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| Monday, 21 June 2004 |
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CHINNAPALLIKUPAM, India, Sunday (AFP) - The United Nations, which designated yesterday, Sunday as "World Refugee Day", believes it is still unsafe for Sri Lankan refugees living in India to return. But after living in camps here for decades, many can't wait to go home. "We do not know if our house is still there or whether the war has consumed it. But now that there has been peace for the last two years, it's best we go back," said refugee Krishna Kumari Jayaraman. "My children are still very young and can adjust easily in the new environment over there." Jayaraman has been living in Chinnapallikupam camp, about 250 kilometres (156 miles) from the Tamil Nadu state capital Madras, since she fled Sri Lanka when her father was shot dead by unknown gunmen 16 years ago. She married a labourer in the camp and the couple have two children. The family is now swelling the growing ranks of those among the 90,000 refugees living in 102 makeshift camps in India now wanting to return to their motherland. "We are ready to take 3,000 refugees who want to go back," Sri Lanka's Deputy High Commissioner to India, Sumith Nakandala, told AFP. The applicants are being carefully screened by staff working overtime to make sure their return is voluntary and they know what to expect. "There has been unimaginable destruction in the northern region. These people are going back to the rubble of the past with a huge hope of reconstructing the future," added Nakandala. But the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) insists it is not yet safe for the tens of thousands who fled the fighting in Sri Lanka and sought shelter in neighbouring India to return home. "We do not have any organised repatriation except for a few exceptional cases," UNHCR spokeswoman in Colombo, Maeve Murphy, told AFP. "We do not think conditions are conducive for them to return. "Yet there are those who come on their own, and we give them some assistance." Out of the 9,793 refugees who have returned from India since the ceasefire between Sri Lankan troops and the LTTE began in February 2002, the UNHCR has assisted 1,810 -- all needing urgent help for special humanitarian reasons. Many others have risked hazardous rides in rickety boats across the narrow Palk Straits dividing the two countries to reach Sri Lankan shores, journeys for which they were charged so much they had to sell almost all their belongings. UNHCR figures show that 360,000 people who were made refugees inside Sri Lanka as a result of decades of fighting have returned home since the truce. A further 400,000, however, are still listed as internally displaced. Ganesan Arulkumaran, a 22-year-old who became a computer engineer with support from the state government of Tamil Nadu, said he wanted to return to Sri Lanka and participate in the reconstruction effort. "Yes, this peace has lasted for more than two years and since there is international pressure, the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government may not go to war," refugee Kumaran Thenmozhi said. |
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