Sri Lankans Flee Once Tranquil Paradise

Tens of thousands of Sri Lankans have fled to India, risking an uncertain future as refugees to escape the ethnic warfare that has made a hell of their tranquil paradise.

“I sold everything I had to my neighbors for rock-bottom prices to raise the money for the boat trip,” said Singaduthu, a 40-year-old fisherman.

He clutched his two wailing daughters to his chest while their 4-year-old brother, Prem Kumar, looked around in confusion for the mother he would never see again.

She was killed when the family was caught in a battle between Sri Lankan soldiers and Tamil Tiger guerrillas.

“I lost my wife in the cross-fire while waiting for the boat to escape to India,” Singaduthu said. His voice choked. His daughters, 11-year-old Tilakavathi and 10-year-old Kala, cried for their mother.

Singaduthu’s family fled their home at Edukalampatti on Sri Lanka’s northeastern coast and made their way westward to Mannar, a Sri Lankan island in the archipelago that stretches across the Palk Strait toward India.

“The boat that was supposed to take us to Rameswaram was gone already,” said Singaduthu, who like many Tamils uses only one name.

“We needed to wait for one day, and we hid in the bushes to escape from the cross-fire. . . . My wife, Gnanavalli, was hit by a bullet and she died. How I wish all the five of us had met the same fate.”

More than 100,000 Sri Lankan Tamils have fled to Tamil Nadu state in southern India since fighting between the Tamil Tigers and the Sinhalese-dominated government resumed in June.

Naresh Gupta, Tamil Nadu’s commissioner for Sri Lankan refugees, said up to 1,300 arrived at Rameswaram port in a single day. Arulanandam Fernando of the Rameswaram Fishermen’s Assn. said the daily figure was more like 3,000.

Many, like Singaduthu, register at a dingy reception center and are taken in government buses to makeshift refugee centers in schools, warehouses and cyclone shelters.

Rameswaram once was best known as a Hindu pilgrimage site. Before Sri Lanka’s ethnic wars, ferries plied the 30 miles between Rameswaram and Talaimannar port on the bountiful island formerly called Ceylon.

A flourishing, largely illicit bazaar sprang up at Rameswaram, 275 miles south of Madras.

Sri Lankan Tamils, coming to visit the huge temple of the Hindu god Shiva, brought electronic items and other choice goods that were hard to find or prohibitively expensive in India. In Rameswaram, the visitors stocked up on lungis , the bright plaid cotton sarongs worn by Tamil men on both sides of the strait.

Ferry service halted in 1983 when Tamil separatists began fighting the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka, but the smuggling trade continued. Smugglers ferried goods, arms for the Tamil guerrillas and refugees.

Today, the briskest trade is in refugees.

Malraja, a Sri Lankan boatman, charges the equivalent of $14.50 for space on his 20-foot fiberglass boat, which is fitted with an outboard motor for the trip from Pesalai on Mannar Island.

Some passengers, like Anthony, a construction worker, have no money.

“I gave Malraja the gold ear studs of my wife and one of the daughter’s for the trip,” he said. “I also gave him my old cycle.”

Anthony, his wife, Kadiramma, and their three daughters left after five of their neighbors in Pesalai were killed by an air force bombing raid on suspected Tiger hide-outs.

“We would spend entire nights in bunkers infested with snakes,” Kadiramma said.

Many refugees were reluctant to criticize the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The guerrillas seek a separate homeland for Tamils, who make up 18% of Sri Lanka’s 16 million people, and more than 14,000 people have been killed in seven years of war.

Anandaraja, a trader from the east coast town of Batticaloa, was willing to speak his mind.

“Many of us do not understand why the (Tigers are) fighting this war,” he said.