Camps of neglect

TAMIL NADU MINISTERS Suba. Thangavelan and K.R. Periyakaruppan meeting refugees at the Uchapatti camp during a fact-finding visit. - G. MOORTHY

The refugees have lived without electricity, drinking water supply and sanitation.

There are signs of decay and neglect everywhere. The independent houses, in disuse for long, are in a dilapidated condition, with cracked walls and broken roofs and bushes all round. The row-houses where the refugees live are in a state of disrepair and the bathroom and toilet facilities are virtually non-existent. The roads are in bad shape, with the macadam having disappeared. This is the "star" camp for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees at Mantapam, about 15 kilometres from the Rameswaram island in Tamil Nadu's Ramanathapuram district. It is one of the 103 camps in Tamil Nadu, spread across all districts except Chennai and the Nilgiris. There are 62,969 refugees staying in these camps and more than one lakh refugees live outside the camps

Cut to another camp, at Uchapatti near Madurai. About 320 families, consisting of 1,300 members, live here in thatched huts or sheds whose roofs are mostly broken. They fled to Tamil Nadu after Eelam War II broke out in June 1990 between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lanka armed forces. Of the nine handpumps, only four work. There are no toilets. There is no electricity supply to individual homes and streetlights do not burn. Three refugees died after they were bitten by snakes in the dark. "Even the cremation ground nearby has a shed with a proper roof and there is power supply too," said a refugee.

When the refugees welcomed Madurai Collector T. Udhayachandran with two lanterns when he visited the camp on the night of June 17, he thought there was a power-cut. He was amazed when told that the camp did not have electricity supply. "Electricity [board] officials break even the bulbs we put up to light up our streets," a refugee alleged.

At Kattumannarkovil in Cuddalore district, refugees live in godowns, their living space partitioned with gunny bags. There are no toilets and there is no drinking water supply. When D. Ravikumar of the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) visited the camp, the refugees could not believe it. "It is 16 years since we came here. This is the first time that an MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly] has come to meet us," he was told. Ravikumar, who is also a human rights activist, was elected to the Assembly from Kattumannarkovil.

What really exercises the refugees is that their children have been denied admission in the State in medical, engineering and agriculture and veterinary science courses since 2003. The piquant situation came about because of a Madras High Court order. Although the legal contretemps have been sorted out, officials at the Centre are sitting over the issue for the past two years.

"We do not grumble about the lack of facilities in the refugee camps. We are grateful to India for providing us protection here. But please do not deny education to our children. For education is the key to life," said S.C. Chandrahasan, treasurer of the Organisation for Eelam Refugees' Rehabilitation (OFERR), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees.

K.R. Periakaruppan, State Minister for Slum Clearance, and Suba. Thangavelan, Minister for Housing, who visited the camps at Mantapam and Uchapatti on June 17 and 18, were shocked by the extent of decay and neglect. At Uchapatti, the Ministers and the Collector met the refugees at night with an LPG-powered lamp because the camp has no power supply. The refugees told them about the lack of drinking water, sanitation and medical facilities, and pleaded for an increase in the dole.

The two Ministers submitted a report to Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, who had directed them to visit the camps after he read an article on the plight of the refugees by Ravikumar in a Tamil magazine. Karunanidhi had shown a similar interest in the welfare of refugees when he, as Chief Minister, visited the refugee camp at Nemmeli on July 21, 1990, on the way to Mamallapuram.

Indeed, if the attitude of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government towards the refugees is any indication, they are in for better times.

Ravikumar also visited camps at Kullanchavadi, Kurinchipadi and Vriddhachalam and found the conditions in them to be no different from those in Kattumannarkovil. At Kurinchipadi, the refugees live in ramshackle huts and makeshift sheds with roofs of broken asbestos sheets. Each dwelling unit has just one bulb, power supply to which is available only after 6 p.m. and up to 6 a.m.

Besides huts in open spaces, the refugees are housed in cyclone shelters, warehouses, dilapidated "marketing committee" offices, abandoned "touring" cinema halls, school buildings and marriage halls. In many of these so-called camps women's self-help groups (SHGs) have been set up and they make candles, agarbathis, pickles and so on. But banks do not allow them to open accounts because of their refugee status.

If the Government of India welcomed them after the anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka in July 1983 and even sent two vessels to Colombo to ferry Tamils of Indian origin (plantation Tamils), it used strong-arm methods to send the refugees back after the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement in July 1987. Between 1987 and 1989 a total of 48,000 refugees were forced to return to Sri Lanka: 28,000 from the camps and 20,000 living outside.

The next biggest flow of refugees took place in June/July 1990 when Eelam War II broke out. Thousands reached Rameswaram from Mannar, Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts. Hundreds of fishermen from Trincomalee reached Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu in their own boats. In June 1990 there were only about 5,000 refugees in the camps, including 4,000 Tamils of Indian origin, but the number swelled to 1,35,000 in the next few months. They were housed in 243 camps that were set up hurriedly. Half of the 48,000 refugees who were sent back in 1987 returned to Tamil Nadu.

In July 1990, the Indian Navy twice intercepted and sent back boats carrying refugees. In October 1990, more than 70 refugees drowned in two incidents off the Tamil Nadu coast when their boats capsized after they were challenged by the Indian Navy.

After the LTTE assassinated K. Padmanabha, leader of the Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), and others in Chennai in June 1990, the then DMK government cracked down on the refugees. The State police knocked on their homes at midnight, dragged them to police stations and took prints of all their ten fingers. Young men among them were incarcerated in "special camps" meant for Tamil militants. For the police the security concerns were real, as subsequent events proved. Six Sri Lankan Tamil refugees registered in camps played important roles in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991. They were Robert Payas, Jayakumar, Shanthi, Vijayan, Selvaluxmi and Bhaskaran. The Final Report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the case on May 20, 1992, says that these six accused came to India "illegally without any passports, got themselves registered as refugees only as a make-belief affair, but in fact they came with the purpose of assisting and abetting the conspirators in this case and took houses on rent at Porur and Kodungaiyur in Madras where they accommodated Sivarasan (A4), Dhanu (A5), Subha (A6), Nehru alias Nero (A8), Santhan (A10) and Ruban (A14) before and after the offence was committed."

In the wake of the assassination, the then Jayalalithaa government closed down camps in the coastal areas and moved the refugees to camps in the interior. As a result their children lost a year of studies because schools in the new areas denied them admission as the academic year had begun. The Jayalalithaa government also issued an order denying admission in colleges to refugees' children. NGOs were also not allowed to work in the camps.

It was only after Karunanidhi returned to power in 1996 that refugees' children were allowed to study in colleges and NGOs resumed their work in the camps.

However, Tamil Nadu government officials who administer the refugee camps have, to this day, barred reporters and even academics and research scholars from entering the camps and interacting with the refugees. An academic pointed out that this was ludicrous when "Refugee studies" had developed into a specialised discipline and Oxford University in the United Kingdom and York University in Canada boasted departments of Refugee Studies.

About 30,000 refugees fled to Tamil Nadu in July 1983, the first influx. There was a groundswell of sympathy for the refugees then. They were put up in camps at Mantapam and Kottaipattu. The Mantapam camp is situated on the coast with several hundred housing units. Hundreds of refugees came in 1985 after the Sri Lanka Army went on the rampage in Mannar district in the Northern province and Trincomalee district in the Eastern province. "Operation Liberation", launched by the Army in the Vadamarachchi region of Jaffna peninsula in April 1987, also brought in hundreds of refugees.

By May 1987 there were 32,000 refugees living in camps in Tamil Nadu and more than one lakh were on their own, the non-camp refugees. In the latter category are plumbers, electricians, doctors, advocates, engineers and others who could find work to support themselves and their families. Many run phone booths, tourist taxi agencies and so on. They also receive remittances from the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in the United States, the U.K., Canada, Germany, Australia and other countries.

Between 1992 and 1995, about 55,000 camp refugees went back on their own. One of the reasons for their return could be Colombo's announcement that the government employees among the refugees would get their jobs back if they returned.

Refugees in the camps receive dole from the State government. While the head of the family receives Rs.200 a month, each additional member aged 12 years and above gets Rs.144 a month. The eldest child, if it is less than 12 years, receives Rs.90 and other children Rs.45 each.

When a family of refugees first arrives at Mantapam, it is given cooking vessels and mats. The Centre defrays the expenses incurred by the State government on refugees. Most refugee men find jobs as construction workers or in nearby industrial units. The fishermen among them travel to the coastal areas of the State to work in mechanised fishing trawlers or repair boat engines and mend fishing nets.

For several months after the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE signed the ceasefire agreement in February 2002 the refugees adopted a "wait and watch" attitude. As the situation seemed to have stabilised in the Tamil areas, about 15,000 refugees returned to their homes, between 2003 and 2005-end. They included 5,444 refugees whose repatriation was facilitated by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Chennai.

Sumith Nakandala, Deputy High Commissioner for South India at the Sri Lanka Deputy High Commission in Chennai, helped the refugees go back by providing them travel and other documents quickly, including birth certificates and marriage certificates.

Refugees have been arriving again since January 2006 following the deterioration of the situation on the ground in the Tamil areas and the fear of renewed fighting between the LTTE and the Sri Lanka armed forces.

Said R. Vidjea Barathy, Associate Repatriation Officer, UNHCR, Chennai: "We appreciate the fact that India, in line with its traditional open door policy towards refugees, has allowed them to land on its shores."