Sri Lanka's Tamils turn to smugglers to flee conflict

TALAIMANNAR, Sri Lanka, June 20 (Reuters) Maduraweeran Kantharajah was so desperate to flee conflict between Sri Lanka's government and Tamil Tiger rebels that he sold his furniture and wife's jewellery to pay smugglers to sail his family to India.

Two miles out to sea the Tamil grocer thought he was home dry.

But like 200 others now housed in a school-turned-camp at the island's northwestern tip, he was caught by Sri Lanka's Navy.

His dream shattered, Kantharajah must now find another way to escape as Sri Lanka seems once more on the brink of civil war.

Kantharajah handed more than 650 dollars for a passage aboard a small fishing dinghy -- months' worth of wages -- to escape harassment by the majority ethnic Sinhalese army and the risk that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would recruit one of his four sons. He now faces the future with just to his name.

''We are the people who are caught between the army and the LTTE.

There is so much violence going on,'' he said, sitting in an empty classroom surrounded by his family and a few plastic bags containing clothes and his son's cricket medals.

''I am filled with fear and frustration. Again we have to start our lives,'' he added. ''I still want to go to India. But what to do?'' United Nations refugee arm UNHCR says more than 2,800 people have fled from Sri Lanka to India so far this year, mostly from the northwestern district of Mannar. Many of them are now housed in basic camps in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Many more Tamils, particularly from the eastern area around Trincomalee, have tried to flee to India in recent weeks following a deadly bomb blast in a market place there in April.

But like much of the north and east, Mannar -- which sits on an islet stretching towards Sri Lanka's giant neighbour -- was badly shelled in the late 1980s and is also in the grip of sporadic violence.

In a nearby church, some of those longing to head over to India were last week caught in the crossfire. One woman was killed and dozens more people were injured when a grenade was tossed into the church building. Residents believe the military was responsible. The military blames the Tigers.

Officials fear any sharp escalation in violence could spark a repeat of the mass exodus of the 1990s, when tens of thousands fled to India. Some are still there.

WAR FEARS Armoured personnel carriers patrol the main road to Mannar, the army is building new bunkers, and many residents worry that a civil war which killed more than 64,000 people before a 2002 truce is about to resume.

The government accuses the Tigers of using scare-tactics to force people to flee as a propaganda tool in their push for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east. The rebels say people are fleeing abuses at the hands of the military and that they actively discourage people-smuggling.

With more than 700 people killed so far this year -- over half of them civilians -- in a rash of ambushes, bombings shootings, military clashes, and extrajudicial killings, those fleeing blame both sides. And they vow to keep trying.

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