By Daniel Pepper in Ramanathapuram, India
At 2:30 a.m. on a recent, early November morning, K. Thangaraja found himself standing knee-deep in seawater and thought he was going to die. Surrounding him was the murky confluence of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean -- the barrier between his home in Sri Lanka and a new life in India.
The 46-year-old tractor driver from eastern Sri Lanka had been deposited onto the shallow sand bank -- miles off the coast off India -- hours earlier along with 19 relatives, including young children. Shortly before piloting his 26-foot wooden boat into the darkness, the fisherman assured the family that "someone will be along shortly to take you to the Indian coast."
No one came. For hours. Not until 4:30 p.m. the following afternoon, when they were nearly unconscious from exhaustion, hunger, and dehydration were they spotted. An Indian fishing vessel happened to notice their improvised white flags and brought them ashore.
“It was the worst experience of my life,” says Thangaraja. “If I had to do it all over again I would take my chances in Sri Lanka.”
Yet for ethnic Tamils now caught in the crossfire of a spiraling and increasingly bloody civil war in Sri Lanka between the government and armed Tamil rebel groups, staying is increasingly not an option. Dozens of civilians have been killed in recent weeks, including at least 23 ethnic Tamils last week when government shells slammed into a school in a rebel-controlled area. Over 3,250 people have died in the fighting this year so far despite both sides continuing to insist they are honoring the 2002 truce.
Trying to start anew
A wave of refugees fleeing the fighting has been the result of the renewed fighting. Since January over 16,000 have fled Sri Lanka across the water to the shores of Tamil Nadu, India’s southeastern state, where they find refuge in camps across the region and receive basic support from the Indian government. Those who have made it to India constitute only a small fraction of the nearly 200,000 people who have been displaced in Sri Lanka since April. But they represent some of the most desperate cases -- those who have given up hope for a quick end to hostilities and are trying to start anew.
“It is an expensive and difficult journey to the Tamil Nadu coast,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, a local representative of Human Rights Watch. “These are people who are so terrified that they believe survival is impossible back home.”
Arrivals have been decreasing lately with the onset of the rough seas and thunderstorms that characterize autumn in the Indian Ocean. Whereas August saw over 5,700 refugees appearing on the beaches of Tamil Nadu, there have been fewer than 200 this month. Many Sri Lankans had also been awaiting the outcome of peace talks centered on re-opening the main north-south arterial on the island nation which connects the rebel-controlled north with the rest of the country.
Those talks, though, broke down in October and violence has become rampant. Aid workers expect arrivals to spike once again in the weeks and months ahead -- despite the hardships of the journey. And the price. Those wishing to be smuggled from Sri Lanka to India are expected to fork over between $55 and $140 for the 30 kilometer journey and they often have to sell property or family jewelry to pay for the trip. Plus, refugees aren't allowed to bring much luggage -- and the small satchels they do carry with them are often thrown overboard in the rough seas.
This most recent wave of sea-borne refugees is not the first time India has seen Tamils washing up on its southern beaches. Tens of thousands have come in successive waves since the war -- which cost the lives of some 65,000 prior to the 2002 truce -- began in 1983. But this most recent wave is symbolic of a collapsed peace, coming as many had believed the decades-long civil war had become a thing of the past.
"UN peacekeepers must come to Sri Lanka"
Manoharan Bijayaraj, 49, is one of those who as arrived recently -- coming in late September. As a union activist for Tamil fishing cooperatives in eastern Sri Lanka he was shot seven times in an attempt on his life in early September. He still experiences a dull pain around the pink two-inch vertical scar below his left arm where one of the bullets lodged itself. “They want to wipe out us Tamils,” he says. “There is no solution through military means, nor through dialogue. UN Peacekeepers must come to Sri Lanka.”
Such peacekeepers, though, are nowhere in sight. The vast majority of refugees who have made the journey in the past few months escaped villages located near the front lines of the fighting in a war which pits the government in Colombo against separatist Tamil rebels in the northern part of the island.
New arrivals in India often end up at the Mandapam transit camp, a fenced-off series of dilapidated one-story cement apartment blocks with communal water faucets. The camp was originally established and controlled by the British until 1964 as a transit site for thousands of poor Indians being sent to sprawling tea estates in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the British Commonwealth. Today they are coming in from the other direction.
At the moment, Mandapam has over 5,000 residents, the majority of whom have been there for months waiting to relocate elsewhere in Tamil Nadu state. A housing shortage, though, is keeping them put for the time being.
Although conditions in the camp are substandard -- with buildings crumbling and trash strewn about -- its leaders are reticent to voice their concerns too loudly. “We do not complain about the conditions because just next to us there are Indian citizens who don’t get even what we get,” says S. C. Chandrahassan, an officer with the Organization for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation (Eelam is how Tamils refer to Sri Lanka), which helps run the 130 refugee camps throughout Tamil Nadu.
The Indian government provides the refugees with 400 Indian Rupees, or about US $9 a month per head of household and a little less for every other member, as well as cooking materials, a refugee ID card, and subsidized rice. But even if meager, the aid means the refugees are often better off than many Indians outside the camp. “We always have to keep that in mind and encourage people to work,” says Chandrahassan.
Targeting young Tamils
Twenty kilometers away, fishermen along the flat Arichalmunai beachfront -- scattered amongst the half-buried remains of another former British naval station at India’s closest point to Sri Lanka -- are often the first point of contact for the refugees. Sri Lankan smugglers often drop their cargo of refugees here -- should they be in the mood to bring them all the way in. Earlier this autumn, such drop-offs were an almost nightly occurrence.
And the hardships, even if there is a feeling of brotherhood between Tamils in India and the Tamils escaping the violence of Sri Lanka, are great. Vikram Raja, 36, is a mason who made the journey in early September with his wife and three young children. He has worked just two days in two months despite sending much of his time sitting by the highway hoping to be picked up as a day laborer.
“My life was in danger there,” he says of Sri Lanka. “The army will arrest anyone without any grounds.” His home was destroyed by the 2004 tsunami and he paid for the journey by selling his wife’s jewelry. His mother, father and sister live in displaced persons camps in Sri Lanka, but Mr. Raja wanted the opportunity to provide for his family and not sit idly in a camp, which he considers unsafe.
Plus, he was concerned for his children. Young men are often forcibly conscripted by Tamil rebels, and the United Nations this week has also accused the Sri Lankan military of helping a splinter group recruit children to fight against the Tamil Tigers. Plus, in government-controlled areas young Tamils are also under constant suspicion for working or conspiring with the rebels.
Eighteen-year-old Subramaniam Karisuthan and his 17-year-old sister, who arrived here last week, were sent out of Sri Lanka by their parents for just that reason. Wearing baggy jeans, a thin gold chain and a U2 T-shirt, they are biding their time until their parents save up enough to make the journey themselves. “We were afraid to leave the house,” Subramaniam says. Twice, he says, he saw tortured, headless bodies dumped along the side of the road near his home. He didn’t want to become another anonymous victim.
“The army targets the youth,” he says. “They suspect that we support the [rebels].” He had heard stories of the rebels grabbing young Tamils off the street or snatching them from school. “I’ll stay here until the war is over,” he says.
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