By Keith Vass | Agence France Presse
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After several months on sea, the MV Sun Sea cargo ship arrived on western Canada's Vancouver Island surrounded by a naval frigate and police helicopters. Canadian authorities stood on deck wearing face masks as a precaution.
Buses with blacked-out windows stood ready to transport the 490 migrants to holding jails on the mainland. Victoria General Hospital set up a special room and quarantined ward for any sick migrants, spokeswoman Shannon Marshall said.
The ship's progress has been monitored for weeks, triggering a furor in Canada over whether the boat migrants were jumping the queue while thousands of other applicants await their turn.
Public Security Minister Vic Toews repeatedly vowed that Canada, known for some of the world's most welcoming asylum policies, would not be a "soft target" for human smugglers.
Toews told reporters Thursday that some people aboard the ship are "suspected human smugglers and terrorists" and Canada would prosecute anyone involved in human trafficking, which he called a "despicable crime."
Keith Martin, the member of parliament representing the Esquimalt Harbour where the asylum seekers arrived, said that his office has been deluged with calls from angry constituents who do not want the Tamils taken in.
The ship had originally intended to go to Australia before being deterred and heading to Canada, which also has a politically active Tamil community.
Canadian Tamils have urged their adopted country to accept the asylum seekers, saying that the minority group faces continued difficulties in Sinhalese-majority Sri Lanka.
Krisna Saravanamuttu, spokesman for the National Council of Canadian Tamils, said the community "accepts our federal government's right to promote security" but added: "At the same time keep in mind these people are fleeing from persecution and they must be treated with compassion."
"They must have went through hell and high water to ensure they could escape Sri Lanka," Saravanamuttu told public broadcaster CBC. "There are severe health problems on this ship, and many of the individuals on this ship are under the age of 13."
"Canada has a very strong reputation, and I think a noble reputation, to open its arms to those individuals who do need asylum," he said.
However, Sri Lanka's government has called for the ship to be turned away, calling it a smuggling operation by the defeated rebels, officially known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"We have lodged our concerns with the Canadian authorities that these people aboard the Sun Sea could be linked to the LTTE," a foreign ministry spokesman said in Colombo.
Sri Lanka last year ended decades of civil war by crushing the Tamil Tiger rebels in a bloody finale in which the United Nations says that at least 7,000 civilians were killed.
Despite concerns about Sri Lanka's human rights record, Western nations ban the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization. The group was known for its suicide bombings and use of child soldiers during its nearly four-decade fight for a separate Tamil homeland.
© AFP
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