Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS: From War Zone to Double Deckers, Hope Returns to Orphans

AVISSAWELLA, Sri Lanka, Oct 6 2009 (IPS) - The two double-decker buses were a rarity on the Avissawella-Colombo road. One usually does not see slow-moving old English buses on the highway about 50 kilometres out of the capital Colombo.

If the buses were a rarity, their bubbly travellers – children and youth ages two to 20 – waving and straining their necks out of the top decks were even more rare. Not anymore. These children of war had witnessed the most horrible effects of a seemingly endless strife. Late last month, they finally had the chance to celebrate the World Children’s Day – and savour peace. It was an elusive dream come true.

“It is like coming out of a nightmare and walking into a dream,” 15-year-old Predeepa Kulasekeram said.

Less than five months back, riding huge buses, flying balloons in the air and waiving at passersby were stuff only in their imaginations. Back then they were more intent in staying alive while running away from bullets, shells and artillery fire.

Living in the Vanni, the large swath of land in northern Sri Lanka that was once under the control of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the children and youth in the double deckers now snaking leisurely through the highway were among the over quarter of a million civilians who fled the fighting.

As the conflict intensified in mid-2008, more than 280,000 civilians, mostly from the minority Tamil community, fled the conflict, first deeper into Tiger-held areas after being prevented by the militants from crossing into areas held by government forces.


As the fighting reached its feverish pitch in the final hours, cornered into a narrow coastal area, the civilians, risking injury and death, crossed the frontlines into government-held areas. At least 260,000 of them now remain at sprawling welfare camps for the internally displaced.

The story of the young bus riders was far worse than that of the ordinary civilians who had fled. Enduring life in a bloody war that offered no escape, they suffered extreme loneliness and separation in the war zone. Every one of them who finally had the chance to ride those buses was an orphan from the Vanni.

Some had lost both parents in the war, others had been abandoned by parents who found it difficult to bring them up and care for them in the war zone. They lived in orphanages functioning in the areas formerly held by the Tigers.

During the last weeks of the war, between late April and early May, they were forced to flee yet again, this time into the safety of government lines. The long-drawn-out battle between Sri Lankan government troops and the LTTE finally ended on May 19, when the former killed the Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. By then it had claimed over 70,000 lives, and left tens of thousands homeless.

The children of war are now under the care of the Varaliyakulam Siriliya Foster Home in the northern town of Vavuniya, located right next to the former combat areas. In the last week of September, they visited Colombo for the first time and were taken to an amusement park, the zoo and on a sightseeing tour of the city and its suburbs.

Coming from the ravages of the decades-long war, it was their first taste of the capital and of any type of excursion. The tour had been organised by the office of the First Lady Shiranthi Rajapakasa to coincide with the international day for children.

As the buses closed in on Leisure World, an amusement park at Avissawella, the lower decks of the two buses were almost empty. All the curious young visitors were on the top decks, looking out on all the passersby while waving their hands at them, their eyes open wide, savouring every moment of their first taste of freedom.

“We never knew anything else about Sri Lanka. We lived in the Vanni, in orphanages. No one told us anything about the country; we did not have TV, no radio, not even a newspaper,” 18-year-old Supriya Thirunawel told IPS. She had lived the last 12 years of her life as an orphan in a combat zone.

The buses rolled to a slow stop and the visitors, each with a name tag on them, disembarked and got into pairs and lined up. They moved first nervously through the various attractions and were first a bit reluctant to get into the rides.

When ride operators requested them to put on the seatbelts before the merry-go-round could start, most did not know what the contraption was or what to do with it. When the carousel began moving slowly, the children, eyes nervously flitting and wide open, broke into a smile. But as they gained speed, there was a palpable fear on their faces while some of the younger children screamed as they held onto their older peers.

“When it was gaining speed, it was scary, but I got used to it. It is fun,” a beaming Kulasekeram said. She then made a dash for the electric train, a major hit with the excited bunch of youngsters.

As the day wore on at Leisure World, usually full of families from Colombo and the suburbs, the park echoed with shouts and gleeful screams. The same scenes had played out the day before, when the group visited the famous zoo just outside Colombo.

As they walked through a large aquarium with its darkened corridors winding through the brightly lit fish tanks, some of the orphans could not believe that the aquatic species were real and not plastic imitations. They had been removed from the real world for so long that everything else seemed unreal to them.

“It was a totally different world out there. In the Vanni, we were living in a world where there was no escape; we were totally helpless,” Thirunawel, one of the oldest in the group, said.

“Other kids at least had parents to protect them and families that they could feel safe with. We had no one like that,” she said. The mental strain of her past proved more unbearable for her than for the younger ones, though they shared her experiences of the war. Yet, the 18-year-old’s younger companions became just as fearful as the war drew closer, forcing them to leave their foster home and flee like thousands of others.

Five months after they fled, their lives have changed more dramatically than any one of them could have ever imagined. They now have the facilities to study and dream of becoming doctors and lawyers. “I want to be a doctor,” said Kulamsekeram.

“We go to school just like any other kid. There is no fear of bombs or anything like that,” said nine-year-old Nilawendaran Dilani.

Perhaps no one symbolised the newfound hope of these children more than two-year-old Sandya. She was born on Sep. 27, 2007, surrounded by bombs, mayhem and the stench of war. Left orphaned, the better part of her first two years was spent on surviving. At Leisure World, she celebrated her second birthday, this time surrounded by smiling and jubilant companions.

The ride to peace may have been long and turbulent for Sandya and all the other children of war, but now they can hop on double deckers — and dream without fear.

 
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