By: Amjad Mohamed-Saleem
When Mohamed Lateef got married and took over a rice farm, he was looking forward to settling down to a quiet life of farming and raising his family. But just a few months later his dream was shattered.
In 1990 the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam forcibly evicted Lateef and 70,000 other Muslims from their homes in northern Sri Lanka, and confiscated most of their possessions.
Without knowing where they were headed, these desperate people moved south. Most of them trekked miles for days on end, and many died on the journey.
Eventually Lateef and the other survivors found themselves in Puttalam, a town with a sizeable Muslim population. There they were received by the locals and housed in makeshift refugee camps.
Eighteen years on, and Lateef is still in Puttalam with his family, living in the same camp in a coconut-leaf hut which offers little protection from the elements. He relies on daily wages to support his wife and three children, all born in the camp.
"I don't think about the past. It just makes me sick," he says wearily. "There is no future for me to think about. I just think about the present and how I can give my family at least two square meals a day."
This mass exodus has been largely forgotten in the annals of the Sri Lankan conflict.
Successive governments have failed to provide adequate support for the displaced, who find themselves without much of a voice, despite having some representation in the government.
The camps lack proper schooling, decent shelter and sanitation.
"Every so often we get the refugee tourists, who come and see us, take photographs, give us some money, promise additional help and disappear," says A.B. Niyas, the camp leader of the Saltern Internal Displacement Camp.
Most of the camps' residents are dependent on menial jobs or handouts from philanthropists, the government and humanitarian organisations.
Puttalam still houses approximately 100,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) from the Northern Province. In recent years Puttalam has also played host to Tamil and Sinhala IDPs who have been driven from their homes in Batticaloa and Trincomalee, Eastern Province. The town is beginning to buckle under the pressure.
There is now fear that a fresh crisis could develop as tensions rise between the camps' residents and the original Muslim inhabitants, who say they have grown tired of the newcomers taking their jobs and buying their land.
"We did all we could for them when they first arrived," says Naleer, a businessman from Puttalam. "But they're placing an unbearable strain on resources."
Naleer says the education and healthcare services can't cope and, whereas the displaced receive government support and help from international aid agencies, the original residents do not.
"The situation has created a lot of hate," says Naleer.
Other critics say the camp-dwellers do little to help themselves because they know they will always have sympathetic support.
But M. Rahman, an activist from a local community-based organization set up by the displaced people, says the camp residents just want to go back home. "We are from Jaffna or Mullaitivu. We lived side by side with our Tamil neighbours without much problem. We want to go back to that."
Until 1990, the Tamil and Muslim communities co-existed fairly harmoniously in the north. Eighteen years after the evictions, the displaced Muslims still speak affectionately of their old Tamil neighbours.
After the government and Tamil Tigers signed a Ceasefire Agreement in February 2002, some families returned to their homes in the north only to find their houses occupied by displaced Tamils or rebels, or destroyed. Those who stuck it out were soon forced to return to Puttalam when fighting escalated once more.
The flame of hope needs to be reignited for these forgotten camp-dwellers of Puttalam, and it is high time their problems are resolved 18 years after they lost their homes.