What the Tsunami Survivors Say

I am back in Sri Lanka after a short period at home in Merseyside. I have come back to a country yet again on the brink of war. This morning Erik Solheim, the Norwegian Minister of Development and Facilitator of the stalled peace talks between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan Government, has arrived for yet more talks. A crucial question is where to hold the next round of talks, a surmountable issue if both sides were actually ready for compromise. Meanwhile daily reports of claymine blasts covers the front pages of the media

I am sitting now in a veritable tower of Babel, in the Nagarodaya Auditorium in Colombo. You Can See Herman Kumara of the National Fisheries Organsation giving the feed back from his network of groups to the People's Commisson. The three key languages of Sri Lanka . Tamil, Sinhalese and English, are being used simultaneously to present and discuss the final report of the People’s Planning Commission. The PPC was established in November 2005 to examine the relative exclusion of many Tsunami survivors from the national and local planning processes of rehabilitation and re-development following the Tsunami. The Commission, established by NGOs engaged in community development and advocacy, was composed of a range of academics, lawyers and community leaders who took evidence in many of the coastal communities affected by the Tsunami, the worst natural disaster to strike Sri Lanka in historical memory. The Commissions findings are not news to most people.

In much of the evidence collected it is astonishing how widespread the dissatisfaction is at the failure of Government to really listen to and respond to the people. Their main criticism is that ‘other’ agendas have crept in and policies seemingly shelved by previous Governments are being dusted down and brought back as a ready made economic development plan. Most galling is the extension of the tourist industry into 4 and 5 star coastal facilities to the exclusion, and in some cases, dispossession of the fishing communities. The newly appointed President had seemed to listen closely to these concerns in the October November 2005 election campaign, even reducing the coastal buffer zone where no non tourism rebuilding could take place, from 100 meters to 35 meters, but now as President of a new Government many fear Tsunami rehabilitation and infrastructural rebuilding plans will simply revert to the previous discredited plans.

Just as I reached home I hear news of 5 bomb blast around the capital - one just 1/2 mile form my house. Most of the news is saying that no one was killed or injured so it is unlikely that it was a serious attempt at carnage. Nevertheless there is a hieghtened air of tension and people are putting all their hope in restarted negotiations between the Tamil Tigers and the Government of Sri Lanka.