Canada detains Lankan ship with 490 refugees
Vancouver, Aug. 13: The Canadian Navy on Thursday intercepted a cargo ship carrying 490 Sri Lankan asylum seekers and prepared to screen them, fearing some belonged to the defeated and banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels.
After days of tracking by the Canadian and US authorities, Canadian Forces and Canada Border Services Agency personnel boarded the MV Sun Sea after it appeared to veer from its expected destination in the Vancouver area.
The frigate HMCS Winnipeg “attempted to hail the Sun Sea several times and, after establishing communications, the vessel declared that it had refugees on board,” the public safety minister, Mr Vic Toews, said, public broadcaster CBC reported.
The Thai-flagged ship’s skipper said that around 490 refugees were on board, but Canadian authorities are unsure of their identities, Mr Toews said. Some of the people on the ship are “suspected human smugglers and terrorists,” he said.
Mr Toews pledged that Canada would prosecute anyone involved in human trafficking, which he denounced as a “despicable crime.” Canada and other Western nations have been critical of Sri Lanka’s human rights record but consider the Tamil Tigers, known for their suicide bombings and child soldiers, to be a terrorist organisation.
Canada has among the world’s most welcoming asylum policies and has a politically active Tamil community, which urged their adopted country to grant asylum to the boat people.
In a similar incident in October 2009, 76 Tamil refugees arrived on a ship to Canada where they were held but eventually released after none were determined to belong to the Tamil Tigers.
“We are optimistic that the Canadian government will do the same thing again,” said the Canadian Tamil Congress spokeswoman, Ms Manjula Selvarajah.
“The idea of security, it’s very important to us as well. We are Canadian as well,” she said. Ms Selvarajah hinted that the accusations of Tamil Tiger links came from the Sri Lankan government.
The Sri Lankan High Commissioner, Mr Chitranganee Wagiswara told the CBC that the ship was a “human smuggling operation managed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.”
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