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‘3 meals, 2 cups tea’ – Sri Lankan Tamils crossing sea for refuge in Mandapam Camp again

In the old Tamil Nadu camp for Sri Lankan civil war refugees, the new have started arriving after the economic crisis.

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Mandapam, Rameswaram: Just as crowds swelled in Colombo’s upscale Galle Face area demanding former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ouster in early April, a young couple journeyed by road from Vavuniya in the northern provinces of Sri Lanka to the island of Mannar.

Indrakumar Kodeeswaran and his pregnant wife Kasthuri travelled two hours in a bus, waited till dusk at Mannar Island and were shepherded into a boat with seven others to cross over to India. They arrived in Mandapam, Tamil Nadu’s largest refugee camp for Sri Lankan Tamils on 10 April.

With raging protests, a massive economic crisis that saw shortages of fuel and cooking gas, Sri Lanka has had a tumultuous year. The sharp increase in the cost of living made it close to impossible for several Sri Lankan Tamils to make ends meet, prompting some to cross over to India in search of a better life. So far, 150 Sri Lankan Tamils have found their way to Mandapam.

With a packet of bread costing Rs 200, a small biscuit packet Rs 90 and a kilogram of rice at Rs 250, “it was extremely difficult to make ends meet,” says Kodeeswaran, who was an agricultural worker in the Vavuniya district. His wife, Kasthuri, was four months pregnant with their first child when the couple decided to abandon their home and leave to join family in India. His parents and sister have lived in the Bhavanisagar Camp in Tamil Nadu’s Erode for three decades, he said. According to records with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, there are over 58,000 refugees living in 108 refugee camps in Tamil Nadu.

Kodeeswaran and Kasthuri began walking towards Mandapam Camp from Arichal Munai in Danushkodi—the end point of India’s tip which is 18 nautical miles from Sri Lanka—where the boat dropped them off on the intervening night between 9 and 10 April. “We finally flagged down an auto and were dropped outside the refugee camp at 5 am,” he says. Once there, they were taken to the police station, asked for their personal details, separated into different groups, and brought to where they are currently housed.

Nearly a week after the couple arrived at Mandapam Camp, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin spoke to the newly arrived via video conferencing to enquire about their needs and well-being. “Only some saw him via video, me and my wife were made to sit outside,” says Kodeeswaran.

Stalin had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 April, just as Lankan Tamils began arriving by sea, to ask if the state can be accorded permission for providing them temporary asylum so the “concessions being given to the Lankan Tamil refugees could be extended to the Tamils arriving now.” The Mandapam Camp, originally created by the British for migrant plantation workers from Sri Lanka, lies 700 km south of Chennai and now houses approximately 1,500 Sri Lankan Tamils.


Also read: Sri Lanka wasn’t India’s backwater. Just look at its violent, religious medieval history


Three meals, two cups of tea – Life in the camp

For now, Kodeeswaran and his wife, like several other newly arrived Lankan Tamils, have been given accommodation, three meals and two cups of tea a day. “My wife is nearly 8 months pregnant and the meals provided here are just not conducive for someone carrying a child,” he says. “But I understand that they are cooking for 150 people and cannot change it for just one person.”

The couple has given several written petitions to the camp office requesting for Kodeeswaran’s mother to be allowed to come visit for three months. “We will need help during the delivery,” he says. “Even for a scan now we are expected to go to Ramanathapuram since the hospital within the camp doesn’t have such facilities.”

Latha (name changed), also came by boat, with nine other people and two children. The day she decided to leave Sri Lanka for good from the eastern provinces, 100 grams of milk powder cost LKR 400.

When she landed at Mandapam, her details were recorded in a rose-coloured ‘Emergency Registration Form’: Name, gender, place of birth, documents that she had on her and so on. The form doesn’t allow refugees to leave the camp, she says. “Now, we are given three meals a day and two cups of tea while we await any paperwork that will recognise us as refugees,” she says.

While Latha came with refugees seeking a better life in an economic crisis, Mathi (name changed), who has been living in the camp since 2006, says in a sense her situation wasn’t any different when she first arrived. “We did not even have one square meal a day,” she says. There was no water, food, nothing, in the war-torn years.

“There is not much to complain about,” Mathi says, about her current life. “Others might, but I won’t since I know how much we suffered in Sri Lanka.”

For the past four months, Mathi has been keenly tracking news from her home country.

“When I watch the news, I do feel worried, I feel like crying thinking about my country,” she says. “Only now do the Sinhalese people understand why we fought. You can’t clap with one hand, if we had clapped together back then, today our country would have been different.”

So far, 150 Sri Lankan Tamils have found their way to Mandapam | Sowmiya Ashok | ThePrint

Also read: Take care, Rajiv Gandhi told Prabhakaran. Even gave bulletproof vest before Sri Lanka Accord


Stuck between two countries

Everything from fresh chicken to gold loans is available on the road leading to the heavily surveilled Mandapam Camp. On a Wednesday morning, Sri Lankan Tamils walk in and out of the gate: Some carry bags of string beans, others leave the gates to work on construction sites or buy vegetables from the weekly market in Ramanathapuram, about half an hour away. Those who stay at the camp access the outside world through buses and trains. Mandapam “is a famous stop”, says Mathi.

A father and daughter make their way first to a vegetable shop, then a bakery, before walking back to the camp. “My daughter has lived in this camp for years, but I have just been here for ten days now. I came for a heart checkup,” he says. With the crisis in Sri Lanka making it more and more difficult to access medicines, the only option was to seek medical attention in India. “It was really difficult to find medication in northern Sri Lanka where I am from.”

Elsewhere, under a tin roof, an old Tamil man stands watching people pass by his home. “He is a Ceylon Kaaran (person), he is a Ceylon Kaaran,” he repeats, pointing at people who walk, cycle, or drive past on their mopeds. He and his neighbour burst into a spontaneous discussion over the situation in Sri Lanka.

“They don’t have petrol, cost of living is very high, they only have petrol if Modi sends them some,” he says. His neighbour chips in, “Then the Chinese came and parked their large ship. Look at the cheek, for them to do that.”

Kodeeswaran says he does not plan to return to Vavuniya. “This is home now, my family lives here,” he says. But he is yet to meet his family since he is awaiting documents that will allow him to leave the camp. “I’d like to share something that happened that hurt me a lot,” he says. “Day before yesterday, I was collecting jamuns from beneath a tree that was close to the police check post. The official on duty spoke very rudely to me saying I have come here, after all, to beg, and hit me for no reason.”

At the Mandapam camp office, an official, says so far 150 people have crossed over into Tamil Nadu. “The usual practice is to lodge them first in the Puzhal prison but since these are people fleeing the economic crisis, they are brought here and fed and housed. I myself have provided meals to them,” the official adds.

For several houses in Mandapam Camp, Sri Lanka is home they can no longer access. “I do think about home very often,” says Madhi.

“I cannot go back. If this was my country, I could freely go and come back but I can’t do that, it will complicate my return,” she adds. “Here they may be looking after us very well, providing a roof over my head. Even then I know when I die, I won’t be buried in my own land.”

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