Tamil and Sinhala youth in the Wanni region can benefit by joining hands:

Overcoming dark shadows of terrorism, a priority

By Dhaneshi Yatawara

When development takes shape in the Vanni region of Sri Lanka following a dark age of nearly three decades, today it has become a politically hot spot, giving numerous debatable subjects. "Those who shout against the Government in the Northern Province at present has no right to do that," said the Sri Lanka Freedom Party Organiser for the Killinochchi District Geethanjali Naguleswaran. As she said in an interview with the 'Sunday Observer', those who are shouting now locally and abroad were never from these grounds and those who are actually living in these areas are very quiet. "I would like to request the Sinhala community also to be awake and not let dark shadows of terrorism cover the independence we achieved after many years and many sacrifices," she said giving her first hand experience in the Vanni where she worked as a Principal during terrorists time and today as a political leader in the post war era.

Following are the excerpts of the interview:

Question: What is the present political situation of the Vanni area? How do you see the change over time?

Wanni SLFP organiser Geethanjali Naguleswaran Pix: Chinthaka Kumarasinghe

Answer: Considering the Northern Province, its people are cultural bound and very sensitive. Since these people have undergone terrorist threats for 30 - 40 years it has made the most of the Tamil 60 percent are not so interested in responding to politics. They have good jobs, better living conditions so they are not much interested in politics but are the observers of that community. But the remaining 40 percent in the Vanni community are very interested in politics - among them 20 percent are totally working for the TNA - they demand for rights, they want the government to directly separate the land, have it controlled by the Tamil leaders, they demand liberation. The campaign is kept alive by local and foreign people who enjoy a better life while the faction of true Vanni people who are poor and innocent. The other half of this politically motivated faction is split as supporters for few of main political parties of the country, like SLFP, UNP, JVP. Even members of allied parties of the Government are trying to raise as individuals without giving much interest to the collective nature of the ruling party and thus, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party has to be engaged in a bigger fight to stand on proper place in the Vanni political sphere.

With the keen interest of the Government extended to all issues of a community, I don't think it would take a long time to turn the 20 percent of the populations who have turned away from the Government to turn towards it and make realize the neutral 60 percent of the population of the actual development.

Q: The political sphere in Vanni seems to be heavy with allegations and blames. How would you explain this?

A: The development happening in the area is evident - no one can deny it even in United Nations conferences in Geneva. What many allege the government is on violation of human rights, abductions etc. But in fact there seems no proof. They are fabricating issues, since I lived in the Vanni area and still continue to live and we know exactly what happened. We have seen what happened. And those who shout against the Government in the Northern Province at present have no right to do that. Because nobody was actually dedicated during the rough times. Those who are shouting now locally and abroad were never from these grounds.

Q: As you have more access to the ground levels of the Vanni region what do you see among the common people? How are they feeling about this political war?

A: Those who are actually living in these areas are very quiet. Those who are not with the ground realities and living abroad are the people shouting a carrying a campaign selling the emotions of the poor innocent people living in Vanni for their own agendas and political growth.

I blame the Sinhala people as well who support these Tamil diaspora who make a huge noise in the international arena. This faction of the Sinhala community is supporting only a very few percentage of the Vanni community. It is not helping the entire Vanni to develop. This is the true independence we received after many years. I insist, as a Tamil woman and a person living in the Vanni, that these LTTE supportive anti Government Tamil parties are very evil and narrow minded. If certain Sinhala people are working with these narrow minded Tamil campaigners then those Sinhala people are working against the Tamil community and our future generations too. If that continue to happen we are going to loose our peace.

I would like to request the Sinhala community also to be awake and not let dark shadows of terrorism cover the independence we achieved after many years and many sacrifices.

Q: How do you see the change in Vanni in respect of development in areas like infrastructure, education and health? What is the ground level situation?

A: The development happening in the Vanni is the living proof of Government's commitment to bring prosperity to our people. The A9 road is almost complete and the railway track will be completed most probably by end of 2014 up to Kankasanthurai.

There are numerous housing projects going on. Various livelihood programs are being conducted at village level. All damaged infrastructure is repaired and in full function now. Education is reviving. There was a time when the best educated people were from the North. But with the war against terrorism the education factor was slipping away from the people because of terrorist activities.

Considering what the LTTE did and what the Government is doing a greater credit go to the Government for the attention they are giving to the people of the north. Government is taking a high level of interest in the education system. We see that MP Namal Rajapaksa, under the guidance of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is visiting schools in the Vanni area and giving personal attention to its development. There is a big improvement in the schools with the developments taking place under the government initiatives. In the near future we will surely see the high level of education we saw in the North in the past.

These developments can be seen. What these manipulative people anti government people are trying to do is fabricating an unseen environment to be depicted to the international community.

Q: According to statistics there are a significant number of Women-headed families in the Vanni. What is their situation?

A: There 70,000 women headed families in the North - counting the past 30 - 40 years. But those who create a fabricated environment say this number of widows are within the past three to four years. These women headed families can be divided in to four division. In one category the husband is killed - not only recently but thirty years ago too. Another section is where the husband is missing. During the terror time LTTE abducted men as well as other terror groups that existed in the North.

During the war the LTTE killed thousands of our Tamil people - even in the last phase. Some were abducted and never returned and no dead body so they get recorded as missing. In some families the men are in Prisons. They have been found guilty of having explosives or parts or full weapons. The fourth category would be families with disabled husbands - mentally or physically affected by the war. Most of these widows are young. The reason why most of these women are young because they married very early in life in order to avoid forced recruitment by the LTTE.

Young girls were given in marriage very early in their life, like when they just turn 15, 16 years of age, in order to avoid forced recruitment. And these young women didn't delay getting pregnant so that LTTE won't take them. Women and families I met gave number of instances where the LTTE aborted the child and recruited the girl in to terrorism. This is not just one or two incidents but several.

With the help of the Government many self employment programs, handing over soft loans are taking place in the villages in order to strengthen women economically. We see a progress with the keen interest of the Government.

Q: Many question the status and safety of women living in Vanni. What is your experience?

A: A lot of issues are there in Vanni related to women. There are many allegations against military for raping women. When I visited the villages, we formed groups for women to discuss their problems and bring sustainable solutions and I work as the North Women Forum Leader. I have lots of discussions with these women about their various problems and I have specifically requested for such instances to be reported. We are people's representatives and we need to console and help victimised women. But so far no one came with proof of any such incident. I have met women associations and have told the women leaders and all other women to report such incidents.

Politicians raising allegations against Government can plant such stories and make people to talk about them. So far I have not received a single complaint and I strongly disbelieve such stories. There are many women headed families in the Vanni and there is a strong need for the women to come up as leaders. In the entire North about 60 percent of the population in women. The lack of support from the community for a woman to lead is the greatest obstacle. They only criticise a leading woman and working against with jealousy. It is important to let women come up as community leaders as they are the people who understand the need of a family, children and security of a community. If somebody is against woman leadership they should be embarrassed about it.

More Women, specially Tamil women, need to be involved in when talking about difficulties women of North face. Politicians carry tales and woes of women to international delegations but no woman representative is taken.

Q: Majority of the youth living in Vanni have seen only the war affected community. What is their situation in this transformation period?

A: Thousands of Vanni youth are affected due to lack of proper education. There are many reasons. Children were forcefully captured and were sent to fight and they never had the chance to get a proper education. Today this has created unemployment among today's youth. Even for the simplest job today employers request Advanced Level qualifications at least. These youth who were forcefully removed from education and now they are without proper qualification.

This is the situation of majority of youth in the Vanni. There are anti government politicians at certain instances trying to use these innocent youth to achieve their political mileage. These politicians even included the few who managed with great difficulty to get in to the University.

These university students are not just individuals. They have families - mostly women headed families where their mother is the head of the family. These mothers have dreams - dreams to see her child in University becoming successful and become a pillar of strength to the family. These narrow minded politicians are destroying these dreams. These groups are trying to arouse the emotions of students and destroy the education. This actually shows the true picture of these politicians. They don't speak about developing the education system while thousands of Vanni youth are affected due to lack of proper education.

These politicians have not spoken about a methodology to bring an employment to these victimised youth. Though no one truly highlights this is a key factor that has already started diminishing popularity among people to parties like TNA. You see in the late '70s and early '80s Tamil people were supportive of the liberation movements and that was not only LTTE. And they let one family member to join these groups for the sake of the people and to get out of misery through a rebellion. The first movements included parties like TELO lead by Kuttumani, Thangathurai and several others. There were about 22 such movements. So all these people carried weapons promising Tamil people their liberation.

Though the LTTE started killing these leaders of the movement becoming the main terrorist group this practice of including one person from one family to the movement continued.

But later forceful recruitment started. When one person from one family was not enough the second and the third were recruited forcefully. They were sent to the front line without proper training and they die tragically in the battlefront. Families saw this happening to the first of their family to the second and the third as well. Like this, thousands and thousands were killed. The LTTE carried weapons promising liberation and then they turned the weapon to kill their own people.

The misery of families is beyond description when they see their son or daughter taken away by the LTTE and the dead body brought home.

And I heard from some of the ex cadres now living again with their families that during the last few years of the war the LTTE leaders had targets in people killed per day in order to give a far pathetic picture than what was happening in Palestine. At that time the LTTE was comparing Sri Lanka with the war situation in Palestine. So they wanted to show worse figures in terms of civilian deaths, casualties and houses damaged putting the blame on the Government forces.

LTTE planned to kill civilians intentionally. That was the path the LTTE took to achieve Eelam. We have almost around 20,000 disabled children who are under 16 years of age. Because of landmines and other injuries some went to the LTTE so they were disabled during fighting. These children should be schooling now but these politicians are not talking about them or getting them help. Those who still support the Eelam ideology still follow the same rule. Their main aim is to create a worst picture to the world - not thinking about people, youth, women and children.

Q: With more newly resettled areas, the Government mechanism in Vanni region surely be facing highly demanding problems needing quick solutions. Are you happy with the way people are served?

A: Some of the politicians and certain government officials are trying to take credit to themselves not mentioning Government efforts.

Specially the land dividing issue gets unnecessarily dragged and complicated by certain Government officials bringing blame to the Government, where as the Government mechanism is powerful enough to answer problems of people. This makes people think it is the ruling party that slows down their solutions in land disputes. Some of the Government officials, not all, are not genuinely working for the benefit of the people.

But I see that military officials are working very hard to bring betterment to the people. They are very dedicated to serve the people. They have a very good relationship with the civilians. Army personnel gives a great support to the community be it a funeral, drought, flood or any other event.

There was a time where Tamil people hated military officials but today that thinking has changed and soldiers have become the communities best friends in certain areas. Soldiers build comfortable beautiful houses and the Army on their own finds donors to needy families. Changes happen fast with them and that would be the speed people would like to have their development.

Army is helping the communities to start their livehood activities, be it farming, fishing or any other industry.

Then the Civil Defence Force, on the directives of Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 3,800 people are working in the Vanni area. Most of the recruits are ex LTTE cadres. This was a turning point for the people. Now these youth have a solid job and support their families. They were re-rehabilitated and not thrown back in to the society but the Government mechanism work on getting them a good job as well. This worked on the Vanni community very positively.

I believe, that Vanni being a free part of the country must be free for people to come in and settle if they wish for, irrespective of their ethnicity. If one person wishes to sell his land and another person from another part of the country would like to buy it there should be freedom for the transaction. As Tamils of the north go and live in South, buy land others living in the rest of the country also have the right to come and settle down in the North. I lived my childhood in Jaffna and we had many bakeries run by Sinhala people and I remember some were favourites of us as children. That harmony should return.

Q: Do you think Vanni region is heading in the right direction?

A: The real independence to North came in 2009. Now terrorism is no more.

We have to protect this independence very carefully. That is the correct path we should take. Trusting each other is a very important thing. If a political party claims to be people's representatives, if they are genuine, they need to represent people at every table of discussion. They cannot avoid discussions with Government if they want to bring a sustainable solution to the people they serve. People have brought them to that level and politicians in the Vanni need to give credit to it. Because people who selected us are still with worries, problems and unanswered problems. When coming to a solution, benefit to the people tops personal preferences of politicians. So far we have come to a very satisfactory level of development. And we, as Tamils, also have a hope to live. We all feel that there will be a better tomorrow. Tamil and sinhala youngsters need to travel hand in hand in this long walk of life.