Baskaran Athimuthulingam- a UN worker ordered out in 2008

Baskaran helped run nutrition classes for women in the Vanni on behalf of the World Food Programme, an organisation within the UN. In 2008 he and other UN workers were ordered to leave before mass atrocities occurred.

What was your role while working for the World Food Programme?

I worked for the World Food Programme (WFP) from 2004-2008, after the tsunami, the biggest problem people faced in affected areas in the North and East, was malnutrition. If a woman had two children she wouldn’t even look like a young woman because she would’ve suffered so badly from malnutrition. In 2004 the Sri Lankan government distributed high-nutrition food, we got the food and distributed it to people but government supply usually wasn’t enough, if we needed ten packets of food they’d only give one. We did need-assessment surveys before distribution and I was doing sampling and collecting data from everyone to provide the correct food for their needs. The WFP ran workshops for women because they didn’t have a lot of knowledge about nutrition so we explained what was in their food, that it was fortified with nutrients to match their needs etc. A scheme called ‘food for work’ ran in agricultural villages and was aimed at women in particular, we gave them a sense of confidence- they worked and got food in return so they could look after the family. We provided daily lunches at schools- if there were forty people in a class, ten would come without eating, when we were operating the girls attending school increased in numbers and more parents let children go to school because they could have lunch there. Problems increased in terms of food supplies after the war picked up again.

What was it like when you were told to leave in 2008?

I left Mullivaikal in August 2008 and went to Jaffna, Mullivaikal was the last place I worked before having to leave and that’s where mass atrocities occurred. It was a very sad situation. There was no point in the WFP being there because there was no food, the government continuously reduced food supplies. Even if we told them there are 300 000 people in an area, they wouldn’t accept that number and only provided enough food for 50 000 and eventually they stopped it all together. Even though the UN are a big organisation, without government support they can’t operate, if they’re told to leave then they have to. High-level figures within the UN didn’t approach the situation in a humanitarian way. When I watched Channel 4’s Killing Fields and I saw that video of people asking UN workers not to leave, I recognised most of the faces. There was an elderly man saying that if UN workers left, there would be no witnesses and I had seen him walking around many times before. They asked us to stay there because when military attacks had happened before, people came from far away and stayed near UN offices because that area would not be targeted. When UN offices closed they knew they were not safe.

Eventually, people in the Vanni lived in tents and moved every day, they used WFP bags to make make-shift houses and I heard they ate leaves to survive in the end. As everyone stayed in different places, it was not their own land and they didn’t have tools/facilities to grow food for themselves. Farming is a long-term process so they didn’t want to start farming because they didn’t know how long they’d be in a certain place.

I know what would’ve happened in 2009, the north is like a triangle, the army covered all three sides and pushed people to a small area. People moved about 5km a day, they had moved up to 50/60km in total and finally ended up in Mullivaikal.

Now that the war is over, what do you think will happen in terms of women’s rights?

Now women are more affected because male LTTE fighters are in jail or they’ve died, women- headed households have doubled or trebled since the war ended. What NGOs are doing now is not going to help them- they just go and give them 5000 rupees or a bicycle- it’s not going to help them change their lifestyle, they need to provide training programmes- women need technical knowledge to develop the areas they live in. Women in the North and East are very confident, they’ve lost everything but if you give them the chance, they’re ready to work hard and improve their lives. Girls have lost a lot of time in a way, they didn’t have the chance to improve their lives because they were just trying to survive. Now they want to prove themselves although they’re still affected mentally by the experiences they have had during the war.

#interview