Sri Lanka’s Muslims, Evicted by LTTE in the Nineties, Want to Return
Daily FT, Srilanka | 30/10/2023
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Thirty-three
years have passed since the eviction of northern Muslims. In October
1990, some 75,000 to 100,000 Muslims in the Northern Province (about 5%
of the province’s total population at the time) were forcibly expelled
from their homeland (places of traditional habitation) by the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In some places, the rebels gave only
about 12 hours for Muslims to leave the province.
Beginning in Chavakachcheri on 15 October, Muslims were evicted in their
entirety (mass) throughout Mannar, Mullaitheevu, Kilinochchi, Jaffna,
and certain parts of Vavuniya by 30 October. Families were allowed to
take only Rs. 500 and some clothes; some were forced to flee without any
belongings. Unable to get transport until they reached towns further
south, many walked for upwards of three days. To date this community’s
sufferings have not been recognised officially and there has been no
adequate support for return or reparations. Over three decades of
abandonment, neglect and misunderstanding by local residents, Government
officers, Muslim politicians and international human rights community
have left northern Muslims feeling there is no one they can trust.
The eviction of Muslims caused a serious rupture in the coexistence of
Tamils and Muslims in the north. The Tamils in general could not
dissociate themselves as a group from this heinous act or condemn it
openly when it was unfolding perhaps due to fear of reprisals from the
LTTE. Small groups of Tamils, however, pleaded with the LTTE to stop the
eviction but their pleas did not move the LTTE.
Now when a section of the evicted Muslims is in the process of
resettling in the north and have begun to stabilise themselves in
socio-economic terms, the doors to a renewed coexistence are slowly
opening. A genuine process of coexistence can begin only if the members
of the Tamil community are willing to interrogate, even belatedly, their
narrow exclusivist nationalism and their silence in the face of the
LTTE’s militarism which allowed the LTTE to commit an act of ethnic
cleansing. The coexistence of Tamils and Muslims in the north depends
largely on how these two communities work together in addressing the
challenges the returning Muslims are faced with.
Since the civil war’s end in May 2009, northern Muslims have started
returning in substantial numbers, but the challenges are many folds.
Political and economic rivalries between Tamil and Muslim communities is
a major reason for it. Senior Government officers, for instance, are
said to under-quote Muslim returnee numbers, which significantly reduces
the allocation of resources and the development support required for
resettlement. When confronted over this perceived bias, Government
officers in the north respond that Muslims are already ‘well-settled’ in
Puttalam, so the Government’s priority should be on the war-affected
Tamils.
It is certainly true that the plight of war-affected Tamil civilians
remains distressing especially in the Vanni. 14 years after the end of
the war, many still lack land, housing and other basic needs and
continue to struggle for truth and justice in a dangerous, militarised
space. These needs are critical but addressing them should not forestall
northern Muslims’ right to collective return. The suffering the two
communities experienced during the civil war, instead of alienating them
from one another, should lead them to empathise with one another and
commit themselves to pluralistic coexistence. Delaying or discriminative
treatment in addressing northern Muslims’ collective return and
meaningful reintegration will inevitably delay the much needed long-term
reconciliation and relative peace to the region.
Them already suffering the adverse effects of 33 years of neglect,
northern Muslims have also faced assaults on their basic democratic
rights. During the November 2019 presidential election, northern Muslims
who travelled from Puttalam to vote in Mannar came under attack, with
their buses fired at on the way to Mannar at Tantirimale early morning
on 16 November 2019. After voting they were attacked again that evening
by Sinhala mobs in Medawachchiya; many women and children were injured
but to date, no inquiry has been held (not even an investigation report
was released by the Election Commission). This attack is also at the
backdrop of the noncooperation of election officials and other
Government staff members when it comes to registering these returning
Muslims and/or those wanting to return to votes in Vanni.
Even when transitional justice was mooted from 2015 to 2019, early
efforts to redress northern Muslim grievances through the proposed
mechanisms were abandoned. The investigation launched by the Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Official Inquiry on Sri Lanka
(OISL), only probed the period from the 2002 February ceasefire until
2011. This meant that earlier crimes, such as the LTTE’s ethnic
cleansing of Muslims from the north were ignored. When the Sri Lankan
Government committed itself to starting transitional justice processes
through the UN Human Rights Council’s Resolution 30/1 in 2015, it
likewise did not commit to addressing earlier events like the eviction
of the northern Muslims.
Northern Muslims nonetheless took it upon themselves to play an active
role in the public hearings led by the Consultation Taskforce on
Reconciliation Mechanisms and made numerous suggestions including on
larger issues of truth, justice and reparations but to no effect. As a
result, the current reparation policy does not specifically recognise
northern Muslims’ loss in any form. Within the Tamil community, only a
few voices emphasised that the transitional justice processes
acknowledge the crimes committed against the Muslims and address the
grievances of the evicted Muslims. There was hardly any coverage of the
submissions made by the evicted Muslims during these sessions in
mainstream Tamil media. One Tamil politician who termed the forcible
expulsion of the Muslims as an act of ethnic cleansing at a
commemoration event held in Jaffna faced vicious vilification from
chauvinistic forces within the Tamil community.
Northern Muslims are disappointed that Government authorities have paid
little heed to the needs of returning Muslims and are now demanding that
Ranil Wickremesinghe appoint a commission to investigate their issues.
First of all, one needs to understand why the politicians who
represented them did not influence the successive Governments that they
were serving as ministers to appoint a commission on northern Muslims’
expulsion. Secondly with the long history of local commissions and its
insignificant delivery, why are they demanding for yet another political
show at the cost of taxpayers’ expenses. Instead, the call should not
be for just about acknowledgement but also as a step towards actions to
overcome impacts of expulsion, including to rebuild community links with
the Tamil community and work together towards building a more just and
equitable future.
The Government has been pushing for a truth commission to negate the
March 2021 that established a UN accountability project to collect and
prepare evidence of international crime committed in Sri Lanka for use
in future prosecution. There is heavy resistance from victims and
women’s groups from north and east questioning the motives of the
proposed truth commission. This week, the Office for National Unity and
Reconciliation Bill has been tabled after establishing an interim
secretariat for unity and reconciliation a few months ago possibly with
some international donor support.
One wonders whether northern Muslim community leaders who are clamouring
for a local commission (another delay tactic) would look into a
possibility of incorporating northern Muslims’ collective right to
return into any of these efforts at least at this late stage. Or else
why these leaders cannot mount a legal challenge as the collective
return of the northern Muslims and the challenges attached to it are
continuing violations of their constitutionally guaranteed fundamental
rights and most of which are denied by the Government officials in the
north?
In addition, in any forthcoming elections the northern Muslims have to
think seriously and use their franchise to choose a new leadership that
could take forward their issues genuinely as a right based issue and
demand for accountability for eviction, full access to their ancestral
homeland and proper reparation that includes the very recognition of the
injustice committed to them not only at the point of eviction in
October 1990 but also to date with regard to their collective return and
the State failure to redress it.
This article was first published in Daily FT, Srilanka