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Stateless in Lanka
Some of them yearn to go home. Others like Maria are happy to make a home of their takarang shed at the Mirihana detention camp for illegal immigrants. Kumudini Hettiarachchi reports
“Just a moment…….I will be with you as soon as I put on my make-up,” says a lilting voice, while blasts of Hindi music come from the takarang shed.
A few minutes later, the window of the shed is pushed open and out jumps a sprightly woman. This is the first glimpse of Maria for whom this shed in the rear of the Mirihana Police Station has been home for the past four years.

Pretty Maria, with her curly hair tied up in a ponytail, make-up and sunglasses is from Iran and for all purposes her status is “stateless”. She has been at the Detention Camp of the Immigration and Emigration Department located in the premises of the Mirihana Police Station all those long years, with no yearning to go back home.

“The camp accommodates illegal immigrants and visa overstays until their removal from Sri Lanka,” explains the Deputy Controller under whose purview comes the camp. “From the inception of the Immigration and Emigration Department in 1948, we have had this camp. But at that time it was on Kew Road in Slave Island. We had to move to Mirihana to make room for the police flats in 1989.”

And here we are face to face with Maria, the longest resident of the Mirihana camp. “I have no home. Can’t go back to Iran. Political problem,” says 57-year-old Maria rushing back to her “room”, jumping in and rifling through her papers to produce many photographs of family and friends.

“Come on in,” she invites as we look into her room hesitantly. But where is the door? There are only two windows, one with a mosquito net hung across and two tin plates dangling like a bell and the other through which she moves in and out.

A ready smile lights up her face as she says she does not want intruders in her room. “I don’t like ….. and ……,” she says naming two foreign nationalities. “I keep to myself.” Two takarang tents house the women and a more permanent looking structure the men. The other sheds in the fairly large enclosure are used by the police.

When The Sunday Times visited the camp last Wednesday there was Maria, the longest resident, two young women from Guinea, two more young women of Chinese origin and six men – one from Nigeria, four from India and one from Bangladesh. The Nigerian, clad in a pair of shorts and socks and tennis shoes, who claims to be a famous footballer refuses to talk to the media, but walks around with a mobile phone plastered to his ear.

The women from Guinea, both in their 20s, hands under their chins, squat on the ground and stare into nothing forlornly, suddenly breaking out into speech in their language. “We were in transit on our way to Romania. We stayed in a hotel in Negombo and came to Colombo to the travel office to reconfirm our flight out when we were told that our passports were forged,” explains one, adding that she has two small children back home whom she misses terribly. The CID picked them up in November 2004, produced them in court and then sent them here.

“The courts and the prison authorities also send people to be kept in the camp,” explains the Deputy Controller, adding that if the people have no passports, the department arranges with the relevant embassies to get temporary travel documents for them. However, the detainees themselves need to get their tickets arranged.

The two Guineans are now awaiting their tickets, one said. “This week or next week we are hoping to go home,” the other added. Though language is a hindrance, the youth from Bangladesh, pleads with us to inform his mother about his plight in Sri Lanka. From the little communication The Sunday Times could have with him a heart-rending story pours out. Mohamed, 27, says he boarded a ship in Chittagong, whether to work, it is unclear. One day he was fast asleep on the deck, when he was rudely woken up by someone throwing him overboard. At that time he did not know that he was miles away from home. He was in the water in Sri Lanka’s Colombo port and the navy picked him up.

In a different kind of mid-sea drama off Mannar, the four Indians from Rameshwaram were fishing when the Sri Lankan navy picked them up for being in the wrong waters. “We will be getting our tickets soon,” one of them says in Sinhala, while another urges the other two to wear shirts before their photograph is snapped.

The most comfortable person, however, is homeless Maria. Building up a rapport with the police who provide security to the camp, there seems to be implicit trust between them and this “willing detainee”. Coming from a wealthy and influential family, Maria had first been married to a German. She and her husband were leading a happy life, running a business importing heavy machinery to Iran from Germany. When trouble was brewing in Iran, Maria found it difficult to stay there and lived in Dubai for a while and then came to Sri Lanka on the suggestion of her children. Her husband being dead, she married a local, “mainly to get citizenship” but he kept demanding large sums of money from her. She refused and that’s how she ended up in trouble with the immigration authorities.

“I have seven children who are all married and living in Germany and Dubai. See this is my grandchild,” she says picking out a photo. “They send me money…big money, about Rs. 250,000 a month.”

At the beginning, the police didn’t want to give her the money. “I broke a window….. okkama finished and Maria got her way,” she laughs. Now life goes smoothly for her. She gets money from her children, she goes to the bank, gets it out and pays a visit to the supermarket and gets her requirements and also a treat for those around her. “Four times to supermarket, one lakh gone,” she jokes.

What of the future? “Can’t go home until fanatics are not around. Until trouble in Iran ends,” says chain-smoking Maria detailing out what she does all day long. Exercise in the garden, karate chops here and there, listening to music.

“I keep to myself in my room other times,” she says pointing to the dark interior where one table is stacked with empty bottles of fizzy drinks and another with all her personal possessions. On the wall near her bed are a collection of pictures from all religions – Christ by the side of Buddha, Ganesh by the side of Arabic religious writing.
Contented Maria takes one day at a time.

Better facilities soon
“The conditions at the camp will soon see much improvement with the construction of permanent structures with all facilities,” says the Deputy Controller adding that estimates have been taken.

The police feed and provide the basic facilities if the numbers at the camp are small. “But we come in when there are large numbers such as when the boat people from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan seeking greener pastures in Italy were kept there. It was 2003 and at one time we had more than 200 in the camp. There is a female warden to see to the needs of the women,” he said.

Referring to Mohamed now being held at the camp the Deputy Controller says the Bangladeshi High Commission has been informed about him. “The Indians of course may fly back home soon or we sometimes arrange a mid-sea transfer off Talaimannar when Indian naval ships call.”

“In Maria’s case she does not want to go home. So we have informed UNHCR and requested them to intervene on sympathetic and humanitarian grounds and assist her, maybe by sending her to a third country,” adds the Deputy Controller.

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