SRI LANKA: Displaced People Return, but Hungry for Peace

By Rita Manchanda

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Feb 28 (IPS) - After decades of civil war, this year the migratory birds have returned to the wetlands along the A-9 highway to the north-eastern Jaffna peninsula, every inch of which is scarred with battles fought between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tiger rebels.

A colony of pelicans is back and so too are the painted storks, as the year-long ceasefire in the conflict waged by the Tigers for a homeland in this South Asian island nation brings quiet and the promise of a lasting peace.

Every day brings the return of hundreds of internally displaced people -- the United Nations estimates there are 800,000 of them - to the north and north-east, the region most affected by the 20-year-old conflict.

Families are busy rebuilding blasted homes with canvas sheets from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) fluttering in the wind, a mute reminder of histories of displacement produced by a string of major offensives from 1990 to 2000.

Ammunition boxes are being transformed into flower beds, and disused railway track serve as beams in the Tamil Rehabilitation Office (TRO).

Uniformed children follow lessons in wall-less schools. Fields of burnt stumps of Palmyra, a tall palm tree found in the north, are replanted. Bananas and eggplants are being trucked to markets in the capital, Colombo.

Shops are re-opening along the roadside as it circles past the Omanthe exit checkpost of army-controlled Vavuniya that leads to the Tiger-controlled Wanni and on to Jaffna town, retaken by the army in December 1995.

There are now four checkpoints for travellers and goods, after the years of blockade. This means four unloadings of goods like bananas and the payment of 'tax', but at the premium price the goods fetch in Colombo, evidently it is still worth the tedious process.

In Killinochchi, a region that borders Jaffna and is also a Tiger stronghold, Tiger rebels encouraged a Tamil restaurant owner who had moved to Colombo to return and open an eatery to cope with the rush of middle-class visitors en route to the Jaffna peninsula.

Meantime, as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the Tigers are formally called, transforms its military structure, a bureaucratic culture is fast growing in areas under its control. Newsprint-paper entry forms are used for entry and exit. (The Sri Lankan administration has no equivalent forms).

On either side of the A9 highway are endless stretches of barbed wire clustering into a thicket around abandoned army camps, dotted with warnings about mines.

Of the estimated 1.5 million to 900,000 mines in the area, Lawrence Christy of the TRO in Killinochchi claims that 10 percent have been cleared and that the accident rate has radically come down over the last three years.

The year 2003 has been announced as the year for resettlement of the internally displaced persons. Already, 200,000, or one-fourth of the estimated total number of internally displaced people, have come back, said Christy.

The Sandhinathan family came back in January along with 500 others from a refugee camp in Vavuniya, a town that is the gateway to Tiger-held territory.

Sandhinathan was busy re-stocking his old roadside shop, while four other family members were rebuilding the house and replanting the land -- a de-mined area. The barbed wire now is used to protect saplings growing along the road.

The rebuilding process is a testimony to Sri Lankans' desperate faith in a fragile peace, but activists say people are also hoping to see this make a real difference in their lives soon.

According to the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), there has been a nine-point decline in faith in the peace talks from 91 percent in 0ctober to 82 percent in December.

The centre's social indicator study of public perception in the Jaffna peninsula reveals that 63 percent of the people believe that the government is not committed to the return of the internally displaced people as a propriety issue, while 61 percent believe that the LTTE is committed to it.

The return of displaced people is complicated by the ''domino effect'', said Ole Brondum, Jaffna district head for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, which monitors the ceasefire agreement signed by Colombo and the Tamil Tigers in February last year.

"It involves a long chain of re-housing,'' he explained as successive waves of the internally displaced have moved into houses abandoned by people displaced before them.

When the Jaffna peninsula was taken by the Sri Lankan army in May 1996, the LTTE forcibly evacuated 280,000 people to the mainland Wanni across the Jaffna lagoon.

The LTTE has set up an arbitration structure to deal with disputes. However, the long queues that formed outside its political office in Jaffna have shrunk as the leadership counselled the people to go to the Sri Lankan administration for redress of civil disputes.

Meanwhile, the Tigers are concentrating on political mobilisation through the commemoration of 'Remembrance Days' that mark key dates in the ethic conflict. The newly established peace secretariats in Kilinochchi and Colombo remain empty shells.

The one issue of displacement that the LTTE has taken up in earnest is the return of people to homes in the 'high-security zones', or areas held by government troops.

Ironically, there is no direct call for the withdrawal of the 40,000 Sri Lankan security forces in the areas. But it is indirectly demanded through the clamour surrounding the high-security zones, which prevent people from returning to their homes and their livelihoods.

The Sri Lankan government has appointed a retired Indian general, Satish Nambiar, to untangle the issue of the high-security zones.

In addition, there is the delicate issue of the return of the Muslims. In October1990, the LTTE ordered an estimated 120,000 Muslims to leave the north within 48 hours.

Father Jayakumar of the Jaffna diocese claims that a few of the trading community have returned but without their families. The LTTE is making no gesture of reconciliation, let alone proffering an apology. "They are being asked to come back, like everyone else,'' Jayakumar added.

J Maheshwaran, part of the LTTE team at the peace table, said some 150 Muslim families have returned to live in the north-eastern coastal town of Mullaitivu, under the immediate gaze of the LTTE supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran. (END/IPS/AP/HD/IP/PR/RM/JS/03)