S. Prabhu

S. Prabhu wants out of Sri Lanka. "We Tamils don't have freedom here," he says. "The Sinhalese get all the advantages.


All we get is danger." Prabhu says some young Hindu Tamil men have disappeared without explanation from his town. Locals assume they were detained by the military for suspected involvement with the rebel Tamil Tigers but no one really knows.


"We can never know what is going to happen to us or at what time, this is the main reason all of us want to leave." Prabhu now wants to take a boat to Australia. But it won't be his first attempt at a new life abroad.


In 2002, aged 18, he paid a local smuggler to take them to Europe. The journey was plagued with problems from the start and then mechanical failure left them stranded in the Arabian Sea. The overcrowded trawler ran out of food and water, leaving the 71 people on board facing starvation. "Conditions were very bad," Prabhu says. "We drank sea water for seven days." The wretched passengers were saved by a Saudi Arabian naval vessel.


Prabhu spent a month in a Saudi prison before being sent back to Sri Lanka. Undeterred, Prabhu is waiting for an opportunity to head to Australia. ''It doesn't matter if you get caught, you just try again," he says.

The Sydney Morning Herald