Meena Kandasamy
First Published : 05 Apr 2009

ISTColombo calls it a no-fire zone, but it could also be called a no-food zone, a no-care zone, even a no-safety zone, if the story of Prasad Siva­tharsany is anything to go by. Early last month, the pregnant 24-year-old was injured in army shelling. Twelve days later, on March 14, she gave birth to a baby girl at the zone's only hospital, a makeshift affair. Staff noticed a piece of shrapnel in the baby's thigh. So even before her first feeding, the child underwent surgery.

By some accounts, mother and child were lucky. Two days earlier, doctors found that the feet of a six-month-old foetus of another pregnant woman admitted with shell-blast injuries had been severed by shrapnel. Mother and foetus died.

Such stories are synonymous with Sri Lanka's safe zone in the northeast, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the army are locked in a last-ditch battle. Also in the area are approximately three lakh civilians, and it is for their safety that Colombo unilaterally declared a no-fire zone along a now constantly shrinking strip of coast that is 12 km long and 1.5 km wide.

Stretching from Maththalan to Mullivaikkal, it is bounded by the sea on one side and natural lagoons on the other. The fighting takes place west of the lagoons. The International Committee of the Red Cross can enter the safe zone by sea.

In the zone, every day is a gamble with death. The shells fall everywhere, on humanitarian supplies, hospitals, water bodies and roads. According to a United Nations document, on an average day, 63 civilians are killed and 145 injured.

The survivors struggle against insurmountable problems. Food is the biggest. A World Food Programme review in January concluded that Vanni was facing a crisis caused by an almost complete loss of livelihood and diminishing stocks. With farm land no longer in use, coconut and fish are the only food items in the market. But a coconut costs SLR 250 and fishing has stopped because of floods. The coastal terrain is barren. Even onion stalks have disappeared. The cultivators have become scavengers, scrounging for a handful of rice from last season's paddy husk discarded by mills. Last month four children were admitted to hospital having eaten the toxic Adampan creeper (Ipomoea biloba). The hospital at Maththalan has reported 16 starvation deaths so far.

In February, the Kilinochchi Regional Directorate of Health Services (RDHS) said Vanni had only 2.2 per cent (109.71 tonnes) of the total monthly requirement of food (4,950 tonnes) that come through the ICRC. So food is strictly rationed nowadays among the 81,000 families. Most civilians in the zone subsist on a single meal a day. Chronic malnutrition is simply a matter of time. Potable water, too, is in short supply, distributed at just 10 locations.

Civilians live in tarpaulin huts and take refuge in bunkers when they hear artillery, multi-barrel and cluster bombs falling. Torrential rain and strong winds last month blew the roofs off a fourth of the dwellings and damaged the temporary toilets. Because of the army's ban on transporting construction material, most people have no choice but to defecate in the open. The area's medical officers fear an outbreak of water-borne communicable diseases.

Why do the people stay on in such hardship? The greatest fear seems to be that if they leave, they won't be allowed back. And young Tamils in the zone have never lived in army-controlled areas, but they have heard stories of life under the army. They are also held back by the prospect of confinement in army-run internment camps. Only the critically injured and their caretakers leave when the ICRC rescue-ship arrives.

The healthcare system has collapsed. Only one temporary hospital is operational. The zone's makeshift hospitals at Udaiyarkaddu, Suthanthirapuram and Thevipuram were abandoned after continued artillery attacks. A school building at Puthu Maththalan has been converted into a surgical centre. The playground has now become the mortuary.

As for conditions, a terse March 16 letter by Dr T Varadarajah and Dr T Sathiyamoorthy, RDHS of Mullai­thivu and Kilinochchi, states the problem clearly: "Since January 2009, more than 500 civilian deaths, either on or after admission have been registered at hospitals. Thousands of civilian deaths could have gone unrecorded, as they were not brought to the hospitals. Most of the hospital deaths could have been prevented if basic infrastructure facilities and

essential medicines were made available. We have been supplied with no antibiotics, no anesthetics and not a single bottle of IV fluid."

Dr Sathiyamoorthy is the people's hero. Even as drivers hesitated to transport the injured, he led the ambulances. Where people could not be carried to hospital, he went to their huts. At one point, bandages and pads were not available. He had to make do with old cloths for bandages and palmyra pads to support the fractures. Now, the absence of fuel has driven people to use bullock-carts as ambulances.

Children, as always, are the worst hit. Dr J Sivamanoharan and S Edm­und Reginald of the Vanni Psycho-social Coordinating Committee say that 65,000 children are affected as 288 schools failed to reopen in the Vanni this year. Roughly 7,800 children have lost the chance of starting school. And the absence of adequate prenatal and antenatal care has sent infant mortality rates soaring.

Hospital records with The New Sunday Express show that 49 children below 15 have died in shelling from March 1-26. Thirty children were less than 10. In the same period, 431 children have been admitted to hospital with grievous injuries. Nearly a third have shrapnel injuries to head and face, and 212 have been treated for shell injuries to limbs.

Santhirakumar Eraimagan is just 18 months old, but he'll never walk properly again. His right leg was amputated on March 14, even as Siva­tharsany's baby emerged into this safe zone of death and starvation.

These children hear no lullabies, only the sounds of people mourning their dead. But you wonder if they will even survive long enough to swap stories. Given the world's hands-off attitude so far, it would be a brave man who said yes.

-- meena84@gmail.com

(Correspondents from Vanni area contributed to this report. They also provided the photographs.)