RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: MANY REFUGEES WARY OF RETURNING HOME.

by Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb. 12 (IPS) -- When residents of a refugee camp in Sri Lanka's wartorn northern region refused to return to their former homes during a ceasefire last year, the government closed the camp and temporary school and stopped all food rations.

That finally compelled the 1,600 families at the Madhu Church welfare center in the Mannar region in late September to return to their original homes farther north in Kilinochchi, an area devastated by the 20-year old conflict.

"Buildings were shattered, houses were completely destroyed, there were no schools and other basic infrastructure," one welfare worker said, recalling the hometown they returned to.

Worse, some were forced to return to areas that were yet to be de-mined, says Renuka Senanayake, a legal specialist working at the Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a private think-tank.

"I remember when we studied this matter last year, there was one such family who had to be careful not to venture across the road from their battered house because it was mined," she said.

Close to a million people have been displaced by Sri Lanka's two-decade old ethnic conflict and have been living in refugee camps or welfare centres in Sri Lanka and southern India or have sought political refuge in the West.