'The situation in Sri Lanka is not alarming for refugees to return'
'I am not saying the situation is either good or conducive'
'What I am trying to do is to place all the facts before the refugees and just nudge them to take a call'
Image: A file photograph of Tamil civilians at a refugee camp on the outskirts of the northern Sri Lankan town of Vavuniya. Photograph: Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/Reuters/Pool.--IMAGE: Refugees who have returned to Sri Lanka congregate at the church in Mannar.
IMAGE: Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who have returned home fishing off the Mannar coast.
June 23, 2016 
A 28-minute documentary, No Longer A Refugee, tells the story of Sri Lanka Tamils who have returned home after spending many years as refugees in Tamil Nadu. According to one estimate, there are over 65,000 65,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees still living in nearly 110 refugee camps in Tamil Nadu.
The documentary was produced by Ashok Gladston Xavier, a Chennai-based academic, on behalf of the Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation or OfERR, a self-help group run by refugees since 1983 and which has offices in Chennai and Colombo. The documentary will be shown in all refugee camps in Tamil Nadu, and where not possible CDs will be supplied to refugee camps for exhibition.
After the documentary was screened in Chennai recently, S C Chandrahasan, founder of OfERR, said out of the 65,000 refugees still in India, some 1,700 of them want to go back to Sri Lanka immediately and that he is in touch with Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj to arrange for their return.
“We had asked Swaraj to arrange for ships to send back these refugees and the minister had promised to look into it. We had also asked the minister to re-start the ferry services between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka to facilitate their return. Since these are all poor refugees, the government has to ensure their return by arranging for their travel free of cost,” Chandrahasan said. "The situation is fast improving in Sri Lanka, and this documentary is a soothsayer’s message to the refugees who are living in India."
In a conversation with R Ramasubramanian, Xavier said, "My documentary attempts to find answers to those frequently asked questions from Tamil refugees who are still in India."
What made you produce this documentary?
I wanted to find out the challenges faced by those refugees who had returned to their motherland, and to find answers for refugees who are still living in camps in Tamil Nadu.
When and where did you shoot the documentary?
I visited Sri Lanka in April-May 2015 and in April 2016. I had gone to at least seven places including Colombo, Vavuniya, Killinochi, Jaffna, Mannar, Mullaitivu and spoke to those refugees who had come back from India.
