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ALSO IN OUR NAME
When a word is deprived of its dimension of action, the word is turned into idle chatter, into verbalism. If action is emphasized exclusively, to the detriment of reflection, the word is converted into activism.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.The Collective for Batticaloa is a small group of people from southern Sri Lanka who toured certain areas in Batticaloa in order to assess the nature of the present political and socio-cultural climate prevailing there and to be in solidarity with the people of the east in these difficult times.
Our visit was motivated by a need on our part to make contact with at least some people in the east. Since the time of the MOU and the Ceasefire Agreement there has been a no war situation in the country. The peace process has been hailed as bringing calm and prosperity to the country, with its economy beginning to thrive once more. Yet, it has also been severely criticized from many angles, notably by human rights groups, the UTHR in particular, and by groups representing Muslim interests in the north and east. Groups emphasizing minority concerns in the north and east including those of Muslims, and other ordinary people, including women and children, have consistently questioned the premises on which the peace process has been built. They claim that the peace process has brought very little peace to the war ridden areas, especially the east and that the peace is about peace in the south and peace for the market to expand than about peace for people living in the north and east.
The Karuna-Vanni debacle early this year and the continuing internal strife within the LTTE has further turned the East into a battle field and a testing ground for the stability of the peace process. In April, when the pro-Prabakharan (Vanni) led group and the Karuna group clashed in Vaharai, there were heavy losses incurred by the Karuna faction, following which large numbers of the cadres belonging to his faction were released. Karuna presumably retreated into the jungle with a few of his followers; about 6000 combatants were released who, , made their way to Batticaloa and other parts of the east. ‘There were children, young people everywhere, not knowing where to go, where to find their families,’ an eye witness report of that eventful day of April 12 2004 stated. The Vanni faction too had large numbers of combatants from the east. Responding to pressure from the families of these cadres, a small number of children, about 200 were released by the LTTE (Vanni) to the UNICEF in Mid-April.
The split within the LTTE, somewhat divided along regional lines though not exclusively, has resulted in a totally unexpected situation, spawning its own set of issues, concerns, problems. However, the showdown and the continued tensions are signs of a fragile political situation in the east, most exemplified by the large scale demobilization of the Karuna faction. It is in this climate of anticipation and trepidation that we decided to visit the east at the beginning of June, to find out for ourselves, partial as our finding might be, what the tenor of the land, the pulse of the people are. As a collective and individually we want to make an informed intervention in the peace process. The peace process is about us in the south and the people of the north and east. Unless we make important links of solidarity and action, peace will be fragmented and lopsided. Very specifically, we were prompted by growing concerns of;
1) child recruitment which had risen to alarming proportions in the east since the MOU,
2) political assassinations
3) Muslim-Tamil relations .Batticaloa for most of us who went was unfamiliar territory and we had to pore over a tourist road map, like many of the other peacemakers to plot out our action. Avoiding the complexities involved in navigating the line between cleared and uncleared areas, we stayed fairly close to the main line of travel, the Colombo-Batticaloa route. Although, in the few days we were there, we had not mastered the intricacies of existence in Batticaloa, we can say without reservation that PEACE has passed by the east, leaving its people out. Batticaloa is in the thrall of the PEACE PROCESS, but there is no peacefulness; definitely not for the struggling and working families and people of Batticaloa. The Karuna-Prabakharan ‘supremacy’ battle has created in many ways further uncertainties as people seem to fear not just one but multiple factions. On the other hand, the uncertainty has probably opened up spaces for negotiation where greater interventions in the peace process can be constructively made. In this regard we appeal to CIVIL SOCIETY, the INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY and all other progressive circles to ‘hear’ the pleas, the concerns, the desperate calls for help that parents make regarding their children, and the frustration of a large number of Muslims of the east 1).
OCCUPATIONS
“ Batticaloa has been an occupied land for several decades now” said one respondent to us, pointing out that successive occupations by the Sri Lankan/Sinhala Army, the IPKF and the LTTE from the north have always exploited and used the land for its resources. Of course one could go further back in history to the time of the Kandyan Kingdom and European colonialism. Batticaloa is occupied land in many senses; when we were down there we were continuously being greeted by army checkpoints. The sentry at the checkpoints let us get off easily, given our tourist standing. But there was another worm eating into the entire fabric of society, like a cancer, not just undermining its social order, but also tearing apart social communion. It was an occupation that was taking hold of the mind and body of the people from within. This occupation is perhaps the most insidious of all, in the sense, it is the most difficult to talk about, externalize and objectify. This occupation results in a distressing isolation of individuals within a polity.
We encountered trauma on our visit: collective trauma. Occupations are not only about brute violence. Occupation buys your willingness to live under the most difficult conditions: Occupation is about consenting to violence. Occupation allows one to be spoken for and spoken to. Occupation means one does not hear or talk about the violent death of a friend, the trauma of a brother/father/ mother when her 13 year old daughter has been abducted by the LTTE; it means that one’s home with its familiar adornments of pictures couches, flowers and porches do not provide one with the usual sense of middle class security. One does not know whether the person who walks in with a friendly greeting has a gun tucked away. Occupation means: ‘we do not know who killed X. We do not ask. It is not our concern.’
The Gun speaks for us:
Fear was a predominant issue among all we spoke to: ‘We do not ask questions from anybody nor do we talk about these things as we do not know who is who.’ While people spoke of the army and the violence of the STF openly, the ‘unspoken’ words were about the rift within the LTTE and how it has overtaken the everyday of the people’s actions there. “When there is a killing we do not ask who is killed any more but who has killed.” Even leaders of the community are too scared to meet together and discuss the situation. As the middle class has left or is leaving, the community at large is left in the lurch, leaderless and fragmented.
Wherever we went there was a reluctance to talk. There was the prepared official political line that appeared to be in favour of the LTTE. But individuals followed us after the meetings, walked up to us, and made sad appeals for help.
Batticaloa is a town of harthals. Usually these harthals are accompanied by vehement expressions of protest, road blocks and other signs of threat. Two days after our arrival we were stumped in our plans by a harthal called by the LTTE (Vanni faction) to mourn the death of G. Nadesan. While Nadesan lay dead in his home, the town was slowly coming to a halt. When we set out on our ‘picnicking’ we were greeted by silent streets and shops. From behind closed doors a few stared at us, at our supposed temerity, stupidity or privilege. One of our local guides pointed out an LTTEr on a motorbike in civvies, on a surveying mission. But there was also another curious thing. The LTTE did not seem to have absolute monopoly of the streets there. A few predominantly Muslim towns were teeming with activity and people who seem to defy direct orders from the LTTE, and resist the factional politics within the LTTE. Even in the other areas, the stranglehold of harthals had not quite throttled life in the streets out. Since the showdown between Karuna and the Vanni faction, taxation has ceased in Batticaloa. ‘Of course we are happy about it,’ said one respondent. Could we take this as some kind of breathing space for democracy?
WHERE HAVE ALL THE CHILDREN GONE?
The released combatants, children and young people pose the greatest challenge to society today. If 6000-odd children and young people have been released and are at present waiting for a conducive turn of events, this return of ex-combatants can no longer be thought of as an isolated and peripheral issue. The UNICEF figure of returned under-aged children is approximately 1, 500 in number, the actual figures are somewhere between 2, 000 and 3, 000. This means that close to 50% of the cadre population within the LTTE is under-aged while the other half consists of very young adults. It has been estimated that there are probably between 8 –12,000 children in the LTTE. The issue of children, of people returning, calls for immediate and urgent action on our part. But responses to the situation are delayed, and worse still, uncoordinated and discrete. Thus, organizations and leaders have not come up with any concerted programme of action that would infuse a sense of confidence in the system or in the structures of administration or service. This urgent issue cannot be dismissed as tangential to a resolution of the ethnic conflict. It is central to ‘talks’ about interim administration, governance, devolution of power, militarization and importantly political stability. It is an issue, a problem and factor that have to be faced up to and addressed by all of us today. Many political and humanitarian entities have chosen to turn a blind eye to this issue because of their short term interests and the exigencies of peace negotiations while families languish or are eaten up with fear, anxiety and a severe lack of resources.
The collective trauma of society that was clearly evident wherever we went is most exemplified in the silence regarding ‘returnees.’ Parents do not know where to turn to, and a mother clutches at any passerby by who may listen to her story of helplessness.. The silence surrounding the ‘returnee’ is a silence born not out of indifference but of fear and hopelessness. This fear must be broken through and we need to build a culture of solidarity centred on empowering the ex-combatants and their families.
Life for the returnee is hard. As checkpoints have been installed along the Vaharai-Batticaloa thoroughfare, the returnees find it difficult to travel without detection. Many of them do not possess Identity Cards. There is also a directive by the LTTE asking local authorities such as the Divisional Secretariat not to issue I.D cards to returning children and young people. Posters have appeared in the Batticaloa-Kallady regions calling out to people: “We will once again protect the Land of Eelam.” What do these slogans and posters mean? People, families fear re-recruitment, which they say can happen at any moment and without warning. Civil Society in Batticaloa is apprehensive about what could happen and how to resist re-recruitment. One of the leaders we met said, rather scornfully, of other organizations: ‘Nobody can stop re-recruitment as long as LTTE is in power. The only way to negotiate with the situation at hand is not to negotiate with the LTTE and to maintain your independence. I have done that.’
Society must develop some strategy to address the challenge of returning combatants and recruitment. Approximately 2 – 3, 000 children between the ages of roughly 12 and 18 in the Batticaloa region are in urgent need of assistance right now. These children, released by the Karuna faction of the LTTE, are facing many obstacles in their efforts at reintegration into their social milieu. No adequate mechanisms or programme currently exist to ensure their physical and psychological well being.
1. The families today are faced with the difficult situation of providing for them and of providing them with protection.
2. Families and their children live in constant fear as these children (and their families) are being pressurized through various means to rejoin the LTTE.
3. Almost all of them undoubtedly need some form of counseling.
4. Those brave enough to attempt a return to school have been ostracized and even refused readmission in some instances.
5. Although the Education Department has directed schools to readmit school going children, practical, social and psychological factors pull in other directions.
6. Schools have few resources to help these children catch up on years of missed schooling.
7. Parents despair over the fact that their children somehow cannot get out to either other areas in Sri Lanka or abroad, don’t have enough money to do so, or are unable to procure the necessary official identification papers as the government authorities will not issue them without the prior consent of the LTTE.It has been estimated that approximately 60% of the returned children are young girls. Many of them are instantly recognizable because of their very short hair. While the hair may grow longer, issues of anxiety that these young women face may not disappear. Returning to school is not easy. Some have outgrown in age their level of school knowledge. Others have been trained in some other valuable skill that they would like to continue to possess and be trained in further. Social ostracization and fear surrounding the returnee impede easy reintegration. As one respondent said, the child has to walk alone to school. Nobody would walk along with her out of fear. Parents of the other children are scared that their own children might be recruited in a new wave of recruitment if they befriend these children. The children would introduce the others to unwelcome ‘conduct’. Schools too are worried about how returning children might either ‘lure’ other children into the fold of the LTTE or be a threat to the well being of their own children. They are marked people. They, the children are ‘shy’ reticent and withdrawn for the most part. But when we sang Sinhala and Tamil songs, one of them said: ‘we were not allowed to sing cinema songs in the camp. We could listen only to ‘liberation’ songs.’ She joined us when we sang a new Tamil hit, eyes downcast, trying to mouth the unfamiliar words. Girls with their closely cropped hair are highly visible and are marked. At army check points they are singled out for scrutiny, making all heads turn and look at them. Previously, before the release, the short hair, acted as a deterrent to their running away as they would have been easily discovered. At present they are targets for re-recruitment, social ostracization. It is a psychologically traumatic state of mind for the child.
Parents find it difficult to cope with returned children, while also having to provide for their other children, earn a living and survive in adverse poverty. Reports abound about parents marrying off young children in the hope that this will deter their re-recruitment. Those with sufficient means have resorted to sending their children to work as domestics in the Middle East in a bid to ensure their safety. They cannot be easily absorbed into the family occupation either, particularly into farming, as that would entail getting back to the jungle area, a close reminder of all of the threats embodied by the LTTE.As one mother told us:
‘ First the LTTE denied having my child in the camp until I got to know of it through other sources. Even after that when I visited they would not let me talk to him for long; They (the LTTE said) said, if the mother is with the child for a long time, mother’s love would increase and love for the land would diminish.’
In the meantime, the child combatant falls through the cracks between mother and motherland: a contradiction that peacemakers have not taken note of.
A grandfather broke down: “What they say they would do they do not; What they do, they do not say”
This grandfather and mother have been left out of the peace process. May we ask why?In all of our encounters we saw children saying:
‘ I am scared.’
‘ Please take me out of this place.’
‘ Find me a place to stay away from Batticaloa. I am scared. ‘An 18 year old carries a grenade in his pocket, threatening to kill his mother if she does not send him abroad. This mother who earns a living selling vegetables has another 13 year old daughter who has also recently returned. Can she speak?
Often the LTTE would recruit children of parents who are extremely poor, or from families of single parents, female headed households, because then these parents would not be able to try too hard to get their children back. Recent reports suggest that the LTTE is paying ‘informants’ to gather information regarding children who may be hidden elsewhere for safety. Increased recruitment is currently being carried out in Trincomalee and the Vanni.
UNICEF
It is indescribably sad that the issues faced by these children and their families are largely ignored. Many are unaware that such a problem exists; others choose to ignore it for reasons of political expediency; the few committed organizations and individuals working in this area operate amidst a climate of fear, suspicion, uncertainty, and occasionally terror with very inadequate resources. While the UNICEF has registered about 50% of the returned children and has advocated on their behalf it is unable to ensure their safety. But while UNICEF has begun to organize training programmes for the children, other than for their collaboration with TRO, UNICEF has had little to do with local NGOs. This situation may change or may have already changed. However the changes should be deep seated and not cosmetic so that local people and local organizations including other Sri Lankan organizations can develop their own creative responses to the situation. The effectiveness of UNICEF as well as of that of local organizations has been hampered by confusion over the nature of the role played by the former. We spoke to several organizations and leaders who said that they had no power, no ‘mandate’ to carry out any programme for the children or for the youth released by either faction of the LTTE. Many organizations seem to believe that the UNICEF has the sole mandate to deal with these returned children, although they are unclear as to what the specific nature of this mandate is, or as to who exactly has handed over the task to UNICEF. The point is that confusion over ‘the mandate’ has inhibited other organizations from focusing on this issue (or intervening in), although it is widely acknowledged that the participation of the UNICEF is vital for ensuring the success of any endeavour.
It is unfortunate that the government, government agencies involved in rehabilitation, human rights and child protection, and civil society in general seem to have placed the responsibility of these returned children, and that of other children that may be released in the future, solely in the hands of INGOs like UNICEF and ‘Save the Children.’ It is important that we collectively come to terms with the issue of returned children. International organizations, while invaluable for their support, cannot be the only places of refuge that young children can turn to for safety. We are responsible for the peace process and likewise we are responsible for these children as well. We cannot leave it to UNICEF alone.
Many of the returnees have acquired some skill, other than those that they already had, during the few years of training under the LTTE. These skills are diverse and are empowering at some level. For instance, many of the returnees have been trained in computer management programmes; quite a number in medical aid; others in accounting. Unfortunately, very few of the organizations we spoke to have actually thought of developing their projects in any of these disciplines and are most interested in providing vocational skills along very traditional lines of thinking. In some of the plans that NGOs and CBOs are planning to conduct for returning children there is a preponderance of training programmes in needlework, plumbing, masonry, motor mechanics etc. Again, the training in these skills is provided on a mass scale, for 75 persons at a time. A more innovative way may be to diversify the training and to provide it on a smaller scale so that the community itself would then be equipped with multiple skills.
When do children become adults?
While we continue to talk of children and their plight, we are sadly reminded of the fact that many of the returnees are above the age of 18. If one is a few months below the age of 18 one is a child, a few months over and one is an adult and can be offered no protection. It seems to be no ones’ concern that these youth may wish not to go back to the LTTE. They can fall only within the mandate of the UNHCR, but have very little protection. According to one of our respondents, in almost every district, the over 18 year olds outnumber the under eighteens. Yet, programmes are being initiated only for those below eighteen, the ‘children.’ This seeming and total indifference to the plight of young adults who have returned is an outcome of the fear psychosis that has gripped all of us. The ‘adults’ who have returned pose the greatest threat to the LTTE (Vanni-faction) and somehow have to be brought to book. Posters have been pasted all over asking them to register with the LTTE. There has been only a lukewarm response to this call. Yet, one wonders about how long these ‘adults’ can resist. Some have already been re-recruited and recruitment has stepped up. CBOs and NGOs we spoke to said they would not be able to hold any programmess for ‘children’ over 18. What does peace hold out to them please?
Pittum, Thengapoovum: Piecing (together) the Peace Process
In times past, the east was renowned for its record of peaceful coexistence of Muslims and Tamils. Where has all that gone today? The pittu bamboo metaphor used to denote the separate and yet close and symbiotic existence of Tamils and Muslims is seemingly a thing of the past. Relations between Muslims and Tamils in the east are under great strain and are scarred by tragic hostility. Both have suffered at the hands of the ‘other.’ Yet, strangely, both communities showed a great willingness to begin the process of mending relations. In no place did we hear of any bitter acrimony against the other community. . Also, Muslim groups repeatedly emphasized the distinction between the LTTE at whose hands they as an ethnic group had suffered and the Tamil people.
The Peace Process has been very linear in its approach to the conflict and has emphasized only militarily powerful and dominant groups as noteworthy parties to negotiations. Likewise, powerful segments of civil society and the intellectual and theoretical support bases of the peace process have been linear and politically modernist in their outlook treating ethnic groups, territory and people as homogenous. In turn, identity too has been seen as politically fixed, unmediated and as necessarily governed by top down mediations and not by multi lateral ones. While this is a core flaw of the peace process at large, where Muslim-Tamil relations in the east are concerned, this has resulted in tragedy. The proponents and advocates of the Peace Process, should even at this late date, work hard to enable dialogue between the two communities to flourish at many levels.
Our dialogue with Muslim groups centred on the issue of land, although we also discussed other important issues of intimidation, killings and taxation. While Muslims are not directly taxed in their own townships, Muslim traders who are obliged to trade outside the limits of their townships are taxed in Tamil areas which is then passed onto the people in Muslim areas IN THE FORM OF HIGHER PRICES. In the Kalkudah region where half the population of the Muslims of the Batticaloa region live and where they form roughly 40% of the population, they occupy only 0. 6% of the land. Agriculture, fishing, and business are the mainstay of their economy But the lands belonging to the Muslims lie beyond Tamil areas. The Muslims have to cross bordering Tamil areas controlled by the LTTE to till their land or to undertake fishing. They have been repeatedly threatened with death, at gun point, to abandon their livelihood and their land, which are then taken over by the lessee in some cases or by others. At times, Muslim farmers had been allowed to cultivate and toil over their land, only to be intimidated into abandoning their land at harvest time, the crop ripe for harvesting. Recently the Government turned a village situated in Koralapattu North – Kiran – into an AGA division by incorporating land including 10,000 acres which had previously belonged to a Muslim majority area. The few Muslims living there were intimidated by the LTTE and had fled the area. Since then, that area is forbidden land for Muslims. One woman said: ‘The LTTE recognizes our claims to the land only when it wants to buy those plots from us for a throw away price.’
Since 1990 after the infamous massacre of Muslim males in the Mosque in Kattankudy, Muslim men had faced threats to their lives. The Kattankudy massacre was followed by less spectacular incidents of violence against Muslims which had in turn resulted in anti-Tamil riots perpetrated by sections of the Muslim community. There is a large number of widows in Kattankudy, many of whom have received no redress at all as their husbands who died in the massacre were not government workers. Intimidation of Muslims by the LTTE has worsened in some ways after the MOU. Incidents of abductions and deaths have continued well into the present, the peace process, the MOU and Ceasefire Agreement notwithstanding. One member of an organization of predominantly Muslim membership said rather bitterly: ‘the southern media and the NGOs have done little to highlight our predicament. So many people have come here from the south and have gathered information from us about our disempowerment, the shrinking living and agricultural space available for the Muslims, about the land we have lost, about abductions. But they have not done anything about it after they have returned. I hope you will not do the same.’
Many of the Muslims we met in the Batticaloa region were not supportive of a separate Muslim unit as they felt that might further marginalize them as a minority. The Muslims want to live in peace, with their right to mobility fully restored. They want to be able to have safe and intimidation-free access to their land. They want to coexist with the Tamils in the east, their homeland, as they have done for generations.
The Muslim people are watching the unfolding events in the east keenly and from a distance. They do not know what the split within the LTTE holds for them. But as one person put it: ‘if the eastern Tamils cannot accept the leadership of Vanni, how could anybody expect us to? Or as another said ‘Maybe they will leave us alone for a while.’
THE PRAXIS of PEACE
The developing situation in the east is a complex part of the ethnic conflict, and there is no easy solution to it. The situation of the returnees, children and others, demands immediate attention. Re-recruitment is taking place and there is no response to it in the south, from southern peace making quarters. Any effort at resolving the ethnic conflict and brining peace to the country will entail ‘talks’ on the rights of combatants who are forced, abducted and packed off to fight a war against their wishes.
The east is going to be the touchstone for the success of the peace process. Unless peace makers attend to the imperatives of peace and not of war they will be greatly failing in their mission. Peace making should involve resistance to the operations of the war machinery. We have cracks appearing in the east; mothers have resisted the forcible recruitment of their children. ‘My mother resisted the LTTE. But she was beaten up by them.’ When the Vanni and Karuna factions had lined up along either side of the river in Vaharai, in silent hostility, mothers had gone and demanded the release of their children. The courage of the families has to be applauded, materially and ideologically supported. We have a duty towards these people as they are resisting for us too, in our name. The international community and local civil society must develop creative responses to the situation. They must develop viable programmes of reintegration of the returnees into a society that is caring, supportive and democratic. There should be an opening up of society and the possibility of multiple options for these young people as well as for their families and society at large.
Contributors to this report include Nirekha de Silva, Lareena Haq, Ziaul Haq, Naren Kumarakulasingam, Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham, M.K. Sarmila, Mihirini Sirisena, S. Sumathy and Gayani Sylva. They can be reached at batticaloa_collective@yahoo.com
1. Any visit from the ’privileged’ south to the war torn area of the east is politically fraught and is full of the dangers of political complaisance and superiority on the traveller’s part. Yet, we strove to battle through the voyerism that may be inherent in such visits and to turn the visit into a solidarity journey so that in the end the links we form are not be about ‘them’ and ‘us’ but will be about political action, ideas, and a mutually learning process. In reviewing the visit and our ‘findings’, we have expressed sentiments and ideas that may mark us as the outsider, for we cannot simply wish away the power relations already built into our different locations. Nor should we think that we who went formed a homogenous group as we occupy multiple political positions and come from different political backgrounds. Again, all of us are not from the south. The south/east dichotomy may even be a ‘false’ one and is useful only in so far as we can learn to make it an empowering one that keeps us/them in check. What we report here is what we heard, saw and had reported to us by people we met in the east. What we hold onto, on the other hand, is a desire to look at the Sri Lankan polity itself through what is happening in the east.
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