Sri Lanka polls non issue for Tamil refugees

Chennai: Sri Lankan refugee Stanis, (35), will be sitting in front of the TV in his cramped, one-bedroom house in Chennai while most of his friends and relatives in his home town of Batticola in Eastern Sri Lanka will be queuing up outside polling booths on Thursday to choose the country’s president in the most tightly fought poll in recent times. Stanis can go to the island to cast his vote, but he is among the many Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu who feel dispirited about the presidential poll and consider it a non-issue which will do nothing to improve Tamils’ lives here and back home in Lanka.

This did not, however, deter several Tamil refugees here from calling their friends and relatives to find out who among the two Sinhalas, incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa and his friend turned contender, Maithripala Sirisena, had the edge. Jobless and struggling to make ends meet, Stanis, who writes to web portals about Lankan Tamils’ affairs, made an ISD call to Batticola to know if the Tamils were determined to defeat Rajapaksa.

Echoing his view, Maheswaran, (38), an Eelam Tamil, hailing from Vanni in northern Sri Lanka and now an inmate of a special camp at Trichy central prison campus said on the phone, “They will make promises now and trade charges against each other later. Once elected, they will only do more damage.”

“All Tamils want Rajapaksa out for what he did to them during the bloody war. The Tamil National Alliance is supporting Sirisena because they have to apparently work under the federal government and protect the remaining Tamils,” Maheswaran said, surprisingly, adding that Rajapaksa would continue to do what he had been doing so far and a newcomer may do more to appease the Sinhala chauvinists.

“If Sinhala fishermen get caught by India, Colombo interferes immediately, but it does not do it for Tamil fishermen from there. If it does not do it for Tamils there, what will they do for refugees here?” he wondered.

“Neither of their manifestoes states anything about refugees living outside the country. My plight in the Trichy camp is no better than those at the Chettikulam camp in Lanka. How does it affect me if Mahinda or Sirisena wins?” says Gnanavarodayan aka Daya, (32), a native of Santhipuram in Mannar, also lodged at the Trichy special camp for allegedly trying to flee to Australia illegally in June 2013.  Though Sirisena was defending Mahinda till a few months ago as the general secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, most Tamil refugees here said that a majority of Tamils and Muslims were backing Sirisena as they wanted Mahinda punished.