96 Lankan refugee families get houses

TIRUNELVELI: Of the 208 families living in the Naranammalpuram Sri Lankan refugee camp, 96 families, which are living in a 150-year-old dingy go down, have got houses.
The houses were constructed by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) at a cost of Rs. 1.15 crore on 8.50 hectares of land near Gangaikondan, close to the Tirunelveli–Madurai National Highway.
The decision to construct permanent shelters for these families was taken when government officials visited the camp in mid-2007 to see the pathetic condition of the people in the go down, once used by the British to store ammunition.
Collector G. Prakash identified 20 hectares of land and it was immediately handed over to the Tirunelveli Social Service Society (TSSS) through which the CRS completed the construction within 14 months.
Each house with a plinth area of 200 square feet has a hall, a kitchen and a toilet-cum-bathroom. Though groundwater is very good there, two taps have also been installed in each street to provide drinking water. A playground and park are also available. A ration shop has been established.
“The CRS and the TSSS should consider our request for construction of similar houses for the remaining 112 families as we are prepared to give the land,” said Minister for Backward Classes K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran after receiving the houses from Deputy National Representative of CRS Rev. Fr. Celestine and RC Bishop of Palayamkottai Diocese, the Most Rev. A. Jude Paulraj.
Mr. Ramachandran said the State Government, which had already forwarded a proposal for Rs. 17 crore to the Centre for renovating the houses of 19,598 refugee families with 73,522 persons living in 100-odd camps across the State, was preparing another proposal for Rs. 30 crore. Thanking the CRS and TSSS, the Minister said that construction of 100 houses each in Nattarasankottai and Kaangayam was about to start soon.
“This colony will be a model for other refugee camps which will get houses in a phased manner,” he noted.
Minister for Environment, Youth Welfare and Sports T.P.M. Maideen Khan, who handed over two volleyballs and nets to the youth of the colony, said tennikoit and volleyball courts would be established in all refugee camps.
Mr. Prakash said roads would be laid and electricity provided to the colony within 15 days. Former Rehabilitation Commissioner Karpoorasundara Pandian, Rehabilitation Commissioner Mohan Pyare, Deputy National Representative of CRS, Rev. Fr. Celestine and RC Bishop of Palayamkottai Diocese, Most Rev. A. Jude Paulraj, MLAs V. Karuppasamy Pandian and N. Maalairaja, Director of TSSS Rev. Fr. A. Joseph Kennedy and others spoke. (Hindu)

Two Lankans among victims of US boat

The U।S। Coast Guard called off its search Wednesday for at least 12 missing migrants — including two Sri Lankans — in choppy waters off the British Virgin Islands after their flimsy boat collided with a reef and broke apart।

Rescuers said roughly 25 people, most of them Haitians, had been aboard the overloaded boat that was illegally travelling the 100-mile (160-kilometer) passage from the Dutch territory of St. Maarten to the British Virgin Islands. They were apparently island-hopping in hopes of eventually reaching U.S. shores when the boat hit a reef Monday night, pitching passengers into the ocean.
Crews used aircraft and several boats to look for any sign of the missing people — including three children — in white-capped Atlantic waters off Anegada, a sparsely inhabited island of coral and limestone, according to U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad.
Rescuers scoured a vast ocean area covering more than 586 square nautical miles for two days before ending the search, he said। Fishermen reported spotting a corpse and a live person drifting a couple miles off the northernmost island of the wealthy British archipelago, but said they vanished beneath the waves.

DM

Refugee kids dream of return to an Isle of Peace

Chennai- India, ]



For more than 19,000 children under 12, growing up in 117 refugee camps across Tamil Nadu, home is where they have never been. Home is where their parents abandoned hearts and hearths as tanks rolled into village after village and terror-stricken Tamils fled.
They dream of returning home but not, of course, to a strife-torn Sri Lanka. They dream, perhaps even more ambitiously, of returning to a peace that the north of Sri Lanka has not known for three decades.
Says Vijayakumar from the Nagavathyannai camp, in a message with his painting: "When peace came to our Tamil homeland, there was happiness, many coloured flags waved, people came out in large numbers. The Yarl Devi train started running again from Jaffna to Colombo. Our hopes were high. We who had lived as refugees returned to our native villages. But when we thought we could have peace of mind, came news of war and fear has returned. Oh! When will there be peace in our country?"
These children were all born and brought up across the Palk Straits but have grown up thinking of Sri Lanka as their ultimate destination, not seeing mainland India as the motherland.
This revelation came in a recent exhibition of paintings, where 500 camp children painted their fears and aspirations in fascinating hues, for a contest that was organized by the Chennai-headquartered Organization for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (OfERR), which has been working towards refugee care since 1984.
Ten-year-old Satish Kumar, in his drawing of the emerald island, shows a terrified bird fluttering. In his wishful explanation, he writes: "The river of blood that ran through the land and the volcano that burst forth in our hearts are laid to rest by world peace.
"War - an event that affected my life," says the title of a painting by 10-year-old Maria Selvi from Vaazhavanthankottai camp. Her picture shows fleeing people in a boat, the sea caught between land on either side. At 15, K. Koneswaran from the Lenavilakku camp is more articulate and has drawn a prison. "Up to now, I have had no life."
Though ignored by governments, significantly a large number of the drawings submitted by the children are of the island of Sri Lanka, which hangs like a bright tear drop in many of the pictures.
S. Koushalya, 13, of the Paruvai camp says it all in her caption: "I want my country to be peaceful and prosperous like I have drawn."
Emee Perumal is an exception. As he makes tea for his mother's friends, the 11-year-old watches a Jackie Chan film on a tiny colour television set and admires "fighting", not unusual at his age, his idol, the LTTE fighter. He goes to school near his camp home, loves to play cricket.
One of the "camp children", as under-teens here are collectively called, Emee has an identification number, included in his mother's identification card which denotes her as a refugee from Sri Lanka.
Not many children want to be fighters. Most are like John Praveen of the Pooluvapatti camp, dreaming of being a great footballer, or Dhanesh Kumar of the Eenjampalli camp whose ambition is to be a scientist. Only one child in tens of thousands thinks of "fighting" as an end by itself and this really is what is so "unique" about Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, growing up in India, say relief officials. "Thekids don't admire militancy but every child wants to go home."
According to OfERR, as of Dec 1, 2008, there are 7,006 boys and 7,121 girls below eight years of age in 114 of these camps. There are 4,667 more children between 9 and 11 years in such camps, most born in India, who are growing up with a sense of alienation that does not exist in any official document. But it comes out when one talks to them, sees their drawings, reads their writings.
"The Sri Lankan Tamil refugee community in India is a striking contrast to refugee communities in other parts of the world. Nowhere will you find such high investment in education of refugee children," says OfERR chief S.C. Chandrahasan, giving Palestine as an example to the contrary.
"Education, we decided right at the outset, was the best antidote to militancy. His organization has helped more than 22,000 refugee children go through the schooling system in India in the last 25 years.
Recalling the early days of OfERR, Chandrahasan told IANS: "Our vision was clear. "We decided what we want from India. We made a decision to rebuild. We wanted education for our young so that when one day our people return, they will be able to rebuild our country, Sri Lanka."

Sri Lankan boat people volunteer to be sent home
Two Sri Lankan boat people whose vessel breached Australia's border defences and landed on the West Australian coast have been repatriated, the first in the latest wave of arrivals to be sent home.
The two men were part of a boatload of 12 Sri Lankans who landed at False Entrance, 800km north of Perth in November.
It is understood the group sailed directly from Sri Lanka to Australia, a hazardous journey of more than 5,000km. The remaining 10 are still on Christmas Island, where their cases are being processed.
Immigration officials said they had been advised of their options, but had yet to lodge a claim for asylum.
The pair were repatriated on December 22 and January 12, less than a month before a group of 28 Afghan asylum seekers were granted protection visas after their arrival in October.
Early indications suggest the men, who were Sinhalese, were economic rather than humanitarian migrants.
Of the 181 unauthorised boat arrivals intercepted since October, the overwhelming majority have been Afghan, Iraqi or Sri Lankan. Pamela Curr, of the Refugee Resource Centre, said it was unusual for Sinhalese arrivals to successfully claim refugee status.
A Immigration Department spokesman said the two had been voluntarily sent home.
"They raised no protection issues so there was no impediment to their return, so obviously we facilitated the request (to return them home)," he said. The Department also confirmed an undisclosed sum of money was paid to the two as part of a voluntary return package.
The co-ordinator of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service- an organisation that has helped recent asylum seekers lodge claims-David Manne, cautioned against making hasty judgments about the predicaments of unauthorised arrivals.
The Australian
DN

Tribal refugees cast votes for Mizoram assembly polls

From correspondents in India, 03:00 PM IST
Reang tribal refugees, sheltered in six northern Tripura camps, Friday exercised their franchise for the Mizoram assembly elections after special arrangements were made for them, an official said.
Over 8,000 refugee voters Wednesday boycotted the assembly polls, refusing to exercise their franchise through postal ballots forcing the Election Commission of India (ECI) to make special arrangements with normal ballot papers.
'We decided to boycott the elections as only the names of candidates were written on the postal ballot papers with no symbols of party printed on the postal ballot papers,' said Elvis Chorkhy, president of the Mizoram Bru Displaced Peoples Forum (MBDPF).
'The commission considered the request of the Reang tribal electors and ordered that for this general election the ballot papers should bear the symbol along with the name of the candidates,' an ECI notification said.
The ECI has set up facilitation centres to take votes in all the six camps in north Tripura and two camps in Mamit district of Mizoram. The voting has been conducted Friday and it would be held Saturday too.
The election to the 40-seat Mizoram assembly is scheduled Dec 2 and the results are expected Dec 8.
About 35,000 Reang tribal refugees are sheltered in six north Tripura camps for the past 11 years following ethnic clashes with the majority Mizos. Of the 35,000 refugees, about 8,000 refugees were eligible to cast their votes.
'Voting was held in all the six north Tripura camps and two camps in Mamit district of Mizoram peacefully and no untoward incident was reported so far,' Debashish Sen, a special election observer of ECI, told IANS by phone from Kanchanpur refugee camp, 180 km north of Tripura's capital Agartala.
The Reangs, also called Bru, are recognised as a primitive tribe and constitute about 10 percent of Mizoram's one million population. Clashes with the Mizos in October 1997 forced them to flee to Tripura and other places.
The Reang tribals have fielded three candidates in the Mamit, Kolasib and Lunglei districts in southern and eastern Mizoram.