The Ceylon News

By Dr. Chandrani Gunaratne

What seems like an almost simultaneous attack, articles criticizing Sri Lankan government's handling of refugee crisis appeared Friday (June 19) in several western newspapers.

Nirmala Carvalho in AsiaNews under the heading "The tragedy of refugees in Sri Lanka, hidden from the eyes of the world", citing an aid worker, only identified by a pseudonym, 'Prasanna', writes that "there is still no data on the precise number of the refugees," and the "The only interest of the Colombo government - says Prasanna - is to find more Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam members who are living in the camp and kill them."

Had the author had even a slightest sense of journalistic integrity, she would have checked the facts and verified her information. OCHA Situation Report No. 22 of 18th June on Sri Lanka : Vanni Emergency gives the precise number of IDPs in the camps up to June 16th and the number still in hospitals. OCHA report also says that access to camps in Vavuniya has improved, though some delays are still experienced.

Did Ms. Carvalho try to find out how many LTTE cadres have been taken from the camps and executed as she claimed? When and where they have been killed? Anyone can say anything but doesn't the author have a responsibility to check her information at least from one other source before writing disparaging accounts.

So far 9,100 LTTE cadres including 400 child soldiers have surrendered to the Sri Lankan military and they would not have willingly marched into their execution. Out of them 7,237 cadres including 1,601 women are now being rehabilitated at various centers. Another 202 cadres, including 80 men, are in IDP camps. Incidentally, there were reports that IDPs in the camps have beaten up the LTTE cadres, and in some instances, have even helped the military to identify them.

In another report, the Christian Science Monitor under the title " Sri Lanka 's postwar resettlement stalls" criticizes the government saying that it has no clear resettlement plan.

The government was the first to realize that the early resettlement is in their best interest and that is why it has planned to resettle at least 80% of the displaced within 180 days. Last month the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, set up a high-level task force, headed by his brother and MP, Basil Rajapaksa, to prepare strategic plans and projects to develop the infrastructure of the North and resettle the IDPs.

However the bottleneck is, the region to be resettled is heavily mined by both sides, and demining process is excruciatingly expensive and slow. Also, the military is still in the process of recovering arms hidden in the area by the LTTE. These two processes need to be completed before proceeding with any resettlement.

In addition, most of the infrastructure and facilities like schools and hospitals in the north have been destroyed during the war and the government needs to reconstruct these and provide basic facilities such as roads, water, and electricity and restore tanks and bridges so that the people can restart their livelihoods once they are resettled.

Parts of Mannar have been demined and the government has so far resettled 2,120 people in the cleared areas. The government is focusing its efforts now on clearing the west of the A-9 highway, known as the "rice bowl' where most of the rice cultivation took place before the war started and most of the people from that area depends on agriculture.

A UNHCR today reported that it brought back the first group of 1,676 people (about 390 families) to Arippu and some 555 people (about 150 families) to five other coastal villages in Mannar district where most people rely on farming or fishing.

The Sri Lankan government has already started to reconstruct power stations, train tracks, roads and other services in the region as the area being cleared up. Also, the government has moved the IDPs in Vavuniya from 34 area schools to a newly built welfare center so that the children can attend the schools. Projects that cost over one billion rupees are planned for the development of North under the President's "Uthuru Vasanthaya" program.

The welfare centers are not five star hotels but they provide the basic care to the displaced. The sad fact is these displaced civilians have better living conditions in the camps than they were under the LTTE, living under the trees and packing up and running along with them under gun point. At least the children who had been malnourished and starved under the LTTE are now receiving the care they need. Only thing they don't have is the freedom to venture out of the camps whenever they want to.

Dr. Jemilah Mahmood of Malaysian Medical Relief Society (MERCY), which is an NGO providing medical care in the Manik Farm camps recently said in an interview that compared to the camps for the displaced people from Afghanistan, Pakistan to Indonesia and Myanmar, these camps in Vavuniya do not appear as bad as those the NGO had experienced.

U.N. emergency relief co-coordinator John Holmes today told the reporters that they have "pretty much full access to those camps at the moment," and problems with overcrowding, water shortage and sanitation problems were gradually being overcome. His complaint was that people were not allowed to move freely in and out of them for the moment.

The Sri Lankan government has an obligation to the 19 million or so civilians in the rest of the country to protect them. The citizens also expect the government to ensure their safety from the possibility that hardcore LTTE cadres still hiding in the IDP camps masquerading as civilians could escape, regroup, and carry out suicide attacks.

If the UN, the NGOs, the Western media or even the Sri Lankan people think there are no sleeping LTTE cadres in the other parts of the country and all the IDPs are innocent civilians then they are really clueless to the LTTE's terror network.

Months-long violent protests by the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora in the cities of US, UK, Canada and Europe clearly demonstrated to the world the hidden potential of the LTTE to regroup and cause mayhem again even though their puppet leaders are dead. Under these circumstances the Sri Lankan government cannot be careless and allow the civilians to freely move in and out of the camps until the hiding LTTE cadres are weeded out for rehabilitation or for prosecution.

The Sri Lankan government also has the right to be weary of the NGOs and not to provide "unfettered access" as some have demanded. Knowing the track record of certain NGOs abetting the LTTE to procure vehicles, machinery, earthmovers etc. so that they can build air conditioned bunkers and earth bunds and acquire sophisticated weapon technology to have home-made submarines and aircraft, the government has to be selective when allowing NGOs access to the IDP camps.

Not all NGOs have the best interest of the IDPs at heart. Even the UN Secretary-General's Chef de Cabinet had an ulterior motive when he visited the North before the final battle. He was there on consultation with KP, the LTTE's head of international relations, to get 50 senior LTTE cadres out of the war zone more than facilitating the evacuation of the trapped civilians.

The Sri Lankan government is faced with the enormous task of not only sheltering and feeding over 285,000 civilians currently in the camps but later on resettling and providing facilities and livelihoods for them. The UN and other humanitarian agencies agree that although basic conditions are met lot more need to be done for the welfare of the civilians.

Ceaseless reports in the Western newspapers that criticize the government of Sri Lanka over the IDP issue miserably fail to mention any of the development programs, or facilities the government has set in place for the welfare of the IDPs. Not only these reports are biased, but also, like the report in AsiaNews, are blatantly false and lack credibility.

The Western media catering to the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora is in a constant drive to discredit the Sri Lankan state and encourage the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora to justify and continue their struggle for a separate state in Sri Lanka . Their latest move, the formation of the Transnational Eelam state to perpetuate the LTTE dream is partly due to the support it receives from the Western media.