The hoardings in front of the 50-year-old building housing the District Secretariat read: “No to violence” and “Say no to destruction. Never again.” One of them was apparently put up at the time of the presidential election in January.
People of the Northern Province, having borne the brunt of the Eelam Wars, seem to have internalised these messages. There is a sense of calm in the region.
Regime change A regime change, which took place early this year, has meant that several restrictions imposed on them are no longer in operation. “White van operations” — kidnapping of individuals using white vans and their subsequent disappearance — are now a thing of the past.
An elderly inmate at the Chidambarapuram camp, about 20 km from the Vavuniya town, told The Hindu on noticing a police vehicle that has passed by: “had it been the previous government, I would have been questioned once you left the scene. Now, there is no problem.”
In the last six years, there has been some development with regard to physical infrastructure. The condition of highways in the region is as good as anywhere else in the country. One can find scores of dish antenna on either side of the highways — both that connecting Jaffna and Mullaitivu and that between Mullativu and Vavuniya. This is the situation even in Mullivaikkal, near Mullativu, where the Eelam War-IV came to an end in May 2009.
Elegant-looking homes have come up along the stretches. The train services between Jaffna and Colombo have resumed.
“Life is slowly improving. The Maithri [President Maithiripala Sirisena] government is doing well,” says Rt. Rev. Dr. Thomas Soundaranayagam, who is the Bishop of Jaffna since 1992.
However, the story does not end there. Chronic underdevelopment, poor state of agriculture, unemployment and, above all, lack of a political solution, characterise the big picture. They only confirm what former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, during her talk in Colombo, observed last month: “We have won the war. We have not yet won peace.” M. Ravichandran, a member of the Tamil Civil Society Forum, says: “The War is over but not the conflict.”
The Bishop points out that large presence of the military continues to be a major concern.
The government has not made much progress with regard to the political question. On a priority basis, the resettlement of internally displaced people needs to be attended to. To improve livelihood opportunities, the farm sector has to be revitalised.
Meenkashi (name changed), a woman at Mullivaikkal, who breaks down while recollecting what she underwent between 2009 and 2012, wants a thorough investigation into what happened during the last stages of the War and thereafter.
“Be it domestic or international, the investigation has to be credible,” she says.
Would another militant group emerge in future? Speaking near a playground in Valvettithurai , not far from the house of where slain LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran lived, Nishanthan, a young telecommunication executive, says chances are bleak. However, he comes up with a counter question: When a community continues to nurse a feeling of denial of justice and fairness, will this not lead to the revival of militancy?
Shalini (name changed), a beneficiary of the Indian government’s housing programme in the Jaffna district and mother of an infant, says there are several distractions for the present-day youth and this makes it impossible for any militant group to emerge.
V. Niranjan, founder of the Jaffna Managers’ Forum, a think tank, says the Northern Province accounts for five per cent of Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product and strongly believes that if the problem of economic development is addressed effectively, a political settlement will be the natural corollary.
