Civilians have been granted freedom of movement and many of the once teeming camps have now been emptied.
But, in the resettled villages, it is a different spectacle: Over hundred thousand civilians, former inmates in camps are virtually dumped on their former villages in the Wanni, and are left without any means to resume normal lives.
With their houses no longer intact, their property destroyed and vandalized, it is an uphill task for the resettled Tamils to restart their lives.

When this correspondent visited the resettled villages on the A 9 Road, it was a waste-land that awaited him. The majority of the houses had been reduced to rubble. A few skeletons of concrete buildings stood where former towns were located. No building was left with the roof intact. Kilinochchi is a ghost town of war wrecked buildings, except for the soldiers and pilgrims heading for Nagadeepa on the A 9 Road.

It is a land of shattered hopes and crumbled homes.

Sinnaiah Velu was released from the IDP camp in December last year along with his family. Originally from Nedunkerny, Olumadu, they were told that their land is still being demined. Hence, the family was left abandoned in Parissamkulam, near Kanagarayan kulam, where they now live in a makeshift hut and collect fire wood to make ends meet. “People from Jaffna come to buy firewood,” he says.

He said he was not given a plot of land to cultivate as he was not a resident from the area, which leaves him having to rely on the jungle to make living.

But, mines and booby traps in the jungle pose a mortal threat. Last week, two civilians lost their limbs from landmines.

The Sinnaiahs are one among 65 families from Nedunkerny living on the A 9 road in Parrisamkulam, awaiting green light to proceed to their villages.

Sinnaiah like most other IDPs have received 25,000 rupees start up allowance. But, the fact of the matter is that it is too little and it could hardly better the IDPs case, who is left with nothing but the cloth on his back. The only exceptions to groups with such a fate are those with access to foreign remittance.

Another 25,000 rupees is being paid to the IDPs for doing 50 days of social work, ten days of which could be utilized to rebuild and clean their own houses.

Additional Government Agent (Vavuniya North), K Paranthaman says that the government would provide a grant of 325,000 rupees each to rebuild houses, and that the evaluation report has already been sent to Colombo. Housing is the acid test for the government. The resettled former IDPs take shelter in tents and huts, but the monsoon would complicate the situation. A few could, of course, afford to build houses on their own, but the vast majority would be condemned to live in shacks. Many civilians, this correspondent spoke to were clueless about the government’s resettlement plans.

On the surface, it looks like the camp life had been shifted to Kanagarayan kulam. But, there is some work, though at its incipient age. There are 20 or so Grama Sevaka Divisions in the Vavuniya North AGA Division, only in nine of which, resettlement activities have commenced, owning to landmines. Resettlement had commenced only on the left side of the A 9 road and the demining activities are being carried out on the other side.

IDPs are given paddy land to cultivate. Every family is given 2 acres and the government provides seed free of charge. Farming has commenced in many places.

K. Ganesh (40), a resettled villager in Kanagarayankulam says that he has resumed farming.

Weidyalingam Nithyanathan (42) another resettled villager asks for a water pump to water his vegetable plot. But he and many other IDPs complain that they had not received food rations for past two weeks.

Many of the resettled villagers carry old scars of war; many were caught in shelling as they fled the Tiger controlled pocket.

K. Rathan (28) originally from Nedunkerny shows his still festering wounds in the legs. He says battle scars had prevented him from working in the paddy fields. Another villager says he was evacuated to safety by the ICRC relief ship at the height of war. But, he mourns for his son, who is still missing and feared to be killed in the final days of the battle.

In the face of scarce resources, there is competition. A middle aged couple -- residents of Nedunkerny --- complained to the AGA that locals didn’t allow them to use the well.

The AGA tells this correspondent that it was a sign of caste differences, a perennial trait of the Tamil polity, which the LTTE reined in to greater extend, but is showing up, even before people emerge from the wreckage of war.

The Assistant Government Agent vows that a resettlement package is in the offing and that he would commence a vocational training program for the resettled youth to find employment in the host of construction activities soon to take place in the war torn Wanni.

But, some IDPs are yet to make up their minds after the end of a vicious war and a wretched camp life. Some have lost their kith and kin to the war; some others are still unaccounted for, while others languish in detention.

Life in Menik Farm...

On Monday, when this correspondent visited the once swarming Menik Farm camp of the internally displaced persons in Vavunia, it was a different scene. The camp, once teeming with 300,000 people, who were kept in a tightly guarded barbed wired camp has been opened since December last year. Half of the refugees held in the camp have been sent back ( at least officially) to their villages; the rest have been granted freedom of movement.

That means the poor souls who had been incarcerated in camps under squalid conditions have been granted freedom of movement. On the part of the government, it has delivered at least a part of the promise it gave to the international community to resettled the IDPs before January 31.

That assurance was given when the IDPs were locked up in the camps after the decapitation of the LTTE. Six months since then, the government had released them, sent half of them back to their former villages; the rest awaits until their land -on the right side of the A 9- road is cleared of mines.

S.Chandrakumari was among several women filling their buckets with drinking water from a tap -- a facility funded by an international non governmental organization.

The woman, who was a former resident of Akkarayankulam, South of Kilinochchi, complains that the dry rations has not been issued for three weeks.

She is managing with the leftovers of the rations of the previous month.

The authorities had allowedfree movement for the IDPs. People venture out from their camps to seek work on the town.

Siva Priya, another IDP says her husband has gone to Vavunia seeking work, but she complains that there is not enough work for men in town.

“Most of them return without work. But, if the government lets us leave (the camp), there is lot of work in Kilinochchi,” she claims.

Her four children attend school in the IDP camp.

“There is not much of learning. They just go to school and come home”

A teacher in Zone 1 Unit 1 school agrees.

Kesara Raja, himself an IDP and formerly a teacher in Paranthan Hindu Maha Vidyalam claims that students come from different background.

“It was a homogeneous set up in Paranthan, but here in the camp, you have a different group of students, coming from all over the area. It is not easy to cater to their needs”

He says students exhibit violent behavior, having witnessed violence at the first hand.

There are over 100 students, who lost at least one parent in the conflict.

Some children need counseling. He said three children had been directed to psychological support, but he is not sure whether their concerns have been addressed.

He says the teachers have been instructed to follow the unconventional pattern of teaching, obviously because children come with different background and different educational achievements.

“But, even to do that, we don’t have facilities. We are IDPs just like the children,” says Kesara Raja.

He himself fled deep into the Wanni as the military offensive approached and ended up in the no fire zone in a pocket of Mullaitivu.

“There was no schooling in the No fire zone” he claims.

“There had been no schooling since we displaced from Paranthan in January(last year).” School started only in June after the camps were set up,” he says.

The army officer in charge of this particular section of the camp seems to have grasped the fact that education would bind communities together.

Colonel Sarath Perera says that the children in the camp represent the future of the country. There are five schools and 20 pre schools located in the section - Zone 1 Unit 1 of the Arunachalam Camp, which comes under the purview of Colonel Perera.

He says the army does not interfere with the civilian affairs of the camp and that the soldiers do no go inside the camp after 6 pm.

He says the army is encouraging the NGOs to employ the IDPs in their work and suggests that should the government employ the people from the camp in the state funded infrastructure projects, that would be a remedy for the acute shortage of work opportunities in the town faced by the IDPs. He says he helped a mason from the camp secure work in construction activities in Mannar.

“Later, he bidded for a contract and won it. Now he hires several people from the camp,” he says.

The congestion in the camp has been reduced since the government allowed free movement of people. At the outset, the section, Zone 1 Unit 1 housed 48,000 people. Now, the numbers have reduced to 19,818 as of last Monday. Many of the remaining inmates have left the camp, seeking work and visiting relatives.

Mourning...

Even seven months after the war ended, at least officially, the horrors of the war haunt many who survived one of the most brutal conflicts in recent times.

Mahendrarasa, from Nedunkerny, now eking out a living in Parissamkulam, lost five members in his family to shelling in Vellamullivaykkal.

“Bodies were left to rot. If someone tried to save the dying, he could also be caught in shelling” he told this correspondent early last week, as he joined several dozens other resettled Tamil civilians to tell their plight.
“At the end, the army invited us to come to their area and we came.”

He said, both sides shelled and the LTTE wanted them to stay back.

But, defecting to the military area and the decimation of the Tamil Tigers, once the purported saviours of the Tamils, didn’t end their misery.

Chandrakumar Pannalasu, another former resident of Nedunkerny claims her son, Raju Chandrakumar (32), was arrested on December 4, a couple of days before their release from the camp.

She claims that the LTTE members in military detention are settling old grudges by naming their enemies as LTTE cadres.

“The LTTE forcibly recruited our children. When we come here, army arrested the innocent,” she complains.

“Those who were with the LTTE are still free and only the innocent were kept in military custody,” she claims.

The displaced

Punyadarai Ratnam, another displaced man from Nedunkerny now lives in a tin hut in Kanagarayankulam. He survived the war and the wretched life in the government run detainment camps, but, days before his family was released, all hell broke loose.

His daughter, Nesamalar Ratnam (30) was arrested in December by the Army which alleged that she was an LTTE cadre.

Ratnam says she was not and that her only crime was that she had short hair. He says his daughter, who had passed Advanced Levels sat for several interviews for government jobs.

The LTTE did not allow her to leave the Wanni. It was when the LTTE tightly controlled the influx out from its territory.

Kaneshalingam Dilex, (19), the son of the Kaneshalingam, a post master by profession was kidnapped by the LTTE. Dilex fled the LTTE, two weeks after his conscription and later fled to the government controlled areas with his parents. He was preparing for the Advanced levels exams at that time.

At the entry point, he surrendered to the soldiers who announced to the crowd that anyone who would surrender would not be harmed. Dilex languishes in a detention camp in Nellikulam Technical College since then.

His father, who visits the son weekly, says he would not mind his son being kept in detention as long as he is allowed to study. He says his son wants to study commerce.

However, Dilex had been left out from the batch of children who were brought to Colombo to facilitate their studies.
An ageing woman, M. Velam (70) is left with her daughter after her son-in law was arrested by the military.

Residents of Kanagarayan kulam, North, the mother and daughter collect timber to build an abode. Velam had been given half an acre of paddy land to cultivate by the government. She has received 25,000 rupees start up allowance given by the government to resettled IDPs.

Saundarasa Pillay (69), a shop keeper lost five children of his family during the last months of the conflict. Father of seven children he claims his wife and the two children who were lucky enough to survive are not yet been allowed to leave the camp. Pillay says his house and the shop have been destroyed.

“I am left with nothing. I will go back to the camp and stay with my wife and children until they are released.”
He is unaware of any government assurance to help the displaced restart their lives.

“Nothing could replace my children,” he says - courtesy: Lakbima News -