Journey Without a Destination:Is there a solution for Sri Lankan refugees? (Chapter 2)

 

Chapter 2: Flight 

    When the refugee problem first began to take on serious proportions after the 1983 riots, there was a more or less uniform cause of flight: government-sponsored violence in the form of pogroms, reprisals against civilians, and torture and extra-judicial executions facilitated by the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) 1979. This Act provided for a person to be detained incommunicado for up to 18 months without being charged or brought before a magistrate, and had no provision for legal remedies for detention or torture.

    By mid-1989, the situation had become far more complicated; the refugees might be fleeing the Sri Lankan security forces, the Indian army, the EPRLF, the Tigers, some combination of these forces, or the crossfire between them, in a ‘dirty’ war in which all sides engaged in atrocities against civilians, including little children.

    We turn now to the experiences which led to their decision to leave – or, in some cases, to their relatives’ decision to make them leave. The accounts which follow are all compatible with reports published by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, as well as published accounts by Sri Lankan writers and analysts; there seems to be no reason for doubting their authenticity. Yet only those marked with an ‘R’ at the end of their statements had been given refugee status; none had received political asylum.

 

• I was working in Air Lanka. In 1985, Tamil militants bombed the Tristar, and after that they were suspicious about us, Tamils working there. And they caught two of my colleagues, two Tamils – caught them and took them to the CID.

 

Were they involved in the bombing?

 

They were not involved, but they were suspected. One came on holiday to the UK, I think, on the day of that particular incident. The other one, I don’t know why they suspected him. They were taken to the CID, fourth floor [notorious for the torture carried out there] and interrogated.

 

Tortured?

 

Yes. They are still there. The CID had gone to one Tamil engineer’s house and questioned him at 2 o’clock in the night, and they asked him what’s my address, to go to my place, and fortunately he didn’t know my address and didn’t lead them to me. Then one day while I was working, the call came to me stating that the CID wants to speak to me. I went there – I hadn’t been involved in anything.

    They started questioning me: ‘Why are you going to London at times, who do you know there, are you supporting these militants, where do you get money, who gives you money for going abroad?’ We get free tickets because we work for the airline, but still they were asking me all these things. My family was not staying with me – they were in Jaffna, my daughter and my wife – so I was worried about them too. Because one of my brothers-in-law had been shot in Vavuniya in 1983: on the way to Jaffna, they kidnapped the bus and shot about 18 Tamils. One of them was my only sister’s husband.

 

Do you know who did that?

 

The army. Because there was an attack on the army camp by the Tamil militants, and this was in retaliation for that. So ultimately I also got panicky, I was afraid to stay there, so I took my leave and came over here with my wife and daughter.

 

• In 1984 I was arrested by the Sri Lankan army, beaten with a gun barrel and kicked. My mother was able to speak in Sinhala, so she managed to get me released.

 

What was the reason — did they give you any reason?

 

At that time one inspector was shot dead, so they rounded up the area and took some youths and harassed them.

 

• In 1981 I started working in Saudi Arabia, and my family was occupying a flat in Colombo. In the 1983 riots the house was attacked and ransacked; my family had to leave the house and stay temporarily with Sinhalese neighbours, then go to the refugee camp, and then they were shipped to Jaffna. But I thought, even in Jaffna it was not safe – the army, the Sinhalese army, was moving around and shooting and killing. So I decided to remove them all out of Sri Lanka, and later I joined them.

 

• I was one of those who suffered in the July 1983 riots. In Badulla, where my house was burned, we ended up as refugees in a refugee camp – my wife and I. And then we were sent to Jaffna. I had been in Badulla for 32 years, practising as a lawyer there, when the situation became very unsettled and critical – in Jaffna also, because of the clashes between the Sri Lankan army, the police and the Tamil militants. The police station in my home town was destroyed by the militants, and also the courts. Then, because my children were rather concerned about our lives, they persuaded my wife and me to come out to London.

 

• I decided to leave Sri Lanka mainly because of my children’s future – I have one daughter aged 20, and after 14 years I had a son – he’s only 6. We had problems with these groups – they come to our school and demand one day’s salary and all that. And they come home asking for food parcels… The Tigers were asking for money and jewellery. But later, under the IPKF, the EPRLF started stealing everywhere. There were cases of rape, even of married women. But before the IPKF came, there was such a lot of shelling, we couldn’t get out for even half an hour because we didn’t know when the helicopter would come; you just had to run about, get some bread and all that, and come back. Many times I have got caught at it – people start shooting from the helicopters, and we just run into any house we know on the way. One of our school children also died like that – a seven-year-old – a shell fell right on his head. Amazing to think of all that now: my son might have been another victim if he had stayed longer.

 

• I worked for the Sri Lankan government for 14 years as a trustworthy employee; they wanted me to study Sinhala so I studied Sinhala, I passed their language at SSC level, I worked for them without any disagreement or misunderstanding. But unfortunately my brother – one of my younger brothers – got involved in the movement; he was detained, he escaped from prison, and he was wanted by the government. I saw him after about seven years in 1985 – he came to know where I was and he came to my place. At that time we were staying in government quarters, and he came to see me there one day. The purpose he came for was to get some assistance for the refugees, people who were fleeing from other places to Vavuniya. At that time I didn’t want to see him because I wanted to avoid any political involvement – it was a very sensitive area, on the Sinhalese and Tamil border, and we were living close to the army and police station… But he was my brother, you know, I couldn’t say no, so I gave him some money. He came a second time also, with another two boys. I think somebody saw him and gave the message to the army or police that some of the boys are coming to my place, so they thought I was fully involved in the movement. Luckily, I knew someone in the police department; he telephoned me and said, ‘There is a charge against you under the Prevention of Terrorism Act – they are going to arrest you for sure. If it’s possible, try to get away from your place.’ That day the army surrounded my house – there were 34 armed guards! But I was not there. The next day my wife came to Jaffna and said, ‘You must get out of this country somehow.’ So within five days I left.

 

• Well, the story is like this. In 1983 my house near Colombo was burnt. Five of them came to the house, you see. I was the only man. My second son and my wife managed to hide; my elder son and I got the beating. I got two bones broken and all that. So I shifted to Batticaloa because we have some property there. Then I found that my younger son was very much affected by what happened.

 

He saw what happened?

 

Of course! They were hiding and seeing what was happening. He was 8 or 9 when that happened. After that, his teacher used to tell me, ‘Your son is fairly badly affected. If I ask him to write about a dog, he will say, ‘The dog was barking when my house was burned.’ If I ask him to write about the moon, ‘The moon was shining when my house was burned.’ To write about a tree, he will say, ‘The people who burned my house cut down the tree that was in front of it.’ You know, whatever he was asked, this was having an effect on it. He kept telling me, ‘Papa, you could have easily fought those fellows, and you could have easily hit them, but you never made an attempt’. Then the teacher told me, when they asked the students, ‘What is your ambition in life?’ my son had said, ‘When I grow up, I’ll become a Tiger and shoot at least a hundred Sinhalese.’ That shocked me. I didn’t want that to happen. I thought that if I went to India, I would lose my son [because the Tamil militant groups were active in India too], so I wanted to go somewhere else.

     My house was attacked for a second time, in Batticaloa, in April 1985. So it was just a matter of days when we decided to leave. People were getting shot dead for nothing. I was seeing corpses all over the place.

 

• You know in Amparai, all communities are living together – Muslims, Tamils and Sinhalese. In one of the incidents in 1985, my younger brother was killed by the STF – in May 1985. [The Special Task Force was a paramilitary unit whose numerous atrocities against both Tamils and Sinhalese have been well documented.]

 

Was he involved in any of the groups?

 

No. On Friday morning, the STF came. The reason is that the day before, the Tamil militants had killed some Sinhalese in Anuradhapura. The day after that, this incident happened. They came and fired at random. Then in 1986 May, at Rambukkana, when I travelled from Kandy to Colombo, some Sinhalese said I’m a Kotiya [Tiger]. They had gone to the station-master, I think; he asked me to get down from the train and took me to the police, and they arrested me.

 

How long were you in detention?

 

Three days. 

 

Were you ill-treated?

 

Yes.

 

So were these the main reasons why you left?

 

There were some others too. I couldn’t go to my village because of the STF – any time they can come and arrest or shoot. So when I finished my degree I went to Kandy, then I went to Colombo, stayed there and found a teaching job. But in the holidays I went to my village, and I had some problems with the militant groups there as well. Some things were going wrong… But when you try to explain, when you try to criticise them, then you will be on the list. I face that sort of problem. On all sides I faced problems. [Then I received] a death-threat from the militant groups – that was the most important reason why I left. I left the following day.

 

• In the army operations in the northern part of Sri Lanka, so many young people have been arrested, including me at one time – in 1986. After that I could not go to college, so my parents said I should go to another country rather than live there, because I may be arrested. My friends also have been arrested and disappeared.

This is by the security forces, is it?

 Yes.

 

• Since leaving school, after the riots in 1956, I was engaged in farm development work and public development work and social work in the Northern Province, and I used to address public meetings also. But then the boys started fighting, they went into the jungle and started their training, and the police started to suspect me because they thought I was encouraging them in various ways. So they arrested me. That was in 1979.

    I was put in a cell for a week. They didn’t look after me properly, and they wanted me to make a statement saying that I had been participating in activities which I had not actually participated in. I refused, and some of the other social workers met the police officers and said that I was not involved in these things, so they released me. But they went to my home and they took all these files and papers, and they found that some of the books were written by Chelvanayakam, so again they started suspecting me because I was having those documents. This finally made it difficult to stay in that country – I thought that it’s not safe for me to remain there, and I decided to leave the country.

 

• The shelling… you don’t know when it will fall and where it will fall. It has fallen around my house – that area – but you really don’t know when it will fall on your house. And sometimes they ask you to get out of the house and stay in the temple or somewhere for six days, saying that they are going to check the house and all that. So… I used to be so scared, because the army means you are so scared…

This was the Sri Lankan army?

 

The Sri Lankan army – it’s a Sinhalese army! I mean the thing is, you can’t live there – it’s impossible. You can’t live there because of the trouble, the shooting and all that.

 

• I had been involved in political activities since 1980. I was working for the LTTE as a full-timer in 1983, so I was a ‘noted’ [officially recorded] case. The Sri Lankan army would come to my place to check whether I was there, because I was involved in military activities. I was arrested in 1984, tortured and detained for one week – the army wanted to find out where the Tiger camp was and where they were living, so they were rounding up all the young boys from Jaffna town and torturing them to get this information.

    After that incident I decided to leave the country because when I’d been caught I gave a different name, and that was the only way I was able to escape from detention. I realised that if I stayed there, I would get caught and tortured again. So I thought it would be better to leave the country. I was able to get a passport immediately by giving some money to an agency, and I left in January 1985 with a visa to East Germany.

 

• I was kicked out of Sri Lanka. I was put on a flight to Britain, that’s all. I was given two days’ notice, and my brother told me that he’d bought my ticket for me and I should go. I had done my ‘O’ Levels and I wanted to do my ‘A’ Levels as usual, and I was doing my ‘A’ Levels at that time when the 1983 riots came up. And before the 1983 riots I was also involved in certain other things that my brother didn’t like – that my family didn’t like: I joined the EROS and everything else. So when the crunch came, they already had got in touch with the college in England; they managed to get my admission, and told me victoriously before my departure. I mean, had they told me earlier, I wouldn’t have left anywhere.

So it was your family who got you to leave?

 

Yes – they are the people who trapped me here. I think it’s because one of my classmates got arrested. His uncle and my family are good friends, and he probably informed them.

 

• When I was in Sri Lanka I was participating in anti-government activities, and I mostly joined with the TULF [the Tamil parliamentary party]. From that day I was ‘noted’. In 1972 I organised a demonstration, hartal [general work stoppage], and everything. One day the military personnel came to my house and tried to arrest me, I escaped with gun-shot wounds. Three or four days later I came here, with 25 stitches in my leg. I had treatment in a hospital. 

So you left immediately? 

 Yes, that was the last day I spent in my house – I never went back. From there I went to a safe place, until I could come to Colombo. Before that, when I returned from India, I had been arrested and kept for 15 days in detention. That was in 1981. They tortured me – my diaphragm was broken, so I had to go to hospital. Jaffna hospital. For ten days they kept me in the camp near the bus stand at Vavuniya; then they took me to the police station. From there I contacted my uncle, and only after that was I released.

    It was terrible! They hang you upside down and they light a fire in a pot and put chili powder on it – they did that, that time. They beat me on the back, pulled out nails from my feet – terrible torture! In those 10 days I suffered a lot. They broke my nose, and they punched me in the stomach…

• The Sri Lankan army was shelling, and bombing from helicopters, and so many things – even near to my house, so many people got killed, because they were shelling without looking here or there, they were just shelling. One day when I went near the town I had a narrow escape, because a bomber was bombing and so many people got killed. So my mind was very upset, I had no peace of mind. My father, my mother, everybody wanted me to go away, to leave the country, otherwise maybe I could get killed. So they asked me to leave as soon as possible.

 

• We were living in Colombo, and our house was burned in 1983. Then we went to Batticaloa, which is our home town, where we lived for about a year and a half. What really made us decide to come here was that there was some sort of problem between the Muslims and Tamils, I think. The Muslims [she is referring to the Muslim Home Guards, a government paramilitary unit] started burning houses and villages one after the other – they almost came to our village, so that night no one slept. The whole village was up, and we were wondering whether we were going to get killed by the army.

    They killed and they burned systematically, village by village. First they burned one village and all the houses in that village, then they went on to the next village. This was done by the Muslims [Home Guards] and the army, together – the army was protecting the Muslims [Home Guards] while they were burning the houses.

    My husband was in Colombo, only my son and I were in Batticaloa. We actually went to the lagoon and we were hiding behind the shrubs and the bushes. Because the army came in an armoured car, and they had some powerful light, so the people couldn’t even hide. We were so scared! That whole night we stayed out – on the bank of the lagoon we were hiding. It was a terrible night! And we could see the fires – we could see the other villages being burned, because the thing was such that the villages were alongside the lagoon, and if you stand in one part of the lagoon, you could see the rest of the villages, so we could see the houses being burned and people screaming and shouting. It was a terrifying night; we didn’t think we would survive that night.

    Luckily for us, just before they came to our village – two villages before they came to our village – at that point it was 4 o'clock in the morning, and Muslims, they have to go to pray. So because they had to go to the mosque to pray, they stopped, and we were saved.

    We were so frightened on that night, my son was also crying. I said, ‘Don’t get scared, we’ll all die together.’ But he says, ‘I don’t want to die, I want to live, I don’t want to die!’ That night I telephoned my husband, and in about two or three days we left. Partly it was because we had no home; because we came from Colombo to Batticaloa thinking that we would be safe, but then we thought that next time we would have to jump into the sea!

 

• My twin brother was in one of the movements, so I was afraid they would identify me with him. He died on 19th March, this year – killed by the IPKF.

Did you manage to get a proper passport and visa to come to Britain?

 

No. I got a forged Sri Lankan passport, but not in my name. An agent got me a visa.

 

• I passed out as an advocate for the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, and for some time I was practising as Crown Counsel. Thereafter I joined the Legal Draughtsmen’s department. But I was denied promotional chances, and whenever scholarships were offered, I was overlooked. So I petitioned against my seniors, saying that things were going badly and all that. From that time onwards, the higher-ups as well as my Sinhalese colleagues developed some kind of hatred towards me. I was asking for my rights, but they interpreted it otherwise. 

You felt you were being discriminated against?

 

Not felt; in fact I was. You see, I was the seniormost among the Tamils in that department, and should have been made a Deputy Legal Draughtsman long, long ago. But they would always say, ‘Yes, because the Deputy Legal Draughtsman’s post involves a lot of administrative work… Of course you have passed your GCE exam in Sinhala, but that is not sufficient.’ And they always used that as an excuse to shut me out. Then an opportunity came from Nigeria – the government of Sokoto recruited me as a lecturer in law in one of the polytechnics – and it was a big amount that was offered, so I thought that rather than be discriminated against in Sri Lanka, I would go.

Was it because you came to the end of your contract that you came to Britain?

 

The end of the contract, yes. I can’t think of going back just now, because things have worsened – I would not be safe in the hands of the Sri Lankan forces, or the Indian forces, or in the hands of the militants sponsored by them, I don’t think.

 

• I was involved in refugee resettlement in the Vavuniya area, and I was working with EROS at that time, and also with TRRO – Tamil Refugee Rehabilitation Organisation. They were Hill-country Tamils who had been driven out of the plantations. We were educating them and finding almost all the resources for resettling them in those areas. This was in 1977. By 1979, they were raiding almost all the organisations; they arrested eleven of our people from the Vavuniya area, and they were looking for me. So they came to the college where I was teaching, then to my house, and they took my uncle, then went to the next house and took my cousin. My uncle was imprisoned, and they were taking too many people instead of me, because they didn’t know what I look like, so they took another person instead of me, an engineer’s wife – and they were actually giving trouble to some other ladies as well. 

Was this the security forces?

 Yes, the Sri Lankan army. So I thought that if they came to know that I’ve left the country, then they might leave my uncle and they won’t give trouble to the other people as well. So I had to come out – I was forced to leave my country and go to India. 

What made you leave India and come to Britain?

 In India I was actually involved in a political campaign, and was also organising rehabilitation work for the estate workers who had been deported under the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact [see Chronology]. Eventually the Indian government asked me to leave the country.

 • The first time we left Colombo was after the racial riots in 1983. Our house was attacked, so we had to run to the refugee camp in Kotahena, then from there we had to go to the harbour, and then to the Northern Province by the ship provided by the Indian government. We were in Velvettiturai for some time, and we put our children into schools there. But again those schools were bombed from the sea by the navy and my house was burned. To safeguard our lives, we had to go back to Colombo. In the meantime I got this scholarship, so I had to go to Australia to follow it. But my family suffered a lot – they were going from Colombo to Velvettiturai and back, the children couldn’t get any continuous education – everything was disturbed. So they came to Britain, and I joined them from Australia.

• There was some real danger for my life at my workplace, and also at my residence. Because I used to work in the Sri Lankan army – not as a soldier, but in the administration. Then I took up accountancy, and was appointed at the IGP’s office – that is police headquarters. Most of the top-ranking army and police officers were personally known to me, and they knew me also, and they were the people operating in Vavuniya. My duties involved liaising with them. And the activities of the police and the government machinery then, were in search of the so-called militants. So my duty also was supposed to be to trace the militants and hand them over the military! That was very unfortunate.

    The place where I was working was the birthplace of all the Tamil groups. Our part of the duty, officially, was to spot them out, where they were, and inform the police and the army, so that the police and the army could come and arrest them and do whatever they like. It was not a pleasant job. Being a state officer, I had to do certain things; but I never did this thing of informing on these people. I had a problem with the militants also, because I never acted in any way against my own conscience. But the army distrusted me, because they expected me to give them more assistance, but it was not forthcoming.

    So ultimately, when they came to know that it was not forthcoming, they really turned against me. One day they came to my office and shot 50 rounds, and one night they came for me in four or five army trucks. I was alone there, my family was in Jaffna at the time, so I quietly slipped away through the back entrance of the quarters. But just near my gate, there was a statue of Arumuga Navalar, the great Hindu saint; they broke that statue of Navalar into pieces, urinated on it, and also damaged my gate.

    Then you know there was Gandhiyam [rehabilitation scheme], Dr Balasunderam was carrying on a lot of work there for rehabilitating refugees – he was not involved to my knowledge in any activity other than rehabilitating some upcountry Tamils who had been uprooted. But the government intention was not to help them!

    You must have heard of the Dollar and Kent Farms? Originally they were for the rehabilitation and settlement of these uprooted Tamils. The farms were not really on encroached state land; they were farms given to certain companies, like the Dollar Corporation. Big business concerns were given land, up to some 600 acres, under the Dudley Senanayake government. So when they abandoned that land because of Sinhala colonisation and harassment and that sort of thing, they allowed the land to be settled by people who had lost their homes in the upcountry. But when that was taking place, the government was not really happy: they wanted them to be chased out. [They did eventually succeed in chasing out these hapless people, making them refugees once more, and resettled the farms with Sinhalese convicts and their families.]

    But they encouraged Sinhalese people to encroach on state lands! Adjacent areas were being encroached on by Sinhalese people, without any permit. And there were bhikkus [Buddhist monks] coming and settling in the areas of tanks [reservoirs], bringing some Sinhalese people. They would get hold of the district minister, get the tank renovated, make it a permanent settlement – and not only that, they also renamed the places! So we couldn’t actually work according to our conscience.

    That was the situation then: we were at the centre of all these activities – Gandhiyam, Sinhala colonisation, training of these boys and everything. We, as state officers, were supposed to be with the government – to prevent Tamils encroaching on state lands, to assist the army to chase out the Tamils and bring the Sinhalese into these areas – but I couldn’t comply with them. I had some good Sinhalese friends who were very close to the army officers, and one of them one day told me, ‘It’s not safe for you to stay here, better get out from the place, don’t sleep at your quarters, they are after you,’ So the message was clear for me, and I thought it was time to leave; even the government agent told me it was better to leave, because I was more marked than any of the other people there.

    But at that time, we believed there was going to be some settlement or intervention on the Indian side, and if there was any settlement between the Sinhalese and Tamil people, that was the only thing we wanted. That is the real reason I didn’t come as a refugee. I applied for six months’ leave and came, thinking that after six months I could go back; but I found that I couldn’t.

 

• I left because of the problems that were happening around me – say people were arrested, people being charged – things like that. I went with a few of my colleagues on a human rights survey to Batticaloa after the riots, and we were taken for questioning while we were doing the survey. We were quite ‘noted’ then, but because we were lawyers we were able to escape without too much harassment. In those days when you said you were a lawyer, they were willing to listen. After that, my friend and I thought we would be out for some time, and then another friend was thinking about opening a Tamil Information Centre. So we left.

 

• I was in the eighth grade, and I was actually in school when my grandmother came and got me at mid-day because all the troubles were breaking out on the street; and that’s how it started. This was July 1983 – in Colombo. Then we went to Jaffna, where there wasn’t any trouble at that time. We had Indian ships coming to take us there, and I studied there for one year, finishing my eighth grade.

    Then I started my ninth grade, but then the army started bombing from the sea, and we had to go to our granddad’s house through all these lanes and jumping over the fence and everything, because the main forces of the army were coming. So we – all the family – went to Colombo again, because by this time it was Jaffna which was getting into trouble. Then I went to one of the other schools again and tried to finish the ninth grade, and then back to another school. That was in 1985, and that’s when we came to Britain. It was very sudden. We’d got a school holiday, and I remember just owing some money to one of my friends because everything was so sudden.

 

• In 1983 we were very much disturbed by the riots in Colombo – we lost our jewellery, property, everything. Then we went to Velvettiturai, but after six months there was a problem there also. My children were studying there, but then their school was burned. I tried to contact my husband because he was living in Colombo, working there, but I couldn’t contact him – there were no phones, nothing. Every day there were problems, no schools, and the army bombed, all the time they bombed.

    That was in 1984. I went back to Colombo to join my husband, but then he got a scholarship and went to Australia. I couldn’t live alone with my children in Velvettiturai. Every day they were coming, the army people were coming in a jeep and killing people. They were catching 17-year-old boys. At that time, my son was 16 or something, I was frightened that he would get caught. So we decided to come to Britain, because my brothers are here. Only for one year, we thought; after that, everything will be sorted out, we thought. But after that, the problem was worse. We thought we couldn’t go back.

 

• I was doing some serious study because I really wanted to enter the university, but you couldn’t continue peacefully – all the time there was something going on, and the situation was getting worse and worse and worse. Then the Tigers and others were coming and pushing us to join them and all that. They just came into the school. Our principal was really strict – she wouldn’t allow us to go and join – so later on they’d get admission at gun-point, so she couldn’t do anything. They just come in and have a meeting, and say ‘Sign this form’ and all that. Some of the girls joined, and a couple of them died in the fight, I heard later on.

Did you join? 

 

No, I never did. I was really scared, for a start; and also I didn’t know which group to support, there were so many of them! 

Was that one of the reasons why you decided to leave?

 

Yes – my parents took that really seriously, you know, they were scared for me and my brother. He’s really small now, but when he grows up, he may go automatically into that sort of thing.

 

• I left because of the political problems. In ’86 when I was there in Jaffna, near my house there was the Tiger movement, so the Sri Lankan army started bombing… We couldn’t stay there because the children were screaming, every day and night we couldn’t sleep, we were thinking, ‘What is going to happen the next day?’ My husband was not there at the time – he was in Colombo, working there.

    I wrote a letter to my sister in Britain, she wrote a sponsor letter to me, and I got a visa for three months. So I came with my children, and straightaway I asked for political asylum, at the airport. My husband stayed in Colombo, and I felt very sorry about that, because the children are very small, and I got a letter from my relations that he was arrested in Wellawatte, Colombo, because they thought he was involved with the political movements. I was very unhappy and depressed. After that, this year, he came and joined me; but he couldn’t come straight away, he came illegally, because this government wouldn’t allow him to come and join me.

How long was he in detention?

 

Two months. In Wellawatte prison. Then he went to Jaffna, but he had difficulty in getting food and staying at home because the IPKF asked him to come to the camp. Now he is with me and my children. We still don’t know about our stay – but at least we are safe in this country.

 

• The army assaulted me because I was a member of a militant group. I was detained for 35 days, then again for three months. Then, after the arrival of the IPKF, they used to take me daily and bring me back.

Who used to take you?

 

First the Sri Lankan army, then the IPKF – to prevent us from going back to the movement, to have us under control, they took us daily. 

Were you tortured when you were in detention?

 

Yes. [Shows injuries on throat and chest.] I had been assaulted to such an extent and injured so badly that I wanted to get medical treatment, I wanted to get out of the country and get myself treated – that was the main reason I decided to leave. They beat me with a PVC pipe, attacked various parts of my body including the genitals, burned me with cigarettes, caused a lot of injuries. I am still in a deteriorated condition. Within a year I have to undergo an operation on the hips, otherwise in another few years’ time I may not be able to get up and walk about.

 

• You know, in Sri Lanka, basic human rights have been violated; people are unable to talk freely, they are unable to write, and their day-to-day life is endangered. Physically we are at risk, our lives are at risk from a lot of directions – from the Sri Lankan troops, the Indian troops, and from the division and unplanned struggle among the militant groups. All of them pose a risk to our lives. My house has been burgled and partly destroyed by Indian troops and by the militant Tamil groups and by the Sri Lankan troops. So I had a very empty feeling – I couldn’t breathe the air of freedom. I was so depressed, I thought of leaving.

 

• I was in Jaffna when the war erupted between the LTTE and the IPKF. When the IPKF captured our hospital, you know that they killed many people inside the hospital. The war erupted on the 10th of October, and they came to our hospital on the 21^st and 22^nd of October. One of my consultants and one of my colleagues were killed. So after two months I came down to Colombo. Then my brother, who is in Switzerland, contacted me and said, ‘You can make a visit to Switzerland.’ So I went to Switzerland, and then came to Britain.

 

• We left because we underwent persecution; UNP thugs came to attack our house and they came to kill us. At that time the UNP was in power, during the 1983 riots. They took over that place, took over Nawalapitiya. The UNP people were like most thugs, they were not an educated crowd, all uneducated people were there. And we were the only Jaffna Tamils there at the time. When these thugs were coming, when they were burning the town, the Sinhalese man in the upper house – actually he belongs to that JVP crowd – he was a really nice chap, he came running from the hospital and he said, ‘The mob is coming, come, close the house and come.’ And he took us to his house. We were watching when they came and damaged the house – about 50 people. From the upper house we were watching them searching down below – they were searching for us… Then they left the house and went off. My children were small at the time, and they were very scared. One son asked me whether we should kill ourselves before they come and shoot us. When they said that to me, I felt very bad; I felt it was my duty to get them to a better place.

    For two days we were staying with this boy, then some Sinhalese neighbours came and scared him; they said, ‘If you keep them, you’ll also get into trouble, so send them to the camp.’ So we went to the refugee camp and stayed for two days, but then that boy felt sorry, and he came and called us back to his house, and we were there with him for ten days. Then we hired a van and went to Jaffna – we left everything like that and went to Jaffna.

    At that point we thought, what’s the purpose in staying? Because that house actually belongs to my husband, his parents were there for a very long time, the house was there for nearly 30-40 years… If you are not recognised in your own country, in your own birthplace, then what’s the purpose of staying there?

 

• I was arrested by the Sri Lankan army in January 1984, and was in detention for nearly two years, until November 1985. They arrested me in my home, then they took me to Maskeliya in the central part of Sri Lanka, near Nuwara Eliya. I have been in the Vavuniya army camp, Maskeliya, Hatton, Welikada, Tangalle, Boosa… My mother came to visit me after nearly 19 or 20 months, with great difficulty – and she had to find money. 

Do you know why you were arrested? 

 I was involved in politics in one of the groups, and I am interested in estate Tamils [Hill-country Tamils], so I took classes for them – not politics classes, just ordinary classes – in Hatton College, on Saturdays and Sundays, when I was at Peradeniya [university]. So the Maskeliya police arrested me, because I had been in Maskeliya with some boys. They came to Vavuniya army camp, and took some army people, and came to my house and surrounded it. I couldn’t escape… Somebody arrested before me had mentioned my name under torture. I went through all kinds of torture – they put pins in my nails, they hung me upside down and beat me, they did so many things – I have even written a leaflet about what happened to me in Sri Lankan prisons.

    Then my mother gave 80,000 rupees to get me released. I was arrested under the Sri Lankan Prevention of Terrorism Act; according to that Act, after 18 months they must bring me to court. But they didn’t – they wanted to keep me. So afterwards my mother gave the money – she gave nearly 50,000, and she spent another 30,000. So they spent nearly 80,000 rupees to get me released. 

Was that when you decided to try and leave Sri Lanka?

 Yes. After that, twice the army came to my house to arrest me. But I was not there, I was in hiding… I paid money to an agent to get my travel documents. He got me a passport, but not a visa – I came without a visa. I came through India – I was there for 10 days. At the airport in Britain they gave me temporary admission, and I claimed political asylum. After two or three months, they asked me to go back to India: they said that I came through India, so I could ask for asylum in India also. But I don’t want to go there, because I was a member of a political group – a militant group – so it’s difficult for me there. Then I got a stay order because they wanted to deport me. They treat me as an economic refugee – even though I’ve got all the documents, I’ve got the detention order!

So they didn’t believe you?

 They didn’t believe me. They said the reason was that I could have asked for asylum in India, so why did I choose a European country? 

• In 1987, every day the Sri Lankan army was bombing and carrying out air attacks. I couldn’t live there; all the time there was bombing and shelling – I can’t live like that. I also had a problem with the Tigers. I support the other movement – not the Tigers – so they made some trouble for me, the Tigers. I couldn’t stay there with the Sri Lankan army problem and the Tiger problem.

 

• One of my brothers was arrested in June 1986 and killed. My second brother was also beaten by the army one time… and he had to go to hospital for nearly three months. I’m the third brother, so they decided to send me. My father’s a sick person, someone has to help – that’s why my elder brother stayed behind; but he said, ‘You leave the country and save your life.’ At first I didn’t want to go, because my parents really helped me, and I wanted to stay with them – I really like my parents. But my parents and my brother said, ‘You must go, otherwise we won’t let you stay in our home, go away now!’ – something like that. They asked an agency to get me a passport and visa, but the agency cheated us – it was a forged visa.

 

• I am the youngest in the family – I’ve got two sisters, father and mother in Sri Lanka. Some of my friends are in the movements, they are fully involved. That means, if they are caught by the Sri Lankan army, they would give my name also, and the Sri Lankan army would find out about me – that was one problem. Another problem is in the movement itself. One is the Tigers, but I supported the other movement, so they tried to kill us… My father didn’t like me to stay there because I was young; he said, ‘You must leave – just go to any part of the world you want to go to.’ That was another reason…

    I decided to leave very suddenly. In 1986 July I was still at college, but I couldn’t continue studying because two or three times I was involved with the Sri Lankan army. One time they killed one of my friends – both of us were coming on bicycles, and suddenly they were in front of us, the Ceylon forces, and they shot and killed my friend. I just left my bicycle and ran away, far away. Then I came back after two hours’ time, he was still lying there. I didn’t want to stay after that… My father paid an agent to get my travel documents.

 

• I decided to leave Sri Lanka because my children’s studies were being disrupted. Another problem was that my husband was in the government, no? So one of the boys, the LTTE movement boys, said, ‘Your husband helped the Sri Lankan government.’ The army said, ‘Your husband helped the boys.’ So we had a problem with both parties. I have two sons; the elder one is grown up, and the movement wanted him to join, they asked him to join. They ask for money and everything – I have given some money, yes…

    I had already decided to come to Britain, because of this two-sided problem. My husband had come with only a six-month visa. I left my children in Jaffna in the care of my father-in-law and went to the British High Commission in Colombo and said that I want to join my husband in Britain, I have a problem looking after my two sons alone, and I asked for a visa. I waited three months. First the High Commission said, ‘You wait for one month.’ I waited for one month by myself – the children were in Jaffna, and there was a lot of fighting there between the Sri Lankan government and the boys. People were saying my children’s school was bombed – I was anxious and fed up, for one month I was suffering in Colombo! After a month they didn’t reply, so I went back to Jaffna. Then a friend took up my case with the British High Commissioner in Colombo, and the Home Office, but still they never replied.

So after three months, you and your children came without a visa?

 

Yes, without a visa.

 

• I was actually involved in one of the movements. Then I left the movement, so they passed the order to kill me. So they were searching for me on one side, and the Sinhala army was searching on the other side – I was trapped. There was no one to help me in my situation. So that’s the reason I left, because actually I was involved in the LTTE movement, the Tigers. 

So when did you decide to leave Sri Lanka?

 

When I left the movement. I couldn’t get a passport, because if I wanted to get a passport, I’d have to go to Colombo, and they would have arrested me – I couldn’t get through the barrier at Elephant Pass [the narrow pass connecting the Jaffna peninsula to the rest of Sri Lanka]. So actually, anyone who was involved in the movements or participated in the political struggle couldn’t go to Colombo and get proper documents. So an easy way was to cross the Palk Strait by boat and go to Madras, and the agencies would arrange for travel to Bombay, and from Bombay abroad.

    I contacted an agent, and he arranged everything. There are a lot of agencies operating there – if you pay the money, they arrange everything, false documents and ticket. I wanted to go to Canada, and bought a ticket with London as a transit point: Bombay, London and Toronto. But when the plane arrived here in London, they caught me because of the forged documents – they didn’t allow me to carry on from London to Toronto. In immigration here they ask, ‘Where are your original documents?’ But if anyone comes with original documents, that means he was never involved in the struggle. If he is involved, he cannot get proper documents!

What happened after that?

 

They caught me, and I asked to be allowed to go to Toronto. They refused. So I asked for asylum here. But they didn’t take any statement from me; they just put me in detention for eight months. They put me in various detention centres, and in prison also: Harmondsworth and Lakshmi House and the [prison] ship – Earl William… I was released after the cyclone – because of the scandal! [The Earl William nearly sank with all the refugees on board in 1987.]

 

• My house was close to the town, and all the time the army went along the road where my house was. Every time the army used to come to our house and search it and everything. My husband was in Britain on a student visa, and I wanted to join him. I went for an interview at the Embassy in Colombo, and they didn’t reply, at least for one year. So I went to India and came straight from there. I came on an open visa, and straightaway told immigration, ‘I was waiting for your reply, I didn’t receive your reply… After one week they said, ‘You go back to your country and get an interview and get a proper visa. Then you can come back.’ I said, ‘I can’t go to my country, there are a lot of problems there! My husband has a student visa, let me stay with him.’ My case was taken up by a British man, and a Conservative MP stopped my deportation. I appealed against it; then I got pregnant, and when I was called for an interview I said, ‘I can’t travel at the moment.’ It was postponed, postponed, then my baby was born, and now they have given me a visa, a one-year visa.

 

• I was supporting the EPRLF, and at the same time I was working with the Citizens’ Committee, but the other military groups didn’t like my being in the Citizens’ Committee and they didn’t like my support of the EPRLF. The other groups threatened me, and the EPRLF also asked me to go to India and help them in India, because I’m a skilled worker. So I went there, and I was helping them to make arms. But when the Indian army went into Sri Lanka and started fighting there, I didn’t want to support the Indian army, so I had a disagreement with the EPRLF. The EPDP [Eelam People’s Democratic Party] broke off from the EPRLF and I went along with it – I was a member of EPDP. After Douglas [Douglas Devananda, leader of the EPDP] was arrested by the Indian government, I had to escape from India… It was very sudden… I came here without a passport, only a Sri Lankan identity card.

 

• I was a student in Sri Lanka in 1984 – a GCE O Level student – and at that time I supported the Tamil Tigers. I was arrested by the Sri Lanka police and interrogated for five days in a camp. After that I couldn’t continue my studies because I was a noted person, so I went to India. While I was studying in India, I supported the Tamil Tigers. Then the Indian army entered Sri Lanka and started fighting the Tigers; after that, Tamil Tigers and Tiger supporters were at risk in India, so I wanted to escape from there too… I didn’t have a passport or visa.

What made you decide to leave Sri Lanka?

 

• The Sri Lankan army, the Indian army, and the militant groups. The Indian army was chasing the people who were involved; the Sri Lankan army was chasing any young, unmarried Tamils: and the groups were chasing everyone to get them to join: if you don't join, they think you are an enemy.

 

Why did you choose to come to Britain?

 

Amnesty International invited me to come as a speaker for a meeting they were organising, because they had taken up my case when I was detained. I was arrested in December 1985 by the Sri Lankan army, and detained for two years – at Boosa… I was tortured for about three months until letters were received from England. 

Did you come with the idea of staying on?

 

No I didn’t, but I had a problem at the airport in Sri Lanka – I was arrested at the airport. The same day that they arrested me, when they put me in the cell, the JVP blew up the place – it was the day of their jail-break – so everything was in chaos, I lost all my luggage. Earlier I didn’t want to stay on in England, but that made me realise it would be dangerous to go back. (R)

 

• The Tamil population of the East was harassed by all the services, especially the Special Task Force, which was concentrated in Batticaloa. There were numerous incidents where innocent men, women and children were killed either by the army or by the Home Guards. These were not even retaliatory – sometimes it was just for the sake of killing. The day before the TULF leaders came to Colombo in July 1986 for their discussion with J. R. Jayawardene, an army contingent had gone by launch from Trincomalee to Mutur, shot dead 30 men, women and children who were refugees, and there were 30 more who were missing. There was no provocation – nothing whatsoever. This, we felt, was an attempt by the army to sabotage the talks between J.R. and the Tamil leaders.

    My eldest son was killed by a gang of thugs at Dehiwela, on the 26^th July 1983. What happened was, I was at that time in Batticaloa, a visiting lecturer in English there, and that day of all days, my wife had got it into her head to go to the dental surgery in the hospital to have a tooth extracted. So she had gone earlier. My son was on leave that day, my eldest son. He went towards Wellawatte, saw the houses and shops burning, came back home and waited till about 12 0’clock – his mother hadn’t come. So he and my fifth son got into a taxi and went to the hospital.

    There was a crowd in front of the hospital. Unfortunately, these fellows were talking Tamil in the taxi. So when they went into the hospital, the taxi driver must have probably tipped off the crowd there – because if you look at my sons, you can never tell that they are Tamil. The eldest son went up, the other was downstairs, then the crowd came up to him and asked him, ‘Demala de?’ [Are you Tamil?] So he said, ‘Ne mamme lansi.’ [No, I’m a Burgher.’] But since he had spoken in Tamil, they started assaulting him. He tried to defend himself, couldn’t do anything, ran this way, that way, ran into a room. They had torn his trousers also – they tried to hold him by the trousers, and when he hit the hand, his trousers tore. Then he ran into one of the wards behind, and those chaps protected him – the Sinhalese chaps. Someone gave him a sarong, he put on the sarong. He was bleeding also – someone had hit him with a stone – so they put a plaster there, on his head, they gave him a covering for his head. They took him by the back door and he got out there, he came out to the bus stand, there were no buses, so he walked all the way back home. He was saved.

    Then, at about 12.30, my eldest son was bringing my wife downstairs when some Sinhalese told him, ‘Don’t go, because they’re killing Tamils.’ But this fellow didn’t bother about it. He went out, went to the bus stop, they were waiting there for a bus but they couldn’t get one. My wife was a very bad heart case, so he told his mother, ‘Hold on here, I’ll just see whether I can get a taxi’ – there were one or two taxis there but there was a tremendous crowd.

    When he went up there, some people recognised him as the chap who had got out of the taxi. They surrounded him, and I hear one fellow hit him with an aerated water bottle, and he fell unconscious. When my wife tried to go there, there was a Sinhalese woman who held her by the hand. Then when he got up, probably he must have been in a daze, he couldn’t have seen his mother, and he started running into the hospital shouting ‘Amma, Amma!’. The crowd followed him there and bludgeoned him to death… My wife only heard him shouting ‘Amma!’ Then this Sinhalese woman dragged my wife on to the canal bank – she was in a shanty, I hear. Because of the curfew, there was no transport. She spent the whole night there. The woman went out to some other hut and brought a roti made out of wheat flour with some sambol and gave it to my wife, and some water to drink – kept her there. Early morning she woke her up at four o’clock and walked her home.

    Nobody knew what had happened to my son. So some Sinhalese boys who were friends of my other sons said, ‘We’ll go and check up.’ They went round all the wards: no sign of him. Then they tried to go into the mortuary, but they were refused permission to go in. So they came back and said, ‘We were not allowed to go.’ My landlord’s son was a police inspector, so he said, ‘Look, I’ll get into my uniform and go there.’ So he got into his uniform, went there, saw the body in the mortuary, came back and told my sons. They decided not to tell my wife.

    This was the 26th. On the 27th, a crowd came to attack the house. They were warned that the crowd was coming; my wife was in the meantime with some Sinhalese friends at some other place. So my sons jumped over the wall into the next compound; that belonged to an army officer, he kept them there. They came into our house, broke all the furniture, wood and everything, and they left. The army officer said, ‘Look, you can’t stay here, it’s very dangerous for you, the only thing is to get into the refugee camp.’ That night they couldn’t get a taxi. Early morning by about 5 o’clock, they managed to get a reliable Sinhalese taxi driver to take them to Dehiwela Police Station. From there they were sent to Ratmalana.

    There were some 10 or 15 thousand refugees at the airport; and my wife, with a heart condition, not knowing what had happened to our eldest son… Luckily, there was an officer there, a Sinhalese chap, who had known me; he took the eldest of my surviving sons aside and asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ My son said, ‘Look, my eldest brother has been killed; this must not be known to my mother.’

    ‘Yes, yes, I heard that your mother was a heart case; you can’t stay here. The only thing to do is, there’s a small number of refugees in Mount Lavinia, I’ll go there and speak to the warden and we will get you the best accommodation there possible.’ He went out in the evening, and next morning they were shifted to Mount Lavinia, and looked after there very well. Then this particular officer arranged for them to come by sea to Trincomalee; they were put on the first possible ship, and they came there on the 8th of August…

    In Trincomalee, my second son was working as a clerk in the Urban Council. He lived about 10 miles north of Trinco. On the 22nd of May, 1985, it was, I think, there was an encounter between a Tamil militant group and the navy, in the course of which an air force officer was shot dead. All the navy fellows took cover – this was near the beach. There was an exchange of fire, after which the militants withdrew. The navy fellows remained under cover, and early in the morning they started moving. They shot about six people before coming on to the main road – innocent Tamils.

    My son, unfortunately, was waiting at the gate of his house, to catch an early bus to get to work. A fellow with a gun just came and asked him something, put the rifle right on his heart, and fired. He died on the spot. And then, when my daughter-in-law screamed, he pointed the gun at her, so she dragged the two children and ran behind. And then she came back only after about 15 minutes, to find her husband dead. There was no communication with Trinco, so she waited there. When the bus came, the bus driver knew what had happened; he took her into the bus, brought her to Trinco, dropped her there, and she told us – we got the news at about 8 o’clock. But the Sinhalese army officers maintained that when my son was shot, he had a rifle in his hand. Utter lies! The worst (if you’ll pardon the language), the worst bloody liars I ever came across!

    Two days before that, the army had walked into my house and subjected me to a brutal assault. I was very unpopular with the army, because I had got articles about their activities published in various magazines; so these fellows didn’t relish the idea of their violations of human rights being published in magazines. The army policy was this: a good Tamil is a dead Tamil. Nobody was safe at that time.

 

• I was a witness of a massacre by the government armed forces; the Tigers had killed some soldiers, so in retaliation they killed all these innocent Tamils. I gave the report to the international media. It came to the Ministry, and they issued a warrant to arrest me. I got the news, and I left immediately.

 

• I was arrested by the Sri Lankan security forces in 1984, February, and I was in prison in Welikada for 21 months. I was tortured terribly: they hung me upside down, they beat me, and forced me to smoke chili powder, and I got wheezing after that. I was unable to walk for three months! My bones were broken due to the beating, my ankle was dislocated due to the hanging, and I lost two of my teeth. They inserted aluminium pipes in my rectum, and it started to bleed. Someone had given the information that I was treating patients from the militant groups. I told them, ‘I don’t bother to find out if they are militants or civilians.’ That was my position. So they said, ‘You should know the Tigers (or the insurgents, or the terrorists), and tell the State.’ I didn’t know, actually – how could I say? So they harassed me and continuously ill-treated me, and ultimately they put me in prison.

    According to the Prevention of Terrorism Act, they can’t keep a person in detention without trial for more than 18 months, so we started a hunger strike. Though the Prevention of Terrorism Act is a wrong Act, we asked them to implement their own Act – at least that much! That was our demand. So after that, they had to release us; in the meantime, two of the British parliamentarians visited us, and they took our case, and Amnesty International also intervened, so the agitation was more, and they had to release us.

    Within 10 days I left Sri Lanka; I didn’t even go home, because that was such a terrible period. Some of the victims who were released were shot dead by the army after being released! When this story came to us, we didn’t want to go home to our areas. So I went with my wife to India.

How long were you in India?

 

I was in India for nearly four years. There’s an organisation called the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation – TRO – and I was working with them. It was started in June 1985 by Dr Jayapullarajah – he, myself, and another two or three Sri Lankans, we formed that organisation on a voluntary basis. We got enough funding from Sri Lanka and Europe and so on. Initially we worked in three camps which were close to Madras, and gradually we were able to cover about 85 camps in about four districts. We had a mobile medical unit, and if we started work one day, we used to return after 14-15 days. So the whole day and night we used to visit, giving them medicines, as well as for the children we gave milk powder, and for the elderly people some assistance and nutritional foods; and some clothes too, cooking utensils, things like that. If they were too crowded, we supplied materials and worked to make them some huts.

    At the beginning it was terrible; you know, all the people didn’t get proper medical attention and they were suffering a lot of diseases – skin diseases, infections – all kinds of things. But gradually, after we started, after six months we were able to observe a marvellous improvement. What we did was to make monthly visits, and in the meantime we had a clinic open daily in Madras, and it was functioning – we appointed some doctors. We also selected some educated youths and girls from the camps and trained them in para-medical work, gave them some first aid kits, and got them to work there. So we were able to reduce disease and improve health conditions. After that, we opened three district clinics in Madurai and Tanjavur, and we were running those. We were doing a good job there!

Why did you leave India?

 

After the Indian government’s agreement with the Sri Lankan government, the Indian government’s attitude towards Sri Lankan refugees changed completely: they asked all the refugees who were in camps to return to Sri Lanka, and they sent them back by force. Without the refugees, there was no point working there. In the meantime, they gave some harassment to me also – periodical check-ups and interrogation – and I was afraid of being sent back to Sri Lanka because I personally suffered a lot when I was in prison. So I came to Britain instead – at the airport I went to the immigration officer and said that I want political asylum.

 

• In 1983, during the violence – the July violence – we were in Colombo – in fact, I was sitting for the LLB examination on that day – and my future wife was a lecturer in the university. When the paper was over, we came out and just saw smoke everywhere – you couldn’t even see! And people were running, there were no buses, and the university authorities told us not to go out, so we waited there.

     My father, at that time, was the vice-president of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, so we wanted to go to their office, but we couldn’t go. So some service boys came, and they brought a car, and they took us there. On the way to the office, from a distance, I saw smoke rising from the building. So I thought, ‘They have burned that also’. But when we came in, we saw – inside the premises there was a shop – they had burned that. For five days we stayed there. For the first two days, there were 150 people in the office, and there was no food! There were some children also; Tamils who were walking on the road when the violence started, came to take shelter there. There were some guava trees in the compound, so we managed to get some guavas. And there was a hotel on the other side of the road; some people managed to walk across and get some food. So we managed for two days; after that, food was arranged. But I didn’t go home – I was there for about a month, and there were others who stayed for two or three weeks.

    At that time, six of my relatives got killed in Nuwara Eliya – one uncle and five cousins, part of two families. This was the only Tamil family in that area, but they had been living there for 100 years. They were very friendly with the Sinhalese, but at that time a big mob came and attacked them. 

Did people from the area carry out these attacks, or people from outside?

 

Always when you enquire about this, they say that people came from outside. This is not always the case; people might have come from outside, but in this case they said the local people also got involved. People came from outside and said they want to know about the area and the people living there, and some local people fell in with them. The mob came in the night and attacked them. So all these things made us decide to leave. We didn’t think of leaving permanently – we thought we’d go and stay for some time and then come back.

    Our marriage took place because of the violence – like a lot of other marriages! Because we are from different castes, my wife’s parents were at first opposed to the marriage; but after the violence her parents thought, ‘Now everybody’s going to get killed, so they might as well get married!’

 

• In 1977 my father had a shop in Ratnapura – everything was burned and destroyed. But at that time I was in Jaffna, I didn’t have any experience, really – only my parents suffered, we didn’t see. In the 1983 riots we saw it with our own eyes. We were staying in Kotahena. All the houses were burned. Actually, we are alive because of our next-door neighbours – Sinhalese on one side and Muslims on the other side.

Tamil houses were being burned?

 

Yes. After we left, my sister’s house was also burned. Then we stayed in the camp for 14 days. We really suffered a lot, because until we went to Jaffna, we didn’t know if we were going to be alive! Yes, because any minute… we could hear the bombs and all that. Then my parents gave me the option: either stay at home in Jaffna, or go abroad, but don’t stay in Colombo, they’re worried because I’m a girl. Then my sister was in Britain, and she called me to come as a student.

    I had been working at a bank in Colombo, and I didn’t have a passport. I had to get a passport, and for that I had to come to Colombo. The bank gave us two months’ leave; then the third month they sent us a red letter saying, ‘If you want to come to the office you must come immediately, otherwise we are going to sack you.’ Then I came back in September, I came back to my office. I didn’t have anywhere to stay – I actually stayed with one of my Sinhalese friends then, because I wanted to get my passport as well. When I came back, we couldn’t walk straight on the roads because we were so scared, we were frightened to open our mouths! In public, we would never talk to each other, you see, because then they could pick up our accent and straightaway identify us as Tamils. We really had a hard time!

    I stayed in Jaffna for two-and-a-half months, then came and stayed with this Sinhalese friend in Colombo, then somehow or other my Sinhalese friend helped me to get a passport – because I didn’t have anybody to sponsor my passport application, so it was difficult. Actually, at the time I left Sri Lanka, I didn’t intend to get refugee status. I just wanted to be out of the country for a while, so I came as a student. But then I couldn’t go back because the problem was going on and on, so I asked for asylum.

 

• I was offered a job in Batticaloa, as a consultant, which involved the design and construction of the university complex, and I was very satisfied with it. But then the killing started in that area, and the satisfaction was dead. I accepted that job for 18 months, but within those 18 months there were so many difficulties! The first problem was that our house used to be in front of the main police station, so there was crossfire and various things. Our daughter was only very small at that time, so we had to leave our home and go somewhere else – we never were able to be in peace in that home… I also had to travel 10 miles for work, so on a lot of occasions we were stopped and checked by the security forces… It got to such a state that we couldn’t live there any more. They started burning the villages – in the mosque they prayed and then started around 9 o’clock – gunfire and burning, we could see it in the night. They were coming with the help of the government forces, so we had no alternative, we had to go into the jungle, and we were there the whole of the night. And what’s more, the next day we didn’t get any relief. That was a nightly terror we will always remember! On both sides they were burning houses, Muslims [Home Guards] with the help of the security forces – it was an organised thing, they were not just attacking Tamils, they were chasing them out! That’s the real time we decided we can’t stay there… [That was in] May 1985, about a week before we left. We had to leave the house and everything behind.

 

• We had to leave the house and run to the woods, and I had fever there and we couldn’t get a doctor. I could see the village burning, and I could hear people saying that my uncles were leaving the town, and I was wondering what’s happening. Our daughter was only nine or ten months old and I was feeding her, the dogs were barking and coming towards us, and we were afraid that because the dogs were barking, we would be found. So that’s what made us decide to leave the country.

 

• My husband was a non-commissioned officer in the Sri Lankan Air Force. The trouble started on July 25th 1983. He was on duty, and we were living in Colombo in a rented house. I took my children to school as usual. From the office he realised that the situation was very bad, so he came to the school and fetched me and the children. The whole of Colombo was up in flames. The people were beaten up by servicemen and thugs. He left us at home and went back to work. They passed a curfew through the whole of Sri Lanka.

    My landlady was Sinhalese. That evening she came home and told me that I have to leave the place because tonight thugs were coming to attack you all. I said, ‘I have no place to go and my husband is not here.’ My neighbours were Muslims. I explained my situation to them. They asked me to come and stay there. I took all my important things with me. Around 9 o’clock the mob began to attack the home and to break the things, and they burned a few things. Truckloads of troops passing through were seen encouraging the mobs.

    Next day there was no curfew for three hours. I left the children with my neighbours and went to church. I told my situation to the priest: he was a Sinhalese priest. He said, ‘Don’t wait for your husband; take your children and go to the refugee camp. The mobs were shouting not to give places for Tamils, and if your neighbours hide Tamils, they will be attacked by the mobs.’ Then I decided to go to the camp. I asked my neighbour to pass the message to my husband, and reached the camp safely.

    On Friday early morning, my husband came to see us. The camp was over-crowded; there was no proper food and many children got diarrhoea. Every day there were three special trains to Jaffna; in one of these trains we went to Jaffna. My husband couldn’t come with us because he had to go back to work. When we reached Jaffna the situation was quiet, but later on violence continued unabated. The children were going to school one week, then they closed the schools. We stayed in Jaffna for six months. From there we went to Trincomalee.

    The place where we stayed was safe. But after some time, the army got information that Tamil Tigers were hiding in our area. The police station was attacked by Tigers. That day my husband was there; he was telling me, ‘Now they’ve started here also. Innocent people are going to suffer.’ Any time they would come home and check everywhere – the army, air force, navy and police – they went around checking all the Tamil houses. The army was the worst. Once they came to my house and checked all my rooms. They found my husband’s old uniforms and asked me, ‘Where did you get these uniforms?’ I said, ‘My husband is a serviceman in the air force.’ They said, ‘No, you are sewing these uniforms for the Tigers.’ I said, ‘Can’t you all see these are old uniforms?’

    Then they were asking me about my husband: where he works, what position, I-card number. I told them everything I knew. At once they asked me, ‘Does your husband support the Tigers?’ I said, ‘He is an honourable serviceman.’ Then a few minutes later they found the album. They looked at it and asked so many questions about my brothers: ‘Where are they? Have they joined the Tigers or gone for training to India?’ I said no, and gave all the addresses of my brothers’ working places. Whatever they said to me in Sinhalese, I had to answer in Sinhalese. Without warning, any time they would jump into the house. I had to speak the same record to each of them. Once they told me, ‘If you don’t tell the truth, we are going to kill or rape you.’

    When every other day the army came and questioned me, the Tigers started to suspect me; they thought I was giving information about them. But I didn’t know who was a Tiger and who was not. When the army came and went, the boys would come and ask me, ‘Can we come and stay for two nights behind the well? Why can’t your husband give us information about where they keep the weapons?’ ‘My husband is not here, he is in Colombo. I am staying with my two children without my husband. I went through so many problems and came here; I beg you all, don’t come here any more.’ There was a temple near my house. In the middle of the night each Tamil family had to leave food for the Tigers in the temple. I also did the same: if I don’t cooperate with them, they might do something to my family. I was getting forced by both parties.

    At that time my mother was in England. I wrote about my situation to her. On the 27th April 1985 I got a call from my mother that she is arranging for us to come over there. Then we came to England on the 28th of May. My husband wanted to come over here. Before he got married, he signed a contract for 15 years, and in May 1986 the contract expired, so nearly three years he has been without a job. So many people are coming in so many ways, but he doesn’t want to come in that way, he wants to come in a genuine way. I have been waiting for four years, and so far he didn’t get a chance to come to England. The children need their father. How long are we going to wait like this? 

    These are all undoubtedly stories of persecution, although the intensity of suffering or degree of danger varies from person to person. Rape was not often mentioned, but I got the impression that fear of it was frequently a factor in the case of women, or those with young daughters.

    Fitting together pieces of the jigsaw from the last two chapters, one gets a complex picture of a divided community suffering from multiple sources of persecution. Unless this complexity is recognised, it would often be difficult to understand what, exactly, a particular individual is fleeing from.

    These cases illustrate the hazards involved in entrusting asylum decisions to officials who (a) are ignorant of the political situation in the countries from which the refugees are fleeing; (b) have never experienced a single day of hardship or danger in their lives; and (c) lack the imagination to put themselves in the place of those whose cases they are judging. By way of example, let us look at the reasons which are sometimes given for deciding that asylum claims are ‘bogus’:

(1) The refugees have chosen to come abroad rather than taking shelter in ‘safe’ areas in their own country. If we adopt the popular convention of referring to all areas of Sri Lanka other than the Northern and Eastern Provinces as the ‘South’, this would mean that, since the war is currently being waged in the North and East, refugees should seek asylum in the South.

    As a matter of fact, this is precisely what millions of Tamil refugees have been forced to do, as we will see in a later chapter. But it is worth pointing out that many of the refugees interviewed in Britain, as well as in the camps in Sri Lanka, fled to the North and East in the first place in order to escape from violence in the South. It is therefore a patent absurdity to think of the South as a satisfactory place of safety or refuge for them. Indeed, for some Tamils, the trauma associated with the violence they have experienced in the South is so great that even the war in the North and East is preferable. For example, one man I spoke to on the Yal Devi – the train which once used to go to Jaffna but now stops in Vavuniya – said that his family had fled to the North after the 1983 riots; and although he himself was forced to be in Colombo because of his work, he still felt that his wife and daughter were safer in Jaffna; he preferred to endure the separation, anxiety and hazards of the frequent journeys to visit them, rather than expose them to the risk of being massacred in cold blood in the South.

(2) The refugees have chosen to come to Europe or America rather than seeking asylum in the nearest neighbouring country – in this case India.

    Once again, fleeing to India is something which hundreds of thousands of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka have been forced to do, many living in camps where conditions are comparable to conditions in Sri Lankan camps. It seems to me there is something slightly perverted in the notion that rich European and American countries cannot afford to shelter asylum-seekers whereas poor Third World countries like India can. However, it is not poverty alone which makes India unsuitable for Sri Lankan refugees. From a very early stage in the conflict, the militant groups had bases in India, and many Tamils from Sri Lanka have been killed by them there; so for refugees attempting to escape from any of the militant groups, or to prevent their children being recruited into them, India was never a satisfactory option.

    Moreover, India became directly involved in the conflict in 1987, with the signing of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and the entry of the IPKF. From then onwards, Sri Lankans opposed to the Indian involvement were no longer safe in India, and there was also general pressure to repatriate refugees to Sri Lanka, by force if necessary. It is once again patently absurd to recommend that refugees fleeing Indian government forces in Sri Lanka should seek asylum in India.

(3) The refugees have come illegally.

    This is a typical Catch-22 situation. As some of these cases show (and there are others too), getting asylum from Sri Lanka is to all intents and purposes impossible: I didn’t come across a single case of it. Those few asylum seekers who entered legally had come as students or visitors. So all refugees are in effect forced to come without a valid entry permit, some after waiting for years. Nor can everyone afford to hang around for so long; those fleeing an arrest warrant or death threat have to leave immediately if they are to have a reasonable chance of survival. For people in such situations, as some of the refugees pointed out, it is often impossible to obtain even a valid passport, much less an entry permit; they are in many cases forced to rely on the numerous agencies which have apparently sprung up to meet this desperate need – supplying, more often than not, forged documents.

    The fact that some people come as visitors or students and then claim asylum is also not a reason for doubting their bona fides. Many of the asylum seekers interviewed here had come in the expectation that the situation would change for the better and they would soon be able to return. However, none of those interviewed thought that the situation had improved, and most thought it had deteriorated since they left. I was able to confirm the validity of their assessments in the course of my two visits to Sri Lanka.

    A genuine problem does arise in the case of asylum seekers who may have engaged in crimes against civilians in Sri Lanka; indeed, it is evident from some of the foregoing testimony that there are some Tamils who continue to organise such attacks even from Britain. In the case of those who may have committed crimes in Sri Lanka, it is important to remember that they are still, nevertheless, entitled to a fair trial and respect for their own rights, and should not be sent back until these are guaranteed. In the case of those who continue these activities from within Britain, the purpose of stamping out their crimes is certainly not served by treating all refugees as criminals; on the contrary, people living in daily fear of deportation are more likely to fall prey to threats, intimidation and violence from within their own community.

    In the next chapter we turn to the fate of refugees who succeed in gaining entry to Britain. At this stage it is sufficient to point out that there is no way that asylum claims can be processed efficiently unless they are handled by people who are qualified for the job – i.e., people who have a thorough knowledge of the historical background to the situation they are dealing with, as well as day-to-day current developments. They would not then waste time by asking questions like, ‘Why don’t you seek asylum in India?’ at a time when India had become a party to the conflict and was persecuting and repatriating refugees.

    In addition, some training is required to ensure that they understand that even for people inured to suffering, there are limits to human endurance, and to push them beyond these limits is tantamount to violating their human rights. I have lived in conditions of material insecurity and hardship which most people in Britain would find intolerable, and I have known people who live in conditions ten times worse, so I know very well that one can adapt to – live with, make the best of – some fairly dreadful conditions. But I’m very sure that I could never adapt to living in the constant fear that my husband and children could arbitrarily be picked up and tortured to death any time they go out; that someone could enter my home and rape or kill me without fear of punishment; that I and my family and neighbours could at any moment be hacked or burned to death. Could anyone adapt to living with that fear? I don’t think so. And it is unethical to expect that anyone should be forced to live in such conditions.

    The concept of ‘human rights’ has arisen precisely because to violate those rights deprives a person of humanity, and to expect a person to live without those rights is inhuman. If people dealing with asylum claims had some training in basic human rights so that they were quite clear about this, they would be able to do their job much more quickly and efficiently; they would not need to spend years deciding the cases of most of the refugees quoted here.