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TRINCOMALEE, SRI LANKA
HOME AGAIN Tamilchelvi Sivarasa’s mother joined her on the long trek to safety in 1996; she hopes her grandchildren will be able to enjoy a more stable life
Eleven-year-old Priya wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Her classmate, Nasseemullah, dreams of flying planes for a living. They and other sixth graders chatter happily about the future as they help their teachers fetch water from the well in the courtyard of the Kuchchaveli Vivekananda Maha Vidyalaya. The school has no electricity, says principal Devaranjini Sivapunniyam. “But we’re okay for water,” she adds.
About 30 kilometers (km) from the port city of Trincomalee, the school, like the surrounding villages, has suffered from Sri Lanka’s 20-year ethnic conflict. At the height of the conflict, Trincomalee’s strategic importance led to some of the worst fighting between Sri Lankan government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Since the ethnic fighting erupted in the 1980s, the school has been looted, shelled, and occupied by military forces. In 1990, as the fighting between government and LTTE forces intensified, villagers fled to other parts of Sri Lanka and, in some cases, to neighboring India. With no students and no teachers, the school closed. It reopened in 1994, but disaster struck again in 2000 when a cyclone damaged the school building.
The teachers did not give up, continuing to teach in heavily damaged classrooms until the school could be rebuilt with financial support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Today, 250 students—140 girls and 110 boys—are able to get a good education in large, airy classrooms with natural light. That helps offset some continuing difficulties, such as the lack of electricity. The students study hard, looking forward to a peaceful future in which their education will help them find the jobs of their dreams. That future looks more likely since the Government and the LTTE signed a memorandum of understanding, establishing a cease-fire, in February 2002.
The long conflict has directly and indirectly affected the whole country, but the fighting and aerial bombing devastated large parts of northeastern Sri Lanka.
" If the peace holds, we will be satisfied "
- Tamilchelvi Sivarasa, returning refugee
Tens of thousands of people were killed in the Northern and Eastern provinces, which together cover 24% of the country’s land area. An estimated 800,000 were forced to flee their homes. Since the cease-fire, people have been returning to the towns and villages of their birth—but often to find their homes gone, schools and hospitals bombed, and roads destroyed.
Now the Government, supported by the international community, is helping them rebuild their shattered lives, largely through the North East Community Restoration and Development (NECORD) Project. This Project provides shelter, health and education infrastructure, water and sanitation facilities, employment opportunities, and roads.
The $40 million project is funded by ADB, the OPEC Fund for International Development, the governments of Germany and the Netherlands, and the Sri Lanka Government. Project beneficiaries will contribute a total of about $1 million. ADB is providing $25 million to cover 62.5% of the project cost.
OLD AND NEW A new bridge replaces an old one destroyed during the conflict, connecting farmers to their markets and children to their schools
Through this Project, ADB is helping rebuild more than 200 schools in the eight districts of the Northern and Eastern provinces. Additionally, ADB and other development partners are providing furniture and equipment. In Kilinochchi District, in the Northern Province, ADB is rebuilding a college that was almost completely destroyed in the fighting. It is also building a hospital, the first one in the district to have a maternity wing. In several villages in the Eastern Province, tube wells are being dug to provide safe drinking water. As people displaced by the conflict return to their villages, the NECORD Project helps them build homes.
Other ADB programs supplement the work done under the NECORD Project. In the north, ADB is helping build the A9 Highway, once known as the “highway of death.” When rebuilt, the road will again link the Jaffna Peninsula at the northern tip of Sri Lanka with the town of Kandy in the central part of the country. ADB is funding the rehabilitation of a 93-km sector of this major artery, devastated by shelling and aerial bombing. By the side of the highway, the front of a building—with gaping holes for doors and windows—bears mute testimony to the past destruction. Nothing is left of the building, except for this incomplete façade, which has somehow been knocked askew to stand at an almost impossible angle.
The road sides are lined with land mines, which still kill and injure several people a month. Before a section of the highway is repaired, the road and the stretch of land immediately beside it have to be carefully demined.
Another ADB project is funding the rehabilitation of the rural electrification system in the northeast, which was also severely disrupted by the conflict.
As the cease-fire agreement continues to hold and the first signs of rehabilitation and development become visible, people displaced by the conflict are slowly making their way back home.
Tamilchelvi Sivarasa returned with her family to Kilinochchi District in March 2002, after 5 years of living as a refugee. She remembers the day and time she left her home, and the military operation that ousted her along with the rest of the inhabitants of Marudunahar Village. The village no longer exists. All 350 families fled their homes on 26 July 1996. “Government forces took over the area,” remembers Ms. Sivarasa. “There was shelling, and we were scared.” It is not clear from her account which side was responsible for the shelling, and whether it occurred before or after the army had taken over. For the people caught up in the conflict, it hardly matters.
HELPING OUT Children at the Kuchchaveli Vivekananda Mahavidyalaya draw water from the school well
The villagers scattered. Twenty-five families decided to walk to Mullaitivu, a town about 45 kilometers away from their village. “There was no army in Mullaitivu,” explains Ms. Sivarasa. They left at 9 a.m., with the cash they had at home and the clothes on their backs. Everything else had to be left behind. She was accompanied by her husband, brother, and elderly mother. They walked for 3 days, at times dodging fire from planes flying overhead.
“We walked during the day,” says Ms. Sivarasa. “At night, we stayed with families in villages along our way.” Those families also lent them pots and pans to cook their meager meals.
There was no refugee camp or welfare center in Mullaitivu. But friends allowed them to build a mud and thatch hut on their land. And that was their home for the next 5 years. During that time, Ms. Sivarasa had two children.
Now the entire family is back on the land where they were born. Although she had no home, not even a village to return to, Ms. Sivarasa is glad to be back. “This is our own home,” she says, indicating the land rather than the temporary hut the family has built. “We can work on our own land again.”
As they attempt to build a fresh life for themselves in Kilinochchi, the NECORD Project will lend a helping hand. Through a grant provided by the Government of the Netherlands, the Project has provided 25,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($265) to help them build their livelihood. “We have already bought the materials,” says Ms. Sivarasa.
Meanwhile, the Irrigation Department has given them permission to till land owned by the Government. “We have had one harvest already,” says Ms. Sivarasa. The older of her two children goes to a government-run school about a kilometer from their home. The second child will start once she is a little older.
“If the peace holds, we will be satisfied,” she says.
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