Refugees and reconciliation: Sri Lanka ponders its future
Colombo (AsiaNews) - “Is it a celebration of victory of peaceful, peace loving people over those who were violent or those who were terrorist? Or is it a celebration of the victory of one group over another. Will this victory lead to a dominant and suppressive authority in the hands of one group over another group who will be made refugees or internally displaced for long years or for eternity?”. For Sarath Fernando, moderator of the Movement of Lands and Agriculture Reform and Human Rights activist, Sri Lanka needs to start answering these decisive questions for its future.
The fate of the refugees and the society that will be born out of almost 30 years of war: these are the issues that are beginning to concern the people of the Island nations’ south as celebrations of the government’s victory over the Tamil Tigers wind down.
In the refugee camps in the North there are over 300 thousand people who survived the last stages of the battle between the army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The end of the conflict has opened the question regarding their future and the chances of coexistence between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority.
Fernando believes that there is only one way to defeat and overcome terrorism and that is reconciliation between the people and the different components of society. “Reconciliation is a process of bringing together an understanding between people by overcoming the sufferings, hardships, misunderstandings and mistrust, which were created in the process of the war and also the longer process of political conflict and ideas that led to war”.
The first step that needs to be taken is to return the refugees to their homes and restore their lands. Wickremabahu Karunarathna, leader of the New Left Front, says it is a “crucial issue” on which the Colombo authorities must be clear. “If the government claims to have identified and removed 10 thousand rebels among the 300 thousand refugees in the camps, for what reason therefore must it continue to keep these people behind barbed wire”.
Sarath Nanda Silva, President of the Sri Lankan Supreme Court, says that after having visited refugees in Cheddikulam: “I may be punished for what I am about to say, but the refugees cannot wait any longer for the normal course of justice in this country”. They must be returned as soon as possible to their homes and lands. And the conditions in which they live are so dramatic that they force Silva to warn: “We have to provide for their needs. If we fail in this, we will be damned”.
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