Keeping Northern Muslims In Refugee Camps

By Latheef Farook –October 19, 2015

Latheef Farook

Northern Muslims continue to rot in refugee camps; Ignored by successive governments, their own politicians and international community

The unfortunate plight of northern Muslims refugees, abandoned by Muslim politicians, the successive governments and even the international community speak volume for the bankrupt nature of the Island’s Muslim politics and even the community.

Muslims were part and parcel of northern soil and society. Over centuries this was their only place and their Tamil neighbors were the only people they knew. Most of them often felt alien when they visited the island’s south as they found it somewhat uncomfortable there due to the different social environment especially when it came to speaking in Sinhala.

Even around the late 1980s, the bulk of their concentration was in Jaffna city where they lived predominantly in three densely populated areas, namely Sonaka Theru, Ottumadam and Bommaively which were collectively known as Muslim ‘vattaaram’ -zones.

Their main activities were retail and wholesale hardware trade, lorry transport, jewellery and tailoring besides agriculture and fisheries. They owned houses and properties besides paddy lands and fishery boats. Muslims dominated the trade at one stage to such an extent that two-thirds of the blocks in the new market in Jaffna, built by the Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah, and was monopolized by them.

They avoided getting involved in the ethnic crisis. Yet the ethnic crisis had its devastating impact on the Northern Muslims as their traditional life was disturbed. Every time fierce fighting broke out between the security forces and the LTTE, there was intense shelling and mass scale bombing, compelling residents, both Tamil and Muslim, to flee their residences and business houses. They would suffer great losses and would only return when the fighting subsided to rebuild their lives and their businesses.Read More