Part 1
'We all support the LTTE silently'

George Iype

My son is in Jaffna
Wife in Colombo
Father in the Wanni
Mother, old and sick, in Tamil Nadu
Relatives in Frankfurt
A sister in France
And I,
Like a camel that has strayed in Alaska
Am stuck in Oslo.
Are our families
Cotton pillows
To be
Torn and scattered by the
Monkey Fate?

As 58-year-old Karunan Coomaraswamy finishes reading the poem, the small group around him claps.

Coomaraswamy is one of the 1,800 Sri Lankan refugees in the Goondapondi refugee camp, 55 kilometres north of Madras. For him and his fellow victims, there aren't many pleasures left in life.

"We are doomed to see death in these huts," he sighs. "Life has been miserable for us. India protected us. We are indebted to her."

He still owns 22 acres in Jaffna. Like his fellow victims, Coomaraswamy hopes to return to the island of his birth one day.

For many of the 80,000 refugees in the 129 camps across Tamil Nadu, especially the youth, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are heroes. Ironical, as many elders hold that outfit equally responsible for their current plight as the Sri Lankan army.

"We are thrilled that the war against the Sinhalese government is progressing well. We will achieve Eelam this time!" predicts 22-year-old Shivappa.

"My family escaped from Jaffna in 1984 with nothing but the clothes on our back. We have been reduced to manual labourers in an alien land. We want to go back and live with dignity," he says.

Youths like Shivappa pray for Eelam. What stops them from openly expressing their sympathy for the LTTE is fear.

"The police will arrest us if we say we support them," says Jayapal, 49, at the Puzhal camp on the outskirts of Madras.

Jayapal is the leader of 270 refugee families with a combined population of 816. Most of them were supporters of the EPRLP. They fled Jaffna in 1990 when the Indian Peace Keeping Force was withdrawn.

In the initial days, Jayapal was an LTTE supporter. He subsequently joined the EPRLP. He knew that he would be killed if he continued in Jaffna.

"We were first brought to Malkangiri in Orissa by the IPKF. Then we were shifted to Tamil Nadu," he says. "The government then jailed us at Puzhal prison thinking we were all LTTE members."

They tried convincing the authorities that they weren't LTTE. But to no avail. Then a 16-year-old boy committed suicide. The others threatened to follow suit. Whereupon the authorities shifted them to this camp.

The Puzhal refugees are mostly manual labourers. The Tamil Nadu government provides them free education, housing and medical care. Rice at 57 paise per kilo (as against the regular Rs 3.50) through the public distribution system. Sugar and kerosene too, at subsidised rates.

Besides, each refugee family gets Rs 150 for one member, Rs 270 for two members, Rs 345 for three, Rs 382 for four and Rs 508 for five members. Some families receive money from their relatives abroad.

The government also permits the refugees to take up employment -- a gesture not extended to the Chakma refugees in the North-East from Bangladesh.

"The Tamil Nadu government has been very sensitive to the humanitarian needs of the refugees," says social activist Uma Vasudevan.

Their security is well taken care of. The refugees did undergo a bad time after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991. The government withdrew the special education privileges granted to them. Those were restored in 1996.

Today Sri Lankan students are admitted to colleges, universities and professional institutions in the state. The restriction on refugee movement too has been removed.

"We have included the refugees among the weaker sections. This entitles them to benefits from the state exchequer like free sarees and dhotis during festive seasons," says an official of the Commissioner of Refugees.

The refugees however accuse the government of indifference on many issues. At Puzhal, electricity and water are scarce.

"The government officers are corrupt. They ask for money to restore such services," allege David, who works as a paramedic in the camp.

David spends most of his time in the one-room library meant for refugee students. On the wall are photographs of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran and the killed EPRLF leader Padmanabha.

"We were EPRLF members. A Tamil bond exists between LTTE, EPRLF and other groups. We all support the LTTE silently. We know that Prabhakaran can bring us Eelam," says Murugan, another refugee.

That hope, however, isn't enough to banish the despair that engulfs many refugees.

"They are frustrated. Some have committed suicides," says S C Chandrahasan, president of the Organisation for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation. His is the biggest voluntary group of Sri Lankans working among the refugees.

"Husbands becoming alcoholics and beating wives is common in camps. We constantly counsel the refugees to prevent domestic violence," he adds.

According to Chandrahasan, a major problem among refugees is caste system. You would expect life in a camp to be social leveller. But the upper caste Vellala community still tries to retain its superiority.

"The Vellala refugees look down upon the lower caste people," says social worker Aruna Srivastava.

A creditable achievement of the refugees is the strides they have made in the field of education. Most children attend school. Better still, the dropout rate is very low, much lower than that among the local Tamils.

PART 2
'The LTTE has been callous and counterproductive all these years'

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