France to provide 100-bed field hospital for IDPs in the North
Sat, 2009-04-25 03:44
Colombo, 25 April, (Asiantribune.com): Responding to a call to the international community made yesterday by Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama for emergency relief assistance for the large number of civilians who have fled LTTE control and sought sanctuary in the cleared areas in recent days, the French Foreign Minister,Dr Bernard Kouchner telephoned his Sri Lankan counterpart today(24th April 2009) and informed that the Government of France will be providing a fully equipped 100-bed field hospital, backed by a 75 strong medical and support staff immediately.
In this regard,an advance team will arrive in Colombo tomorrow to make a field assessment to locate the hospital facility in the Vavuniya district.
As a further manifestation of the long-standing excellent bilateral relations between the two countries, Dr Kouchner accepted Minister Bogollagama's invitation to visit Sri Lanka. This visit is expected to take place as early as next week.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
With 6432 Dead in Sri Lanka, UN Council Takes Over Press Room, UNHCR Funds Detention Camps, "Collective Punishment"
With 6432 Dead in Sri Lanka, UN Council Takes Over Press Room, UNHCR Funds Detention Camps, "Collective Punishment"
Apr 25, 2009, 01:07 Digg this story!
UNITED NATIONS, April 24 -- The UN descended into chaos on Friday on the topic of Sri Lanka. In Colombo, the UN gave diplomats an updated chart of civilian casualties, with the death count having risen to 6432 since January 20, up from 2683 as of March 7. Inner City Press exclusively published the first report, and now places online this second one, here. In response to Inner City Press' questions on Friday, UN Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe said that these UN figures "may be a reasonable estimate." Video here, from Minute 10:29.
While the 3749 minimum additional civilians were being killed, the UN Security Council has held three informal meetings, the last on April 22 with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's envoy, Vijay Nambiar. Ban claimed the Nambiar had won a commitment from the government to a UN humanitarian assessment mission to the conflict zone. But the government of Sri Lanka has now said such a trip is not necessary or feasible.
Friday morning, Inner City Press asked a range of Council diplomats what they would do, given this new development. One senior diplomat from a Permanent Member of the Security Council opposed to adding Sri Lanka to the Council's formal agenda told Inner City Press that Ban had made a mistake by speaking publicly about what Nambiar said he had won. He said that his country, as supporter and funder of the government of Sri Lanka, believes that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam uses UN Council meetings to argue to civilians to stay with them in the conflict zone. Whether UN Webcasts can be seen there is not clear.
Nevertheless, even this Council member later on Friday agreed that Council president Claude Heller of Mexico could read out his second "remarks to the press" about Sri Lanka in three days, this time encouraging the government to cooperate with the UN to visit the conflict zone.
When Ambassador Heller read this out -- more below on how and where he did this -- Inner City Press asked, is the Council calling for a ceasefire? No, Heller said. Video here, from Minute 15:48.
Inner City Press asked if Heller or the Council had seen the UN's count of 6432 dead civilians. Heller replied that the Council on Wednesday had "no opportunity to discuss the casualties." Video here, from Minute 13:31. What then have they been discussing?
Amb. Heller in near-empty Council, run to near-empty press room described below
The manner of Heller's presentation was without precedent at the UN. In the UN's briefing room, UNHCR's representative in Sri Lanka Amin Awad was answering questions about his agency's work with the government on camps. Of the camps, he said the government was given an "aide memoire" which he would now try to make public, and that the camps "should not be collective punishment."
Midway through, after Inner City Press had asked about charges that the UN is working with and funding detention camps in violation of international humanitarian law, suddenly Ambassador Heller and his spokesman, UK Ambassador John Sawers and other Council staffers, burst into the room. They stood along the wall, as cell phone filmed by Inner City Press.
A note was handed to UN Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe, and she asked Amin Awad to leave the rostrum. Heller took his place, and read out his and the Council's "remarks to the press." He tried to immediately leave, but Inner City Press asked a question about the UN's casualty figures, and if the UN's Neil Buhne trip to Jaffna was the mission to the conflict zone that the UN is speaking of. Video here, from Minute 13:31.
Heller replied that now John Holmes of OCHA is going to "the region." Does this mean the conflict zone? Heller didn't answer. He was asked if this was a formal Council statement. He called it "remarks to the press," and said it was the "best way to agree." But agree on what?
Inner City Press is told that Heller and Sawers came out of the Security Council but found few to no journalists waiting to hear the remarks meant for them. Much of the UN press corps elsewhere, covering a committee meeting about listing companies which helped North Korea's recent launch.
Frustrated, Heller headed for the media briefing room, figuring he'd find reporters there to hear the Council's remarks. There were perhaps a half-dozen journalists in the room, listening to Amin Awad. In fact, at the beginning of the briefing Ms. Okabe had indirectly apologized, saying that many reporters would be "watching in their rooms."
Now the under-attended humanitarian briefing about refugees was converted into the forum for the full Council's scripted "remarks to the press." UK Ambassador Sawers showed himself -- he did not go to the rostrum or consent to taking questions -- while France's Ambassadors Ripert or LaCroix were nowhere to be seen. The U.S., it was said, was represented by Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo, with Susan Rice being in Washington, most surmised.
Once Heller left the stage, Inner City Press asked Amin Awar about a comment Amb. DiCarlo had made, that IDP camps that do not comply with international humanitarian law should only be funded for so long. Amin Awar said that UNHCR has to be there, that there may be bilateral talks he is not privy to. Video here, from Minute 27:25.
On the elevator going down to the UN lobby, he told Inner City Press that in Washington earlier in the week he had met with Inter-Action and testified to Congress along with NGOs. Inner City Press asked him about reports that the government of Sri Lanka is funding DC-based firm Patton Boggs to represent its interests. I didn't know that, Amin Awar said. And so it goes at the UN.
Footnote: We continue to wait for the UK's formal answer to the first of the two questions which Inner City Press asked the UK Mission to the UN two questions on Sri Lanka early on April 15:
Does the UK believe that international law and the rights of UN humanitarian staff are being violated by the now-acknowledged detention of UN staff in the Sri Lankan government's “IDP” camps?
It has been reported this morning that Sri Lanka's “minister also told the British Foreign Secretary that there was concern that the LTTE would continue to consolidate its fortification of the No-Fire Zone.” Please confirm the accuracy of that, and of this and if so, does the UK interpret it as saying that an offensive on the No-Fire Zone and the civilians in it will begin? What did the UK Foreign Secretary say?
As of this press time nine days later, the formal answer has been referral to Minister Miliband's April 12 statement, and this. On April 21, Inner City Press put the question to U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose spokesman the following day cleared this response: "UN personnel should have freedom of movement and be treated with respect." But they are still detained as of this writing. As more answers arrive or are released we will report them on this site.
Apr 25, 2009, 01:07 Digg this story!
UNITED NATIONS, April 24 -- The UN descended into chaos on Friday on the topic of Sri Lanka. In Colombo, the UN gave diplomats an updated chart of civilian casualties, with the death count having risen to 6432 since January 20, up from 2683 as of March 7. Inner City Press exclusively published the first report, and now places online this second one, here. In response to Inner City Press' questions on Friday, UN Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe said that these UN figures "may be a reasonable estimate." Video here, from Minute 10:29.
While the 3749 minimum additional civilians were being killed, the UN Security Council has held three informal meetings, the last on April 22 with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's envoy, Vijay Nambiar. Ban claimed the Nambiar had won a commitment from the government to a UN humanitarian assessment mission to the conflict zone. But the government of Sri Lanka has now said such a trip is not necessary or feasible.
Friday morning, Inner City Press asked a range of Council diplomats what they would do, given this new development. One senior diplomat from a Permanent Member of the Security Council opposed to adding Sri Lanka to the Council's formal agenda told Inner City Press that Ban had made a mistake by speaking publicly about what Nambiar said he had won. He said that his country, as supporter and funder of the government of Sri Lanka, believes that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam uses UN Council meetings to argue to civilians to stay with them in the conflict zone. Whether UN Webcasts can be seen there is not clear.
Nevertheless, even this Council member later on Friday agreed that Council president Claude Heller of Mexico could read out his second "remarks to the press" about Sri Lanka in three days, this time encouraging the government to cooperate with the UN to visit the conflict zone.
When Ambassador Heller read this out -- more below on how and where he did this -- Inner City Press asked, is the Council calling for a ceasefire? No, Heller said. Video here, from Minute 15:48.
Inner City Press asked if Heller or the Council had seen the UN's count of 6432 dead civilians. Heller replied that the Council on Wednesday had "no opportunity to discuss the casualties." Video here, from Minute 13:31. What then have they been discussing?
Amb. Heller in near-empty Council, run to near-empty press room described below
The manner of Heller's presentation was without precedent at the UN. In the UN's briefing room, UNHCR's representative in Sri Lanka Amin Awad was answering questions about his agency's work with the government on camps. Of the camps, he said the government was given an "aide memoire" which he would now try to make public, and that the camps "should not be collective punishment."
Midway through, after Inner City Press had asked about charges that the UN is working with and funding detention camps in violation of international humanitarian law, suddenly Ambassador Heller and his spokesman, UK Ambassador John Sawers and other Council staffers, burst into the room. They stood along the wall, as cell phone filmed by Inner City Press.
A note was handed to UN Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe, and she asked Amin Awad to leave the rostrum. Heller took his place, and read out his and the Council's "remarks to the press." He tried to immediately leave, but Inner City Press asked a question about the UN's casualty figures, and if the UN's Neil Buhne trip to Jaffna was the mission to the conflict zone that the UN is speaking of. Video here, from Minute 13:31.
Heller replied that now John Holmes of OCHA is going to "the region." Does this mean the conflict zone? Heller didn't answer. He was asked if this was a formal Council statement. He called it "remarks to the press," and said it was the "best way to agree." But agree on what?
Inner City Press is told that Heller and Sawers came out of the Security Council but found few to no journalists waiting to hear the remarks meant for them. Much of the UN press corps elsewhere, covering a committee meeting about listing companies which helped North Korea's recent launch.
Frustrated, Heller headed for the media briefing room, figuring he'd find reporters there to hear the Council's remarks. There were perhaps a half-dozen journalists in the room, listening to Amin Awad. In fact, at the beginning of the briefing Ms. Okabe had indirectly apologized, saying that many reporters would be "watching in their rooms."
Now the under-attended humanitarian briefing about refugees was converted into the forum for the full Council's scripted "remarks to the press." UK Ambassador Sawers showed himself -- he did not go to the rostrum or consent to taking questions -- while France's Ambassadors Ripert or LaCroix were nowhere to be seen. The U.S., it was said, was represented by Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo, with Susan Rice being in Washington, most surmised.
Once Heller left the stage, Inner City Press asked Amin Awar about a comment Amb. DiCarlo had made, that IDP camps that do not comply with international humanitarian law should only be funded for so long. Amin Awar said that UNHCR has to be there, that there may be bilateral talks he is not privy to. Video here, from Minute 27:25.
On the elevator going down to the UN lobby, he told Inner City Press that in Washington earlier in the week he had met with Inter-Action and testified to Congress along with NGOs. Inner City Press asked him about reports that the government of Sri Lanka is funding DC-based firm Patton Boggs to represent its interests. I didn't know that, Amin Awar said. And so it goes at the UN.
Footnote: We continue to wait for the UK's formal answer to the first of the two questions which Inner City Press asked the UK Mission to the UN two questions on Sri Lanka early on April 15:
Does the UK believe that international law and the rights of UN humanitarian staff are being violated by the now-acknowledged detention of UN staff in the Sri Lankan government's “IDP” camps?
It has been reported this morning that Sri Lanka's “minister also told the British Foreign Secretary that there was concern that the LTTE would continue to consolidate its fortification of the No-Fire Zone.” Please confirm the accuracy of that, and of this and if so, does the UK interpret it as saying that an offensive on the No-Fire Zone and the civilians in it will begin? What did the UK Foreign Secretary say?
As of this press time nine days later, the formal answer has been referral to Minister Miliband's April 12 statement, and this. On April 21, Inner City Press put the question to U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose spokesman the following day cleared this response: "UN personnel should have freedom of movement and be treated with respect." But they are still detained as of this writing. As more answers arrive or are released we will report them on this site.
The agony in Sri Lanka
The agony in Sri Lanka
April 25, 2009
ONE OF THE WORLD'S longest, bloodiest conflicts is coming to a gruesome conclusion on the island nation of Sri Lanka. The United Nations estimates that some 6,500 civilians have died and 14,000 have been injured in the government's merciless offensive against the Tamil Tigers in the northeast of the country. The Obama administration and other governments, particularly India and China, should pressure both the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers to halt the fighting and permit trapped civilians to escape.
Discuss
COMMENTS (22)
This sort of humanitarian intervention would be more likely to succeed if the interveners make it clear that Sri Lankan government officials and Tiger leaders will be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Accounts from refugees leave little doubt that both sides have perpetrated such crimes. It was probably to hide those crimes that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Defense Minister Gotabahaya Rajapaksa, his brother, banned international aid groups and independent journalists from the theater of war.
At a time when 100,000 refugees need medical care, food, and shelter, and another 50,000 are under shelling in a five-square-mile war zone, the international community has proved impotent to live up to the UN's 2005 adoption of a "right to protect" civilians who are not protected by their government. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon deserves credit for announcing Thursday that he was sending a humanitarian aid team to the war zone. "So many lives have been sacrificed," Ban said. "There is no time to lose." Welcome as the UN chief's humanitarian initiative must be, the sad truth is that it comes woefully late, after too much preventable human suffering.
The Rajapaksa brothers have been able to get away with their no-quarter assault on the Tigers, with all the collateral damage that entailed, because they dressed it up as a war against terrorists. Their propaganda has been effective because it is grounded in a half-truth. The Tigers have committed terrorist acts. But the overwhelming majority of the victims in the Rajapaksa brothers' war have been Tamil civilians. For more than a quarter century, successive Sri Lankan governments have refused to grant ethnic Tamils in the north and northeast of the country some form of autonomy or self-rule in a confederal state.
The Tigers may be crushed in the next few days. But the anger and alienation of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is more acute than ever. The ultimate solution for Sri Lanka's communal conflict can only be political, not military. If the Tamil populace sees no hope for autonomy within Sri Lanka, it may come to demand a separate state - after all, the secessionist goal of the Tigers.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
READER COMMENTS (22)
ampanai wrote:
This is first "hell from earth" for Obama administration. Such individuals as Ms.Susan Rice and Ms.Samantha Powers have a responsibility to protect civilians from war crimes. If we do not act in the next few days, we may witness skyrocketing casualties.
Yes, separation is the only solution left!
4/24/2009 9:46 PM EDT
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Varathan wrote:
"I am not worried about the opinion of the Tamil people... now we cannot think of them, not about their lives or their opinion... the more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here... Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy."
J.R.Jayawardene, Former President of Sri Lanka - Daily Telegraph, 11th July 1983
Whoever the president the message is same, It is Tamil Genocide. "We are witnessing an enormous human tragedy. People, who have done well in their professions, are as good as beggars today. There should be immediate efforts to stop the tragedy,'' Ravi Shankar said. SRI LANKA,S NO-FIRE ZONE IS, ZONE OF DEATH, NO-FOOD ZONE, NO-CARE ZONE, now NO-SAFETY ZONE, FIRE ONLY ZONE... World Watches Helplessly Genocide of Eelam Tamils in Vanni by Sinhalese
http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=145&id=5729
Sri Lanka used Chemical weapons, Cluster bombs, dropped over 5000 bombs per day. Tigers are not the root cause of the long conflict in Sri Lanka. Tigers are mere symptom of chauvinist and terror state of Sri Lanka to defend the rights of Tamils. The mother died while nursing the baby.The baby was still breastfeeding..." screams of the child when it was taken away from its dead mother http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=28924, Has anyone seen a picture of a full term pregnant mother who was killed by a shell, which lacerated her womb exposing the leg of the fetus? Or the baby that was born with shrapnel embedded in its thigh? It is most disheartening to see thousand of our mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters being brutally killed by the occupying Sri Lankan security forces in the North and the East and enduring long and immense sufferings in the hands of the Sinhalese chauvinism for more than six decades, but particularly during the last three years under the current regime, which is brutal and bloody to the Tamils. We are witnessing the barbaric slaughter of our race including indiscriminate bombings and torture of innocent civilians. Civilian casualties top 20,000 in Vanni: Leaked UN document,
April 25, 2009
ONE OF THE WORLD'S longest, bloodiest conflicts is coming to a gruesome conclusion on the island nation of Sri Lanka. The United Nations estimates that some 6,500 civilians have died and 14,000 have been injured in the government's merciless offensive against the Tamil Tigers in the northeast of the country. The Obama administration and other governments, particularly India and China, should pressure both the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers to halt the fighting and permit trapped civilians to escape.
Discuss
COMMENTS (22)
This sort of humanitarian intervention would be more likely to succeed if the interveners make it clear that Sri Lankan government officials and Tiger leaders will be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Accounts from refugees leave little doubt that both sides have perpetrated such crimes. It was probably to hide those crimes that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Defense Minister Gotabahaya Rajapaksa, his brother, banned international aid groups and independent journalists from the theater of war.
At a time when 100,000 refugees need medical care, food, and shelter, and another 50,000 are under shelling in a five-square-mile war zone, the international community has proved impotent to live up to the UN's 2005 adoption of a "right to protect" civilians who are not protected by their government. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon deserves credit for announcing Thursday that he was sending a humanitarian aid team to the war zone. "So many lives have been sacrificed," Ban said. "There is no time to lose." Welcome as the UN chief's humanitarian initiative must be, the sad truth is that it comes woefully late, after too much preventable human suffering.
The Rajapaksa brothers have been able to get away with their no-quarter assault on the Tigers, with all the collateral damage that entailed, because they dressed it up as a war against terrorists. Their propaganda has been effective because it is grounded in a half-truth. The Tigers have committed terrorist acts. But the overwhelming majority of the victims in the Rajapaksa brothers' war have been Tamil civilians. For more than a quarter century, successive Sri Lankan governments have refused to grant ethnic Tamils in the north and northeast of the country some form of autonomy or self-rule in a confederal state.
The Tigers may be crushed in the next few days. But the anger and alienation of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is more acute than ever. The ultimate solution for Sri Lanka's communal conflict can only be political, not military. If the Tamil populace sees no hope for autonomy within Sri Lanka, it may come to demand a separate state - after all, the secessionist goal of the Tigers.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
READER COMMENTS (22)
ampanai wrote:
This is first "hell from earth" for Obama administration. Such individuals as Ms.Susan Rice and Ms.Samantha Powers have a responsibility to protect civilians from war crimes. If we do not act in the next few days, we may witness skyrocketing casualties.
Yes, separation is the only solution left!
4/24/2009 9:46 PM EDT
Recommend (12)
Report abuse
Permalink
User Image
Varathan wrote:
"I am not worried about the opinion of the Tamil people... now we cannot think of them, not about their lives or their opinion... the more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here... Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy."
J.R.Jayawardene, Former President of Sri Lanka - Daily Telegraph, 11th July 1983
Whoever the president the message is same, It is Tamil Genocide. "We are witnessing an enormous human tragedy. People, who have done well in their professions, are as good as beggars today. There should be immediate efforts to stop the tragedy,'' Ravi Shankar said. SRI LANKA,S NO-FIRE ZONE IS, ZONE OF DEATH, NO-FOOD ZONE, NO-CARE ZONE, now NO-SAFETY ZONE, FIRE ONLY ZONE... World Watches Helplessly Genocide of Eelam Tamils in Vanni by Sinhalese
http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=145&id=5729
Sri Lanka used Chemical weapons, Cluster bombs, dropped over 5000 bombs per day. Tigers are not the root cause of the long conflict in Sri Lanka. Tigers are mere symptom of chauvinist and terror state of Sri Lanka to defend the rights of Tamils. The mother died while nursing the baby.The baby was still breastfeeding..." screams of the child when it was taken away from its dead mother http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=28924, Has anyone seen a picture of a full term pregnant mother who was killed by a shell, which lacerated her womb exposing the leg of the fetus? Or the baby that was born with shrapnel embedded in its thigh? It is most disheartening to see thousand of our mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters being brutally killed by the occupying Sri Lankan security forces in the North and the East and enduring long and immense sufferings in the hands of the Sinhalese chauvinism for more than six decades, but particularly during the last three years under the current regime, which is brutal and bloody to the Tamils. We are witnessing the barbaric slaughter of our race including indiscriminate bombings and torture of innocent civilians. Civilian casualties top 20,000 in Vanni: Leaked UN document,
Friday, April 24, 2009
Dark victory:But the imminent end of war offers an historic chance to make peace
Dark victory
Apr 23rd 2009 | COLOMBO
But the imminent end of war offers an historic chance to make peace
Reuters
A DARK herd creeps across a grassy plain, wades a shallow lagoon and clambers to safety. Filmed from the air on April 20th, this was a scene Sri Lanka’s government had been dreaming of: the start of a mass breakout from the Tamil Tigers’ last sanctuary by, it claims, over 100,000 refugees—perhaps two-thirds of those being held hostage there. Having inspired the exodus, by breaching a sandy embankment around this “refuge”, a few kilometres of beach in north-eastern Sri Lanka, the army has encircled the surviving Tigers.
According to its private estimate, the Tigers may be reduced to 1,000 hardened fighters, plus a few thousand recently impressed refugees. The army believes Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tiger chief, and his senior henchmen are among them—as was also claimed this week by a spokesman for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the rebels are properly known, after the Eelam, or Tamil homeland, for which they have waged a 26-year war. To bag these men, the last prize of a brutal two-year offensive, the army claims to be using stealthy tactics, with “deep-penetration” commandos and snipers. It has a history of over-egging its battlefield triumphs. But the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa seems genuinely to believe that one of Asia’s oldest wars could be over within days.
That would be momentous, and the island-nation’s Sinhalese majority will rush to celebrate it—and perhaps also give Mr Rajapaksa victory in an important regional election, in Western Province, on April 25th. Sri Lanka’s long war has probably cost over 100,000 lives, including 30,000 in the past two years.
Coinciding with a period of high economic growth outside the war-zone, in the west and south, the conflict has come to seem an increasingly anachronistic blot on a hopeful country. By rallying Sinhalese, who make up around three-quarters of the population, to support an all-out campaign against the Tigers, which his steely defence chief and brother, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, and General Sarath Fonseka, the army commander, have ably delivered, Mr Rajapaksa has almost erased this stain. Nor should Mr Prabhakaran and his crew be mourned. A well-organised and vicious terrorist group, expert in brainwashing and suicide-blasting, the LTTE has maintained its fief—which until late 2006 extended over almost a third of the country—by murder and fear. Moreover, having sabotaged a peace initiative of the previous government, and helped it lose an election by imposing a boycott on Tamil voters under its sway, Mr Prabhakaran has had the war he was asking for.
Yet, among Tamils, who may represent 18% of Sri Lanka’s population, including a community descended from 19th-century Indian immigrants which has played little part in the war, Mr Rajapaksa’s impending declaration of victory will be largely derided. And the congratulations of many foreign governments, especially Western ones, will be muted. The main reason is that the government’s apparent victory has come at an appalling cost. Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, said this week that the entire world was disappointed that in its efforts to end the war, it was causing “such untold suffering”.
In its rush to exterminate the Tigers—partly in justified fear of their skill at manipulating foreign opinion—the army has shown a cruel disregard for Tamil civilians crowding the battlefield. Earlier this month the UN estimated that since early January, when the Tigers’ fled their northern capital, Kilinochchi, driving perhaps 200,000 civilians before them, some 4,500 had been killed and 12,000 wounded. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has evacuated over 10,000 wounded civilians and their relatives from the no-fire zone, said on April 20th that hundreds more had been killed or wounded since the army made its breach.
Most appear to have been victims of shellfire inside the Tigers’ last refuge, though the government designated it a “no-fire zone” and claims to have shelled it only when civilians would not be harmed. It accuses the Tigers of bombarding the zone, to bolster international demands for a humanitarian ceasefire. But entrapped civilians, including doctors manning a makeshift hospital on the northern tip of the zone, say the army is to blame; and human-rights researchers believe them. More broadly, the government’s campaign has been marked by gross disregard for the rule of law, especially as it applies to Tamils. The defection in 2004 of a senior LTTE commander known as “Karuna”, now minister for national integration and reconciliation, enabled the army to capture the east rapidly, by mid-2007. Unfazed by the crimes allegedly committed by its proxy, including the forcible recruitment of children and many murders, the government has partly emulated them. In the east and elsewhere, especially Colombo, the country’s main city, it is alleged to have abducted and killed hundreds of young Tamils. Nor are Sinhalese entirely safe, especially journalists. Several have been mysteriously assassinated, and the rest terrorised. Reporters Without Borders, an NGO, considers Sri Lanka more hostile for journalists than any other democracy.
Asked whether he could not have prosecuted a just war more justly, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the defence chief, says the government had no choice but to use extraordinary tactics against a monstrous foe. Mr Rajapaksa denied they included extra-judicial killing. But he admitted that many Tamils had been detained and interrogated for extended periods. Most, he claimed, were operating as LTTE agents under false identities. “You can’t expect all the normal things that happen in a normal society because the LTTE are not like that.”
The American example
If this recalls the defence of water-boarding and other brutalities offered by America’s former government, it should. A former Sri Lankan army colonel, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is also an American citizen; and the government has often likened its war against the LTTE to America’s zero-tolerance of Islamist terrorists. To an extent, America and its Western allies have encouraged the comparison, by proscribing the Tigers as a terrorist group. Yet the Western powers, which face no threat from the LTTE and whose politicians are susceptible to skilful lobbying by the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils who bankroll it, have extended their sympathy only so far. They have lambasted the government for its human-rights abuses and, in the case of the EU, Sri Lanka’s biggest export market, threatened to cancel preferential trade terms. Making matters worse, the government has used such criticism, levelled, it claims, by Tiger-hugging imperialists, to stir up Sinhalese nationalism. This has hardened domestic support for the war, but alienated Sri Lanka’s foreign allies.
As a result, Sri Lanka, one of Asia’s oldest democracies, has been driven to seek other friends: Pakistan, its main arms-supplier; Iran, which has been providing 70% of its oil supply on tick; and Libya, from which it expects a soft loan of $500m to arrive soon. That cash would be welcome, but insufficient to avert a looming solvency crisis. The government’s profligacy, including defence spending that has ballooned as the army’s strength has been doubled within three years, to 200,000, has depleted the country’s foreign-currency reserves, which now cover barely six weeks of imports. The president, who is also the finance minister, this week dispatched emissaries to the IMF to negotiate terms for a $1.9 billion loan.
Undoing the damage its campaign has done to Sri Lanka’s economy, reputation and democratic institutions will take years. But the government’s abuses against Tamils may prove even costlier. Annihilating the LTTE will work only if, as the government claims, they do not represent the aspirations of their marginalised community. But its ethnically-guided “control measures”, in Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s phrase, have suggested to many innocent Tamils that the government considers them terrorists. The internment of almost every resident of Mr Prabhakaran’s former northern fief, including some 70,000 before this week’s flood, provides a relatively mild, yet pressing, example of this.
Given that many of these people have grown up under the LTTE, the government obviously must vet them. It also reasonably notes that their mine-strewn paddy-fields may be unsafe for some time. Yet the government’s original plan, to keep this population penned up for a year or more, was outrageous. In a rare concession to its critics, the government has somewhat relented: it now aims to resettle 20% of the interns by the end of this month and 80% by the end of the year. Yet to members of a proud minority, almost without exception, such blundering confirms the government as just the sort of diehard Sinhalese overlord that drove the LTTE to take up arms in the first place. And indeed, some members of Mr Rajapaksa’s regime, including General Fonseka, are avowed Sinhalese chauvinists. So even moderate Tamils, their ranks severely thinned by LTTE assassins, say they will be worse off without Mr Prabhakaran as their champion. Echoing the LTTE’s propagandists, a retired Tamil judge, an otherwise sensible pundit, accuses the government of genocide.
Winning the peace
For Mr Rajapaksa to win over many Tamils would be tough. Yet if he is to turn military triumph into enduring peace, he must try. And in some ways, he has an historic opportunity to succeed. Crowned with laurels, he is expected to hold parliamentary and presidential elections within a year, and win thumping majorities in both. That would give him—and his three brothers with ministerial status—unprecedented power to transform Sri Lanka. Having removed the obstructive LTTE, or (remembering the restorative powers of the Tamil diaspora) at least crippled it, Mr Rajapaksa could preside over the emergence of a liberal Tamil polity. By implementing a policy of regional devolution, that has existed on the statute for two decades but never in fact, he would go a long way to meeting the basic political demand of most Tamils. Such steps would win Mr Rajapaksa global acclaim. Yet there seems worryingly little chance he will take them.
As in the east, the government says it will quickly hold an election in the north for a provincial government. It also promises massive infrastructural development in the region. Yet Eastern Province is an unconvincing blueprint for healing Sri Lanka. Its election, won by a coalition led by Minister Karuna’s mob, was tainted by allegations of voter intimidation. Under the chief-ministership of Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, a former LTTE child-soldier and comrade of Minister Karuna (with whom he is now at war), it remains worryingly violent. According to the International Crisis Group, which this month released a discouraging report on progress in the east, Mr Chandrakanthan’s administration has minimal power.
Nor should the north count on even this modest reform. In the absence of a powerful local proxy, the government is mulling having another of its controversial Tamil allies, Douglas Devananda, elected as its chief minister. This might be difficult. Mr Devananda, the minister for social welfare, is said to be loathed in Jaffna, the capital of Northern Province. But if he, or some other enemy of the LTTE, cannot be assured of victory, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa says the election may not be held. Despite the supposed liberation of the region from the terrorists’ yoke the authorities seem strangely worried that northerners may yet vote in a pro-LTTE government.
Apr 23rd 2009 | COLOMBO
But the imminent end of war offers an historic chance to make peace
Reuters
A DARK herd creeps across a grassy plain, wades a shallow lagoon and clambers to safety. Filmed from the air on April 20th, this was a scene Sri Lanka’s government had been dreaming of: the start of a mass breakout from the Tamil Tigers’ last sanctuary by, it claims, over 100,000 refugees—perhaps two-thirds of those being held hostage there. Having inspired the exodus, by breaching a sandy embankment around this “refuge”, a few kilometres of beach in north-eastern Sri Lanka, the army has encircled the surviving Tigers.
According to its private estimate, the Tigers may be reduced to 1,000 hardened fighters, plus a few thousand recently impressed refugees. The army believes Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tiger chief, and his senior henchmen are among them—as was also claimed this week by a spokesman for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the rebels are properly known, after the Eelam, or Tamil homeland, for which they have waged a 26-year war. To bag these men, the last prize of a brutal two-year offensive, the army claims to be using stealthy tactics, with “deep-penetration” commandos and snipers. It has a history of over-egging its battlefield triumphs. But the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa seems genuinely to believe that one of Asia’s oldest wars could be over within days.
That would be momentous, and the island-nation’s Sinhalese majority will rush to celebrate it—and perhaps also give Mr Rajapaksa victory in an important regional election, in Western Province, on April 25th. Sri Lanka’s long war has probably cost over 100,000 lives, including 30,000 in the past two years.
Coinciding with a period of high economic growth outside the war-zone, in the west and south, the conflict has come to seem an increasingly anachronistic blot on a hopeful country. By rallying Sinhalese, who make up around three-quarters of the population, to support an all-out campaign against the Tigers, which his steely defence chief and brother, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, and General Sarath Fonseka, the army commander, have ably delivered, Mr Rajapaksa has almost erased this stain. Nor should Mr Prabhakaran and his crew be mourned. A well-organised and vicious terrorist group, expert in brainwashing and suicide-blasting, the LTTE has maintained its fief—which until late 2006 extended over almost a third of the country—by murder and fear. Moreover, having sabotaged a peace initiative of the previous government, and helped it lose an election by imposing a boycott on Tamil voters under its sway, Mr Prabhakaran has had the war he was asking for.
Yet, among Tamils, who may represent 18% of Sri Lanka’s population, including a community descended from 19th-century Indian immigrants which has played little part in the war, Mr Rajapaksa’s impending declaration of victory will be largely derided. And the congratulations of many foreign governments, especially Western ones, will be muted. The main reason is that the government’s apparent victory has come at an appalling cost. Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, said this week that the entire world was disappointed that in its efforts to end the war, it was causing “such untold suffering”.
In its rush to exterminate the Tigers—partly in justified fear of their skill at manipulating foreign opinion—the army has shown a cruel disregard for Tamil civilians crowding the battlefield. Earlier this month the UN estimated that since early January, when the Tigers’ fled their northern capital, Kilinochchi, driving perhaps 200,000 civilians before them, some 4,500 had been killed and 12,000 wounded. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has evacuated over 10,000 wounded civilians and their relatives from the no-fire zone, said on April 20th that hundreds more had been killed or wounded since the army made its breach.
Most appear to have been victims of shellfire inside the Tigers’ last refuge, though the government designated it a “no-fire zone” and claims to have shelled it only when civilians would not be harmed. It accuses the Tigers of bombarding the zone, to bolster international demands for a humanitarian ceasefire. But entrapped civilians, including doctors manning a makeshift hospital on the northern tip of the zone, say the army is to blame; and human-rights researchers believe them. More broadly, the government’s campaign has been marked by gross disregard for the rule of law, especially as it applies to Tamils. The defection in 2004 of a senior LTTE commander known as “Karuna”, now minister for national integration and reconciliation, enabled the army to capture the east rapidly, by mid-2007. Unfazed by the crimes allegedly committed by its proxy, including the forcible recruitment of children and many murders, the government has partly emulated them. In the east and elsewhere, especially Colombo, the country’s main city, it is alleged to have abducted and killed hundreds of young Tamils. Nor are Sinhalese entirely safe, especially journalists. Several have been mysteriously assassinated, and the rest terrorised. Reporters Without Borders, an NGO, considers Sri Lanka more hostile for journalists than any other democracy.
Asked whether he could not have prosecuted a just war more justly, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the defence chief, says the government had no choice but to use extraordinary tactics against a monstrous foe. Mr Rajapaksa denied they included extra-judicial killing. But he admitted that many Tamils had been detained and interrogated for extended periods. Most, he claimed, were operating as LTTE agents under false identities. “You can’t expect all the normal things that happen in a normal society because the LTTE are not like that.”
The American example
If this recalls the defence of water-boarding and other brutalities offered by America’s former government, it should. A former Sri Lankan army colonel, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is also an American citizen; and the government has often likened its war against the LTTE to America’s zero-tolerance of Islamist terrorists. To an extent, America and its Western allies have encouraged the comparison, by proscribing the Tigers as a terrorist group. Yet the Western powers, which face no threat from the LTTE and whose politicians are susceptible to skilful lobbying by the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils who bankroll it, have extended their sympathy only so far. They have lambasted the government for its human-rights abuses and, in the case of the EU, Sri Lanka’s biggest export market, threatened to cancel preferential trade terms. Making matters worse, the government has used such criticism, levelled, it claims, by Tiger-hugging imperialists, to stir up Sinhalese nationalism. This has hardened domestic support for the war, but alienated Sri Lanka’s foreign allies.
As a result, Sri Lanka, one of Asia’s oldest democracies, has been driven to seek other friends: Pakistan, its main arms-supplier; Iran, which has been providing 70% of its oil supply on tick; and Libya, from which it expects a soft loan of $500m to arrive soon. That cash would be welcome, but insufficient to avert a looming solvency crisis. The government’s profligacy, including defence spending that has ballooned as the army’s strength has been doubled within three years, to 200,000, has depleted the country’s foreign-currency reserves, which now cover barely six weeks of imports. The president, who is also the finance minister, this week dispatched emissaries to the IMF to negotiate terms for a $1.9 billion loan.
Undoing the damage its campaign has done to Sri Lanka’s economy, reputation and democratic institutions will take years. But the government’s abuses against Tamils may prove even costlier. Annihilating the LTTE will work only if, as the government claims, they do not represent the aspirations of their marginalised community. But its ethnically-guided “control measures”, in Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s phrase, have suggested to many innocent Tamils that the government considers them terrorists. The internment of almost every resident of Mr Prabhakaran’s former northern fief, including some 70,000 before this week’s flood, provides a relatively mild, yet pressing, example of this.
Given that many of these people have grown up under the LTTE, the government obviously must vet them. It also reasonably notes that their mine-strewn paddy-fields may be unsafe for some time. Yet the government’s original plan, to keep this population penned up for a year or more, was outrageous. In a rare concession to its critics, the government has somewhat relented: it now aims to resettle 20% of the interns by the end of this month and 80% by the end of the year. Yet to members of a proud minority, almost without exception, such blundering confirms the government as just the sort of diehard Sinhalese overlord that drove the LTTE to take up arms in the first place. And indeed, some members of Mr Rajapaksa’s regime, including General Fonseka, are avowed Sinhalese chauvinists. So even moderate Tamils, their ranks severely thinned by LTTE assassins, say they will be worse off without Mr Prabhakaran as their champion. Echoing the LTTE’s propagandists, a retired Tamil judge, an otherwise sensible pundit, accuses the government of genocide.
Winning the peace
For Mr Rajapaksa to win over many Tamils would be tough. Yet if he is to turn military triumph into enduring peace, he must try. And in some ways, he has an historic opportunity to succeed. Crowned with laurels, he is expected to hold parliamentary and presidential elections within a year, and win thumping majorities in both. That would give him—and his three brothers with ministerial status—unprecedented power to transform Sri Lanka. Having removed the obstructive LTTE, or (remembering the restorative powers of the Tamil diaspora) at least crippled it, Mr Rajapaksa could preside over the emergence of a liberal Tamil polity. By implementing a policy of regional devolution, that has existed on the statute for two decades but never in fact, he would go a long way to meeting the basic political demand of most Tamils. Such steps would win Mr Rajapaksa global acclaim. Yet there seems worryingly little chance he will take them.
As in the east, the government says it will quickly hold an election in the north for a provincial government. It also promises massive infrastructural development in the region. Yet Eastern Province is an unconvincing blueprint for healing Sri Lanka. Its election, won by a coalition led by Minister Karuna’s mob, was tainted by allegations of voter intimidation. Under the chief-ministership of Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, a former LTTE child-soldier and comrade of Minister Karuna (with whom he is now at war), it remains worryingly violent. According to the International Crisis Group, which this month released a discouraging report on progress in the east, Mr Chandrakanthan’s administration has minimal power.
Nor should the north count on even this modest reform. In the absence of a powerful local proxy, the government is mulling having another of its controversial Tamil allies, Douglas Devananda, elected as its chief minister. This might be difficult. Mr Devananda, the minister for social welfare, is said to be loathed in Jaffna, the capital of Northern Province. But if he, or some other enemy of the LTTE, cannot be assured of victory, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa says the election may not be held. Despite the supposed liberation of the region from the terrorists’ yoke the authorities seem strangely worried that northerners may yet vote in a pro-LTTE government.
White House says the government of Sri Lanka must stop shelling neutral areas and allow international aid groups to work
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403516.html
WH: Sri Lanka must stop shelling neutral areas
The Associated Press
Friday, April 24, 2009; 8:04 PM
WASHINGTON -- The White House says the government of Sri Lanka must stop shelling neutral areas and allow international aid groups to work during the nation's civil war.
The White House on Friday said Washington is "deeply concerned about the plight of innocent civilians caught up in the conflict." The White House says civilians should be allowed to leave the combat zone, and journalists should be allowed to report on the violence.
Washington also called on both sides to adhere to humanitarian law and warned abuses would make reconciliation difficult.
The United Nations on Friday reported almost 6,500 ethnic Tamil civilians have been killed in the last three months. The south Asian island nation has endured a quarter-century of civil strife.
WH: Sri Lanka must stop shelling neutral areas
The Associated Press
Friday, April 24, 2009; 8:04 PM
WASHINGTON -- The White House says the government of Sri Lanka must stop shelling neutral areas and allow international aid groups to work during the nation's civil war.
The White House on Friday said Washington is "deeply concerned about the plight of innocent civilians caught up in the conflict." The White House says civilians should be allowed to leave the combat zone, and journalists should be allowed to report on the violence.
Washington also called on both sides to adhere to humanitarian law and warned abuses would make reconciliation difficult.
The United Nations on Friday reported almost 6,500 ethnic Tamil civilians have been killed in the last three months. The south Asian island nation has endured a quarter-century of civil strife.
165,000 civilians face imminent starvation, LTTE urges IC to act
165,000 civilians face imminent starvation, LTTE urges IC to act
[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 23:52 GMT]
In a press statement titled 'UN and IC Need to Act Faster to Prevent Hunger' the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam Friday said 165,000 Tamil civilians belonging to 40,000 families within the LTTE controlled area in Mullaiththeevu coast are faced with serious crisis due to the deliberate denial of food and other humanitarian supplies by the Sri Lankan Government. "The LTTE urges the UN and other members of the international community to act promptly to ensure immediate and continuous supply of food to these people. We fear that further delay can result in a crisis similar to that faced in Darfur or even deadlier," the statement released from Vanni said.
Full text of the statement follows:
Media Release
24th April 2009
UN and IC Need to Act Faster to Prevent Hunger
The civilian population in the LTTE controlled Mullitivu coastal areas are faced with serious crisis due to the deliberate denial of food and other humanitarian supplies by the Sri Lankan Government. The dwindling stocks coupled with the deliberate withholding of fresh supplies has made starvation imminent over 165 000 civilians belonging to 40, 000 families now living in this area. Food supplies have been withheld since 2nd April, local authorities have been seeking dry rations since 11th April in an attempt to minimize the spectre of starvation that looms ahead. According to the District Secretariat for the month of March just 1050 Metric Tons of food was received whereas the minimum requires was 4950 MT.
In addition to preventing international humanitarian agencies into the Vanni region, the World food organization has been purposely delayed and frequently denied access, since the escalation of this phase of offensive operation by the Sri Lankan armed forces. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government has continued to deny access to international media to report on the humanitarian catastrophy that is unfolding.
In the last few months, the Sri Lankan regime has blocked the food supplies through land and sea. The supply routes have been deliberately targeted by artillery and mortars. The occupation of Puthukdiyerupu and surrounding areas has made impossible food supplies by land. Delivery by sea the only option for supplies to the people living in the LTTE controlled areas.
This systematic and deliberate denial of food, medicine and other medical supplies in serious breach to the international humanitarian law is a war crime and falls within the international crime of genocide.
The LTTE urges the UN and other members of the international community to act promptly to ensure immediate and continuous supply of food to these people. We fear that further delay can result in a crisis similar to that faced in Darfur or even deadlier.
The LTTE welcomes the announcement of the UNSG on sending humanitarian monitoring team to this part of the Island. We are prepared to engage in a constructive dialogue to address the humanitarian crisis in Vanni.
Political Head Quarters
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam
[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 23:52 GMT]
In a press statement titled 'UN and IC Need to Act Faster to Prevent Hunger' the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam Friday said 165,000 Tamil civilians belonging to 40,000 families within the LTTE controlled area in Mullaiththeevu coast are faced with serious crisis due to the deliberate denial of food and other humanitarian supplies by the Sri Lankan Government. "The LTTE urges the UN and other members of the international community to act promptly to ensure immediate and continuous supply of food to these people. We fear that further delay can result in a crisis similar to that faced in Darfur or even deadlier," the statement released from Vanni said.
Full text of the statement follows:
Media Release
24th April 2009
UN and IC Need to Act Faster to Prevent Hunger
The civilian population in the LTTE controlled Mullitivu coastal areas are faced with serious crisis due to the deliberate denial of food and other humanitarian supplies by the Sri Lankan Government. The dwindling stocks coupled with the deliberate withholding of fresh supplies has made starvation imminent over 165 000 civilians belonging to 40, 000 families now living in this area. Food supplies have been withheld since 2nd April, local authorities have been seeking dry rations since 11th April in an attempt to minimize the spectre of starvation that looms ahead. According to the District Secretariat for the month of March just 1050 Metric Tons of food was received whereas the minimum requires was 4950 MT.
In addition to preventing international humanitarian agencies into the Vanni region, the World food organization has been purposely delayed and frequently denied access, since the escalation of this phase of offensive operation by the Sri Lankan armed forces. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government has continued to deny access to international media to report on the humanitarian catastrophy that is unfolding.
In the last few months, the Sri Lankan regime has blocked the food supplies through land and sea. The supply routes have been deliberately targeted by artillery and mortars. The occupation of Puthukdiyerupu and surrounding areas has made impossible food supplies by land. Delivery by sea the only option for supplies to the people living in the LTTE controlled areas.
This systematic and deliberate denial of food, medicine and other medical supplies in serious breach to the international humanitarian law is a war crime and falls within the international crime of genocide.
The LTTE urges the UN and other members of the international community to act promptly to ensure immediate and continuous supply of food to these people. We fear that further delay can result in a crisis similar to that faced in Darfur or even deadlier.
The LTTE welcomes the announcement of the UNSG on sending humanitarian monitoring team to this part of the Island. We are prepared to engage in a constructive dialogue to address the humanitarian crisis in Vanni.
Political Head Quarters
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam
UNHCR starting emergency airlift of relief to Sri Lanka
UNHCR starting emergency airlift of relief to Sri Lanka
2009-04-24 22:42:47
GENEVA, Friday (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that it was starting an emergency airlift of tents and other supplies to Sri Lanka, where tens of thousands of people have fled fighting in the northeast.
The airlift, which could begin as early as this weekend, will carry 5,000 tents suitable for families and other items from the agency's stockpile in Dubai to the capital Colombo.
"The decision follows a dramatic escalation in fighting between government forces and Tamil rebels in recent days as the government attempts to flush out the remaining rebel stronghold," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
Indian envoys met Sri Lanka's president on Friday after New Delhi demanded a truce in the closing phase of a 25-year war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which U.N. data says may have killed almost 6,500 people in the last three months.
The Sri Lankan military said more than 108,000 people had poured out of the dwindling rebel-held area since Monday.
The tents will be used to shelter families who have fled the conflict zone now gathered in some 38 camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the towns of Vavuniya, Jaffna and Trincomalee, the UNHCR said.
"Overcrowding at the camps is becoming a major worry...Many IDPs in the camps have no shelter from the sweltering heat."
The Geneva-based agency urged the government to allocate more land to build emergency shelter and water and sanitation infrastructure and make public buildings available for shelter.
"Aid workers also cite growing problems of malnourishment, lack of transport to move the sick to hospitals and a shortage of medical personnel," it said. "Some of the displaced have not eaten for days."
SITUATION CATASTROPHIC
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that the situation in northeastern Sri Lanka remained "catastrophic".
"Several tens of thousands of people are still trapped in the conflict area with very little access to medical care, food and water. Sanitation is deplorable," ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno told a news briefing in Geneva.
The ICRC managed to evacuate 900 wounded and sick people since Monday and plans to evacuate another 300-400 people.
Sri Lankan authorities were preventing the neutral humanitarian agency from bringing life-saving surgical and medical supplies into the conflict zone, the spokesman said.
"The couple of doctors still operating within the conflict zone work with absolutely nothing. They have no blood supplies, no antibiotics and a very limited amount of bandages," he said.
"We are continuing to negotiate this delivery of medical material in the zone with the authorities but with no success for the moment," Schorno added.
UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau warned that risks were growing for civilians, especially children, caught in the crossfire. "The risk of seeing more and more children killed is considerable and unacceptable," she told reporters in Geneva.
2009-04-24 22:42:47
GENEVA, Friday (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that it was starting an emergency airlift of tents and other supplies to Sri Lanka, where tens of thousands of people have fled fighting in the northeast.
The airlift, which could begin as early as this weekend, will carry 5,000 tents suitable for families and other items from the agency's stockpile in Dubai to the capital Colombo.
"The decision follows a dramatic escalation in fighting between government forces and Tamil rebels in recent days as the government attempts to flush out the remaining rebel stronghold," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
Indian envoys met Sri Lanka's president on Friday after New Delhi demanded a truce in the closing phase of a 25-year war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which U.N. data says may have killed almost 6,500 people in the last three months.
The Sri Lankan military said more than 108,000 people had poured out of the dwindling rebel-held area since Monday.
The tents will be used to shelter families who have fled the conflict zone now gathered in some 38 camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) around the towns of Vavuniya, Jaffna and Trincomalee, the UNHCR said.
"Overcrowding at the camps is becoming a major worry...Many IDPs in the camps have no shelter from the sweltering heat."
The Geneva-based agency urged the government to allocate more land to build emergency shelter and water and sanitation infrastructure and make public buildings available for shelter.
"Aid workers also cite growing problems of malnourishment, lack of transport to move the sick to hospitals and a shortage of medical personnel," it said. "Some of the displaced have not eaten for days."
SITUATION CATASTROPHIC
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that the situation in northeastern Sri Lanka remained "catastrophic".
"Several tens of thousands of people are still trapped in the conflict area with very little access to medical care, food and water. Sanitation is deplorable," ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno told a news briefing in Geneva.
The ICRC managed to evacuate 900 wounded and sick people since Monday and plans to evacuate another 300-400 people.
Sri Lankan authorities were preventing the neutral humanitarian agency from bringing life-saving surgical and medical supplies into the conflict zone, the spokesman said.
"The couple of doctors still operating within the conflict zone work with absolutely nothing. They have no blood supplies, no antibiotics and a very limited amount of bandages," he said.
"We are continuing to negotiate this delivery of medical material in the zone with the authorities but with no success for the moment," Schorno added.
UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau warned that risks were growing for civilians, especially children, caught in the crossfire. "The risk of seeing more and more children killed is considerable and unacceptable," she told reporters in Geneva.
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