Five Tamil refugees arrive at Mukundarayar Chathiram
Five Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, including three children, arrived at Mukundarayar Chathiram near Dhanushkodi on Thursday, Dec 30th. This was reportedly the first since the end of the war between LTTE and Sri Lankan armed forces in May this year.
Seeking shelter: Sri Lankan refugees who reached Dhanushkodi in Ramanathapuram district on Thursday.
The refugees told the police and intelligence agencies that they had boarded a boat at Talaimannar in Sri Lanka at 2 a.m. and landed at Mukundarayar Chathiram around 5 a.m. From there they travelled to the Dhanushkodi police station. R. Vigitha, one of the refugees, said she had given her gold chain as fee for ferrying her family to Tamil Nadu.
Asked about the reason for seeking asylum in Tamil Nadu, Vigitha said the police and other agencies had been looking at Tamils with suspicion always.
They were subjected to sudden enquiry or summoned for interrogation. “The situation in Sri Lanka is still not conducive for peaceful living. Tamils do not know when they will be interrogated, enquired and summoned,” she said.
To a question, Vigitha said there was no problem in hiring a boat to India [though it was illegal], as the security agencies had relaxed their surveillance along the shore. Several Tamils, who returned to their homeland by various means including illegal trips from India after being given asylum, were eager to come to India basically to revive their registration. - courtesy; The Hindu -
1 Comments
Certainly a different story to what is woven by the President and his regime
about what ordinary Tamils feel about the "safe conditions" in the Tamil areas in the NEP now. What has Douglas, Kanura and Pillaiyan have to say. Time the
international community and India took note of the real situation. Canada signals her own dissatisfaction about the safety of Tamils and the sincerity of the rehabiliation programme and has formally announced they will fast-track
another 1,200 Tamil applications for emigration. Australia and New Zealand are
following. Although the UK and E/U are equally generous they have their own
problems both of emigration and the economy. The ultra-nationalists here will celebrate the emigration of Tamils is good for them. The fact is this kind of
emigrant is bound to carry negative feelings about a State that created conditions for them to be thrown away from their soil. They will become a difficult-to-convince part of the already powerful Tamil diaspora that will not easily forget what happened to them. As Bertolt Brecht said "I am not an emigrant who came to a new land voluntarily. Conditions were created to throw
me away from the land of the birth of my ancestors. I cannot forget that"
ISS