Catalog

Sri Lanka
Refugees in Their Own Land

A refugee for 13 years, a woman tells of her life in a welfare center—and how she dreams of going home again

By Pamposh Dhar
External Relations Specialist

"We came here as children. We married in the camp and had children here"

- Sivarajah Sashikala, refugee

NILAVELI, SRI LANKA

Thirty-year-old Sivarajah Sashikala has been a refugee for the past 13 years. She lives in a welfare center in the eastern Sri Lankan town of Nilaveli in a small mud and thatch hut with her husband and two young sons.

She left her village with her parents and two sisters in 1990, driven out by an eruption of ethnic conflict. Ms. Sashikala was 17, her sisters 15 and 11. “We came here as children,” she says. “We married in the camp and had children here.”

They left their native village of Pankulam when they heard of the violence that had engulfed a neighboring village. They were not alone. “There were nearly 500 families—Muslims, Tamils, and Sinhala. We all fled when we heard what had happened to the village nearest to ours,” Ms. Sashikala recalls. “We walked through the forest for 3 days before we reached Nilaveli.”

Initially, they found shelter in a makeshift refugee camp set up behind the local church for people displaced by Sri Lanka’s long ethnic conflict. They lost contact with their father early in their lives as refugees. He disappeared soon after they moved to Nilaveli, caught up in the strife that uprooted so many families in Sri Lanka. “We still haven’t found him,” says Ms. Sashikala.

In 1994, Ms. Sashikala married a man she met in Nilavali. A landless laborer, her husband was unable to earn enough to support both of them; so he, too, moved into the camp. Within a year of her marriage, Ms. Sashikala gave birth to her first child, Puspashantan, in the camp behind the church. Fearful of what might lie outside the camp, Ms. Sashikala was too afraid to go to a hospital.

In 1998, her family moved to the government-run welfare center where they live now. A couple of years later, Ms. Sashikala had a second son. Her children, now 9 and 3, have lived as refugees since they were born, knowing no other way of life.

At the center, Ms. Sashikala gets food rations for her family and a steady supply of water from wells within the center’s compound. Her family of four, like others at the center, lives in a mud and thatch hut.

Inside the hut is cool and dry, but dingy. During the day, some natural light filters through holes in the thatch, but during the rainy season, the same holes let in water. “Only a little,” says Ms. Sashikala of the water. “But the mud floor does get damp,” she adds.

The trials and tribulations of the past 13 years have not broken Ms. Sashikala’s spirit. Even at the welfare center, she takes care to keep her hut clean. She raises chickens to be able to feed her sons some eggs. And she is determined to educate them. “The older one is already going to school and the younger one will too,” she says with determination.

Rather than bemoan her past, she wants to work toward a better future. “Now, after the MOU, there is some peace,” she says, referring to the Memorandum of Understanding that established the cease-fire in 2002.

With this improvement in the security situation, she wants to go back to her village. In Nilaveli, her husband can work only as a laborer a few days a month. If they go back to her village, the Government will give them a permit to till about an acre of land on the basis of the land they had owned before they were forced to become refugees in their own country.

The overall situation in the country has changed dramatically and for the better, Ms. Sashikala feels: “There is a big difference in the situation before and after the MOU. I think there will be peace now.” For Ms. Sashikala, this means a chance to return to a life of dignity on her own land and the hope for a brighter future for her children.

Email this to a friend