> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 36 Years After Their Expulsion, Jaffna’s Muslims Gather Where It Began - URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/featured/36-years-after-their-expulsion-jaffnas-muslims-gather-where-it-began/ - Published: 2026-10-30T16:46:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T16:46:16.000Z - Author: Our Reporter - Tags: October 2026 **JAFFNA, Sri Lanka —** On the morning of Oct. 30, 1990, fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam went door to door through the Muslim neighborhoods of Jaffna. Loudspeakers ordered every Muslim man to report to the grounds of Osmania College. There, rebel officials told the community it had two hours to leave the city. By the end of the day, nearly 22,000 people were gone. On Friday, 36 years to the day later, Muslim residents and community leaders gathered in the auditorium of the same school to mark the anniversary. The Jaffna Muslim Cultural Council, which organized the event, issued a six-point declaration. It calls on the government to help displaced families return, to compensate them, and to guarantee that no community in Sri Lanka is forcibly expelled again. Jaffna was the last stage of a campaign that October in which the Tigers drove Muslims out of the entire Northern Province. About 65,000 people were uprooted across the province. The expulsion came after months of deadly violence between the rebels and Muslim communities in the Eastern Province. Survivors said the rebel officials at Osmania College cited that violence to justify the order. Muslims had lived on the Jaffna peninsula for centuries. Many were traders, jewelers and small merchants concentrated around Sonakar Theru, or Moor Street, where a dozen mosques stood along a stretch of about two miles by the early 20th century. Their language at home, in school and in the mosque was Tamil. “Until 1990, we had no other place we called home,” Moulavi B.A.S. Sufyan, chairman of the People’s Secretariat, a group that works on the resettlement and welfare of displaced Jaffna Muslims, told Jaffna Monitor last year. “We had almost no relatives outside Jaffna.” Survivors interviewed by Jaffna Monitor last year described what followed the order. They said it was delivered by two senior rebel political officials: C. Ilamparithi of the group’s Jaffna political wing, and Karikalan, who headed its political wing in the east. When men protested, they were told they would be killed if they stayed. Armed fighters sealed off the Muslim quarter, and families were not allowed back into their homes. “From Osmania College Ground, they didn’t even allow us to return home,” said Mahroopa, who was 35 at the time and the mother of a month-old son. “We were chased out with only the clothes we wore.” Her family was already wounded. Weeks earlier, a shell fired from a Sri Lankan military helicopter had struck their home in the Pommai Veli area. It killed her 10-year-old daughter and injured nearly everyone else in the house, including her husband and her 12-year-old daughter. At Ainthu Santhi, a junction at the head of Moor Street, fighters strip-searched men and women and took their gold and cash, survivors said. Mumthaj Begum, who was 30, said a fighter pulled the studs from her daughter’s ears hard enough to draw blood. Mahroopa said the confiscated jewelry was heaped into piles and shoveled into gunny sacks. A man who left by a less-used route, and who asked to be identified only as Usman, said a fighter he had known for years apologized as he took his valuables. “He told me, ‘We know this is wrong. But it’s an order from the high command,’” Usman said. Near the Vannarpannai Vaitheeswaran Temple, about half a mile from the junction, each family was handed 500 rupees, he said. The rebels then loaded families onto tractors and left them at Sangupiddy, in the Poonakary area of Kilinochchi District. From there, survivors walked for three days to Vavuniya with little food or water. Mr. Sufyan said an elderly woman died near Sangupiddy and a young child died on the way. In Vavuniya, Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim families took the expelled in and fed them, the survivors said. From there, people scattered across the island. The largest group went to camps in the Puttalam district on the northwest coast, where many lived for decades. Others went to Colombo. Mahroopa and Mumthaj Begum spent seven years in a camp on Peters Lane in Wellawatte. Saldin Segu, whose family had owned the Arabath Hotel in Jaffna, ended up in Puttalam working as a cook in other people’s hotels. “From owners to workers,” he said. Mumthaj Begum’s husband, a carpenter, had a stroke two months after the expulsion and was bedridden for 15 years until his death. “The sorrow killed him,” she said. The Tigers later acknowledged that the expulsion was wrong. During a ceasefire in 2002, the group’s chief negotiator, Anton Balasingham, called it a political blunder, and its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, expressed regret and said Muslims belonged in Jaffna. Government forces defeated the Tigers in 2009. The return has been slow. Osmania College reopened in 2003\. Mahroopa and Mumthaj Begum came back to Jaffna in 2010, after 20 years away, and found that most of their Tamil friends had died, been displaced or moved abroad. Many families who rebuilt their lives in Puttalam, Colombo or overseas have not come back. Friday’s declaration was read by N.M. Abdullah, a member of the Jaffna Municipal Council and the cultural council’s secretary. It describes the expulsion as ethnic cleansing and calls for formal recognition of the injustice, documentation of survivors’ experiences, accountability and compensation. It reaffirms the right of displaced families and their descendants to return voluntarily, with their land and property protected. It asks the government for a resettlement plan, drawn up with affected families, that covers housing, jobs, schooling and health care. It also says returnees should receive state assistance without discrimination by ethnicity, religion or political affiliation. The declaration commits the community to Tamil-Muslim reconciliation and calls the prevention of any future expulsion “the collective responsibility of all.” Survivors have expressed similar views. Mr. Segu said last year that he still feels a deep sadness over the expulsion and holds no anger toward Jaffna’s Tamils. “We never expected this,” he said. “Not from our own brethren, not from the people with whom we lived like one family.” The event was chaired by A.C. Mahanas, the cultural council’s coordinator, and opened with a Quran recitation by Moulavi A.M. Abdul Azeez, president of the Jaffna-Kilinochchi Jamiyyathul Ulama. The main speakers were M. Thiruvarangan, a lecturer at the University of Jaffna, and M.S.F. Safna, the principal of Osmania College. Mujahid, a representative of local traders, spoke for members of the public. Those attending included R.F. Rizla, another municipal council member, along with mosque administrators, Islamic scholars, representatives of civil society and women’s groups, business owners and young people.