The Sydney Morning Herald examines why hundreds of Tamil asylum seekers are risking their lives and fleeing Sri Lanka.

See here for full report, extracts reproduced below:

Kajan [a villager on a remote stretch of Sri Lanka’s west coast] insists that, three years on from the end of Sri Lanka's brutal separatist civil war, the country still offers Tamils no chance ''to make a good life''. ''No job, no education, we have trouble from the police and army. We are desperate people,'' he says.

The Herald has chosen not to name this isolated Tamil-dominated fishing village, its location or the names of those spoken to. The people speak only on condition of anonymity. They fear government reprisals, against them or against their family members.

Economic opportunity, real or perceived, is the major driver that puts people from this village onto leaky boats bound for the other side of the ocean. But some leave here because they face serious, systematic and sometimes terrifying persecution.

The ''white van'' abductions - where people are grabbed from the street by plain-clothed men driving unmarked vehicles, to disappear for days, weeks or sometimes forever - are less common this far from the big cities. But people are regularly hauled in by police and face prolonged, sometimes violent, interrogation.

People [from this village]... claim they are targeted simply because they are Tamil.

''It doesn't matter if you did nothing, if you don't know anything, you are under suspicion always,'' Gadin says.

''Anyone can be accused,'' Gadin says, ''we are all guilty to them.'' But leaving often makes the situation worse for those left behind. Police arrive unannounced at people's homes, demanding to know why they left and who took them.

See also: Diaspora groups seek to work with Australia on asylum seeker deaths (19 Jul 2012)