Canada Tamils Admit Lifeboat Deception

Leaders of Canada’s Tamil organization, faced with a growing public backlash against their group, acknowledged Sunday that 155 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka who were picked up in overcrowded lifeboats off Newfoundland last week had sailed from West Germany and not South Asia as the refugees first claimed.

“Spokespersons (for the refugees) made certain admissions that put the situation in context,” Sri G. Sri-Skanda-Rajah, communications chairman of the Tamil Eelam Society of Canada, told a news conference here after some of the refugees admitted lying about how they came to Canada.

He told reporters he was concerned that the focus of attention had unfairly settled on the original untrue stories about the trip when real concerns should be “with the desperate situation” that forced people to lie.

The Tamils, a Hindu minority, contend that they are persecuted by the Buddhist Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government.

The first public acknowledgement by the refugees that the group lied about how it got to Canada came in a Saturday news conference in Montreal in which Niallah Wijayanathan, a refugee leader, admitted that the original story was false and added, “We deeply regret misleading the Canadian public.

“We were told by those who helped us (the captain of the ship that brought them from West Germany) that we had better say we had come from India or they (the Canadian government) would deport us to Sri Lanka,” he said.

The refugees’ initial story was that they had made their way to Madras, India, from Sri Lanka and boarded a freighter in early July, which then abandoned them Aug. 7 in two lifeboats without food and only a little water six miles off the coast of Newfoundland. They said they drifted for five days until their rescue by Canadian fishing boats.

Nightmare Voyage

They acknowledge now that they left refugee camps in West Germany, where they had fled from Sri Lanka, and boarded the ship near Hamburg on July 28. The Tamils still say their voyage was a nightmare of poor food, unsanitary conditions and overcrowding. Wijayanathan said that instead of the five days they originally reported spending in the lifeboats, the group floated helplessly for three days.

He repeated their earlier contention that they had almost no food and little water and added, “I thought we would die.”

Under Canadian immigration policy, Tamils are designated as legitimate political refugees and are given near-automatic permission to live in the country for at least a year. The 155 who landed last week have been given such permission in spite of their original false story; Canada’s policy is not to send back any Tamils.

Last week’s decision provoked charges by Canadians that the Tamils have illegally jumped ahead of other would-be immigrants, who are forced to wait years to enter under Canada’s quota system.

Several members of Parliament are demanding changes in the law, citing demands from large numbers of Canadians that the Tamils be sent back and steps taken to ensure that they are not followed by others.

Another Canadian Tamil leader, Arul S. Aruliah, said Sunday that he was concerned “about a double standard,” pointing out that “there is nothing different about this group” from the thousands of other refugees who first entered Canada illegally.

“You are treating these people like pariahs,” Aruliah said to a critical reporter, “but what have they done? To run for freedom, is that bad?”