Indian-origin refugees to get Sri Lankan citizenship

The Sri Lankan government is all set to give citizenship to 28,500 Tamils of Indian origin now living in refugee camps in Tamil Nadu without any documents to prove their nationality.

Following consistent efforts by NGOs, officials and political leaders in Sri Lanka and India, the Sri Lankan cabinet has approved a proposal by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) to grant citizenship to these "stateless" people, who had fled the island because of ethnic riots and war since 1977.

Many had left Sri Lanka with no documents of any kind to show that they were Sri Lankans.

At the initiative of the JVP, a parliamentary committee was set up to supervise the implementation of the cabinet decision.

The lone Tamil MP from the JVP, Ramalingam Chandrasekharan, who was chairman of the committee, visited Tamil Nadu and studied the problem of the refugees. He came back convinced that the refugees would return to Sri Lanka if only the legal hurdles were removed.

Earlier, the Sri Lankan Law Commission had suggested some amendments to the citizenship law to allow grant of citizenship to the people who did not have the right documents to prove that they had been continually resident in Sri Lanka from 1964 onwards — a basic requirement for citizenship by registration in the case of Indians.
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