Muslims In Sri Lanka Fail To Return To Their Homes In War-Torn Provinces
(ANALYSIS) Nearly two decades have passed since the 26-year-long civil war ended in Sri Lanka. Yet, Muslims displaced from the island nation’s northern and eastern Provinces still face significant challenges in returning to their homes and reclaiming their land.
The civil war between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Tamil guerrilla separatists, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who sought to establish an independent Tamil state, Eelam, in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, ended in 2009. The conflict displaced around 300,000 Tamils, an ethnic minority, and 70,000 Muslims, a religious minority.
Tamils faced harassment and violence, allegedly at the hands of the Sri Lankan Army, while Muslims suffered killings, forced eviction, displacement, and the loss of property, livelihood, and land at the hands of the LTTE. Some Muslims were pressured into selling their land to Tamils during the war.
Between July and September 1990, the LTTE killed over 300 Muslims in Batticaloa mosques, while Muslim home guards and the Sri Lankan Army allegedly killed more than 220 Tamils in Sathurukondan and Puthukkudiyiruppu.
After the war, some government projects helped displaced Tamils resettle, but Muslims, who make up 9.7% of Sri Lanka’s population, received minimal aid. The government never recognized them as internally displaced.
Over three decades, the number of displaced Muslim families grew to 300,000, with 260,000 still living in camps and other areas in the eastern, western, and north-central provinces. Only 40,000 have managed to resettle in the north, according to activists.
Native Muslims labeled ‘newcomers’
After the war ended, many Muslims began returning to the northern and eastern Provinces, where they originally lived — but they were not welcomed by the Tamils. Local Tamils referred to them as "Varathan," meaning "newcomer" in Tamil, and many protested their resettlement.
Student activists, along with Tamil nationalists, have protested the resettlement of Muslims. In Northern Province's Mullaitivu, local Tamils blocked government efforts to resettle Muslims, arguing that the move was meant to alter the area's ethnic makeup and destroy hundreds of acres of forests planted and "preserved" by the LTTE.
Although over 2,500 Muslim families are registered with the local authorities in Mullaitivu, only 1,200 currently live there, according to activists.
Furthermore, the Sri Lankan Army, which has been expanding its base in the north, particularly in Mullaitivu — the place where LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran was killed — has taken control of large portions of land belonging to Muslims.
Muslims in the north earn their livelihood through small businesses, such as manufacturing food packets and weaving fishing nets at home. However, they are unable to expand their businesses due to a lack of land they can claim as their own.
Muslims face discrimination
Many Muslims who came of age after 1990 complained that their names were never included on voter lists. In 2019, following the Easter bombings, in which an Islamist militant group allegedly killed over 260 people and injured more than 500, many Muslims were not allowed to vote during the presidential elections.
After the Easter bombings, Muslims — who had already faced attacks by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority under former president Mahinda Rajapaksa — suffered further discrimination. The Sri Lankan government banned the wearing of burqas in public, citing national security concerns. They also shut down thousands of Islamic schools (madrassas), prohibited burials for Muslims who died from COVID-19, and demolished a Muslim shrine to restore a Buddhist relic, all of which further alienated Muslims.
Following the Easter Sunday bombings in 2019, police randomly arrested 1,820 Muslims. Since then, over 250 Muslims have been charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and many local Muslim charities have been blacklisted under the law, according to activists.
In 2021, a rally organized jointly by Muslims and Tamils from Pottuvil in the Eastern Province to Polikandy in the Northern Province called on the international community to intervene and protect their rights.
Three years later, in his inaugural address to the nation, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the firebrand Marxist elected as the ninth president of Sri Lanka, stated he was launching a permanent program to build a “unified Sri Lankan nation” that respects diversity and fully ends the era of division based on race, religion class, and caste.
During his campaign, he met with Muslim leaders, which was widely promoted on social media. However, Dissanayake’s recently appointed 21-member cabinet lacked representation from both minority communities—Muslims and Tamils—from the war-torn North and East.
Clearly, despite Muslims and Tamils struggling to reconcile their differences, both minorities continue to face similar treatment on the national level.
Sonia Sarkar is a journalist based in India. She writes on conflict, religion, politics, health and gender rights from Southeast Asia. Her work has appeared in a range of international publications, including the South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asia and Al Jazeera.