My visits and experiences in Jaffna

By Lt Col (Retd) Anil Amarasekera

(April23, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) My first ever visit to Jaffna when I was just a kid was way back in the early fifties. My uncle Mr. Tissa Ratnatunga was an important government official in Jaffna. He had a large bungalow within the Jaffna Fort and our family spent a holiday with my uncle and his family in this bungalow. The only memories I have of that visit over five and a half decades ago was this majestic Old Dutch Bungalow and the small but beautiful Jaffna Fort with its impressive entrance across an equally enchanting moat and the herds of wild ponies that we saw running freely in great numbers all over the Delft island.

In 1973 as a Lieutenant of the Second Volunteer Battalion of the Gemunu Watch, I was sent to Jaffna to perform duties with the Task Force for Illicit Immigrants (TAFFII), I was initially the Officer Commanding the Mathakal Army Detachment and after promotion to the rank of Captain I served as the Officer Commanding the Valveddittuari (VVT) Army Detachment in 1977 and 1978. Though there was a lot of turmoil and unrest in the south due to the JVP insurrection during the early seventies the Jaffna peninsula had a calm and tranquil environment at that point of time and the people of Jaffna were not hostile towards the Army on TAFFII duty. However the demand for a separate state put forward by Tamil chauvinists such as S.J.V.Chelvanayakam was seen to gain ground by 1978, during the latter stages of my service period in Jaffna. This was partly due to the mistakes made by power hungry politicians from both the Sinhala and Tamil communities and partly due to the inability of the Police and the Security Forces to win over the hearts and minds of the Tamil population in Jaffna.

One good example with regard to the inability of the Army to win the hearts and minds of the Tamil population will be illustrated by one of my own personal experiences when I was the Detachment Commander of Mathakal. I had dispatched a section of soldiers under a sergeant with specific instructions to establish a road block to apprehend a vehicle transporting smuggled items. On my way to the road block to check if it had been established at the correct road junction, I encountered some Tamil civilians carrying bicycles on their shoulders. When questioned as to why they were doing so, I was informed by them that the Army soldiers at the road junction had ordered them to carry the bicycles home on their shoulders for cycling in the night without lights. I instructed them to remount their bicycles and to ride back home. When the sergeant was questioned by me in this regard, he informed me that he had given those civilians the same punishment that the Police usually give them. I had to warn him never to repeat that kind of action, as TAFFII duty was very different from Traffic Police duty, which we had no mandate to perform.

A bicycle after all is a way of life in the Jaffna peninsula. In the early seventies hub dynamos for bicycles were not freely available. Therefore the dynamo for the bicycle headlight had to be powered by attaching it to the side of the bicycle tyre. As a result the side of the tyre wore out fast. The thrifty Jaffna man used his dynamo very sparingly to get the maximum mileage from his bicycle tyre. Knowing this mentality of the Jaffna man the Police and the Army should have taken a more understanding attitude without giving harsh punishment for such trivial offences. If the Police and the Army had been friendlier towards the people of Jaffna and had they been able to win their hearts and minds, it would have been difficult if not impossible for separatist and terrorist organizations to win support and acceptance from the Tamil people in the Jaffna peninsula.

Power hungry Tamil politicians who propagated separatist ideology misled the Tamil people to a false belief that they would be better off if a separate Tamil state of Eelam could be established by amalgamating the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. The insurrection staged by the Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna (JVP) in the South showed how a few thousand armed and motivated youth were capable of terrorizing and bringing a government to its knees. The militant Tamil youth who realized that the passive resistance of their power hungry senior Tamil politicians would never be able to achieve their proposed state of Tamil Eelam, decided to emulate the insurrection staged by JVP youth in the south and to bring the government in Colombo to its knees through acts of terrorism.

The mishandling of the foreign policy with India by the J.R Jayawardena government resulted in India providing military training to militant Tamil youth organizations. Therefore terrorist and sabotage activities staged by militant youth organizations began to increase rapidly in the northern parts of Sri Lanka. Yal Devi the train that linked Jaffna with Colombo was dynamited and the northern rail track was damaged beyond repair by terrorists. It was by train that most people travelled to and from Jaffna. I have myself travelled in this train on numerous occasions. When travelling from Jaffna to Colombo I used to often see Tamil gentlemen changing from their vetties to trousers when Anuradhapura was approaching and when travelling to Jaffna from Colombo it was a common sight to see Tamil gentlemen changing from trousers to their vetties no sooner the train leaves Anuradhapura. Normal traffic flow along the A9 highway too came to a standstill as the government lost control in much of the Northern Province. While links between Colombo and Jaffna were deteriorating, links between Jaffna and Tamil Nadu began to flourish due to support from Tamil Nadu for the separatist cause in Sri Lanka.

All the effort the Sri Lanka Army took through TAFFII to prevent smuggling and illicit immigration from India to Sri Lanka came to a grinding halt as the government lost control in most of the northern coastal areas. On a recent visit to Kanagarayankulam, I met a member of a Maha Weera family. He informed me that he was an Indian Tamil who was to be repatriated to India under the Srima Shastri Pact. However having avoided repatriation, he and his family had settled in Kilinochchi. His children joined the LTTE and one of his sons was killed in action. As a result he was given Maha Weera family status and provided with a house and a large extent of land in Kanagarayankulam by Prabhakaran. He had been requested to contact his relations in Tamil Nadu and to persuade them to come and settle in the land so provided to him. He said that all other Maha Weera families too were given large extent of land by Prabhakaran and they too had been requested to invite their relations in Tamil Nadu to come and settle in these lands. There had been many families who had accepted this invitation and come from India to settle in these Maha Weera family lands. Some of these families have obtained affidavits after bribing the Grama Niladharies to prove that they were long time residents in Kanagarayankulam. These families are now being resettled by the government in these very same properties.

What I noticed during my two visits to the Jaffna peninsula in February and April this year was that the people were very relaxed and happy and were once more travelling around in bicycles more than in any other form of transport. The Police and the Security Forces were very courteous and friendly towards not only the visitors but also to the general public of Jaffna. Mr. Ramalingam with whom I stayed during my last visit also confirmed that the Police and the Security Forces were now conducting themselves with dignity and had won over the hearts and minds of the Jaffna people.

Though I was happy to hear such news, I was saddened when I saw the magnificent Jaffna Fort now only just a rampart with no buildings within. The majestic Dutch buildings within the Fort were raised to the ground by the LTTE after the withdrawal of the Sri Lanka Army from the Jaffna Fort. When I visited the Mathakal Army Detachment only the parapet wall was left standing while the building that the Army occupied had been completely destroyed. All the buildings that were occupied by the Army in the VVT camp too had been completely raised to the ground by the LTTE and in its present condition no one would believe that a company of 150 soldiers ever lived in that location. These are I believe the inevitable results of a separatist war that brought only death and destruction and no good to anybody.

There were many palatial houses of the smuggler community with beach frontage and some of these houses had a canal dug from the house to the sea along which a motor boat could be driven from the sea into a garage like building attached to the main house. None of these buildings or canal ways exists any longer. However I was able to revisit the smugglers caves that I visited way back in 1976. At that point of time I remember climbing down to the floor of the cave by making use of a small Tamarind tree. After 33 years the same Tamarind tree had grown so big that it was impossible to use it to climb down to the floor of the cave. However I was able to make use of another entrance and work my way with difficulty in to the caves. These caves formed under the surface of the lime stone crust have a very good potential to be developed into a great tourist attraction.

Delft as I remember it from my visit as a kid was an island full of ponies running wild. However when I visited Delft Island this month I did not see any wild ponies and what I saw looked more like domesticated animals. The cattle population owned by the people of Delft I was told had greatly increased. It is possible that the increased cattle population is grazing in the available pastures and sans adequate land to graze there has been a drastic reduction in the pony population. The island has only one bus, a couple of three wheelers and a few tractors. I had the opportunity of travelling around the island in a hand tractor.

Many people driven out of the Jaffna peninsula to Kilinochchi by the LTTE travelled that distance not in motor vehicles but on bicycles. When the Sri Lanka Army commenced its humanitarian operations in the district of Mannar the LTTE ordered the Tamil people in the Mannar district to move to the Kilinochchi district. Many did so using their bicycles. When the Sri Lanka Army humanitarian operation was approaching the Kilinochchi district the LTTE ordered the Tamil people to withdraw towards the Mullaittivu district. Therefore there are mountains of bicycles in many locations in the Mullaittivu district in various states of disrepair that could be repaired and given back to the internally displaced Tamil people that are now resettling in their original habitats. As a hearts and minds operation the Security Forces Commander of Mullaittivu was keen to commence a project to repair as many bicycles as possible and to hand these back to their rightful owners and where owners cannot be found to repair and hand such bicycles to deserving Tamil families that are resettling in their original villages. While returning from Jaffna I initiated such a project through the Thawalama Development Foundation to establish ten bicycle repair shops in the district of Mullaittivu. The necessary tools for this purpose were gifted to ten resettled Tamil families from the Mullaittivu district at the Divisional Secretariat in Odusudan to commence bicycle repair self employment projects. A donation of Rs. Forty thousand (Rs.40000/=) was received to commence this project from the Executive Committee of SPUR.

The Security Forces Commander of Mullaittivu Major General Athula Jayawardena and the General Officer Commanding the 59 Division Major General L.A.D. Amaratunga together with several other senior Army Officers participated at inaugural ceremony of this bicycle repair project that was organized on 6th April 2010 by Lt Col P.A. Dayananda, the Civil Affairs Officer of Mullaittivu.