ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the homes of Lanka’s minority populations were isolated and targeted by arsonists as a prelude to the violent spatial displacements that would follow. Home, homeland and nation are inter-related and idealised ontological categories that convey very different interpretations of territory. The dissenting nation accessed remotely from the scattered homespaces of exiled subjects further emplaces these multiple dislocated imaginaries. The denial of both individual rights and property converted Tamils into a dispossessed minority, extracting them from their homes among Sinhala, Muslim and Burgher residents and placing them as a communal collective in temporary refugee camps. The Presidential Truth Commission usefulness is in describing violence outside the capital, against communities living on plantations, in workers’ line-rooms or in small landed rural properties, or against Tamil businesses and homes located in contiguous configurations at town centres.
