KAMALIKA PIERIS
As Eelam war IV came to an end, the armed forces
moved onto Rescue, Rehabilitation and Resettlement. This essay is about the
Rescue.
From mid
2008 civilians from LTTE controlled territory, were entering government
controlled territory. They came in small groups,
as well as large numbers, wherever and whenever possible. They escaped in the
daylight and at night. Sri Lanka army had provided night moves to help them get
across at night.
The
biggest escape came on 21 and 22 April 2009 when the LTTE embankments were opened up and
the hostages came streaming out. Before the day was over, army had rescued
around 80,000 civilians. By following morning 174,564 more had come in.
Hundreds of LTTE cadres had also dropped
their weapons and joined the large crowd fleeing across the lagoon. ‘It
was like hitting a ‘meevadaya’, the army said later.
On our
television screens, we saw them running eagerly towards the armed forces. We
also saw how the soldiers compassionately carried across the hostages who could
not walk and helped others who could. The civilians were able to escape
because of the assistance offered by Security Forces. Sri Lanka armed forces
took the lead role in this emergency humanitarian effort’. This must be
recognized and never forgotten.
All
those who crossed over to Government controlled areas received immediate care
and attention. The army looked after them. As they came in they were given a
bottle of water, and immediate medical attention.
Medical
teams from the Sri Lanka Army Medical Corps looked at their health status.
Dehydration and hypoglycaemia were treated at the initial point of contact, and
anyone with bleeding was given emergency treatment to arrest the flow of blood.
No distinction was made between civilians and combatants in the services
provided.
Those
with injuries and illness were sent to
medical stations for treatment.
Eight Advanced Dressing Stations were established within 500 meters to 1
kilometre of the front lines for minor surgical procedures. More complex
procedures were carried out at the five Main Dressing Stations established in
the army divisional headquarters area. Those with severe injuries were sent to
hospitals at Vavuniya and Anuradhapura using helicopters.
The
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) were then taken to registration centers and
registered with assistance of the Red Cross and UN agencies including UNHCR.
These were transit centers with medical, food, water, sanitation facilities and
clothes. IDPs were processed and
accommodated within 5-7 days. A social
profile was prepared for each IDP, which included level of radicalization and
socio economic status. LTTE cadres who surrendered were taken to other centres
for further investigation and rehabilitation. Former child combatants were
looked after separately.
The
civilians were then taken to the
shelters prepared for them. Reception centres had been established and detailed
preparations had been made beforehand. Government schools and institutions in
Vavuniya district with large buildings had been taken over
Gamini
Keerawella observed that the government was able to absorb the initial shock of
satisfactorily providing shelters, water, medical care, food supply as well as
identification and registration of IDPs. This was a gigantic task, he
said. Around 300,000 civilians were
rescued altogether. This figure shows
the magnitude of the operation and the logistic support necessary.
After
initial screening, all civilians not requiring medical treatment were sent to
the relief villages established by the Government of Sri Lanka at Menik
Farm, a sprawling 700-hectare site
outside the northern town of Vavuniya. 100 acres of Menik farm was cleared by
the army for the purpose. Menik
farm was selected it was only 22 km away from Vavuniya town. The villages in Menik Farm were named Anandakumaraswamy, Arunachalam, Kadirgamar
and Ramanathapura. 262,629 IDPs
were accommodated there. Families
were kept together as far as possible.
Government
took responsibility for the management of the welfare villages and took full
control over all activities The Sri Lanka army saw to overall management
supervision and maintenance of security. Menik
farm was considered the world’s largest camp for internally displaced people.
At its peak, it held 225,000 people. Rs 2777 million was spent on these relief
villages from 2009-2012
The
villages had schools, pre schools, healthcare centers, hospitals, community
kitchens, tube wells, water tanks, shops, cooperatives, banks, post office,
telephones, libraries, children’s parks and place of religious worship., Many organization and individuals from elsewhere in
the country spontaneously and overwhelmingly responded by making donations of
water, food and non food items but not the Tamils.
A family
from Adampan in Mannar had travelled, on the orders of the LTTE all the way to
Nanthikadal. On the way, family got split up. The survivors had later regrouped
in Ramanathapuram in Menik Farm, but one
sister had gone missing after they
crossed over.
Menik Farm closed in September
2012. Several schools and hospitals which were located within Menik Farm were
retained. The government of Sri
Lanka said its work at Menik Farm was
wonderful. The west which had supported the civil war and deeply resented the
defeat, thought otherwise. This is what they had to say, as given in Wikipedia.
The Sri Lankan
government/military describes the camps as “welfare centres” or
“welfare villages” but the conditions imposed on the IDPs have
prompted others, inside and outside Sri Lanka, to use other terms to describe
the camps, said Wikipedia. Western critics have described the camps as “prisons”
or “closed camps” because the IDPs were not permitted to leave the
camps.
Some, including the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights Navaneetham Pillay, have
gone further and described the camps as “internment camps”
because the IDPs were not permitted leave the camps; access to the camps by
independent aid organizations, independent media, IDPs relatives and opposition
politicians is heavily restricted or denied completely; and the camps are
controlled by the Sri Lankan military, continued Wikipedia.
Tamil activists have described the camps as “concentration camps“, using an image of IDPs standing
behind barbed wire fences to liken the camps to the concentration camps of World War II and Bosnian Civil War, added
Wikipedia, helpfully. Indian and Tamil MPs, Catholic priests, academics, Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal based
in Milan, Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky as well
as the Telegraph and Times newspapers also described the IDP camps as
concentration camps said Wikipedia.
The conditions imposed on the IDPs, the conditions inside the camps
and the slow progress of resettlement have attracted widespread criticism from
inside and outside Sri Lanka, went on Wikipedia. Shelters had been built from
tarp and sticks. Much of the displaced civilians were often forcibly detained
in camps lacking even the basic amenities.
The IDPs were not allowed to leave the camps initially. Human rights groups
believe that this effectively meant that the IDPs were being detained
indefinitely without charge or trial, in contravention of international law continued Wikipedia, citing ,
nonsensically, Articles 9 and 12 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which
guarantee the rights to liberty, freedom from arbitrary detention and
freedom of movement.
On 1 December 2009 the camps were opened up, giving the IDPs limited
freedom. The IDPs could leave the camps for up to 15 days after giving their
details to the authorities but they would have to return to the camps on a
stipulated day. Some IDPs could leave the camps permanently but would have to
report to the police regularly. The Sri Lankan military has threatened to
“track down” IDPs who don’t return to camps or report to the police.
The camps are being described by some as “open prisons” because of
these strict conditions imposed on the IDPs, said Wikipedia.
Access to the camps by independent media is heavily restricted. When
the media are allowed into the camps they are monitored by the military and all
contact with the IDPs is filmed by the military. Access to the camps by the
IDPs’ relatives is also heavily restricted
Wikipedia went on.
Initially the Sri Lankan military denied all access to the camps by
NGOs. This was later relaxed after pressure was exerted by the international
community. Many local and international NGOs now work in the camps but they
continue to report problems with access. However, human rights groups and
others who wish provide advice to the IDPs were denied access said Wikipedia.
The Menik Farm site is very prone to flooding because it lies on low
ground near a number of rivers and streams including the Aruvi Aru
(Malvathu Oya). In August heavy rains flooded the site, causing heavy damage to
the tents housing the IDPs and sending raw sewage into the camps and the rivers
providing drinking water. There is widespread concern that the north east monsoon season
(October to March) will flood the site.
By the end of September 10,000 IDPs had been identified as having some
links to the Tamil Tigers. This includes not only former cadres but also their
relatives, those who worked in the Tigers’ civil administrative structures and
anyone believed to be a supporter or sympathizer of the Tigers They have been
moved to separate camps. The Red Cross and UN
have been denied access to them. Many of those being detained as Tamil Tigers
are children, said Wikipedia adding
that In June 2011, government claimed
that all former female LTTE combatants were released.
The play ‘Dear Children, Sincerely’
is a play first performed in 2015
, in Colombo. It was commissioned by Office of National Unity and
Reconciliation (ONUR) and funded, inter alia, by the Neelan Thiruchelvam Trust and the Embassy of Switzerland.
This play had added a new scene into
it when I saw it again in 2017,
Scene 7 ‘the story of Menik Farm’
. The programme note spoke of the ‘infamous Menik farm which not many saw’. This farm, said the programme note,
split the experience of the end of the
war into two isolated camps, victors
and victims. This reinforces, at the level of theatre, the
notion put forward by the Tamil
Separatist Movement , once the war ended, that the public in the north were
‘innocent victims’ who had nothing to do
with the war.
The inspiration for the scene, said the programme note, came from an old lady who was displaced at 90
years of age at Menik Farm. This scene was based on a poem written by one of
the persons interviewed by the project. She had visited the camp and worked
with the people there and the poem was based on the many conversations she
had with them.
Scene 7 condemned Menik farm as an awful, diabolic place.
Children died there and IDPs
disappeared, never to be seen again.
Scene 7 was delivered as a monologue. Repeated reference to ‘sweet smelling jasmines ‘ and the inclusion
of hymns in Tamil were the main artistic devices used.
Some of the data in this
essay is taken from Ministry of Defence report” Sri Lankan
Humanitarian Operation, Factual Analysis” (2011) . The full text could be found
at http://slembassyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Sri-Lankan-Humanitarian-Operation-Factual-Analysis.pdf ( continued)
