Journey Without a Destination: Is there a solution for Sri Lankan refugees? (Chapters 4 and 5)

Chapter 4: ‘How can we live like this?’

    The condition of Tamil refugees in Britain leaves much to be desired; but the state of those remaining in Sri Lanka is incomparably worse. I did not visit Tamil refugee camps in the North and East, and therefore did not see the worst; but what I saw was quite bad enough. Refugees were herded into large halls, their mats spread side by side along the walls and down the middle, all their belongings crammed into that small strip of space which, for the time being, they could call their own. Or crowded into small cadjan [coconut palm leaf] huts, several families in one room.

    Facilities were minimal: about four water taps and the same number of toilets shared between about 1,500 people; in some camps, people stayed up all night, waiting to use the toilets. Rations – mainly rice and bread – were provided by the government. Conditions had deteriorated between my visits in October 1990 and September 1991, with more and more refugees coming in. Unregistered inmates outnumbered registered ones by about three to one, and since the government provided rations only for those who were registered, the shortfall was made good partly by donations from voluntary organisations, partly by watering down and stretching out whatever food was available, making the monotonous diet even less nutritious and more unappetising. Lacking employment and therefore money, most of the refugees spent their time in forced inactivity, although efforts made by voluntary groups had secured school places for children of school-going age, and later on, classes for pre-school children as well.

    Most of these people had fled the renewed outbreak of war in June 1990. One woman in her late twenties had come from Batticaloa in early June for St Anthony’s Festival, and couldn’t return because the war broke out. When she went back in August to fetch her two little sons, she found that her whole house had been looted, the roofing removed, and so forth. She was worried about the children’s schooling, because she had no money for the bus fare to take them to school. Weren’t there any teachers in the camp? Yes, there were two, she herself was one. Couldn’t they teach children at the camp itself? They had to register at state schools, otherwise they wouldn’t get paid. Another worry was that one of the children was ill; a doctor who visited the camp had prescribed some medicines, but she didn’t have any money to buy them. I asked how the trouble had started:

 

• The recent trouble started only after the attack on the Muslims in the mosque [by the Tigers]. 

Would you like to go back and live in Batticaloa?

 

We can’t live in our house again unless we are given the money to repair it. 

Do you think Sinhalese and Tamils can ever live peacefully together?

 

I should hope so! My husband is Sinhalese! (General laughter from those around. I later discovered that a large number of the inmates of the camp spoke Sinhala fluently, and there were other intermarriages too.) 

    The saddest cases were of those who had lost relatives, A young woman from Trincomalee was there with her two small children, her elder brother and their cousin. Her husband had disappeared, taken away by the security forces and never seen again. A middle-aged woman, her face marked by grief, was looking for a lawyer who would help to get her son released: on the way to Colombo, he had been arrested by the security forces and detained in Welikada prison. She had already lost her husband – another disappearance.

    As in the case of the refugees in Britain, some of the people in the camps had originally been living in or near Colombo and had been displaced by the 1983 riots. Some of the children in these families had spent a large proportion of their lives in refugee camps. I spoke to one such family, a middle-aged couple who looked worn and ill, and their teen-aged daughter; their son was staying with relatives. The daughter told me:

 

• Before 1983 we were living here, and my father was working in a garage. Then in the ’83 riots the Sinhalese mob came and burned our house and destroyed the garage… That time my father was not there: I and my mother and brother were there. We saw them coming, so we ran to the house of our Sinhalese neighbours. 

Did the mob come to the Sinhalese houses at all?

 

No – they didn’t know we were there. We were hiding under the bed! 

But that means they knew which houses had Tamil people living in them?

 

Yes, yes. We came to this same refugee camp, and stayed here for two years. Then the government gave 15,000 rupees to each family, and 84 families went to Batticaloa. For one month we were in a camp there. After that they gave us a one-room house – one room and a verandah. And my father again set up a garage there. This time, army fellows destroyed our house in Batticaloa. [That was] in August 1990. [They destroyed] a lot of people’s houses… We couldn’t stay there – if we had stayed there, they would have come and hacked us to death…

    My friend’s two brothers were killed by the army fellows, and another friend’s father. One woman, the army killed her husband, and she had five small children. There are a lot of families here without a husband.

    We stayed four weeks in a camp in Batticaloa – a lot of people were there! There were no meals or anything, so always we were drinking kanji (rice gruel). Sometimes even that was not there. Then a government bus brought us here. 

    Her mother, who was thin, haggard, coughed constantly and seemed to be feverish, described in more detail what had happened:

 

• The armed forces were bombing and shelling us from the air. They said they were fighting the Tigers, but of course the Tigers were nowhere to be seen, we were the ones who were getting bombed. After all, you wouldn’t expect the Tigers to wait around and get killed, would you? They fire some shots or throw a bomb and then they get away, vanish – they know very well how to do that. But we, we can’t get away so easily; we’re sitting targets when the bombers come. And after the bombs, the Muslim Home Guards come on the ground, they break what is left of our houses and loot everything – even the roofing and other parts of the house itself. We had nothing but the clothes we were wearing when we came; even these few things here were given to us after we came.

    This mode of operation was confirmed by many others: bombing and shelling from above, home guards on the ground. The purpose of the exercise was apparently to clear Tamils out of the area – although, paradoxically, some of them were there only because they had earlier been cleared out of Colombo and other parts of the South! 

Who do you think is responsible for all the violence and killing?

 

Oh, that’s the government’s fault, isn’t it? It’s the government’s duty to protect people and their lives, and they can do it too, they have the power. If they tell the army not to kill civilians, then the army will have to listen to them, the government is so powerful. They can protect people if they want to. 

What about the Tigers?

 

The Tigers are the same; they are no better than the army. They also harass people, they also kill civilians. The problem is that neither the armed forces nor the Tigers are the least bit concerned about people. They are fighting for their own reasons, but they’re not at all bothered about what happens to ordinary people. We are the ones who are suffering because neither side takes any trouble to avoid hurting us. 

    She also spoke of the fear of rape, especially of her young daughter, and of the time her husband had been beaten almost to death by the EPRLF, who accused him of helping the Tigers: he had been found unconscious, and had taken eight months to recover. Her husband commented bitterly on the irony of the fact that they were back in the same refugee camp after having worked so hard to rebuild their lives in Batticaloa, having lost everything they possessed for the second time, reduced to destitution once again. ‘How can we live like this?’ he asked. ‘We are being fed, but what sort of life is it? We can’t live like this!’

    His voice expressed the despair and humiliation which many of these hard-working, self-reliant people must have felt at being forced to live on hand-outs, without any prospects of improvement in the foreseeable future. He wanted me to write and publish a report about the refugee camps, saying emphatically that ‘People should know what we’re going through.’ And indeed, I found that even within Sri Lanka there was a great deal of ignorance about the sufferings of this very large section of the population who have been displaced.

    A young man had left Jaffna in 1989 to avoid forcible conscription by the militants. His parents had remained in Jaffna throughout the troubles, but his father had just come to check that he was all right, since they were anxious about him. Their house was damaged by the shelling, and the neighbouring house was completely destroyed. ‘Isn’t your mother afraid to stay alone at home?’ I asked. ‘She goes to the camp when there is shelling,’ he replied. The young man had been a driver in Jaffna, and wanted to know if he could find work in Colombo.

    Another young man had come with his wife from Kilinochchi because he would have been forced to join the armed struggle if he had stayed. Many others were students, with no idea when or how they would be able to continue their education; they had come because they didn’t want to join the Tigers. This seemed to be the main reason why most of the young men had fled, although they were at the same time afraid of the security forces. It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that the majority of them had become refugees because they didn’t want to fight or kill anyone. But the horrifying implication was that the security forces and Tigers, between them, gave young men in the North and East no other option but to fight or flee; to stay behind without fighting was to risk being targeted by both parties. This dual dilemma was expressed by a young man who had fled from Batticaloa when the fighting started:

 

Do you want to go back home when the troubles are over? 

 

• Now we can’t go – we’ll just get chopped to pieces if we go now.

Who will do that?

 

The army and the Muslims [Home Guards]. The problem is that some people want to divide the country. It’s impossible to divide the country! But you can’t say that there – if you do, you’ll get killed by the Tigers. Only here can we say such things. 

    Another young man who had come from Batticaloa in August 1990 to escape the fighting between the LTTE and the military had left his parents, four brothers and two sisters in camps in Batticaloa; his house had been bombed by the army in June. He was more favourable to the Tigers:

 

• If the government and the LTTE have talks again, the problem could be solved… The government was saying one thing and doing another – they didn’t mean what they said. The LTTE is fighting for a reason – the needs of the Tamil people are their priority.

    Earlier, Tamil leaders have talked, but fighting has been more effective. In the earlier talks, there were four demands: (1) self-determination, a federal state; (2) they must stop their colonisation plans; (3) language equality; and (4) security. The government must discuss these, especially self-determination for Tamils; fighting will go on until they get a separate state within a federal structure. Provincial councils fell short of a proper federal arrangement because they were not given enough rights. If they had been given enough rights, the fighting would not have started again; but why would so many lives have been lost just for the right to issue bicycle licences?! The provincial councils were like a still-born child. The government is not serious about solving the problem because they get benefits from it, like a beggar exhibiting his sores in order to get money. 

Do you have any Sinhalese or Muslim friends, colleagues or neighbours?

 

Yes, I have Sinhalese and Muslim friends in Batticaloa. 

What will happen to them if there is a separate state?

 

They could stay on there. 

Will they be safe?

 

That’s a difficult question. At the moment, because of the fighting and disturbances, they are getting attacked. But after there’s a separate state, they can come back if they want to. 

    In one of the camps, I spoke to a group of young women aged from 15 to 31; they told me their stories, and then had a discussion about the situation.

    The first had come from Trincomalee in June 1990 with her parents when the army attacked them. She heard afterwards that their home had been destroyed.

    The second, also from Trincomalee, came with her parents in April 1991 when the

Sinhalese commandos attacked: they were coming in the night and taking away young people.

    The third came from Vavuniya with her parents in June 1990 because the LTTE and army were fighting, helicopters were bombing, and they were afraid. They were living in the jungle for ten days, thirty miles from town, and got away by walking at night. They later heard that all the houses had been destroyed.

    The fourth had come from Mullaitivu with her husband and parents for St Anthony’s Festival in early June 1990, and couldn’t go back because the fighting broke out.

    The fifth came from Jaffna with her husband and five sons in October 1990 because of the bombing and disruption of her children’s schooling; she was also afraid that her sons, the eldest of whom was 14, might join the Tigers. However, the eldest boy had disappeared after they came to Colombo: one day he went to the library and never came back. Her husband searched for him, going as far as Vavuniya, but failed to find him. He was not likely to have gone off on his own accord since he was a quiet boy, more like a girl, who spent most of his time alone or with his mother. Another boy with him had also disappeared. (This chilling story highlights the fact that Colombo, and the South in general, is by no means a safe place for Tamils to be; many have been picked up and some, like these boys, have never been seen again.)

    The sixth had come from Kalmunai in October 1990. She lived on the border with a Muslim village, and said that Muslim informers had denounced Tamils to the army. After the war started, about 45 people were rounded up; among them were her husband and two brothers, but she got them released after five days. Her home town was Anuradhapura, but she left in 1985 after rioting there.

    The seventh had come from Vavuniya with her husband and two children in July 1990, afraid of the constant bombing; they had spent ten days in the jungle and walked nine miles. She was originally from Badulla, where her father was an estate staff worker; her husband had been a student in Kandy, but had moved to Vavuniya after the ’83 riots.

    The eighth had come from Vavuniya in October 1990 with her parents, four brothers and a sister, due to fear of the army. Their house had been destroyed by bombs. They were Hill country Tamils, and she had been a domestic worker in Colombo at the time when her parents moved to Vavuniya. One of her brothers, who had been a domestic worker in Kandy from the age of five, had disappeared four months ago.

    The ninth had come from Batticaloa in September 1990 with her husband and child. They had been living on the border with a Muslim village, and when the fighting broke out in June 1990, Tamils went to a refugee camp three miles away; their houses were burned by Muslim Home Guards. On September 3^rd, the army came to the refugee camp, rounded up and arrested 143 inmates, including her husband’s brother, who was never seen again. Following that incident, they walked through the jungle to the town, and came to Colombo after three days. Her husband’s parents were still at home, but didn’t want him to come back.

    The tenth had come from Batticaloa with her husband in June 1990, when they had been attacked by Muslim Home Guards and the army.

    The eleventh had come from Batticaloa with her husband and three sons in December 1990, after spending four months in a refugee camp in Batticaloa. Muslim Home Guards supported by the army had hacked her husband’s father and brother to death and taken away her brother.

    In the discussion they said, among other things:

 

• Only because people are armed has the problem got so bad. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so bad.

 

• Yes, now the problem is the people with arms. But the problem started because people – especially the educated youth – didn’t have employment. If everyone had food and employment, they wouldn’t have started fighting.

 

• Since ’58 the Tamils have been suffering. Our parents went from Anuradhapura to Jaffna, Jaffna to Colombo – there’s no freedom anywhere, we get chased from one place to another.

 

• Since 1958 the old men have been talking and wasting time. Now the young men are taking up arms and wasting time! 

    I asked if they thought the fighting would stop if the government could supply enough jobs, food, housing and education for everyone.

 

• No – first the fighting must stop, then they must provide jobs and food and all those things.

 

• Somehow we must get freedom, even if we have to live on kanji!

   The experience of repeated displacement – being chased from place to place – was a common one. Another woman, a Hill-country Tamil originally from Badulla, had moved to Colombo after marriage, and then been displaced to Batticaloa after the 1983 riots. When the ceasefire broke down in June 1990, her family fled to a refugee camp in Batticaloa, but while they were there, Muslim Home Guards came and killed her 15-year-old son. She then came to Colombo with her husband and three younger children. Her husband had gone back with six others to try and get compensation for her son, but he and four of the others had not returned. The two who did return said that the other five had been arrested by TELO [Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation]. So she wanted money to go and try to get her husband released.  

    Hill-country Tamils have been among the worst sufferers, because they were attacked not only along with all other Tamil-speaking people, but also on separate occasions when they were specifically targeted. To quote one example:

 

When the United Front government implemented the Land Reform Law in 1972, thousands of Tamil estate workers were thrown out of the estates. They had to beg on the streets. Some died of starvation and some fled to the North Central Province. The traditional Left never raised any kind of protest against the hooliganism of the thugs. In a number of plantations, SLFP hooligans and thugs set fire to the barrack type lines of the plantation workers, stole their belongings and harassed them. (Jayaratne Maliyagoda, ‘The Working Class in Recent Years’, Satyodaya, January 1981).

    Since their accommodation was tied to their jobs, these Tamils were exceptionally vulnerable because loss of employment automatically made them refugees. Thus not only those thrown out during nationalisation of the plantations, but also others who had been sacked after a strike, had become refugees. Several families who had been victims of rioting in 1986, had lived in a refugee camp since then.

    As some of the interviews quoted earlier indicate, the Hill-country Tamils resettled in the Northern and Eastern provinces were still not allowed to live in peace but continued to be subjected to periodic attack. There were some to be found in the Tamil refugee camps in Colombo, but many had taken refuge with relations who had remained in the plantation areas, sharing their over-crowded quarters and inadequate diet because they were not receiving any rations on their own account. I travelled to Nawalapitiya to interview some of these Hill-country Tamil refugees, who told me their stories.

    One couple with two teenage children were born on an estate in the Kotmale area, and had gone to Batticaloa because a Muslim merchant had promised the man a tinker’s job. He was earning well and living peacefully, but came back when fighting broke out in 1990 because he couldn’t get work and his family was starving. Now he was living with his cousin and was still unemployed. He had worked in a workshop in Kattankudy since 1983, and his Muslim employers used to warn him not to come to work if there was trouble between Muslims and Tamils; he had plenty of Muslim friends, and felt no tension between himself and them.

    Another couple with three children came originally from an estate in Ratnapura. They moved to Trincomalee in April 1983, having bought three-quarters of an acre of land there, but in July their house and all their belongings were burned; 24 houses, all belonging to Tamils, were burned in one night. They spent three months in a refugee camp, but after the birth of another child they rented a house from a Tamil in Trincomalee town. Three years later, while visiting Colombo for a relation’s wedding, they heard that for the second time their home and belongings had been burned, by Sinhalese and Muslim Home Guards and security forces. So they stayed on in Colombo till 1988, then went back and rebuilt a house on the original site, using Rs 6000 which the government had given them. They were doing quite well until in June 1990 their home was burned yet again, along with several other houses; they were not sure by whom, since the people came in the night, but thought they were Sinhalese Home Guards. They took refuge in a church, and in September were evacuated to a refugee camp in Colombo by the government. From there they had come to stay with relatives in one of the plantations. In Trincomalee they had had good Sinhalese and Muslim friends.

    One middle-aged woman, born in an estate near Nawalapitiya, had gone to live with her husband in Mannar after getting married in 1954, and was helping him to run a shop there. In 1988 her husband was severely assaulted by the army and died after being taken to the hospital; they were warned by the army not to say anything about the beating. She was then running the shop with her 27-year-old son, but a rival Muslim merchant denounced her son to the army, saying he was a member of the LTTE, and the security forces came and assaulted her and her son in July 1989. So she sent her son to India, and later came back to stay with her relatives on the plantation. She had a very good relationship with her Muslim neighbours, some of whom had escorted her up to Kurunegala; but she had also heard rumours that Muslim informers were giving information to the army, and was not sure if it was true.

    A middle-aged man had moved from the estate to Vavuniya district in 1980 and settled there. In October 1990, people came at midnight and chased them out. They hid for three days in the jungle, and when they went back, found that their houses had been looted and stripped. So they walked to Vavuniya where the army gave them train tickets. He was now staying with his son-in-law on the estate.

    In the brief discussion, the following opinions were expressed:

 

• If the problem is solved, I would like to go back to Mannar.

 

• I don’t want to go back to Trincomalee! We have been affected by the violence there three times already! We don’t want the country to be divided, we only want peace.

 

• That’s right, we only want peace. Because of all this fighting, we have no place to stay, no jobs and no food.

 

• There has to be a political solution – fighting won’t solve anything. The situation here is a bit better; there it’s so bad that even the children feel hatred. So I prefer to be here.

 

• They’re fighting, we’re suffering. The government failed to solve the problem from the beginning, that’s why it has got worse. I agree that peace is necessary, but now we are facing the problem of where to get our next meal! 

    It is worth noting, at this point, that some Muslim refugees too had fled due to indiscriminate attacks by the army in its fight against the Tigers. Muslim refugees in Colombo spoke of Muslim casualties in the security forces’ bombing and shelling of Mannar city, and the fact that they had been displaced to outlying villages as a result. And I met others in a camp of about 50 families in Puttalam. They had been living on the Mannar-Puttalam Road, and had initially fled and settled further down the road when the fighting broke out in June 1990; but in August the government had shifted them to the camp in Puttalam. The Tamils from their area had already fled earlier on; they themselves escaped on foot, some people getting blown up by landmines on the way. In their own village they had been agricultural people, cultivating rice; the women used to work at home, a few doing tailoring or beedi-rolling.

    The men in the camp were now mostly unemployed, but the women, after coming to the camp, had with admirable resilience and resourcefulness learned how to make winnowing fans out of palmyra leaves. They prepared the leaves collectively, and sold the winnows for fifty rupees each; they showed us a couple: they were crudely but attractively made. I asked the refugees:

If there is peace, would you like to go back?

 

• Even if there is peace, we don’t have any homes to go back to – our homes have been destroyed.

How do you know your homes were destroyed? Have you had any news from your village?

 

No, but the army was throwing grenades at all the houses along the road, so it’s very likely that ours would have been destroyed. Besides, [pointing at a derelict hut which had been abandoned], look at the state of that hut after being left for only two months! Ours have been left for 14 months, they’ll be in a much worse state even if any of them have survived the grenades. 

If there is peace and you are given assistance to rebuild your homes, would you want to go back?

 

Yes, then we would go back. 

    The experiences suffered by all these Tamil-speaking refugees, within the camps and outside, were similar to the experiences which had led to the flight of the refugees in Britain. However there were two major differences in their current situation.

(1)   The degree of material deprivation and hardship suffered by the refugees in Sri Lanka was much greater; surveys indicated high levels of malnutrition (especially among children) and disease. Although many of the refugees in Britain had failed to find employment and were living on social security, they were not subjected in quite the same way to forced inactivity and the humiliation of being totally dependent, nor to the soul-destroying lack of privacy suffered by the people displaced within Sri Lanka.

(2)   The refugees in Sri Lanka were still in areas where Tamils had been attacked in the past and could be attacked in the future – indeed, many of them had returned to places from which they had earlier been driven out by anti-Tamil violence, and there were occasional cases of disappearances of camp inmates. The degree of security in Britain was greater – although admittedly being undermined by politicians and tabloids who instigated attacks on refugees, and racist thugs who carried them out.

    However, in both these respects, the refugees I interviewed in the South were much better off than those who had remained in the North and East. This was clear from the references some of them made to their experiences in camps in those areas. But I would also like to quote from UTHR (University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna) reports to give a better picture of the nightmare existence of thousands of refugees still remaining in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

 

Special Report No. 1, 25/8/90 (Jaffna):

 

Churches and schools have been bombed even when they functioned as refugee camps, killing a number of refugees (p 1).

The relief sent by the government in the form of food and medicines to the affected areas is far from adequate. Many refugees died of starvation and disease (pp. 2–3).

5.8.90. Two Machetti bombers attacked a refugee camp at St Anthony’s Church, Passaiyoor. According to eye witnesses no militants were around, and apparently there was no provocation to attack this place. Three rocket propelled bombs were fired into the camp, one falling straight into a group of refugees who were cooking a meal. Six people were killed and thirteen were injured. Out of the six who died four were children (p. 5).

On the 8th August the bomber attack on St Patrick’s College refugee camp, at 8.45 am, left 3 dead and 26 injured (p.10).

 

Report No. 5, 10/9/90

 

(Eastern Report):

Pottuvil: Following the outbreak of war, all Tamils were rendered refugees, a large number of them fleeing to Thirukkovil. Towards the end of June, the STF command at Pottuvil sent a message through a senior government official that it was safe for the people to go back and that they would be protected. The people did go with hesitation and shortly after their return, the STF did a round up and took all their young men away. The people had no one to complain to. The government official who had persuaded them to go had remained behind in Thirukkovil. The young men have since not been heard of. A grieving mother said, “Oh God, why did I go back to Pottuvil? I had three sons and lost them, and am back to being a refugee” (p.10).

(Jaffna Report):

A situation report sent by Fr. M.E.Pius of the Jaffna Diocesan Human Development Centre contains the following: “....The situation of the refugee camps is very pathetic. The refugee camps and their surroundings have been bombed very often… Many are dying of hunger and disease… The fortnightly government ration of food had been given only twice during the last two months and that too had not reached all the refugee camps… No water could be supplied to the refugee camps since the bowsers [water trucks] are being bombed… There are now over 327,000 persons in 396 refugee camps in the Jaffna district” (pp. 53-4).

(Eastern Province, Southern Sector):

On the 20th (June), the Karaitivu refugee camp which was set up in a school and was flying a white flag, was bombed from a helicopter, killing 3 and injuring 3… A female teacher who went from the Kalmunai refugee camp to ask for food from the GS (headman) was raped by the army (pp. 56–7).

 

Special Report No.3, 16/10/90:

 

In the Amparai District… Tamils were being evicted from one place after the other… Several tens of thousands of refugees were now gathered in Thirukkovil, Thambiluvil, Kallianthivu, Sinnathottam and Vinayagapuram. On 20th September, the STF started its round ups in these areas. From the 24th dead bodies, some headless, and heads without bodies started appearing along the coast at Vinayagapuram, Thambiluvil and Thambattai. Refugees who often had no change of clothes, had inadequate shelter against the oncoming rains, were hungry and sometimes caught pneumonia, were now stricken with another source of terror. “Whom can we tell these to?”, “Who will do anything at all?” are anguished cries one frequently hears. Picking up refugees for human shields during operations has also become a regular practice (p. 3).

    In Veeramunai, the refugee camp was attacked on 12th August by Muslim hoodlums backed by the police. At Sorikalmunai, on the 18th September, following such an attack the army fired at refugees trying to flee the church (p 8).

    It can be safely said that well over half the Tamil population in the Eastern Province are refugees by design. Out of the 60,000 Tamils in the Amparai District, outside Thirukkovil-Thambiluvil, Kalmunai and Karaitivu, few Tamils are living in their homes. Thirukkovil-Thambiluvil has a refugee population of 10-15,000… In many communities, a high proportion of males have been slaughtered. It is about 10% or more in Veeramunai and is much higher in smaller Tamil communities in the interior parts of Amparai District, The number of widows, orphans and elderly parents who have lost their sons is significant. The men are often missing or demoralized, it is often the women who go in search of missing boys and who get about trying to find food for the families. A lady who was distributing forms for entering appeals for missing persons found that every woman was asking for not one, but a couple of forms – son, father, brother, nephew, etc… Many of the women were illiterate, and the younger ones often pregnant (p. 32).

    On 2nd August, forces wearing a mixed bag of uniforms surrounded the refugee camp (in Pottuvil) and took away 150 males. 30 of them were later released. What remains of the rest remains unknown (p. 49).

    Sorikalmunai… is predominantly Roman Catholic with a population of about 3000. From the beginning of hostilities in June, the villagers became refugees at Holy Cross Church… On 12th September, the army came to the church and took away 7 men… On the morning of 16th September, the army with Muslim home guards arrived in trucks, armoured vehicles and motor cycles, surrounded the church and took away 28 males. The refugees were both leaderless and thoroughly frightened. At midnight the same day, Muslim home guards arrived and forced their way into the church. According to the people, they were backed by members of the forces… They started molesting women. Some were grabbed by their hair and were beaten against the floor. They then abducted 12 women and made their exit.

    The following morning, the STF arrived to drop 3 boys from a party they had detained earlier. The boys had injuries including fractures… The people spent another night in fear.

    When morning came (18th), the people decided to flee, either to Karaitivu or to Thirukkovil. One group, including old men and women stumbling along with the help of sticks, was sighted by the army at Chavalakkadai who fired two shells… some of the people retreated screaming to Sorikalmunai while others kept moving to Thirukkovil. The witnesses we spoke to included women and elderly men. The women who had been abducted included pregnant mothers. Some of them had made their way back to the church in the morning, while others with their clothes rent had been abandoned about the place. Others had to take clothes and fetch them (pp. 64–6).

 

Report No.7, 8/5/91

 

(The Refugee Camp at the Eastern University, Vantharamoolai)

 On 25th July, the army came to the Eastern University refugee camp about 5 pm. 10,000 refugees were in the camp at that time. The army left after taking 5 persons with the help of TELO informants…

    The LTTE was… irritated by losing its civilian cover in the surrounding areas. Instead of being sympathetic to the refugees who had suffered much, it became angry with them, accusing them of eating sufficiently, having electricity and watching television, while they were in difficulties outside. Towards the end of August the transformers supplying electricity to the university were blasted. This act was an indication that the LTTE did not approve of the camp and was feeling around for means to make it uninviting…

    Early morning on 5th September, the army surrounded the camp and wanted men and women to line up separately in the grounds. These inmates were then paraded before informers… Of those who were paraded, 159 were taken away. There was much anger over this. A senior member of the university staff said: “The Muslim informers brought by the army simply pointed at anyone they knew. A young boy I knew well and who was taken away, was timid and would not even have so much as spoken to the Tigers.” A Christian clergyman who ministered to a number of army officers said: “The whole thing was a sham. My sister’s neighbour was a fishmonger whom I know well. He had no connection with the Tigers. Someone must have been trying to get rid of a business competitor…”

    The army made a similar raid on the camp on 23rd September. On this day fighting had taken place between the army and the Tigers at Kaluwankerny, a fishing village 3 miles east.

    Following this, 500 people from the village came to the refugee camp. Not relishing being alone in the village the Tigers ordered the villagers to get back, threatening penalties… On 27th September the Tigers abducted the university registrar for a so-called enquiry (later released) and about the same time told the inmates of the camp that they must vacate by the 1st October… By 1st October… the home of 40,000 persons stood empty. Some of the people found their way to Batticaloa. But the larger number had headed for starvation and perils, natural and man made, in the surrounding jungles (pp. 43–7).

STF Round Up of Refugee Camp, 12th December 1990

At 5.30 am the STF surrounded the refugee camp at Vipulananda College. Refugees from each village were asked to come out in turn, and were marched past persons described as Muslim informers. 28 persons were taken into custody. The manner in which persons were picked up was reminiscent of what happened in the Eastern University… Of the 28 taken, only one person from Attapalam was released. The rest are missing, mostly without any indication about their fate (pp. 34–5).

 

Report No.8, 28/8/91

 

Siththandy, 21st August 1990: At 5 pm army personnel from the Morrakkaddanchenai camp took away 44 persons from the refugee camp at Sri Murugan Temple, Siththandy, who are since missing. They were mostly students, labourers and fishermen. This… suggests that the taking away of 159 persons from the refugee camp at Vantharamoolai Eastern University was one publicised instance of a practice widespread in the Batticaloa District about that time… The widespread nature of these disappearances, together with the numbers involved, point to connivance at high level (p. 15).

    Following the onset of the current war, the army started moving towards Batticaloa. On 20th June 1990, several bodies with cut injuries were seen on the northern outskirts of Kiran…

    Many refugees then moved into Christa Seva Ashram, under the care of Sevak Sam Alfred… In August 1990 a rumour went around that the LITE had buried mines in the surrounding area… The army then came to the Ashram refugee camp and took away about 60 persons. These persons were marched in front as mine sweepers, and the army came behind (p. 25).

    If the fate of refugees exiled in an alien country can be described as sad, even tragic, there is only one way to describe the condition of these refugees in their own country: it is utterly intolerable. In reply to the question ‘How can we live like this?’ I had to agree that human beings could not possibly be expected to put up with such conditions. Yet thousands of people have lived through this daily torment for years on end; and not only people in the rest of the world but even a shamefully large number of people in Sri Lanka itself are quite oblivious of their sufferings. Surely this situation cannot go on indefinitely! It is dehumanising for everyone concerned – the refugees themselves as well as those who allow this intolerable situation to persist. It is true that there are a few courageous and dedicated people working hard to alleviate the hardships they suffer, but despite their efforts, the problem apparently gets worse and worse. Clearly something needs to be done on a much larger scale. But what?

    The refugees, both in Britain and in Sri Lanka, had thoughtful and intelligent suggestions which are in urgent need of consideration by all Sri Lankans and others who are in any way concerned about the problem. But before turning to these, I would like briefly to examine two of the movements which many of the refugees felt were responsible for the problem: Sinhala and Tamil nationalism.

 

Chapter 5: The ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ State: spiritual haven, or hell on earth?

    There is virtually unanimous agreement among Tamil refugees that there would have been no war if it had not been for the discrimination against, and persecution of, Tamils. In view of this, we have to examine the main cause of all the discrimination and persecution – i.e. the attempt to turn Sri Lanka into a Sinhala Buddhist state – and see what it has meant for the majority of Sri Lankans who are Sinhalese Buddhists. That the minorities have suffered from this policy is obvious; but has the majority benefited?

    One obvious way in which the war has affected the Sinhalese population is by displacing some of them and turning them into refugees. I did not meet any Sinhalese refugees from the Northern Province, and was told that many of the Sinhalese who had fled to Anuradhapura from Vavuniya District had returned home when government forces regained control over the area from which they had been displaced. The refugees I met were from the East, and I visited them accompanied by a Sinhalese friend who had earlier visited Tamil camps not only in the South but also in the East.

    The Sinhalese refugee camp in a village outside Colombo was a good deal less crowded than the Tamil camps: around 110 to 125 people in a hall, similar to those which housed thousands of Tamil refugees, and spacious grounds with washing-lines hung with clothes and a sheltered corner where apparently teams of refugees took it in turn to prepare the uncooked food rations that were issued by the government. In other respects, the scenario was similar, with mats spread out along the walls, a few foam-rubber mattresses hung on lines along with the clothes, and belongings stacked up near the mats. A sewing-machine and chair were in the middle of the hall, apparently for the use of refugees who might want to make or mend their own clothes.

    A small group of three women, with a couple of elderly men on the edge of their group, called out to us and asked us who we were. My friend explained that she had come before, and that I wanted to ask a few questions about how they had come to be refugees.

    A woman in her late thirties said that most of them had been refugees in a Buddhist temple in Batticaloa since the disturbances in 1987, till the Tigers chased them away after the breakdown of the ceasefire in June 1990. They had been taken to the airport, put on a plane and brought to Ratmalana. Did they know what had happened to their houses? The Tigers had removed everything from them, including the roofs. Another woman said she had been a teacher in a nursery school attached to the Methodist Church. In 1987 the Tigers had closed down all the Sinhala schools and the Sinhala medium in other schools, including her own. Here she was teaching in the temple near the camp, but not getting paid for it.

    Others said that they had come with nothing but the clothes they were wearing; only after coming to the refugee camp had they been given mats, mattresses and clothes. I observed that in the Tamil camps there were many Tamil people from Batticaloa who had also come with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. The first woman denied that Tamil people had anything to fear or had left Batticaloa; according to her, they were all living happily there in comfort. I assured her that there were much larger numbers of refugees in the Tamil camps. My friend (who was Sinhalese) told her about the Thirukkovil camps in the Eastern Province, where tens of thousands of Tamil refugees were living in dreadful conditions and great fear, because even the security guards appointed to protect them said that on the slightest pretext they would be ready to kill the people in their care, that even new-born babies were “Tiger cubs’ and ought to be killed.

    ‘But it’s true,’ said the first woman, apparently with the agreement of the others, ‘they teach them to be Tigers from the time they are small,’ Both of us protested. ‘It’s ridiculous to say that a new-born baby who knows nothing of such things can be a Tiger; that just means you are saying that all Tamils are Tigers, which is not true,’ I said.

    My friend added, ‘Just because a few people in a community do wrong, that doesn’t mean that the whole community is bad; after all, even in our community there were people who did wrong during the JVP violence, but that doesn’t mean that all Sinhalese are bad.’

    The old man: ‘But you can’t trust the Tigers, you can’t believe anything they say.’

    ‘That may be true,’ I said, ‘but not all Tamils are Tigers. Many Tamils have been killed by the Tigers and some of the refugees in the Tamil camps have had relatives killed by them. Many are here to get away from the Tigers as much as the security forces – they’re as much afraid of the Tigers as of the security forces.’ I told them about the Tamil woman married to a Sinhalese man, and asked if there were any Sinhalese married to Tamils in this camp. The first woman started off by saying, ‘No, no, there are no such people here, but then stopped and asked what I meant. I explained again. Once again, the woman flatly denied that there were any Sinhalese married to Tamils in the camp; but an elderly man, who turned out to be her brother, indicated a thin, elderly woman wandering around, and murmured something about her being a Tamil married to one of the Sinhalese men in the camp. His sister, however, said she must be a Burgher, and reiterated her opinion that Tamils had nothing to be afraid of, that they hadn’t suffered, etc.

    In desperation, I told her: ‘I know Tamils have been suffering for a long time since my own family was attacked in 1958 because my father is a Tamil, and we too had to leave everything and flee just as you did. The same thing happened to many other families in 1958 and 1983 – in fact there are many refugees in the Tamil camps who had fled to Batticaloa after the 1983 riots, only to be chased back again this year.’

    I had hesitated to reveal my Tamil parentage for fear of stirring up even more hostility than the argument already seemed to be generating, and at first the announcement took them aback. ‘Your father is Tamil?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And your mother? Is she Sinhalese?’ ‘No, she’s Burgher.’ Then turning to my friend (as though my ethnicity affected hers!): ‘And she?’

‘She is Sinhalese.’

    After that the first woman was quiet for a while, but the teacher was very eager to speak. She agreed that there were many Tamil people who were not like the Tigers – for example, the priest in charge of the church to which her school was attached, a very good and courageous Tamil man; after the Tigers had closed down the Sinhala stream, she had continued to teach in the English and Tamil streams.

Then you know Tamil?

 

• Yes, yes, I know it well. All of us can speak Tamil except her [indicating a third woman] – she still hasn’t learned to speak Tamil after all these years, I don’t know why. 

    She explained that the reason why people felt so bitter was that they had trusted the Tigers; when the ceasefire was declared, they had really believed that the war was over and they could get back to their normal lives. Everyone had put away their arms: even the policemen were unarmed when the Tigers attacked them.

    I agreed that was a very wrong thing to do, but said it was also wrong to blame all Tamils and make them suffer for the wrong-doing of a few individuals. ‘No, no, there’s no such feeling here,’ the elderly man assured us. ‘Look’ – indicating the woman whom he had told us was Tamil – ‘she was our neighbour and now she’s living here – that’s not a problem, there’s nothing like that. Why don’t you talk to her?’

    He called her over and she came willingly, obviously curious about what was going on. But she wanted to know absolutely everything about me and my family before she would answer any of my questions. She then confided, as though it were something she didn’t want to get spread around, that her parents were Tamil Brahmins of Indian origin, and that she was married to a Sinhalese. Of course all the others, who had been her neighbours in Batticaloa, must have known this; if the elderly man knew it, his sister must surely have known it too. Yet she had denied that there were any Sinhalese married to Tamils with such vehemence that it seemed to me she actually believed what she was saying, she had somehow convinced herself that such a thing was not possible.

    When the Tigers attacked Sinhalese people in 1987 and all the others moved into the refugee camp at the Buddhist temple, the Tamil woman and her husband – perhaps because she was a Hindu – had moved into a police bungalow. They had been staying there when the recent fighting broke out, and armed Tigers had come and knocked on the window at night, wanting, she said, to take her husband away. Instead she had gone out and talked to them and apparently succeeded in persuading them to allow her and her husband to go. She herself was a teacher of English at A level, and she said that all the people around us were her neighbours in Batticaloa. ‘I could easily get a job here,’ she continued; ‘I have already been asked more than once. But how can we go to work from this refugee camp, where we don’t even have a cupboard where we can lock up our belongings?’ Having lost almost everything that they possessed, she now felt very apprehensive about leaving their meagre belongings exposed to theft. ‘I won’t be able to concentrate on my teaching if I’m worrying about what’s happening in the camp,’ she said, ‘You have to settle things at home before you can do your work properly!’

    We asked the whole group about their plans for the future. Most of them thought the government should give them a little land and assistance to settle down and build new homes.    ‘What about going back to Batticaloa – don’t you want to do that?’ we asked.

    ‘No, no, it’s impossible to go back to Batticaloa while the Tigers are there.’

    ‘But suppose the Tigers are driven out?’ asked my friend.

    ‘No, the Tigers will never be driven out,’ said the first woman very emphatically. I got the impression that their roots in Batticaloa were not very deep.

    This conversation left us both feeling quite disturbed at their refusal to acknowledge that Tamils had any grievances, and the consequent implication that they were the only sufferers. My friend commented rather angrily that they ought to be taken to see the Tamil camps in Thirukkovil – then they would be thankful for their luck in being where they were! I thought that even a visit to the Tamil camps in Colombo would help them to come to terms with the plight of the Tamils. It appeared to us that an initial attitude of goodwill towards their Tamil neighbours had partly been transformed into suspicion and hostility by anti-Tamil propaganda on the one hand, and Tiger atrocities on the other.

    The ability to look more deeply into the causes of the conflict seemed to be absent – except in one case. An elderly woman in traditional-style ‘cloth’ [lunghi] and jacket accosted us on our way out and asked us who we were and what we were doing. We explained, and then asked her about herself. She told us she had come from Batticaloa, but was originally from Matara District; her husband had moved to Batticaloa 45 years ago in search of work, and she herself had gone there after marriage. Most of the people here, she said, were from Galle and Matara districts and had gone to Batticaloa in search of work. She said that earlier Sinhalese migrants to Batticaloa had been accepted without any trouble by the predominantly Tamil residents; there had been peace and friendship. But all that began to change around 1957–58 with the government’s new policies; there had been attacks on Sinhalese settlers.

    ‘On Sinhalese?’ I asked; ‘I know there were attacks on Tamils, because my own family was affected’.

    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘here they were attacking Tamils, there they were attacking Sinhalese. It was the government policies which started it all. Now everyone is suffering: we have fled, all the Tamils have fled, so many people have been killed; the whole country is being destroyed.’

    ‘I hope you will talk to the other people in the camp and tell them all this,’ I suggested.

‘Some of them seem to think that Tamils haven’t suffered at all, and that all Tamils are Tigers or Tiger supporters.’

    ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I can explain to you why they think like that. Some of the Tamil families have managed to escape or send their young people away, but not all of them. So the Tigers come to the Tamil families and forcibly recruit a young person from each of them. They do it by force, but even then, the whole family comes to be known as Tiger supporters. They are trapped: even though they didn’t want to give their son to the Tigers, even though he was taken by force, still they become identified as “Tigers”.’

    The picture she gave confirmed what most of the Tamil refugees had said. But her depth of understanding was unique among the Sinhalese refugees. If we were disturbed by our conversations in this camp, a year later we were quite horrified by what we found in the Sinhalese camps in the eastern part of Anuradhapura District, close to the border with Trincomalee District. These people had been through experiences as traumatic as those suffered by the Tamil refugees: in 1990 they had been attacked by the Tigers, who had massacred large numbers of villagers, including children. Several thousands of refugees lived in these camps, which consisted of settlements of cadjan huts, and many of the families there had lost relatives.

    We went with a Tamil Christian priest, who remained in his jeep, and were shown around by a Sinhalese sister from a Christian convent. At the first camp, she called a sort of meeting; most of the talking was done by the camp ‘leader’, a demagogic middle-aged man, and a tall, well-built young man, with occasional interjections from mostly middle-aged to elderly women. They said they were still living in considerable insecurity, since anyone who wandered too far from the camps – for example to fish in the lakes – was liable to be killed by the Tigers; earlier there had been some such incidents and the bodies had been found. Just a few days before, two young boys of 11 and 12 had wandered away like this and disappeared, and they feared the worst.

    The news which had really terrified them was that the government was going to send them back to Trincomalee District in less than two weeks, and put them into camps there whether they wanted to go or not. Of course they didn’t want to go – they were convinced they would be slaughtered – but they would have no choice in the matter: their rations in this camp would be stopped and they would be taken to Trincomalee in army trucks, not to their homes, which were in various different places in the district, but to refugee camps. ‘But why are they doing this?’ we asked. They didn’t know why, but had apparently been told that they couldn’t stay on in Anuradhapura District and had to get back to their home district.

    The sister confirmed this information, and added that the children were having problems with their schooling, and it would be better if they settled down in schools back in their home districts. It seemed to us, however, that this would not solve the problem of their schooling and might even make it worse, (a) because they would still be in centralised refugee camps, not in their home areas, and (b) because there was every chance that they would be driven out again by the Tigers. The rationale of sending them back into such obvious danger seemed to have much more to do with the government’s colonisation policy and attempts to alter the ethnic composition of the Eastern Province by settling Sinhalese people there, even against their own will.

    ‘Do you know what has happened to the Tamil people in your area?’ we asked. Leader: ‘We don’t know what has happened to those animals, they must still be there. Only the Sinhalese have nowhere to go – they will be driven into the sea and that will be the end of it!’

    I replied: ‘No, there are many Tamil refugees, some of them from Trincomalee, in the Colombo camps. They have suffered the same kind of atrocities.’ My friend added: ‘Tamil refugees in the Eastern Province are suffering even more. Once when we were in Thirukkovil, we came across a large group of women and girls crying by the roadside. When we asked them why they were crying, they told us the security forces had taken away their menfolk earlier, telling the women to come and collect them; but when they went, the security forces denied all knowledge of their men and boys. Now they didn’t know what to do, that’s why they were crying. Over there, there are many refugee camps where all the males have been wiped out.’

    Young man: ‘These are all untrue stores!’

    My friend: ‘What do you mean, they’re untrue? I saw these things with my own eyes!’

    Young man (hastily): ‘Well, we don’t know anything about these things.’

    Sister (also hastily): ‘Yes, that’s right, we don’t get to hear anything about what is happening anywhere else.’ (Could this be true, we later wondered? It seemed rather incredible.)

    ‘Do you know when all this trouble started?’ we asked.

    Several people answered that it had started in 1983, when the Tigers started fighting the Sinhalese. We asked: ‘Before that, was there any trouble between you and your Tamil neighbours?’ ‘No,’ they assured us, ‘before that, everything was fine; Sinhalese and Tamils and Muslims lived very happily together.’

    We persisted: ‘But the trouble started much earlier for the Tamils; it started because their rights have been denied and they have been attacked since 1958.’

    Leader: ‘The trouble in ’58 was over the use of the letter “Shree” – the Tamils didn’t want it, they protested, they caught Sinhalese people and branded them with the letter “Shree”!

    We said: ‘But it was mostly Tamil people who suffered in the 1958 riots and in many incidents since then. They have suffered for a much longer time the same kind of atrocities that you are suffering now.’

    Sister: ‘But that was not like this, it was not a case of people being hacked to death!’

    Leader: ‘Have you heard about the Kent and Dollar Farms? They were settled with Sinhalese convicts who were on the way to being released, and they were just lined up and shot!’ (No mention of the fact that they were settled there only after the Hill-country Tamil refugees already settled on the farms had been brutally attacked and driven out.)

    A woman: ‘There was a case like that in one of our villages too – 30 people were just slaughtered.’

    Sister: ‘Some of our schoolchildren come from across the border, they come by van. Once the Tigers had waylaid the van and massacred almost everyone! Our own schoolchildren! It was so horrible, I couldn’t even bear to look!’

    We responded: ‘Yes, it’s true the Tigers have done terrible things, but the security forces have done exactly the same thing to innocent Tamil people – hacked them to death, burned them on tyres – and not just Tamil people either; during the JVP insurrection they killed thousands of innocent Sinhalese people too, hacked them to death and burned them, we’ve seen the pictures.’

    Leader (dropping his voice): ‘Look lady, we know about the security forces too, don’t think that we don’t know about them. But we can’t talk about such things here – you never know who may be listening.’

    Sister (looking around): ‘Yes, that’s right, you don’t know who may be listening.’

    My friend launched into a small speech about how ethnic divisions benefited only the rich and powerful, while poor people of all communities were suffering. There were murmurs of agreement, and the sister wandered off.

    We asked, ‘So what is going to happen now?’ They replied, ‘What is going to happen? We will be taken there, that’s all, we’re helpless, we can’t do anything about it.'

    We asked, ‘Do all of you want to stay here?’

    They said: ‘There are some people in this camp who want to go back, but the rest of us are afraid, we think we too will get killed if we go.’

    ‘If you don’t want to go, can’t you stay behind?’

    They answered: ‘How can we stay? They say they will take us by force if necessary.’

    At the next camp, we asked to speak to families individually, thinking that people might express themselves more freely in private, and we did, indeed, hear much more explicit criticism of the government. We first talked to a woman whose son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren had been killed by the Tigers. She was a midwife who had been practising in the South, but had been transferred to the East because of a shortage of midwives there; she had been offered some kind of gratuity, but instead had asked for some land, and had built a house there. She said there had been trouble in her area since 1980; in 1985 the Tigers had come and gunned down 30 people, and on the 31st December 1987 her house had been burned with all her belongings, embodying savings since she started working in 1948, but there had been no compensation from the government. Even in this camp, she said, it was not the government but only the sisters who cared for them and got them what they needed.

    She showed us photographs of her grandchildren, taken after they had been hacked to death; they had been given to her by the army, and my friend said she should throw them away because they would only serve to stir up hatred. However, it seemed to me she was suffering more from grief than from hatred. ‘I know we all have to die some time,’ she said, ‘but not like this, not like this! And now I have to carry this grief and pain with me until I die. Maybe that will happen soon enough, since we are being sent back there.’

    Her young daughter-in-law, who was suckling a baby, joined in vigorously at that point: ‘Yes, that’s what will happen, and everybody knows it; whoever survived last time will get killed this time – we’re being sent to our deaths. They say the army will protect us, but we know very well what that means. Maybe during the daytime they will be around, but at night they will disappear, and that’s when the Tigers will come. We’ll end up hiding in the jungles as we were doing before. And how can we hide, with all these little children? You know what they’re like – they cry, they laugh, they cough – it’s just impossible to keep them quiet. We’ll be finished off, every single one of us, that’s what’s going to happen.’

    ‘But if you know what the situation is, and they know what the situation is, why are they sending you back?’ we asked. ‘It would be different if the war were over and there was peace, then there would be some sense in it. But what sense does it make to send you back while the war is still raging?’

    ‘They want us to help to fight the war, that’s what they say.’

    ‘Don’t any of you want to go?’

    ‘No one from this camp wants to go.’

    ‘Can’t you stay, then?’

    ‘They’ll cut off our rations and leave us to starve. What can we do? We’ll die if we go and we’ll die if we stay. We heard that the AGA has been told he will lose his job unless he gets rid of us. We don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what we’ve been told.’

    We asked what had happened to the Tamil people in their area. The young woman told us that the Tigers had rounded them up and taken them all away, apart from two people whom they had killed, and they hadn’t been seen since then.

    We talked to another group of people, mostly women and girls with one young man. A middle-aged woman from Trincomalee said, ‘It would be different if we were being sent to our homes – at least that would be something. But no, we’re being sent to other camps which are not even near our homes.’

    ‘When did all this trouble start?’ we asked.

    ‘In 1983,’ they told us.

    ‘Before that, was there any trouble between you and your Tamil neighbours?’

    ‘Not at all. We lived together very happily, like brothers and sisters.’

    ‘Do you know what has happened to them now?’

    ‘No, we don’t. The Tigers came and took them away – only two old people who couldn’t walk they shot. They rounded up everyone else, including women and children, and took them away, we don’t know where. We’ve been told they have underground camps where they keep all these people, and where they also have factories and everything else.’

    They agreed with my friend that poor people of all communities, including Tamils, were suffering. Their attitude to their Tamil neighbours was a mixture of sympathy based on their previous friendship, and suspicion because they half believed the rumours that they had all gone over to the Tigers.

    ‘What do you think is the solution to the problem of this conflict?’ we asked.

    ‘The solution? The only solution is for all of us to get killed, and that’s what is going to happen,’ said the young man bitterly.

    ‘It’s difficult for us to think of anything now except this problem of being sent back,’ said one of the women. ‘It’s like dying a daily death. How can we think of anything else?’

    ‘We have no way out. If we go, we’ll be killed. If we try to stay, we won’t get our rations –  and in any case they have threatened they will take us by force.’

    As they went on talking, they conveyed a feeling of utter fatalism and hopelessness, of being used as pawns in a game they couldn’t understand, of being crushed between forces they couldn’t control.

    ‘How can this happen?’ we asked the sister on the way back to the jeep. ‘Surely there must be some way in which this forced deportation can be averted?’

    ‘But you must see the standpoint of the army,’ she replied. ‘They are strangers to the place, they say they need local people to guide them and help them. Besides, they say, what is the point of being sent there to protect the Sinhalese residents if there are no Sinhalese residents to protect?’

    We thought, but didn’t say, what is the need to send in the army to protect the Sinhalese residents in the first place, if there are no Sinhalese residents there to protect? Why not simply recall the army, and get them to protect these refugees where they are? No sane person could have been taken in by this upside-down reasoning. It was obvious that these unfortunate people were being sent back to Trincomalee district for reasons which had nothing whatsoever to do with their protection or welfare, that they were being used against their will in the government’s strategy to alter the ethnic character of the East, and that the sister approved of all this.

    The anti-Tamil feeling not only in the refugee camps but – even more – among the sisters in the convent, made me uneasy; I began to understand why the priest who had brought us, much more obviously Tamil than I was, and isolated in Anuradhapura district from where most Tamils had been driven out by repeated pogroms, had chosen to remain in the jeep. When we had dropped the sister back at the convent, I suggested that he should try to explain to these people, at least to the sisters, about the denial of Tamil rights.

    ‘There’s no point,’ he said bitterly, ‘these people will never understand; they will only think I’m a Tiger supporter for saying such things. I’m no supporter of the Tigers; but as for the Tamil people, I’ve seen how they have suffered, and I feel very deeply about it. But I can’t talk to any of these people about that. Now you’ve seen the situation for yourselves, you can understand how it is. It was even worse before: right in front of me they would say that all Tamils should be killed, and things like that. When the Sinhalese refugees first came, I worked night and day getting relief supplies to them, but after some months I stopped. I thought, there’s no point, no point doing this without enlightening their minds; this won’t solve the problem – it will just go on and on.’

    My friend and I were both quite shaken by this whole experience: Firstly, by the impending fate of the refugees we had met, some of whom would almost certainly be killed within a month. Surely it was their fundamental right to stay where they were if they wanted to, to refuse to be recruited – down to the last old person and tiny child – to fight a war against their will? Or did Sinhalese Buddhists have no fundamental rights in this ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ state?

    Secondly, we were horrified by the way in which their ignorance of the fate of their Tamil neighbours and of the history of the conflict was being manipulated to generate distrust and hostility against all Tamils, bearing out the allegation by some Tamil refugees that ordinary Sinhalese people were having their minds poisoned by anti-Tamil propaganda. We knew, from friends working in Moneragala District with Sinhalese villagers who had suffered similar atrocities at the hands of the Tigers, that even in such tragic circumstances it was possible to promote understanding between the two communities; indeed my friend, in the short time she had at her disposal, was already able to make an impact.

    We had thought that the sisters, with their superior access to information and religious commitment to being peace-makers, would be playing such a role. But they seemed, on the contrary, to be promoting sectarian feelings among the refugees they served: the irrational blaming of all Tamils for the atrocities of a few, the callous disregard of the sufferings of the Tamil community, and the justification of atrocities committed against innocent members of it. We had heard that some Buddhist priests were promoting such attitudes, but had not known that Sinhalese Christians were doing the same. We sympathised with the Tamil priest’s feeling that it was pointless doling out relief and rehabilitation to the refugees so long as the relief supplies were contaminated with the poison of communal hatred.

    Interestingly, his sentiments were echoed and amplified by a Sinhalese refugee in the camp near Colombo. ‘Look at all these people here,’ she said, indicating the other refugees. ‘They are asking for a plot of land and assistance to build a house over here. But supposing they get what they want… Will that solve the problem? No. Because they will always feel: it was because of those Tamils that we were driven out of our homes. So the hostility and resentment will remain. And the same with Tamil refugees. Even if they are given a piece of land and a house somewhere, they will still feel, it was because of those Sinhalese or Muslims or whatever that we were driven out of our homes. And they too will feel hatred and hostility. Hatred will lead to violence, and violence will lead to more violence, and so it will go on until the whole country is destroyed. So is that the solution? No, it’s not. What is the solution? The only solution is to have friendship between communities as we used to have earlier. Isn’t that the only solution? How else can we solve our problems?’

    We had to agree with her. Promoting friendship between communities as a way of breaking the vicious circle of hatred and violence: that made sense to us. But friendship is possible only between equals, and the past she was referring to was the time before attempts to create a Sinhalese state had converted members of minority communities into second- or third-class citizens. ‘Have you noticed that it is always the poor who suffer?’ she asked. ‘The rich people somehow manage to escape and get away, they don’t have to suffer the consequences of all the devastation. It is the poor people of all communities who have lost everything they had. Look at us now, completely destitute, no better than beggars. And yet, after all, we are the lucky ones: we have escaped with our lives and limbs. With a bit of help, we can manage to survive. But what about those who have lost their arms and legs? Who is going to give them back their limbs? And what about those who have been killed? Who is going to bring them back to life? Tell me, who is going to bring them back to life?’

    A simple woman in cloth and jacket, she was speaking in private to the two of us. But I feel her words should be put to every Sinhalese person in Sri Lanka, because what she is suggesting is of the utmost importance: she is pointing out that the conversion of Sri Lanka into a ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ state has not benefited poor people in the majority community, but has, on the contrary, made life much harder for them; it is her contention that most Sinhalese people – since the rich are only a minority – have suffered as a result of the government’s policies.

    Is she right? This is a question that the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka can answer better than I can. But the scattered evidence I came across tended to support her view. According to records compiled by SEDEC [Social and Development Education Centre], on 30th August 1990 there were 934,501 displaced persons in 694 camps throughout Sri Lanka. In August 1991, according to Mr P. Dayaratne, Minister of Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Social Welfare, there were 1,640,000 refugees in the country (The Island, 24/8/91, ‘Minister Dayaratne and officials discuss refugee problem’). This is a massive number of displaced people, approximately one-tenth of the island’s population; according to Mr Dayaratne, it cost nearly Rs 150 million a month to provide them even with the inadequate rations they were receiving – a severe drain on the economy, to which must be added the loss in production caused by their displacement.

    Already by November 1987, when the situation was not yet so bad, a World Bank report was saying:

 

The conflict has disrupted activities in all sectors of the economy – farming, fishing, manufacturing, transport, trade – put a heavy burden on both the budget and the balance of payments, and caused damage to the country’s infrastructure estimated to be at about US$700 million. This US$700 million is only a portion of the quantifiable economic losses that the country has suffered. The decline in tourist arrivals after the beginning of the conflict caused US$200 million reduction in foreign exchange earnings since August 1983. Another US$500 million had to be allocated to strengthen the security forces, some US$300 million of which was for imports of military equipment. About US$250 million of foreign investment that could have materialised in the last four years under normal conditions were lost because foreign investors were reluctant to invest in a country with an uncertain political climate. Lost agricultural and fishing production is estimated to be at US$250 million. All in all, the ethnic conflict has caused since its beginning losses to the economy that are probably over US$2 billion…

    Almost 100,000 families, of which about 90,000 were farmers and fishermen, lost their homes; with an average of 5 people per family, that translates to 500,000 people homeless…

    The northern and eastern parts of the country suffered the greatest disruption… Many workplaces were destroyed or damaged, and thousands of others closed… Thousands of farmers were forced to leave their lands and in some areas, the irrigation systems they are so dependent on were damaged… whole fishing villages were destroyed… Schools were damaged and others forced to close… Similarly, some hospitals and clinics were damaged… (Sri Lanka Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Program, World Bank Report No. 6998-CE, 6/11/ 87).

    And so it goes on, detailing the destruction of housing, commercial businesses, agriculture and fisheries, irrigation, water supply and sanitation, roads and bridges, public transport, railways, telecommunications, power, industry, education, health services and public buildings. By 1990-91, the number of homeless people had more than trebled, the destruction had continued unabated, and the Ministry of Rehabilitation estimated that the losses to the economy had doubled. To this must be added the heavy cost of the continuing military build-up. The main direct sufferers from the ethnic conflict might have been Tamils, but the devastation of the economy affected Sinhalese too, leading to increased poverty and unemployment.

    During my second visit in 1991, a UNP MP was reported in the newspapers as complaining that when Sinhalese youth in his constituency asked for employment, the only avenue open to them was the security forces – which, of course, is not a particularly safe or healthy occupation in a time of war. I have no figures of Sinhalese soldiers dead or injured during the course of the war, but casualties were reported to be high when the fighting was heavy, and many thousands of Sinhalese young men must have been killed or maimed – in addition, that is, to the civilians attacked by the Tigers.

    While standards of living deteriorated for the majority of Sinhalese people, there is also a great deal of evidence that the democratic and human rights of ordinary Sinhalese people were being eroded at the same time. Sri Lanka, once renowned for the conduct of free and fair elections, completely lost this reputation from 1982 onwards, when electoral fraud and intimidation were reported on an alarming scale (Samarakoon 1988, p. 19; Senewiratne 1986). Most horrifying of all were the well-documented reports of attacks on Sinhalese civilians by the security forces and state-backed vigilante groups during the counter-insurgency operations against the JVP (see Amnesty International reports).

    The very fact that the JVP insurrection took place indicates that a significant section of the Sinhalese population was dissatisfied with the government which ruled in their name. However, it cannot therefore be assumed that all Sinhalese people in the areas where the JVP was active supported it, or approved of its extremely violent methods; and the violent methods of the JVP are certainly no justification for the way in which thousands of Sinhalese youths were tortured and executed without trial, their bodies hacked to pieces and dumped in rivers or left burning by the roadside. During my first visit, people were still stunned by the murder of Richard de Zoysa, a well-known journalist and critic of the government, and the death-threats against his mother and her lawyer, who were trying to pursue the case against the police officers they accused of murdering him. It was widely felt that if someone so well-placed could be so easily killed and his killers go scot-free, ordinary Sinhalese youth must be so much more vulnerable. And indeed, the Mothers’ Front, which his mother helped to found, documented the disappearance of tens of thousands of Sinhalese youths during the counter-insurgency operations. The case of a Sinhalese lawyer tortured to death by the security forces also received wide publicity. (See Amnesty International reports for both these cases.)

    Talking to people from a couple of hill-country villages, I got some sense of the nightmare endured by ordinary Sinhalese people trapped between the violence of the JVP and that of the security forces. A man from a JVP stronghold around eight miles from Kandy said that the JVP was supported mainly by young men of 18 to 30 years old, but also by some young women and schoolchildren of 14 to 18; most of them were educated up to O level, and unemployed. Their families owned very little land and got no income from it; most of them had parents who worked as carpenters, masons and so forth on a casual basis.

    The period of maximum activity was 1987 to 1989, but the violence had escalated in September 1989 when the JVP put up posters saying that unless all army personnel resigned, their families would be killed. In fact, one family which had two sons in the army was attacked; the father was killed and the mother and sister were cut and wounded, but survived and left the village. Another couple was killed – it was said that the wife was a strong supporter of the UNP and very critical of the JVP.

    The next day around noon, army personnel, fully armed, entered the village in truckloads and set about smashing and burning houses and attacking people. They then went away, but came back in the night and killed whole families – for example, a father and three sons, a mother and father and son, etc; they brought dead bodies from elsewhere and dumped them in empty houses. Those villagers who could escape, hid in the jungle that night, and many left the place, so that it was like a ghost village. Later the police came again at night and took away people, some of whom were still missing. After about five months people started coming back, but JVP killings of suspected informers still went on. Recently, a woman who had lost her husband and three sons in the violence had been heard to say, ‘They should have killed me too – it would have been a meritorious deed!’

    In another village close to Nawalapitiya, I met women whose husbands had been killed, some by the JVP and some by the security forces. The first woman told us that in 1989, about three people from the village and ten from the area, including the former MP, were killed by the JVP, after which repression was let loose. 25 to 30 people were taken away. Of her husband’s five brothers who were taken away, two were sent back and the rest disappeared. But her husband was taken and killed only the following year. She had kept telling him not to get involved with the JVP even if his brothers were involved, persuading him to stay at home, and she was in fact convinced that he had kept clear of them; she thought he had been taken away because he had been denounced to the police by a rival claimant in a land dispute.

    She felt that the JVP violence would never have arisen if there had been sufficient jobs, food and housing to go round. Previously things had been much better for them; now the cost of living was higher and real incomes lower. At one time they could manage for a whole month with 10 rupees, but now not even 1,000 rupees was enough; the situation deteriorated dramatically when the food stamp system was introduced in 1979 and prices shot up by several hundred per cent.

    Another woman’s husband had been arrested on the road at night in August 1989, and had disappeared; she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. His two brothers had also disappeared. She said that about seven people had been taken by a vigilante group calling themselves ‘Gonusso’ (‘Scorpions’), and the rest by the security forces; they had done nothing wrong, it was because there was no unity, people were divided and so they denounced each other on the basis of personal grudges.

    The third woman’s husband had been killed by the JVP. He had been a plantation supervisor and then a security guard; he supported the UNP, worked for the government and was known to be corrupt, taking bribes and giving jobs not to qualified youths but to those who gave him money. She and her three sons had been at home that night in July 1989 when a crowd came to their door dressed in black with black hoods. Three of them came in and started assaulting her husband; when she and the children tried to intervene, they were threatened too. The hooded gang then dragged her husband out on to the doorstep, shut the door, and proceeded to hack him to death there and then. She and the children could hear everything, and when they finally came out his corpse was there, the neck almost completely severed. After that they couldn’t stay in the house, so they went to her mother’s place; but they couldn’t stay there for ever either, so they came back after a year, and she used the compensation money provided by the government to break down the part of the house where her husband was killed, and rebuild and improve it.

    She was better off than the widows of those who had been killed by the security forces, because she had received compensation and they had not; but the money couldn’t solve the problems of her children, all of whom had been severely disturbed from that day. The eldest, who was nearly 16, suffered from severe headaches, couldn’t concentrate on his studies at all, and had become very withdrawn and anti-social, refusing to mix with his friends or take part in anything. The second, 14, would never stay at home, but slept at his grandmother’s place and studied in his friend’s house. The youngest, 12 years old, had become completely unmanageable and fought with everyone. ‘The problems in our country have occurred because people don’t think that other people are like themselves, that they have the same needs and the same feelings regardless of differences in race, caste or religion,’ she said. ‘A change has to take place in people’s minds, in their thinking. So many people are armed now; but the problem can’t be solved by arms, only by discussion. Now the fighting is less in these areas, but it is going on in other areas. There too innocent people are being killed. We know what they must be suffering, because we too have suffered.’

    It was clear to us that the JVP, or people acting in its name, had committed atrocities; but it was equally clear that there had been no semblance of a legal procedure to establish the guilt of those who had been killed in reprisal. Another informant told us that in his village, under cover of the counter-insurgency operations, there had been an attempt to wipe out all members of the SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which was the parliamentary opposition at the time), himself among them. He was stunned one day to be warned by a police officer who knew him that his name was third on a list of JVP suspects to be eliminated. Going to see for himself, he found it was true: the UNP MP of the area had drawn up a list, identifying all SLFP members and supporters as JVP suspects. In this case the police had refused to take action against them, but in other cases many SLFP supporters had been killed. Evidently, human rights violations by the Sinhalese state were not confined to ethnic minorities; these poverty-stricken Sinhalese villagers had gained nothing and lost a great deal – in terms of living standards as well as human and democratic rights – from the government policies carried out in their name.

    This informant also confirmed my impression that their own experience of state repression had changed these people’s perception of the ethnic conflict; many of them were now sceptical about the role of the security forces in the North and East, and thought they might be killing innocent people there just as they had done here, where Sinhalese were killing Sinhalese. Anti-Tamil feeling was much less now, he said; even the virulence of the Buddhist priests had abated. Recently, when the bodies of two young Sinhalese soldiers killed in the fighting were brought home, it was two Tamil boys who put up the decorations for the funeral.

    I feel that all Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka need to think very seriously about the refugee woman’s suggestion that the solution to their problems lies in a democratic country with equal rights for all and friendship between communities rather than a ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ nation where no one’s rights are respected and civil war has become chronic. I put ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ in quotation marks because I know that many Sinhalese Buddhists feel that the whole notion of ‘Sinhala Buddhism’ is nonsensical, since Buddhism cannot be defined by reference to any nation or ethnic group; indeed, one Tamil informant told me that there are three major Buddhist epics written in Tamil.

    Although many Tamil refugees referred to the communal role played by some Buddhist priests, there are others who have deplored the violence and have helped Tamils. A monk interviewed by Dharmasiri Bandaranayake in his film Echoes of War said, ‘Being a refugee is a wretched condition for anybody – Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim. If you go into a refugee camp you will understand this clearly. A human being has certain essential human rights but in a refugee camp he loses all these… No human being should become a refugee.’ Another spoke of sheltering Tamil refugees in the temple (see Lanka Guardian, 1.4.88). Indeed, many Tamils (perhaps including my own family) owe their lives to the Buddhist traditions of non-violence and compassion, and these would certainly be a resource in rebuilding a peaceful Sri Lanka.

    My impression is that the majority of Sinhalese people, if all the facts are laid before them and a referendum is held to decide the question, would vote for equal rights and peace rather than ‘Sinhala Buddhism’ and war. Because it is a mistake to think that only ethnic minorities have suffered from the attempts by successive governments to convert Sri Lanka into an exclusively ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ nation. The majority community has suffered too – so much so that most of them look back to the period before the ethnic conflict as a kind of golden age or paradise lost. But what has been lost can also be regained by reversing the process that led to the war; it won’t be easy, but it can be done.