A bittersweet homecoming for Sri Lanka’s displaced Tamils

New boundaries: a Sri Lankan Tamil villager walking past a new barbed-wire fence in his area on the Jaffna peninsula. — AFP

JAFFNA: When Balasundaram Rasamalar finally got back her home in Sri Lanka’s battle-scarred north after years of military occupation, there was an unexpected problem. The toilet was still in the militarised zone – where civilians are not allowed.

Sri Lanka’s army this year began returning land it has occupied since the end of a decades-long separatist conflict to its original owners in the Tamil heartland of Jaffna.