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Home  >  Struggle for Tamil Eelam > Human Rights & the Tamil Nation > University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna Branch) > Trincomalee: State of ideology and Politics of Fear, 7 March 1997

Trincomalee: State of ideology and Politics of Fear

UTHR Special Report No.8
7 March 1997  


Whatever may be said, who ever may say it - to
determine the truth of it, is wisdom
- Thirukural

 Summary

The objective of this report is to highlight the deeply entrenched  discriminatory practices of the State machinery and the Armed  Forces, as touched upon in Reports 11 and 12, using contemporary  factual evidence as well as recent history. Trincomalee District is a  key example of why the people are unable to trust a Government  which remains too passive in its approach to tackling these  problems. The fact that refugees cannot return to their native areas  still today demonstrates that insecurity and poverty remain as  impenetrable barriers.

Settlement of communities continues to be  shaped by political ambitions and the approach of the Central  Government where too often partisan considerations prevail. The  findings of this report are presented to help those concerned to push  for administrative and political reform by addressing the problem in  a realistic light. The present Government has indeed established a  political breathing space which was not in existence before 1994.  Having said this, efforts towards devolution will not be fruitful  unless the State begins to take steps towards gaining the confidence  of the people in the North-East. A fundamental change in ideology  and an end to discrimination are desperately needed before there  can be any hope for a peace with dignity for all.

The Trincomalee jail break serves as a primary example of a  continuing unwillingness on behalf of the State to bring  perpetrators of gross human rights violations to justice. Medical  evidence has revealed indications of torture and that some prisoners  were deliberately shot at close range. Further information tells us  that many of the suspects involved were prisoners who were to be  released soon after and thereby having no reason for attempting to  escape, and may have only done so out of fear of reprisals. What  resulted was a cover up by the Government with NGOs and citizens  either too fearful or simply not caring enough to help find the truth.

There are a number of recent incidents which demonstrate the  ideology being imposed by the central governing powers on  Trincomalee, the market fiasco being one. In this case, a tender  which was legally entitled to a bidder who was a Tamil man was  viewed as a threat to Sinhalese control over business, by both the  Army and local reactionary tendencies. What developed was a  situation where the Urban Council dared to stand up to the  Brigadier�s orders to revoke the tender by use of emergency powers.  In another case, a Tamil government officer was denied the regular  five year extension of office before retirement at 60, clearly because  he had challenged discriminatory land settlement practices by the  Army in the past. Further, the flaring of hatred following the killing  of land officer T.D. Pieris was yet another incident showing the  volatility of a situation where business and politics have become  poisoned by communal tendencies, furthering detrimental suspicions  among the people.

While altering the ethnic balance in favour of the majority  community in the Trincomalee District has been the common  practice of the State, the eviction of Tamil settlers from lands such  as Linga Nagar take on overt characteristics of discrimination since  pervasive fear renders public scrutiny and opposition ineffective.  The displacement of Muslims from areas such as Aakuwatte near  Uppuveli Vihara have involved a concerted effort of distortion of  land claims as well as supplying Sinhalese settled in their place with  building materials.

Sinhalese and Muslim communities in the area have been forced to  rely on protection by the security forces due to a history of massacres  by the LTTE. In villages such as Dimbulagala, youth often join the  Army out of sheer desperation to escape poverty. Untrained  civilians are sometimes forced to man security posts while their  wives at home may be harassed by Army personnel. The resulting  social problems and frustration of not knowing where to turn for  security has become largely ingrained.

Widely held suspicions have broken much of the friendly relations  between the communities of Trincomalee. Discrimination in  practice by the Armed Forces and the State, combined with blatant  misinformation by the press in Colombo, continue to fuel the fire.  Unwillingness on behalf of the Government to investigate cases of  mass disappearances and extra-judicial executions which occurred  not so long ago, convince the people that protracted ill-will would  remain business as usual.

The responsibility for reform of the State machinery lies not only  with the Government but also with the people. If Tamils who have  the privilege to live abroad continue to thoughtlessly support the  LTTE, then the progressive demise of all communities which remain  in the East and the values of civilised humanity will continue. The  LTTE would rather have Tamils continue as refugees while the  organisation remains trapped in its inertia unable to negotiate an  honourable peace or conclude the war in its favour. What is needed  is room for discussion among all communities and a Government  which is actively committed to ending the discrimination which is  built into the State and administrative machinery. The youth, with  their past experiences of militancy and sacrifice for better and for  worse, must be encouraged as organisers of the peace movement.  The confidence of the people must be established long before the  displaced can return to their homes, long before communities can  freely work together, and long before any proposals for devolution  can be respected.

 Why this report? 

Unlike our usual reports that deal in matters more directly related to  violence, conflict and the hurt caused to vulnerable groups, this one  concentrates on state structures and ideology. These are no doubt  the root cause of the civil war that began in earnest in late 1984, and  are among the chief obstructions to a political resolution. The  political package now being discussed is a move in the right  direction. But unless the Government displays a will to tackle the  issue of state structures and ideology independently, the political  package too may prove a meaningless exercise.

Trincomalee is an area where the damaging and discriminatory  practices of state structures are most deeply entrenched, and have  shown no change for the better under the present Government. It  would serve the cause of peace well if the Government would make  an effort to understand the situation and make Trincomalee a model  of how different communities can realise their common interest of  harmonious co-existence. If on the other hand the Sinhalese in such  areas see any just and adequate political resolution , necessarily  involving considerable regional autonomy, as transferring the boot  to the other foot - where the minorities will do as they were done by  - peace would long elude us. Confidence building must therefore be  an exercise independent of the package. In part it involves cleaning  the Augean stables that comprise the state machinery.

The problem is again highlighted in an answer given by the  President in a recent television interview. She elaborated her claim  that her Government had tackled the problem of �state terror�  within a short time of assuming office. By this she meant that the  Government no longer encourages nor orders security personnel to  indulge in violations, and has up to a point taken measures to  discourage them. The main reason why the Government has made  little or no qualitative impact is that this is too passive an approach  to structures and practices that are very deeply entrenched, have a  life of their own and are so alienating to the minorities. They call for  hard-headed positive action.

Introduction:  

 It has never been our intention to make our reports  catalogues of misery. But rather we would also like to point out  signs of hope for the reader to meditate upon and if possible  contribute to their enhancement. In the course of what follows  below we will point to a theme that has its reflections in two very  different situations. The North and the South of this country have  both a valuable resource - youth who have participated in militant  struggles, have had time to reflect on their experience and have  matured politically over the years.

The common tendency is to treat  them as flotsam and jetsam from a past that most people would like  to forget. Yet many of them represent a section of society imbued  with a spirit of sacrifice and trained to endure present discomfort  for long - term goals. It would be fair to say that it is such persons  who comprise the back bone of the peace movement in this country.  Owing to the fact that internal terror is still dominant within the  Tamil community, few Tamil youths with a militant past have found  themselves able to play an active role, and indeed the intellectual  discussion in the Tamil media that would help them to do so remains  largely stifled. This is the principal challenge facing the Tamil  community in this crucial period of change.

Before taking up this theme in Tamankaduwa (Polonnaruwa  District), we set the scene with an incident that points to the role of  the State in Trincomalee that has been a constant feature of all  governments.

The Jail Break 

On the night of 30th October 1996, some LTTE prisoners made a  planned escape from the Military cum Police detention centre for  LTTE suspects in Customs Road in Trincomalee Town. Many details  of the incident appeared as the lead story in the Island of 1st  November. `Five Tigers killed in Trinco jail break�, the title chosen,  as we shall see below, was utterly misleading. The report from  Colombo contained as much as could be obtained by telephoning  Trincomalee a few hours after the event.

The report gave some  disturbing testimony from a senior officer of the Human Rights Task  Force in Trincomalee. He said that two of the alleged escapees killed  could not be identified because their faces were disfigured by  gunshot injuries. It is a fair surmise that the two at least were not in  the act of escaping and had been shot deliberately at close range. As  most often happens where Tamils are concerned, the story was not  followed up even though the censorship had been lifted three weeks  earlier. Indeed, after the headline reference to 'Five Tigers killed',  there was no room for a follow up that brought out foul play on the  part of the authorities.

The true fate of the five prisoners killed began to emerge through  testimonies given in confidence. This was further confirmed by the  state of the corpses.

Of those killed Krishnapillai Meharasa (22), Ward 7, Kirankulam;  and Nallaratnam Sasi(19), Senaithurai, Mahaloor,  Kaluwanchikudy, were from Batticaloa District. Achchuthan  Irajasekaran(27), 677 Anbuvelipuram; Shanmugam Pushpakaran  (25), Varodayanagar, Sambaltivu, and Thiyagarajah Nagaratnam  (30) , 64/4, UNHCR camp, Alles Garden, were from Trincomalee  District.

They had all been detained between mid-February and early June  1996. In the case of Pushpakaran, his corpse had an eye badly  damaged, a tooth broken and the stomach had been pierced. It was  a case of a person who was tortured and killed. He was married to  Mangala (20), had a year old son and was arrested on 5th June`96  near the 3rd Mile Post security post between home and Trinco town.  He was held by the police, produced in court a month later on 5/7,  again on 18/7 and then transferred to Army detention on 26/8.

The case of Nagaratnam ought to be even more a matter of  international concern. He had left the LTTE, married , gone to India  as a refugee and returned on the basis of what was essentially a  guarantee by the UNHCR. He was arrested on 6th March, spent 2  months in police detention and then was transferred to army  custody. He was produced in court on 8/8/96. He was to be released  on 5th Nov. 96. These persons were just technically suspects against  whom no case had been made, and whose detention was being  periodically renewed. Achuchuthan for example had been in the  process of being released. His release date was 13th Nov. 96, and so  had no reason to escape.

The press report claimed that further investigations were to be  conducted under Chief Inspector E.Mahendra, HQI Trincomalee  and that the military was to launch a high level inquiry into the  incident. Not surprisingly, nothing further has been heard. The  incident took place near a middle-class residential area of  Trincomalee. Yet in talking to people, hardly any one seemed to  know anything definite. No two versions seemed to agree. The  priest in the neighbourhood through whom two of the escapees  reportedly surrendered, would only say that he was not in  Trincomalee at that time. There had been no activist group to  marshal the facts, provide assurances to the witnesses and press for  action. This is hardly the situation of lack of information or interest  that one would encounter in, say, Batticaloa. The fear of knowing  too much and saying too much was very real. What should have  been a matter for concerted public pressure was dissipated in  private gossip.

We give the facts as pieced together from several sources. The LTTE  `suspects' were kept in a two storey building. The cells were on the  ground floor. Upstairs was used by the military police. The  atmosphere there had become friendly. At 7.30 pm the prisoners  used to be let out of their cells for dinner which was followed by a  sing - song from 8.00 pm, after which the prisoners were locked up.  When the military police were given a TV set, the prisoners used to  be invited upstairs to watch TV or videos at 8.00 p.m.- all completely  against regulations. On the night of the escape there were three or  four military policemen seated on a bed, two policemen seated on  chairs and 26 prisoners seated on the floor, all watching a video.  The police appear to reckon that 7 or 8 of the 26 had LTTE  involvement. This figure of 7 or 8 as the reader might surmise,  seems to include those who had LTTE connections in the past and  were leading ordinary civilian lives when detained as suspects.

The escape, it appears was planned no more than by four or five  prisoners with the others knowing nothing - had they known, they  had a vested interest in tipping off the guards. That night these  persons had placed themselves close to the policemen. About 10.30  p.m. they set upon the policemen and grabbed their revolvers and  shot the military policemen, of whom Corporal Bandara died. The  two policemen quickly escaped unharmed. Those who planned the  escape got away by jumping over the wall. Most of the rest followed  not because they wanted to escape, but did so fearing reprisals.  Indeed, many had release dates coming up in November.

One of them jumped onto the tin roof of a lavatory in a  neighbouring house and broke his leg when the roof gave way. As  the alarm was given the security men began firing. They were also  joined by other security personnel, including the Harbour Police. The  nearby residents were put up and their houses were searched while  firing noises were heard. Three or four of the escapees were seen  running towards the beach . One version suggests that a boat was  waiting for them. The more plausible version coming from the police  is that they were seen running along the beach and had then escaped  along side North Coast Road, after dropping a seized weapon on  the beach.

By about 12.30 am firing noises had ceased. A little later neighbours  heard one prisoner being moved along the road by the prison  shouting, 'Aiyo amma ( mother) do not beat me'. A little later a  single shot was heard. This was the end of the prisoner who had  fallen into the lavatory.

Five bodies were found on the beach the following morning near the  Buddhist monument. According to witnesses all had injures in the  head from firing at close range. Sources close to prison officials said  that four among the dead were persons who had not escaped.  Witnesses who were about near the monument to the victims of the  Welikade jail massacre, opened by the TELO that same month, said  that they saw these persons being brought out and shot.

There are also other corroborating circumstances. The four other  than the man who fell into the lavatory, appear to have been killed  while there was regular firing from the vicinity of the prison. A  tractor and trailer were forcibly removed from the Urban Council  premises that were later returned with blood- stains in the trailer.  This is said to have been used to transport the five bodies from the  vicinity of the prison to the beach. The security authorities later  claimed that a weapon was recovered from one of those found dead  on the beach.

As for the other prisoners, circumstances suggest that their main  problem was not how to escape, but how to surrender.  Ranjithakumar and another prisoner had spent the night hiding in  the Calvary monument at the nearby St. Mary�s church and had  surrendered through the parish priest the following morning.  Krishnadasan, Singarasa Sivaarasan, Puratchidasasn and  Sandirasingham surrendered through Sub- Inspector Ubaithullah of  the CID. Five others were reportedly picked up from around town.  Of these Sivarasan had been a Sea Tiger who had left the  organisation.

The HRTF knew the facts and ought to have raised the matter and  informed the President as it was bound to do. The MP for the area  raised the matter in parliament. But with no organised follow-up  locally, the matter ended there. The shameful incident remains  effectively covered up.

With much apparently going for Trincomalee to check such incidents  or ensure that proper action is taken, all systems seem to have  failed. Several international NGOs including the ICRC and the  UNHCR are represented in Trincomalee. There are a number of  local NGOs. The judicial authorities too could not be drawn into  commenting on the incident. The only action known to have been  taken is that the two police officers who were watching the video  were interdicted. The surviving prisoners who should have been key  witnesses in any proper investigation, continued to be held in the  same vulnerable conditions.

The victims of the incident were persons who were routinely  remanded at the request of the security forces. In sharp contrast 11  soldiers who were identified at considerable personal risk by  civilians as having participated in the massacre at Killiveddy during  February 1996, were released on bail by the Acting Magistrate of  Trincomalee during June the same year, to return to active duties.  The failure to bring these men to trial has been cited as one of the  failures to enforce the law in the recent Country Report released by  the US State Department. While the Acting Magistrate claims that  he did what was required by the law in view of the failure by the  Attorney General to file charges within three months, others  knowledgeable in the law maintain that it is the High Court and not  the Magistrate�s Court that is empowered to grant bail to any one  remanded on charges of homicide. The Acting Magistrate further  denies that he was under any pressure from the Army to grant bail.

The Army Brigadier in charge of Trincomalee has powers of court  martial to take disciplinary action against the men concerned in both  the incidents above in the best interests of the Army. He did nothing  of that kind. What moved him to action in December 1996 was  something most singular. Citing a `deteriorating security situation�  in the Trincomalee market area, he moved to cancel the tender for  the market legally awarded to a Tamil individual.

These are reflections of the continuing nature of the State that is at  the root of current problems around Trincomalee town, that have  made land settlement, the arrival of Tamil refugees from the North  and even the control of the market highly sensitive issues. In these  matters the Government has been seen to vacillate between the  mean and the infantile.

Distortions of broad settlement patterns

One aspect of this is the most unusual step taken by the Defence  Ministry in confining Tamil refugees arriving from the  North(Vanni) in so called welfare centres in Vavuniya. Conditions  for them to move out and go to a place of their choice in Vavuniya  town, the South or East of the same country where they are fellow  citizens is governed by extremely stringent conditions. These  generally involve paper work, documents and letters of acceptance  to establish that the internal refugee is a permanent resident of, or  has a close relative such as a parent, spouse or child residing in,  these areas. Several people in frustration went back to the LTTE  controlled Vanni with all its privations. Those willing to go to  Jaffna, other alternatives unavailing, were most readily accepted,  transported to Trincomalee, kept in camps, loaded into ships often  after waiting hours in a queue under the sun and shipped off to  Jaffna.

The policy came in for severe criticism in the foreign press. This  liability applied only to Tamils in the North. Security reasons cited  did not justify the degree of harshness especially considering that  other avenues for LTTE infiltration were wide open. Moreover  many of those being confined were elderly, women and children.  The Defence Ministry issued a press release on 5th December 1996  confirming that it had very much in mind reasons other than  security. It contained the sentiment : �As a matter of principle, mass  movements of persons in a situation of this nature cannot be  permitted to develop into distortions of broad settlement patterns  without creating undue tensions�.

The last part of the sentence could only apply to Vavuniya, and  particularly, to Trincomalee whose Sinhalisation was a foregone  conclusion by the early 80s. It was distortions by 'broad settlement  patterns' of Sinhalese that successive governments had been trying  to bring about in the Trincomalee District with the Defence Ministry  taking an increasingly prominent role. As a matter of policy every  Government Agent(GA) appointed to the majority Tamil-speaking  district from the 60s has been Sinhalese. A concerted attempt to  speed up Sinhalisation was undertaken by the new UNP  government of J.R. Jayawardene elected in 1977. In the late 70s and  early 80s under Mr.D.J. Bandaragoda as GA, large extents of crown  land were brought under the control of various government  ministries by gazette notification.

The employees of these  corporations were mostly Sinhalese brought from outside.  Sinhalese encroachers were encouraged to move in under the  patronage of government ministers, Buddhist monks or local  Sinhalese merchants around Trincomalee market who were  invariably agents of either the UNP or the SLFP. A new order of  local power was so being fostered with the active patronage of the  security forces. A case in point concerning encroachments is that the  Ports Authority(SLPA) at no time used more than 100 acres of the  5000 it had acquired. At Premadasa's Trincomalee Presidential  Mobile Secretariat on 6th January 1993, the case of Sinhalese  squatters on these lands came up. The SLPA obligingly offered to  release 700 acres to regularise these encroachments. Some of these  encroachments on the west side of 4th to 6th mile post on the  Colombo road were regularised about 1994.

From 1977 communal violence in which recently settled Sinhalese  elements were mobilised with the connivance of the armed forces  was used to bring about the displacement of Tamil and Muslim  civilians. Some of the merchants around Trincomalee market too  saw violence as a means to enhance their commercial advantage.  From the mid-80s and then again in 1990, the armed forces played a  direct role in the destruction of Tamil property and the displacement  of inhabitants in the suburbs of Trincomalee town and in the rural  villages of the district. From 1977 to 1992, upwards of 1400 Tamil  civilians were killed or went missing in the Trincomalee District.  The worst period was June 1990 - March 91 when about 870 youths  disappeared after being detained by the security forces. About 100  were killed during July 1983. [See our reports 10,11 & 12 for more  details.]

Sinhalese fears and psychology of the armed forces 

A combination of events led to the first attack by Tamil hoodlum  elements against Sinhalese civilians in September 1987. The Indian  Peace Keeping Force had arrived in early August. Tamil militant  groups opposed to the LTTE had returned to town and there was a  new assertiveness on the part of the Tamils. There was also  growing friction between the Indian Army and the Sri Lankan Army  which took being confined to barracks very badly. On one occasion a  Sri Lankan Army vehicle speeding past the Town Hall opened fire at  a group of Indian Army men and local civilians which included  Brigadier Joshi. About this time around 2000 Tamil youths who had  been confined at Boosa without charges were shipped to  Trincomalee and released under terms of the Indo-Lanka Accord.

One day Tamil hoodlums started attacking Sinhalese with the  backing of certain militant leaders. Some of the local civilians  helplessly observed some horrendous scenes of cruelty. An old man  who went to a Tamil house to purchase milk for his grand-daughter  when confronted by Tamil hoodlums pleaded for his life from the  lady of the house. She was unable to stop them chasing the man and  beating him to death. A Sinhalese lorry driver was assaulted and his  lorry was set on fire. As he emerged crawling from under the  burning lorry, he was lifted and thrown into the flames screaming.  Witnesses also spoke of Sinhalese women being raped and killed.  Several bodies were thrown into a well that was covered up.  According to these witnesses in the region of 50 Sinhalese were  murdered in the area around the main Sinhalese school, east of  Inner Harbour Road on the isthmus. These Sinhalese were long  settled there and had been close to the Tamils.

The mob moved northwards towards Anuradhapura junction  raiding liquor shop after liquor shop on its way before tottering to  exhaustion. By that time the Indian Army had also intervened.  According to a widely believed story, elements of Tamil militant  groups had been given a few hours by a section of the Indian Army  to clear the Sinhalese before they intervened. The cycle of cynicism  and mischief was to go on bringing further distrust among the  civilians and complicating matters at every turn. According to  documentation presented in Narayanan Swamy�s `Tigers of Lanka�  Brigadier Kobbekaduwa who took charge of the Sri Lankan forces in  Trincomalee about that time was instrumental in supplying arms to  the LTTE which had commenced a war with the Indian Army,  during the middle of 1988. This was done irrespective of the fact that  the LTTE had never stopped attacking Sinhalese civilians and had  been responsible for massacres during the same period.

Following the event above, a large number of Sinhalese fled as  refugees. Although most of them returned, they never regained the  confidence that the Sri Lankan State was ultimately willing to or  capable of protecting them. This has persisted despite the fact that  the old-order returned after June 1990 with the town area firmly  under the Sri Lankan Army & other security forces and police  under Sinhalese leadership and the administration essentially  controlled by Sinhalese. It is notable that when the Sri Lankan forces  went on a binge in June 1990, the Sinhalese population and  merchants kept aloof. The politics had become too murky for anyone  to take sides.

For the defence establishment too there was the persisting unease  and a feeling of self-doubt, that their ideological goal of  Sinhalisation that had seemed so certain in the mid-80s and on  which they had staked much, had been thwarted. From the point of  their goal, talk of decentralisation and a political settlement brought  more uncertainties. Another factor adding to their unease is the  arrival after 1990 from the North of a Tamil refugee population  who have bought property and settled down.

Further there are now in Trincomalee town armed Tamil militant  groups who though in one sense junior partners of the armed forces  in fighting the LTTE, also support the present Government in  parliament. This has given them a, perhaps illusory, measure of  autonomy. Given their past experience, Tamil civilians though not  necessarily liking them, see them as a useful counterweight to what  they see as a Sinhalese army and police. This in turn has spurred  some of these groups to go in for populist actions that are  counterproductive in the long run.

These in turn have enhanced the fears of the local Sinhalese  population who had a bad experience in 1987. Although relations  between the communities are normal on the surface, the deeper  suspicions are seldom talked about openly and mutual fear lurks  underneath. Each community continues to hold on to very dissimilar  interpretations of events based on half truths and falsehood. The  press contributed much to keep Sinhalese suspicions on the boil by  giving ample space to extreme nationalist spokesmen in Colombo  whose knowledge of the ground-reality in Trincomalee is scant. As  we shall see below the press often gives total misrepresentations of  facts and events and are calculated to feed Sinhalese suspicions.

It is this background that would help to explain the attitudes of the  Defence Ministry to the land issues in Trincomalee, tenders for the  Trinco market and �distortions of broad settlement patterns� that  would otherwise seem idiosyncratic. We must also keep in mind that  the State and its essentially repressive and discriminatory structures  will remain the most decisive force around Trincomalee with the  capacity to do the greatest harm.

Dimbulagala, Tamankaduwa 

Some remarkable speeches were made at a peace meeting organised  by the Sri Lanka Solidarity Forum held in the local conference hall at  Dimbulagala. A number of peasants from the surroundings had been  present there after finishing their day's work.

Dayawansa, a  member of the Provincial Council spoke on the theme of a majority  becoming a minority. He said that before the Mahaweli Scheme was  instituted the majority of the people in the area were Tamils. The  chairman of the Village Council at Mannampitiya was a Tamil.  Under the Mahaweli scheme the lands on which the Tamils had  been cultivating were taken over by the Mahaweli Authority. When  lands were given under the Mahaweli Scheme many Tamils were  left out, and today these Tamils suffer many disabilities. Today, he  said, there are 80 Tamil children in Dimbulagala who are unable to  attend school. Such experiences, he said, are at the root of the  present conflict.

Another speaker was Dharmasri Liyanage, an  official of the Samurdhi Movement and a farmer in Mannampitiya .  He said that he grew up in Batticaloa and left in 1985 when the  troubles began. When he came to Mannampitiya his Sinhalese had  been imperfect and he had often substituted Tamil words in his  speech. He had later served in the police for a time. He had  witnessed the Sri Lankan Army looting Tamil houses from which the  owners had been chased away, and retrieving jewellery from nooks  where they had been hidden by those fleeing. In Mannampitiya,  there are today 80 families who had not been given land by the  Mahaweli Authority that had taken over the land on which they had  previously cultivated. In this land on which the Tamils had been a  majority, they now cannot get their official work done in Tamil.  They often need to hang around government offices until they find  someone who could translate from Tamil to Sinhalese.

These speeches were more remarkable considering that this was the  home-base of the late Dimbulagala Thero who had led a crusade of  5,000 people with the connivance of the Mahaweli Authority to  occupy lands used by Tamils to the east across Madhuru Oya in the  wake of the July 1983 violence.

Since that time the press and a number of well connected militant  Sinhalese based in Colombo have represented Dimbulagala as a  bastion of heroic Sinhalese resistance to the Tamil menace. When  reporting on these border areas, press-men have regularly relished  photographs of peasant women carrying shot guns. In the course of  such reporting, the humanity and ordinary human aspirations of  these people have been suppressed. The real life of these people is on  the other hand a tragedy imposed on them by the dominant  Sinhalese ideology of the State of which they too are of victims. The  audience listened patiently and were obviously looking for a change  in the course of this country's history. The pervasive influence of the  ideas of the late Dimbulagala Thero on these people is again a myth  created by the press.

Nimal Munasinghe, the local organiser of the peace movement is a  much respected English teacher in the area based at Nidanwela  Central School. He was one of the rebels during the 1971 JVP  insurgency, who then spent a few years in prison and married a  fellow prisoner from a family of women rebels. He has continued to  be politically active. It is clear that the people look up to him and are  receptive to his ideas. The people of the area have suffered  immensely from the war. Over the years there had been more than  50 LTTE attacks in the area claiming more than 60 lives of civilians.  Many of the people are unable to use their lands. Consequently  several men from the area have joined the armed forces.

The  protection given to the villages too is not adequate to prevent LTTE  incursions. It was reported that equipment from the conference  centre too was robbed by the LTTE. Even worse soldiers had often  forced untrained civilians to man the bunkers, and in complaints  reminiscent of Weli Oya, had crept into their homes and harassed  their women. This caused many social problems in the area that had  become very much impoverished. Such practices, it is said, had  decreased after PA government assumed power.

Shortly after sun set, as the home guards were taking up their  positions in the bunkers, we were taken to the last sentry point to the  east that was manned by five soldiers. This point had been attacked  after night fall on three occasions and in one attack two soldiers had  been killed. By the side of the sentry point is the house of Mr  Somapala of the All Lanka Peasants Congress who died of natural  causes a few days ago. During 1995, two of his sons-in-law who  were farmers were hacked to death by the LTTE in the paddy field,  about quarter mile east from their home. Especially from that time  Somapala had become an ardent campaigner for peace. This was  the village of Arunapura, lying on the edge of the main village of  Aralagamavilla. Also recently police constable Susil Nandana, the  husband of a grand daughter of Somapala's, was killed in action,  leaving his 18 year old wife widowed with an infant child. Normally  the house would have been empty by this time, as the inmates sought  safety in a house further to the interior. Owing to funeral  observances this period was an exception. Five youths from  Arunapura are said to be serving in the army.

Looking eastwards from the army post one could witness flickering  lights in empty huts meant to dissuade elephants from coming into  the paddy fields. Across the Madhuru Oya (River) two miles away,  lies Padduvankarai in the Batticaloa District, where too life for the  Tamil peasants must be no less miserable. But the situation there is  one where no active peace movement can take shape. This is  another aspect of the internal tragedy of the Tamils.

The misery of 87 Tamil families in Dimbulagala is hardly ever  mentioned or written about. They are a forgotten people with no  one to speak for them. The children used to attend an old Tamil  school towards the jungle where they had to spend a good part of  the morning clearing buffalo dung. Since the onset of the war the  children had stopped going there. Nimal Munasinghe said that  although school space can be found for them nearby, this has not  been done. He had also found it difficult to highlight this in the  press. An even deeper tragedy of the Tamil families is that in 40 out  of the 87 families the men folk are missing. According to  Munasinghe the families maintained that the men had been finished  off by the Army, while several of the Sinhalese claimed that they  had joined the LTTE. This also reflects the state of suspicion against  these Tamil families. It has been claimed that some of the youths  from the area have ties with the LTTE and were instrumental in the  murder of Dimbulagala Thero during mid-1995.

During the night we encountered another problem that is quite  typical of the area. An elderly lady R.B.Somawathy, originally from  Bibile, and her elder son, Jayathilake(21), a home guard working  under the police, sought out Nimal Munesinghe. Somawathy�s  younger son Rajapaksa had joined the army when he was 18, had  later deserted and was working as a tailor in the village. He was  arrested by the police when the government ordered all deserters to  return. He then absconded again when the police sent him to a shop  to buy something. He was re-arrested and in the course of  assaulting him, the police broke his arm. He is now remanded in the  custody of Polonnaruwa police. The mother was concerned about  her son�s medical condition. She could scrape up Rs 3,000 for the  lawyer�s fees in Polonnaruwa, but it was difficult to find lawyers in  these parts willing to take up cases against the security forces. Those  such as Munasinghe were among the rare persons to whom she  could turn for help.

Technically Rajapaksa by deserting had acted in breach of the law.  But this was a predicament that was very unlikely to be faced by a  boy from a well-placed middle-class home in Colombo that was  comfortable with the war. The two acres of land which the family  had been given was very inadequate to be shared among the  children. Alternative employment is hard to come by. It would have  been very hard for a young boy who had known only the mother�s  affection to go into the army and be assaulted and abused by the  sergeant in the course of breaking him. Unable to take it, Rajapaksa  made his escape. Now the government wants Rajapaksa back, not  for his own good, but to use him as cannon fodder.

These are other aspects of the legacy of state ideology based on  narrow Sinhalese nationalism, that has brought only tragedy to  these people. The lands on the other side of Madhuru Oya, once  taken over by the Dimbulagala Thero in the crusading zeal that  followed the July 1983 violence, now lie bare of inhabitants. Even  older settlements such as Maligatenne on the western side of  Madhuru Oya, had been abandoned. It has indeed been a harvest of  blood and misery.

Law of the Jungle and the Trivialising of the State

We now go into an investigation of some current problems  confronting Trincomalee, two of which have been much in the news.  Indeed they would hardly have been newsworthy had the  authorities applied the law impartially without harbouring an  agenda that was hurtful to the minorities. How these problems have  been dealt with at the highest levels of a government that in many  ways represents a change for the better from past governments is a  sad comment on the state of the country. These cases below also  give a gloomy picture of the levels to which the State and  administrative machinery have degenerated particularly at a time  when a political solution is being sought to end a wasteful ethnic  conflict. Indeed a far higher standard of administrative integrity is  called for.

In land matters that further Sinhalisation in keeping with state  ideology, the different government ministries and departments have  the capacity to work together very expeditiously. The instances of  Ports Authority land and the acquisition of Muslim squatter land by  the Uppuveli Vihara which was itself originally built on crown land  have been cited. Brigadier Lucky Wijeratne settled squatters along  Colombo road on forest reserve in 1990 and in the meantime got the  land de-reserved and regularised. When Tamil residents in Love  Lane who fled their houses in 1990 found Sinhalese occupying them  when they returned, two powerful ministers in the last government  intervened in an effort to have the Tamils shifted to alternative  housing. On the other hand when it comes to public uses of land  where Tamils and Muslims would benefit, obstructions are thrown  up that carry little reason. A particular instance of related  obstructiveness is the case of the Tamil officer given in the sequel.

1. Displacement of Muslims from Aakuwatte (now Pansalwatte),  Uppuveli

At the outset of the war in June 1990 the LTTE attacked the police  station in Uppuveli and ran away. In the resulting pandemonium  Tamil refugees streamed out of Trincomalee and the barons of local  power did not fail to use the security forces to carry through their  agendas. The victims of one such event were the 50 or so Muslim  families of Aakuwatte, squatters originally from 7th Mile Post (Iqbal  Nagar), Nilaveli Road, who had been there from about 1980. They  had evidently moved there at the invitation of a Muslim mill owner  who sought security from the Sinhalese squatter settlements  beyond.

On 13th June 1990 the Police set fire to their dwellings.  Rahamathullah Sahib, the leader of the community, asserts that the  police performed this act of arson at the behest of the influential  Buddhist priest at the Uppuveli Vihara. The displaced persons had  continued to live as refugees in two sheds in Love Lane partitioned  by polythene paper. They insist that they would go nowhere else  except where they were chased from.

A second blow came when President Premadasa came in January  1993 to hold the mobile Presidential Secretariat and the Buddhist  monk requested and received from the President _ acre of land in the  same area that has so far remained idle according to the refugees.

Following the election of the new government in 1994, the refugees  have taken up the matter with Mr.M.H.M. Ashraff, Minister for  Ports and Rehabilitation, Deputy Minister Hisbullah and Mr.  Najeeb, MP. All of them promised to resolve the matter, but had  proved powerless. The worst came when recently the National  Housing Development Authority(NHDA) began supplying materials  for the construction of 30 houses for Sinhalese on the land where the  Muslims had lived. The local head of the NHDA told the Muslim  refugees that �there had been orders from above�. When they  approached the AGA(DS) Trincomalee Town and Gravets, he told  them that he was powerless to do anything in the matter.

The problem was later put to a number of Sinhalese residents who  were present at a local peace meeting. The response received was  that the Muslims were making a bogus claim because the Uppuveli  Buddhist monk had produced a title deed to that land. This also  gives an insight into their psychology of beleaguerdness. It had not  occurred to them to question the ethics of dealing with the Muslims  in this manner, leave alone by a Buddhist monk. Further if the monk  had a genuine legal claim, and with the apparatus of the state  behind him, he could easily have dealt with it through the courts in a  humane manner.

A similar case is that of Mattikali which housed Sri Shanmuga Boys�  Home until the disturbances of 1983. Then Sinhalese encroachers  moved in. A Land Officer, T.D. Pieris, tried to regularise these by  producing a deed showing that the land belonged to the nearby  Jayasumanarama Buddhist temple. This move was dropped after  other Tamils produced old deeds to establish Pieris document to be  a forgery. (More on forgeries in the sequel.) But many Sinhalese  continue to insist that the land is as described in the forgery.

2. Linganagar

Mr. T.D. Pieris the Land Officer was shot dead by an unknown  gunman on 17th September 1996. Among his last major acts was to  issue eviction orders to squatters at Linganagar who were recently  placed there by the Tamil militant group, the EPDP, whose 10 MPs  support the Government in Parliament. The Defence Ministry was  claiming that the land was the property of the Army. The LTTE is  generally ruled out since the assassin is said to have watched Pieris�  home in town for some days and Pieris regularly visited rural parts  of Trincomalee where the LTTE had greater access. Although the  Tamils had long looked upon his activities with alarm, there is no  suggestion that he was ever an LTTE target. Although the killer has  not been identified and evidence is lacking, suspicion remains  focused on the EPDP.

The �Sunday Island� of 29th September 1996 carried a feature article  titled �The murder of a land officer�. It was a compendium of claims  and suggestions gathered by interviewing officials and a former  UNP minister, Gamini Jayasuriya - all Sinhalese with seemingly a  similar mind-set. What follows is the essence of the feature. An  official was quoted as saying that Linga Nagar is situated on a 47  acre plot of land belonging to the Sri Lankan Army, that was given  by the UNP government to build a firing range.

Officials were further quoted as saying that the authorities had  decided to relocate the people in Linga Nagar elsewhere because the  LTTE could use it to threaten the naval dockyard, Plantain Point  SLA detachment, the SLAF base and the Trincomalee harbour.

A survey conducted by Pieris had found that only 31 of the 177 Tamil  families at Linga Nagar had been displaced by the war. The rest it  was claimed had been �brought from all parts of the country�. There  was a fear, it was claimed, that the group behind the settlement  �was planning to intensify its activities�.

Gamini Jayasuriya claimed that there was a well organised  campaign to cripple civil administration in Trincomalee, one among  whose objectives was to settle a large number of so-called Tamil  refugees around Trincomalee town.

We shall now give the truth as best as we are able to piece together.

The story of Linga Nagar 

Linga Nagar is situated north of Trincomalee town. Travelling  north on the main road leaving town on the inner (western) side of  the isthmus one finds Cottiar Bay to the left, first the Inner Harbour,  and then a promontory known as Orr�s Hill also to the left going  into the bay. The nearer part of Orr�s Hill has offices of the NE  Provincial Administration, then what is now a crowded residential  area and lastly a wide extent of land occupied by Plantain Point  army camp. The road then passes Jayasumanarama temple on the  left, then Yard Cove (a lagoon inlet) on the left with Mattikali on the  right and then a promontory on the left, the nearer part of which is  Linga Nagar. Further down the road is another Tamil village  known as Palaiyootru.

Linga Nagar consists in part of the old village close to the main road  with more than 150 families which existed prior to 1970. By the 1980s  there were more than another 100 squatter families living on crown  and private lands further interior into the promontory. In 1989 the  Ministry of Lands called all encroachers on crown lands throughout  the country to register themselves with a view to regularisation if  the land concerned was unused crown land not ear-marked for  other purposes. A circular further said that no regularisation was to  be done after 27.10.89. Some families on crown land at Linga Nagar  registered themselves and obtained LDO permits.

In early 1990 the Indian Army was in the process of withdrawing  and the LTTE which had close dealings with the UNP government of  President Premadasa moved into Trincomalee. A number of youths  from Linga Nagar quite imprudently identified with the LTTE and  appeared to enjoy a spell of authority. In a multi-ethnic context  where the Sri Lankan forces too had a large presence, they were  warily observed, marked and the SL forces awaited their chance.  This came in June 1990 when the LTTE massacred policemen, started  a war and pulled out of towns in the East. Several people of Linga  Nagar in the category above, or who had moved with the Indian  Army, were among the 870 or so persons in the district picked up by  the Sri Lankan forces without great finesse or discrimination, and  eliminated in death orgies at Plantain Point among other places.  [Reports 10, 11 & 12.]

Once more large numbers fled as refugees. In 1992 there were 14  families with LDO permits living in what was earlier crown land in  Linga Nagar. It is this land that is the subject of controversy. The  older part of the village with its school and temple carries on much  as before with many of the refugees having returned.

Plantain Point Army Camp and Claims on Linga Nagar 

The story now goes back in time. Plantain Point, at the further end of  Orr�s Hill was earlier used by the British Admiralty and remained  abandoned when they pulled out in 1958. The area turned to shrub  jungle and came to be occupied by Tamil squatters. In 1975 a land  officer named Jayasuriya who was in the Volunteer Force moved to  get the Sri Lankan Army to take over the area. He went in and  unceremoniously evicted the residents overnight. The action was  grossly discriminatory and unprecedented in the treatment of  squatters. It was the time when estates in the South were being  taken over by the government and much land was being given to  Sinhalese peasants.

Tissa Devendra who was government agent at that time, it is  reported, was unhappy with the move, and had left the station to  dissociate himself from it and at the same time to avoid confronting  the Army.

While the original camp was a small one at the edge of the  promontory, the new one was greatly enlarged with the boundary  moved several furlongs eastwards towards the main road. The  lands on Orr�s Hill including what was taken over by the British  Admiralty during the last war were private lands. The British  Admiralty tried to trace the owners with a view to returning the  lands as they pulled out in 1958. Being unable to do so and the  owners not showing much interest then since land prices were low  at that time, the lands were left as crown lands by the Admiralty.

About 1978 or 1979 the Army at Plantain Point made a request for 6  chains (132 yards) of land to be measured from the tip of the  adjacent promontory containing Linga Nagar to be used as a  demolition ground. The land was measured and marked off by the  Kacheri Surveyor for Town and Gravets, Mutur, Kinniya,  Kuchchaveli and Thampalakamam. The extent of land was 1.9  acres, but it was never taken over by the Army(see map). At this time  T.D. Pieris was Kacheri Surveyor for the remaining divisions of  Trincomalee:- viz. Kantalai, Seruvila and Gomarankadawela.

In 1982 T.D.Pieris was interdicted by the chairman of the District  Development Council(DDC) elected in 1981 for allegedly having  taken a bribe of Rs.500/- from a lady for the issue of a land deed.  Such remained constant complaints against Pieris throughout his  career. With the communal violence of July 1983, the last vestiges of  the DDCs - that were advanced as a solution to the ethnic problem -  collapsed. Under Camillus Fernando as GA, Pieris was returned to  his position. It was a time of confusion and what sort of inquiry was  held, if there was one, is not clear. Following the retirement of the  Kacheri Surveyor covering Town & Gravets, Kinniya, Mutur,  Thampalakamam & Kuchchaveli, Pieris was given charge of the  whole district and was later promoted to Land Officer.

It was after the collapse of the North-East Provincial Council under  the Indo-Lanka Accord, and the onset of the war in June 1990 that  Pieris� hand was felt in a big way. His small-time jobs consisted of  taking money, getting clerks to fill up LDO (Land Development  Ordinance) forms, and forging the signatures of former land  officers. The Army and the Administration found him useful in  identifying lands around Trincomalee to settle Sinhalese, exclude  Tamils and Muslims or to plant some state body such as the Army.

  MAP 1  MAP 2   Vested    with SLPA  Linga Nagar  Linga Nagar

   47  Acres  for Army   firing range

  Yard Cove  Orr�s Hill

Bay * Plantain Point   Army Camp  Edge of  Promontory    Sketch of Pieris map  produced in 1992

 In 1992 T.D. Pieris produced a map (map 2 above) which showed 47  acres east of the ridge as belonging to the Army and another piece of  land as vested with the Ports Authority. The Army command at  Plantain Point under Brigadier Siri Pieris made an insistent claim  that they needed the land for a firing range. Had the land been  measured from the edge of the promontory, taking a natural slice of  it with the boundary running north-west, instead of north-east  through the middle, Linga Nagar would have been excluded. But the  lands claimed by the Army and supposedly vested with the SLPA  were so placed as to take over much of Linga Nagar. It was claimed  that the transfer had been effected in 1979.

Confronting the Army in Trincomalee was then considered a  dangerous thing to do. But several officials challenged this claim.  This also brought the claims of the Army in conflict with the actions  of A.Thangarajah, Additional Land Commissioner for the North -  East, who earlier as a land officer in 1989 had issued LDO permits to  encroachers on land which the Army claimed had already been their  property. Thangarajah had acted according to a government  decision at that time as already explained.

Major General Nalin Seneviratne, Governor of the North-East  Province, appointed a 3 member commission that could not report  because the chairman Markandu was transferred to Colombo and  A.Thangarajah resigned because the propriety of his own action  was in question. The Governor then appointed a second commission  chaired by Mr. Velayuthapillai with two other Sinhalese officers.  The commission report found the claims of T.D. Pieris and the Army  inconsistent and badly wanting. T.D.Pieris and an army officer who  was earlier Lieutenant Tikiri Banda told the commission that the  hand-over of 47 acres shown had been done in 1979 on behalf of the  administration by T.D. Pieris and Tikiri Banda had accepted on  behalf of the Army. The following are some salient features of the  case.

(i) No record of procedure such as: Request by the Army for  land stating extent and purpose, record of survey, request  by GA to the Land Commissioner for authority to transfer  crown land, gazette notification, and documents of  transfer. In particular, there is no gazette notification of the  land transfer. (ii) The transfer was claimed as having been done to the 22nd  Brigade of the SLA in 1979. But the 22nd Brigade was formed  only in the late 80s. (iii) The SLPA could not in 1979 have possessed the land shown  in the map as belonging to it. Land acquisitions by the  SLPA were not gazetted until the early 80s. No record of  any request for the land by SLPA. (iv) T.D. Pieris could not have done the transfer in 1979 as his  duties then did not cover Town and Gravets. A more senior  surveyor covered the latter area and there was no reason  to call upon Pieris, a junior officer, to do the transfer.

There is another little known fact. While the controversy was going  on General Nalin Seneviratne wrote to the Army asking them to  shift the firing range to some other suitable rural location. Being an  experienced military man he considered the suburban setting in  Linga Nagar inappropriate for the purpose - and even more so in  the location nearer the main road chosen by Pieris.

It was clear that the acquisition had nothing to do with any military  purpose. The motivations were ideological. The map and the claims  were fraudulent. Although the Army did not subsequently press its  earlier claim, it did not drop the demand and the matter remains  unresolved. It is also very much a reflection of the degree of ethnic  polarisation within the administration and the absence of  professionalism that the report of the commission on the lines above  was submitted by the chairman, with the two Sinhalese members  refusing to sign in the matter of what was an open and shut case.

But T.D. Pieris� presence became an embarrassment and even a  nuisance in the administration of Trincomalee and during 1993 the  Government Agent Mr. Godawela called for his removal and a  transfer order was given by the Ministry of Lands. According to  prominent local sources Brigadier Siri Pieris and the Defence  Ministry successfully lobbied to retain him in Trincomalee on the  grounds that his services were invaluable to them. T.D. Pieris  remained in Trincomalee but was thereafter not taken very  seriously. He continued to do the small-time jobs for which he was  well-known. We also reliably understand that in the Land office of  the Trincomalee Kacheri, LDO permits held by non-Sinhalese were  picked up from stacks, a small number at a time, and destroyed on a  regular basis. It was in the wake of EPDP activities that Pieris  managed to revive the Army�s interest in taking over Linga Nagar.

This time apart from the old claim that the 47 acres of land belonged  to the Army, security reasons were being advanced (Shamindra  Fernando�s report cited above) and the officials are quoted as  denying charges that they intend settling Sinhalese on the land. Both  these deserve comment. In terms of proximity, Linga Nagar is  further away from security installations than other Tamil  residential areas. Orr�s Hill in fact adjoins Plantain Point camp. If  one goes on the basis that any Tamil residential area is a security  threat, this line of reasoning would lead to herding all Tamils into  fenced and guarded �welfare centres� such as obtain in Vavuniya.  What would then be the country�s fate?

The claim of having no intention of settling Sinhalese is again  disingenuous. Going by past experience, some junior army officer or  local official has only to give a signal and encroachment would be  guaranteed. The authorities have no record of ever taking action  against Sinhalese encroachers unlike the third degree methods used  against other communities.

It may also be asked why the Army made such a flimsy case for the  Linga Nagar land that was full of gaping holes? The short answer is  that they expected little active opposition. There are many officials  retired and in service who are familiar with the original history of  the case, the actual request in 1979 for 6 chains of land and what  happened thereafter. But they remain reluctant to testify in public or  have their names quoted. Trincomalee has a particular history and  there is real fear that once you are marked, anything could happen.  Something did happen to one official who was mixed up in the  Linga Nagar case. This will be taken up below.

 EPDP's Activities & its Antecedents 

Through a fluke of history the EPDP got ten MPs into parliament  from the Jaffna District with as few as 5 votes from some  electorates. It had been allied to the last UNP government and its  cadre had been posted in Jaffna's offshore islands which had the  bulk of the effective voters in the district, since the vast majority of  voters who were then under LTTE control could not vote. The  EPDP also effectively prevented other Tamil parties from  campaigning in the islands. The elections were technically held and  the EPDP got its reward. Thereafter it switched sides to support the  newly elected PA government in parliament. This was the source of  its influence. The EPDP did not have a reputation for being so unruly  or heavy handed as, say, the PLOTE or TELO.

In November 1994 , following the last elections, an incident revealed  something of the EPDP�s inner nature. One of its cadre Udaya  Sooriyakumar who is said to have been wanting to leave the  movement was found dead with 17 stab injuries on the Wellawatte  beach on the morning of 15th November 1994.. A report in the  Observer of 13/11/94 by P.Senanayake & J.Jayasinghe said that  acting on an anonymous call two members of the EPDP, including  the organiser for Trincomalee, were detained and questioned about  this killing. They had revealed that the deceased had been abducted  on 1/11/94 for leaving the organisation without notice and detained  at the EPDP�s head quarters then at Park Road, Havelock Town. On  the evening of 14/11/94 he was taken in an EPDP jeep to the beach  where he was murdered. The EPDP hierarchy was clearly  implicated, and according to the Observer of Sunday 27/11/94, the  police searched the EPDP HQ following the organisations failure to  hand over three suspects. Nothing remarkable came out of these  investigations. The EPDP�s MPs were already supporting the  Government in parliament. The support was no doubt more firm  after the investigations.

With the breakdown of any rational administrative policy or outlook  it is the general rule throughout the country that the distribution of  state resources depended overwhelmingly on the political  patronage of the government in power. As the last president D.B.  Wijetunge put it crudely, it was the government that ladled out the  rice from the bowl. The message was that those who voted for the  opposition would suffer. The Tamils in the East who lived in a  multi-ethnic environment saw themselves as having suffered  heavily through being in the opposition most of the time. Tamils,  even nationalists, in the Amparai District who now have no  representation, feel that the benefits that had accrued to them by  their former TULF MP Kanagaratnam crossing over to the UNP  government had been crucial to their survival.

Today all four Tamil  MPs including the one from the Trincomalee District support the  government in parliament. The means by which state resources are  distributed has also consolidated a populist political culture where  the MP gets the credit for resources brought to the area. The EPDP  is largely prevented by security considerations from working among  its own constituents in Jaffna.

On the other hand Trincomalee town  and suburbs which are considered fairly secure have become a hub of  activity for all militant groups opposed to the LTTE. But the EPDP  has few resources to build up its image in Trincomalee since the local  Tamil MP is from the TULF which supports the government. Given  the large refugee population in Trincomalee, the EPDP resorted to  another brand of populism where the lack or resources did not pose  a big problem. What it did was to call applications for land in  Trincomalee town from refugees who were nearly all from the rural  villages. It then blocked out 6 to 8 perches of land for a family from  two blocks of land.

One was the contentious crown land in Linga  Nagar, and the other was the 30 acre plot purchased by the Tamil  University Movement near 3rd Mile Post on the Nilaveli Road. The  move was both short sighted and had serious inherent limitations.  Other residents pointed out that the land belonging to the Tamil  University Movement could have been used for an educational or  cultural purpose at an appropriate time in the future. The trustees of  this land were at present not contesting the move by the EPDP. The  fact that it is an armed militant group that currently enjoyed some  influence with the State is something that would cross anyone�s  mind.

In the case of Linga Nagar the EPDP�s move to settle people on the  land provided opportunity to T.D.Pieris who had largely ceased to  be taken seriously. Once again publicity was loudly voiced to the  effect that there was a sinister move to settle Tamils on land that  belonged to the Army. The Army too began voicing its claim which it  had not taken seriously for some time. Under Pieris moves were set  in motion to evict the squatters. It was agaist this backdrop that  Pieris was shot dead on 17th September. Then cries of foul play by  sinister Tamil forces became even more strident with the ultra- nationalist sections of the press, Buddhist monks and members of  the elite in Colombo getting into the act. There were calls to disarm  the Tamil militant groups opposed to the LTTE. It is a measure of  the influence commanded by the EPDP's parliamentary support to  the government that in Trincomalee the PLOTE was disarmed for a  time. Indeed the PLOTE was notorious for killings in Vavuniya town  for which no serious action had been taken. It's three MPs from  Vavuniya too supported the government in parliament. But any  suspicion that the PLOTE was responsible for the killing of T.D.  Pieris in Trincomalee was extremely remote.

Prior to the temporary disarming of the PLOTE there were  demonstrations in the market area on 10th October 1996. This was  preceded by a drama that is not widely known and the potential  danger it portended should not be underestimated when taken in  conjunction with the volatile political climate in the South. During  early October there was a meeting in the suburban Sinhalese  settlement of Sirimapura which is the home of some rougher  elements with interests in the market and associated with leading  communal violence in the past with the co-operation of the security  forces. Those considered friendly to the Tamils were excluded from  the meeting that was also attended by some Buddhist monks. The  issues of T.D.Pieris� murder and of a police sub-inspector were  discussed. The dominant sentiment was that the Sinhalese interests  were being threatened and that they could no longer take things  lying down. Emotions were running high.

A prominent Tamil citizen was informed by a Sinhalese resident that  there were plans afoot to spark off communal violence. This was  communicated to the TULF general secretary in Colombo and  preventive measures were taken. It also turned out that a number of  Sinhalese had urgently communicated the danger to their Tamil  contacts. This is again suggestive of a strong interest in avoiding  violence.

The demonstration which began in the market and moved to the  EPDP office passed off without much incident. Muslims and Tamils  in the market area too had little choice but to participate in the  protest for the fear of displeasing the rough Sinhalese elements. The  press in Colombo reported this as a broad-based protest against the  armed Tamil militant groups.

What happened then was that the Army became insistant on taking  over the Linganagar land. The EPDP which was crucially dependant  on the Army at one level could not go far in confronting the Army.  Thus the logical thing for the EPDP to do was to slowly wash its  hands off the Linganagar matter alltogether. The Army which  regarded T.D.Pieris as their man and was convinced that the EPDP  had done the killing was prevented from getting at the EPDP  because of its influence with the government and the lack of any  evidence. So they were demanding their pound of flesh by getting at  the people who were not EPDP supporters, but had simply wanted  land. It was again the old logic of reprisal action against the people  after the attackers were safely beyond reach .

In the case of theTamil University land too, once some kind of peace  returns, the board of trustees of the Tamil University Movement is  bound to file court action and the people will have to leave the land.  In either case, the EPDP�s populism is bound to leave the people in  the lurch and worse off than what they would have been.

The people concerned are those from villages in the district and feel  that there are too many uncertainties for them to go back. Any  solution to their problem needs to take into account their well-being  and economic viability in the long term. Perhaps the most serious  criticism of the EPDP�s action is that it was using these people to  score a point in the same manner that the Army plants Sinhalese  peasants along the roadsides in insecure areas.

 Mr. Chandradasa, the present Government Agent, has a reputation  for having sympathy for the down -trodden with a sincere  diapproval of violence. While serving as AGA in Seruvila some  years ago, he had worked hard at helping the neglected Tamil  peasants in Ichchilampattai.  Even while T.D.Pieris was trying to raise alarm in circles of power  about the EPDP settling squatters in Linga Nagar, Chandradasa did  not take sides. But once Pieris was killed, he had reportedly become  coloured by the view that the settlers were EPDP supporters and  that the killing was a threat to the administration. But on the market  issue reported below, Chandradasa had voiced the view that the  Army was in the wrong.

 The Trinco market Fiasco 

A letter dated 5th January was sent to the Chairman of the  Trincomalee Urban Council by Brigadier P.S.B.Kulatunge RSP USP,  Commander 22nd Brigade and Co-ordinating Officer, TCO South.  The letter contained the following unusual statement: � The decision  to cancel the tender after our discussion, as you know, was made  due to the deterioriating situation in the area, and in the general  interest of the public in Trincomalee�.

The letter further added a note of warning, �Your hasty decision to  allow the tenderer to collect the rent at the vegetable market as  from 4th January 1997, would further aggravate the security  situation, and hence I would like you to abide by my earlier decision  for the UC employees to collect the rent from the vegetable market.�

The foregoing would suggest a most singular drama considering  what was involved was simply the Trincomalee market being given  out on tender with all the rules followed to the letter.

The facts in short are these. The Trincomalee market was  dominated by Sinhalese traders. The Tamils who were the majority  in town, generally did not show much interest in this line of business.  The influence of some Sinhalese merchants rose sharply with state  patronage, the backing of the security forces and the advent of  communal violence from 1977. Their power was greatly reduced  when the Indian Peace Keeping Force arrived. From June 1990  however, the market was under the control of an influential  Sinhalese agent who got control of the market for Rs 300, 000/= a  year with no competition offered.

In November 1996 the chairman of the Urban Council decided to call  for tenders and set the minimum at Rs500,000. His contention was  that the Council needed the money and moreover business had  picked up in recent years. Jayaratne, the man who originally  controlled the market objected to the new minimum set and did not  tender for the market. This being the situation the tender period was  extended at the request of the Brigadier. Only one person, Kennedy,  tendered, who also happened to belong to the militant group  PLOTE.

This is understandable since only a Tamil person with such  a background could hope to stand up to those who had hitherto  controlled the market and wielded considerable intimidatory  power. Kennedy was awarded the tender. A protest was organised  by the supporters of Jayaratne on 17th December 1996 which closed  most of the shops in Trincomalee and public and private transport  too was brought to a standstill as Sinhalese operators dominated  these sectors as well. It was clear that these sections were using the  power they had enjoyed with the blessings of the Sinhalese  dominated security forces, to prevent the law from taking its course.  Buddhist priests too joined in the protest against the award of the  tender to a Tamil man. It reflected arm twisting by interests that had  been increasingly asserting themselves in Trincomalee for the last  few decades.

The Brigadier in charge of Trincomalee intervened using his  emergency powers to cancel the tender, but the Chairman of the  Urban Council stood his ground. Following a meeting with the  Brigadier on 26th December the Chairman agreed as an interim  measure for employees of the Urban Council to collect the rent from  the market stall holders. The Brigadier in turn promised police  assistance to the Urban Council officers who went to collect the  rent. But no such police assistance was forthcoming and the UC  chairman decided to allow the tenderer to collect the rent. The  tenderer too proved unsuccessful. Up to the time of writing the UC  had not collected any rent from the market.

The Sunday Island of  26th January 1997 carried a feature by Namini Wijedasa which gave  an impartial report on the situation based on interviewing Mr.  Sooriyamoorthy, chairman of the Urban Council and some of the  Sinhalese traders. In comparison with the protest on 17th December  new reasons were being adduced such as a threat to the Sinhalese,  plans to shift the market to a Tamil area and so on. The report also  added that the Tamil and Muslim traders refused to comment and  concluded that the truth of the matter may have evaded the writer.

According to the Tamil residents the Brigadier�s action  demonstrated that laws in this country are applicable only to the  minorities. They added that the Tamil and Muslim traders in the  market had to do as they were told by the former Sinhalese bosses,  as given their experience in the past, they feared being marked and  something unpleasant happening later on. The �Island� of 27th  January carried an editorial referring to the Trincomalee market  sitting on a powder keg and calling for the situation to be defused.  

Eighteen years ago in 1979, the Financial Times of London carried  a Survey on Sri Lanka where the lead item was headlined, 'Sri  Lanka sits on a powder keg'. This country went happily living out  the prophecy over the next few years with the burning of the Jaffna  Public Library, communal violence and then precipitating a war.  Neither the press nor the ruling establishment ever seemed to take  all this seriously, and now we seem to have discovered that  Trincomalee market is sitting on a powder keg! Indeed, the  situation must be defused. But we seem to be going through a  certain kind of warped reasoning again and again. Where it is an  issue where the law appears to place the minority in an  advantageous position a grave crisis and a threat to peace are  discovered and used as an argument to deprive the members of the  minority. A similar argument was used to introduce a very unfair  system of standardisation of university admissions in 1971, which by  lowering the marks for Sinhalese candidates gave the advantage  overwhelmingly to privileged Sinhalese students in the best schools.  [Originally preference was based on purely linguistic criteria. The  district quota system was introduced some years later.]

The Administration : 

The cost of being effective and belonging to the wrong community 

Given below is the fate of a Tamil officer who exercised initiative  and whose services were uniformly commended. His recent  penalisation is linked in particular to two land matters. One of them  is Linga Nagar:

At the time he reached 55 on 10th February 1995, A. Thangarajah had  worked 20 years in the Administrative Service, having earlier  worked as a teacher, also in government service. A number of  others with his experience had reached the top. But what happened  to Thangarajah was very unusual. On reaching 55 (the age of  optional retirement) while he was AGA(DS) Mutur, he was told that  he should go on retirement. Upon application it is practically routine  for SLAS officers to be given extensions until they reach 60 (age of  compulsory retirement).

In 1980 the officer was punished while serving as AGA Vaharai by  having to spend 40 months on no pay, losing several increments and  his seniority. He had then refused to register a Rural Development  Society where the president and secretary were UNP minister  Devanayagam�s men who were resident in Valaichenai. The  inquiring officer had found no charge to be valid. The officer who  should have reached Class I in 1992 retired at Class II -Grade 2. His  deferred promotion to II-1 due in 1993 was not given and is still on  appeal.

Thangarajah came to Trincomalee in 1983 as a land officer covering  the mainly Tamil and Muslim AGA divisions of Town and Gravets,  Kinniya, Mutur and Kuchchaveli. Up to 1990 he had strictly followed  government regulations and circulars in issuing 17000 Land  Development Ordinance permits in these divisions. Working hard  for the people on land matters was no doubt undesirable from the  point of State ideology. He was never faulted on his work, except  that later in 1992, his issue of 14 LDO permits on land in Linga  Nagar to which the Army subsequently made a claim was advanced  in certain quarters as unlawful and conspiratorial.

In 1990 Thangarajah was appointed Additional Land Commissioner  for the North-East under the NE provincial administration. Acting  within his powers under the 13th Amendment to the constitution, his  administration issued more than 2000 LDO permits mainly in the  Mannar and Kilinochchi districts and appointed 40 land officers and  assistant land commissioners to expedite land work.

He was made AGA (DS) Mutur in early1993. In all matters under his  purview, he used his powers to the full and ensured that the people  received the best possible benefit. As DS Mutur he spent all the  money allocated for public works at the rate of about Rs 78 million a  year without returning any to the treasury. Of about 50 projects  allocated to Mutur under 15,000 Village Level Projects, he saw that  the work was completed.

When floods came to Mutur in December 1993, his work in flood  relief was commended by the co-ordinating officer Brigadier Siri  Pieris. Once the brigadier�s commendation came, the excess Rs 3.9  million spent above the 0.5 million allocated, about which questions  were being raised, was expeditiously settled.

Thangarajah made an application to the Ministry of Public  Administration (MPA) for the first one year�s extension from 11.2.95  about August 1994.

On 13th February 1995 he received a letter from the ministry  informing him that he should go on retirement. Thangarajah  appealed to the Public Services Commission on 14th February, the  following day. He found that his application had not been  recommended by Mr. Chandradasa who was appointed  Government Agent in late 1994 after the election of the new  government. The grounds for not recommending were said to be  some petitions against him. Thangarajah stated in his appeal that  Chandreadasa who was only familiar with his work for a very short  period could not be a suitable referee and that Mr.Godawela, the  former GA, would be the right person. Godawela later confirmed  that he had recommended Thangaraja. The PSC approved his  extension and informed the MPA. After a long delay of 18 months  that included the MPA asking for Thangarajah�s birth certificate  which they said was not in the file, Thangarajah received his  approval from the MPA on 11 th November 1996, by when even the  period for his second year�s extension had almost expired. He sent  his second appeal to the PSC the following day on 14.11.96 and at  the time of writing this report he had been out of work for 24 months  and was yet to receive a response. But it is learnt that the PSC had  hand-delivered its approval to the MPA on 7/2/97. The matter had  been raised by a number of persons including a local MP. Ratnasiri  Wickremanayake, the minister of public administration is  understood to have said that the officer had been treated unfairly.

It is widely understoodthat what is held against Thangarajah is in  particular his issue of 14 LDO permits in Linga Nagar in 1989.  Another that surfaced after Chandradasa became GA is the issue of  Sinhalese squatters who had lived near the Mutur jetty. Some time  after June 1990 the Army put them into occupation of public land in  town designated for a bank and the telecommunication centre, and  were helping them. Moves to regularise the encroachment in 1993  were dropped following protests, including by Mr. M.H.M Ashraff,  now a minister in the present government. Chandradasa took up  the matter again and wanted Thangaraja as DS, Muthur, to  regularise the encroachment. This Thangarajah refused as he had  refused Minister Devanayagam in 1980. In Thangaraja�s case one  could think only of utter inefficiency, or the cabal applying the  unwritten rules of the public service, knowing what they want.  Either way the state of the administration bodes ill for the credibility  of any political settlement.

The new PA government in late 1994 called for appeals from those  who had suffered political victimisation under the previous UNP  government of 1977-94. Thangarajah�s case is expected to receive a  positive response. In the meantime his treatment by the new  government was hardly an improvement.

 At the highest level

In what is again a very unusual development, both the Linga Nagar  matter and the Trincomalee market affair were brought to the  president for her resolution. Both these matters are governed by  clear rules laid down in the law and should have been disposed of at  a much lower level. These should never have been brought to the  president whose job was quite something else. The fact that these  matters came to her is again a symptom that rules had ceased to  apply in the ramshackle state machine worn down by decades of  misuse.

The parties to the market dispute had been invited to the  presidential secretariat for a discussion. The TULF MP for Trinco  District met the president at the end of January, showed her T.D.  Pieris� map of Linga Nagar and explained the facts to her with the  findings of the governor�s commission. The president immediately  saw through the issue and asked the MP to discuss the matter with  defence ministry officials. The latter stood by their claim to 47 acres  of land. The MP asked the defence officials to show when and where  they had shown cause and asked for land in Linga Nagar, and how  they arrived at the magic figure of 47 acres, except for the fact that it  surfaced in the claim faked by T.D. Pieris. Later the defence officials  modified their claim to 47 acres, that were to be measured from the  edge of the promontory. There were even later suggestions that  some officials dissatisfied that Linga Nagar would be largely left  untouched, had wanted 30 acres of SLPA land (again a fiction from  Pieris map) to be first marked off from the edge of the promontory  before measuring 47 acres for the Army. The matter is bound to drag  on and probably go back to the president again.

Had an ordinary member of the public made the kind of claim in a  court of law that the defence ministry was making on the basis of  Pieris� map, he would have been found guilty of fraud, perjury and  forgewry. By right, the president should have severely reprimanded  the officials concerned as persons who ought to set a better example  and even have demoted some of them as unfit to represent the  country with honour at its highest levels. By not doing so, she had  chosen to appease the defence ministry, thus adding to her  problems. We also get a fair idea of why cases of violations by  security personnel under this government either continue to get  covered up, or even where arrests are made, the accused are bailed  out with the trial indefinitely delayed.

The murder of T.D. Pieris was a crime against an individual who  was also an officer of the State. But would such a crime in a  Sinhalese area have sent the Army hell-bent on acquiring land in the  area to punish residents, as at Linga Nagar, who were not party to  the crime? The Linga Nagar and the market issue further confirm  what has long been said about the inner motivations of the Army  and the Defence Ministry. They perceive themselves as Sinhalese  state institutions furthering a communal state ideology. By standing  his ground and calling the brigadier�s bluff on the market issue, the  chairman of the Trincomalee Urban Council has exposed State  ideology at its silliest and most ridiculous. It also aptly sums up Sri  Lanka�s post-independence political legacy as communal politics of  the fish and vegetable market.

Refugees and Resettlement 

Sinhalese refugees from Kallara:

Mary Agnes (50) was originally from Thiriyai just south of Kallara.  She had belonged to the only Sinhalese family in the farming village  of Thiriyai who farmed several acres of paddy land. She had good  friends among the Tamils and spoke the language fluently. In 1985  as the conflict intensified her neighbours advised her to leave. She  went first to Trinco town and then to live in Kallara with Sinhalese  fisherfolk in 1987 after the IPKF arrived. With the onset of war in  June 1990 the residents of Kallara fled to Trincomalee town and  returned six months later.

On 25th May 1995 the LTTE attacked  Kallara a month after it broke its cease-fire agreement with the PA  government. 46 Sinhalese civilians were killed including a niece of  Agnes and the husband of her niece. Agnes now lives with other  Sinhalese refugees in Love Lane receiving food rations from the  government. The LTTE�s claim was put to these refugees that it had  attacked the village because these Sinhalese were integral to the  armed aggression against Tamils and were so part of the military  machine. The refugees responded that they did not work for the  Army and hardly saw the LTTE. The only help they gave the Army  was that their fishing boats were used to transport vegetables to the  Army from Puddavaikkattu and soldiers who were going home on  leave.

The presence of Sinhalese fisherfolk in the area goes far back and  has been mentioned in the Ceylon Census of 1901. The LTTE's  actions have forced isolated Sinhalese and Muslim communities to  depend on the Sri Lankan Army for their protection. The choice was  not theirs. Several of the men among the refugees now work for  fishing boat owners in the area.

Refugees: General 

A key problem presently facing refugees from the Tamil villages of  Trincomalee is that they are scattered in several camps or in small  communities around Trincomalee town, in Mullaitivu District and  further afield such as Mannar Mainland(Madhu), Mannar  Island(Pesalai) and India.

The camp at Alles Garden near Trincomalee town was built by the  UNHCR and is now administered by the Trincomalee Kachcheri . All  refugees who are not resettled are provided rations by  rehabilitation ministry. Nilaveli, still has a refugee camp at the  Roman Catholic church where the refugees came mainly from the  villages further north such as Kuchchaveli and Thiriyai. The  difference is that those in Nilaveli, had evacuated after the army  arrived in 1990 and harrassed the people, causing some to  disappear. The people had then moved towards Trincomalee town  for relative safety and some had settled in Nilaveli.

Those in the  UNHCR camp are generally people who fled into Mullaitivu  District before the Army arrived in June 1990, trekked through the  jungle to the Mannar coast, were in India as refugees and were  brought back by ship to Trincomalee from 1993 under what they took  to be a guarantee of their security by UNHCR. The UNHCR camp  thus contains people from all parts of the district starting from  Pulmoodai, Thiriyai and Kuchavelli in the north, from Kannia and  Pankulam to the west of Trincomalee town, and also persons from  the Mutur and Kinniya divisions in the south of the district.

Kannia, Pankulam and Thiriyai are at present not under army  control., and lie almost totally abandoned. These persons may not be  able to go back, unless the LTTE and the security forces agreed to  certain norms that would guarantee their safety and reconstruction  is made possible. But a number of persons in these camps are from  Kuchchaveli which is the last village going north under Army  control. Between Kuchchaveli and Pulmoddai is a gap containing  Pudavaikkaddu, Thiriyai and Kallara from which the Army pulled  out in 1995.

Refugees from Kuchchaveli have for some time been  asked to return. Some of the factors are that these refugees from  Kuchchaveli have found work as employees of fishing boat owners  close to town, as labourers or as farm hands around Nilaveli. They  receive rations as displaced persons, have some kind of rudimentary  housing particularly in the UNHCR camp, and their children have  found schools close to the camps. Combined with doubts and  uncertainties about going back home, a certain inertia has set in. On  the other hand if communication is established between the  scattered communities from the same village and they can jointly  decide to go back., there would be greater confidence in returning.

The refugees at the Nilaveli Roman Catholic church also related a  problem faced by a number of refugee families who did not flee the  district in 1990. The Army had come into the Nilaveli church camp on  three occasions from July to August 1990 and taken away a total of  56 males who are now missing. The families who lost bread winners  have been eking out a living supported by government rations. It is  not easy for them to contemplate going back to their village and  starting life anew, without assurance of further support. Further,  entrenched discriminatory practices followed at check points and by  the Navy reinforce Tamils in their insecurity. For the refugees in  particular these prevent them from developing trust. For example,  the Tamil and Muslim fishermen are not allowed to go beyond a  certain distance from the shore. But this does not apply to Sinhalese  fishermen.

Also among the refugees in town are Muslims from Pulmoddai.  These people too are scattered with some in Kinnia, some in  Puttalam and others in Pulmoddai itself. According to Ahamed  Lebbe, the head of sixteen families living in Love Lane, they had  come to town in 1990 and went back on foot after two years. But has  received little from the rehabilitation ministry besides their rations.  There is no direct access to Pulmoddai along the coast. Ahamed  Lebbe feels that they may be cheated again and is reluctant to go  back without more concrete assurances.

In the case of Puddavai Kaddu the Muslim villagers were even  earlier treated with suspicion by the security forces. At the outset of  the present bout of war in April 1995, the LTTE attacked soldiers in  the area and five civilians were killed, reportedly in reprisals by the  Army. The area is now under LTTE control. These refugees feel that  they cannot go back until the security forces are firmly in control,  owing to the LTTE�s ambivalent attitude towards Muslims.

The TULF MP was asked for his observations on rehabilitation and  to respond to some of the shortcomings that people had complained  about. One of the complaints was that the 186 families of estate  labour origin who were resettled in Kappalthurai six miles south on  the Colombo road are living in dilapidated conditions. The MP  admitted that the conditions for resettlement are not ideal and the  Rs25,000 /= provided for housing by the rehabilitation ministry was  inadequate. He pointed out that adjacent to Kappalthurai 50  Muslim families and another group of Sinhalese families were  resettled with identical facilities - that is an initial Rs 6,000/= and  then the housing grant in stages.

The Muslims and Sinhalese he  said, had done some gardening and had found some other means to  supplement their income. They participated in the self-housing  scheme and had put up houses using the Rs 25,000/= from the  rehabilitation ministry along with their own money and they are  now fairly stable. The Tamils he said had not participated in the  self-housing scheme. But they had been given a hospital that is now  being built and two school buildings. But they had been slow in  finding means of a reasonable income. Although the dry rations  would normally have been stopped after they were paid the Rs  6,000/=, this facility has been extended. It is therefore not correct, he  said, to say that they have been unduly neglected or treated  unfairly.

The MP observed that although settling rural refugees in small plots  of land around Trincomalee town is welcomed by some, it would on  the long run be ruinous for the Tamils. He added, 'Most of these  people are from the villages and that is where their culture and  community life belong. In your village you have your culture, your  place of worship, your home garden and you will never starve. In  the case of refugees in town their children are in a sorry plight and  you could see many of them rootless and becoming undisciplined.'

'It is not fair to say that Trincomalee town is being neglected by me.  In fact the building programmes of schools that had long been  stalled are now being looked into and new buildings have been put  up under various schemes. But I would say that my priority is the  rural villages. It is these areas that had suffered the greatest  destabilising damage and conditions must be created for people to  go back. Several tens of millions of rupees are now being spent on  rural infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and dispensaries. I  would say that resettlement in Thampalakamam is a fair success.  Sippitthidal, Munmaritthidal, Parathipuram, Mulliyady and  Patthinipuram have been resettled. They now have a hospital with a  maternity ward, a medical ward and an ambulance and patients  need not come to Trincomalee except in the serious cases. Because  some people went back and resettled the area, other refugees are  now coming back, even from places such as Mullaitivu.

If you look at the refugee phenomenon closely, it is often the case  that at the slightest sign of trouble those in villages more accessible  from Trincomalee town tend to flee there. You take Ichchilampattai  (in the south of the district near Verugal). This has been the most  difficult area. It has been changing hands from the Army to the  LTTE. But all this time hardly two percent of the people ever fled the  area. Sambaltivu, Athimoddai, and Illupaikulam had been resettled,  and money is being spent on infrastructure including Rs 15 million  on water supply. The LTTE twice attacked the police in Sambaltivu  and about 60% of the people ran back to Trincomalee town that is  barely 6 miles away. But the rest are staying put, and hopefully  those who left would return. Kuchchaveli now has a hospital built  by the Swiss Disaster Fund and it is about time the people went  back. The rations supplied by the Rehabilitation Ministry too cannot  be kept up for ever and sooner or later they would be stopped. We  need to work at bringing life back to our villages, if not our villages  may be gone forever. As things are, the basics such as a decent  school, a hospital and basic help in housing can be provided to those  who return. The rest is left to us'.

Staying home and the political challenge before the Tamils: 

Among the urgent questions facing the Tamils of Trincomalee are  the abandoned villages and the refugees, many of whom are now  around town, seeing little prospect of going back in the near future.  There are a number of similarities between those leaving Jaffna and  going to Colombo, eventually hoping to go abroad; and those  refugees in Trincomalee. If this goes on the former may end up as  marginalised plebeians in Western society, while those who  abandoned their villages in Trincomalee may find themselves as  impoverished vagrants in new slums around Trincomalee town.

Both these phenomena have to do with the refusal to tackle serious  political and human rights issues internal to the Tamil community.  For the middle and upper classes, it has become too comforting to  send their children abroad and involve themselves in NGO activities  that amount to little more than giving handouts. In this culture there  is a good market for blaming the Sri Lankan government, the  security forces, the rehabilitation minister Mr.Ashraff and the Sri  Lanka Muslim Congress, besides the ordinary Sinhalese, for all the  ills of the Tamils. This goes hand in hand with the refusal to face up  to the crucial questions posed by the activities of the LTTE.

For those Tamils who intend to retain this country as their home,  the problem has reached crisis proportions because the market for  blaming the government, the security forces etc. has its greatest  demand at the higher and most articulate levels of Tamil society.  Whether the latter realise it or not, their conduct suggests that they  have much to gain by going on blaming the government and  continuing a situation of war. It does help their children to establish  themselves abroad. But it also creates hell for those wanting to  remain behind. For those sections of Tamil society who support the  LTTE or the actions of the other groups such as the murder of  T.D.Pieris, the militant cadre and their eventual fate count for  nothing. They are just regarded as our thugs who are a useful  counter to Sinhalese or Muslim thugs, whether in uniform or  without. This makes the task of creating a healthy politics which  would help the Tamils to live in dignity at home even more difficult.

The reality is that a good deal has at least temporarily changed for  the better under the present government. There is breathing space  which was not available before. Activities in the South by peace and  political groups have shown that there is far greater receptivity  among ordinary Sinhalese people for a just settlement to the war  that is also very hurtful to them. There is also more space to  mobilise on human rights issues with less fear of repercussions. We  too need to use these openings to consolidate and expand them. Our  purpose in highlighting continuing deficiencies in the state  structures is to help bring about corrective political action and not to  feed a market.

If we try to answer the question why the refugees in Trincomalee  are not going back to their villages, the blame lies not so much with  the rehabilitation effort, but primarily with the policies of the LTTE.  The same is true of those leaving Jaffna, who most of the time  though, find it far easier and self-justifying to cater to the market  and blame the government. In Jaffna those seen to co-operate with  the government on rehabilitation and reconstruction have been  threatened by the LTTE. Where the LTTE is concerned they do not  want the credit to go to anyone else for reconstruction and the  restoration of village life. They would keep the people refugees  until the war is ended in their favour. One need not explain why this  would be catastrophic. Our villages and our community life may  then be gone forever.

Thus the political and human rights issues remain paramount. Our  first handicap is that there is no real political discussion within our  community. For example, why are a number of Tamils happy with  the murder of T.D.Pieris? There was similar rejoicing in nationalist  quarters in 1975 when Alfred Duraiappah was murdered. The  failure to condemn this ultimately led to grave violations and rivers  of blood within the community. Twenty two years later, have we not  learnt? The problem with Pieris ought to have been tackled  politically. The facts were there and so was the commission report.

It is generally considered bad form among Tamils to have a good  word for the North-East Provincial Council which was a result of  the Indo-Lanka Accord. But many in Trincomalee feel that this was  the most hopeful thing that ever happened to the Tamils. Now they  see the attack on Sinhalese in 1987 as grave blunder. Had we instead  sought accommodation with the Sinhalese then and persuaded them  to participate in the NEPC, it would have attained greater stature  and stability. Much has thus gone by default owing to the lack of  moral and political vision.

It is today far easier for those who are not refugees to see that it is  in the best interest of the refugees to go back to their villages, than it  is for the refugees themselves. They have gone through the  experience of becoming refugees on more than one occasion and  thus have legitimate fears. It therefore falls to the community to  articulate a politics that gives them confidence. If we have failed to  persuade the government to bring to trial those service personnel  behind the Killiveddy massacre last year and the jail-break murders  recently, what reasonable guarantees can we give those returning  to rural villages? Even the jail murders which happened in the heart  of town have been covered up with next to no protest.

Once more we return to the theme mentioned at the outset of this  report. A large number of Tamils aged 45 and below have one way  or the other gained valuable experience through the militant  struggle. Much has been learnt and forgotten. What has been learnt  must be openly discussed and put to good use. The Trincomalee  Urban Council is controlled by such persons. What they have  demonstrated by going strictly according to the law and standing up  to the Brigadier, is an example of what can be achieved. If they  could go even further and convince the Sinhalese residents that their  actions are in the common interest of everyone, it would be a  hopeful sign.

Trincomalee poses a potent challenge to all those concerned with  bringing about peace. It is a misfortune that most peace groups are  based in Colombo and have only a cursory understanding of the  deeper problems in Trincomalee. Although some of these activists of  proven dedication have made a significant impact in the South, the  intricacies of Trincomalee go far beyond general sentiments. The  ideological workings of the state apparatus, the legacy of Tamil  nationalism that fostered strife within and without, and the survival  oriented populism of Tamil militant groups, have all combined to  create an atmosphere of mutual fear among the different  communities. On the other hand the people have continually  demonstrated a common vested interest in communal harmony. But  with a fragile political climate in the South, the destabilising  potential in Trincomalee should not be underestimated. Herein lies  the task of the peace groups: to marshal their energies, co-ordinate  their activities and bring to bear a common voice of the people.

 

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