A Vancouver businessman says his memories as a Sri Lankan teenager tossed into a violent jail made him understand why 76 of his countrymen have risked their lives to reach Canada aboard a rusty freighter.

"It's nicknamed Meat Shop," Roy Natnavel said Tuesday of the jail where he spent three months. "So you can take that and imagine it in your head. I'm not going to go into all the details because I don't want to relive those moments."

Ratnavel, vice-president of the Canadian Tamil Congress, said young male Tamils are targeted in Sri Lanka because they're considered potential soldiers who could fight the government that recently ended a 26-year bloody civil war.

Ratnavel, 39, said that after he was released from in jail in 1988, his father had the foresight to put him on a plane to Toronto so he could live a life without fear in Canada, where he claimed refugee status.

He said the Sri Lankan men now being held in a Vancouver-area corrections centre after their cargo vessel was intercepted off the West Coast on Friday also want the chance for a life without fear of being tortured or persecuted.

"I came here by myself," Ratnavel told reporters at a news conference, adding that two days after he arrived in Canada his father was shot in front of his mother. "But this is country showed me great compassion and I was able to get the right help."

"These men are doing the same thing. Between life and death, they chose life."

The men are expected to have detention review hearings before the Immigration and Refugee Board later this week.

The men haven't been identified officially but federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has suggested the migrants are from Sri Lanka, based on information from the Australian government, which had also intercepted a migrant ship from Sri Lanka.

Vancouver lawyer Douglas Cannon, who has extensive experience with Canada's refugee process, said the men's situation could become complicated if any of them are found to be members of the separatist Tamil Tigers, banned in Canada as a terrorist organization.

Manon Berube, a spokeswoman with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, would not discuss details of the agency's involvement in any investigation of the migrants' admissability in Canada.

Ratnavel said it's nearly impossible for Tamils in Sri Lanka to come to Canada legally because the trip from their north region to the capital city of Colombo in the south to deal with immigration issues is fraught with difficulties.

"That travel, from north to south, is probably more dangerous than getting on a boat and coming to Canada."

Ratnavel said Canada needs to make the legal process easier so people aren't putting their lives in jeopardy to flee a country where almost 300,000 people are being held in barbed-wire interment camps without their basic needs being met.

The Sri Lankan government crushed Tigers last May and has kept ethnic Tamils in camps ostensibly to allow the military to clear land mines and weapons caches from the region.

He said Canada has stood by silently while human rights organizations have slammed the Sri Lankan government for abuse people are enduring in the camps.

"Countries like this still exist and they have diplomatic relationships with countries like Canada," he said. "To us it's shocking."

Gary Anandasangaree, one of two Tamil lawyers at the news conference, said the legal route to Canada is blocked for many Tamils, starting with the Canadian government's policies.

"Sri Lanka is not recognized as a source country and therefore an individual of Tamil origin who wants to apply for refugee status is not able to do so from within Sri Lanka and this is probably an opportune time for Canada to reflect on that policy," he said.

"It can take up to four years for applications to be processed and when people find themselves in dire, dire situations given the calamity that's taking place in the last several months we certainly appreciate people wanting to flee that scenario for immediate safety."

Sid Tan, a spokesman for the Chinese Canadian National Council, said his group is supporting the Sri Lankan men and that he hopes Canada can learn from other cases of migrants who have landed on Canadian shores.

"I would just like Canadians to understand that we should not repeat the mistakes of the past," he said, referring to 150 Sikh men who were sent back to India months after their boat arrived on the West Coast in 1924.

He also said the government could have saved much of the $40 million spent on dealing with 600 migrants who arrived here on ships from China in 1999 by allowing community-based organizations to help out.

"Coming to Canada can sometimes be a very difficult and arduous process and sometimes also fraught with discrimination and racism. And I would ask Canadians to be compassionate, to allow the process to work itself out."