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.
Navalady, 256km 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 $3-billion aid deal between Sri Lanka’s government and Tamil Tiger rebels, who control large parts of the country’s north and east. On Friday 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” 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.
”Ninety-eight per cent of people worked in fishing. What else can we do? We have to come back,” said Vinasythamby Rajendran, the head of the returnees’ committee who led back 50 families in April. ”We have had no help from the government. No water, no money for boats. We know there are plans for a cricket pitch and a hotel here. But we will never leave our home.”
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.”
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 19-million 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 $3-billion aid deal signed by the government on Friday 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 on Friday as they demonstrated against a deal they say will legitimise the rebels.
”The aid deal is about trust-building between the government and the Tamil Tigers. It will see a sharing of the relief work and coordination,” said Kethesh Loganathan of Colombo’s Centre for Policy Alternatives. ”For Sinhalese extremist opinion it is about the Tigers’ hidden agenda to break up the country. If you do not have a deal, you have the possibility of a war.”
Readers’ fund helps house victims
For hundreds of Sri Lankans, the first fruits of Guardian readers’ generosity meant new homes to replace the ones they lost in December’s tsunami.
An hour’s drive out of Colombo in Kalutara, temporary wooden houses were built on land used for a bakery for 20 families. By the end of the summer 6 000 such homes — part of a network of sites along the island’s southern coast — will have been built using the money raised by the Guardian‘s appeal.
The temporary camp in Kalutara has showers, toilets and a drainage system, essential for dealing with the fast-approaching summer rains. The charity Concern and its local partner Sewalanka has kitted out the new homes with desks, tables, cupboards and beds.
Clutching her six-month-old baby, Irangani says that when her son went to school all the teachers laughed at him because he had no shoes or school uniform.
”It was explained that we were tsunami survivors and then everybody understood.” All they had after the tsunami washed nearly all their possession away, she says, was a clock and two family photographs.
Now she lives in a two-roomed wooden house and will eventually be moved into a permanent home when land can be acquired. ”Around Colombo and the coast land is expensive so it will take time,” says Aruna Samaranayaka, project manager for Sewalanka.
The immediate concern is employment. Irangani’s husband used to sell vegetables and earned 2 000-3 000 rupees a day. Now he can only find work as a labourer, and makes just 500 rupees a day.
Concern is funding a study to kickstart employment in the camp.
Sheena McCann, Concern’s country director, said: ”People lost so much. The transitional shelters funded by the Guardian provide families with privacy, a sense of security and ownership. It is a stabilising asset so that they can start living their lives again.” – Guardian Unlimited Â