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Refugee camp in Colombo shines with communal amity despite misery

Squatting in the dirt outside his shanty home near Colombo, refugee Michael Anthony, 55, talks and talks about the plight of the internally displaced.

''This is our country, our land. But look at the injustice. We are just like a pack of animals being shunted all over the country,'' laments Anthony who used to run a profitable tea shop in his village, now in the war zone.

Anthony is a spokesman for 26 families in Attidiya who survived widespread anti-Tamil riots in July 1983 -- the turning point in the ethnic conflagration -- when Sinhalese mobs killed and looted Tamil homes and property in Sri Lanka.

The riots fanned the flames of ethnic hatred, and precipitated a full-scale war in the island's north and east that has divided the island nation and uprooted tens of thousands.

For 15 years, Anthony and his neighbours have been herded from place to place by the authorities. Two years ago they were dumped in Attidiya, a new settlement of poor families, 10 km from Colombo. Here home for each family is a hovel from discarded packing cases and plastic perched alongside a foul-smelling drain.

''We have no permanent abode. We don't get letters because there is no fixed address,'' says graduate Dharmalingam Karunawathie, 33, who is tired of the uncertainty. Karunawathie is actually Sinhalese, but mobs attacked her home in 1983 because her husband is Tamil.

With the ethnic conflict showing no signs of ending, she worries incessantly about the future. ''What is our future? What is going to be the future of our children,'' she asks, wearily.

Vadivel Ratnam, a 47-year-old former spare parts salesman, recalls that many Tamil families -- rich and poor -- who lived in and around Colombo had taken refuge in a Hindu temple in southern Colombo during the 1983 riots. ''I was doing a good job but was forced to move into a refugee camp with my family,'' he says.

After two years of misery and nothing to do in the camp, they were moved to Mannar in the north-west region during a ceasefire in fighting between government troops and Tamil rebels while both sides sat down at peace negotiations.

When fighting broke out again in 1990, the families were caught in the crossfire and some homes were even damaged. They were put into nine buses and brought back to another refugee camp in Colombo, which was later shut down in 1994.

''We were virtually thrown out on to the streets,'' says Ratnam, who along with Anthony are spokesmen for the community. They slept on the streets for a couple of months until moving to the beach at Wellawatte in southern Colombo and putting up small huts.

Anthony said a minister of the present People's Alliance government promised they could stay in the beach huts, though they were unauthorised. But the Colombo mayor, who belonged to the main opposition party, insisted they had to leave.

The night Sri Lanka's cricket team won the World Cup in Pakistan in March 1996, bulldozers from the Colombo municipal council were brought in to raze their homes to the ground.

A day before the action, the police had taken all the men into custody, saying they were suspected of being Tamil rebel spies. There were only women and children on the beach when the bulldozers moved in and dumped all their belongings into the sea.

Later the women and children were kept for a day in the police station before being herded on to trucks in the night and offloaded with only the clothes on their backs near the canal at Badowita, at Attidiya.

''People already living in the area were kind enough to bring us water, tea and some biscuits that night,'' recalls Sriyani Silva, 36, a Sinhalese who has three children.

The group -- Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslims -- is living a hand- to-mouth existence, but have vowed to stay together. In fact, their ability to live harmoniously without communal rancour was the focus of a report by Young Asia Television, a local television station.

Their immediate concern, they say, is meeting daily requirements of food and other basic needs. Each family receives a meagre 1,200 rupees (roughly 20 dollars) from the government to buy dry rations like rice, lentils and cooking oil.

''We need at least 300 rupees a day to survive and it is a struggle for survival,'' says Karunawathie. Quite often her large family of 10 goes hungry, she adds.

Pointing to her threadbare dress, she says it was a gift from a family in the neighbourhood. People have been helping the group with clothes and food, while some of the men and women have been employed in nearby houses or small factories.

''We are thankful ... for their kindness,'' says former tea shop owner Anthony.

Help has also come from individual Buddhist monks, Hindu and Christian priests who have ensured free education is provided to their children, he adds. ''That is our only hope,'' he declares. ''That the children should not suffer our fate.''

UNI

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