“Tamil refugees’ return should be voluntary”

Chennai, 19/01/2015: For Tamil Nadu Desk / City: Sri Lankan refugees tailoring coaching unit run by OFERR (Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation). Photo: B. Jothi Ramalingam

The governments of India and Sri Lanka will have to work out a structured process and a package of assistance as this will enable smooth and voluntary return of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka, said S.C. Chandrahasan, founder, OfFER (Organisation for Eelam Refugees’ Rehabilitation).

Emphasising that the process of return should be voluntary and gradual, the 72-year-old Chandrahasan, who has been running the organisation since 1983, says that the refugees, having spent a considerable period of their lives in Tamil Nadu, cannot be expected to take a spontaneous decision to go back.

Education of their children and the avenues for livelihood are some of the important factors to be kept in mind before taking any decision to return. “After the War in 2009, some of those who decided to return spontaneously have invariably come back,” he points out.

He was responding to one of the decisions taken at Sunday’s meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera on the renewed move to repatriate the refugees.

Suggesting a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two governments on the issue of return of the refugees, Mr Chandrahasan says the proposed document should ensure the refugees’ return in a “safe, dignified and sustainable” manner. It should spell out the details of protection and humanitarian assistance assured to those who go back, he says adding that both at the stages of MOU formulation and implementation, the refugee community has to be involved.

Between October 2013 and August 2014, his organisation conducted 17 rounds of discussion with the refugees from all the 110 camps in 25 districts. There are about 65,057 persons in the camps, of whom about 30,000 persons are aged up to 17 years and around 35,000 are major. Besides, the State has about 34,600 persons living outside the camps.

Pointing out that the voluntary return of refugees is an integral part of the implementation of recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), Mr Chandrahasan says that if the return of refugees works out successfully, this will improve the ties between India and Sri Lanka tremendously. Besides, India can quote it as a classic role model for the rest of the world.

Concurring with the rationale behind the proposal of the OfFER, Tho. Pathinathan, a writer and a refugee himself, says that in the absence of any attractive package, the refugees would not go back. “For them, it will not make any difference even if they suffer from all the problems that they will have to encounter for being refugees.” Mr Pathinathan, who has recently published a Tamil book on the refugees, is personally inclined to go back to Sri Lanka and adds that the change of regime has generated expectations among certain sections of the refugees.