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MANIK FARM, Sri Lanka-Devi Segaram(picture left) kept on the run for two years, forced to move time and again to stay ahead of the civil war sweeping across northern Sri Lanka.Then there was nowhere left to shelter.So, two weeks ago, the teacher and her daughter joined hundreds of other ethnic Tamils to make a dash for safety just before dawn, sprinting across open fields and braving rebel gunfire to reach government lines.They joined more than 30,000 other civilians who have fled the war zone and are now living in camps, penned in by razor wire and watched over by soldiers of the Sinhalese-dominated government.Speaking to journalists during an army-organized visit Monday, refugees told harrowing tales of months spent huddling in bunkers while government troops and the Tamil Tiger rebels pounded each other with artillery. Many moved repeatedly, forced deeper into rebel-held territory as government troops pushed northward.People said the rebels have grown increasingly desperate over the government onslaught that has left them near defeat after a quarter century of civil war. Rebels are forcibly conscripting civilians and trying to keep tens of thousands of others inside their territory as human shields, refugees said.While the civilians said they were happy to be safe from the fighting, many expressed frustration at the restrictions that the government has put on them. They are confined to the camps and visitors are turned away. Soldiers patrol the compound."We are not getting freedom," said Linga Thevan, a 54-year-old farmer living at the Manik Farm camp, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of the town of Vavuniya. "Emotionally, we are in a swamp."Segaram, the 52-year-old teacher who fled with her daughter, said she is just happy their ordeal is over.When the war heated up in 2007, she was driven from her house in the Mannar district, on the southern edge of rebel territory. She and her daughter, now 21, fled to a Christian shrine in Madhu. But they were forced to move again as the front lines rolled over the shrine.Over the ensuing months, the war forced her to move repeatedly. She was displaced at least 10 times, she said."You can't stay. There were constant bomb blasts. We left everything behind," Segaram said.Once the army cornered the rebels inside a sliver of land in the northeast, nowhere seemed safe.On the night of Feb. 6, Segaram and her daughter hid in a field with some 1,000 people waiting for rebels to leave the area. Just before sunrise, they began running. Four or five rebels demanded they stop and fired in the air, she said. When the group ignored the warning, the fighters shot at their legs, she said.She and her daughter ran for a half hour before reaching government lines. "We were joyous," she said.Another Tamil at the camp, Ramalingam Rajivan, said his flight to safety was tinged with sadness. He escaped, but it was too late for his brother.The two men were visiting their grandmother in rebel-held territory in 2006 when the Tamil Tigers decided to seal the area, trapping the brothers.Soon after, the rebels sent a letter demanding the family send one member to become a fighter.They ignored the summons, but rebels came and dragged away his 21-year-old brother, Priyadarshan.A few weeks later his brother died in battle, Rajivan said. "They didn't give us my brother's body. They just gave me a picture," he said...By RAVI NESSMAN.AP Writer
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