Death Trap to Sri Lankans who flee from Sri lanka in boat

(Kakinada, India) - Horrific accounts from refugees fleeing the fighting in Sri Lanka by boat show the wanton disregard for civilians of both Sri Lankan government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on both the United Nations Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council to make the situation in Sri Lanka a priority to avoid further loss of civilian life.

"The Sri Lankan government is doing everything it can to keep these stories of suffering from reaching the world," said Meenakshi Ganguly, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. "These accounts must be multiplied tens of thousands of times to capture the full horror of those who remain trapped by the Tamil Tigers and shelled by government forces."

Human Rights Watch interviewed a group of Sri Lankan refugees in Andhra Pradesh in India. The refugees were rescued on April 29, 2009, from Indian waters, where they had been lost at sea for nine days after fleeing from the government declared "no-fire zone" in northern Sri Lanka's Mullaitivu district. Accounts by refugees are especially important because the Sri Lankan government has long refused independent access to the combat zone for journalists and human rights monitors. The refugees' detailed statements contradict claims by the government that it is not using heavy weapons in the "no-fire zone."

A motorbike taxi driver, S. Indra Kumar, told Human Rights Watch that his family went to Putumattalan, on the coast, after the Sri Lankan government declared the area a safe zone: "We were living in such fear. There was constant shelling. On April 5 or 6, our neighbors were injured in the shelling. A shell landed inside the bunker. Ten people were injured, and of them, five died. There was no anesthesia. The doctors had to cut off a girl's hand without any anesthesia. My small daughter was crying and scared. I decided then that we had to leave."

He said that sometimes the shelling lasted so long that people could not come out to use the toilets: "Whenever there was shelling, we were in the bunker. There was heavy shelling, and the people were easing themselves in the bunker. I would take a bucket to clean up the mess and bury it in the sand."

His brother, S. Indra Meenan, a 25-year-old hardware engineer, described long periods of shelling: "In the village, every house had a bunker. Five or six people sitting inside, sometimes for three or four hours." He said that the Tamil Tigers sometimes fired from areas close to where the civilians were living, putting them at risk from retaliatory fire. "We left [by boat] on April 20 because we were scared. There was so much bombing and shelling. Every day, at least three or four hours, there was shelling. The firing was coming from the Sri Lankan army."

The boat was adrift on the Indian Ocean for nine days. Jaya Niranjana’s 3-year-old daughter died. M. Yesudas lost his father, sister, nephew, brothers, and uncle — six in all. An 8-month-old baby, Kuberan, survived only because his mother somehow managed to breastfeed him until just hours before she died.

By the time these refugees fleeing the war in Sri Lanka reached Indian shores last Wednesday, 10 of the 21 original travelers had died or jumped overboard. They had nothing to eat and only saltwater to drink. The scorching sun beat down on their heads. Diarrhea struck. The first child died on April 24, then the others. S. Indira Meenan, 25, recalled it in halting English: “One by one. Dead babies, children. No food, no drink.”

“Twenty-fourth, dead; 25th; 26th,” he went on. “One by one. Dead.”

In the dead of night, the boat left the sandy spit of land where fighting raged. Its captain had apparently steered the vessel far out into the sea, in an effort to evade the fighting, and then lost his way.

He had promised his passengers a journey of nine hours to the closest point on the Indian coast, about 100 miles, far shorter than the distance from Miami to Havana.

But the boat’s outboard motor gave out after a few hours. By Day 9, the captain jumped into the sea — whether from guilt or delirium, no one will ever know.

These refugees said they did not want to be quarantined in a Sri Lankan-government-controlled camp, where tens of thousands of displaced ethnic Tamils have fled in recent weeks.

Instead, they took the risky journey across the water. They considered themselves lucky. Unlike many others, they had a boat, a motor and kerosene for fuel.

For two months, their boat, a fiberglass vessel no more than 20 feet long, first served as a bunker on the last bit of coast in Mullaittivu district on the northeastern corner of the island. The boat belonged to Mr. Yesudas. He and his relatives had dug it into the ground, covered it with palm tree trunks for a roof, and hid inside when artillery shells rained down.

The area, a village called Mathalan, had been designated by the Sri Lankan government as a “no-fire zone.” But the refugees said in separate interviews that it was shelled every day, sometimes so much that they had to relieve themselves in buckets rather than venture outside the boat-bunker.

The refugees here recalled that both sides shelled indiscriminately that day, and that those among them who hid in their bunkers had no time to count the dead.

About 1 a.m., after the shelling had stopped, they dug out the boat from under the sand and quietly took it out into the sea. Had the Tamil Tigers detected them trying to escape, Mr. Yesudas said flatly, they would have shot at the boat. “If we didn’t get out that day, we wouldn’t have gotten out at all.”