REFUGEE

COLOMBO, Nov 18 (IPS) - By January 2010 they will be returning to their homes in war-torn areas.

What could be better news for thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils displaced by bloody fighting between government troops and separatist rebels, and huddled in crowded camps with no freedom to move out?

The government announced on Tuesday that it was speeding ahead to complete the process of resettling the displaced in two months. And that was all because of a radical change in the political firmament.

The fear of a formidable candidate in the form of army General Sarath Fonseka—widely credited with leading the army to a historic victory against the badly bruised Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—pitted against his commander-in-chief, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is setting the stage for a public relations coup, including settling the displaced in their homes before the election.

A presidential poll is likely to be held in January followed by a parliamentary poll. Widespread media reports—neither denied nor confirmed by the General who retired on Monday—that Fonseka would contest the presidency have put the government on the back foot and feverish arrangements are underway for a poll.

"We were (earlier) told between 60 and 70 percent of the displaced would be resettled by January 2010. Now it appears all of them will be out of the camps by January," noted Firzan Hashim, deputy executive director of the Consortium for Humanitarian Agencies, an umbrella group of local and foreign humanitarian non-governmental organisations.

"But while we are happy that they are at last returning to their camps, our fear is they don’t have a livelihood and will be returning to villages where there is a huge military presence," he said. "This could lead to frustration and all kinds of problems."

On Tuesday, a group of Tamil Parliamentarians who visited camps housing more than 100,000 displaced people in northern Vavuniya was told by Basil Rajapaksa, advisor to the President and chair of a Special Task Force spearheading the reconstruction and rehabilitation on the war-torn northern region, that all the displaced would be back in their former homes by January.

"He informed us of this decision when we briefed him on our visit to the camps. We made our observations on the visit," said N. Sri Kanthan, parliamentarian from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which represents the Tamil community in Sri Lanka.

Kanthan and six of his TNA parliamentary colleagues were permitted to visit the displaced on Monday, the first time local parliamentarians were allowed into the camps, access to which had been severely restricted. Camp residents are also denied freedom of movement, including coming out of the camps guarded by the military.

Kanthan said of the more than 200,000 who fled fierce battles between government troops and the rebels who fought in the northern region and swarmed into temporary shelters in March to April 2009, 102,000 residents have been settled, with another 130,000 expected to return to their homes in the next two months.

"We have requested for a long time to visit these camps, and finally this was allowed. We were flown to the area in a government helicopter and also visited resettlement areas. We were impressed and found the military and officials committed to their task," he told IPS.

Government soldiers crushed the rebels in bruising battles in May, including killing the elusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and his family, ending a 25-year-long armed revolt against the state to push for more autonomy for minority Tamils in areas where they mostly live.

Since then, human rights groups and the international community have accused the government of keeping civilians against their will in camps amidst difficult conditions. The media, however, continues to be shut out of these camps, with a few local and foreign journalists given ‘escorted’ tours.

Sivanathan Kishore, another TNA parliamentarian, who also visited the camps, said the situation has improved tremendously from before. "In May I went alone (because I live in the same area) into the camps, and conditions were appalling. Now there is a major change."

But another TNA parliamentarian, Sivashakthi Ananthan, said he turned down the invitation to visit the camps, as it was a conducted tour and not free access as claimed.

"We had informed the military that we would be driving in our own vehicles, but the government insisted that we go in a government helicopter to the camps. Why should we go in a government helicopter to visit our own people?" he asked in a telephone interview.

A Tamil journalist, who declined to be named, labeled Monday’s exercise a public relations one, since it was held a day before the United Nations top humanitarian official arrived in Colombo on Tuesday. He added that the planned quick release of the displaced was aimed at soothing the Tamils and winning back their support ahead of the polls.

U.N. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator John Holmes, who has visited Sri Lanka thrice this year, the last being in May, is due to meet the President and visit the camps for the displaced.

The U.N. has repeatedly expressed concern over the continued "detention" of these residents. The government justified this on two grounds—clearing their former homes of mines in a huge de-mining operation and ferreting out suspected Tamil rebel cadres. Nearly 20,000 former rebels have been identified among the displaced and moved to another detention centre and processed for rehabilitation.

On Tuesday, Britain-based Amnesty International said it had launched a week of action from Monday, highlighting the continued detention of thousands of displaced civilians in government camps. In a statement, it said activists in more than 10 countries would take part in the ‘Unlock the Camps’ campaign. Events include a ‘Circle of Hope’ in Canada, a street march and signature campaign in Nepal, a poetry reading in Switzerland and solidarity actions in France, Germany, Mauritius and the United States.

Another opposition legislator, Dr Jayalath Jayawardene, pooh-poohed the attempt to open the camps to parliamentarians. "We have filed an action in the Supreme Court seeking a declaration that our fundamental rights have been violated by not allowing us free and unimpeded access to the camps.

"If the government is allowing member of Parliament access, then why can’t they come and inform the Court?" he asked. "This is just a farce," he said. "Furthermore, they are relaxing these rules now when half the population in the camps have been returned to their homes." "We need free access … not conducted tours," said the Parliament member from the main opposition United National Party.

(END/2009)

Sri Lanka's government says it is on track to have most of the Tamils living in its internal refugee camps back in their home villages by the start of next year.

AM has gained rare access to Manik Farm, the main camp where more than 130,000 Tamils are forced to live after the end of the country's civil war.

The camp's residents live in makeshift tents without access to many basic amenities, all the while under the watchful eye of Sri Lanka's military.

The media was allowed in because Australia's special representative to Sri Lanka, John McCarthy, was visiting the camp.

Manik Farm is a sprawling sea of makeshift tents stretching across almost 20 kilometres of land cut from dense jungle.

There is little power and running water. At the temporary hospital some young children look to have mild malnutrition.

Tens of thousands of people wait for their names to be called out over the camp's loudspeakers. If they are called it means they can return to their villages.

Among those straining their ears is a woman named Kamala, who says life is hard in the camp and she wants to go home.

She lives in the camp with her three sons. They have been there since May, just before the end of the civil war.

A woman called Ponamma and her young son also live at the camp.

Ponamma says she survived the civil war but now lives in a place where there is no dignity and the only thing she looks forward to is getting permission to return home.

The international community has repeatedly questioned Sri Lanka's use of the camps to house large numbers of Tamils displaced by the war.

But the Sri Lankan military says it is a necessary measure.

The military commander of the camp, Major General Kamal Gunaratne, says by the start of next year most of the residents will be back in their villages.

"As of today we have sent more than 100,000 people out of Manik Farm for resettlement proper," he said.

"Adding to that, we have started sending the pregnant mothers with their families and the people with their families, the infants with their families, then sick people with born disabilities with their families."

Camps 'working well'
Mr McCarthy, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's hand-picked representative to Sri Lanka, is the man charged with stemming the tide of asylum seekers wanting to get into Australia.

He has a strong interest in Sri Lanka's efforts to resettle Tamils affected by the civil war.

"It's been very worthwhile for us to see at first hand, this delegation, what is happening in the camps and what is happening in the process of resettlement which is taking place within Sri Lanka," he said.

"I think we're encouraged by what we've seen. On the whole these camps are working well and the settlement, resettlement process is working well.

"The momentum needs to be maintained. I think the government of Sri Lanka is aware of that. Also of course it's necessary to ensure that the needs of the people are met when they immediately return."

Later, the delegation visited the town of Mallavi. Its residents had just returned after months at Manik Farm. They arrived back to a home town which had been devastated by the civil war.

But even though many of their houses had been destroyed they said they were happy to be home.

And it is where the Australian government would like them to stay, rather than to take their chances with people smugglers on the open sea.

A family of internally displaced ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils wait to go home at Kathankulam village in Mannar, 144 miles north of Colombo, on Oct. 22, 2009. (Str/sri Lanka - Reuters)

TRINCOMALEE, SRI LANKA -- Six months after Sri Lanka's decades-old civil war ended with a final assault, about 200,000 people remain trapped in overcrowded government-run camps that were once safe havens for those fleeing the conflict.After the army defeated the Tamil rebels in May, top government officials paraded their success on the streets of Colombo, the capital, and the country's leaders made noble promises about ensuring national harmony. Now analysts say the real test of Sri Lanka's success in building a stable, post-conflict society lies in the fate of these scores of thousands of detainees.

Human rights groups say the government is lying about its resettlement efforts; authorities concede they are using the camps as a tool to uncover any remaining Tamil militants but deny they are deliberately stalling civilians' return home.

"We thought this war was over. But for Tamils, it's like going from the frying pan and into the fire," said Devander Kumar, whose brother was released, only to be taken away by police without explanation, one of 30 men in this seaside city who have disappeared soon after their homecoming. "Do we Tamils have to prove every second of the day that we are not terrorists?"

Facing pressure from the Obama administration and the European Union, the Sri Lankan government last month launched a campaign to resettle tens of thousands of the minority Tamil detainees. But interviews in the country's war-ravaged north reveal that many civilians have merely been shuffled from the large camps to smaller transit ones and are being held against their will. Others have been released, only to be taken from their homes days later with no indication of where they have goneTamil leaders worry that if civilians end up languishing in the camps indefinitely, the situation will only breed more resentments and risk spawning another generation of rebels. But the government says it needs more time to de-mine vast stretches of land in the north, as well as to repair infrastructure damaged by war. Authorities also say they continue to root out rebels who have blended into the civilian population.

"History will prove us right," said Basil Rajapaksa, who is leading the resettlement process. Rajapaksa is a U.S. citizen and an adviser to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his brother.

"We need the transit camps to weed out any underground rebels. The Tamil people have had a lot of hardship," he said. "So the last thing we want is to sacrifice their security for the sake of risking even one more sleeper cell or one more attack.After a fierce military offensive in May, the government declared victory over the rebels, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a well-funded militia that for 26 years fought for a separate homeland in northern Sri Lanka. The United States and other governments have labeled the Tamil Tigers a terrorist organization. The group pioneered the use of suicide bombings and is said to have orchestrated bombings that killed a Sri Lankan president, six cabinet ministers and, in 1991, former Indian prime minister Rajiv GandhiThe U.S. State Department has called for an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by both sides during the war's final days. After the fighting stopped, the president commissioned patriotic pop songs extolling the virtues of a prosperous Sri Lanka united under one flag. In the new Sri Lanka, he said, the Sinhalese Buddhist majority would embrace its Tamil compatriots, who are mostly Hindu and make up 15 percent of the nation's 20 million people.

But there is growing frustration among Tamils over the camps, ringed by razor-wire fencing and patrolled by armed guards. There is also anger over the unexplained arrests of military-age menOn a recent day at a camp set up inside a school here, soldiers held back a group of weeping women who rushed to the gates to greet family members they had not seen in more than a year because they had gotten separated during the fighting."The most worrying part of the transit camps is that nobody is allowed to even meet them inside, not even religious leaders or desperate relatives," said V. Kalaichelvan, head of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies in Trincomalee. "It's like a wound on the psyche of the already damaged Tamil community."

Mano Ganesan, a Tamil member of Parliament, has filed a lawsuit against the government to allow him and other Tamil leaders to visit both the transit and the relief camps.

"Tamils feel like inmates in their own country. . . . The irony is that the root causes of this conflict are being ignored yet again. That can only mean more Tigers in the future," Ganesan said.

On a 10-hour trip by car from the capital to Trincomalee, one encounters frequent checkpoints, abandoned villages and fields of weeds where once rice and cashew were grown. The transit camps appear overcrowded, with families spread out under trees.

"In the last few weeks, there has been a sincere effort to release more people from the detention camps," said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect diplomatic efforts. "But we have so far been unable to track where exactly they are going. We are hoping to see evidence soon that they have actually been resettled."

Sri Lankan officials say the government has begun relocating nearly 42,000 people from the camps. The government also says it will dedicate a large amount of development money to the Tamil-dominated north.

But mistrust prevails. In one village, residents said police had taken away several of their neighbors, who they said were innocent. "One of the major problems with the camps is that the government is not telling people when or why they are arresting relatives," said Gordon Weiss, a spokesman for the United Nations in Sri Lanka. "In a country with a long history of disappearances, just snatching people creates an incredible atmosphere of fear. At the same time, the sinister nature of this war was that so many civilians were militarized, which legitimized them as targets by the other side. That is the tragedy of this conflict."

Sri Lanka said 164,000 civilians displaced by the civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels remain in camps in the north and the government intends to reduce the number to less than 50,000 by the end of January.

“We are now moving with incremental swiftness” to settle people from the camps, Rajiva Wijesinha, the secretary at the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said late yesterday, according to the government’s Web site.

More than 280,000 mainly Tamil civilians have been held in the camps since the army defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in May, ending the group’s 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka’s north and east. The U.S. and United Nations are leading international calls for the swift release of the displaced people.

The need to ensure security in the north, the slow pace of clearing mines from former conflict zones and a lack of infrastructure as a result of the war are delaying the program to settle the civilians, Wijesinha said.

“The pressure from the West was quite extensive” to get people out of the camps, he said, adding that countries such as India, Pakistan and China understood the security concerns of the government in Colombo.

“These countries also had questions about the refugees and their rehabilitation, and a political map for the devolution process, but they did not pressure us,” Wijesinha said.

Caught in Fighting

The army defeated the last LTTE forces in a battle on the northeastern coast in May. Tens of thousands of civilians were caught between the rebels and army units.

Sri Lanka rejected comments in September by Navi Pillay, the UN Human Rights commissioner, that the Tamils are being held in “conditions of internment.”

Last month, more than 10,000 people were resettled around Kilinochchi, the northern town where the LTTE had its headquarters. The area was heavily mined and had to be cleared, the government said at the time.

An estimated 1.5 million mines and unexploded ordnance contaminated 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of the north when the war ended, Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka’s army commander, said Oct. 27.

While army units in the north will be reduced in time, they “cannot be removed” because of the danger of the LTTE’s possible resurgence, Wijesinha said. The group’s revival is unlikely without foreign intervention, he said.

The conflict left about 90,000 people dead between 1983 and this year, the secretary said.

Separatist Threat

Sri Lanka is still threatened by separatist forces, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a speech Oct. 19. The government’s war on terrorism was based on achieving an “undivided country, a national consensus and an honorable peace,” he said.

Tamils make up almost 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 20 million people. Sinhalese account for 74 percent, according to a 2001 census.

While the government is committed to devolving some power to minorities, federalism is ruled out, Wijesinha.

“There is a danger of legitimization of separatism” in a federal structure in a country like Sri Lanka, he said.

Rajapaksa last week named a five-member committee that will investigate a U.S. State Department report on alleged human rights violations in the last weeks of the war, including the shelling of civilians by the army and the LTTE using civilians as hostages. The team consists of lawyers and a university chancellor, the government said at the time.

Sri Lanka has already responded to 99.9 percent of the allegations, Mahinda Samarasinghe, the minister for disaster management and human rights, said last week. The government has described the U.S. report as “unsubstantiated.”

The State Department said last week the abuses listed in the report are based mostly on reporting by the U.S. embassy in Sri Lanka, international organizations and the media and are “credible.”

By Dr M D P DISSANAYAKE
For many years, Indian Tamils came illegally by boat or swam through Chavakachcheri to Sri Lanka( then Ceylon). During the recently concluded War against Tamil Terrorists, there are no reports of many Tamils leaving Sri Lanka to India or other countries, because they all thought Prabhakharan will be their Prime Minister of Eelam and Norway government had all emergency plans to recognize Eelam. Vast majority of Tamils, I would say 99% of them, prayed and expected Prabha to find a homeland for them. But President Mahinda Rajapakse, Gothabhaya, Sarath spoiled their plans. Now their hopes are in tatters, those who did not leave Sri Lanka during the War, are now trying to find an alternative place to avoid further investigations against them.

Since being elected Prime Minister in 2007, Mr Kevin Rudd had enjoyed a massive popularity gain percentage over opposition leaders, viz. Dr Brendon Nelson and the current leader of Liberal Party Mr Malcolm Turnbull. Since 2007 Mr Kevin Rudd had to face many serious issues, one of which was the global financial turmoil. He and his Treasurer Mr Wayne Swan took timely action to ensure growth, employment, investment, education, infrastructure development, education by injecting Federal Government funds to avoid an economic disaster. Many other government leaders have thus far failed to find a practical solution to come out of global recession. Global financial melt down did not melt down Mr Kevin Rudd’s popularity.

Last week poll by Newsweek, has shown a dramatic reduction of Australian Prime Minister’s popularity, in as much as 6% points. This was caused by one single factor, i.e. tamil illegal migrants issue. The TV and radio talk back shows continue voice Aussies anger, if the government allows these suspected terrorists are allowed to enter to this peaceful land.

If you are a peace loving person, friendly, honest you are accepted in Australia. If you are properly qualified and possess necessary skills, you can rise to the highest position. But to enter Australia there is a procedure. Tamils on the Boat have apparently paid well over $20,000 per person, to enter into Australia. They are refusing to disclose their identity. If you are skilled in the relevant category, you need not spend $20,000. The question is where these guys have found such vast amount of cash, are those the hidden resources of LTTE?

One Tamil on boat complained that his 9 months old baby daughter cannot get enough milk each day. (How about breast feeding, Thambi Nadarajah?) Australian government is apparently spending $75,000 per day to look after these Tamils but one woman on boat cannot get enough milk to feed the 9 months old baby. These boat people are well dressed, wear many jewelleries, speak good English, can spend $20,000 per person, to illegally migrate to Australia. How can they be asylum seekers? Why are frightened to disclose their identities? Who is funding them?

By refusing to disclose their identities and to land voluntarily as temporary asylum in Indonesia, they are already breaking the law. How can Australia, Canada, Indonesia can make these Tamils happy? We as Sinhalese have tried and still trying to make them happy with so called “Uthuru Wasanthaya” .((I think Uthuru Wasanthaya is an absolute waste of time and money, instead must settle Sinhalese and Muslims in North and East). Is there a single Tamil who says “ Thank you” to Sinhalese? None. If you ask a Tamil, “: From which country you originally come from?”, the answer is “Ceylon”. But suddenly the Tamils on boat are calling themselves with headline banners. “We are Sri Lankans”, instead of calling themselves as “Ceylonese”. That is to draw the sympathy and next few weeks will unravel the true identity of these (suspected) terrorists who are being hunted by the Government of Sri Lanka.

“The Australian” newspaper on its edition of 5 Nov, had the front page headline as “Solution to Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers”. According to the story, these Tamils if accepted into Australia, will be employed as “unskilled” workers, exactly the same way Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) gave jobs to Tamils as Cleaners ( Sakkiliyas) etc.

India has done enough for Tamils. Sri Lanka has done much more than what India has for Tamils. But those who cannot live peacefully in their own country peacefully, cannot live anywhere else peacefully!

All these Tamils on boat must be sent back to Sri Lanka, let them be screened under a joint Aussie-Sri Lankan UN panel of Inspectors to determine and identify who they are.