Tamil Justice

Reuters - Sri Lanka: bulk of refugees still in transit camps

Most Sri Lankan refugees resettled from large military-run camps since the end of a 25-year civil war in May are still in transit facilities while de-mining work is finished, the government said on Friday.

Human Rights and Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said 70 percent of the more than 280,000 refugees who fled the final phase of the government’s war against the Tamil Tigers had been relocated from the main camps, which drew widespread criticism.

“The bulk of them are still in temporary facilities. It’s a transit camp until the de-mining is completed. There is a quite a number in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu,” he said, referring to two former rebel-held districts in northern Sri Lanka.

On Tuesday, the government gave all those resident in the main camps permission to leave temporarily to find work or seek out relatives, answering months of international criticism over freedom of movement restrictions. More

BBC - Sri Lanka war displaced ‘free to leave’ military camps

More than 100,000 displaced people in military-run camps in northern Sri Lanka will be allowed “free movement” from Tuesday.

Up to now, Tamils in the camps who were displaced by the war were not allowed to come and go at will.

The government says the camp-dwellers will now be free to leave after giving their details to the authorities.

But with northern Sri Lanka devastated and mined, some of the displaced will want to stay on in the camps for now.  More

PM – First access to Sri Lanka camps

[audio:http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/pm/200911/2009111109-pm-01-slanka-camps-plus-backannounce.mp3]

MARK COLVIN: Whatever Australia and Indonesia try to do to stop the flow of asylum seekers in boats, the core problem begins in war and disaster zones like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

The civil war in Sri Lanka ended in May this year, but the refugee problem was just beginning. For the last six months, more than 280,000 Tamil civilians have been held in camps in the north and east of the country. Many are desperate to get out.

Human rights organisations including the UNHCR claim the Tamils are being held in conditions of internment. The Sri Lankan Government denies it. It’s also refused access, until now, to the camps for international organisations, aid workers and the media.

Our correspondent, Michael Edwards is one of the first journalists allowed into the camps. On a mobile phone, just a few minutes ago, I asked him about conditions in the camps. More

Taken from the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice blog :

The Australian Government says it enjoys ‘warm’ bilateral relations with Sri Lanka.

Does this mean that Mr Rudd’s Government has used the good relationship between the two countries to make sure Colombo hears a clear “let the near quarter of a million people in the camps go”? After all, even the mild mannered UN has now called for this.

According to TamilNet, the answer is no. It quotes senior Australian officials as saying “Australia is reluctant to call for a closure of these camps and release of the innocent IDPs as soon as possible“.

Rather, it turns out that the Government is using Australian tax dollars to pay for leading ad agency, Saatchi and Saatchi, to help scare off potential asylum seekers to Australia.

Using state of the art “social control” tactics, the campaign uses “street drama to take its message directly to the people. Actors will play people smugglers, and warn locals their efforts to escape from Sri Lanka will end in disappointment.”

9news reports that Catholic Churches are also being targeted, with literature and pamphlets being distributed around parishes warning asylum seekers they will not be welcome in Australia. The push has been dubbed the “Stay the Bloody Hell Away” campaign by media, in reference to Tourism Australia’s much-maligned “Where the Bloody Hell Are You?” campaign.

Saatchi and Saatchi can be expected to do something clever, creative and certainly not cheap. But how effective will this campaign be?

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ABC TV News : Desperate Plea

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ABC Radio AM : Asylum seekers issue personal plea to PM
As Australian Government sources say they’re monitoring as many as six more boats, 255 Sri Lankans moored in western Java have made a desperate plea to Australia and other countries to consider their bids for asylum. The group was intercepted in Indonesian waters on the weekend after a phone call from the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Indonesia’s President. Last night, AM’s Geoff Thompson went onboard the vessel and spoke to the asylum seekers.
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Click here to listen audio report from source

AFP – Girl, 9, begs for asylum as hundreds held in Indonesia

Press Trust of  India -Tamil asylum seekers appeal for refuge in Australia

ABC – Asylum seekers’ fate up to Indonesia: Gillard

ABC – Rudd talking humbug on asylum seekers: Turnbull

Brisbane Times – Tamil asylum seeker stand-off drags on

WA – Hoax emails claim asylum seekers boosted with cash, houses

The Age – UN contradicts asylum views

New Matilda – Next Time Check Your Facts, Philip

As Rudd takes a hard line on Tamil asylum seekers, Philip Ruddock’s recent claims that all is well in Sri Lanka couldn’t be further from the truth, writes Jake Lynch

“The toilets are only less than five metres from my tent and the smell was strong when the emptying of the toilet pits is not carried out in time, which is always the case. When there is water shortage, which is frequent, concern about how one is going to use the toilet becomes the most serious problem of the day, surpassing the problems of food, health and other major issues”.

So says a former inmate of Menik Farm, the vast internment camp where the Sri Lankan Government is holding upwards of a quarter of a million Tamils against their will. They were herded away from their homes five months ago in the final deadly phase of the country’s civil war, during which, according to unofficial UN estimates, as many as 20,000 people were killed.

Her eyewitness account, reported on Tamilnet, reached the outside world after she secured exit from the camp by what are euphemistically referred to as “other means”: former detainees are known to have bribed the guards with their life savings to get away.

This is what desperation feels — and smells — like. Periodic visits by “dignitaries” were marked by handouts of bread, the eyewitness records, for which the inmates would scrabble pathetically. Rations were so poor that a man went around begging for sugar to sweeten the plain black tea he was feeding his newborn; the mother was so malnourished that her breast milk had prematurely dried up. Staff from the UN High Commission for Refugees were told that Tamils were not to be given vegetables unless they could buy them from Government-approved traders, who were busy leeching off the inmates.

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Daily Mirror – UN urges relocation of IDPs before monsoon season

The United Nations has appealed to the government to relocate Internally Displaced People (IDP) housed at the Menik Farm welfare camp before the monsoon season sets in as making physical arrangements at the existing sites by digging up bigger drains or ensuring better sanitation will not be enough.

UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes, speaking to reporters in New York, said that during relocation the Sri Lankan government must also ensure that those placed in transit camps are given freedom of movement and not placed in “closed” camps like most part of the Menik Farm.

Sri Lanka accepts UN criticism of camps: minister

Sri Lanka on Thursday said it accepted much of the United Nations’ recent criticism over its handling of 250,000 Tamils detained in camps since the end of the island’s ethnic conflict six months ago.

Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe pledged the government would address recommendations made by Walter Kaelin, a representative of the United Nations secretary-general, who last week toured the detention facilities.

“He (Kaelin) said a lot of factual things like getting the sewer and sanitation right on an urgent basis and to make things comfortable for those living inside the camps,” Samarasinghe told AFP.

“It is a very positive statement. We take these things in the right spirit.”

The government has vowed to re-settle all people displaced during the decades of war by January, but international aid and human rights groups have questioned its commitment to the welfare of Tamil civilians.

Kaelin spent five days visiting the overcrowded camps and holding talks with officials.

He asked Sri Lanka to comply with its international obligations and said a clash at the weekend between troops and detainees raised serious human rights issues.

Sri Lanka has resisted repeated calls to close the camps, saying it needed more time to weed out former Tamil Tiger rebel fighters.

AFP : UN ratchets up criticism of Sri Lankan camps
The United Nations on Tuesday issued its strongest criticism yet of Sri Lanka over its continued internment of 250,000 people who fled fighting in the final stages of the island’s separatist war.

Walter Kaelin, a representative of the United Nations secretary-general, said civilians held in tightly-guarded camps should be granted freedom to ensure that the island complied with its international obligations.

“Immediate and substantial progress in restoring freedom of movement for the displaced is an imperative if Sri Lanka is to respect the rights of its citizens and comply with its commitments and obligations under international law,” he said in a statement received here.

He criticised the slow screening of people in the camps for suspected Tamil Tiger rebels and called for unhindered humanitarian access to the camps by international and local aid workers.

Restoring freedom to the displaced “is becoming a matter of urgency, and I remain very concerned about the very slow pace of releases”, Kaelin said, two days after wrapping up a visit to camps in the island’s north.

Kaelin, UN representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons, said a clash over the weekend between troops and people interred in a camp underscored the growing tensions and human rights abuses.

The incident “that resulted in injuries to two persons raises serious human rights issues”, he said.

Sri Lanka has resisted repeated calls to free the civilians saying that the authorities need more time to screen the them and weed out suspected Tamil rebels.

The UN has said that up to 7,000 civilians may have perished in the first four months of the year while many more were wounded. Sri Lanka has denied targeting civilians and blamed Tigers for using civilians as a human shield.

Tiger rebels were defeated in May when the military wiped out their leadership. The offensive sparked international condemnation of the government’s handling of the final stages of the war.

The UN announced earlier this month that Sri Lanka’s government was not making sufficient progress in implementing a promise to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in May to resettle the refugees within six months.

Reuters : Rapid refugee resettlement a must for Sri Lanka-UN

BBC : UN in Tamil ‘bitterness’ warning
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has warned that Sri Lanka risks creating “bitterness” if it fails to rapidly resettle Tamil refugees.</strong