• Deadly sands
• Scholarship sans religious discrimination
• New look to mundane
• Sweet sounds lit up by fireworks
• Dramatic confrontation of body and mind
• Hi, how are you?
• Kala Korner By Dee Cee
• Food of fantasy
• What Fa Hsien saw and did
• A doorway to many paths
• A view from the hills
• Farmer in the dark
• Where was peace?
• Wrights and wrongs!
• Green, green trees of your own
• Appreciations
• So long, stage fright
• Separation not enough
• Letters to the editor

Deadly sands

By Kumudini Hettiarachchi

Kandakuli: How many more must die before preventive action is taken?

The question keeps drumming my brain as I talk to Doreen Mary Sriyani in their empty and desolate home in this village off the Pallavi-Kalpitiya road in the Puttalam district. We've trod this road not so long ago, just last August. Then the death toll was two, with two more being injured. Now the death toll is one. Then the victims were children. Now the victim is a youth, a mere 19-year-old.

Why did they have to die? Curiosity over the unknown. A human being's innate need to collect what is different. The need to experiment....... And the glaring indifference and inaction of officialdom.

"My mother came running out of the house on hearing the sound and Ajith had said, 'Amme, Amme' and died in her arms. His tongue was out and one eye blasted, with bullets coming out of his brain," weeps Doreen, leading us into the garden, to the side of their home and showing us the wall pockmarked by shrapnel.

"This is where my brother died that Sunday morning," she shivers, pointing to a bush which is burnt. "Fortunately, my brother-in-law who was carrying our one-year-old niece escaped with minor injuries." Doreen attributes Warnakulasuriyage Ajith Nissanka Fernando's death to the misfortune which has been dogging their life since their father a wealthy fish mudalali who owned several boats, died of a heart attack. She believes her family has been the victim of enemies, who have "done something".

"We've lost everything. Now it's my brother," she says and we nod our heads in mute agreement seeing the house sans a scrap of furniture except two unsteady chairs and a small crucifix on a ledge, with a tiny oil lamp before it.

But we are convinced that it's not "something" done by enemies, but the absolute callous disregard of officialdom towards innocent and humble people in this area which is adjacent to the "wedi pitiya". The anger mounts as we journey back in memory to a similar incident in August 1999 in Sagaragama village and our pleas that something be done.

On Sunday, July 16 this year Ajith had strolled into the 'wedi pitiya'— the 1,000 acres demarcated for the firing range and bomb experimentation of the security forces, because the sandy ground is ideal for such testing —collected some 'bullets' and brought them back. What he and most illiterate people in the area, who are simple fishermen, onion cultivators or labourers didn't and don't realize is that some of the bullets were in fact unexploded, live shells.

Only small concrete pillars planted on sandy mounds indicate the danger zone. There are no security personnel around to warn people of the dangers except for a home guards' training centre located in a corner of the range. Many tiny cadjan huts have been put up very close to the so-called boundary of the firing range with some even in the demarcated area. People walk into the danger zone at any time of the day like we did last Monday. For the children it has become a playground and a place to pick up odd pieces of metal and bullets.

Ajith banged on one unexploded shell to open it and paid with his life, like Amila Chamara (13) and Sisil Kumara (9) did on August 18, last year, with Kumara's sister Nilmini being critically injured (see box). "People collect them for the metal to keep as souvenirs," says Doreen.

Villagers say more people have died, but the stories are difficult to confirm. But we are sure of the deaths of Ajith, Chamara and Kumara. These could have been prevented with simple remedial measures. If only the powers that be take note and feel that something needs to be done, at least more deaths in the future could be prevented.

Of course in the context of the conflict raging in the north and the east, and the thousands of deaths of soldiers, Tigers, men, women and children in the border villages and victims of suicide bombers, one or two deaths in innocuous villages such as Kandakuli and Sagaragama, which are adjoining each other, may not move them.However, even one such preventable death is one too many.

A buffer zone, or no-go area, strictly cordoned off, as proposed by Kalpitiya Assistant Divisional Secretary L.T.M.G.C. Bandara soon after last year's deaths would be a simple, but very effective measure in ensuring that curious men, women and children do not step into the danger zone.

Now only concrete pillars, few and far between, and a few pathetic red flags indicate that parts of this wasteland of sand dunes running along the Kalpitiya coast, are being used for exercises with live ammunition and testing of modern equipment including bombs by the security forces.

High pillars with barbed wire tightly strung along would be the answer. Is this a Herculean task for the bureaucrats to undertake to save innocent lives?

Blasted lives

From Kandakuli to Sagaragama, the roads and paths are winding and sandy. We cannot leave the area without meeting Nilmini, the four-year-old who barely escaped with her life in the blast in August last year.

As we near the area where her tiny hut used to be, we are confused. More cadjan huts brave the mighty wind blowing across the sea and the open dunes. They stand cheek by jowl with the 'wedi pitiya'. We spot Nilmini in the doorway of what she, her mother, father, and siblings call their home - one small room made of cadjan, with their few precious clothes hung on the sticks, which support the cadjans. Tattered pieces of cloth spread on the sandy floor are their beds.

A heavy lump chokes me as I see Nilmini's seven-year-old brother hugging a pillow, sleeping on the sandy floor.

Nilmini's mother, Irene is still at the onion field, where she works as a labourer, though the sun is setting on the beautiful coast. Though she has to take Nilmini to the Eye Hospital for regular monthly check-ups, she has not done so in the last two months.

Nilmini who was seriously injured in the blast nearly lost her left eye. After many months in hospital in Colombo and several operations, including a lens implant, she has been told by the doctors to get it checked regularly.

We go in search of Irene and ask her why she has been so irresponsible so as not to take the little girl to hospital. "Salli thibune ne," (Didn't have any money), she says, not looking us in the face. Why hadn't she borrowed money, because she would be able to get it from the Family Rehabilitation Centre (FRC), an NGO which has been helping the family through their trauma? "No one will give now, because we've borrowed so much," she says.

Nilmini's elder sister, Siromi had already mumbled that they've not eaten a proper meal for about two weeks, because the onion crops had failed and their mother could not find work.

If Nilmini is not brought to hospital in Colombo, an infection could set in and she could lose the sight in the injured eye.

Since the blast incident, not a cent has been paid to any family, not as compensation, not as help. Only the timely financial and material assistance provided by the FRC has helped them through these difficult times.

Don't they fall under any scheme, such as Samurdhi, to enable them to lead decent lives?

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