Anne watches land mine clearance at Sri Lanka’s former civil war front line

Royal visit to Sri Lanka – Day two

The deadly land mine legacy of Sri Lanka’s civil war came into stark relief for the Princess Royal when she watched workers clearing a site.

Anne travelled to the former front line of the conflict described as “brutal” and like the Western Front to learn about efforts to make the area habitable.

During the visit a family who have returned to their homeland after being forced to flee the war welcomed Anne and her husband with lotus flower garlands and performed the namaste greeting which the royal couple returned.

The King’s sister put on a heavy protective vest before she was given a private tour from the perimeter of an active minefield near the northern city of Jaffna, being cleared by workers from the Halo Trust using machines.

The conflict between armed separatist Tamil Tiger forces and the Sri Lankan Army ended in May 2009 after 26 years, with the government troops claiming a victory that left an estimated 100,000 dead.

Stephen Hall, Halo Sri Lanka programme manager, gave Anne and husband Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence a briefing of the charity’s work before they drove to the landmine site.

It was brutal, it was bloody and there is a lot of ordnance out there to clear

Stephen Hall, Halo Sri Lanka programme manager

He told the princess, who is midway through a three-day tour of Sri Lanka, that the area close to their location, Muhamalai near Jaffna, was the forward defence line in the civil war.

“For this think Western Front, First World War, it’s very similar. Ten years we had both sides dug in firing at each other, entrenched,” he said.

Mr Hall added: “It was brutal, it was bloody and there is a lot of ordnance out there to clear.”

Halo’s land mine clearance in Sri Lanka has allowed 280,000 displaced people to return to their homelands, with locally trained staff removing more than one million pieces of ordnance that were left by both sides during the war.

He also said: “We’re very much focused on the humanitarian impact of our work – the resettlement of internally displaced people, restoring livelihoods and reconciliation. So clearing explosive ordinance is a means to an end.”

Rasathurai Nallaiah and his wife Kesavi Rasathurai gave the royals a tour of their land, showing them their goats and Anne marvelled at a dusty purple yam the smallholder pulled from the ground.

The displaced family were told to leave their land in 2000 by Tamil Tigers and returned in 2020, after living in the Jaffna area, to an acre of land where they have built a new home and are waiting for an extra four acres to be cleared of munitions.

When told four of their eight children remained at home Anne quipped: “They are quite useful – not very useful.”

Earlier the princess and her husband visited Jaffna, the centre of Sri Lanka’s Tamil community who are rebuilding their cultural heritage after the civil war, and toured the public library which is home to more than 200,000 Tamil books and manuscripts.

When she arrived the princess had a garland placed around her head and a pottu or dot placed on her forehead and met Tamil representatives from the arts, education and local politics and viewed library archives.

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