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"The young boy walking in front of me got shot...I never knew blood was warm. My face and clothes were splattered with the blood of this boy. He died."
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN In Colombo SOPIKA had only ever known war. It had always been there, part of the scenery, part of her very existence. Yet for the first nine of her 10 years, it had seemed to visit only those on the edges of her life. Now, as the bullet passed through the body of the young boy ahead of her on the edge of the lagoon on the north east coast of Sri Lanka where she and her family had sought refuge from the killing, it finally found her. In the darkness, she felt a sudden dampness on her face and on her clothes as the boy's blood splashed onto her. "I never knew blood was warm," she said. In front of her, the boy crumpled to the ground. "My face and clothes were splattered with the blood of this boy. He died," she said simply. Small and thin, she was sitting in the dirt in the heart of the sprawling tent city that is Menik Farm, outside the town of Vavuniya, home to the 250,000 people who poured out of the north east as the fighting reached its climax. The Sri Lankan government has shut them in there, behind locked gates and barbed wire, determined not to let them go home until it has rooted out those members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who have mingled with the civilians. Sopika's harrowing story is testimony to the brutality of both the LTTE and the government during the final stages of the 26-year-conflict. Each accused the other of acts of unspeakable cruelty. Both, it seems, were right. Hers is a story of air force jets screaming through the air and unleashing their bombs, of shells landing around her, of Tamil Tiger gunmen firing on their own people to prevent them escaping the slaughter. It is a story told, of necessity, through an intermediary with access to the camps, because the government has restricted access to such an extent that aid workers despair of how they are to provide even the basics of life for those imprisoned within. Sopika was born on the island of Kayts, off the northern tip of Jaffna. Until eight months ago, she and her older brother and younger sister lived with their parents in a village overlooking the Indian Ocean. Then they left to visit the town of Madhu on the mainland, and the nightmare began. As the government unleashed its military offensive against the Tigers, their route home was shut off. Desperate to escape the shelling, they were driven ahead of the advancing government forces, further into LTTE territory, moving from place to place, dodging the air strikes and artillery. The beginning of the end began in the town of Mullaitivu. Sopika found the noise of the Kfir jets overhead overwhelming, she said. Her days were filled with the sound of shelling and gun fire from the fighting nearby. Her parents decided they had to make a break for it. It was 2am when they set off with several other families. "As we were walking, the LTTE started to fire and the young boy walking in front of me got shot," she said. That was when she felt the blood on her face. "We turned back because we were afraid of more death," she said. But there was no escaping the killing now. Sopika curled her legs tight beneath her as she recalled the moment when a sniper's bullet killed a relative sitting close by. "I saw the bullets hit her head&ldots; half her face fell off&ldots;" she said, her mouth going taught. The family decided to try again to escape. This time they headed for the shore, setting out again at 2am, hoping that the darkness would provide them with some cover from the guns of the LTTE and the government forces. "We were walking in between the shooting from both sides but we realised that we could be seen in the moonlight," she said. In front of her, a 12 year old boy and his mother were caught in the crossfire, collapsing dead on the ground. "We missed death by a few feet," she said. They turned back again. The next day, there was no food, so the children went to bed hungry. They awoke again at 2am and joined another family, walking towards the shore. "We started to walk a long way&ldots; no, we really started to run, we were scared we would get caught by the LTTE, we would get beaten," she said. Dodging the bullets, they pushed on through shrubs and thorn bushes. "There was no road or path, there was a lot of mud and ditches," she said. "Once I fell over a dead body." Nearing the shore of the lagoon, they started to crawl on their bellies across the sand, terrified of being caught by the LTTE. Entering the water, Sopaki found the waves crashing down on her head. She could not swim; she had never learned. "I was terrified because the water was up to my neck," she said. "I could barely stand as the current kept pulling me down. "The navy's search lights kept beaming into the water. I cried out Appa Appa [father, father] when I fell into a trough. I nearly drowned. During the entire journey we simply wanted to run, but we couldn't." Finally, emerging from the water, they could see the army ahead of them. "We were asked to lie down. They wanted to search us," she said The soldiers gave them biscuits, dates and water and put them on a bus. "People were shouting and crying because many of them had lost their relative during the search operation," she said. Sopaki was also crying because her father and brother were missing, but the next day they were reunited. They arrived at Menik Farm eight days ago, just as the fighting reached a crescendo. Two days later, the government announced that the war was over. But their ordeal is not. Conditions inside the camps are squalid: food and water are in desperately short supply and even the government admits the toilets are inadequate and that the tents leak when it rains. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, travelled there yesterday [SAT], to see for himself the scale of the humanitarian disaster, hoping that he might be able to persuade the triumphant Sri Lankan government to exercise a degree of magnanimity in victory. Others imprisoned behind the wire have their own tales of hardship and horror. Slowly, despite the government's attempts to shut them away out of sight, their stories are emerging. "It is a great relief that the war is over, but peace has come at a very high price, with thousands of civilians killed, including large numbers of children," said James Elder, the Unicef spokesman in Sri Lanka. "There is no end to the gut wrenching stories of death and destruction that scar these children."
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Makeshift Sri Lanka hospital is shelled, taking 47 lives At least 47 people were killed today and more than 50 injured when a shell struck the last hospital inside the so-called no-fire zone in north-eastern Sri Lanka, where casualties of the country's brutal civil war are being treated. 'Two of us fled. 75 other women killed themselves with grenades' 12 Apr 2009: The harrowing stories of captured female fighters who chose to surrender rather than carry out suicide orders At least 128 reported dead in Sri Lanka's 'no-fire zone' 11 Apr 2009: Military announce that operations to free tens of thousands of trapped civilians have entered final stage Sri Lanka rejects UN call for ceasefire in war against Tamil Tigers 7 Apr 2009: Government says it is determined to crush rebel leaders, despite mounting anger over civilians trapped in conflict zone
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Copyright ©2011 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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