Tamils forced to work on State plantations

Press, 22 September 1983, Page 20

Tamils forced to work on State plantations

By

FRANCIS WHEEN,

in Colombo, Sri Lanka

Hundreds of Tamils were forced out of their refugee camps at gunpoint by police and troops during the recent disturbances in Sri Lanka.

They were herded into buses and driven nearly 320 km to the hill country, where they were set to work on State-owned tea plantations.

The mass eviction took place in the north-eastern port of Trincomalee, which has a large Tamil population. Attacks on Tamil houses and shops in Trihcomalee began at the end of June, a month before the violence in the west of the island. By mid-July, more than 1000 displaced Tamils were sheltering in nine refugee camps around the town.

Late on July 24, just as communal violence was starting in the capital, Colombo, armed police and air force men went to the Trincomalee camps, accompanied by a convoy of 13 buses. “They came just after midnight,” one witness said, “and they told everyone to get into the buses. We asked what authority they had and where they were going, but they just waved their guns.” All but one of the nine refugee camps were emptied in this way. The Tamils were driven through the night to the tea-growing towns of Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, and Badulla. m the morning they were dispersed around several estates

and told to start picking tea.

In at least one case the authorities seem to have had second thoughts about the wisdom of this move. On August 1, a week after their arrival, more than 100 of the Tamils were removed from estates belonging to the State Plantation Corporation and put into the Simecita refugee camp in Nuwara Eliya.

They had apparently been considered a disruptive influence, on the grounds that they had been telling other Tamil tea-pickers about the previous month’s violence in Trincomalee. On August 25, however, these refugees were put back on to the estates again. Some of the refugees taken from Trincomalee were stateless “Indian Tamils,” who had fled from the plantations after the communal violence of August, 1977. For the last six years they had been living in Pankulam, a village outside Trincomalee, where they had been cultivating rice paadies.

The government view is that these Tamils, who were stripped of their Sri Lanka citizenship soon after independence in 1948, should keep to their traditional area — on the tea estates. For some time the authorities had been looking for an excuse to remove the Pankulam settlers. Last month’s crisis provided one.

In its eagerness to return the “Indian Tamils” to the plantations, the Government also transported a number of Tamils born and bred in Trincomalee. A few have managed to go home but others are still stranded on the tea estates. The Sri Lankan Government is doing its utmost to persuade the rest of the world that all is now back to normal. A party of travel agents and journalists has been taken around the island at the Government’s expense to see for themselves;

They could hardly fail to have noticed that armed troops or police are still posted on most street corners, and that the curfew had still not been lifted. Moreover, parliamentary approval has been given for an extension of the state of emergency.

The curfew has not been lifted and has, in fact, been introduced in some areas previously free from it. This would suggest that the authorities are by no means sure that violence will not erupt again.

Government-controlled newspapers have been waging a vigorous campaign against “rumour mongers,” “mischief-makers” and other “measly mugwumps” who may foment more attacks on the Tamils beginning to return to Colombo after fleeing last month.—Copyright, London Observer Service.