Sri Lanka court blocks state deportation of Tamils

COLOMBO, June 8 (Reuters) Sri Lanka's Supreme Court today ordered the government to stop evicting minority ethnic Tamils from the capital a day after police deported hundreds to the island's war-torn north, a civil rights lawyer said.

Police yesterday swept boarding houses in Colombo, evicted 376 Tamils citing security concerns and took them to the northern district of Vavuniya, the front line of renewed civil war between the state and Tamil Tiger rebels. Rights groups are up in arms.

The order came as police defused a big roadside bomb in Colombo and air force planes bombed a suspected rebel airstrip in the north.

Separately, police found several unidentified corpses around 30 miles miles (50 km) north of the capital. But no details were immediatedly available.

''They have just made the order. The registrar has been asked to contact the Inspector General of Police immediately to stop any further evictions of Tamils from Colombo,'' lawyer MA Sumanthiran, acting for independent think-tank and advocacy group the Centre for Policy Alternatives, told Reuters.

He said a second interim order had also been issued which stops police from obstructing Tamils from coming to Colombo.

Many Tamils deemed by police to lack valid reasons to be in the capital spent the night in the grounds of a school building in the northern district of Vavuniya.

The government wanted them to cross into rebel-held territory and return to their villages at a time when the foes are fighting artillery duels. However, following the order, police said they would return the Tamils to Colombo.

''Those who want to come back to Colombo, we are bringing them back. Those who want to get to their villages will go there. The numbers are not exactly known,'' said Rohan Abeywardene, deputy inspector general of police for Colombo.

Police had justified the evictions as a security measure following attacks blamed on the rebels in and around the capital in recent months, saying it was also an effort to eject any potential Tiger infiltrators from Colombo.

ETHNIC CLEANSING? Some observers likened the deportation to ethnic cleansing and dubbed it a disgrace to humanity, amid fears it could stoke ethnic tensions at a time when the civil war that has killed nearly 70,000 people since 1983 is deepening.

''Nothing could be more inflammatory in Sri Lanka's polarised climate than identifying people by ethnicity and kicking them out of the capital,'' Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement issued from New York on Friday.

''Tamil Tiger crimes don't give the government the right to engage in collective punishment,'' he added. ''The Sri Lankan government is sending the dangerous message that it views most of its Tamil citizens as a threat to security.'' The United States' embassy also condemned the move, saying it would widen the island's ethnic divide.

A Reuters witness in Vavuniya saw elderly women, mothers carrying children and young men getting off police buses, herded by police carrying T-56 assault rifles. Many carried a few salvaged possessions in plastic bags.

''I had come back from abroad and was living in a lodge in Colombo. Then the police told me to get into the bus. They didn't tell me where it was going,'' said 32-year-old ethnic Tamil Kularatnam Prabhakaran after dismounting from a bus.

REUTERS GT VC1745