About 20 persons, including 11 schoolchildren, have been reported killed and a similar number wounded by the blast of a claymore mine on Tuesday as they travelled in a school bus on Mannar’s Madhu Road in the LTTE-controlled area on their way to school.

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The National Peace Council condemns this heinous crime, not only because children were targeted, but also because the Madhu Church area is sacred to Catholics from all parts of the country who wish that it should be demilitarized. NPC regrets that the Bishop of Mannar, Rayappu Joseph's requests for the Madhu area to be declared a zone of peace has been ignored.

The LTTE has blamed the Government, and the military has denied involvement, calling the assertion LTTE propaganda. The absence of impartial monitors, such as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission which was scrapped as a result of the abrogation of the Ceasefire Agreement is sorely felt at this time. While we may never obtain concrete proof of the identity of the perpetrators the assault on civilian school children shows the hypocrisy and nefariousness of those who use violent means in seeking justice.

This attack is notably similar to the claymore mine the LTTE allegedly detonated to weeks ago in Buttala, which similarly deliberately targeted a bus filled with civilians killing over 27 and wounding more than 60and etching a violent end of the Ceasefire Agreement and a violent beginning to 2008. A week ago 16 decomposed bodies, which are believed of people from elsewhere were found in the forests near Kebbetigollewa, which itself has been the scene of two bus bomb attacks that killed over 80 persons over the past two years. A suicide bomb explosion in Jaffna on Thursday killed at least five and injured another 15 civilians. NPC laments the worsening cycle of violence and impunity, and its consequences and the absence of any viable political initiative that can stop the violence.

These further human tolls of war borne by the people of this country show the necessity that the conflicting parties find another way of resolving this conflict. NPC deplore their actions in repeatedly sacrifice children’s rights and religious rights, among others, in seeking a military solution and in not pursuing a political solution beginning with a cessation of hostilities. The only way of preventing civilian victims is ultimately to end the violence. NPC calls upon the conflicting parties to take responsibility for the people, and the violent actions that the people endure.

In the meantime NPC call on both sides of the conflict to abide by obligations under international humanitarian law and protect all those not involved in hostilities. It is unfortunate and tragic that after having gained National Independence without shedding a drop of blood sixty years ago, we have not yet found a way to make the February 4 celebration of our Independence more meaningful and acceptable to all Sri Lankans. The people of Sri Lanka deserve to live and travel in peace and deserve more than the sorrow and frustration of more bodies and the shifting of blame with no end to violence in sight.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reported that Muslims in Sri Lanka continue to be caught in the middle with no voice in this civil war. With the Sri Lankan government formally ending a 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) on January 16, the hopes for repatriation of refugees displaced by the fighting have faded.

In the north-western town of Puttalam, home to thousands of Sri Lanka's Northern Muslims, this is a particular source of despair.

After 17 years of their flight from the Northern provinces, which became defacto battlegrounds between the LTTE and government forces, many of these refugees still live in squalid camps.

In the Soltan camp, located in a depression outside Puttalam, the monsoon rains have already flooded much of it. In the dry season, it becomes a dust bowl.

Samsiya, a mother of seven who fled Jaffna and has been living at the camp, said: "There is diarrhoea, malaria – look, there is water everywhere, full of mosquitoes." 

A.M. Mihlar Mohammed, programme director with the Community Trust Fund, which works with the Puttalam refugees, said that 80 per cent of the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) live in such camps and rely on aid.

"The government fixed aid at 1260 rupees ($11) per family per month back in the 1990s and it has not gone up [since]. Think about it – a small packet of dried milk now costs 280 rupees," he said.

The government says that it is trying to do its best for the refugees at a time when its resources are greatly stretched. In 2007 it appealed to the Kuwait Fund and other international donors to help in the construction of new housing facilities for the displaced.

Battleground displacement

In November 1990, some 80,000 Muslims from Sri Lanka's northern provinces were given as little as two 48 hour periods by the LTTE to vacate their homes.

"They made the announcement over the mosque loudspeakers," recalls S. Marhana from Jaffna. She now lives with 116 other families in the IDP camp at Soltan.

Some 80,000 Muslim IDPs seek a return to Sri Lanka's northern provinces

Back then, the LTTE controlled a swathe of territory from Jaffna at the very northern tip of the island to Mannar and Vavuniya further south.

Most of the LTTE's supporters are from among the ethnic Tamil, largely Hindu community which forms a minority on an island with a largely Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Sri Lanka's Muslims, who are mostly Tamil-speaking, form a minority within this ethnic group.

Asan Saleem, whose family was expelled from Mannar by the LTTE, said: "They had a responsibility to look after us. After all, they were saying that the Sinhalese majority on the island did not look after them. Then they went and did the same thing to us."

Forced from their homes, most had then to walk on foot through the jungle to government-controlled areas.

"Some disappeared," recalls K.M. Ashar, also from Mannar. "Many families still don't know what happened to their relatives. It was the richer ones particularly who vanished."

Many of the refugees were relocated to Puttalam. The population of this coastal community doubled, placing a huge stress on local resources - a burden which continues to this day.

Looking for answers

Meanwhile, many IDPs feel that after 17 years, the LTTE has still offered no good explanation for what many Muslims say was a programme of ethnic cleansing.

"We still don’t know why they did this," says Saleem.

"We had always got on well with other Tamils before. For the ethnic cleansing though, the LTTE brought in people from outside the area to carry it out. Some of the other Tamils protested too, particularly the local Christian priests, who tried to stop us being expelled. But they couldn't stop it."

However, after the ceasefire agreement with the government had been signed in 2002, the LTTE admitted that the expulsions had been a "political blunder".

In 2003, representatives of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the country's main Muslim political party, met Velupillai Prabakaran, the LTTE chief, who urged the Muslims to return to the areas they had been expelled from.

An agreement was signed to facilitate this but was never implemented.

Military solution favoured  

Muslims say chances for their repatriation will brighten if the government and LTTE return to the negotiating table and halt all hostilities.

But that now seems a distant hope. Since fighting broke out again in April last year after the 2002 ceasefire started crumbling, over 5,000 people have been killed.

Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, a Colombo-based think-tank, says both sides are readying for an all-out war.

He said: "The government is now almost totally focusing on the military solution, while the LTTE's response has also been entirely military. I think we can say with reasonable certainty that the military conflict is just going to escalate."

No going back

Samsiya says such escalation means they will never go back home. "We are afraid to go back. In Jaffna there are killings and bombs all the time."

M. Farooka, another Jaffna refugee, said: "Even if the army says it now controls the situation, at night the LTTE might come back, or put snipers out during the day. It is just not safe at all."

In the camp at Soltan, the more immediate problems are the flooding and the daily question of finding enough to eat.

Saleem despairs at his community's continuing misery.

"I think to the outside world, to our own government, and to the LTTE, we no longer exist."