Decades of struggle here between the Government and the Tamil Tigers drove many thousands of Tamils out of this country and across the narrow sea passage into southern India. Unlike most Tamils here who have largely been re-settled there are tens of thousands and in refugee camps in southern India having fled the repression of the Tigers and the Government and as Evan Williams reports, they have an even greater incentive to try to escape from their the seemingly endless refugee life and there is no shortage of boats willing to take them.
REPORTER: Evan Williams
Just across the water from Sri Lanka here in southern India, the full-scale of the Tamil exodus becomes clear. More than 140,000 Tamils are massed in camps or villages here, many just waiting for the chance to leave. At a local dock I find this boat, an old fishing trawler that dozens of Tamils had used just three month ago to try and reach Australia.
As the asylum seeker boarded they were told to get inside the trawler's fish hold. This is the fish hold of a trawler very similar, almost exactly the same as the one that the people were going to try to get to Australia in and it is unbelievable. It absolutely wreaks obviously of fish, it is claustrophobic and small and damp. It is almost unimaginable to think that there were 150 people crammed into this area and that they were willing to be down here for anything up to 20 days in rough seas.
Being in here just makes you realise how desperate they are or how much they are being ripped off by traffickers who do not think they will make it to Australia, but being down here is quite disturbing. When police found them, many were already gasping for air inside the stinking hold. Many of them said they were fleeing persecution in Sri Lanka and a life of stateless limbo in India.
CHANDRA HASAN: There were basically persons who believed that they can get across to the Coco Island or to Christmas Island and thereby get asylum and their future and their lives would be stable.
They were among the lucky ones. Hundreds more have died at sea. Chandra Hasan runs the main organisation looking after Tamil refugees in India.
CHANDRA HASAN: They are looking at the uncertain future and are being misled into thinking that if they get across to Australia they will have a better standard of living.
In his office Chandra Hasan shows me the scale of the refugee crisis. Each one of these black dots is one of 110 camps he runs housing a total of 70,000 refugees who fled years of civil war in Sri Lanka. Another 70,000 live outside the camps. Now the war is over, Tamil refugees like these women are being encouraged to go back the Sri Lanka but many say they can't.
SUBAGHINI (Translation): Even if the war is over, we don’t have a house to live in and nothing is permanent. The fear the war will start again is still there. If it starts again, our lives are at risk and the question will arise as to why we went to India.
Subaghini and her husband fled the war - two years ago he left on a boat for Australia to try to give their family a new life. She has heard no news since.
SUBAGHINI (Translation): We live in hardship. The children are always asking me to bring their dad home. It’s very hard. My children don’t even know their father is missing. I don’t tell them and they are expecting he will come back. On the 21st of this month my daughter will have a birthday and she keeps asking if her dad will come to that. I don’t know what happened to him which makes it even harder.
Vijitha has also not heard from her husband since he left by boat two years ago.
VIJITHA (Translation): Today is the first time that I speak openly about this - for two years nobody knew. I have been telling people at work he will call and he’ll send me money and that I am still in contact with him. It’s for my safety, sir. In the camp I need protection. We married for love, we had no problems in six years, he was a golden husband. He only went because he wanted a good future for our children.
It was for the better lives of his four sisters that 38 year old Sambavi, one night three years ago, got on a boat for Australia. His mother told him it was too dangerous so he left without saying goodbye.
MOTHER (Translation): I only have one son and four daughters. It is three years since my son left.
There is a chance their men are in detention but they could always all have drowned at sea. Like many heading to Australia, they feel they cannot return to Sri Lanka because they have lost their land, their jobs and would face persecution for being in India so long even though the war is now officially over.
VIJITHA (Translation): On what basis are you saying that the war is over? Who can we complain to if anyone comes for us at night? Our lives are at risk. They say it is an open environment but will anybody guarantee our safety in Sri Lanka?
They tell me it costs about $2500 to reach Australia by boat. Most scrape the money together by selling all their jewellery, going into debt, saving and asking for help from relatives abroad - it is often everything they have.
FATHER (Translation): We can stay here in India, our lives are not in danger in India. But if we stay in India, we can’t get ahead. If we can get to Australia or any other country overseas - for our families - in future we will be better off. We considered that situation and sent him.
Unable to move his family beyond a few meals a day this man sent his 26-year-old son on a boat to Australia. Like so many others I met here he has not heard from him since.
FATHER (Translation): We don’t believe the war has finished in Sri Lanka. War could start tomorrow.
Journalists are banned from entering the camps. The closest I could get was this outer fence guarded by police. Behind me just behind this fence is Mandapam Camp which is the biggest refugee camp for Tamils coming from Sri Lanka. Now it looks like people are able to come and go, they can go to work, go to school but they have to be back in by night-time and they have to be registered and they are very controlled.
The Indian Government does not want pictures of the camp getting out so I'm not allowed to go inside with a camera, in fact even here is quite sensitive. We have arranged to meet some people from inside the camp at another location away from the camp.
We arrange to meet near a fishing port where boats from Australia like these can be bought by traffickers. This man had tried to go to Australia by boat but lost all his money when they were caught by police, he did not want to be identified.
MAN (Translation): So many people have died - around 600 people. We don’t want to go back, but we can’t live here. They are not even treating us like humans, even going to the police and the women are treated in a degrading way. Even at the station, or at Q Branch, they don’t record our cases – they treat refugees like slaves.
Having lost his money the only way he had a chance to go was to get more people on the boats so he became what is known as a sub-agent in the camps for the traffickers.
MAN (Translation): They said “We’ll send you on the next boat. If you send six people, we will send you on the next boat for free.”
I asked if tougher Australian laws will stop the flow of Tamil refugees.
MAN (Translation): No sir, they will find a way to go somehow. So many people have died, nobody survived on those two boats before mine. But people still left the very next day because they can’t live here. They are even taking babies with them, babies a year old, eight, seven, six months old were taken.
He said he had been beaten by Sri Lankan soldiers and claims that today the Tamils are losing their land. While not fleeing persecution in India many seem to feel they cannot go home or stay in India.
MAN (Translation): There’s no freedom, we are at their beck and call - it’s a slave’s life. All of them will try to go even if Australia blocks us they will try to get there somehow - so many are still waiting to go. Hardly anyone wants to live here, they want to go.
And so the flow keeps coming. Just a day before I was here, 40 Tamils were found gathering at this beach to get on a boat the Australia, it is right across the road from the state's police headquarters.
ABASH KUMAR, POLICE CHIEF: Obviously they are not satisfied with the explanations given by the Sri Lankan Government.
Police chief, Abash Kumar says that this year alone they have stopped 1,000 Tamils trying to get to Australia by boat.
ABASH KUMAR: They know that the war is over but with their own network they keep collecting information about conditions in northern Sri Lanka, Jaffna, and other places. Probably they are not very happy with the developments over there and they think that if they go back, perhaps their life will not be as good as even what they are having here.
The upsurge in boats going is fuelled by Tamil smugglers who used to provide the supply network for the LTTE. They know where to buy fishing boats, how the refit them, the illicit coastal networks and the deep sea supply routes. For each boatload of refugees traffickers can make a profit of $200,000.
ABASH KUMAR: These people who are now agents and taking these people out are not LTTD dropouts. They were helping LTTE earlier in the sense that LTTE was relying on them to bring medicines or supplies but they never fought with weapons, now these people are unemployed and this is a good source of income for them. So they take these people and they are able to sail to far-off places.
I'm told wounded Tiger fighters and their families go on board for free. The next day I got a call from the police who found another group trying to get on a boat to Australia.
We are just on the phone now to Q Branch which is the intelligence wing of the Tamil police, their the guys that basically keep an eye on foreign activity in this state and particularly keep an eye on the Tamil questions, they are the ones monitoring and acting on the refugee issue, people trying to leave this state to go to Australia by boat. We are just told that last night they made an arrest of 61 people trying to go on a boat to Australia and that included four agents or four traffickers. We have been told we can get access to them this morning and we are heading there now.
The night before, Police Superintendent Ram Subramanian led a raid after being tipped off that refugees were travelling in these three tourist buses. He said the drivers had no idea they were unintentionally trafficking prospective boat people.
SUPERINTENDENT RAM SUBRAMANIAN: They were told they were going like tourists and put in the van without telling the real reason.
These asylum seekers had all agreed the pay about $2500 each for the passage the Australia. Some of them even had small children. Remarkably among them were thee suspected traffickers. This man had received about $4,000 as a down payment and the rest was to be handed over when they boarded the boat for Australia.
REPORTER: It is very dangerous to go by sea. Many people have lost their lives.
MAN (Translation): Those who are there call us and tell us, and we see our problems and our freedom. They talk about their income and their jobs, so people here want to go there.
Despite the risks of theft and death these desperate people seem to keep willing to keep trying. Not even tougher Australian laws seem to deter them.
MAN (Translation): We trust they will accept us and we come with that trust. We have confirmed trust that they will accept us as refugees. I have been badly affected, sir. Even in my own country I have never been happy. From childhood everybody, including my parents, say we have so much land but we can’t live peacefully here. We have all these problems, that is why they are sending us. If everybody goes, they can be happy, that is why they are sending us. We’re coming with that hope, we are not criminals, sir. We are coming as honest people, look at our evidence and accept us.
All of these people will be returned to the camps and almost all of them said they would keep on trying to reach Australia, even the next generation.
BOY: I am also going to Australia and I get a good education and good life and we get the freedom. And we get a better life.
REPORTER: It is very dangerous.
YOGESWARAN: It is OK. I will see.. This is my mother, she is going to customer service, monthly she gets only 300 rupees, I get no education.
REPORTER: You don’t get a good education, but you can go to school. Why are you upset? What upsets you?
BOY (Translation): I don’t get to study here.
YOGESWARAN: No money, many more problems.
REPORTER: Many problems?
YOGESWARAN: Yes.
REPORTER: What problems?
YOGESWARAN: School, education, peace.
After years of farming his father now has an injured shoulder which means he can no longer lift heavy loads, so the responsibility for earning money for the family falls to this 13-year-old Yogeswaran.
YOGESWARAN (Translation): I don’t study anymore because I have my mother, father and younger sister to care for and I have to save them. My hand was broken so I can’t carry sacks or anything. So now I have to study somehow, but they won’t let us study.
MARK DAVIS: Evan Williams and the plight of Tamils in southern India where the potential number of boat people heading for Australia could ultimately dwarf the numbers leaving from here. You can see all tonight's stories, leave your comment and find information on tonight's topic on our website.
Reporter/Camera
EVAN WILLIAMS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Associate Producer
EVE LUCAS
Fixer
BHAGWAN SINGH
Editor
STEVE GIBBS
Translations/Subtitling
SARA NATHAN
EDILBERT RAJADURAI
Original Music Composed by
VICKI HANSEN