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Lanka doesn’t feel like home

Say many Tamils

Ap, Colombo
The assailants broke in after the fighting | between ethnic rebels and the military erupted again into full-scale war, storming through his family's home and calling his name.
Thanabalasingham Surendran, a member of Sri Lanka's Tamil ethnic minority, fied to the capital, Colombo. But unknown "messengers from military intelligence" kept calling and demanding extortion money. So the shop owner paid a smuggler to get him out of Sri Lanka.
As the government claims it is coming close to winning a quarter-century war with the Tamil Tiger separatists, many ordinary Tamils are giving up on their country.
Hundreds of thousands have already left, and others are desperately trying to get abroad.
In his Independence Day speech earlier this month, President Mahinda Rajapaksa appealed for everyone who left to return home to the Indian Ocean island nation off the tip of India.
But after decades of war, harassment and economic hardship, many Tamils say Sri Lanka doesn’t feel like home.
Some 800,000 Tamils now live overseas and that figure is growing, especially among young men, analysts say.
’ Their priority is to get out of the country," said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, a political analyst and executive director of the Colombo-
based Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Many fear a military victory over the rebels will further embolden the nation's mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority and make life for the mostly Hindu Tamils even harder, Tamil parliamentarian Mano Ganesan said. Tamils make up about 18 percent of Sri Lanka's 20 million people.
We feel more vulnerable now,” Ganesan said.
Many also fear other Tamil paramilitary groups will grow stronger after the rival Tamil Tigers are defeated, threatening locals, increasing their forcible conscription of young boys and demanding heavier extortion payments to fund (heir activities.
In the capital, armed guards pull over cars and taxis for security checks several times a day, searching for possible rebel suicide bombers. Main roads are routinely shut down for government convoys, and security cordons block areas with government offices and tourist hotels.
Few residents, Sinhalese or Tami], are willing to talk openly, and those who do generally refuse to give their names. Tamils fear that any criticism of the country would mark them as rebel sympathizers
’I want to live here in Sri Lanka, but 1 have no choice but to go overseas because of the security situation,' one Tamil man said. "Many young men arc in the same situation.”