A chance encounter behind the wire offered the cook an opportunity to serve exquisite revenge on his would-be killer. He was a prisoner, one of 280,000 Tamil civilians interned in Sri Lankan detention camps this year, when the moment came. Memories of his earlier escape from the strip of land held by the Tamil Tigers during their last stand in May were still vivid.
“The Tigers killed between 20 and 30 people in the group I was with as we tried to run,” V. Sivalingam, one of the final Tamil detainees released on Tuesday, recalled. “There were four or five of them. At first they argued with us. Then the crowd around them grew bigger. They began to panic. People started to push past them. Then they opened fire. Close range. Waist high. Directly at us. It was chaos. The military were shelling us at the same time.”
Sivalingam, a cook from Mullaittivu, had miraculously survived, and succeeded in reaching the army’s lines with his wife of 20 years and five children after an epic flight that involved wading through neck-high sea water for ten hours. Within a matter of days he and his family found themselves interned by the authorities in a Zone 2 camp of the infamous Manik Farm complex, where they remained until Tuesday. Most of his fellow detainees were strangers but on one glorious day Sivalingam had recognised a familiar face.
“It was one of the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] fighters who had shot so many people that day,” he said. “He was a young man, who had managed to escape too, and now disguised himself in the camp as a civilian. I walked up to him and said, ‘Remember me? I was in that crowd you shot at. Think of what I could do to you now’. The man hung his head.”
However, instead of beating up the Tiger, or revealing his identity to the camp guards, Sivalingam said: “I did nothing. I told nobody of his identity. I could have had him arrested but I didn’t. The LTTE had fought long and hard for us. At the end of it all they did terrible things — we know that. But they didn’t have much choice.”
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Such ambivalence towards the Tigers, even among those who suffered directly at their hands, is typical among the civilian former detainees now struggling to pick up the threads of their life since their release.
“When I first heard that Prabhakaran [leader of the LTTE] was dead I felt nothing either way,” explained Jegathees Sridtharan, 34, a teacher from Kilinochchi, released after spending six months in a Zone Zero detention camp in Manik Farm with her husband and two infant sons.
“But later, as a Tamil woman, I felt deeply worried about his death. For 30 years the LTTE had fought for our freedom, right up until disaster.”
Yet these words came from a woman who by her own account had endured a horrific battlefield ordeal in which she had waded through the sea with her husband, clutching their sons aged 2½ and 7 months, escaping a war zone in which she described seeing hundreds of bodies of civilians killed by artillery and airstrikes, simultaneously under fire from both the Tigers and the army.
“I could see the LTTE shooting at us as we entered the water with a huge crowd,” she said. “People were hit and falling into the water.”
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These mixed loyalties pose a complex and time sensitive challenge that the Sri Lankan Government must surmount speedily if it is to transform its military victory of May into a lasting peace.
Detaining 280,000 civilians for six months, whom it first claimed to have liberated from the Tigers in “one of the largest hostage rescue operations in history”, was not an auspicious start to winning their support. Though life in the camps does not seem to have involved systematic physical abuse, it could nevertheless be one of hardship, overcrowding and poor sanitation.
“Our camp was particularily bad,” Sivalingam said. “People fought over water, food and space. We felt like prisoners because that’s what we were: third-class citizens.”
All returnees, including the final 130,000 released on Tuesday, are technically offered an immediate resettlement package, which includes a World Food Programme ration card, the first of two $220 (£133) handouts and essential non-food items such as blankets.
However, the plan is flawed in its application. Some people receive cash and rations, some do not. In Trincomalee not a single returnee spoken to by The Times had managed to draw the weekly ration allowance, despite being issued cards, owing to administrative errors by local authorities.
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“Each time I go to the authorities they tell me that they have received no rations to give us yet,” said Rajneedevi Visavalingam, 32, the wife of a 40-year-old Tamil farmer who had been blinded in both eyes by shrapnel in April (but who nevertheless had been detained in a Zone 4 camp with his family the moment he was released from hospital).
“I took a letter to the UNHCR [United Nations Commissioner for Refugees] here, saying I have three small children, a blinded husband, no home of our own and no money. They sent me to the IOM [International organisation for Migration], who sent me back to the local divisional secretary, who sent me away with nothing. The Government has washed its hands of us.”
“The situation is crazy,” admitted Father V. Yogeswaran, the Jesuit priest who is director of the Centre for Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in Trincomalee. “There is no clear procedure for the rehabilitation or resettlement programme. We don’t know it. The returnees don’t know it. The UN hasn’t a clear plan either. Why? There’s no answer yet. It’s like the blind groping for a way out.”
The Sri Lankan Government has undermined its own ability to cope with the situation by restricting the access of NGOs to the north and east of the country, organisations that would be far better skilled at delivering resettlement aid than local authorities.
Meanwhile, even the exact freedom of movement status of the final 130,000 released detainees remains unclear. Many have no homes left to go to. Some from the Manik Farm camp complex have been told to report back within ten days, others within 15 days. The total closure of camps is not due until January 31.
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Most of those released on Tuesday were happy just to savour even limited freedom after six months’ incarceration rather than brood on their more distant future, although for the cook Sivalingam, the day was one of mixed fortunes.
“I said goodbye to my wife of 20 years for good when I walked out of the camp gates,” he said. “We had been through so much together. We had escaped through the fighting knowing it could be the end of our lives. But we survived. I loved her. But in the camp she consorted with the military for extra rations. That association disgraces her. She’s gone to Jaffna. I’ll never have her back.”