Sinhalese refugees go home after 20 years to find their village occupied by Muslims
On 18 August 1985, about 200, Sinhalese families, 37Muslim families and one Tamil family left their homes in Namalwatte because of the war between the sri Lankan military and Tamil Tiger rebels. As the military gained ground against the rebels, their region was liberated and its former inhabitants began the trek home where they found others farming their land on which they had built their own homes.
Now the bitter surprise could lead to another inter-ethnic clash between Namalwatte’s original residents, mostly Sinhalese, and the newcomers, who are Muslim.
So far demands that the authorities intervene to settle the matter has fallen on deaf years, and returning villagers are forced to live in makeshift accommodations.
Most of them are farmers and the loss of their land to the benefit of the new Muslim residents has deprived them of their only livelihood.
Namalwatte Vidyalaya Mayor D.M. Dasanayakemanike is concerned that the land dispute might lead to tensions.
“A few villagers returned to the village during the peace process in 2003. Now we see new faces among the newly resettled crowd, so that proper land survey should be carried out to immediately identify the real owners of the land.” The mayor said.
The Namalwatte case is much more than a local dispute because it reopens a wound that has been festering for a long time, at least since Sinhalese settlers were brought to the area by the government in 1962 as part of a plan of colonisation in what was then a predominantly Tamil area.
D.M. Ramayalatha came back to Namalwatte for the first time in 2003, when Muslims had not yet settled in. She lost her husband, abducted by the Tamil Tigers, and had to flee for a second time. Now she is back again but found a house built on her property by new Muslim residents (pictured, she is on the left).
“Our family was well known and well respected in the village,” said the woman’s son, an officer for 13 years in the Sri Lankan Navy. Speaking to AsiaNews, he lamented “that today we have lost our paddy land, which belonged to my father. He held the permit to it,” so “we still have title to this land and are its owners,” but the “problem is that government authorities have not done their duty in a proper way.”
For Namalwatte’s Sinhalese community, the authorities took bribes from the Muslims. In so doing he betrayed his oath of office and failed in his job for money.
For some returnees, the bitterness is even greater because they served their country in the military and now feel betrayed.
“A village official rebuked us for leaving our property,” a former naval officer said. But when we left, “we had no time to worry about it because we were at war,” he said in a bitter and sarcastic tone.
Francis Raajan is the secretary of Praja Abhilasha, an association involved in settling land dispute. He said that only “the divisional secretary has the right to take any decision related to these problems.” For this reason, his organisation is concerned with the fate of these people.
In Namalwatte, Sinhalese families also complain that the government has not provided the aid it had promised them to help rebuild their lives after the war.
“We came back eight months ago,” an old woman said. “They had promised us 25,000 rupees per family (about US$ 220). We have not received anything yet.”
Many families are now living near the road that leads into the village, just after an area called Kinniya. They are sheltering in tents donated by an NGO and eat food provide by the United Nations.
“We are struggling to survive,” an elderly Sinhalese man said. “We have had no aid from the government and its much-vaunted ‘Eastern Reawakening Programme’ (Negenahira Udanaya).”
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24/01/2007
02/02/2022
