A land left behind

Mariyasuresh Isswary, 42
Something is stirring in Mullaitivu.

Walter Wuthmann-Tuesday, April 24, 2018

For years, this corner of northern Sri Lanka was a stronghold for the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE had its own police here, its own courts. Its
leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had a house and a fortified bunker in
Puthukkudiyiruppu, the area’s bustling little commercial centre.
A whole generation of young people in the Mullaitivu district today lived for
longer under the LTTE administration than the Sri Lankan governments.
Mullaitivu was also the site of the LTTE’s last stand in its war against the armed
forces in 2009. It was here that an estimated 100,000 civilians sought shelter
from the fighting on a 3-square kilometre strip of sand in the middle of the
crossfire. A UN report described the final months there as “reminiscent of hell.”
But nearly a decade since the end of the war, many scars have not healed.

The military has been slow to

withdraw, and the district as a whole remains one of the poorest in Sri Lanka.
Drive around Mullaitivu and you hear rumblings of discontent, not just with the
government but with the Tamil National Alliance, the party that people here
have traditionally supported overwhelmingly.
They’re angry that promises like the release of lands from the military and
answers about disappeared people remain unfulfilled, and they blame the
politicians who are supposed to represent them.
This frustration showed in the February local elections when a new political
force staged something of a small coup in Puthukkudiyiruppu.
Formed just 45 days before the vote, and completely independent of any
political party, a group calling itself Mattathukkana Ilajooir Amaipu, or the
Youth Movement for Change, won 4 seats on the 22-seat Pradeshiya Sabha.
“The TNA has lost its way,” said T. Nithiyananthan, the chairperson of the Youth
Movement for Change’s guiding committee. “In the last election, the top-level
leaders, they did not even come to Mullaitivu.”
Mattathukkana Ilajooir Amaipu is now running its own candidate in the
upcoming elections for the Northern Provincial Council.
And they think they’ll win, hitting the same sorts of issues they ran on for the
Puthukkudiyiruppu local council.
It’s a small shift, in a small town in the country’s Northern Province, but it could
be a sign of things to come.
“We are quietly doing something here,” Nithiyananthan said.
Brewing discontent
You can’t miss the legacy of the war in Mullaitivu. Shattered houses still stand
between Palmyrah trees, and caravans of soldiers bump along the roads,
shuttling between the many military camps around the district.
According to a data analysis by the Adayalaam Centre for Policy Research,
about 60,000 Sri Lankan Army troops are currently stationed in the Mullaitivu
District. That’s about 25 percent of the active military personnel in the whole
country.
In front of the Pilakkudijiruppu Air Force Base outside of Mullaitivu town, a
group of families has set up a makeshift tent.
On a recent morning, Arumogam Velayuda Pillai, 51, said he had been
protesting outside the military base for 411 days.
“We’re not asking for anything other than our own land,” he said.
Pillai said he and his family fled their home on December 26, 2008, during the
Army’s final offensive. When they returned in 2012 from an IDP camp, they
found the road to their home closed off by a gate, and their access blocked by
military officers.
They were resettled on a small piece of land across the road. But Pillai said it
doesn’t compare to their ancestral home.
“We had the lagoon on one side, and paddy fields on the other. We had
coconuts and all other resources,” he said, gesturing to the land beyond the
gate. “But here, we don’t have anything … now we have to buy (coconuts) from
the shop, while the Sri Lankan military is picking ours.”
Pillai is angry at the military for occupying land that he says is rightfully his. But
he’s equally mad at the politicians who have promised to get it back for him,
and haven’t delivered.
“Almost all the members of the TNA we’ve talked to have given their promise to
get these lands back,” he said. “They are saying we are talking with the
government. But so far they didn’t achieve anything, and they didn’t give us
anything.”
He paused to let the point sink in.
“So these days we are untrustworthy about our own representatives also,” he
said.
On the other side of town, in another protest tent, a group of women sits
waiting for answers about their lost loved ones.
Mariyasuresh Isswary, 42, is the District Coordinator of the Association for the
Enforced Disappeared Mullaitivu. She lost her husband in March 2009. She said
the Red Cross told her that he was arrested by the Sri Lankan military, but she
hasn’t received any information since.
“Ten years we don’t know if our husbands are alive or not,” she said. “Only once
we know can we move on and plan for our lives, to choose to re-marry or to
move on in some way.”
Like Pillai who is protesting for his land back, Isswary feels betrayed by her
elected representatives.
She said that the recently established Office of Missing Persons, which is the
government’s solution to their problem and largely supported by the TNA, was
inadequate.
“Our own Tamil representatives may say that we can trust the OMP and work
with that,” she said. But she said the fact that the body doesn’t have powers of
prosecution, and that some of its members come from the Colombo elite and the
military, makes her feel that it’s “a play” to the international community.
“We trusted (the TNA), and that’s why we voted for them, but nowadays they
are not seriously addressing our aspirations in the Parliament, or in the
international arena,” she said.
“We are suffering a lot sitting here in this tent
all the time,” she added. “There’s always dust.
Even when we cook, there is dust in the food.
But TNA members are our representatives,
and they are travelling in AC vehicles and
have a luxurious life.”
“They are not genuinely and truly addressing
our issues,” she said.
This growing wave of discontent is not lost on
local TNA politicians.
“Look, I don’t say that the TNA is doing
wonders,” said Peter Illancheliyan, the Youth
Head of TNA Mullaitivu. “I accept that the
TNA is not working properly in some areas.”
Peter Illancheliyan, the
Youth Head But he largely defended the TNA’s political
manoeuvring, especially on issues related to
of TNA Mullaitivu. the land release.
The army recently returned 133 acres of land
in the Keppapulavu area, which Illancheliyan
said the TNA was instrumental in securing.
“We protested in Keppapulavu, and as a result, we got a victory,” he said.
But he acknowledged the complaints like those of the families of the missing,
who said they felt their voices weren’t heard.
“We can’t tell everything to the people,” he said. “We need to do some things
technically. There may be some secrets. It doesn’t mean that our leaders are not
working properly for our people.”
He said the nuances of deal-making, especially in Colombo, made it hard to be
fully transparent.
“It’s not a good idea to oppose the government all the time, but rather we need
to handle these matters in a soft manner,” he said. He pointed out that the Joint
Opposition criticizes the current government for being too close with the TNA,
which energizes their base in the south.
“We can’t do everything in a straightforward way,” he said.
Despite the independent group’s recent electoral victory, Illancheliyan said he
doesn’t feel threatened by other Tamil political groups.
“They are policy-less parties,” he said. “They can be a challenge in elections, but
when it comes to a solution to the ethnic problem, there won’t be a big
challenge.”
Organising a new opposition
They disagree.
The leaders of the Youth Movement for Change say they think the TNA is vastly
underestimating how angry their base is.
“We got around 4,500 votes without spending anything,” said Nithiyananthan,
the group’s chairperson.
Before they formed the Youth Movement for Change, the individual members of
the group’s steering committee were part of a social media network that
organised charity works around Mullaitivu. In the past, they’ve raised money to
donate sewing machines to war widows, and bicycles for children.
He said it was clear to them on the ground that the TNA was losing support.
“Nowadays, they’re career politicians. They only think about their own future,”
he said. “If anyone wants to come up from the ground, they try to undercut
them.”
So Nithiyananthan, a former TNA voter himself, said he decided it was time to
take a new path.
The thought was that if a new party wasn’t going to emerge for them, they
might as well make one themselves, he said.
They campaigned on basic issues, like education, development, and clean
drinking water, and offered party membership to anyone who was interested
regardless of age or caste. They also spoke bluntly about drug abuse, military
occupation, and past atrocities.
When they won four seats, “for the community and the public, it was a
surprise,” he said. “But it wasn’t for us.”
Nithiyananthan said they were now talking to Northern Provincial Council Chief
Minister C V Wigneswaran about forming a coalition to contest the provincial
council elections. The TNA said recently that it would not nominate
Wigneswaran, who they see as a renegade, for the post again.
“For so many years, we have relied on one particular party, or one particular
symbol, for our vote,” said K A Aputharajah, 68, a former lawyer and the Youth
Movement for Change’s candidate for the upcoming provincial elections.
“It’s not easy to come away from that particular identity,” he added. “We hope
that in the future, we will get even better results than this election.”
To stay or to go?
Yet even as the politicians strategize, the lives of the people in Mullaitivu go on.
About three weeks ago some fishermen were arrested for protesting a Navy
base that they say cut off their access to the Nanthi Kadal lagoon, their
traditional fishing ground.
“We are not against the ordinary business of the government,” said R.B.S.
Sanmugalingam, 51, one of the fishermen. “But this lagoon is a great resource.
If the military is going to disturb this fishing, then it will affect the whole
economy.”
“If we can’t access it, we’ll just protest again and again,” said S N
Senthuirselvan, 42. “Fishing is all we know.”
In a house down the road, the local Grama Sevaka K B Jeyeaharan said he
supported the fishermen’s struggle.
“It is obvious I am a servant of the government,” he said. “On the other hand, I
have a desire to help my people.” He said this tension between working in a
bureaucracy and wanting to be an activist can make his job difficult.
He said he often thinks about leaving Mullaitivu altogether.
“Day-by-day, the culture and the dignity and the social structure that we had in
the past is changing,” he said. “I don’t know what it will be like here for my
children.”
He clasped his hands together. Behind him was a small crucifix, and pictures of
family members killed in the war.
“If there’s any chance to leave Sri Lanka, I think that would be a good decision
for me, and my family,” he said.

A fisherman in Nanthi Kadal lagoon

Posted by Thavam