Udaya Karunaratne, Tea Taster from Dilmah Tea dept., and Foundation Volunteer accompanied a Foundation sponsored relief effort involving the supply of medical and emergency relief to LTTE controlled areas of Northern Sri Lanka.

The aid mission was carried out commencing the 01st of January through to the 2nd. The MJF Charitable Foundation contact was Dr Ajanthan, a Specialist Paediatrician with whom I travelled to Kilinochchi and to Mullaitivu. The objective of the exercise was to distribute emergency medical supplies and nutritional and material assistance to the badly affected areas on the North of Sri Lanka.

Departure from Colombo was at 0330 hrs. However the truck with it’s load of medicine had departed earlier and as we met at Anuradhapura and then proceeded from there onwards on to Vavuniya and through to the Omanthai border post and check-point.

Dr Ajanthan had contacted an officer of the Sri Lanka Army and he was there to take care of the formalities at the Army check-point and we were waved through within ten minutes. Though we expected a long wait at the LTTE barrier and customs, it was not to be. Since Dr Ajanthan had already contacted the DMO of the Kilinochchi District Hospital Dr Sathanandan, the LTTE Police cadres again waved us through without even a basic check of the vehicles.

On arrival at Kilinochchi, we drove directly to the Hospital and was met by the DMO and his staff and all present were introduced to one another.

Kilinochchi Hospital is a 128-bed hospital run by the Government of Sri Lanka and fully staffed by Government appointed staff. However, in the many conversations I had with various people at the hospital, allegedly much of the promised and allocated supplies were not delivered to the hospital by the and hence a chronic shortage of various essential items existed.

It is in this context that one views the statistics recorded at the hospital immediately following the events of the morning of the 26th of December. The hospital had admitted over 800 patients needing urgent medical attention on the 26th alone and the hospital had been literally awash (sic!) with tsunami affected people.

A week after the event when we arrived, the hospital was still fully occupied with a few hundred people and they were put up in the various corridors of the wards for lack of space.

The purpose and the direction of the relief effort commenced by the Foundation was explained to the DMO after which the medicine was unloaded at the hospital where the staff took a detailed account of all that was given them. Since I understand and speak Tamil, I was privy to a comment by one of the senior clerical staff at work there who stated that she had not known some of the medicine that we had donated, in her 36 years at the Kilinochchi hospital! It can be very safely assumed that the medicine was very gratefully accepted and was most welcome.

The next stop was at the head-quarters of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a short distance away. There, the other supplies such as Dilmah Tea, Sanitary Pads and Samaposha nutritional supplement were handed over to the head of the TRO. Once again the objectives of the Foundation was explained to the authorities concerned. It must be mentioned here that all relief and aid coming into the North and the East are funnelled through the TRO to the recipients.

Early afternoon, the senior medical staff of the hospital along with a handful of volunteer Doctors from Jaffna Hospital with Dr Ajanthan and I present were informally discussing the programme for the following day when we were paid a visit by the top ranking LTTE Political Analyst and spokesman Thamilchelvam. He was introduced to all present by the DMO and expressed his appreciation of the relief effort and thanked all who were there. I personally, briefly explained pleasantries with him and he came across as a affable person.

He was more than agreeable to pose for a couple of photographs after which he departed. Everyone was as equally surprised as I was and it was with a sense of disbelief that we watched Thamilchelvam depart since, I was told, it was rare of him to appear in public.

It was apparent that Thamilchelvam’s impromptu visit boded well for us; I was told that we had been granted permission to visit Mullaitivu town, which is generally off-bounds for visitors to their territory.

The team of doctors and medics commenced a marathon session of surgery in the hospital during the night which I was told had finished only in the early hours of the following morning.

The following morning, 3 vehicles with around 15 people departed for Mullaitivu. A short distance beyond Paranthan we were stopped by LTTE police at a barrier in the first of what was to be a series of such barriers in the road to Mullaitivu. Security obviously was very tight but we were sent through without much trouble, doubtless because our passing through had been wired ahead of us.

The lagoon and the bridge just prior to the town was intact and had suffered no damage though tons of debris blocked the bridge ports and an earth mover was already clearing the blockages. Mullaitivu town extends along a sun kissed coast for about a kilometre and a half and extends inland for approximately between 500 m to about 1 ½ kilometres. Apart from the buildings just at the periphery of the town inland, the entire town of Mullaitivu had been totally destroyed.

Everywhere we looked, was just a waste land of flattened buildings, uprooted Palmyrah trees and colossal amounts of debris. The odd part of a building, never a complete building, stood sentinel against that wasteland; the most notable of them all being the façade of the church. The pictures depicting complete buildings were well inland and absolutely nothing was left of the 1st 200 meter strip of land facing the sea.

I was told that 3,000 bodies had been recovered and either buried in mass graves or cremated in situ due to the advanced state of decomposition. Noting the curious lack of people in what would have been a bustling town of around ten to twelve thousand people (I counted no more than 20 people in the entire town, most of them being clean-up gangs looking for corpses) I queried my companions who informed me that well over 5,000 people were missing and what was left of the decimated population had been relocated in various schools around the countryside, as there was no potable water in Mullaitivu town.

There were armed LTTE cadres around the ruined town and some of them had been busy shooting dead the mongrel dogs that had begun to feed on the decomposing corpses lying undetected within the rubble. There were numerous funeral pyres smouldering away; testimony to the discovery, after 07 days of yet more corpses. The lone earth-mover that was hauling away mountains of rubble and concrete was every now and then unearthing decomposing corpses which were then promptly burned in situ. The stench needless to say, was appalling and we all were compelled to wear face masks.

In all the terrible destruction and chaos that I saw in Mullaitivu town that day, one moment stands out in my mind chillingly. As I stood in the centre of the town all by myself, there lying on the ground in front of me was a blue school instrument case with a plastic set-square still within which would have been used by some child in a by-gone day; and the thought occurred to me then that a few thousand lives had been snuffed out in a matter of minutes in and around the very spot that I stood.

After having inspected the town or what was left of it, we were offered a welcome and most refreshing soft-drink by the guerrilla cadres who were manning a sentry cum emergency medic-aid post in the town. Having said our thanks to them, we departed Mullaitivu town for Kilinochchi..

En-route to Kilinochchi we passed the Mullaitivu War memorial of the LTTE and I was pleasantly surprised when my very cautious and quiet query about taking a few photographs were readily conceded to. I fully expected the accompanying LTTE unmarked pick-up truck trailing us about a kilometre behind us to object but it was not so.

It was a rather sombre and somewhat shocked and deeply saddened delegation that arrived at Kilinochchi. Words failed us all in even trying to comprehend what we had witnessed. There was little talk the rest of the day and after a pleasant lunch at the I-9 Restaurant at Kilinochchi, Dr Ajanthan and myself departed for Colombo having thanked everyone for their hospitality and kindness shown to us.

At least 75% of Mullaitivu town would have to be re-built from the foundation up and rehabilitation of the displaced both physically and emotionally would certainly have to be undertaken immediately. In my view, sooner the displaced are made available a means to practice their trade, be it fishing, farming or any other, the better it would be for them as a community and as individuals.

Mullaitivu town certainly faces a huge problem of cleaning the water wells and the sooner this is done, the faster rehabilitation work can begin. Food aid would certainly help but restoration of drinking water and then setting up temporary housing within the town itself would be prime areas of focus that the foundation maybe able to help.

Of course aid in the medicine and drugs will certainly be required apart from psychiatric help that scores of the victims will need.