NDTV: Vavuniya: Saturday, March 18,
2017.
For almost
two decades, Sivaraja Sivakumar has lived on a plot of land in the north of Sri
Lanka - but he has no idea who owns it.
The
43-year-old father of two from Sri Lanka's Tamil minority says he prays every
day that he is the rightful owner, but cannot be sure.
"I have
no deed that says I am the owner, I have never had such a deed," he said.
In 1998, the young Sivakumar fled the northern
town of Kilinochchi, the epicentre of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war to
Vavuniya, 80 km (50 miles) to the south.
There, with
the help of a paramilitary group allied with government forces, he was settled
on a small plot of land in the village of Nelukkulam, about 10 km from the main
town.
As the bloody
conflict escalated, Sivakumar tried to formalise his ownership of the land.
"I had some documents, and I submitted them to various government bodies
with no luck."
Sri Lanka's
civil war ended in 2009, but the farmer still lacked land titles. His
predicament is common across the former combat zone, where civilians bore the
brunt of the fighting.
Thousands of
acres of land, some privately owned, are held by government forces who set up
security posts and buffer zones during the war, while others are held by other
government agencies like the wildlife department.
Now, almost
eight years after the war ended, hundreds of smallholders are pinning their
hopes on the newly-minted Right to Information (RTI) Act to unearth details of
who owns the land on which they live and work.
New
Opennes
A
Vavuniya-based youth group, the Association for Friendship and Love (AFRIEL)
has been spearheading a campaign to submit RTI requests across Sri Lanka's
Northern Province, seeking information on government land holdings.
By mid-March,
a month after the law was passed, more than 1,000 RTI requests had been filed
by citizens seeking information on land ownership and government acquisitions,
said AFRIEL chairman, Ravidra De Silva.
"Before
the act, all requests to government agencies on land matters never got
answered," De Silva said while assisting villagers from Nelukkulam to
submit applications.
"The RTI
Act made it mandatory by law that government officials answer these queries and
within a specific time frame."
AFRIEL plans
to help more farmers submit their applications. In Nelukkulam alone, De Silva
estimates there are 800 families without proper land documentation.
During the
last two weeks of March, AFRIEL will hold RTI camps in villages across the
Northern Province to answer questions and speed up the process.
"We have
also submitted RTI requests on military land holdings, land distributed by
political parties and any compensation paid by the military for land
acquisitions," he said.
Over 10,000
acres of private land in the Northern Province were held by the military,
citing continued security concerns after the war ended in May 2009 when
government forces defeated Tamil separatists. According to the Defence
Ministry, so far 5,258 acres have been released to their rightful owners.
"It is
not only about the high security zones held by the military, there are lots of
other confusions ... because for three decades instead of holding onto land,
people ran for their lives," De Silva said.
AFRIEL's
campaign was initially met with resistance from local government authorities
who feigned ignorance of the RTI Act. "We had to convince them that the
act was in fact law and that there was no alternative to accepting the
applications."
De Silva said
AFRIEL had now begun to receive some responses from government agencies.
"At least three applications seeking information on military land
acquisitions have been answered," he said.
The law has
been welcomed by senior politicians as a step towards transparency in Sri
Lanka, a drastic change from the past, especially during the civil war, when
the government administration was obscured by bureaucracy and secrecy.
"It is
like putting the government inside a glass box," media minister Gayantha
Karunathilake told reporters.
Sivakumar
hopes the minister's assessment is true, and he will soon get clarity over who
owns his precious land.
"In the
past, every time I have sought information on this land, I have just got blank
stares from government officials," he said. "This time at least I
have a slip that says they have accepted by query, that itself is a
change."