The right of return to Jaffna – The eviction and the exodus

As Sri Lanka continues to teeter on the edge of all-out war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state, it is hard but necessary to believe that the country does not need to endlessly repeat the same cycle of events. Roads within the war-zone areas of the north, and even more so the east, have once again been crowded with thousands of shelter-seeking Tamils and Muslims – continually pushed this way and that by warring parties. But this is a war for homeland on one side and for a sovereign state on the other, and neither actor will provide ordinary people with homes or lands or the basic rights of citizenship.

Largely forgotten in this conflict's long years has been the fact that, 17 years ago, all 75,000-80,000 Muslims were evicted from the island's north. A group of people who, like the Tamils who the LTTE claimed to be fighting for, had considered the north their inalienable homeland, suddenly found themselves on the other side of a border that attempted to sever their pasts and futures from their homes. About 65,000 northern Muslim refugees now live in camps in Puttalam District alone. These events need to be remembered in Sri Lanka, not only because acts of large-scale forced movement of ethnic minorities continue to be a feature of today's conflict, but also because both observers and participants need to make constant links between these events and the forms of state or quasi-state power that are being claimed and put into effect.