The Sri Lankan military which fought a brutal 30-year war with the separatist Tamil Tigers, began a programme that aimed to reintegrate former militants into society rather than punish them for supporting the LTTE. The programme ended five years ago. What did it achieve?
By Kamanthi Wickramasinghe / Sapan News
She was 16-years old when she joined the militant Tamil Tigers group in January 2009, just months before the brutal 30-year war ended that they were fighting against the Sri Lankan state.
Now married, with two children, Kopiga (not her real name) works with the police department in her hometown Oddusudan, in Mullaitivu District bordered by the Jaffna and Kilinochchi districts in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Many of her seniors are officers of the island-nation’s majority Sinhalese community, who she had been conditioned to see as the enemy.
The change in Kopiga’s outlook and circumstances came about after she was injured during the final days of the war. The victorious Sri Lankan Army placed her, along with others, in a mandatory, year-long rehabilitation programme for Tamil Tiger cadres, titled Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, a curriculum providing education, vocational training and psychological support.
Kopiga was sent to the Air Force Camp in Ratmalana, a suburb in Colombo District where she learned first aid and studied for the General Certificate of Education Advanced Level examination – the senior secondary completion and university entrance exam in Sri Lanka.
She left the programme after completing it in 2010. She credits the rehabilitation programme with helping her change her attitude towards civilians and enabling her to find a decent job, she told Sapan News over a recent phone call.
“We couldn’t study or stay with our parents during the war because we continued to be displaced and the environment was not favourable to engage in studies. We lost many things in life due to the war,” she said.
We spoke in Sinhala, the language of the majority community, and one of its official national languages. There are two national languages in Sri Lanka, the other being Tamil while English is widely spoken as a link language.
“We do not want any more tensions in this country,” added Kopiga.
Seeing society differently
The rehabilitation programme also inducted Tamil civilians who were arrested for allegedly assisting the LTTE. They included Thayaparan, 52, who worked as a medical volunteer at the Kilinochchi Hospital, a government hospital in Kilinochchi, a town in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka.
He has also volunteered in government-run camps for internally displaced persons such as Menik Farm in the Vavuniya District in the Northern Province. These camps served as a shelter for thousands of civilians who fled the final stages of the war in 2009. The camp officially closed in September 2012 after all its residents returned home.
Arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Division of the Sri Lanka Police in 2009 Thayaparan had been incarcerated in various prisons – Boossa, Anuradhapura and Welikada – prior to being placed in the rehabilitation programme in 2016.
He told Sapan News over the phone that the counseling programme and various courses including aluminum fitting and IT allowed him to see society differently.
He completed the programme in 2017. At home, he had to look after his daughter who was two-and-a-half years old when she had sustained a head injury as the family fled from one place to another during the final phase of the war. The child ended up in a comatose stage and is still unable to move or speak and needs continuous care and treatment.
Like their fellow combatants, Kopiga and Thayaparan had been conditioned to see the Sri Lankan Army as the enemy.
But “the colonels and other high-ranking officers treated us with respect and dignity,” Thayaparan told Sapan News. “Both sides suffered during the war and I feel there shouldn’t be conflicts in this world, because it is the people who suffer in the end.”
As many as 12,000 LTTE cadres who surrendered and consented were placed in the programme, through Protective Accommodation and Rehabilitation Centers, 24 of which were established islandwide at the initial stages. There were separate ones for children, females and males.
“What is quite unique about the rehabilitation programme is that the Sri Lankan armed forces militarily defeated the LTTE, and the same security forces took the initiative to rehabilitate them,” Major General (Retired) Dharshana Hettiarachchi, former Commissioner General of Rehabilitation told Sapan News in Colombo.
The main objective, he said, was to reintegrate these individuals into society rather than punishing them for supporting the LTTE.
He added that a majority had no idea about the civic culture as they had joined the militant group as children.
“They hadn’t had any interactions with civilians. All that they knew was to hold a gun and fight with the enemy,” he recalled.
They were brainwashed and thought that armed forces personnel were “very wicked,” said Hettiarachchi. Many had been conditioned to take their own lives if captured.
The rehabilitation programmes concluded in 2021.
Complex task
What is unique about this programme is that “they fought with us for 30 long years” but today, 17 years since the war ended “none of the rehabilitees have opted for militancy again,” added Hettiarachchi.
The war took place between militants from the minority Tamil community (approximately 15-19% of the Sri Lankan population) and the state of Sri Lanka which has an overwhelming majority Sinhalese population. This led to an ethnic rift as both sides perpetuated atrocities during the conflict.
The post-war reconciliation process in the aftermath of the conflict has been a complex task. It entails rebuilding national unity and bringing about transitional justice mechanisms. These mechanisms included setting up the Office on National Unity and Reconciliation operating under the Justice Ministry to promote national unity, lasting peace and harmonious coexistence among all ethnic groups and the Office on Missing Persons.
While there were heavy civilian casualties during the final stages of the war, many individuals also went missing. Families of the disappeared have been staging protests over the years, demanding that the state find their loved ones.
Some state mechanisms failed due to administrative challenges and lack of funds allocated from the national budget. Meanwhile, the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, which was defeated in 2015 when the ‘Good Governance’ regime led by President Maithripala Sirisena assumed power, focused more on infrastructure development with projects such as ‘Uthuru Wasanthaya’ (Northern Spring) in 2009 and ‘Nagenahira Navodaya’ (Reawakening of the East) in 2007 which included mass resettlement programmes in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country for families displaced during the conflict.
That was when the armed forces began the rehabilitation programme to reintegrate individuals like Kopiga and Thayaparan into society.
Counseling and therapy was a major aspect of the rehabilitation programme. Additionally, participants had the option to join around 15 different vocational training programmes.
Many of them obtained the National Vocational Qualification, – a practical, work-based certification focused on advanced technical skills.
“They were encouraged to join sports. Females could train as hairdressers and take beauty culture courses,” said Hettiarachchi.
“We even organized beauty pageants. We were so kind to them and that was something they never expected. By the end of the programme they were speaking Sinhala and everybody became one family,” Hettiarachchi added.
The programme included cricket matches and trips to the South to enable the former militants to mingle with different ethnic communities.
The organizers also held public workshops to prevent discrimination once the rehabilitees returned to society. Communities were encouraged to accept them as they were still vulnerable.
By 2013, many of them had been rehabilitated and rejoined society in the North and East. According to the Bureau of Rehabilitation, a total of 12,196 LTTE rehabilitees have completed the rehabilitation process and were reintegrated to society. Today the focus of rehabilitation programmes have shifted to rehabilitating drug addicts.
What about the soldiers?
It was not only the LTTE cadres that were at the receiving end of conflict and trauma. Having battled in the frontlines, the soldiers of the Sri Lankan army were also exposed to violence and bloodshed. Many developed undiagnosed chronic combat-stress reactions.
“Like the LTTE cadres, soldiers should also have undergone some kind of counseling and sensitization programme,” said Hettiarachchi.
There was no rehabilitation programme for soldiers, partly due to funding constraints, lack of civilian infrastructure, untreated combat trauma and the state’s continued reliance on the military for governance and logistics.
“The service period in the armed forces is 22 years and there are some soldiers who have served for 21 years. They were in the jungles and would go home once every two or three months and return in five or six days. So, one could imagine their mindset,” added Hettiarachchi.
However, they did have some community support as they would go home to their own villages. Unlike India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, Sri Lanka has no major army cantonments, except for one in Panagoda town, around 20 kilometers from Colombo.
Army soldiers played a crucial role in post-war reconstruction efforts by clearing debris, repairing destroyed infrastructure. But due to lack of formal education many were underemployed and had to rely on odd jobs like farming or manual labor to support their families.
Reintegration for Tamil rehabilitees was a particular challenge in the Sri Lankan context as many didn’t have peaceful memories from their childhood. Some villages they came from were destroyed by the end of the conflict. Their loved ones had either died during the war or were missing. Women were reluctant to return to their communities due to the stigma associated with working for the LTTE or Tamil Tigers.
Well-known Colombo-based rights activist Dr. Dayani Panagoda, former Director (Policy) at the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, believes that the reintegration efforts have been 70% effective.
Certain gaps were identified, she said, like some rehabilitees returning to the same Tamil community in the North and East. “Women were released before men and were discriminated against.”
“Some women had no support, and ended up becoming sex workers. In certain areas, rehabilitated individuals were given financial support to start their own businesses. But instead, they bought bicycles and motorbikes and were racing around the villages. Such behaviors traumatized people in these villages,” she told Sapan News.
Subsequently, mechanisms were put in place, like the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation and Office on Missing Persons which were established in 2015 and 2018 respectively, which allowed civilians to provide testimonies.
“But many feared coming to these offices because they thought the military were watching them,” said Dr. Panagoda. “The process could have been more open and transparent, she noted, adding that the East was “somewhat left out in these processes.”
Since 2015 there has been no proper monitoring of the rehabilitees, said Dr. Panagoda. There should have been follow-ups to assess their lives over the past 10-15 years to determine the effectiveness of these programmes.
Like Kopiga and Thayaparan, many Tamil civilians benefitted from the rehabilitation programmes — which also benefitted Sri Lanka as a whole. Ethnic tensions still simmer, but whether the programme will be revived or remain a one-off process is a question that lingers.
Kamanthi Wickramasinghe is a Colombo-based journalist and Deputy Features Editor at the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka, where she has worked for 12 years. She writes on a range of topics including environmental conservation, gender equality, and social justice.
Lead Image: Soldiers assisting Tamil civilians who crossed over to government-controlled areas during the final stages of the war. Photo via report on the rehabilitation programme for ex-combatants of the LTTE, Sri Lanka.
This is a Sapan News syndicated feature available for republication with due credit https://www.sapannews.com.
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