“I lie awake many times till five in the morning. I keep having suicidal thoughts and am losing the will to live,” says Bhaskaran Kumarasamy, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee and ex-LTTE fighter currently lodged in the Trichy special camp in Tamil Nadu. Bhaskaran faces imminent deportation back to Sri Lanka, and has been fighting to get an audience with the Switzerland Embassy seeking asylum. He fears that his life will be in danger if he returns to Sri Lanka. However, despite several appeals to the courts, he’s been unable to seek refuge in India or elsewhere.
On August 20, The Caravan published a report on Bhaskaran’s struggle to prevent his deportation back to Sri Lanka. Bhaskaran fled Sri Lanka and arrived in Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu in 2004, two years before the final leg of the civil war started. He was in the Bagayam refugee camp when in 2016 he was arrested in a case filed against him and 18 other Lankan Tamils and was transferred to Puzhal jail. The FIR, that TNM has a copy of, charges him under provisions of the Passport Act (1967), The Foreigners Act (1946), and sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 370 (trafficking of minors) and 420 (cheating and dishonesty) of the Indian Penal Code.
Though Bhaskaran was in prison in 2016, a special government order was issued in August of that year saying that Bhaskaran was to reside in the special camp in Trichy. Three years later, in 2019, all of the 19 accused were acquitted with regard to this case. Upon his release, he was sent to the Trichy special camp as per the GO which categorically said Bhaskaran cannot leave the special camp premises.
Bhaskaran
Then all of a sudden in 2019, the Q Branch Police (which looks into movement of naxalites and foreign elements) issued an official deportation order. The order was co-signed by the Q branch and the Deputy High Commissioner for Sri Lanka, Chennai, The Caravan reported, adding that there was no specific reason provided for the deportation. TNM has also accessed a copy and can confirm this. In 2020, the Madras High Court put a stay on the deportation in response to a plea filed on Bhaskaran’s behalf, saying that there was a credible threat to his life if he returned to Sri Lanka, but on June 23, 2021, the same court passed an order saying that he could not be considered a refugee any longer, arguing “that much water has flowed under the bridge” since the end of the war. The court had been hearing a second petition requesting permission for Bhaskaran to visit the Swiss Embassy in Delhi to appear for an interview seeking asylum, as he feared deadly consequences in Sri Lanka if deported.
Bhaskaran has also alleged that the Q Branch has repeatedly prevented him from appearing before the Swiss Embassy. The Madras High Court order from June also failed to grant him permission to visit the Embassy. While the 2021 order does not explicitly overturn the previous year’s stay on his deportation, it makes the process easier.
Speaking to TNM, Bhaskaran expressed his despair that none of the relevant authorities seem to be listening to his concerns. He also alleges that the Q Branch has yet to allow him to even sign a new writ petition that again attempts to get him court permission to appear before the Swiss Embassy. The sustained limbo and uncertainty is taking a heavy toll on him.
He also alleges that the revenue inspector has refused to give the required attestation for the writ petition saying that he has already made two pleas earlier in the Madras High Court and he cannot submit any more. Bhaskaran adds that he has previously requested the Swiss Embassy to conduct his interview via video call, given his situation, but they insist on his appearing in person.
While Bhaskaran fears that going back to Sri Lanka means he could be killed or would be 'disappeared' like many others, his story also reflects the problems and human rights violations in Tamil Nadu's deeply problematic special camps.
Lankan Tamil refugees in India broadly fall into three categories. There are non-camp refugees who arrived with passports and visas. There aren’t many restrictions imposed on them.
Then there are those who would have fled without documents, or their documents may have expired during their stay. These people are usually sent to the refugee camps (which the Tamil Nadu state government has recently renamed as rehabilitation camps). There are about a 100 such camps across Tamil Nadu. Inmates are allowed to go out for work and have to abide by strict curfews. They are “registered refugees.” These camps are managed by the Q Branch.
Then there are the special camps that are different from these regular refugee camps and also come under the Q Branch. The camps are highly surveilled and function almost as de facto prisons — interestingly the Trichy camp is actually located within the Trichy Central Prison. As of now, there is only one such camp — the Trichy special camp that is functional.
There is a dearth of information about the camps and a general lack of awareness on how they function.
Advocate Johnson, Bhaskaran’s lawyer, says in his experience, many of the inmates of the special camp don’t even have any affiliation with the LTTE. He shares the case of Sudharshan, a young Sri Lankan Tamil boy who was born and brought up in Tamil Nadu. Sudharshan was named in a confession by an accused person already in jail.
Though his name did not feature in the FIR, Johnson alleges that Sudarshan who was 19 years old was arrested under the Foreigners Act and sent to the special camp where he has been for more than two years. “How is it possible to intern someone who was born here, whose siblings were born here and whose parents have been living in India for 31 years, to be sent to a special camp under the Foreigners Act or to face deportation? He is a refugee,” he says.
With regard to the special camps, he says the government’s answer shows an intention to complete the cases against the inmates and send them back. “Does this mean that the wife of an inmate will, say, receive a free gas cylinder under the ongoing welfare scheme, and her husband will be deported? Where is the justice in this?” he asks, adding that a detailed study needs to be conducted on the number of inmates at the special camp, how many have cases still pending against them, how many have been convicted and how many have been acquitted. This will also clarify how many inmates have completed their sentence or have been acquitted but continue to be punished by being forced to remain in the special camp. “Many are arrested under the Passport Act, but the question to ask is — why are they taking such risks? They aren’t treated humanely here, so they’re desperate to go to a country that they hope they will be.”
Protests against the treatment of Sri Lankan Tamils in special camps have been going on for decades, says Johnson, since their inception in 1990. State governments have come and gone, the protests have been sustained, yet little attention has been paid to them. During the rule of the previous AIADMK-government too, there were repeated protests including in the form of attempts by inmates to take their own lives, but to no avail, he adds.
Sri Lankan Tamil refugees protest inside the Trichy special camp
Advocate Kennedy, a human-rights lawyer who has fought many cases in the past on behalf of special camp inmates, says that there are at present 43 refugees who have got bail in cases under the Passport Act, and six others who were subsequently acquitted. Eighteen others who were booked under the Passport Act on the charges that they have overstayed using the valid passport that they came to India with have also got bail. But all of them continue to be lodged in the special camp.
"They can put any refugee into the special camp for political reasons. The camps are a way to curtail their movement, inhibit freedom to develop their economic freedom. They cannot be with their families. Isn't that unethical?" asks Kennedy. When asked how authorities justify the continued internment of acquitted refugees in special camps, Kennedy says that political motivations underlie the actions of the authorities. He says that it is often difficult to get straight answers from authorities and that their decisions are usually based solely on the argument that refugees are not permitted to live outside of camps. This, however, fails to recognise the major distinction between regular refugee camps and special camps. Kennedy says, even refugees who have come to India by boat with no valid passport or visa are "registered refugees. It is not natural justice to keep them away from their families like this.”
Tholar Balan, an ex-inmate of one of the special camps who was arrested for an alleged LTTE connection, writes in his 2016 book “Concentration Camps of Tamil Nadu – The So-Called Special Camps”, that the camps were set up specifically to intern former members of armed groups like the LTTE, PLOTE, TELO, but there is a great deal of opacity regarding who winds up in one of these camps.
Sri Lankan Tamil refugees protest inside the Trichy special camp; they demand release, to be reunited with their families and assurance that they will not be deported to Sri Lanka against their will
In the book’s foreword, Dr MS Thambirajan who is also the translator, says, “They are not refugee camps, although they house mainly refugees; they are not prisons either, because none of the inmates have been convicted by a court. These are really highly secure detention centres that operate outside the law and hold Sri Lankan families in appalling conditions.” He also highlights how Tholar Balan himself spent eight years in the camp after allegedly refusing intelligence officers’ demand to testify against then Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, and that it had taken repeated “threats, detentions, appeals and further detentions” before he was released.Bhaskaran tells us that there are Sri Lankan Tamils like him who’ve been acquitted and also those who are still fighting the cases against them inside the camp with him. Many have families outside, some have married women from Tamil Nadu others were born and raised in the state. In July this year, there was a sustained 20-day protest inside the Trichy special camp.
The first demand of the protestors was that they all be released and those who still have pending cases be allowed to go through the legal proceedings after returning to their families and homes. Secondly, the wanted assurance that no one would be sent back to Sri Lanka against their will.
Johnson tells us that Jacintha Lazarus, Commissioner of Rehabilitation and Welfare of Non Resident Tamils, visited the camp and reportedly said that inmates will be released in three weeks. This was on July 27. Minorities Welfare, Non Resident Tamil Welfare, Refugee and Evacuees minister KS Masthan is said to have given assurance during a press meet that no one would be deported back to Sri Lanka against their will. But a few weeks later, S Regupathy, the Minister for Law, Courts, Prisons and Prevention of Corruption said that the Tamil Nadu government has taken no decision regarding the matter at another press meet, he says.
It’s at this juncture that inmates carried out hunger strikes, and attempted to die by suicide. TNM has videos of some of these incidents.
“People may ask if external forces are instigating these inmates or if these are attempts to discredit the government, but no, the answer is that they feel cheated repeatedly. They are distraught and angry, which is leading to such attempts to end their own lives,” Johnson says.
Bhaskaran adds that the authorities who fail these inmates are to blame for driving people to such measures. He further alleges that one person, an old Muslim inmate, who already suffered from ailments and was fasting in protest, fainted from weakness and died in hospital but the death went unreported in the press.
A guide issued by the Department of Rehabilitation and Welfare of Non Resident Tamis in response to a 2005 RTI says that there were two special camps functioning at the time, one in Poonamallee and one in Chengalpattu. The guide says that “if it is known that they are associates of militant movements, it is then recommended to lodge them in the special camps situated at Poonamallee in Thiruvallur district and Chengalpattu in Kancheepuram district.” But as Johnson had earlier pointed out, not all inmates have connections with any of the armed groups that formed in the course of the anti-Tamil violence in Sri Lanka.
Johnson further expresses disappointment with the current welfare measures in Tamil Nadu for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees. “Where are the opportunities for work and right to education? They can’t join medical or law colleges or technical institutes. There is some basic amount of money given for education, but where is the assurance of jobs after that? Most of them have jobs as painters or they do some other form of wage-labour. There has been a general lack of understanding about the special camp and its inmates among those in power and further there seems to be a lack of political will to intercede.”
All images courtesy: Jaya Bathuri