RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Returning Home at Time of Peace Far from Easy

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 12 2003 (IPS) - When residents of a refugee camp in Sri Lanka’s war-torn northern region refused to return to their former homes during a ceasefire last year, the government closed the camp and a temporary school, and stopped all food rations.

That compelled the 1,600 families housed at the Madhu Church welfare centre in the north-west Mannar region in end-September to return to their original homes further north in Kilinochchi, an area devastated by the 20-year old conflict.

”Buildings were shattered, houses were completely destroyed, there were no schools and other basic infrastructure,” one welfare worker said, recalling the sight in the hometown they returned to.

Worse, some were forced to return to areas that were yet to be demined, says Renuka Senanayake, a legal specialist working at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a private think tank.

”I remember when we studied this matter last year, there was one such family who had to be careful not to venture across the road from their battered house because it was mined,” she said.

Close to a million people have been displaced by Sri Lanka’s two-decade old ethnic conflict and have been living in refugee camps or welfare centres in Sri Lanka and southern India, or have sought political refuge in the west.

Since Tamil rebels and a newly elected government signed a ceasefire accord in February 2002 and began peace talks, refugees have had mixed feelings about returning to homes which they abandoned at least 10 to 20 years ago.

While some are eager to return, others feel comfortable where they are because of access to schools, jobs and other basic needs and prefer land in areas of temporary shelter.

The uncertainty of the state of these homeless refugees are a growing cause of concern to the government, U.N. agencies and human rights groups. The government is keen to return these internally displaced persons to their original homes to speed up the resettlement process and prove that the peace process is working.

But state strategies to compel or strongly encourage displaced people to return to their areas of origin have been stalled by negative feedback from the Madhu camp experience. There is also resistance from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which says that return of refugees should be voluntary, not forced. A study on the property rights of internally displaced people, sponsored by UNHCR and the state’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) and undertaken by a legal team led by S Srikandarajah, a judge of Sri Lanka’s High Court, shows that 220,000 displaced persons returned to their former homes in the past year.

More are expected to return with the progress of peace talks, whose sixth round just ended last week.

”Almost all the refugees in India (some 100,000) and a fair number of the refugees from the western countries have indicated their willingness to return to their permanent residences,” the report said.

The resettlement issue has raised concerns on property rights. Often, other people have since moved into homes abandoned by those who fled the violence. There is also a lack of basic infrastructure like drinking water, schools and hospitals, inadequate compensation to rebuild damaged homes, and the payment of double taxes – legal ones to the government and illegally to the Tigers.

The slow removal of some 25,000 landmines in the northern Jaffna peninsula alone is hindering the smooth return of displaced people. In some cases, the boundaries of local authorities have been shifted during the conflict, creating more problems about ownership.

Restitution of property, access to land, destruction and landmines, assistance and legal redress are some of the pressing issues and property challenges facing returnees, according to a separate report compiled by a CPA team.

According to Jezima Ismail, a prominent Muslim educationist and well-known women’s rights worker, the homes of Muslims in Jaffna have been taken over by the Tigers and given to the families of dead suicide cadres.

”These families are occupying homes owned by the Muslims, so where do the Muslims go to if they are to return to Jaffna?” she asked, echoing a common dilemma facing all displaced persons wanted to return and take possession of their homes.

According to M Mohideen, who works for a non-government group that looks after the rights of displaced Muslims, many of those born afterwards prefer to remain in the areas where they had fled to, instead of returning to the north.

Most of the 100,000 Muslims who were ordered in 1990 to vacate their homes in the north and north-west regions by the rebels, moved to Puttalam, further away from the north and on the north-west coast, and settled in refugee camps or bought properties there.

”While the older generation of Muslim refugees want to return to their homes in the north, the younger people prefer to remain where they are,” Mohideen told a seminar in Colombo on Tuesday on land and property rights of displaced people.

R C Karunakaran, a senior official at the HRC, believes that displaced people who have adjusted to a new life in their temporary places of abode also have a right to have a similar lifestyle and needs when returning to their old homes.

”We have to ensure that they have these rights and not go back to a place where they are deprived of these benefits,” he noted. ”How do we deal with these situations?”

The resettlement issue has raised issues on the ownership of properties because ownership documents have been destroyed in the war, government records are not available and those occupying abandoned homes may have themselves been displaced from another area where they had a home.

”What do you do in such a situation? Shouldn’t we find other accommodation for those who have moved into the homes of the displaced or ask them to just leave and find their own accommodation? Don’t they also have rights despite the fact that they have illegally occupied some one else’s home?” asked Karunakaran.