In Sri Lanka, families struggle to escape

MANKENI, Sri Lanka --They slipped out of the village and into the jungle after dark, whole families abandoning prized fishing boats and what little else they had to escape forced military training at the hands of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

In many ways, the 69 men, women and children sheltering Monday at the Mankeni Roman Catholic Church in this fishing village are the lucky ones -- they've gotten away, for the time being.

Dozens of others haven't across this seaside sliver of eastern Sri Lanka, where aid workers and villagers say the Tigers and a renegade rebel faction are abducting children and young men. The Tigers are also openly training civilians to fight.

The result: People here are struggling to keep from being sucked into Sri Lanka's ferocious ethnic conflict. Classrooms stand empty, fishing boats beached and streets deserted.

Guarded by soldiers, the people at Mankeni's church explained that they fled their village, Panichankerny, in rebel territory, after the Tigers began forcing able-bodied people between 14 and 55 to undergo military training.

"We're not soldiers, we're fisherman -- even firecrackers scare us," said Nadarasa, a 28-year-old who asked that his last name not be used for fear of rebel retribution. He said dozens of others remained in the village, but "they may join us if they can slip away."

As violence surges across Sri Lanka, the abductions and forced training of civilians are seen as a sign that insurgents are preparing for a possible return to a vicious civil war that for nearly two decades pitted rebels from the Tamil minority against the government dominated by the Sinhalese majority.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the rebels' formal name, took up arms in 1983 to fight for a homeland for Sri Lanka's 3.2 million Tamils, who have faced decades of often-violent discrimination. The resulting war on this tropical island of 19 million people -- nearly three-quarters of them Sinhalese -- left more than 65,000 people dead before a 2002 cease-fire.

Peace talks have faltered, and rising violence in the past four months has killed some 700 people, more than half of them civilians.

The violence continued Monday when at least eight people were slain in a series of explosions, including a blast south of this village that killed two government commandos.

Tensions are perhaps highest in this eastern region of fishing villages, rice paddies and groves of coconut palms, a predominantly Tamil area split between government and rebel zones. Gunfire rings out nightly from the fortified front lines, and fresh bodies turn up nearly every morning in the jungles beyond.

It's also the region where two years ago, the renegade Karuna faction broke away from the Tigers, sparking a murderous crackdown by the mainstream insurgents. UNICEF says the few hundred Karuna fighters now left -- who regularly attack the Tigers and are widely believed to get government protection -- have pressed at least 50 children into service since March.

The Tigers, who have a well-documented history of using child soldiers, abducted 64 children in April and May, UNICEF says.

Aid workers also say both the Tigers and the renegades have abducted dozens of young men over age 18 in recent months.

Everyone feels the fallout. "Teachers aren't going to schools, doctors aren't attending health centers -- it's having an overall impact on life in the communities," said Yasmin Haque of UNICEF.

In the nearby village of Pasikuda, one mother said she pulled a teenage son from school and asked another son, a contractor and the family's sole breadwinner, to stay away from work.

"Even going to the shop is scary," she said, asking her name not be used for fear of attracting attention to her fighting-age sons.

The rebels are also openly readying civilians for war. A pro-rebel Web-site last week claimed that 6,000 civilians already had been trained in regions they control.

Faced with such a frightening prospect, the fisherman of Panichankerny fled, most carrying the only valuables they could -- the intricate gold jewelry Hindu women are given when they marry.

"Everything else is lost," said Selvaseram, 20, who slipped into the jungle after midnight Saturday with his wife and baby daughter. He also asked his last name not be used.

One of the escapees, Kamawadipillei Balasudramuniam, 46, said that in the past two weeks his 15-year-old son and at least two other children in the village had been pressed into joining the Tigers, abductions which helped spark the exodus.

Leaving wasn't an easy decision -- abandoned were two new fiberglass fishing boats, pricey replacements provided by international aid agencies for ones lost to the 2004 Asian tsunami, which devastated this region.

But, he said, "I fish for my family, to earn them money. I am nothing without my family."