An Issue About A Non-Issue Wilpattu Land For Resettlement?
Prof. Shahul Hasbullah
An Issue about a non-Issue
This is a revised version of a paper of the same title presented at a small gathering of scholars and activists on May 27, 2015. Formally speaking, this is my first engagement in public on the hotly debated issue of Wilpattu land settlement and I hope, it will form a critical and informed engagement on this issue. I was at first reluctant to enter into any debate as I felt that it had become over ethnicized and politicized, leaving little from for constructive and politically informed, activist and academic input. But as the debate has taken a turn toward discrediting the right to return of those displaced in war, I feel the need to present my views. I have been working in the area of conflict driven displacement, return and resettlement of communities, land disputes that have arisen in the wake of return for two decades.
The urgency of the situation also demands that I take to task nationalistic forces acting under cover of legal expertise, environmentalism and other benign and legitimate concerns, which drawing upon certain facts and needs regarding the returnees into calculation have transformed the face of the returning figure into one of mass villainy. I have therefore undertaken to bring to light an understanding of the ground situation concerning the return of the people of Musali South (located in Musali DS Division of Mannar District of the Northern Province.)
Concerns raised and the issues focused in the presentation
At the seminar, geographers, environmentalist, rights activists and people with local knowledge presented their views on land and Wilpattu. I for one raised a fundamental question and that my driving motif in this paper. Why are we discussing Wilpattu and Land, now? Why has this become one of national significance at this precise moment? Whose agenda does this serve? Who benefits from it and how? More importantly, why are the concerns of the marginalized, the cardinal principle of existence and belonging, the RIGHT TO RETURN, shelved and not seen as important any more.
In my consideration, the dispute over Wilpattu is not what we have to focus on at the moment and that the disputed forest clearance has to be discussed in connection with the return of the displaced. The need of the hour is a national policy on return and in my view we need to discuss that first and foremost, as every other issue, including the Wilpattu land issue and attendant forest clearance issue arise from that. We need to address this concern at the national level.
