Six months on, tsunami victims still wait to go home

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports - Randeep Ramesh in Navalady, Sri Lanka: Relief effort fails to reach thousands of Sri Lankan villagers amid wrangling over aid deal

"Six months after the tsunami struck, little remains of the village of Navalady built on a narrow finger of sand extending into the Indian Ocean on Sri Lanka's east coast.
Debris lies in piles on the beach and the road through the village, washed out by the waves, has not been repaired. A few roofless walls jut up from the sand but foundations are all that is left of most homes.


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Navalady, 160 miles from the capital, Colombo, was hit harder than most of the hamlets and villages that dot Sri Lanka's coast. Of 1,800 inhabitants, aid workers say fewer than 1,000 are alive today.
A third of survivors have returned thanks to aid agencies which have set up temporary shelters, latrines, provided electricity generators and even paid labourers to right upended temples.

Nearly 35,000 people died in Sri Lanka, when the tsunami struck last December. Of the 78,000 homes needed, by the middle of last month just 120 had been built.

Sri Lanka's response has been the tardiest of the nations hit by the tsunami. In Tamil Nadu in India, the government cut through red tape and allowed local officials to coordinate directly with aid agencies. In Indonesia, where 130,000 were killed, the government has proved much more flexible over rebuilding homes near the water's edge.

Holding up much of the relief effort in Sri Lanka has been the wrangling over the $3bn (£1.64bn) aid deal between Sri Lanka's government and Tamil Tiger rebels, who control large parts of the country's north and east. Yesterday the pact was signed, raising hopes that relief efforts would be speeded up.

But in and around Navalady villagers and relief agencies are voicing doubts over the intention of the local agencies, saying the reconstruction effort appears to have been slowed by design, not accident.

They point to plans by the urban development authority to convert the beach into an eco-tourist resort. A map of the proposed Navalady "beach resort", obtained by the Guardian, shows camping sites, snack counters, sports areas and car parks. Nowhere is there any space for the old village, its school or the local medical dispensary.

Navalady has obvious attractions for the tourist industry. On one side its beach overlooks the ocean, and on the other a lagoon separates the sandbar from the nearby town, Batticaloa.

However, the village's former residents say Navalady should be recreated with government help, not done away with in the rush to exploit its natural beauty. They say without guarantees of electricity and water supplies, there is little choice but to move somewhere else.

Earlier this year local officials offered people new homes in a tin-shed township being constructed in Thiraimadu, 5km inland. They were promised schools, a new medical dispensary, running water and electricity. Eventually, the administration said forest land would be cleared for a permanent settlement.

But tsunami refugees from Navalady are turning their backs on the government's offer. "It is not a good place. Thiraimadu will happen after 10 years. We will be living in tinsheets until then," said Sangarapillai Vairamuttu, 55, who lost his wife and two children to the tsunami. "I have nothing else now but fish and Thiramadu is not near the sea."

Relief workers said Navalady's former residents have been "left in the dark" over their choices. "Displaced people have a right to return home. But that was never made clear to people in Navalady," says Jake Morland, who runs the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' office in Batticaloa. "Instead, there seemed to be an unseemly rush to move them elsewhere."

Mr Morland said the resignation and confusion of tsunami survivors has left them easily swayed by government blandishments. "Officials had offered refugees a new home in Thiraimadu without saying that if it was ac cepted people would forfeit their plots in Navalady. Many people just signed up."

There is another issue: a new "buffer zone" law prevents villagers from rebuilding their homes. Villagers with houses less than 200m from the sea have no option but to move to the new inland camp.

Representatives of the government say the tourist development is just "one option" and reject claims they had not done enough for people.

Bellurugu Shanmugan, the government agent and highest-ranking official for the district, said nobody would lose their "property rights" and that if necessary only the 200m buffer zone will be used for the "eco-resort".

The difficulties faced by the people of this narrow peninsula encapsulate the disregard the country's east coast has always faced. Bereft of supporters in the southern-oriented government and without much of a voice in the northern-dominated rebel areas, the mainly Tamil people here have suffered from benign neglect for decades.

Sri Lanka is home to 19m people, the majority of whom are Sinhala-speaking Buddhists, and was engulfed for 20 years in brutal, bloody civil war. Three years ago a ceasefire was negotiated over the Tigers' demand for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's mainly Hindu, Tamil minority.

The $3bn aid deal signed by the government yesterday sparked riots by Sinhalese nationalists convinced that the agreement to work with the Tamil Tigers is the first step to dividing the country.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a party that marries Marxism with Sinhalese chauvinism, has quit the government over the pact. Police fired teargas to disperse about 1,000 of the Marxists' supporters yesterday as they demonstrated against a deal they say will legitimise the rebels. "