NG
How long have you been in the detention camp?
T
For more than five months. They have arrested my whole family, my neighbours and friends and brought us all to the camp. My two children are still under arrest, but we are not allowed to have any kind of contact with them. I don’t know how they are feeling, if they are dead or alive. They are more than 5.000 people who are missing since they were arrested. Nobody knows if they are still in the camps or if they have been killed or if they have died because of illness or hunger. Who knows – maybe both my children are also among these missing ones. At the moment I have no chance to find it out.
NG
Have they told you why you were arrested?
T
No, they don’t tell us these things, but it is more than obvious that they kept us because we are Tamil people. There is this huge propaganda against my people going on. The media and the politicians present us all as terrorists. But how can it be that the ten thousands of us are all terrorists? That is ridiculous!
NG
How was life in the camps?
T
Hell on Earth. We are kept in small bungalows. Ten people put together in ten square metres. Some of them put together because they are relatives, some of them by accident. The walls of the bungalows are made from a material that is similar to iron, they are no windows. In Sri Lanka the weather in that time of the season is awfully hot, about 36 Celsius (96.8. Fahrenheit). The walls get so extremely hot that one cannot touch them. It is like sitting in a cooking pot.
Because we just have so little space in the bungalow no one can lay down. If you want to sleep, you have to crouch down without taking to much space away. There are no special places for pregnant women, little children or old people. All of them have to be in the same bungalows like the others.
NG
Is it possible to go out and have a walk?
T
No, it is forbidden to leave the bungalow, except to go to the toilet. It is like prison. The whole time soldiers are outside, guarding the bungalows. If someone tries to go out, they force him back. If he rejects going back they have the right to punish him. Most people don’t even think about trying to go out.
Sometimes they took groups of people away, but we never know why some of us can go home and others are still kept. The soldiers also don’t tell us how long we have to be in the camp, so a lot people think it is just for short time. But like in my case or the case of my children it can take half a year and more.
NG
Is there enough to eat?
T
They gave us just one bowl of rice and some spices, sometimes once a day, sometimes every second day. No vegetables or fruits, just rice. Often we have troubles to get water, especially in the hot season.
When someone collapses, they bring him to the doctor of the camp. The problem is that the doctors don’t speak Tamil. I was translating often for the doctor because I was one of the very few people who can speak both – Sinhalese and Tamil. If someone gets badly ill they bring him to the next hospital, but they keep him under guard. During the time I was in camp a lot of people got chickenpox and had to be taken to the hospital.
NG
Is there any kind of possibility to visit the camps?
T
No chance. Press and NGOs are not allowed to enter the camps and even relatives cannot visit their families or get at least informed about their situation. I think that there are still about 80.000 of my people kept in this kind of camp. No one can visit them or find out why they are kept and how long they will be arrested.
Some of the camps are under control of a police chief; some of them are supervised by a military officer. It depends on luck if you come to a camp where the situation is “better”, like in the camp I was kept. Or if they arrest you in one of these camps where soldiers rape the women, people suddenly disappear and water is just given every three days.
NG
What is the main experience you have made out of your horrible arrest?
T
You need a perspective, a hope that keeps your mind clear. Some people pray, but there is no God to come and help you out of the camp. For me it was the perspective to organize help for my people. It was thinking that the SPSL will do everything it can to make these circumstances and these suffering of my people visible, that we can organize ourselves for a future where these things will not happen anymore, for a socialist perspective. This is the only reason why I don’t break down although my children are still kept.