Fleeing economic mess, 16 Lankans land in Tamil Nadu

Following a tip-off from the police, the Coast Guard rescued them and brought them ashore where an enquiry was on

Sixteen Tamils who fled from northern Sri Lanka on boats to escape the acute economic crisis that is ravaging the island nation reached Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday.

While the first batch of six people was rescued by the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) in the morning after they were stranded off Rameswaram coast, the second batch consisting of ten persons reached Dhanuskodi on Tuesday evening and they were taken to safety by the Coastal Security Group (CSG) of the Tamil Nadu Police.

Of the ten persons who reached Tuesday evening, three are women, two men and five children. Both batches set off from northern Sri Lanka on Monday night – more details about the second batch are awaited.

This makes them the first set of refugees fleeing the tear-shaped island nation where the cost of everything from food to fuel has skyrocketed in the past few weeks amid a financial meltdown.

A couple and their four-month-old son and a woman and her two children, hailing from Jaffna peninsula and Kokupadaiyan in northern Sri Lanka, paid Rs 10,000 each to reach the Rameswaram coast from the neighbouring country to save themselves from starvation.

The development brought back memories of an exodus in the 1980s when thousands of Sri Lankans from the Tamil-dominated north fled the island as a bloody civil war raged between the Sri Lankan Army and the erstwhile LTTE.

The six persons — who set off on a boat from Pesalai in the Mannar district of Sri Lanka on Monday night — were dropped off near the fourth island of the Rameswaram coast in the early hours of Tuesday.

Soon after receiving specific information that a group of people was stranded off Rameswaram coast, the Indian Coast Guard launched a hovercraft at 8.40 am and finally located the six at 10.30 am on the fourth island of Rameswaram.

“All six personnel were brought to Mandapam hoverport safely. A joint interrogation was carried out on arrival," a statement from the ICG said.

They are now being interrogated by Tamil Nadu police.

One of the women who fled Sri Lanka told the media that long queues to buy essential items and rising unemployment forced them to come to India.

“We cannot live there (in Sri Lanka) anymore. The prices of essential items have increased a lot. The price of rice and flour is high, and he (her husband) does not have any job," the woman said.

The “economic refugees” said several people in north Sri Lanka are finding it difficult to live and are contemplating fleeing to India.

Since the civil war began in Sri Lanka in the early 1980s, over 1 lakh Tamils from the northern part of the nation have arrived in Rameswaram, which is just 40 nautical miles from Mannar.

Senior journalist R Bhagwan Singh, an expert on Sri Lankan affairs, said India should reach out to Tamils "at this critical time when there is a huge shortage of food".

"New Delhi must also not lose sight of geopolitical compulsion and do its best to keep the island off the Chinese debt trap. The latest line of credit is a step in the right direction,” Singh told DH.

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