinda Samarasinghe, the minister for disaster management and human rights, said last week. The government has described the U.S. report as “unsubstantiated.”

The State Department said last week the abuses listed in the report are based mostly on reporting by the U.S. embassy in Sri Lanka, international organizations and the media and are “credible.”

By Stanley Perera from Melbourne
My dear law makers of Australia,

I wish to express my deep concern on the current issue of Sri Lankan Tamil boat people arriving in leaky boats seeking refuge in Australia.

Human smuggling is a very lucrative business to-day. There is an over one million bogus Tamil refugees residing in European countries. There is approximately half a million bogus Tamil refugees living in Canada. In Australia their numbers could be anything over three hundred thousand. These bogus Tamil refugees are well organised to support the terrorism in Sri Lanka. They spend all their time in propaganda campaign against Sri Lanka. The Tamil Diaspora has infiltrated into the UNO, International News Media, Politics local, National and International level, church and every institution that can be influenced. They employ politicians, journalists and many other influensive people in their propaganda campaign against Sri Lanka. Obama and Hillary Clinton’s election campaign was also funded by this Tamil Diaspora to describe the world’s most ruthless Terrorist group LTTE as good terrorists who are proscribed in 32 countries except Australia. Bishop TuTu was influenced to make a statement to deface Sri Lanka to draw sympathy on the Terrorists.

Amnesty International was influenced to harass Sri Lankan Cricket team at Barbados in the World Cup to the extent that Sri Lankan team had to bat in rain and in pitched dark. Australian cricketers made the second world record after the UNDER ARM RECORD.

Until 1948 and during the British colonial times Tamils in Sri Lanka enjoyed the privileged minority status and dominated the civil service discriminating and depriving the majority Sinhalese of English education and civil service. Vast majority of the Sri Lankan Tamils were brought into the then CEYLON from Tamil Nadu as cheap plantation labourers. Colonial masters conned the Tamils to come to Ceylon. They said that dried fish (Maldive Fish) is growing under the tea bushes in Ceylon. Lot more Tamils came into the country as illegal immigrants. After the independence in 1948 when Sri Lanka government enforced the equal opportunity to all Sri Lankans with free education to all, Tamils began to resist when they lost their privileged minority status. THIS IS THE BEGINING OF THE CONFLICT SITUATION. Indira Gandhi added fuel to the burning fire by giving birth to the made in India Tamil Tiger Terrorists to conduct terrorist activities in Sri Lanka.

In Sri Lanka out of the total population of 22,000,000 only 3.5% are Tamil people. In India there is over 60,000,000 Tamils in the State of Tamil Nadu. All the Tamils are united in setting up of a separate state called Ellam in Sri Lanka claiming 2/3 of the coast line. Sri Lanka is an independent country.

Nordic and some European countries to-gether with the Catholic Church supported the Tamils in their campaign against Sri Lanka.

After the Rudd government relaxed the border security policy, Australia is experiencing a huge influx of leaky boats filled with bogus refugees arriving in our shores. This is a well organised smuggling racket by the Tamil refugees settled in Australia. To justify the bogus Tamil refugee arrival, Tamils in Australia are conducting a smear campaign to accuse Sri Lanka of genocide, war crimes and human rights violation. It is a part of their propaganda campaign. Tamil Diaspora is funding the human smugglers. These bogus Tamil refugees are housed in Malaysia where there is a well established communication system with the Tamils in Australia. THESE TAMIL REFUGEES ARE NOT BRINGING INTO THE COUNTRY WITH THEM OF ANY SKILLS AT ALL. THE ONLY SKILL THEY ARE IN POSSESSION IS MOURN AND GROAN, WINGE AND WINGE AND RIPPING OFF THE SYSTEM. THEY ARE AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE TO THE DECENT LIVING TAMIL PEOPLE. THESE BOGUS REFUGEES ARE AN ABSOLUTE LIABILITY TO THE AUSTRALIAN TAX PAYERS.

GREEN BOB BROWN

My dear Bob how big is your back yard? How many Tamil votes you are expecting to vote you in the forth coming by-election. I smell a rat in you Bob.

WEST AUSTRALIAN PREMIER BARNET

You said that it is the responsibility of Australia to take those Sri Lankan Tamils on the boat in Indonesia to Australia. You are wrong Bob. It is the responsibility of Sri Lanka to take them back to Sri Lanka. Do you think you are some kind of a god to tell the world what is good for you? You have no free access to the public purse. You and Bob Brown are not accountable to the taxpayers while you two are rolling on luxuries at the expense of the taxpayers. It looks to me one parasite is supporting another parasite.

THE PACFIC SOLUTION

Rudd Government’s Pacific solution is falling apart. Indonesian solution is not working. Howard government border protection policy worked very well bringing the bogus asylum seekers to a trickle. These asylum seekers do not want to work. At least for ten years they cannot get into the workforce. Their only intention is to bludge the taxpayers. Indonesian solution is only duplicating the Christmas Island Camps.

SRI LANKAN SOLUTION.

Australia is planning to send a special envoy to Sri Lanka to discuss some arrangements. It is my wish to suggest in brief arranging bilateral agreement with Sri Lanka to: 1. that Sri Lankan Navy with Australian border protection naval and aerial frigate commence a patrolling scheme in the Sri Lanka’s coastal area to intercept any asylum seekers.

2. That all asylum seekers arriving in Australian border to be taken to Sri Lanka and process their refugee applications in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has the capacity to accommodate up to 300,000 refugees. Already Sri Lanka has rescued 300,000 Tamil Civilians taken hostage by the Tamil Terrorists. Those Tamil IDP camps are becoming vacant by the day. Lord Nesby from the UK, Banky Moon from the UNO, politicians from the Tamil Nadu State have visited those IDP camps and expressed that the facilities provided by Sri Lanka are satisfactory although they are not five star luxuries.

Sri Lanka will be too pleased to accept its responsibility to receive the asylum seekers and rehabilitate them and blend them in with the community. They are Sri Lankan people and blend in well back in their culture, religion and their own community.

If this concept is put in to practise one or more of the following can happen:

1. Asylum seekers arriving in Australia will drop down to zero overnight along with the first shipment of human cargo despatched to Sri Lanka.

2. Tamil Diaspora with the church and bleeding hearts will scream their heads off of genocide and human rights violation in Sri Lanka. They will go on hunger strike with hamburgers hidden under the pillow.

3. Bob Brown with all other do gooders,bleeding hearts,church ,AI, BBC, ABC will be out of work.

4. Australia can provide its best service to rehabilitate the bogus asylum seekers.

5. Tamil Diaspora will be dismantled or make some other avenues to fill their pockets.

6. Those hired politicians and vociferous professional gang on the payroll of the LTTE will be out of work.

The most important factor is in this critical situation, Rudd government must be very firm with these bogus asylum seekers. If any leniency is shown please be informed that there are 65,000,000 Tamils waiting to jump into the next available leaky boat.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

Stanley Perera.

Melbourne, Australia

t has been likened to a huge new city in the jungle.
Rapidly built up for the Tamil refugee influx last spring, Menik Farm has pylons, banks, even cash machines - and thousands upon thousands of tents in the cleared arid lands west of Vavuniya in northern Sri Lanka.
Since my earlier visit in April, the camp has swollen to cover some 10 zones, the number of camp-dwellers has ballooned to a quarter of a million, while over 20,000 have been resettled or more informally released, the government says.
There is no water to drink - there is no water to bathe - we are going to die here
Refugee at Menik Farm
This was the BBC's first chance to view all this infrastructure close-up.
In Zone 2, apparently the most overcrowded, a network of drainage ditches has been built which the government says will prevent flooding in the coming monsoon season.
Shops and little stalls line the straight roads. The stalls are a rare chance for camp-dwellers to earn a bit of cash. The shops were run by the government, we were told.
Even though, according to those we met, many people cannot afford to shop in them, the facilities help give an air of normality to parts of the camp.
Distressing conversations
A government intensely sensitive to outside criticism or suggestions, and wary of any outsider's intentions in wanting to visit the camps, was now giving the BBC admittance, alongside the UK's Development Minister, Mike Foster. That in itself seemed like notable progress.
Officials say people cannot go back to areas where landmines remain
And yet, just five minutes of conversation with the camp-dwellers was deeply distressing.
Starting by talking to us through our car-window, women, one after the other, piled on tales of hopelessness in the Tamil language.
Each wanted her turn at the microphone to speak out. There was barely time for us to ask questions or ask where their families were.
One said that after being displaced 15 times by the civil war in three years, and being rescued by the army, she was now sharing a tent with 24 people.
"I don't know how to live like this," she said, simply. "Please send us to a good place, or to our homes."
There seemed to be a widespread assumption that as outsiders we could somehow send them home. It was a cry of despair.
"There is nothing to do," the same woman lamented.
Shops and stalls run by refugees line the straight roads of Menik Farm
"We are falling sick of doing nothing. Even the children who study don't have books, pens, pencils."
"There is no water to drink. There is no water to bathe. We are going to die here."
Everyone criticised the food provisions. Dal, rice, flour and sugar did not amount to proper meals, they said.
They also said they lacked pots and pans to cook, even tumblers to drink from.
Another woman said that by staying in these tents people were falling prey to many diseases.
"It's really hot here. It's really packed. Please send us to our homes," she told us.
"See that water? It's from the river. Can a man bathe in that water? It's the water in which the buffaloes bathe."
'No room'
An elderly woman insisted we come with her to her tent. She showed us her pitifully thin husband, who cowered on the ground in an improvised lean-to.
Refugees say conditions are poor, with inadequate water and cramped tents
"There is no room for all seven of us in the tent; no place to sleep," she cried.
"He is sick. He was discharged from the hospital and now he stays here. I am taking him from hospital to hospital, but even in the hospitals there's no room."
We watched people filling their water containers from a tap in a plastic tank. There were irritable altercations.
A man volunteering to monitor the water distribution said people were fighting for limited rations amounting to about 20 litres per family for three days.
"It's not enough at all," he said, with severe understatement, adding that sometimes the supply lorries did not deliver the quantities they were supposed to, forcing people to look for water elsewhere.
Earlier the visiting British minister had seen positive things - for instance, mine clearance to the north-west.
Mr Foster said he thought the Sri Lankan government was "desperately keen" to get people back to these communities for monsoon rice-planting.
The government is doing the best that the government can do
Maj Gen G A ChandrasiriGovernor of Northern Province
All the more reason to let people out, at least to stay with host families, he said.
But the authorities are sticking to their message that these refugees, young and old, have to be screened for possible links to the defeated Tamil Tigers. Tens of thousands have yet to be vetted.
Furthermore, people cannot just go back to areas from which landmines had not been cleared, according to Northern Province Governor Maj Gen G A Chandrasiri, who was until recently in charge of Menik Farm.
"The government is doing the best that the government can do," he said.
But by the dirt track in the camp, a refugee disagreed.
"They are not taking this issue seriously," he said.
And, despite the trenches, they fear the approaching monsoon will bring water pouring into the tents.

The risk of failure is no deterrent for the many Sri Lankans who want to start a new life, writes Matt Wade in Andimunai, Sri Lanka.

In Andimunai it feels like everybody wants to leave.

The usual population of the sleepy fishing town on Sri Lanka's west coast is about 10,000. But locals say at least 2000 of them have gone overseas by boat.

Another 1000 or so have returned after being deported from places like Europe, North America and Australia.

Many of them will try another getaway.

''Each family has someone who has left, come back and tried to go again,'' says Arun Raj, a Tamil from Andimunai who made a failed bid for Europe and now wants to catch the next boat to Australia.

Andimunai is one of many towns along the Sri Lankan coast with a long tradition of "irregular migration".

Many leave for economic opportunity. But two decades of military conflict between the Sri Lankan army and Tamil Tiger rebels helped stoke the seaside people-smuggling culture.

Illegal departure by boat has become routine along the Sri Lankan coastline and this has underpinned the recent flurry of boats filled with Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers trying to reach Australia.

"Coastal areas [of Sri Lanka] have a higher degree of irregular migrants leaving the country via boats especially due to [the] easy exit route using sea transportation," says Tilani Jayawardhana, an academic from the Institute for Police Studies who has studied Sri Lankan migration.

People smugglers on the west coast - called "agents" by the locals - have the capacity to mount ambitious maritime projects to deliver their clients to foreign destinations.

Mano, a 29-year-old Tamil, says he recently joined a fleet of 10 boats travelling to Europe. The flotilla was well co-ordinated and the vessels kept in constant radio contact. This experienced network of people smugglers is responding to a spike in demand since the end of the civil war in May.

"There's a sense that a flight is on, especially among Tamil youth," one human rights activist told the Herald. "It's due to fear."

Andimunai, about 130 kilometres north of the capital Colombo, was relatively unscathed by the civil war but its Tamil population is still anxious.

"A lot of young people have gone missing from here," says a teacher, K. Mahadevan. "This is the reason so many youngsters are trying to leave by boat."

Europe has traditionally been the most popular destination for those leaving Andimunai, but locals say more boats are being organised to Australia.

This is more than just hearsay.

Three weeks ago police burst in on a gang of smugglers meeting clients bound for Australia at the Ranvil Beach Hotel in Chilaw, a town 35 kilometres south of Andimunai. The ringleaders had hired a function room at the hotel where they were negotiating the final downpayments for the voyage with clients hours before the boat was due to leave.

Normally smugglers demand a portion of the total smuggling fee in advance and arrangements are made for relatives in Sri Lanka to deliver the balance once the asylum seeker has reached the destination. Men at Andimunai said the going rate for passage to Australia by boat was between $3000 and $7000.

The hotel raid has made smugglers more cautious but no one expects it to make much difference. Locals say the boat owner was released by police almost immediately and the remaining crew members were not held for long. The wealthy, well-connected smugglers know who to pay to ensure their boats can leave Sri Lanka undetected. They can also buy freedom if caught.

It's their relatively poor and desperate clients who are the most vulnerable.

Some never make it to their destination.

Arun Raj says he knows three men from Andimunai who have perished at sea while trying to make it to another country.

Sumit Mendis says his life has been ruined by a boat trip to Australia in the hope of asylum. Mendis and his brother were with 10 other Sinhalese men who managed to navigate a small vessel all the way to Shark Bay in Western Australia a year ago.

Their application for asylum was eventually rejected and the brothers were deported with six other group members earlier this month.

Ever since, Mendis has been lying low at his parent's home near the beach at Chilaw. He claims to have fears for his safety after being harassed by police and the agent who arranged last year's boat to Australia. His 26-year-old brother, Prasadh, was thrown into jail on his return to Sri Lanka on suspicion of people smuggling.

The family deny the charge and say Prasadh has been so badly bashed in custody that his hearing has been damaged and his mental health impaired.

"We have been abandoned and ostracised," Sumit told the Herald. "We are now a joke in our village."

Stories of failed migration such as this one are common in Sri Lanka. But they don't seem to be much of a deterrent. Instead many in Andimunai joke about their adventures on the high seas and encounters with immigration authorities across the globe.

''It's not a big deal if you get caught,'' says Tony, a hotelier. ''You just find a new agent and try again later.''

He endured a gruelling 39-day voyage to Italy in 2004. But Tony only made it ashore for four days before his cover was blown. He was deported and spent 21 days in jail in Sri Lanka.

"Of course I'll go again," he says. "Maybe I'll try Australia next time."

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Colombo: Tamil Refugees in Sri Lanka to be Resettled by Jan 2010, Sri Lankan government hopes to relocate the majority of Tamils displaced by war in January next year, a minister has said amid growing U.S. pressure and other Western nations to send to the Tamils.
“The government has always maintained that IDPs should be designed and delivered in a structured and well managed manner,” Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights Mahinda Samarasinghe.
“We hope to reach our goal of resettling a majority of IDPs on 31 January next year,” he said.
Tamil Today, tens of thousands displaced by war are languishing in refugee camps special and Washington, the EU and human rights groups have called for their early repatriation back home.
“Having overcome the threat of terrorism and achieve military dominance in a ruthless organization that has ruined the life of the nation for nearly three decades, we have a unique opportunity to forge a new Sri Lanka where the human dignity of all citizens is fully safeguarded” , who said on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Minister of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Rishad Bathiudeen said the total number of displaced persons in northern numbering 2.85 LAKH, nearly a Lakh people have been sent back home.
Bathiudeen said one of the main obstacles to the resettlement of IDPs in their hometowns or villages was time to clear landmines in those areas.