‘I have visited my home village once’ Mr Mustafa explains ‘about 3 years ago when the Memorandum Of Understanding brokered by the Norwegians, between the Government and the Tamil Tigers, was signed a few of us hired a van and returned to our village to assess what we could do. We had to travel 100 miles or more because the Road is still not open. The village and our lands are now largely over-grown by forest and inhabited by wild animal, and the ‘two-legged-tigers’’ he smiles as he refers to the cadres of the Tamil Tigers. ‘We would need a lot of help to clear the village, rebuild our houses and re-cultivate our lands but many of us would do that if only we could get some assurance from the Tamil Tigers that we would have security and would not be evicted again’.
‘We are Tamil speakers, that is our language, why should we be treated like this?’ chips in a young man who joins us in the shade of the tree and doesn’t give his name. He must have been a small child when he came here and now is seasonally employed as a conch shell diver. ‘If there’s to be a real end to conflict Muslim representatives, and I don’t mean government appointees, must be included in talks and any final settlement must give Muslim Tamils full restitution. If not the issues of grievance will fester and certainly lead to more conflict.’ He knows that I will report his words so I am reluctant to ask for his name. Speaking about the possibilities of Muslims directly arming to defend their rights is a hot issue here but so far Puttalam has remained a relatively quiet area. ‘We have Tamil Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhist Sinhalese all in this area’ says the CTF Project manager Mr Nilmatulla, ‘but we have lived in relative harmony and there’s no real ethnic tension here’.
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