Foreigners in India demand freedom 12-01-2005
By Pratap Chakravarty
INDIA is holding prisoners from Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka in the tsunami-hit Andamans who have already served their sentences because no one is claiming them, an island official said on Tuesday.
The prisoners, mainly fishermen caught in Indian territorial waters, have spent the 12 days since tsunamis hit the archipelago in a primitive camp with little water to drink.
The bare backed men with matted hair squatted on the ground behind a barbed-wire fence looking desolately at a locked gate as soldiers with fixed bayonets guarded them under a blazing sun. “They are kept inside a barbed wire enclosure? Really? I must check,” Raha said, but admitted a group has filed a case in India’s Supreme Court questioning the administration’s right to hold people who have served their full sentence.
The prison-house lies secluded in lush hills outside Port Blair and currently holds 227 Myanmarese, one Sri Lankan and one Bangladeshi.
Five Indonesians … held in the facility for two days but released when international media highlighted their plight.“
Inmates of the controversial jail had their own questions.
Guruswamy, from Kilinochchi district, says he completed his sentence five years ago and wants to be set free.
“Am I to waste my youth here? Officials say I can leave only in a body bag,” said the 25-year-old, labelled by guards as a “spy” sent to India by Sri Lanka’s rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Compatriot Tanshi too strayed into Indian waters from nearby Myanmar and completed his sentence in July 2003.
“My wife has died and I don’t know what happened to my four kids. Oh, I miss them so much,” the 45-year-old man said. afp
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_12-1-2005_pg4_26
Is this how the Hindustanis help the victims of the Asian Tsunami?