“To this shore other shore looks green”

by Ananth Palakidnar

A few days ago a group of residents from Mullaitivu, a coastal region in the North-East part of Sri Lanka staged a demonstration outside the area’s Divisional Secretary’s office to protect and provide shelter to the Rohingiya refugees who arrived from Myanmar a week ago.

The Rohingiya refugees who were affected by communal clashes in Buddhist majority Myanmar were forced to flee the country which is presently under military regime.

Sri Lanka Navy patrolling the Eastern territorial waters in the Bay of Bengal rescued the Rohingiya refugees who were found struggling in the high seas and brought them to Keppapilavu in Mullaitivu region and handed them over to the Government officials.

The Rohingiya Muslim refugees who were brought to Mullaitivu area were in a pathetic state without proper food or water. The residents and the Government officials had taken care of them with providing even necessary medication.

However Foreign Ministry in Colombo has contacted the Myanmar Government and explored the possibilities of deporting them back to Myanmar. So it was in this backdrop Mullaitivu residents have staged a demonstration on humanitarian grounds urging the Lankan officials to deal with the Myanmar refugees by providing them refuge in the country.

It is important to remember when the Vietnam war was in progress in the mid-sixties, a large number of Vietnam people were fleeing in make shift boats from the country to escape from the heavy brutal clashes.

They were even known as the `boat people’ of Vietnam. Boat people of Vietnam had reached Malaysia, Indonesia and even Australia. Whereas with the end of war in Vietnam the country focused very much on stabilizing its economy and now Vietnam remains as one of the promising economies in South Asia.

Several countries in the South Eastern region have increased their vigilance in their maritime borders to prevent the refugees infiltrating into their territorial waters.

Australia has stepped up its maritime vigilance by deploying its coast guard extensively in the sea and air.

The preliminary investigation into the Rohingiya refugees who have been rescued and brought to Mullaitivu by Navy has revealed that they have been misled by a human smuggler.

As far as human smugglers are concerned they are active targeting the innocent people in the countries affected by civil wars and economic crisis.

Human smuggling is taking place not only by sea, the tricky act even carried out by air and land with all forms of manipulations and malpractices.

It was right from the beginning of North and East civil war in Sri Lanka thousands of people from the war torn North and East provinces had fled from the Island and they were smuggled mainly into European countries as well as  they were sent to Canada and down under.

A recent survey has highlighted the Lankan Tamil refugees who had sought asylum in various Western countries doing extremely well in their chosen careers compared to the people arrived from other countries which have been affected by political and economic problems.

Mullaitivu region where hundred Rohingiya refugees have been put up at Keppapilavu refugee camp, was a key location from where a large number of North and East refugees were taken by boats to Australia by human smugglers.

There were incidents of some boats capsizing in the high seas with the deaths of refugees. There were even incidents of human smugglers and travel agents cheating the people by borrowing a big amount of money.  

So the arrival of Rohingiya refugees into the island has even highlighted how the human smugglers operate actively without any concern for the innocent people from the countries suffered by internal problems.

In the meantime the demonstration staged by a group of people outside the Mullaitivu Government Secretariat urging to give due protection to the Myanmar refugees has highlighted the broader out look of the people in the region who had even suffered immensely when the North and East civil war was in progress.

A significant number of persons from the families of those demonstrators would have even fled to various countries as refuges during the turbulent days in the North.

Therefore the demonstrators would have genuinely sympathized with Rohingiya Muslim refugees from Myanmar who have similarities with the sufferings of the people from the North and East Provinces of Sri Lanka.