Travel agents offer Tamils escape

Press, 20 August 1986, Page 6

Travel agents offer Tamils escape

NZPA-Reuter Colombo Travel agencies in Sri Lanka are cashing in on the country’s ethnic strife by promising Tamils fleeing the violence or simply looking for a better life the chance to seek asylum abroad at reasonable prices.

Tamil journalists said the fees ranged from as little as SUS36O ($723) to as much as SUS36OO ($7236), depending on the destination and extra services provided, such as passports or visas. The services sometimes included false documents, although it was very easy for Sri Lankans to obtain passports legally. Some agencies even placed newspaper advertisements in the separatist rebel stronghold of Jaffna, 320 km north of Colombo, promising easy, quick trips to Germany.

“The ads don’t outrightly say they are offering asylum and a safe haven for the Tamils, but their specific destinations are countries in Europe where most Tamils are seeking refugee status,” a senior editor of a Jaffna tabloid said.

A typical advertisement might say: “Travel arrangements to Germany, France and Denmark —- people who want to go to Germany, arrangements straight away.” “Once the people go to the travel office, they would make arrangements for something else,” the journalist said. A journalist at another Jaffna paper said it was implicit in the advertisements that asylum-seekers were the target One travel agency had not even bothered with a name. It simply instructed clients to visit a Jaffna hotel room.

Another senior journalist at a Tamil paper in Colombo said the agencies functioned legally and there was nothing irregular about printing the ads. “The travel agencies normally put out ads for travel to the socialist bloc (countries) whenever there are disturbances ... or when there are reports of atrocities against Tamil civilians in the north and east,” he said.

There was a spate of advertisements in May for air tickets to the Soviet Union, East Germany, and

Yugoslavia after rebel bombs exploded in Colombo. East bloc countries are the favoured destinations because the Tamils can make their way easily to East Berlin from them and then slip into West Germany. Tamils make up 13 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 15 million population, which is dominated by Sinhalese, and live mainly in Northern and Eastern provinces, which the rebels want to merge into a separate Tamil State. At least 200,000 Sri Lankans, mainly Tamils, fled their homes after-anti-Tamil rioting in July 1983. Of these, 100,000 have returned or were resettled by the Government. Some 49,000 still live in temples, schools, Government buildings, and other State-run welfare centres, where they subsist on government hand-outs of 55 rupees ($4) a week. Another 66,000 live with friends and relatives.

About 125,000 Tamil refugees are in India, 35,000 in West Germany, and an undetermined number elsewhere in Europe, the United States, and Canada.