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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lkdood" data-source="post: 8078714" data-attributes="member: 92282">Canadian navy escorting suspected Tamil ship into B.C.<img src="http://www.vancouversun.com/3386268.bin" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />A suspected Tamil migrant boat now believed to hold as many as 500  refugees has entered Canada's 200-mile exclusive economic zone and is  heading for the B.C. coast. "We expect it will land either  late (Thursday) evening or early Friday morning," a senior federal  official said Wednesday of the Thai-flagged ship, the MV Sun Sea. While  Canadian Navy and Coast Guard authorities would neither confirm nor  deny the whereabouts of the vessel Wednesday, US Coast Guard Commander  Mark McCadden said that the 188-ft cargo ship had been spotted  approximately 300 miles off the coast of British Columbia early  Wednesday morning. The vessel was met by a Canadian navy  ship from Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt when it reached Canada's  "exclusive economic zone" at an unknown time Wednesday. The  Tamil ship is thought to be engaged in "human smuggling and human  trafficking, which is obviously a very dangerous thing," the federal  official said, adding that Canada has unconfirmed reports that one of  the ship's passengers has died. The government fears other migrant ships may be on the way, the federal official said. "We are becoming a target of human smugglers and human traffickers," he said. "We  are looking to send a message to these people who are usually (part of)  criminal organizations, in some cases with possible terrorist  connections in the case of the Tamil Tigers...that we are not going to  allow our laws to be broken." On Tuesday, news of the Sun  Sea's imminent arrival with a reported cargo of only 200 Tamils had two  Maple Ridge jails preparing to receive roughly 100 asylum seekers each. On  Wednesday, however, BC Corrections spokesman Jess Gunnarson said that  he had heard reports that there were now as many as 500 Tamils on-board  the ship. Gunnarson said that housing as many as 300 additional migrants would not pose a problem for the province's corrections system. "We  have a longstanding formal agreement with the federal government and if  you look back to the past decade, we certainly have a lot of experience  in meeting that demand when migrant ships arrive. So certainly we'll  meet the demand as it's required," he said. While the Metro  Vancouver prisons prepare to house the Tamil migrants for an unknown  but likely extended time, in the short-term, Victoria General Hospital  is re-opening its unused seventh floor to accommodate 75 people in need  of medical attention. In addition, a former emergency ward  at the hospital will be used to treat the migrants, all of whom have  been on board the ship since it left the Gulf of Thailand in May. It  is expected the vessel will be escorted to either Ogden Point, normally  used by cruise ships near Victoria's downtown and where a similar ship  was towed last year, or to CFB Esquimalt. In October 2009,  the MV Ocean Lady arrived in Victoria bearing 76 Tamil refugees who have  since been bonded and released pending immigration hearings. Most of those migrants now live in Toronto and Vancouver, according to David Poopalapillai of the Canadian Tamil Congress. Tamils  have been fleeing Sri Lanka since the crushing defeat of the separatist  Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by the Sri Lankan government in May  2009. <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/Canadian+navy+escorting+suspected+Tamil+ship+into/3386110/story.html" target="_blank">vancouversun</a> </blockquote>

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