Standing next to a tall, wired fence, Sinnathurai Chitravelayutham looks out at his farming land. It's been nearly 20 years since he was allowed to use it.

"Don't ask me how I feel, I'll get upset," the 68-year-old told DW.

Chitravelayutham is a rice farmer from Sampur in eastern Sri Lanka's Trincomalee District. He fled his homeland in April 2006, after the area came under heavy shelling during Sri Lanka's civil war.

The conflict, which spanned from the mid 1980s to 2009, was primarily a struggle between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority, with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) — also known as the Tamil Tigers — fighting government forces for an independent state.

When he returned after the conflict had ended, he and 107 others found their farming land was under government control. They said attempts to farm on their land were met with threats of arrest, and a fence was later erected to stop them from gaining access.

To date, they say they have not received any compensation.

Now, their land has been allocated as the site for a new solar power plant to be built as a collaborative project between Sri Lanka's Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and India's state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC).

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake jointly inaugurated the project

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