15 years on, the Tamil survivors of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war live in fear — and disempowerment

MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka– At the site of a bloody battlefield that marked the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, Singaram Soosaimuthu fishes every day with his son, casting nets and reeling them in.

It’s a skill he’s known for much of his life and had to relearn after a devastating injury. The former Tamil fighter lost both legs in 2009, as the country’s generation-long civil war came to an end and the Tamils ​​retreated in defeat.

Doing something for himself despite his injuries brought Soosaimuthu success, an achievement in which he finds deep meaning. He sees his fellow ethnic Tamils ​​the same way: to regain his voice, they must prosper.

But the defeat – bloody, prolonged and decisive – has driven Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority to a point of despair.

Some parents have lost hope of ever learning destiny of the thousands of missing children. Parts of Tamil lands are decimated, with poor infrastructure and fewer economic opportunities. Survivors have lived under surveillance for years and many now feel that members of the new generation have become too fearful and apathetic about standing up for their rights.

“There is a clear agenda afoot to degenerate a defeated community,” says Selvin Ireneus, a social activist based in Jaffna, the northern cultural heartland of the Tamils.

The government, he says, does not want today’s Tamils ​​to be politically evolved. After the fighting ended, he says, narcotics and other vices have been systematically introduced into the region. “They just want them to eat, drink and enjoy themselves and not have a political ideology,” Ireneus said. “This has happened to every defeated community in the world.”

The island nation of 20 million people is overwhelmingly ethnically Sinhalese, with the Tamil community making up about 11% of the population. The separatist civil war broke out in 1983 after years of failed attempts to share power within a unified country, and Tamil fighters (known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or simply the Tamil Tigers) eventually created an independent homeland. de facto in the territory of the country. north.

The group was crushed in a 2009 government offensive. The war killed at least 100,000 people on both sides and left many more missing.

Although not all Tamils ​​were part of or supported the Tamil Tiger rebel group, its defeat has effectively become a political defeat for the community. They have lost their bargaining power.

“What’s left now is a very small community, and they don’t have the courage… to show their disagreement,” says KT Ganeshalingam, director of political science at the University of Jaffna.

The Sri Lankan government had promised the United Nations and countries like India and the United States that it would share power with Tamil-majority areas to resolve the causes that led to the civil war. However, successive governments have not followed up.

Fifteen years later, some in Tamil areas still deny that the armed campaign was defeated and that rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was considered invincible, was killed. Sections of Tamil expatriates in Europe have claimed that Prabhakaran would return soon to take the campaign to the next stage, including a woman who claims to be his daughter and is said to be collecting donations in his name.

Prabhakaran’s nephew in Denmark, Karthic Manoharan, says the time has come to put an end to the rumors and state, emphatically, that the leader is dead.

“We have no doubt about (his death) because he loved his country very much. And he is not a coward for fleeing the country and living in another country, a different country to save himself, his wife and his daughter,” says Manoharan.

These beliefs are more than just inaccurate, says Ganeshalingam; They are truly detrimental to any possible future that the Tamil people are trying to chart. He asks, “If I have not grasped the fact that I am defeated, how can I overcome it?”

In Tamil society, especially in the diaspora, talking about the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, their past mistakes and even Prabhakaran’s death is discouraged. Ganeshalingam says such attitudes have created a deadlock in Tamil politics.

Political leaders are divided and in disarray. The political alliance that the Tamil Tigers formed is fragmented, with many leaders breaking away to form their own parties. Civil activists are now working to unify them and strengthen their negotiating position ahead of this year’s presidential election.

In the villages of Mullaitivu district, where the final battle between government forces and the Tamil Tigers took place, many men are addicted to narcotics and alcohol, forcing women to be the main breadwinners, he says. Yogeswari Dharmabaskaran, a social worker in Udaiyarkattu area of ​​Mullaitivu District. School dropouts are soaring in the villages, he says, as children find easy money selling narcotics, illegally felling trees and mining river sand.

In Jaffna, local politician Thiyagaraja Nirosh says family elders discourage young people from speaking out about political rights. Therefore, it is difficult to find younger candidates to run in local elections.

“There is a fear that talking about politics is dangerous. Many family elders do not encourage talking about politics,” says Nirosh. “The reason is that there has been no justice for past murders. “They see no guarantee that such incidents will not be repeated.”

Thayalan Kalaipriya, a former rebel, often wonders about the future. She says her many losses have made her deeply desire unity among all Sri Lankans; At the same time, she says it is painful to realize that her efforts to gain political rights have been in vain.

Former rebels often do not receive adequate support and ex-combatants, such as those who recruited children at the height of the war, are sometimes treated with resentment, although he says some respect their commitment and sacrifice.

She finds solace working with her young children, educating them and helping to give them a good life in a land she hopes is free of civil war and the sad echoes it has caused.

“We teach our children what happened,” he says, “but never to seek revenge.”

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Associated Press writer Nat Castañeda in Copenhagen contributed to this report.