Refugees live under curfew

Chennai: It's just a short bus ride across the scenic, gigantic Pamban Bridge from Rameshwaram to the Mandapam Transit camp for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees. It's forbidden to enter the camp spread over 250 acres dotted with building structures without an official pass.

This camp currently houses 1,260 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who have sought shelter at one time or the other from trouble back home.

The Tamil refugees are free to move around outside the camp but they have to return before sunset at 6 pm.

They seem part of the life of this fishing town. Maybe, it might have to do with the fact that the Mandapam Transit camp exists since 1917.

It was during this time the Ceylon government had constructed this camp to keep the Tamil plantation workers under quarantine before shipping them over to their country. Later, the camp was used to receive the repatriated Tamil workers under the Bandaranaike-Shastri accord in 1964.

During this period, nearly 1,14,712 Tamil workers made it to Tamil Nadu.

But, the repatriation process reportedly petered out when the ethnic violence broke out in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. The single official ship plying between Sri Lanka and India was suspended.

A typical Tamil refugee is Selvakulasingham, a cook from Jaffna. This is his second tenure at the camp. He had to abandon his home in Jaffna last month because of "harassment" from the Sri Lankan army.

"It's difficult to live in Jaffna right now. The army attacks the Tamils at the slightest provocation and the atmosphere is very tense.

Santhakumar, a tractor driver from Bawaniya, another recent refugee lives in a no man's land. The future looks bleak," he says.

His friend Nishantham, who arrived last month with his wife, is also bitter. He also fled hometown after being harassed by the army.

Newly-wed refugees Jaicilin and Arulselvi were locked up for two weeks by the TN police. "They suspected me of being a LTTE member," says Arulselvi pointing to her artificial right leg as the reason. Arulselvi had lost one leg when he had stepped on a landmine in Killinochchi.