Leaders

I’m reminded of the newspaper article I read on arrival about the weakness of civil society in this country and the resignation of Sri Lankans to their fate. I have found the exact opposite on this trip. In village after village, people have come together to organize, challenge, protest and demand their rights.

In fact, this disaster has created civil society and thrown up leaders. Not from the government side – with the exception of the grama seveka in Periyaneelavani, there have been few signs of responsible leadership from local officials. But there have been many from the side of those affected.

A succession of leaders have emerged, with confidence, to represent their people: Sivalangam the washerman, who is fighting the caste system and pressing the security forces to return his land; Arula Nandam, the retired government official who is challenging the power of the rural council in the Manalchenai on behalf of the disempowered former estate works; Nagalingam, the fishing crewman who is challenging the power of the fishing magnates, or mudulalis; Paranthaman, who took a delegation of young men from a suspect village to demand aid from senior government officials.

These are not the actions of people resigned to their karma.

I’ve also seen the power of leadership in our partner, the Home for Human Rights. Francis Xavier, the director and founder of HHR, has a wonderful sense of humor and the gentle demeanor of an elderly priest. He is also totally indifferent to his own comfort and appearance. Still, he radiates authority over his younger colleagues. I’ve been watching this quite carefully.

Xavier has a routine with Sanathani, his assistant, and his field officers in Batticaloa, Parasuraman, Jacob and Sasi. He will bark out their names and they will sing out “Sir!” in response. They are happy with the chain of command and they look with concern on anything which disturbs it. For example, they accept my familiarity with Francis as coming from a long-time friend and foreigner with no tact. But their eyebrows go up when I suggest that HHR is too dependent on Xavier. This is a society that respects experience.

Xavier’s charisma comes from his achievements during a long career on behalf of human rights, and a deep humanity. He started the Home for Human Rights in 1977 with two other lawyers. He first appeared on the international scene in 1983, when he went to Geneva to lobby the UN human rights bodies on behalf of Tamils. The Home for Human Rights has been known for its work on behalf of Sri Lanka’s Tamils ever since.

At the same time, this has not protected it from extremism. In 1987 one of Xavier’s co-founders was murdered by Tamil radicals, and he left for Geneva to work with the World Council of Churches and the World Organization against Torture. From Geneva he went to Canada, where he took the Canadian Bar Exam at the age of 61. He still works from Toronto for several months in the year, and has won over 90% of his cases.

Over forty years he has helped, or worked with, a string of promising younger people who have risen to positions of power in Sri Lanka. They include the current Prime Minister and leading candidate for the Sri Lankan Presidency Mahinda Rajapakse. Another influential contact is the Catholic Bishop of Batticaloa.

Xavier is a wonderful asset to HHR. In spite of this, I have no doubt that the organization is too dependent on him, and that its sustainability will require him to groom young colleagues to step forward. He knows that at 72, he cannot keep up this grueling pace and divide his time between Toronto and Sri Lanka.

Most of AP’s partner organizations have strong leaders, and some of these find to hard to delegate. This is not something that preoccupies their donors, but it is one of the biggest challenges faced by community-based groups as they evolve as organizations. Somehow they have to develop rules which allow them to take advantage of inspired leadership, without become dependent on the personalities. That is a hard balance to strike.

It would be presumptuous and foolish for the Advocacy Project to tread into these delicate areas. But there may be a way that we can help. Collecting material for reports, publishing a newsletter and updating a website forces a group to become better organized.

If we can help HHR get its message out, we may just help to take some of the pressure of Xavier – without upsetting the order of things in this inspired little organization.

Dealing with Grief

It is now nine months since V. Thangumani, also know as Viji to her friends, lost her three daughters in the Tsunami. They were there then one moment, and washed away the next. She was only able to salvage three grainy photos of the girls, and lots of memories. It seems like yesterday.

Viji is one of 42 people in the village of Periyaneelavanai who lost family members to the Tsunami and are still totally traumatised. Their names have been handed to the Home for Human Rights by the village grama seveka (government agent). 83 villagers were lost in the Tsunami out of a population of around 1,000 – by far the largest death toll in any village we have visited.

Viji Thangumani lost three daughters to the Tsunami.

If HHR does decide to help them it quite unlike anything the organization has undertaken to this point. The nearest equivalent is probably its program to rehabilitate torture, many of whom are also deeply disturbed.

It is somewhat strange that these 42 people have fallen through the cracks of the aid effort, because if there is one service offered in abundance by the agencies it is psychosocial support. According to Dr. Ganashan, the chief psychiatrist at Batticaloa hospital, no fewer than 65 agencies are offering psychosocial support in Batticaloa. Nine are working in a huge resettlement camp in Thiraimadu, where 1,000 new houses are being put up. Some of them are even squabbling over the same children.

Psychosocial support is a standard fare in emergencies and it usually manages to stir up controversy. There is no doubt that sudden disasters take a severe mental toll, but humans are also marvelously resilient and drugs are not always the answer. Dr. Ganashan says that outsiders make the mistake of confusing grief with depression. Unlike depression, grief is a natural state, not a medical condition. It can be managed but not treated.

The best way to manage grief, says Dr. Ganashan, is to help the survivor function within a society – and to help the society provide the right sort of support for the survivor. We’re about to find out how difficult this can be in a society has been injured by years of upheaval, culminating in the Tsunami.

Y. Kousalya’s five children drowned in the wave.

*

Viji is on the verge of tears when she comes to meet us in the house of the grama seveka with a friend, Y. Kousalya. It turns out that her friend (who is wearing a hideously inappropriate tee-shirt of the Titanic, donated by an NGO) lost five children. Unlike Viji, who is on edge, she seems stunned.

The tension must have built up as the two women prepared for this encounter, with people from the capital in the house of the village leader. Viji loses all composure at the first question, and sobs as she passes around the tattered photos. Her friend also carries photos of her dead children.

Their distress is so immediate that we’re all taken aback and quickly close our notebooks. Suddenly, we’re the ones who find it hard to communicate, and we sit for several seconds in an embarrassed silence. But the grama seveka, a gentle woman who clearly has the respect of the women, coaxes them and they gradually relax. Viji returns repeatedly to the fact that not one of her daughters has survived. Everything went with them – her support around the house, her old-age pension, her future extended family, her best friends, her in-laws, even her social standing.

She tells us that she would have committed suicide had it not been for her two surviving sons, and that she finds herself stopping women with daughters and asking if she can borrow them. Her husband has taken to drinking arrack, the local liquor.

The best way to manage grief is to help the survivor function within a society – and to help the society provide the right sort of support for the survivor. We find out how difficult this can be in a society has been injured by years of upheaval, culminating in the Tsunami.

The Tamil community has its own traditions to help people like Viji, who have suffered a grievous loss. The extended family rallies round, and the mourning goes on for a fixed time and involves the entire community. Mourners are expected to cry, but for their own departed relatives, not the bereaved family.

But this option is not available to Viji, who appears to live in an unfriendly environment. So many people in this community suffered loss that they are disinclined to favor one woman, who is not even a widow. The more distraught she gets, the more they mock her and call her crazy to her face.

It became so bad that the authorities moved her temporary shelter to a different plot of land, to be away from her neighbors. Not that they were even neighbors. No effort has been made to recreate neighborhoods in the temporary camps. For thousands, like Viji, the camp is merely the latest in a long series of upheavals and displacement.

*

The grama seveka brings up another example of the unfriendliness of the place. Many of the families here, she says, were barely affected by the disaster but have loudly claimed compensation. Others, who really suffered, have been largely ignored. The Sri Lankan government is giving 5,000 rupees every month to a family with more than two members and 250,000 rupees to every family that lost a home. But no effort has been made to provide extra compensation to people like Viki or her friend Y. Kousalya, who have lost several children.

The grama seveka (who was herself detained some years ago for six months for talking to an LTTE patrol) has turned down several unreasonable requests for aid, and incurred the anger of her superiors. She handles it all with dignity and warmth, as if well aware that these women are far worse off than she is.

As the conversation gathers pace, it becomes clear that the two women most need someone to talk to, and some kindness. Once they start talking, they find it hard to stop and the bottled-up emotion comes pouring out. To my acute embarrassment, they kneel to kiss our feet. It should be the other way around.

Xavier and his team decide to select a group of volunteers who will receive some training from Dr. Ganashan and work in small sections of the village focusing on the 42 damaged survivors. Xavier will also draw on his international contacts to try and engage a group of Sri Lankan psychiatrists working in London.

We drive the two women back to the corrugated shacks where they are living, on the outskirts of the village. On the other side of the road are several mounds of sand. These are the graves of their children. They carry no headstone or any other sign of recognition.

Divided Councils

Every village has an elected rural development society, and many agencies deliver their aid through these societies giving them tremendous power. Our visit to the village of Manalchenai showed that this power is not always respected. We come to the same conclusion after visiting Thuraineelavenai, a village that suffered unusual damage from the Tsunami.

Thuraineelavenai is far enough from the sea to have escaped a direct hit. But the fierce winds and high water dumped masses of barbed wire and garbage into the lagoon, making it unusable for fishing. Eighty-five percent of the families here used to depend upon lake fishing.

No agencies have managed to deal with this. Cordaid, the Dutch organization, has provided netting for 30 fishermen, but it remains unused because the villagers are afraid it will be ripped to shreds. They are even unwilling to eat fish, for fear that it might be polluted.

Net Impact: the lake fishermen of Thuraineelavenai are afraid their nets will be shredded by Tsunami detritus.

The best way to help this village is to clean up the lake, and the villagers would contribute their labor. But this would be a massive task, way beyond the means of the Home for Human Rights. As a result, HHR decides to follow the same formula it developed at Cheddipalayam, do a full assessment of the impact of the disaster on the village, and lobby UN agencies and the Government to clear the lake.

*

Once again we come face to face with the issue of widows. There are 66 of them in this village, and while none of them lost husbands in the Tsunami, they have all been indirectly affected by the loss of income that has resulted from the lake closure. Several sit in the front row, clutching affidavits.

We expect a repeat of Nasivanteevu, but it doesn’t happen. This village seems to agree that widows need special help, and T. Ahileswaram, the secretary of the Ward 6 rural development society, says that the council has actually launched a project to provide a group of 25 widows with loans of 5,000 rupees ($50). The society is looking for capital.

Strong personality: One of the Thuraineelavenai widows.

This seems promising. The council was elected two years ago, and several people in the audience acknowledge that Ahileswaram and his committee are doing a good job.

Then something happens, and the mood changes. We are told that there are no fewer than four councils in this village, and they are all competing with each other. S. Poopalaratnam, from the audience, tells us loudly that they cannot be trusted. Someone mumbles that Poopalaratnam is “liqqored” but his fierce little speech draws some applause.

If the mood has changed, so has the plan. It would not be possible to work with just one council, even one as efficient as Ward 6. Besides, the Ward 6 council has already been selected for a lucrative pilot project by one donor, causing jealousy among the others.

Suddenly HHR is back where it started, unable to work with the village representatives and reluctant to work directly with individuals. Xavier settles for the Nasivanteevu formula. He decides to propose a women’s association which will be asked to start with small projects for about 25 widows. Each will be given money to buy a goat or some poultry.

As we develop yet another ambitious scheme, it is becoming clear that the impact on HHR will be considerable. For starters, so many of these projects concern women that HHR will almost certainly have to hire someone to work specifically with women.

The War Widows

In the village of Nasivanteevu we finally come face to face with war.

This is not to say that the war has been entirely absent. Patrols from the government’s Special Task Force are everywhere, and the LTTE operates checkpoints a few miles further inland. Still, we have found that the war has less immediate impact on the distribution of aid than local traditions, attitudes, and structures of power.

Not so in Nasivanteevu. The village lies well to the north of Batticaloa and is encircled by a large lagoon on side, and government forces on the other. LTTE patrols pass through regularly, which further invite the attention of the army. Twenty years of this has taken a terrible tool. Out of the village’s 1,300 inhabitants, 144 have been arrested and tortured, 46 killed as a result of the war, 31 women widowed, and 5 children orphaned.

Strong leader: Paranthaman led a delegation to demand aid for his village.

When the Tsunami smashed into the village, many villagers saw it as one more episode in a never-ending calamity. By the time the water receded, another 5 women had lost husbands, 20 more villagers had died, 63 houses had been destroyed and three more children had lost both parents. We stand for a moment’s silence to remember both sets of victims, under a huge, hundred-year old Banyan tree. Nasivanteevu is the only community to do this. It feels like a political statement.

*

Because of its isolation and suspected ties to the LTTE, Nasivanteevu was initially ignored by the aid agencies. The situation was rectified by yet another act of civic impatience. Under the leadership of their president Paranthaman, several members of the Nasivanteevu Youth Club formed a delegation and went to lobby their Regional Secretary.

“For 90 days we made agitation,” says Paranthaman, a confident young man. Their protest eventually provoked a response. The government and aid agencies have given 15 lake canoes, 32 nets, 19 sea-fishing canoes, a ferry boat, and promised 250 houses.

Marimuthu, 66, one of five Tsunami widows in Nasivanteevu.

But one major need is as yet unmet – jobs. The youth club is asking for vocational training for 52 unemployed members. Half want to learn how to repair tractors, and the other half want to repair outboard motors. This could be their way to break Nasivanteevu’s isolation.

HHR is keen to make some kind of a commitment because it would have an effective partner to work with in the Youth Club. HHR will only have money to cover the cost of 10 trainings, but Parasuraman, HHR’s field officer, has already found a German NGO to undertake the cost of the outboard motor training. Xavier decides to approach the Bishop of Batticaloa and sound him out about supporting the remaining 16 young men.

*

We are about to leave when, quite unexpectedly, another group comes forward. They will prove much harder to assist.

Until now I have barely noticed that more than half of those at the meeting are women, even though some of the weathered faces at the front are quite memorable. Then someone mentions a word, and there is a sudden fluttering in the crowd. Frail figures begin to rise like wraiths and come to the front, where they settle on the ground with barely a murmur and look at us solemnly. These are the widows of Nasivanteevu.

From the point of view of aid donors, widows are in a special category with special needs. They are known in the jargon as “EVIS” (extremely vulnerable individuals).

Few would dispute the label. One of the five women who was widowed by the Tsunami, 66 year-old S. Marimuthu, tells us how the body of her late husband was found with an umbrella in one hand and a knife in the other. Her daughter also lost a child in the Tsunami. Marimuthu is staying in an abandoned house and is completely dependent on one son who lives in another village.

HHR would like to encourage these widows to work together and perhaps form a cooperative, but there is little enthusiasm for the idea. Some of the women on the ground are not widows and argue that they also need help.

As for the widows themselves, they do not necessarily identify with other widows. Xavier’s assistant Sanathani points out that the label of “widow,” which makes so much sense to us, might be seen as a stigma and make it harder for them to deal with the loss on their own terms. There are major differences of age, income and ability between the widows that might make it hard to form an association.

We try a different tack. How would they feel about forming a women’s association that would give special attention to those women who have special needs, like widows? We offer to contribute nine rupees for every rupee contributed by a member and contribute some capital for projects. This seems acceptable. Parasuraman and Sanathani will return and start putting the idea in practice.

This visit has raised serious questions about another basic assumption of donors – that stricken communities will take care of their own and accept responsibility for their most vulnerable members.

The start of the meeting made me feel that Nasivanteevu was especially motivated. Now I am not so sure.

Mobilizing Caste

We drive out to Cheddipalayam to visit a group of families who are known colloquially as “dobies,” or washermen. The word doby denotes a caste and also a profession. Caste is turning out to be a big problem in this aid operation.

The washing itself is a marvel of environmental friendliness. Each washerman services a group of families. Every morning he cycles to their houses, collects the dirty clothes and takes them down to be washed in wells near the sea. He brings the wet clothes back to his home, where they are dried and pressed, using a heavy wrought-iron iron that is heated by coconut charcoals. Each garment is marked by a seed (saen kotta) to make sure it returns to its owner.

Challenging their fate: Sivalingam (right) washes clothes. His son, Ramesh, is an electrician.

However friendly to the environment, this system is also brutally demanding. The washerman rises at 4 a.m. and finishes around 6 in the evening. He has a long way to cycle because washing traditionally takes place at some distance from the town. (Dirty clothes are looked on with some distaste).

The war made their work harder still. This group of families lived for generations along the main road, until the anti-terrorist Special Task Force seized their land and forced them to move. The only available space was near the sea on the broad open flats.

*

It was here that the Tsunami caught them unaware on December 26 last year. Sivalingam was washing clothes with his grand-daughter when she saw the wave approaching from the sea. He abandoned a huge pile of shirts, picked up the child and ran to the school, which was on relatively high ground. His house was completely destroyed.

Sivalingam uses coconut charcoal to heat his iron.

Others were even less fortunate. The washing families lost 14 members, including the wife and daughter of Yogarajah (see Sarosh Syed’s blogs). It was a savage blow to a closely-knit group. These washing families have carved out the market between them and do not compete with each other. They even formed an association in 1999, with Sivilingam as their president.

This solidarity stood them in good stead when they ran into raw prejudice in the relief center. Here they were given cooked food by the military guards, but denied dry rations. They noticed that others were getting dry rations and demanded an explanation from their government organizer. “You washing people don’t need dry food.” It was like hearing a racial slur. Other refugees sneered at them.

Angered, the washing people decided to leave the center and move together back to the land, where agencies were starting to build temporary shelters. Sivalingam submitted a letter to the local government youth officer Sundaram, who passed it to HHR.

When we find them, they have regained some equilibrium. Using its donations from the United States, HHR has equipped each family with a new iron, ironing table, bicycle, and bucket, at the modest cost of $140.

The families are now back and working, if not at the pre-Tsunami level. Sivalingam now services 250 families, as opposed to 650, because people have less money after the Tsunami. He has increased his prices, from 10 rupees a shirt to 20, but is still making 1,400 rupees a month – compared to the 5,000 he made before the Tsunami.

*

The one thing they can’t erase is the memory of the prejudice they met in the center. Xavier explains that caste in Sri Lanka is not so rigid as India, nor as linked to religion, but that it still plays a powerful role in the life of village communities. In this part of Sri Lanka the highest caste are the vellalai, or agricultural workers. Dobies come low down the list. The lowest of them all are the sanitation laborers.

Xavier makes the point that all castes perform an indispensable role in society, and are valued as such. By tradition, a marriage feast cannot begin until a washerman gives permission. No-one else can do the work of the koviar, who carry the dead. Caste gives a structure and stability to society. Every society has its social pecking order.

But no pecking order is so rigid as caste, or inhibiting to personal development. Sivilingam’s 35 year-old son, Ramesh, is particularly bitter because he has turned his back on the family profession, put himself through high school (to grade 9) and trained as an electrician. Still, there can be no escaping his caste in this community, where everyone knows Ramesh as a doby. This is his karma. He watches me with a look of distaste as I film his father at his ironing table, as if the act of filming reinforces the stereotype.

If they can’t escape their caste, can they turn it into a badge, to be worn with pride? The Dalit of India and Nepal have mobilized impressively in recent years and no longer disdain the term Dalit.

For all their cohesion, the washermen of Cheddipalayan would find it hard to challenge social mores in a community of 3,000, although they are showing some welcome signs of militancy. Sivilingam tells us that some of his clients used to throw their dirty clothes at him with a grimace. He will no longer tolerate that sort of behavior.

The question is whether someone who makes the equivalent of 4 dollars a day will be able to withhold his labor – at a time when demand for washing is falling. At present the washermen have no intention of using their association as a mini-cartel or trade union, which would be truly revolutionary.

For all their cohesion, the washermen of Cheddipalayan would find it hard to challenge social mores in a community of 3,000, although they are showing some welcome signs of militancy. Sivilingam tells us that some of his clients used to throw their dirty clothes at him with a grimace. He will no longer tolerate that sort of behavior.

*

Reviewing Sivalingam’s story, I am not sure whether the Tsunami has unsettled the social order in Cheddipalayam or reinforced it. Disasters are great social levelers and this Tsunami forced people from all castes into the highly unnatural environment of refugee shelters. At the same time, it revealed the prejudice that lies just below the surface. Perhaps in the end, karma has won out.

As a human rights organization, HHR might have a role in educating the villagers about the dangers of prejudice – although they will have to tread carefully.

We talk freely about this in the car, until it gradually dawns that we are using a term (doby) that we would never use to their face. Every time someone uses the term, it perpetuates the prejudice and we resolve to use the more cumbersome, but neutral, salavai tholilali (washing men).

Meanwhile, the washermen have set their sights on a more pressing issue – the fact that the security forces are sitting on their land. They are determined to get it back, but this will require discretion. They are talking to the police, and have received encouraging signals. It is not yet time to call in HHR’s lawyers.

If they can pull this off it would represent a small triumph for mobilization.

Back to the Sea

Cheddipalayam is one of many fishing communities that lay in the path of the Tsunami, and 71 of the village’s families have petitioned the Home for Human Rights for support. We go out to visit, and find that the families have gathered in a courtyard and are overflowing into the streets. The mood is tense. There is more to this than meets the eye.

Perhaps they are turning their back on the sea. We have heard that some fishermen were so terrified by the memory of the Tsunami that they are looking for other work. But this is not the goal of the Cheddipalayam group. They say they have recovered from their fright and want to return to fishing.

Fishermen light incense and pray to the Goddess before setting out to sea.

Perhaps they want to rebuild the fleet. Six of the village’s 32 boats were completely destroyed, and another 19 were too badly damaged to put to sea. This has left many villagers out of work (because each boat employed two crewmen). It also robbed another 15 families, which used to dry fish, of their only source of income. The Tsunami even wiped out the “tea boutique” of S. Kobalapillai, who fortified the fishermen with hot tea before they went out to sea.

It would make sense if the villagers want all this restored. But again, this is not quite what they want. What emerges – slowly and in bits – is a new variation on the familiar theme of discrimination and inappropriate aid.

*

After the Tsunami, Cheddipalayam received many visits from aid agencies, seeking to help the fishermen. The most generous donation came from ACTED, a Catholic agency which gave six sturdy new boats and engines.

This has caused enormous divisions in the community.

Fair catch: Fishing canoes in the Batticaloa lagoon.

The reason is that the boats of Cheddipayalam are owned by mudalalis, which roughly translates as “magnates.” Under the system, the day’s catch is sold at the end of each trip. Half the proceeds go to the mudalali, and the remaining half is divided equally between expenses (fuel) and the two crewmen.

In the Sri Lankan society, the mudalali has power and wealth. P. Sinnathamby is one of only two mudalalis in Cheddipalayam who owned two boats before the Tsunami. He earned 25,000 rupees ($2,500) a month, which is more than ten times the average wage of his crewmen.

Most of the crew members have been out of work since the Tsunami, and they were disgusted when ACTED handed over new boats to the six mudalalis who lost boats in the Tsunami, instead of spreading the aid among the entire community. ACTED even replaced the second boat of P. Sinnathamby, reinforcing what many saw as an unjust system. The price of fish has risen since the Tsunami, putting more money in the mudalalis’ pocket.

This is the issue which prompted the letter from the 75 families. In what is becoming a familiar pattern, their letter is as much of a protest as a request. It is another sign of how the Tsunami has mobilized communities along this coast.

*

Interestingly, P. Sinnathamby is the only mudalali to attend our meeting. This takes some guts, although some of the others grumble about his presence.

S. Nagalingam begins by making a powerful appeal. He is secretary of the Cheddipalayam fishing society, and has to support several children. He has a good education and had a chance to take another job, but he says he is committed to the sea. How many others feel the same? Most of the hands go up.

The question is how HHR can help. There are basically two options. The first is to help the mudalalis, which would provide work for their crewmen but perpetuate the unjust system that existed before the Tsunami. The other option is to help the crewmen directly – and undermine the monopoly of the mudalalis. This would be bold and subversive.

Still, this meeting is resoundingly in favor of the second option. Several brothers and friends would like the chance to work together and own their own boats.

There is one major practical problem. HHR has only budgeted $3,000 for this entire village, and a single new boat costs $3,500. How can HHR’s small contribution be used judiciously and without creating further divisions?

*

One thing becomes clear. If we discuss this much further in public, we will start to make some promises. We are told that a small army of agencies has passed through Cheddipalayam and conducted “assessments” but failed to deliver. They include Oxfam (which took photos of the destroyed boats that have not been returned), the Swedish Cooperative Society, Seva Lanka, Save the Children, and the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (the relief arm of the LTTE). Several asked the families to fill out questionnaires.

This community is tired of being assessed. While one can sympathize with the agencies, which have to identify their beneficiaries carefully, one can also understand the irritation of these villagers. This is another unfortunate feature of aid – it gives out mixed signals, and makes promises that it cannot keep.

It is important that HHR does not make the same mistake. It is clearly beyond HHR’s resources to transform the fishing industry, even if this were wise, but HHR can act as an advocate for the fishermen. Xavier decides to fund a detailed survey of the villages fishing needs, and take the issue up with larger NGOs and UN agencies – the UN Development Program and the International Labor Organization. HHR’s lawyers will also help the 71 families form a legal association, and register with the government departments of Fisheries and Cooperatives.

HHR’s also decides to build on what it has learned elsewhere and support sewing classes. 40 applicants, including several men, have applied and word is getting around that this is something HHR does well.

HHR can make one more intervention that will help the entire community. HHR will restore the tea boutique of S. Kobalapaillai. At least those who will fish will have a hot cup of tea before they set out and on return.

*

After we return to Batticaloa, Sanathani and I visit some of the fishing boats of Batticaloa just before they leave for the night’s fishing. Before they head out to the unreliable sea, their crews light incense and say a prayer to the Hindu goddess Kadalatchiamman who watches over fishermen.

They tell us that their confidence was badly shaken when a small temple to the Goddess was washed away in the Tsunami. But life must go on.

The Outsiders

I have always assumed that any mischief in this aid operation would come from the Sinhalese authorities withholding aid from Tamils. This turns out to be grossly over-simplified. The sort of discrimination happening here is much more subtle, as becomes startlingly clear when we visit Manalchenai, some 50 kilometers south of Batticaloa.

HHR has received a list of 65 families in Manalchenai who are angry at having been denied aid – so angry, in fact, that they have formed an association to lobby. When they heard that HHR might be a source of support they submitted a lengthy list of needs, including toilets, wells, and houses.

Challenging the status quo: Xavier (left) and Arula Nandam listen as the Manalchenai villagers make their case.

I had never imagined that the Home for Human Rights would be building toilets and I’m not sure that such infrastructural support is a good idea. But Xavier has been energized by the drive and determination of the 65 families, who are clearly not prepared to accept their karma lying down. We head out to investigate.

*

Black water tanks festooned with NGO logos stand like sentries beside the road leading into Manalchenai. These are for the use of the inhabitants from a nearby village who are living in temporary shelters. The shelters are spacious, and the water is plentiful.

It is a different matter as we turn off the main road and enter the sprawling village of Manalchenai. An invisible line seems to split the village. On one side there are wells, trees, land under cultivation, and a school building. On the other side, in the direction of the sea, the land is poor, the trees are stunted, the wells are stinking open pits.

This is where the discontented 65 families live. Like the Poonichimunai families, their parents and grandparents originally lived and worked on the tea estates, before being driven out in September 1977. They moved to one village, found no work, and moved again to Manalchenai where they settled on public land that happened to lie in the direct path of the Tsunami. They managed to reach higher ground where they spent a month eating bark and plants, and climbing trees to escape marauding elephants, before returning back to their homes.

With all the official channels closed to them, the 65 families have found it almost impossible to get assistance from international agencies.

These families have received some tents from a private German donor, but they have not seen a single rupee of the 5,000 rupees promised to every Tsunami-affected family by the Sri Lankan government. The reason emerges as we sit under a large tree.

In order to qualify for aid, families have to register with their grama seveka, a government-appointed official who acts as a mayor. Unaccountably (and illegally) Manalchenai has no grama seveka. One woman cycled several kilometers to plead with the grama seveka in the next village, only to be told that all 65 families would have to appear in person. They had no better luck with their District Secretary a more senior government representative. He sent them on to another District Secretary, where they were predictably turned away.

They met the same reaction from fellow villagers. Every village has a rural development society, and many aid agencies have used the societies to distribute aid, giving them enormous power. The 65 families say that they have appealed repeatedly to the president of their society. Eventually they went in a group to demand that their representative be elected to the council. They were threatened with physical violence.

With all the official channels closed to them, the 65 families have found it almost impossible to get assistance from international agencies. We are told that the International Organization of Migration offered to help but was discouraged by the District Secretary, who described the 65 families as outsiders and “encroachers” – a demeaning term.

The NGO ADRA brought in some black water tanks outside houses, but omitted to provide pedestals and water. Most of the houses here draw water from kottus, which are deep holes lined with concrete and are almost dry. Another man shows us the remains of a toilet that collapsed as soon as it was erected.

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The hostility being shown to the Manalchenai families seems different from the raw prejudice that we have found in other villages. The 65 families are convinced that the local government is trying to force them out and turn the land back to Muslim landowners. The land was once owned by a Muslim landowner, until it was broken up under land reform.

High and dry: M. Selliah’s water tank has yet to hold water.

If so, this would seem to fit a pattern. A subtle struggle is underway between Muslim and Hindu/Christian Tamils in several villages, and the Muslims appear to be gaining the upper hand. The Tsunami has strengthened their hand, because Islamic donors have been particularly generous.

Whatever the cause of their ostracism, the 65 families have challenged the social order. These 65 families are led by a retired government official, Arula Nandam who is from the area and is – in local terms – relatively affluent. He has taken charge, channeled their anger, organized them into a group, approached HHR, and formed an association – of which he is the president.

Is he legitimate, or is this a grab for power? Arula Nandam has the confidence of the families who are quite happy to follow his lead. They all voted to elect a committee for their new association. Each family pays 25 rupees a month, and they now have 14,000 rupees ($140) in a bank account. The treasurer produces carbon receipts. It is unfortunate that the 11-member committee only includes two women, but that is democracy.

And democracy, as we all know, can be deeply subversive. Not only does this initiative threaten the power of the Manalchenai Rural Development Society. By approaching a human rights organization like HHR, the 65 families have increased the chance that their grievances will be put to the government. There can be no returning back to the status quo ante for Manalchenai. To judge from our visit, this may be no bad thing.

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Xavier does not see it this way. He responds with the instincts of the human rights advocate, and sees the issue in terms of fairness and accountability. The rights of the 65 families must be protected and the authorities called to account. As a lawyer, he knows how to defend clients.

All of this translates into a varied program of activities. HHR will fund the construction of two public wells in the disadvantaged part of the village and ten toilets. The villagers will contribute labor (which we estimate at 85,000 rupees – a sizable amount).

There can be no returning back to the status quo ante for Manalchenai. To judge from our visit, this may be no bad thing.

HHR will also start a sewing project for 22 women who have requested it, modeled on the Poonichimunai success. The villagers have already identified a building, so there will be no rent. HHR will also help them to register their association.

Finally, and most ambitiously, HHR lawyers will see whether they can help the families secure titles to their land. None of the Manalchenai families have land titles on either side of the invisible divide. This might conceivably bring them together, although to judge from this visit it will also take a lot to heal the wounds.

Sewing the Seeds of Recovery

After the Tsunami struck, the survivors were collected from villages surrounding Batticaloa and brought to a large Technical College. From there they were divided according to their local districts. Some went to the Batticaloa Music College, where they stayed for three months.

It was in this shelter that Xavier first heard the charge of discrimination. One young woman approached Xavier and boldly told him that a group of families from the nearby village of Poonichimunai were being made to feel unwanted. Tired of the hostility, they had decided to return home, even though many of their houses were still damaged or waterlogged.

Lingeswari (left) and her sewing teacher Murugamoorthy.

When Xavier’s colleagues investigated, they found that the Poonichimunai families had been on the move most of their lives. They had originally worked in the tea plantations, but were forced to leave in the late 1970s by the first ethnic troubles. They then arrived in the town of Kattankudy, near Batticaloa, which is mostly populated by Muslim Tamils. Here they found work in the hospital, but were forced to leave again in 1992 when tensions flared between Muslim Tamils and Hindu/Christian Tamils.

Finally, they ended up on low-lying public land in Poonichimunai that no-one else wanted – and decided that this would be their final stop, come hell or high water.

HHR decided to launch a sewing program for young women from these families, using its donations from the United States. HHR purchased five sewing machines and rented a terrace from a private home. 40 girls applied, and 28 were selected.

Eleven have persevered and made it through to the end of the six-month training course, which is now days from finishing. We’re here to meet them because Xavier and his team would like to extend this program and help the women to sell the clothes they have made. This seems the best way to encourage them to continue sewing and turn HHR’s emergency support into a sustainable investment. But HHR will have to convince its Dutch donor that it would fit their requirements.

Of course there is also the other possibility – that the women would not want to continue working together.

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They clearly like each other. They hold hands and giggle under the stern eye of Murugamoorthy, their sewing teacher. Murugamoorthy has her own extraordinary story to tell. She was a police officer before she was arrested, along with her husband and sister. While she was in jail, a brother committed suicide and her mother died. HHR supported her under its program for rehabilitating torture victims, and she was an obvious candidate when they were looking for a sewing teacher.

We move around with our cameras and finally settle on Lingeswari, whose husband disappeared in 1990 after he was arrested. She displays a pile of shirts, dresses and pillow cases that she has made over the past few months.

It is true that these women were not sewers before the Tsunami, but it is also clear that they cannot return to the life they led before the disaster. Several girls made baskets from a special wood that is no longer available because the forests were washed away by the Tsunami. Several more can no longer work in the fields because the soil is salinated. Two of the nine do not have legal titles to their land, which means they could be displaced yet again. Only three of the nine families have received money for damage to their houses, as promised by the authorities.

It is true that these women were not sewers before the Tsunami, but it is also clear that they cannot return to the life they led before the disaster.

By my count, nine of the eleven women are clearly worse off than before the Tsunami. Two might be better off because there is plenty of work for their husbands, a mason and a carpenter. But there is no question of excluding them from any follow-up project after they have worked together for six months.

Whatever the merits of these individuals, there is a strong argument for building reconstruction around such women’s initiatives. One recent sample survey by the Suriya Women’s Development Center in Batticaloa found that 80% of those who had died in the Tsunami were women and girls, and that those women who survived found themselves with families that were swollen by orphans and relatives.

As so often happens in disasters, many women have also reported that their husbands – depressed and unemployed – have turned to drink and become abusive.

Donors could do worse than invest in women.

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The Poonichimunai group has worked hard over the past six months, and seem ripe to work in a cooperative. We try to prime the pump by asking who among them they would entrust with money, and who would be the best salesperson. I purchase a charming pillow case from Lingeswari to set them thinking of markets. I also make an elaborate show of asking for a sales receipt.

We then start bargaining (there is really no other name for it). How would they feel about receiving some capital to buy cloth and threads, the use of the sewing machines for a year, and some training from the government cooperative department? They can keep the sewing machines if they can turn in a profit after a year.

This seems like a sweet deal, but they are less enthusiastic than I would have expected. They mutter among themselves. Yes, they would like to work together. But they were promised their own sewing machines by HHR. They’re afraid that if they go home without a machine, and nothing to show for the six months of training, their husbands will insist that they work in the house.

At the Poonichimunai sewing class.

This strikes me as ungrateful. But Sananthanai and Parasuraman, Xavier’s assistants, see it differently. They haven’t come here to twist arms, and they feel privileged to help these women. They also understand that HHR has made a promise, whether or not it was intended.

Xavier understands that the worst possible thing that HHR can do is try and force the issue. They need time to discuss it among themselves and at home. But an idea takes shape. HHR will buy sewing machines for all of the girls and make a special investment in Lingeswari, who is the only woman to have lost a husband to the conflict. She will be given cloth and a deluxe machine. Her brother (who works for HHR) will take her clothes and try and sell them in the markets, along with any other clothes made by the others.

Once they start earning money, Lingeswari’s friends will hopefully see the advantages of forming something more structured like a cooperative – at which point HHR will seek to call in someone from the government’s cooperative department to provide advice. HHR’s lawyer will also inquire about securing permits for their land.

Our job at the Advocacy Project will be to help HHR produce regular reports on the project, and make sure that they reach the Refugee Foundation in the Netherlands. We will also promote the work of the sewers in the US. This will call for some imagination. Perhaps there might even be a link with New Orleans.

I hope this will satisfy our Dutch friends. If not, someone else will hopefully take a gamble on the sewers of Poonichimunai.

Tortured Reaction

We arrive at the Batticaloa office of the Home for Human Rights at 11.30 and come face to face with the tear-stained face of Rajamani Sarathaden and her five year-old son Dinesh.

The two have just come from visiting Poopalapillai, Rajamani’s husband, who was arrested by a security patrol on September 4, after some shots were fired in the area. Poopalipillai had been fishing all night and there was nothing to connect him with the incident. His wife says that he has broken teeth and has been badly bruised around his face.

Rajamani Sarathaden, with her son, after visiting her jailed husband.

Under Sri Lankan law, Poopalapillai should be charged within 48 hours, or released. But he is being held under a special state of emergency that was declared after the assassination of the Foreign Minister, which makes it possible to remand suspects indefinitely. The fact that he has visible wounds makes it unlikely that he will be released soon, because he would be able to prove torture. In fact, the authorities are hurrying to charge him before the emergency expires. Things do not look good for this fisherman and his family.

Extrajudicial killings have increased since the present government took office in September 2004, and arrests have spiked with the current emergency. Indeed, Siva, the HHR lawyer, has received 13 cases like this in the last few days and he expects the number to rise as word gets around that HHR is taking testimony. It is a depressing reminder that HHR cannot afford to let its work with the Tsunami get in the way of its traditional support for torture victims and detainees.

It helps Rajamani to have a sympathetic audience, but she is also on the verge of panic. Dabbing at tears, she tells the lawyer that her first husband was shot dead in 1987, leaving her with three children. She married again and now has another three children.

HHR cannot afford to let its work with the Tsunami get in the way of its traditional support for torture victims and detainees.

With her husband in jail, she is the sole breadwinner for six young dependants. She feeds them by going out into the forests every day and cutting wood. This brings her 40 rupees (40 cents) which is enough to pay for one meal a day. At this rate, malnutrition is probably not far off.

Rajamani’s distress is particularly uncomfortable for those of us who have just arrived from Colombo. How can we relax after the long journey while we’re sitting near to a woman who is feeding six children on 40 cents a day? I choose the easy way and slip her 400 rupees ($4). I tell her that I am paying to take her photo, lest others get it into their heads that HHR is giving out charity.

This draws a look of admiration from Sanathani, Xavier’s assistant, who tells me that many foreigners take photos of the Tsunami victims but do not reward their subjects. But this also leaves me feeling uncomfortable. 400 rupees is a paltry sum – have I given enough? Will I now need to pay everyone whose photo I take? Have I started down a slippery slope by giving to an individual? Everything I’ve read and heard warns against giving out money to individuals.

I seem to have stepped into some deep water. But there are times when you have to put calculation to one side and act as one human being to another, and this one of them.

At least there is no chance of this family becoming lazy – one of the arguments often made against charity.

Aid Puzzle

A tidal wave of money flowed into Sri Lanka following the Tsunami, and every day seems to bring a report of aid falling into the wrong hands. I, however, am about to find out how difficult it has been to spend the money.

Immediately after the disaster, the staff of the Home for Human Rights contributed part of their salary towards the emergency and began visiting relief centers and villages, many of which were still under water. Francis Xavier, the HHR Director, quickly arrived from Colombo and decided to launch a relief project.

Xavier saw the Tsunami as an opportunity to broaden his organization’s mandate. The Home for Human Rights has been known for protecting the legal rights of Tamils since it was founded in 1977 by Xavier and two other lawyers. HHR has helped over 3,000 torture victims and taken several landmark cases before the United Nations.

But cases of torture fell after the 2002 ceasefire, and HHR’s exclusive focus on civil and political rights began to seem restrictive. An external evaluation last year strongly recommended that HHR expand its mandate, and move into social and economic rights.

Capable hands: Sanathani (left) and Parasuraman from the HHR staff

This provoked some soul-searching in HHR. Xavier was in favor of the shift, but his long-time colleague and co-Director, V.S. Ganesalingam, pointed out that HHR’s expertise lay in legal protection. It would be hard to hold the government accountable for failing to provide jobs, schools and health services – particularly in the middle of a war or natural disaster.

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Such issues are keenly debated in human rights classes, but there was nothing academic about the mess that awaited the HHR team in Batticaloa. As they ventured into the refugee shelters and waded through the foul water, they received repeated reports of aid being withheld or dispensed arbitrarily. It was hard to know whether this was corruption or discrimination, but something was clearly not right.

Photo credit: Cristina Rumbaitis-del Rio

The Tsunami caused wells to become contaminated with salt water. A lack of coordination among well-intentioned aid groups led to overpumping and increased salinity of well water.

A new mandate began to emerge for HHR among the ruins. Xavier and his team decided that any money they raised would go to people who had been displaced by war, uprooted by the Tsunami, and discriminated against during the aid operation.

These three criteria would allow HHR to do what it did best and also broaden its mandate. Fighting discrimination was consistent with HHR’s traditional human rights mandate. At the same time, relief aid would allow HHR to address the survivors’ rights to shelter, health and food.

For once, money seemed to be no problem. Within weeks of the Tsunami, HHR has received around $15,000 from the United States, including $1,500 that was raised from students at Georgetown University by Michael Keller, a student who had interned with HHR the previous summer. HHR was also promised a generous grant by the Dutch Refugee Foundation (Stichting Vluchteling), one of several agencies charged with spending Dutch Tsunami donations.

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All of this gave HHR considerable leeway to develop an imaginative program. But at the same time, Xavier’s strategy is not without risks. We start to go over some of them in the journey to Batticaloa.

No matter how much HHR focuses on victims of discrimination, any emergency relief operation will call for technical skills which HHR does not possess. There is also the question of sustainability. Nothing is worse than starting a project and not being able to keep it going. But emergency aid is, by definition, intended to be short-term.

Any intervention, no matter how carefully planned and sensitively handled, will upset the normal balance of society, and challenge Karma. That is the nature of aid.

The best way to ensure sustainability is to invest in people not commodities – to help survivors manage their own aid and work together in ways that will last after agencies pull out. But even this raises some difficult questions.

For example, should HHR work with through communities or with individuals? Helping individuals might create resentment among others who are not chosen. But working through local community groups could make to harder to ensure that aid went to those who needed it. And what if the groups are not representative? Channeling aid through them will simply reinforce an unjust system.

One thing HHR already knows: any intervention, no matter how carefully planned and sensitively handled, will upset the normal balance of society, and challenge Karma. That is the nature of aid.

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It is also in the nature of aid to come with conditions. HHR’s new partner, the Dutch Refugee Foundation (Stichting Vluchteling), has a long tradition of supporting displaced persons and refugees, and is an ideal partner for HHR. At the same time SV also has its own donors to satisfy. They need to know that their money is reaching those who need it, and understandably so. SV tells us that the Dutch press is watching like hawks for any signs that aid is being misspent.

SV wants its money to make up income lost during the Tsunami – in other words, return to the status quo ante. A team from SV visited Sri Lanka in the spring and met with a group of young woman from the village of Poonichimunai, who were being trained in sewing by HHR. The SV team found that the girls had not been sewing before the Tsunami and decided that it could not support any further sewing activities with SV money.

This sent HHR back to the drawing board. Between June and August, the organization’s field officers ranged up and down the ravaged coast. Sarosh Syed, AP’s intern, also made several trips out to Batticaloa to help.

There was no shortage of needy communities, but HHR struggled to find a seat at the table among the army of relief agencies. The field team made several visits to a group of six Tamil Muslim villages known as Ollikulam and was received with interest. But when the team next visited, the villagers said that they had been told not to accept aid from anyone other than a German agency named SEEDS, which was providing 5,000 rupees a month ($50) to each family.

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HHR has now come up with a series of imaginative projects in six villages, which draw from the lessons is has learned over the past nine months and meet its three criteria. My task over the next week is to visit these communities, hear directly from the survivors, and help HHR develop its reporting on the project.

In spite of all the hard work that’s been done, it may not be plain sailing. Xavier wants to continue helping the sewers of Poonichimunai, even though this has been ruled out by our friends in Holland. Someone we must find a way of reconciling SV’s criteria with those of HHR.

I am also reflecting on SV’s request that its aid should go to pre-Tsunami activities. Must reconstruction mean restoring the status quo? Given what these communities went through before the disaster, there might be a strong argument for using the Tsunami aid to help them make a fresh start.

One thing is certain: nothing is ever simple following an emergency.