Canada Hunts Ship, Questions Refugees’ Story

Canadian officials Tuesday ordered a search for a mystery ship that supposedly abandoned 152 Sri Lankan refugees in two crammed lifeboats in the Atlantic off Newfoundland after having promised to deliver them to safety in Canada for as much as $5,000 apiece. Police, however, expressed skepticism about some of the refugees’ assertions.

According to Kandasamy Lingaratnam, a spokesman for the refugees, the group was forced into the lifeboats without food and only a little water and was told that Canada “was only 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away.”

Five-Day Drift Claimed

Lingaratnam told reporters that the two boats drifted for five days before rescue came Monday afternoon when three Canadian fishing boats spotted them six miles south of the port of St. Shotts. on the south coast of Canada’s easternmost province.

He said that all of the refugees, including three women and five small children, are Tamils, a Hindu ethnic minority that says it is persecuted by the Buddhist Sinhalese majority of Sri Lanka. They are asking for refugee status in Canada on grounds that their lives would be in danger if forced to return home.

“They would cause us trouble, they would kill us,” Lingaratnam said.

Misery in the Lifeboats

He told a story of misery in the lifeboats on the stormy North Atlantic, which, even at this time of the year, is bedeviled by rain, high wind, fog and crashing waves.

“People were crying and vomiting blood,” he said. “We thought we were going to die.”

However, Inspector Jack Lavers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told a news conference after interviewing most of the refugees, “There is some consistency in their story, but some inconsistencies in the facts.

“We find it remarkable that they could spend five days in the fog and rain and still be that dry,” he said.

The several refugees who talked to reporters all appeared strong, healthy and in good spirits even though their ordeal had ended less than a day earlier. Government officials said that only one of the group required hospitalization.

Lavers as well as Jerrett Lotto, the St. John’s director of the Canadian Immigration Service, also were intrigued by the near-perfect unanimity of the stories by the adults.

As related by Lingaratnam and later repeated by several others, they paid between 24,000 Indian rupees and 30,000 rupees (3,000-5,000 U.S. dollars) to be taken from Sri Lanka to Canada via Madras, India.

Most of the group came from Jaffna, Sri Lanka, a Tamil center in the northern part of the island nation once known as Ceylon and a center of a violent separatist movement.

Lingaratnam said he sold his wife’s jewelry to pay for the passage, which he said was arranged “by a friend who knew an agency” that would take them to Canada. He could only identify the agent as someone named Ramasmy in Madras.

Treated Well in Canada

The group wanted to go to Canada because “we heard the Canadian people treated people well. . . . We came as political refugees.”

Lavers said the Canadian military has been asked to make an air search of Canadian territorial waters for the mystery ship, which no refugee could identify.

As of Tuesday night, there had been no visual or radar sighting of the missing ship, believed to be a freighter.

Lavers said the name of the ship was removed from lifeboats, which were only 28 feet long and built to hold 30 to 35 people. He said he would not assume that any identification on life jackets could necessarily be tied to a specific ship.

Privately, some police sources said it is hard to believe that the refugees didn’t known something about the ship, since they had first boarded the vessel on July 7 and spent nearly a month on the vessel.

Route Not Revealed

Lavers also seemed doubtful when the refugees couldn’t give him any idea about their route. He surmised that the ship had crossed the Indian Ocean and sailed around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, although it was possible it passed through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean.

However, another refugee, Nalliah Wijayanathan, said they boarded the boat at night, were kept below decks the entire trip and got off the vessel at night. “Nobody in the crew talked to us except for one man, and he spoke English.”

Otherwise, Lingaratnam said only that the crew was Oriental, “maybe Korean or Chinese.”

Both men said they were dry because the last two days were free of rain and a strong breeze had dried their clothes.

Still unconvinced, Lavers told reporters, “We do not know the identity or location of the ship or when the people left the ship--five days ago or yesterday.”

Embassy ‘Completely Baffled’

Lester Corea, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan Embassy in Ottawa, said by telephone: “We are completely baffled by the incident. It seems to us a rather dramatic way to come out of the country. Any Sri Lanka national is entitled to a passport.”

But, countered, refugee Wijayanathan, “I asked for a passport for five months. There was no answer.”

In spite of inconsistencies and with the final decision to be made by federal officials in Ottawa, Letto indicated the chances are good that most of the group will be allowed to stay in Canada, which has a liberal policy of sheltering political refugees.

“There is a reasonable chance they will stay here,” he told reporters. Normally, once someone claiming political grounds is satisfactorily identified and any subversive background is ruled out, a refugee gets a temporary visa for a year.

Even if he is ordered deported he can appeal, a process that runs at least two or three years. And if in that time, the refugee marries a Canadian citizen and/or finds a permanent job, his chances are strong of staying.

Only 3 Sought Refugee Status

Letto said there are only about 1,800 Sri Lankans in Canada, mostly in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. “In the last year, only three Tamils have sought refugee status,” he said.

According to Lingaratnam and the others, they were promised to be taken “near Canada, not on Canada but where we could see it.”

However, when the ship stopped, no land was in sight, although the captain “said we would be there in one or two hours,” Lingaratnam said.

The group members who talked to reporters said they came only with their clothes and no other possessions nor any money. Lavers, however, said several had Canadian and European currency.

What is important, said Lingaratnam, “is to be in Canada, anywhere in Canada.”