Oh dear. HOZ and I are thanking the same post. Meaning we agree on something. Blue moon tonight folks.
Anyhow, I know very, very little about the situation in Sri Lanka, so I've been doing some reading about what conditions these people are escaping from. From what I'm reading is that there was a brutal civil war between the government and the Tamil Tigers, with terribly brutal human rights abuses by both sides. The Sri Lankan government is cracking down on the people from the area of the country that wanted to separate. Many Tamils are STILL being held hostage in military camps a year after the Tigers were defeated and the separatist movement squashed. Journalists trying to report on conditions in Sri Lanka are being killed according to Amnesty.
You can read a bit more here:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/...ons-2010-05-17
Amnesty says the Tigers routinely used Tamil civilians as human shields, whereas the government herded Tamil civilians into supposed "No Fire Zones", and then proceeded to bomb those areas.
I have a feeling that sending them back to Sri Lanka would be a death sentence. I don't know if that changes anyone's opinion. Maybe we don't care and shouldn't care.