The Hindu : Our children must have a future back home: refugees

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Our children must have a future back home: refugees

By S. Annamalai

SIVAGANGA, MARCH 17. Thirty-year-old K. Ramachandran, who came from Sri Lanka to India with a seven-month-old child, is eager to go back to his village, Chettikulam, in Vavuniya after spending over a decade at the Okkur refugee camp in Sivaganga district. His son, now 14, should have a future on his native soil. This sentiment is spread across thousands of Tamil refugees who fled Sri Lanka in the wake of the ethnic crisis there in the 1980s.

The Sri Lankan Government, through its Deputy High Commission in Chennai, has embarked on a programme, as part of the peace initiative on the island, to facilitate the safe return of the refugees. The process of issuing temporary travel documents and birth certificates, which began in July 2003 at the Mandapam refugee camp in Ramanathapuram district, is now under way at the Okkur camp. The refugees did not have money to travel to Chennai.

The Ambassador and Deputy High Commissioner of Sri Lanka, Sumith Nakandala, who was at Okkur to issue the travel documents in person, told The Hindu that concern for the welfare of the refugees' children was paramount in the Government. To facilitate organised repatriation, the issue of travel documents had been set in motion. Once the refugees returned home, they would be properly rehabilitated in places of their choice under the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Programme.

Mr. Nakandala said the refugees, most of them now housed in camps spread all over Tamil Nadu, had requested the Sri Lankan Government to organise a ship for their repatriation as they had come to India with all their belongings. "My wishful thinking is that the organised repatriation should commence tomorrow." The island government had all along been proactive in helping its citizens come back. The Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, had waived the fees for registration of births and citizenship for the refugees.

Even as the peace initiative gained momentum, the refugees would have to wait until after `demining operations' were over in the North and East. According to the Deputy High Commission's estimates, a majority of around 65,000 refugees in the Tamil Nadu camps want to go back home. Added to the refugee problem is that of Tamils who have been displaced within Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which airlifted 1,500 refugees to Sri Lanka last year, has planned to facilitate the passage of 3,000 persons more this year, according to Mr. Nakandala. The Deputy High Commission wants to complete issuing travel documents and birth certificates under the Consular Functions Act 1981 and the Citizenship Act before working out the modalities of passage. It has set up a special cell in Chennai to issue travel documents, birth and marriage certificates. It is also aware of clandestine movement of people between Sri Lanka and Rameswaram and "the Government has taken a serious view of this".

The inmates of the Okkur camp, who expressed a unanimous desire to get back to their homeland, "come what may", were appreciative of the Deputy High Commission initiative.

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