SATTAHIP (Thailand), Sept 17: Sri Lanka’s Muslim rights campaigners, who are conducting an “informal monitoring” of the peace talks in Thailand, are advocating resettlement of Muslims driven out from the Jaffna peninsula at the height of the civil war in the early 1990s.
A spokesman for the campaigners said the delegation would try to persuade Muslim Affairs Minister Rauf Hakeem to fulfil a pledge made to displaced Muslim families regarding a return to their homes.
The spokesman, Zarook Cafoor, who assists refugees in Puttlam, an eastern town with the biggest concentration of refugees from the civil war, said in an interview with Dawn that it was the Muslims’ “fervent” hope that Mr Hakeem would manage to get an assurance from the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) theoretician Anton Balasingham that Muslims would be allowed to live in the North East.
He also said his group expected that the LTTE and the Lankan government would treat the Muslims who were forced to flee the Jaffna region as those who were “ forcibly made into displaced persons”, and not those who were displaced by war.
Javid Yusuf, another activist, dismissed speculations that Muslims too would shortly lobby for something akin to a “separate state” in the eastern area of Kalmunai, a Muslim-majority region. Muslim Affairs Minister Rauf Hakeem, in an interview at the Katunayake airport on Saturday, said he would take up the issue of Muslims’ rehabilitation in areas now controlled by the LTTE.
At present Muslims who venture out of their refugee camps in search of livelihood complain that the LTTE does not allow them to engage in fishing without extracting a certain amount of money. They further allege that although the Tamils too pay money to the LTTE for being allowed to engage in fishing, the amount charged was much lower than that for Muslims.
CONSULTATIONS: The Sri Lankan government has agreed to hold regular consultations with the Tamil Tigers, sources close to the peace delegation said on Tuesday. The LTTE has also responded positively to the proposal, sources said.
In another sign, Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solhiem, who attended the Thailand talks, said on Tuesday that the negotiations had been “undoubtedly like no other peace venture” initiated so far to resolve the conflict.
Constitutional Affairs Minister G.L.Peiris, a key figure in efforts for bringing about an end to the strife, said after the second day of talks that for the first time the government and the LTTE had reached “a distance which they cannot retract”.
“We have built a bridge of trust. The (Lankan) government will not go back. Neither will the LTTE. This is the understanding that we reached during the talks,” Peiris said.
