REFUGEE

Sri Lanka must ensure that Tamil war refugees receive assistance now they are allowed to leave transit camps where they were held since the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated in May, the United Nations and human rights groups said.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government yesterday ended restrictions on people leaving camps in the north that hold about 120,000 civilians. It plans to return all the displaced people to their home towns and villages by the end of January.i


“It’s a very mixed picture,” Gordon Weiss, a UN spokesman, said in a telephone interview from Colombo today. “The civilians are from the worst-affected areas where their homes are destroyed, are abandoned, or are infested with mines.” The government must “maintain its responsibility to care” for displaced people, Amnesty International said.
Sri Lanka has been under international pressure to allow about 280,000 displaced civilians held in camps since May to go home. The government says their return has been delayed by the need to ensure security in the north and to clear an estimated 1.5 million mines and unexploded ordnance from conflict zones.

“They released about 10,000 people from the camps yesterday,” Weiss said. “They have issued passes for them to be away for 10-15 days.”

Temporary Shelter

People without homes “are being provided with basic materials to build a temporary shelter,” Rishad Bathiudeen, minister for resettlement and disaster relief services said by telephone from the capital today. “The government is also giving cash.”

The government is giving conflicting messages about the process of returning displaced people, Amnesty International said in an e-mailed statement today.

“A permanent release from camps must be accompanied by assurances that people are not subjected to further questioning or re-arrest in new locations,” Amnesty said.

The government must alert people to the conditions they will find in the areas they come from “so they can make plans about their future,” it said. “The promise to unlock the camps must be followed up by the protection of the rights of the internally displaced people both within and outside the camps.”

Sri Lanka said last week it completed the return of Tamil civilians to the northern Jaffna region. Those still in camps are from the Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts, it said.

Heavily Mined

Both areas were heavily mined as the LTTE had its headquarters in Kilinochchi town and staged its last stand around the northeastern port of Mullaitivu in May.

Rajapaksa, seeking to capitalize on his government’s success in ending the LTTE’s 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east, has called a presidential election for Jan. 26, two years before his mandate expires.

He will face General Sarath Fonseka, who commanded the army when it defeated the Tamil Tigers, in the election.

The ballot is a strong reason to send as many people back home as they are eligible to vote, Weiss said.

“It has to be viewed in the context of these people being released by January,” he said. The authorities have “a good political imperative for doing this.”

Rebuilding after the conflict is helping the island’s $41 billion economy. The central bank forecasts it will grow as much as 6 percent next year after expanding about 3.5 percent in 2009.

The end to the war that killed about 90,000 people has also helped push the benchmark Colombo All-share index up almost 90 percent this year.

Sri Lanka’s detention of the Tamils “could squander hopes for national reconciliation,” The Elders, a humanitarian group created by former South African President Nelson Mandela, said last week.

The confinement of the civilians breaches international law and deprives them of basic human rights, the group said in a letter to Rajapaksa. It called on the government to allow “unimpeded access” to the camps.

- bloomberg