Livelihood Anxieties of Communities in Mannar,Sri Lanka

Introduction

The laws in Sri Lanka mandate the allocation of state resources, including access to land, business, educational and employment opportunities on the basis of the population ratio of different communities in the country’s districts. The long-drawn internal conflict in this island nation saw demographic changes over the years in the north due to the migration, eviction and internal displacement on the one hand, and the return and rehabilitation of displaced persons, post-conflict, on the other. Communities located in the north and east of the country are therefore seized with anxiety over access to and control of land and resources.

This article examines a case study on how these anxieties have played out with the Muslim and Tamil Christian communities in Mannar district using interviews with parties to the dispute and documented material related to the case. The case involves a dispute between the Uppukulam and the Joseph Vaz Nagar (JVN) fishermen over the use of a fishing pier. The dispute itself is a long-standing one, but came to a head in 2012 restricting the scope of the article to events around this time period. The article introduces a brief political background of northern Sri Lanka and provides information necessary to examine the dispute, such as the socio-cultural context of Mannar, and the status of the return and rehabilitation of internally displaced persons (IDPs). The article examines the role of the state, the courts and the church in locking these communities in competition over access to a source of livelihood.

The long drawn civil war in Sri Lanka ended in 2009 with the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Tamil ‘minority question’ over which the war was fought—for greater political autonomy, economic development and socio-cultural recognition remained unaddressed. Apart from the LTTE, several political fronts, parties and alliances, militant and non-militant such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) were active through the years of war in different regions of the north and east, all of them representing Tamil interests. Some of these political formations were deeply divided on questions of an independent state, means of struggle, political ideology and the nature of ther relations with the Sri Lankan state. Indeed, so splintered were these parties that in the 2000 elections, no Tamil party received enough votes to get a seat in the national list. It was to remedy such fragmentation of votes that the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a party, which is a leading platform for contemporary Tamil politics, was formed in 2001 consisting of TULF, ACTC, EPRLF and TELO. The underlying premise was that the TNA would be broadly supportive of the LTTE and seek its approval and implicit support (Jeyaraj, 2014).

Politically, the 2013 elections restored democratic rights in the Northern Province. The memories of decades of repression of the Tamil people, the heavy-handed approach of the Sri Lankan armed forces during the war and the brutal manner in which the war ended have perpetuated the people’s deep-seated distrust of the Sri Lankan state, exhibited in the decisive election, returning the TNA with a big majority. The vote was particularly an endorsement of the election manifesto of the TNA (The Colombo Telegraph, 2013b) that rejected majoritarian hegemony and promised to address the wide-ranging and diverse concerns of the Tamil minority. These included a repeal of the provision in the 13th Constitutional Amendment that gave the governor more power over the provincial administration, the return and resettlement of IDPs and Muslims, the issue of land and of war widows and the overall development of the Northern Province.

Political Stability in the Northern Province

The 2013 elections and subsequent political developments marked the beginnings of the return of political stability in the Northern Province. The task at hand for the TNA was however far from easy. While the election manifesto of the TNA represented the aspirations of the Tamil minority, its articulation repeated the premise of the Sri Lankan state’s Sinhala nationalism. The manifesto was replete with phrases such as ‘Tamils being distinct people of Sri Lanka’, ‘We, the Tamil people of Sri Lanka’, ‘subject to majoritarian hegemony’ presupposing Tamils as a monolithic collective, privileging the language identity over others, concealing conflicts and glossing over other identities that existed within the group (Fernando, 2014).

For example, the TNA manifesto did not go beyond terming the eviction of Muslims from the Northern Province in 1990 as ‘regrettable’ and placed it on par with the displacement of Tamils as a result of war and violence thereby failing to recognise that from the eviction and the events leading to it emerged hierarchies of oppression that paralleled their own. While the manifesto rightly called for investigations into allegations of human rights violations by LTTE and the Sri Lankan armed forces, it overlooked the need to investigate and place on record the political events leading to mass evictions in 1990. The TNA failed to acknowledge the interconnectedness between these experiences, or that it did not make them mutually exclusive and thereby recognised the futility of denying experiences of another group to prioritise one’s own. In a socio-political context, where all Tamils are minorities and subaltern, the TNA as the elected representative had a particular challenge of ensuring that these communities were not pitched against each other competing for resources and opportunities for development.

A Case Study

The Sri Lankan Muslim community is the second largest religious minority in the country and shares cultural and linguistic ties with the Tamil minority community. In total, 62 per cent of Muslims live among the Sinhalese population in the south of Sri Lanka and 38 per cent of Muslims live in the Tamil dominated regions of the north and east (Manogaran, 1987). Throughout the last century, Muslims tried to construct an identity based on their Arab origins and religion. The need for such a distinct identity was first felt during the 1915 Sinhala-Muslim riots when ‘the Muslims noticed Tamil sympathies for the Sinhalese’ (Ahmed, 2013, p. 115) In the north and east, the Muslims were gripped ‘by demographic anxiety and locked in competition with the Tamils for control over economic and land resources, they turned to religion as a way of bolstering their cohesion’ (Imtiyaz & Hoole, 2011, p. 212).

The sense of marginalisation among Muslims sharpened in the post-war phase of reconciliation, return and rehabilitation of displaced peoples in the Northern Province. Muslims returning to their homes after decades of displacement alleged structural discrimination in Mannar and other parts of the Northern Province (2012). In Mannar, they found themselves competing with Tamils to reclaim their fishing rights from a pier that has been traditionally and customarily theirs until the eviction. Although life for all the communities had been disrupted because of the war and the scarcity of land was making resettlement particularly difficult for the returning displaced people, it was peculiar how resolution in the case of Uppukulam fishing community remained elusive, particularly after the involvement of political and religious leaders speaking on behalf of the minority parties who were caught in the dispute.

Background

Mannar district is spread over 1,963 square kilometres area in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka and has a population of 99,051 according to the 2012 census (Department of Census and Statistics, 2011). There were 18,960 active fishers in 2012, that is, about 19.14 per cent of population of Mannar District were engaged in fishing (Fisheries Statistics, 2020). This figure had increased post-war with the displaced and evicted populations returning to reclaim their livelihood sources.

Despite differences in ethnicity and religion, communities in the north speak Tamil and they have lived, by and large, peacefully with each other. Allam, President of Uppukulam Al-Azhar Fishermen Cooperative Society (UAFCS), describing the relationship between the different communities said, ‘We celebrated events and festivities together, visited each other’s homes, shared food and referred to each other as brothers’ socioeconomic status (FGD notes on file with author, 2013). Other socio-political commentators note, ‘In every way Muslims and Tamils in the north have been traditionally totally integrated into local life as interdependent communities. There were Muslim traders, tailors, iron mongers, labourers and scholars… There was no conflict at all’ (UTHR, 1991).

Over the years however, political relations between the LTTE and Muslims, particularly in the east, became strained and fraught with distrust. The tenuous relations snapped completely in October 1990 when almost overnight the LTTE ordered the eviction of Muslims from the entire Northern Province. The operation to purge Muslims from the north was planned at the highest command level of the LTTE and was implemented by militants from the east and therefore not known to the locals. The key events pieced together by Tamils in Mannar and Muslim refugees in a report published in 1991 showed that it ‘involved attacks on Muslim villages, orders were given to evacuate with almost nothing in hand, robbing them of cash, jewellery, electrical equipment and household items, the isolation of Muslims and prohibition on any dealings with them’ (UTHR, 1991).

A focussed group discussion (FGD) held among women of the Muslim community of Mannar revealed that community members and women perceived that the reason Muslims were targetted for evacuation was their relative superior socio-economic status (FGD notes on file with the author, 2013). They were better-educated, wealthy, owned businesses, land, properties and were employed in higher posts in government jobs, particularly in Mannar. The fact the LTTE broke the Mannar bridge that connected the island to the mainland, prior to attacking the villages, was cited as evidence of the pre-planned nature of the eviction with the sole objective of rendering Muslims homeless and deprived of sources of livelihoods. According to the women in the FDG, about 15,000 families were forcefully evicted in 1990 from the Northern Province and about half of them were from Mannar district (FGD, 2013).

The Return of the IDPs

Some of the evicted Muslims began to return immediately to their homes. They came on the assurance of security and protection by the posted armed forces. However, some who had gone back to these villages found that jungle growth had encroached into their villages. Others found their homes had been occupied by local Tamils or other IDPs. The government was aiding the clearance of the jungle growth (FGD, 2013), but returnees had to come up with own funds to rebuild their homes. It took some families five years to return to their former homes.

In total, 24 years later, this evicted population of the Northern Province had risen to about 40,000 families as a result of the natural growth of families. They had only one home in Mannar. The government did not otherwise facilitate the return of all the families, despite the recognition that they had been locally domiciled and that they were registered as voters. In fact, the government used this recognition and registration of these persons to indicate that on paper they had been successfully resettled, but did not actually provide any support or services for their actual return.

Additionally, according to the post-war official resettlement policy the number of IDPs in the country was 270,030 (Raheem, 2013). The figure included only persons displaced during the war that ended the conflict in 2009. It excluded all Muslims evicted in 1990 or others who were displaced at different phases of the conflict. The IDPs included in the policy came to be referred as ‘New IDPs’ and the ones excluded as ‘Old IDPs’. The exclusion meant that they could not access the resettlement package provided by the government and the humanitarian agencies. ¹ ‘It was only after significant pressure that the Muslim IDPs from the Mussali area in southern Mannar were allowed to go to their homes as part of a recent resettlement effort’ (Mihlar, 2009).

The government had specifically not shown ‘adequate interest in reconstructing the infrastructure of the Muslims that had been vandalized soon after the Muslims had been evicted and further damaged due to the war that followed’ (Imtiyaz & Iqbal, 2011). Land that was owned by Muslims had been occupied by other IDPs or by the state institutions such as the military. The secondary occupation of the land was another issue that affected the land rights of Muslims. ‘In some instances DS [Divisional Secretary] officers have reportedly given permits to land claimed by displaced Muslims to Tamils…in some cases land was sold or transferred by Muslims to Tamils’ however Muslim claim that ‘they sold their land under duress from the LTTE or had only rented out properties to Tamils who are now claiming ownership’ (Raheem, 2013, p. 47).

Returnees who had land and wished to build on it from their own resources faced procedural challenges. The Divisional Secretary’s office in Jaffna required a list of ten documents ² to be submitted before it approved any building on their land. These requirements were the same for other Divisional Secretariats in the north, including Mannar. But many Muslims lost their land documents during eviction in 1990. There were accounts of how LTTE used Tamil officials to systematically distort or tear off pages in the land registry showing ownership of land by Muslims. There were also cases where elderly men or husbands had died and their families were unable to locate the land or produce documents related to it, after years of displacement. The challenges of producing these documents and the expenses involved discourage Muslims to return to their original homes, among other things. Some of them did not know the status of their properties as their lands continued to be inaccessible due to a fear of mines or the environment being otherwise hostile.

Mannar’s Post-war Demography

Mannar town was one such place where evicted Muslims found the environment too hostile to return and resettle. The hostility was from their former friends and allies—the Tamil Christian community and its leadership. The fear of Muslims competing for state resources, particularly land was at the heart of this hostility. The demography of Mannar district had seen rather drastic changes over the past few decades. The population of Muslims had been steadily declining since Independence and rather dramatically since 1990. In 1946, the Muslim population in Mannar stood at 33.01 per cent and in 1981 it was 26.6 per cent (Statistical Information, 2010). The population of Tamil Christians in 1981 was 41.1 per cent (Percentage distribution of population by religion and district, 2014). The religion-wise composition of population according to the 2012 census was 52.6 per cent Tamil Christians followed by 16.6 per cent Muslims (Percentage distribution of population by religion and district, 2014). The Muslim population of Mannar had dropped by 10.8 per cent since their eviction in 1991 and there was a corresponding rise in the Tamil Christian population by 11.5 per cent in the same period, firmly consolidating their position as a dominant community in the district of Mannar.

The Tamil Christian community feared a relative fall in the overall percentage of their population in Mannar town if all the evicted Muslims (and their multiplied families) returned and resettled in Mannar (interview Mohammed Allam, 2013). The government provided resources for businesses, educational facilities, employment opportunities and other services to communities on the basis of their proportionate percentage in the overall population. The Christian community would have to share these resources and services if the Muslims returned to their pre-1990 strength in the Mannar island population. The Muslims claimed that the majority of the Christian community, under the leadership of the Bishop of Mannar, was actively obstructing the efforts of the evicted Muslims to return and resettle.

The Dispute

The obstruction took a serious turn when evicted Muslims returned to claim fishing rights from the pier where they used to fish prior to 1990. The case details are as follows:

The island of Mannar had several piers (Figure 1) from where the locals went fishing. Prior to 1990, different Tamil communities Christians, Hindus and Muslims living in the nearby villages exclusively used each of the piers, respecting such exclusive use without encroaching upon one another’s space. One such pier was the Kondapitty pier (represented in Figure 1 as No.13, Uppukulam) in the Uppukulam area. Muslims have exclusively used this pier for several generations—to anchor their boats, to go fishing and to dry fish. Such exclusive use for generations established their customary right to use the Kondapitty pier. In the absence of Muslims after their eviction, this pier was not extensively used (HRCSL Report, 2014). In October 1990, when the LTTE forcibly evicted Muslims of Mannar island, they were sent ‘60 miles south by sea to Kalpitiya in the North Western Province in boats owned by Muslims of this area. The entire exercise took more than three days’ (Rajasingham, 2013). The evicted Muslims were however not allowed to fish in Kalpitiya.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Source: Provided by the author.

Around the same time, Tamil fishermen from Veedathaltheevu (their pier represented as No: 24 in Figure 1 ) in the mainland, which was then occupied by LTTE, were also displaced. Following their displacement in 1990, the Veedathaltheevu fishermen anchored their fishing vessels and engaged in fishing activity in Pallimunai pier, a pier close to Kondapitty, until 2000. They had a dispute with the fishermen traditionally using Pallimunai pier and were asked to vacate. The Veedathaltheevu fishermen moved temporarily to another village close by (Panamkattikotu) until the Bishop of Mannar made arrangements for them to move to a church land in Thoddaveli in 2001 and settled them in a new village called JVN. They could not however go fishing from the new village as it was not located along the coast leaving them with no pier to lodge their boats.

Since the Kondapitty pier was vacant, the LTTE directed the JVN fishermen to use it alongside the few Uppukulam fishermen who had returned. When the Uppukulam fishermen protested, they were placated by the LTTE with assurances that this was a temporary arrangement and that the JVN fishermen would move to another area once the remaining Uppukulam fishermen returned to the village (Rajasingham, 2013). An agreement was signed between the Uppukulam Al-Azhar Fishermen Cooperative Society (UAFCS) and the Joseph Vaz Nagar Fishermen Society (JVNFS), negotiated by a Veedathaltheevu politician, Selvam Addaikalanahan (a Tamil National Alliance MP) which was witnessed and authenticated by an LTTE official. The agreement allowed members of the JVNFS the use of the Kondapitty pier until all the members of the UAFCS returned. It further stated that upon return of all members of UAFCS, JVNFS would vacate the pier and return the use of the harbour to the Uppukulam fishermen (interviews with members of the UAFCS and JVNFS, 2013). Upon a request from the JVN fishermen and with the involvement of the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and Ceylon Fisheries Harbour Corporation, the UAFCS agreed to extend the period of the JVNFS use of the Kondapitty pier twice between 2002 and 2006 (HRCSL Report, 2014).

Both parties agreed to converting this agreement into a monetary transaction. The UAFCS volunteered information that it charged rent from the JVNFS for a brief period for the use of the Kondapitty pier as evidence of the ownership of the pier (HRCSL Report, 2014). However, when the war ended in 2009 and the remaining members of UAFCS returned and wished to resume fishing from the Kondapitty pier, the JVNFS refused to vacate it.

The UAFCS requested the Ministry of Fisheries to settle the matter which then organised a meeting on 3 November 2011 with all the concerned parties. At this meeting it was pointed out that when Uppukulam Muslims were evicted to Kalpitty they were not allowed to fish from that area. Based on this fact, a decision was taken at this meeting that the JVN fishermen displaced from Veedathaltheevu should ‘remove their fishing equipment on or before 30 November 2011 from Konthapitty pier. The JVN fishermen did not agree with the decision’ (HRCSL Report, 2014) and continued to fish from Konthapitty pier.

In June 2012, the Government Agent (GA) requested the JVN fishermen to stop using the Kondapitty pier until an alternative solution was given. They followed the request for about 13 days after which they continued fishing, without any prior notice, at Kondapitty (HRCSL Report, 2014). This refusal to stop the use of the Kondapitty pier came to a head immediately in 12 July 2012 when the Uppukulam fishermen asked JVN to remove their shacks from the pier. When they refused again, the dispute became unruly as the Uppukulam fishermen damaged shacks erected by JVN fishermen and some of their fishing equipment worth Rs 159,000. The JVN fishermen complained that they feared an attack from the Uppukulam fishermen and requested protection. A case was registered against the members of the UAFCS.

The Court Case

On 16 July 2012, when the case was being heard at the Mannar Court, the UAFCS organised a protest outside the Court complex, which turned violent. Judge Joudeson’s order chided the police for not taking action against the protesters stating that the pier is for the use of all and anyone trying to prevent such use should be arrested. He ordered protection for the JVN fishermen and security for their properties (Francis Jeny vs. UAFCS, 2012) and advised the Divisional Secretary and the government agent to consult the two parties and find a solution to the problem.

Following the court order, the DS made a submission to the Judge (Submission from the Office of the Divisional Secretary, 2013) following consultations with all concerned parties and proposed alternative pier locations for the use of JVN fishermen. The submission made a reference to the 2002 agreement between the UAFCS and JVNFS and stated that due to the past experience with JVN fishermen, fishermen of Panangattikottu, Pallimunai, and Erukalampiddy villages did not want to share their piers. It then proposed three alternative piers that is, Thalaimannar, Thalavaadikeelikkaryanpatty and Naayattruvelli for JVN fishermen to choose from and concluded that if the JVN fishermen did not choose between the latter two options (the first one was discarded because of its distance) they could go back to their original place, that is, Veedathaltheevu.

Judge A. Joudeson questioned the legality of the 2002 agreement referred to in the submission reiterating his observations that piers did not belong to any one entity or community. In effect, the order allowed Muslims to use their Kondapitty pier alongside the JVN fishermen. However, given the contentious history, the Muslims feared that they could be arrested if they used the pier (HRCSL Report, 2014).

The JVNFS rejected the alternatives piers suggested in the submission and refused to go back to their original village in Veedathaltheevu. In March 2013, the JVNFS, in a letter to the Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) came up with suggestions of two piers that were owned by the state and were acceptable to them. However, both the suggestions were in close proximity or part of the piers that were already occupied or had some prior usage rights of existing fishermen’s societies of Uppukkulam, Pallimunai and Erukkalampitty villages. In a letter to the GA in May 2013, the Mannar District Fishermen Cooperative Society (representing all the fishermen societies) rejected these suggestions (HRCSL Report, 2014).

The Politico-Cultural Context

The case reached an impasse and the rights of the UAFCS to the Kondapitty pier itself were questioned. In the meanwhile, the JVNFS continued their fishing activities from the landing base of Kondapitty pier and the UAFCS were unable to assert their right to use of the pier for fear of a reprisal. The origin of the case had an independent history, but the impasse in its resolution was intricately linked with the role of the state in land acquisitions and policies of land distribution. While these polices directly impacted minorities in the north and east with regard to their claim to land in the course of post-war resettlement, the policies also resulted in minorities remaining pitched in competition against each other for sources of livelihood as in the present case. The case was also symptomatic of how the broader post-war rehabilitation and resettlement problems had sharpened the survival instincts of subaltern minorities.

State’s Abusive Land Acquisitions Practices

Land matters are regulated under the Thirteenth Amendment in the Constitution, which devolves some land powers to the Provincial Councils. The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in a 2013 judgment rolled back this provision and limited the powers of the Provincial Councils over land. The court essentially stated that the Provincial Councils would only have power over lands which were given to them by the central government. ³ The Thirteenth Amendment also set out that the distribution schemes of state land should be conducted on the basis of national ethnic ratios. As an additional safeguard for minorities predominantly and historically domiciled in certain areas, it specified that in allocating state land, distribution schemes should not seek to change demographic patterns or communal cohesiveness. ⁴

The post-war Sri Lankan state, facing a rehabilitation and resettlement crisis, had a window of opportunity to use land legislations to further peace and reconciliation with the minority communities of the north and east. Instead, it abused various land legislations, notably Section 38 of the Land Acquisition Act, which allowed the government to acquire land in situations of urgency and had ‘taken large swathes of land in a manner that predominantly affects minority communities and facilitates entrenched militarisation in the North and East’ (Fonseka & Jegatheeswaran, 2013). These acquisitions were directed by the central government and the military provided limited information to local officials and affected populations. The land so acquired by the state was not for the purpose of resettlement of the returning displaced people, but for commercial and military purposes. Moreover, in direct violation of the safeguards provided in the Thirteenth Amendment, the state was actively pursuing ethnic colonisation and using state land to change demographics of certain areas.

There are several reports about the government’s involvement in the ‘Sinhalisation, ⁵ that is, settling Sinhalese communities in the minority Tamil northern and eastern districts of Sri Lanka. A study by the Centre for Policy Alternatives concluded that in the north and east, it was primarily the Tamil and Muslim communities that were affected by the state’s land policies and acquisitions (Fonseka & Jegatheeswaran, 2013). As of April 2013, the state brought approximately 4,800 Sinhala families to Welioya and continued to bring in as many new Sinhalese settlers as possible to the area changing the demography of the region. Such settlement was taking place under the tight fist of the governor, specially appointed military officers and Sinhala government officers (Fonseka & Jegatheeswaran, 2013; Mittal & Fraser, 2016).

Similar attempts had been made to settle Sinhalese communities in Mannar as well (The Colombo Telegraph, 2013a) perpetuating fear among both Tamil and Muslim minority communities that land held by them for decades could be taken away or given to the dominant community. The present case was symptomatic of a broad anxiety and insecurity among the Muslim and Tamil Christian minority community with regard to their land and sources of livelihood. With no recourse, judicial or otherwise, to the affected community it was clear that the process of abusive land acquisitions indicated a breakdown of the rule of law with grave implications for minority rights, peace and reconciliation.

Conclusion

The state has the responsibility to rehabilitate communities affected by the civil war, particularly the IDPs. The responsibility extends to providing resources and support services to all IDPs returning to their homes at the end of the war. The state has performed this role for a limited number of IDPs defined in studies as the ‘new IDPs’ abandoning the protracted ones. The Uppukulam and the JVN fishermen were the definition of protracted IDPs having been displaced since 1991. In their dispute for access to the fishing pier of Kondapitty and thereby their source of livelihood, the state and the courts acted like helpless spectators leaving the communities in a state of livelihood anxiety and manipulation to compete among themselves for scarce resources.

The state however is far from helpless. Its role in taking in large swathes of land ostensibly for administrative and military purposes in the north and east of the country, some of which are lands that belonged to the IDPs had sown seeds of discontent among communities. Even more alarming was that the state, in complete violation of the law, had settled Sinhalese community in these newly acquired lands thereby further marginalising and alienating Tamils and other minority groups.

Given that the basis of allocation of state resources and benefits was based on the population ratio of different communities, the strategy of consolidation of population appealed to Tamil Christians. The case study above has shown that the resettlement of JVNFS in church land, their refusal to give up Kondapitty pier to Uppakulam fishermen or accept alternative piers are all indicative of a strategy in action. The success of this strategy was found in the statistics discussed in the section above on post-war demographics of Mannar, that is, the demographic consolidation of the Tamil Christians population in Mannar by about the same percentage as the weakening of the Muslim population since their eviction in 1991. With the continued lack of access to the fishing pier, the Uppukulam fishermen were left with no opportunities for livelihood. Eventually, their only option open to them was leave in search of livelihood opportunities elsewhere, further contributing to the success of the strategy, and to the continuation of livelihood anxieties among the communities in Mannar.

Cases