Tamil community meets to help refugees

About 50 members of the Tamil community gathered at a temple in Burnaby, B.C., on Sunday to discuss how to help the nearly 500 migrants who arrived on Vancouver Island from Sri Lanka aboard a cramped cargo freighter on Friday.

"We're there to help for them, any kind of help emotionally, physically because they are our fellow people," said Angela Nalliah, who attended the gathering. "They are not terrorists. They are our own."

The 490 migrants arrived at CFB Esquimalt near Victoria on Friday after being at sea aboard the MV Sun Sea since May. They face immigration hearings beginning Monday afternoon in Vancouver.

The federal government has said it believes some of the migrants are members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers, which has been outlawed in Canada as a terrorist group since 2006.

Nagendra Selliah, an immigration consultant who met with some of the migrants on Saturday, told the gathering that the migrants, who are expected to make refugee claims, didn't have enough to eat or drink while on board the ship.

There was only one bathroom and they collected rainwater to make tea, he was told. Some of the migrants also had knee problems because they didn't have enough space to walk around, he added.

Sunday's event organizer, Katpana Nagendra, said she and others worry about the physical and mental state of some of the refugees.

"We have reports from agencies like Amnesty International that some of these people were held in the detention camps and may have been subjected to torture or rapes," she said.

She said she hopes the Canadian government and the Canadian public treat the migrants fairly and won't prejudge them.

On Friday, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the Canada Border Services Agency would take the time necessary to identify and process all individuals who were on the ship in accordance with Canadian law.

He pledged that any individuals who endanger national security or who have engaged in human smuggling "will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."