Sri Lankan migrants reach out to Canadian Tamils

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Some of the Sri Lankan migrants who arrived aboard a rusty cargo ship last weekend are reaching out to the Canadian Tamil community, placing telephone calls and trying to connect with relatives.

At least one of the men who was on the boat that was intercepted off Vancouver Island last Friday has relatives in Toronto, and another 25 have called the Canadian Tamil Congress seeking help from Canada's large and influential Tamil community.

The first details about the migrants' lives in Sri Lanka began to emerge in a Vancouver Immigration and Refugee Board hearing room Tuesday during hearings for two of the men.

Larry Smeets, who is representing the pair, told the hearing through a conference call from a detention centre in suburban Maple Ridge that several family members of one of the migrants were killed in Sri Lanka.

Mr. Smeets said he has interviewed 15 of the 76 migrants.

Gary Anandasangaree, a lawyer with the Canadian Tamil Congress, said he wasn't surprised to hear the claim that family members have been killed in Sri Lanka.

"Much more will most likely come out of a full hearing, a refugee claim," Mr. Anandasangaree said.

Lawyers for the government asked that the migrants not be released because they haven't established their identities.

The Canadian Tamil Congress has set up a toll-free hotline. Toronto lawyer Hadayt Nazami, who has been hired to represent one of the migrants, said about 25 of the migrants have used the hotline.

Mr. Nazami said his client's Toronto-based cousins hired him, and that he hasn't yet been able to speak to the man.

Meanwhile, a Sri Lankan diplomat in Canada told The Globe and Mail that Tamils aren't threatened in Sri Lanka and don't need refuge in Canada.

"It's easy to say somebody's harassed and to seek asylum," said Bandula Jayasekara, the consul general in Toronto. "Anyone who claims refugee status worldwide, they'll find reasons to discredit another country."

Mr. Jayasekara suggested the $45,000 (U.S.) each migrant is said to have paid for the trip came from the Tamil Tigers, a separatist militant organization whose founder was killed earlier this year.

"For each person to pay $45,000, it's very alarming when we don't know how could one person pay," he said. "Where did those monies come from?"

Asked whether the migrants could be Tamil Tigers, Mr. Jayasekara said: "It is difficult to say. … I'm sure the truth will come out."

John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, a public-policy think tank specializing in security issues, said it was unlikely the Tamil Tigers paid. He said a more probable scenario would be that former Tiger operatives organized the illegal passage to make money for themselves, charging passengers a combination of cash deposits and sureties.

"I think it's a straight-up case of people smuggling."

Mr. Thompson said the issue of whether the men are accepted as refugees will be important for other Tamil migrants.

"This may be a test case, in other words - would Canada be willing to accept the claim that Sri Lanka is persecuting all Tamils, period," he said. "If we're willing to let this lot in, others will follow."

The latest migrant crisis on Canada's West Coast is reminiscent of the flood of Chinese people who arrived in decrepit boats in 1999.

More than 300 of the more than 600 migrants were returned to China. But members of the Canadian Tamil community said this situation is different.

They say these people are fleeing violence and persecution in Sri Lanka, which has just emerged from a long civil war between the government and separatist Tamil Tigers. The last months of the war this year were particularly violent and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been affected. More than 200,000 people are in an internment camp, where conditions are deplorable.

Members of the Canadian Tamil community, many of whom have flown to B.C. to support the migrants, say conditions for young Tamil men in Sri Lanka are dire.

At a news conference in Vancouver, Roy Ratnavel said he was thrown in jail in Sri Lanka at 16 and many of the young men who risked their lives to come to Canada could have faced the same fate.

Mr. Ratnavel said that 20 years ago, his father had the foresight to put him on a plane bound for Canada so he could claim refugee status and become a successful businessman.