Did the squatters "deserve" what they got from the Tsumani?

Extracts from comments by "Suchetha" (a resident of Sri Lanka) on the Slashdot discussion forums here and here:

the most affected are the squatters living in improvised huts near the beach. call me cold hearted, but they went there, they grabbed the land, refused all attempts to base them elsewhere.

. the government has been trying to get rid of the squatters who live along the coastline for almost three decades. these attempts have been unsuccessful for many reasons. primarily the squats are a haven for the goons and thugs the parliamentarians use. the squatters have resisted every attempt to move them. the government has provided them with land in the central areas, many of them sold teh land and came back. the government then provided them with an apartment complex in the city. they sold THOSE and came back. there was a time when the squatters have taken over a road reservation. the government gave them land AND money. for every squatter that left, two took their place. hey .. free money.. encroachers have also taken over private and government lands by force (a'la mugabe's kenya). they have also taken over forest preserves, destroying what little forest cover we have. they are egged on by various "human rights" NGO's who claim that they have a right to live where they please.

Quite a few people have responded to Suchetha and criticized her (??) "cold-hearted" comments.

Jason Overdorf, a freelance journalist, adds more on this topic in his blog

In Chennai, where I did my reporting, the people who were affected almost all lived in illegal squatter colonies on the beach. In 1991, the government passed a law called the coastal regulation zone notification which mandated that nobody should build anything permanent within 500 meters of the highest high tide line. But because none of the poor can afford to rent apartments or buy land away from the coast, slums made of thatch huts mushroomed on the beaches anyway. In part this is because the fishermen like it that way: they want to be near their boats and they sell their catch on the beach itself. But it’s also because the government has failed to solve the problem of the shortage of affordable housing (and to enforce its zoning laws).

Says T. Mohan, an environmental activist for Coastal Action Network who works with fishing communities:“Subsistence fishing communities live on the coast. They're used to taking that risk [of natural disaster]. But we're pushing them closer and closer to the coast because of urbanization and the rising cost of land. There are also large numbers ofslums that have grown up along the coast because of administrative failureto build safe & affordable housing for people [other than fishermen] who don't need to live near the coast. They ought not to have been there." That might be true, but as the characters below (in Overdorf's article) illustrate, they plan to go right back to the sites of their destroyed huts.