By Ranga Jayasuriya
In the ruins of Moor town in Jaffna, there is no mood for celebration. The majority of over thousand residents are taking shelter in abandoned schools and shacks put up next to the ruins of their old homes.
Twenty years after the LTTE chased the northern Muslims, including 75,000 from Jaffna, the displaced want to return. But, even for those who returned, it is an unhappy homecoming.
Zarina (45) returned to Moor town from a transit camp in Puttalam in 2001, during the period of the peace process. She was optimistic then, but not any longer. Her life in the run- down Khadija College had cost her, her spirit.
“No one cares for us. Politicians come only during election time. We are living miserable lives for the last ten years,” complains Zarina.
“The Municipal Council provides water supply. That is all. We are living in real hell,” she says.
A group of men and women flocked to talk about their plight when this correspondent visited the ruins of this once fabulous residential area. Now there lies the wreckage of 15,000 houses once inhabited by Muslims. Houses have been vandalized; their furniture and accessories were taken away by neighbours.
Evicted Muslims
Evicted Muslims began to trickle back to their ancestral place as peace negotiations between the then government and the LTTE heightened expectations.
But, since then little has changed. Zarina like the majority of 1000 returnees live in an abandoned school.
Mumtaz (35) another woman in the group says her six children attend Osmania Muslim college, but, in fact, there is little learning being done. “There are no teachers and, after all, we have no place to live. How can our children study,” she questions.
“NGOs give us food, but the rice is full of insects,” she says showing a palmful of discoloured rice.
But would she go back to the transit camp?
“There is no question of going back,” she emphasizes. “Life in Puttalam was miserable for the poor. Of course it was good for the rich.”
Inside the derelict city mosque, Mahamud Bashir (56) is attending afternoon prayers alongside the newly appointed maulavi of the mosque, Mohammed Irshard. Bashir, who was born and brought up in Jaffna sleeps in the mosque in the night. His house, like many others, is in ruins.
Twenty years ago, the LTTE gave his family two hours to leave Jaffna, carrying nothing but, five hundred rupees. Since then, the family lived in displacement in Puttalam and Colombo, but, they wanted to return to their own home. Six generations of the Bashir family lived in this former cultural capital of the Tamils.
Bashir and his father were involved with the old school Tamil politics. His father moved along with those of the calibre of Chelvanayakam and Amirthalingam and was an active member of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchchi (ITAK).
In those long forgotten days, mainstream Sinhalese parties held sway in Jaffna politics. Voters were split between the mainstream political parties and the ethnic based ITAK.
Sometimes, it was the Muslims who swung the vote to assure an ITAK victory.
Mavai Senathiraja, Kasi Anandan and G.G.Ponnambalam were among the recipients of that goodwill.
Tamils and Muslims were like the nail and flesh of the finger, says Bashir referring to an old Tamil saying. But, for Muslims, all hell broke loose when on one fine day, the LTTE announced the eviction of Muslims and packed them in buses and sent them away.
All their properties were confiscated by the Tigers. The horror of that day still haunts Bashir and many other Muslims.

Penalty
“Tigers tore off the ears of women to take away their jewellery, he says.” “But, they paid the penalty for that at Nandikadal,” he adds, referring to the defeat of the LTTE
Several dozen families, including Zarina’s and Mumtaz’s live under squalid conditions in Khadija college, which was once the pinnacle of Muslim womens education in Jaffna.
The tale of Khadija College is one of great expectations which came crashing down.
Badiuddin Mahmud, a former Education Minister of the centre- left Sirima Bandaranaike government in the seventies was the chief guest at the inauguration of Osmania College for boys in Jaffna.
The late Minister asked the organizers: “This is for the boys. What about the girls? Find me land, I will get the money passed for a girls’ school.”
Residents found the land and Badiuddin Mahmud built Khadija College.
Once an academia of excellence, it is now a refugee camp.
Bashir has little respect for Muslim political leaders.
“They serve themselves and their families, not us.”
Khairunissa, another woman ekes out a living by doing menial work for an NGO. She wants a decent place to live, but her prayers have not been answered.
“The Government Agent says he will give us money when he receives it. We never got any assistance from anyone.”
“Why isn’t the government helping us? There are 100,000 Muslims who were chased away at that time,” she queries.
That is a question that many Muslims seek answer.
Bashir says he and a delegation of Muslim community leaders met with the president to tell their grievances.
“The president told us, that he had abandoned us and that he knew our plight, but that his plate was full right now. He assured us that he would rebuild the town soon after the recent IDPs (in Wanni) are resettled.”
Bashir says he is optimistic about the president’s assurance. But, waiting is the least that many of the thousand odd returnees living by the ruins of their old houses in Moor Street and many more thousands living wretched lives in transit camps want to do, after being displaced for two decades. They have already waited enough.

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