வடக்கு முஸ்லிம்களின் அவலங்கள் - ஐ.நா. மனித உரிமைகள் ஆணைக்குழுவிடம் கையளிப்பு

 

இலங்கைக்கு அண்மையில் விஜயம் மேற்கொண்டிருந்த ஐக்கிய நாடுகள் சபையின் மனித உரிமைகள் ஆணைக்குழு உயர் அதிகாரிகளிடம் இலங்கை மற்றும் வடக்குகிழக்கு முஸ்லிம்கள் கடந்த காலங்களில் எதிர்கொண்ட மனித உரிமைகள் மீறல்கள் பற்றிய அறிக்கையொன்று கையளிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது.

 

முஸ்லிம் கவுன்சில் மற்றும் முஸ்லிம் மீடியா போரத்தின் தலைவர் என்.எம். அமீன், பேராதனைப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தைச் சேர்ந்த கலாநிதி ஹஸ்புல்லாஹ் ஆகியோரின் முயற்சியால் இந்த அறிக்கை கையளிக்கப்பட்டுள்ளமை குறிப்பிடத்தக்கது.

 

Muslim Council of Sri Lanka

(Report prepared and submitted by Professor S.H. Hasbullah on the request of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka at the consultation meeting on peace and reconciliation, humanitarian issues, and Muslim issues by three member technical team of Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva on September 16, 2012 in Colombo)

Dept. of Geography

University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

To:

The Leader and Members

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva

Human Rights Concerns of the Muslim Minority of Sri Lanka

I am an academic and a researcher on conflict and post-conflict Sri Lanka. I am requested by the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka to present and represent the concerns of the Muslim minority of Sri Lanka to your technical team visiting Sri Lanka September 14-21, 2012.

Human Rights Concerns of the Muslim Minority of Sri Lanka

Muslims are a minority of roughly 8 per cent of the total population of the country, living in a scattered manner in the entire Island, living among Sinhala and Tamil majority communities and in harmony with local communities wherever they lived (see Diagram 1). Wherever they lived, they maintained a strong sense of a distinct community shaped by religion and other cultural attributes. But this in no way interfered with the close ties they had with other communities.

Though not seen as a party to the conflict, they were directly and indirectly affected by the three- decade long ethnic conflict which was largely attributed to scattered nature of living. From the human rights point of view, the impacts of conflict on the Muslim community varied from region to region. Here I isolate three major trends and occurrences to present mapping the impact on the community.

1. One of the major events that has had a devastating impact on the community is the violent eviction of the entire population of Muslims from the Northern province, an act of ethnic cleansing, by the LTTE in October 1990 and since then has lived in displacement.

2. Muslim communities that lived in smaller and isolated settlements in the Eastern Province had to flee their homes and ‘settle’ among Muslims of larger concentrations, owing to threat and intimidation by armed groups and had to live in constant fear (see Diagram 2).

3. Muslims who lived among the Sinhalese in the ‘south’, as the rest of the 7 provinces are referred to, were in constant fear and confusion owing to spillover effects of the ethnicized, politicized and militarized conflict in the north and east.

4. Loss of land, property, fear and watchfulness, polarization of attitudes are other impacts that I would merely mention, but not detail here.

2

I submit the most important human rights concerns of the Muslims of the south and east briefly while focusing on Muslims in the north in detail. In the south, occurrences of violence against minority Muslims are reported more frequently now than before. The prevention of a religious activity in a place called Dambulla recently by a mob belonging to the majority community was one of the many examples that has served to instill a sense of insecurity among Muslims in the south in the post war context. The conclusion to the war did not relieve the Muslims of the Eastern Province from the fear of loss of land and livelihood. While they have yet to regain thousands of acres of land that were lost during the war and conflict, they are now faced with misappropriation of their lands in the name of expansion of archeological and religious activity, buttressed and actively promoted by the state apparatus in eastern Sri Lanka. One third of a population in the east, the Muslim community uses less than 5 per cent of the land in the eastern province. The right to live in a decent place is being denied to the Muslims of the east because they are forced to live within ethnically demarcated administrative boundaries. This is the scenario in many other parts of the country as well.

 

Human rights violations against the Muslims of the Northern Province:

Ethnic cleansing of Muslims and LLRC

 

I understand that the technical team of OHCHR is to investigate the present human right situation of the country particularly about the implementation of the LLRC recommendations.

LLRC had a mandate to cover the human right violations that had occurred between 2002 and 2009. But to its credit the LLRC interpreted that mandate broadly and went further back in time, in order to uncover some of the deeper and outstanding issuing of the conflict.

 

LLRC refers to the outrageous eviction of the Northern Muslims in October 1990 in no uncertain terms. It refers to the Muslims of the Northern Province as ‘victims of ethnic cleansing’. It also says that this community was ‘forcibly expelled’ and ‘it was done at gun point” (LLRC: 9.192). In several other places in the report, LLRC repeats the term ‘ethnic clashing’ to refer to human rights violations against Muslims of the Northern Province.

 

Muslims were a tiny minority of roughly 5 per cent of the total Northern Province scattered in all five districts and in nearly 100 concentrations when the LTTE systematically embarked on a programme of ethnic cleansing in 1990 for the simple reason they professed the religion of Islam and wanted to be considered a separate community in a province where the Tamil population constituted more than 90% of the population (see a diagram showing the flow of Muslim displaced).

Non recognition of ethnically cleansed Muslim Displaced

 

At the time of eviction, the entire north Muslims had to seek refuge in the southern provinces with the main concentration being in Puttalam which adjoins the Northern Province (see the Diagram that shows the locations of the welfare centers of displaced Muslims in Puttalam District). They continued to remain as displaced people for two decades from the time of displacement mainly because of the fear of LTTE.

Immediately after the end of war, the government and UNHCR labeled them as ‘old IDPs’ and gave priority only “new IDPs’ in the return and resettlement programme. The state and national and international agencies failed to recognize the nature and impacts of human rights violations

 

3

against the ethnically cleansed Northern Muslims. The LLRC report rightly acknowledges it by stating that “the treatment leveled at the Muslim community of the Northern Province has led them to believe that they are at the bottom of the list of priorities of the Government, INGOs, NGOs and the international community” (LLRC: 9.193).

 

Human Right concerns of displaced Muslims after the end of war

 

The government intentionally delayed the return of ‘Old IDPs’ including northern Muslims. Some Muslim returnees who violated government regulations were forcibly sent back to the place of displacement. A year after, when the green light was shown, almost all able Muslim displaced returned back to north to visit, observe and make an assessment. Almost all who went had to return to their status displacement because of the deplorable state of the place of their previous dwellings, which they had to vacate 21 years ago.

 

As our information states, other than the LLRC, 94 per cent of Muslim displaced living outside of Northern Province have expressed a willingness to return to north. Government information further confirms that 22134 families have already registered for resettlement in 77 GN Division and 88 concentrations of the all five districts of the Northern Province.

 

At present, Northern Muslims are in state of confusion and uncertainty. Most want to return home in the north; but they are unable to make this actually happen because of non-availability of shelter and economic livelihood since all of it was destroyed during the long duration of their displacement. They cannot continue to live in the places of displacement (e.g., Puttalam) either, as those places are already over populated, resource scarce and generally poverty stricken where the displaced community had been a burden to the local community.

 

Reliable statistics confirm that 3 years after the end of the war, about 20 per cent of North Muslims returned home and others continue to live in the places of displacement where they had been living for more than 22 years.

 

The Muslim community of the northern province faced and are facing human rights violations and discrimination both in the northern province, the place of origin and in Puttalam, the place of displacement. The violations of the rights of Muslims in these two places are distinct in character and grave in their different ways.

 

Problems and human right violations faced by returnee Muslims

 

Those Muslims who have courageously returned to north face numerous problems. Returnees have been struggling to re-build their lives without appropriate assistance in the places that had been abandoned for more than two decades. Many Muslim concentrations north are still empty and covered by secondary forest or in a state of complete ruin. In the district of Mannar, their determination to live there is often weakened by frequent occurrences of violence against Muslims. Attempts to regain land, shelter and livelihood have created tensions between returnee Muslims and the local Tamil population.

 

LLRC has diagnosed some of the concerns of returnee Muslims in the following manner.

 

“The Government should facilitate the early return of the displaced Muslims to return to their places of origin in the Northern Province” (LLRC 9.194)”

“The Government should take immediate steps to assist in re-building of the mosques, houses and schools destroyed or damaged by the LTTE (LLRC 9.195)”

 

4

 

At the same time, there are other concerns, which are left without address. And many more new concerns have since emerged about human rights violations of this tiny returnee Muslim population. Some of those concerns are connected with the majority Tamil community which sees the returnee Muslim as a problem to the north. Returning Muslims feel and have documented what they consider to be discriminatory practices against them by Tamil government officials and other prominent members of the community. Concerns arising over land, land grabbing by dominant groups, whoever they may be, beset the return of the Muslim community. At times, the concerns of Muslims and their voices are unfavourably reported. There is an unhealthy climate of ethnic tension in the region though the Muslim community is only a tiny minority. There is no real study and understanding of the true nature of events and concerns of the community.

 

This alarming situation warrants many different kinds of measures designed not only to protect the rights, and interests of minority Muslims but also to create a situation of mutual understanding and co-existence between the communities. Institutions among majority community such as the Catholic Church in Mannar, political organizations and civil society groups in Jaffna and other districts of the district of the north could play a leading role in this.

 

Problems and human right violations faced by Displaced Muslims in Puttalam and other places of displacement in the south

 

As indicated only a handful of the former Muslim residents of Northern Province have returned home so far. Others are unable to return mainly because of the non-availability of shelter and economic livelihood since all of it was destroyed during the long duration of their displacement. Thus, many have decided to continue to remain as ‘displaced persons’ in Puttalam and other places in the south.

IDPs in Puttalam and other places in south faced many serious problems in the past which persist to this day. Some of their problems could be listed as over crowed settlements, no space for expansion, depletion of resources in the area where they share their living, lack of employment, increasing cost of living, etc. In short, the places where Muslim IDPs live in Puttalam and other places cannot continue to cater to the present and increasing population in the future. Yet, the government is about to implement a closure of the ‘status of displacement’ the community now possesses, which would pose serious problems to the welfare of the ‘displaced community’ in the south, particularly in Puttalam.

 

At the same time, brewing tension between the displaced and host communities in places like Puttalam district is a serious human rights concern. Unless addressed with political will, it will lead to new problems in the immediately future in these areas. .

 

In order to understand this, it is necessary to mention the impacts and grievances of the host community in Puttalam also. Many local people in Puttalam initially viewed the migrant Muslims from the North as temporarily displaced and extended support to them. Over time, it became clear that the IDPs were in Puttalam for the long haul given their inability to return North on security considerations. The positive attitudes of hosts changed over time. A large number of the host community is economically in the same plight of the displaced community or even worse; consequently struggles for access to limited services (water, health, education) multiplied. Many host families viewed IDPs as having encroached on the narrow resource base and are receiving dry rations, which were higher in value compared to the welfare payments received by the non-IDPs living below the poverty line. They are some of the reasons for the deteriorating IDP-host relationship in Puttalam and other areas of the displacement of Northern Muslims.

 

5

 

LLRC did not recognize this issue adequately. This issue has to be recognized without delay and it is necessary to address grievances of both communities (displaced and host) in an appropriate manner.

What the victims of ethnic cleansing expect from the High Commissioner of Human Rights

- Recognize the root causes of displacement and to make arrangements for it to be recognized at the United Nation level.

 

- Recommend to the state to have an adequate state policy on return and rehabilitation that includes the concerns of Muslims arrived at through a consultative mechanism with representatives of the Muslim community

 

- Recommend appropriate remedies to the problems of returnees and recommend ways of facilitating the return of other displaced persons if they wish to return now or later.

- Recommend ways of addressing the concerns of and compensating those who have decided not to return to their places of origin because of the more than two decade long period of displacement

 

- Regarding those host communities in Puttalam and other places who nurtured the displaced community over a long period the burden of sharing their resourced with a large number of Muslim displaced, make recommendations toward appropriate measures of remedy to their ‘loss’ that they incurred during the war and the conflict.

Conclusion

 

The Muslim community in Sri Lanka has always wished to live in amity with other communities. The ethnic conflict, war and violence, spawned tensions that have had a long lasting impact on all the communities. The conclusion to the war has eased the situation somewhat, but has not cleansed the country of tension and problems. Where the Muslim community is concerned, the sense of insecurity and discrimination they felt during war persists, with new problems and new aggravations dotting their paths. What is necessary is a well-planned state policy on resettlement, which includes the Muslim community. Dialogue between the different communities, particularly the dominant Tamil community in the north and the returning Muslims is something needs to be nurtured at all levels, particularly at institutional levels. It is also hoped that the state would nurture a culture respect toward all ethnic communities, respect and accept concerns of livelihood, particularly with regard to land and would follow a path of tolerance that would be of benefit to ethnic harmony in the future. In conclusion, it is the wellbeing of the entire country that is at stake and for that we need a culture of mutual respect brought on by a sense of justice being meted out to all.

Thank you,

 

Yours sincerely

S.H. Hasbullah, BA and MA (Sri Lanka) and MA and Ph.D. (Canada)

Professor in Geography of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

On behalf of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka