Government offensive against Tamil rebels also claims civilian victims. Emily Wax in The Washington Post:
Maha Oya, Sri Lanka: Under thick tropical rains on a rutted country road, a bus packed with ethnic Tamil families screeched to a stop here in eastern Sri Lanka. At a heavily fortified government checkpoint, the families were ordered off the bus.
They were asked many questions. Where had they come from? Why? Whom did they visit? The experience, for many of them, was more than inconvenient. It was frightening. In places like this, they said, amid bungalows battered and burned by war, people go missing.
“It’s not waiting in the lines or the search of our bags that troubles us as much as the chances of being picked out, arrested and never being able to see our families again,” said a 19-year-old Tamil waiter, who was too fearful of government reprisal to offer his name.
