REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes

REPORTER: To now, your brother in law has never said a word about this?

DEVAN: No.

Until recently, Tamils have lived peacefully with their Sinhalese neighbours in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo, but in the past two years they've been subject to a dramatic rise in kidnappings, extortion and in some cases murder.

DR MANO MOHAN, TAMIL COMMUNITY LEADER: It's an easy way of making money, it's an easy way of inflicting terror in the community. And it's an easy way of ethic cleansing.

Dr Mano Mohan is a Sydney cardiologist and a leading figure in the Australian Tamil community. He says the kidnapping and disappearances of Tamils has reached epidemic proportions.

DR MANO MOHAN: This is going on for the last two years, without any rhyme or reason and Tamils of Sri Lanka are fed up. They live in fear, and Tamils of Sri Lanka who live abroad who are citizens of other countries are unable to visit their kin for fear of being abducted, of fear of being killed, this is a state of affairs. It's anarchy.

Dr Mohan told Dateline of several disappearances which have had terrible consequences for Tamils living in Australia. He introduced me to three men here in Sydney all Australian citizens, who have had relatives abducted from the street of Colombo. Concerned for their families' safety, none were prepared to be identified.

DEVAN: On the front, there was some writing on it by chalk asking her to go to a certain phone booth at a certain time. She'd been there, was waiting and at the right time, there was a call from the phone.

Devan, not his real name, told Dateline his sister's husband was kidnapped and the kidnappers told her to get a $60,000 ransom from Sydney.

DEVAN: Somebody was talking, not in pure Tamil, not in Sinhalese, in between, speaking Tamil but in a different accent, telling her that they got her husband and demanding for 50 Lak, rupees.

REPORTER: What is 50 Lak in Australian dollars?

DEVAN: 50 Lak in Australian money, that's about $60,000 and she was crying.

Unable to raise so much cash quickly, Devan offered his sister what he could.

DEVAN: So I told her that I would try and get at least $10,000 or something like that but she said, "No, it's going to be very very hard, they're going to kill him, if we don't do something to start with." Then I asked her to get some time and I told her that within one week I'll try and get some money.

Cobbling together a few high interest rate private loans and keeping the entire business a secret from his immediate family here in Sydney, Devan sent a $40,000 ransom to his sister in Sri Lanka. His brother in law was released, but refuses to talk about the experience.

DEVAN: My sister tried - I told my sister to find out something. She was trying to get something out of him. He don't even say nothing, not even a word. When she start talking about him, he just look somewhere. Also, he would never talk.

Devan's story had a happy ending but Dateline met another Australian Tamil family who's relative has not been released even after the ransom was paid.

MURALI: It's real agony. It's not only one. So many people undergoing, certainly, we would love the Australian Government and help at least to find out what is happening.

Murali, not his real name is still waiting for news of his brother in law, an Australian citizen who disappeared in Colombo over a year ago.

MURALI: The following day someone said that he will be released, if we pay a ransom. The call came on the cellphone and he said to pay them what they are asking, and they asked a large sum of money, in the order of millions in Sinhalese rupees.

Murali says his family paid the kidnappers more than $1 million to release his brother in law, a wealthy businessman. Several months later he hadn't been released and the family went to the Sri Lankan Government. Murali says the family was told by a Government Minister that this Tamil paramilitary force, the Karnua group was behind the abduction. Last year, Dateline filmed the Karnua group which is accused of acting as a proxy force for the Government in its war against the Tamil Tigers.

MURALI: One Minister, he promised that he should be able to get him releases and he said he know that he's abducted by Karnua group. He said that.

REPORTER: The Minister confirmed this, that it was the Karnua group involved?

MURALI: Yes, the guerilla group of Karnua group, that was involved and they will - he will help to release him. But I think they were trying for nearly two months and at the end of two months he said that we can't help.

REPORTER: Did you say why he couldn't help?

MURALI: He said that he can't help, they're not listening to him, the people that have him.

The family also spoke to the Department of Foreign Affairs here in Canberra which in turn asked Australia's high commission in Colombo to contact the Sri Lankan Government. But the family says it was told nothing more could be done to determine whether he was dead or alive.

DR MANO MOHAN: They are disappointed in that these human right violations and - are not being questioned openly by the Australian Government or the Foreign Office or for that matter the high commission there. So that is definitely something that's causing a lot of disappointment and disillusionment among Australians - citizen of Sri Lanka Tamil origin.

The Department of Foreign Affairs told Dateline in an email that its unable to confirm the veracity of these kidnappings but it also said that it's asked the Sri Lankan Government at a high level to have reported cases of abduction investigated, the relevant person released safely, and to prevent future cases recurring.

KUSUMPALA BALAPATABENDI, HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR SRI LANKA: I don't like to use the word abductions in that manner. Especially in the sense that every disappearance is not an abduction, because these numbers are exaggerated, highly exaggerated numbers.

Sri Lanka's High Commissioner for Australia, Kusumpala Balapatabendi says this that if some Tamils have been found dead, it's probably just a result of Sri Lanka's long-running civil war. Amazingly he accuses Tamils of making up their kidnapping stories.

KUSUMPALA BALAPATABENDI: I can hide some and get them to tell police that I am missing, I am abducted, this is happening. This is tarnishing the image of the country. They're trying to destruct the international community from our community.

REPORTER: But many people have turned up dead?

KUSUMPALA BALAPATABENDI: Well maybe a few people, in a war people are to die.

REPORTER: But 430 people have died?

KUSUMPALA BALAPATABENDI: Maybe. I don't know. Maybe more or less. It can be because in a war, no one knows who is dead and who is not dead.

But with 430 kidnap victims turning up dead, the Sri Lankan Government has been criticised by human rights groups for not doing more to investigate the disappearances, reports by groups like the Asian Human Rights Commission back up the testimony of Tamil families here in Sydney.

TANVIR: She said she had one phone call and they ask for some money and she said immediately she wanted to talk to her son first.

Tanvir, again not his real name, has also suffered the torment of having a family member kidnapped. His sister's 20-year-old son was abducted from the family apartment in Colombo just before Christmas last year.

TANVIR: Someone knocked on the door and four or five people outside, said some sort of police investigation and they then called out his name, so he walked out and he told his mother that he'll sort this and come and when she came out, she saw them sort of pushing them - him in a white van and by the time she came out, the van drove off.

A few weeks after the abduction, Tanvir's sister received a phone call from the kidnappers.

TANVIR: They said they'll come back to her with some details, she told me that, and I told her, what about the money? Somehow we'll get him out. This is about three months ago. We've been waiting since, you know, to hear from those people.

Tanvir's family believes the boy may have been taken by the Sri Lankan security forces and handed over to the Karnua group to be trained as a militant.

TANVIR: I think he was arrested by the army or police. I don't think it's a rebel group but there have been stories about the army and police arresting kids and handing them over to Karnua group to fight against Tamil Tigers. Maybe that has happened, I'm not sure.

Dr Mohan also believes that many of the younger kidnapping victims are being forcibly recruited to fight for paramilitary groups. But he says none of it would be possible without the approval of corrupt Government officials.

DR MANO MOHAN: It's a combination of paramilitary groups, commbination of Government highly placed officials and the military and the armed forces. There should be collaboration between all these groups for effectively to carry this out, again and again and again, without being get caught.

As implausible as this sounds, just a few months ago, Sri Lanka's police chief announced that criminal gangs were involved in the kidnappings along with corrupt police and military officers. Sri Lanka's High Commissioner confirms this but says corrupt officials are already being dealt with.

KUSUMPALA BALAPATABENDI: Many of them are ex-service men and a couple of people serving in the police, not many, but two have been thrown out under detention and been charged.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, says it cannot offer an opinion as to who it thinks is behind the kidnappings. Dr Mano Mohan believes that the Government needs to do more to help its Tamil citizens and their families.

DR MANO MOHAN: So Australia I feel should take a leading role and call a spade a spade, talk to Sri Lankan Government authority and possibly also canvas countries like the United Kingdom which has a moral obligation in this problem because Sri Lanka was a British colony, and perhaps canvas even America and the European Union to take a more proactive role in this problem. Leaving the political problem alone, to take a very hardline on this human right violations, and to put a stop to that.

GEORGE NEGUS: Dateline was told that the Sri Lankan High Commissioner here in Australia says that he has never been approached by the department of foreign affairs in relation to the quite amazing rash of kidnappings.



Credits
Reporter/Camera
NICHOLAS LAZAREDES

Editors
MICAH MCGOWAN
SUE BELL

Researcher
YALDA HAKIM