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Message: <blockquote data-quote="akeel1" data-source="post: 574977" data-attributes="member: 34522">Police evict Tamils from Colombo (BBC World News) Police in Sri Lanka have forced hundreds of the minority Tamil community out of the capital Colombo for what they say are security reasons. They launched overnight raids in Tamil areas of the city and forced guests staying in budget hotels onto buses. Police said that Tamils who were in the capital "without valid reasons" were made to board buses bound for the north and east of the island. Police said that the move was necessary amid fears of renewed civil war. 'Bad example' They say that the crackdown is part of continuing efforts to stop the Tamil Tigers infiltrating the city of 600,000 people. They also say the measure is also being taken for the safety of the Tamil community amid a rash of abductions across Colombo blamed on the rebels and the security forces. There has so far been no immediate comment from the government or the rebels about the move, but mainstream Tamil political leaders have condemned it. "This operation is a very bad example," Tamil political leader Dharmalingam Sithadthan told the AFP news agency. "It is OK for the Tamil Tigers to indulge in this sort of ethnic cleaning because they have no moral responsibility, but a government can't behave like this," he said. 'Serious violation' Officials told the Reuters news agency that 291 men and 85 women were sent in seven buses, six towards the northern district of Vavuniya - in the front line of recent fighting - and one busload to the eastern district of Batticaloa. "Some people who had no valid reasons to be in Colombo and are just hanging around, they have been requested to leave and told they had better get back to their own villages," Colombo Inspector General of police Rohan Abeywardene told Reuters. Correspondents say that hundreds of Tamils, many from impoverished rural areas, live in boarding houses in Colombo while they seek work at home or abroad. Many ethnic Tamils complain they have been deliberately targeted by the security forces, detained and searched. One man forced to board one of the buses called the private local radio station Sirisa FM from a mobile phone. "The police came and took us and put everyone on the bus," he said, saying the bus was about 32km (20 miles) outside the capital, heading northeast. "We don't know where we are being taken." Human rights campaigners and other observers say they are shocked at what they say is a serious violation of human rights. "This is almost like a variation of ethnic cleansing," Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the independent Centre for Policy Alternatives think-tank told Reuters. -BBB News-</blockquote>

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