Even as concerns are being raised by aid workers about the conditions in the internment camps the Sri Lankan government is running in the NorthEast, President Mahinda Rejapaksa spoke of how good life was in the camps.
US and Canadian law makers have called for Sri Lanka’s request for an IMF loan to be linked to unimpeded access to refugee camps and adherence international human rights rules.
Around 65,000 soldiers deserted their ranks during Sri Lanka’s brutal war against the Tamils and are at large, according a Sri Lankan Ministry of Justice and Law Reforms official.
Meningitis and encephalitis have erupted in Sri Lanka's northern Vavuniya district where over 300,000 Tamil civilians forcibly held in temporary shelters behind barbed wires, a local newspaper has reported.
Doctors treating displaced Tamils in the government-run camps in Sri Lanka's north have written a letter to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse complaining about the inadequate facilities and shortage of medical staff.
Sri Lanka has asked aid agencies to scale down operations on the island. The government claims that now it has claimed victory over the LTTE, there is no longer a need for agencies like the Red Cross.
Hundreds of thousands of Tamils remain locked in camps almost entirely off-limits to journalists, human-rights investigators and political leaders. The Sri Lankan government says the civilians are a security risk because Tamil Tiger fighters are hiding among them.
“I call upon the Australian government to stand up and complain bitterly until something is done”, said Justice John Dowd, Vice President of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), stressing his point that it is “to not speak up but yell” in order to save the Tamils in the concentration camps.
DESPITE the end of the long drawn conflict, Sri Lanka will recruit 50,000 personnel to increase security in areas captured when LTTE were defeated last month, the military has said.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has told a Cabinet meeting that he would not be averse to Canada and the European countries granting asylum to the internally displaced Tamil civilians.
THE 57-division’s Commanding officer Jagath Dias has been appointed as Sri Lanka’s Deputy Ambassador to Germany, informed sources said Friday, June 26.
SRI LANKAN Minister and General Secretary of EPDP, Douglas Devananda, announced that his party will contest the local government elections of Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) and Vavuniyaa Town Council (TC) under ‘Betel Leaf’ symbol, the common symbol of the ruling United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA), sources in Jaffna said
Advocating a fresh approach to the Tamil national question in Sri Lanka in the post-LTTE era, DMK president and Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi on Wednesday (July 1) declared in the assembly that achieving ‘Tamil Eelam’ was no more a realistic possibility.
The Sri Lankan Governments thinking that “the concept of Tamil autonomy or freedom or even culture should be beaten to its knees and never rise again” can be compared to the actions of Joseph Stalin, said leading Australian Pediatrician Dr John Whitehall, describing government internment facilities as “concentration camps”, and saying the imprisonment of 300,000 refugees was much more sinister than he originally thought.
Health experts warn that the expected rains could increase the risk of waterborne diseases for tens of thousands of IDPs in camps in northern Sri Lanka.
