High Seas a Twice-Told Tale with a Twist

By Wendy Smith.

The Atlantic Reaper, a fishing boat out of Admiral's Beach, Nfld., was about six miles from land last week when crew members noticed unusual blips on the radar screen. Captain Gus Dalton changed course to investigate and soon came upon two lifeboats packed with passengers. Realizing that he could not squeeze all of them onto his 55-footer, Dalton radioed two other fishing craft in the area. The three boats loaded up and headed for the provincial capital of St. John's. On the way they met a Canadian fisheries patrol boat, which took on the 146 men, four women and five children and brought them to shore.

Thus ended the voyage, but not the story, of the mysterious seafarers. When they reached St. John's, the castaways, most of whom were in their 20s, identified themselves as Hindu Tamils from Sri Lanka who had fled their strife-torn homeland to escape persecution at the hands of the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. They said they were students, businessmen and skilled ! workers, and claimed to have paid an Indian "agent" up to $3,000 each for passage to Canada. Then followed a month aboard a ship that had picked them up at the south Indian port of Madras. But five days before the fishermen found them, the refugees said, the ship's crew told them that they had paid only to be transported "near" Canada rather than all the way. They were thereupon loaded into the scantily provisioned lifeboats and told that they were six miles from Montreal, a city that is almost 1,000 miles west of St. John's.

It did not take Canadian officials long to discover major holes in the castaways' story. First of all, the Tamils were unable to provide the name or country of the mother ship or give any indication of the route it had followed. They had boarded and left the vessel at night, they said, and were kept in the hold throughout their 30-day odyssey. Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers noticed that the Tamils seemed remarkably hale after such an ordeal; they were not only healthy but clean and dry. Moreover, most of the refugees wore clothing with West German labels, and many carried German currency.

By week's end Canadian and West German police had pieced together the probable course of events. Late last month at least 200 Sri Lankans arrived in the small port of Brake, about 60 miles west of Hamburg, from elsewhere in Germany. Each had paid nearly $2,500 in cash and valuables for passage to Canada, but only 155 were permitted to board a ship, where they were confined to the hold and fed boiled rice. They were reportedly warned that they or their relatives would be harmed if they told the truth about their trip.

Investigators suspect the Tamils were victims of an international plot to make a profit by transporting refugees seeking asylum in North America. Hamburg police last week arrested two Tamils and a Turk on charges that included violating passport laws and "trafficking in humans." Police identified the vessel that brought the Tamils to Canada as the Aurigae, a 425- ton West German ship that flies the Honduran flag. The telltale clue: the Aurigae's owners had recently bought three lifeboats belonging to the cruise ship Regina Maris. Though attempts had been made to sand off the name, the words Regina Maris were faintly visible on the lifeboats in which the castaways were found. Police said the West German captain, Wolfgang Bindel, received about $350,000 for transporting the Tamils. Bindel last week denied any involvement.

Many of the refugees apparently reached West Germany after flying from Sri Lanka to East Berlin and then crossing legally into West Berlin. They then fled West Germany because they were worried that authorities would reject their applications for asylum. Since 1949 Bonn has accepted any foreigner "persecuted on political grounds" in his native land. This lenient policy has led more than 37,000 Sri Lankans to pour into the country since 1980. The flood has provoked racial conflicts and calls for stricter immigration laws; new arrivals meet rising hostility. At the same time, rumors spreading through Tamil communities in West Germany depict Canada as an asylum seeker's haven where refugees can find comfortable lives.

Those tales may have some foundation. An estimated 8,000 Tamils have already settled in communities in Montreal and Toronto. While Canadian officials are clearly unhappy about the way the "boat people" entered their country, they indicated last week that the new arrivals will not be turned away. The Tamils have been issued work permits and granted permission to remain for at least a year. Immigration officers say they will not deport the castaways to Sri Lanka so long as civil strife continues. Says Canadian Immigration Consultant Dennison Moore: "It appears that under any circumstance, they're here to stay."

With reporting by John Kohan/Bonn and Peter Stoler/ Ottawa