The Australian Red Cross says much of the political debate over asylum seekers and refugees is out of step with community attitudes.
Its survey of 1,000 people across the country found more than 80 per cent of respondents were willing to assist a refugee to settle in Australia.
Of those surveyed, 67 per cent agreed refugees have made a positive contribution to Australian society, while 83 per cent agreed people fleeing persecution should be able to seek protection in another country…More
AUSTRALIAN of the Year Patrick McGorry has called for the asylum seeker issue to be taken out of the coming federal election and replaced by a return to a bipartisan approach…
…He said people should vote on economic issues, the health system and mental health.
”Mental health is really a huge issue that needs support and obviously refugees and asylum seekers need to be part of that whole process.”
Sri Lankan Aran Mylvaganam, 26, told refugee supporters who marched to Fitzroy Town Hall that he was 11 when in 1995, he saw the bombing of his school in Jaffna by the Sir Lankan Army and the killing of 72 Tamil school children and the wounding of more than 200.
”On that day my 14-year-old brother was cut into half and murdered in cold blood by the Sri Lankan Army,” he said.
That same day, he came upon his close friend, ”hanging from the tamarind tree by his intestines”.
In 1997, aged 13, he came to Australian on his own and spent three months in detention.
He was treated for depression. For three years the Immigration Department refused to admit his parents until, under pressure from doctors and welfare bodies, it relented.
Mr Mylvaganam, a finance officer, told The Age, his parents arrived in 2000 but he continued to to be depressed until 2006.
”The effects of war don’t go away even when you have your parents,” he said.
He said the situation facing Tamils in Sri Lanka today was much worse today than when he was there in 1996. More than 2000 youths being held as suspected Tamil Tiger supporters, faced torture.
Every day, young girls and boys disappeared at the hands of government-supported paramilitaries, he said.
”How can Australia say it is safe for refugees to return?” he said. More
SRI LANKA: Aid Organisations Struggle to Operate in Post-war Sri Lanka
The Sri Lankan government wants the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to scale down its operations in the country, but is sparing other international nongovernmental organisations amid questions over the post-war role for humanitarian workers.
Sarasi Wijeratne, ICRC spokesperson in Colombo, this week confirmed that they were shutting down four offices in the eastern region. These offices had 148 local staff and up to 10 expatriates, out of its total strength of 649. Read full article here.
Sri Lanka: War-Wounded and Displaced Patients Flood MSF Hospitals
An update from MSF – Click here.
Colombo’s order to the Red Cross to cut back its work at Tamil internment camps is an outrage. The world must boycott Sri Lanka until it starts releasing detainees
There is something despicable about forcing doctors to lie about war crimes. By their calling, doctors are committed to relieving human suffering, to helping the sick and preventing disease. It is therefore particularly disturbing to see the five doctors who remained with the besieged Tamil civilians as the Sri Lankan Army closed in being paraded before journalists to deny their earlier casualty reports. Men who risked their lives to save lives are now being forced to take part in a political charade to cover up the appalling suffering two months ago — suffering that is still being inflicted on 300,000 Tamils interned in detention camps in northern Sri Lanka.
As the army squeezed the Tamil Tigers into an ever smaller strip of beach, the doctors were the only source of news about the slaughter caused by the military’s indiscriminate shelling. The United Nations found that more than 7,000 civilians were killed between January and May. Subsequent aerial photographs of beach graves, revealed in The Times, suggested that the figure was more than 20,000. World outrage embarrassed the Colombo Government. The doctors were swiftly arrested and nothing further was heard of them until Wednesday.
Their recantation, clearly made under duress, was as ludicrous as it was humiliating. Mechanically rehearsed but clearly nervous, they drastically reduced the death toll estimates, denied that a key hospital had been shelled and insisted that they had been forced to exaggerate the totals by Tiger fighters. In response the UN yesterday asserted tersely that it stood by its figures.
Few people will be fooled by Colombo’s crude attempt at a propaganda victory. For the Government took a far more sinister and callous step yesterday when it ordered the International Committee of the Red Cross to scale back its operations in Sri Lanka, leave the camps where it has been monitoring conditions and halt its aid programmes. The need for expatriate assistance was much less now than before, the Government asserted. Sri Lankans were fully able to meet all the needs of those detained in “welfare villages”.
The claim is an outrageous lie. Senior international aid figures said yesterday that about 1,400 people a week are dying at one of the big internment camps. Tamil civilians, rounded up after the government victory on the pretext of a security need to weed out former fighters, are suffering from hunger, disease, insanitary conditions, overcrowding and the enforced separation of families. The Government has taken almost no steps to free them. Indeed, a former Sri Lankan foreign minister has accused it of a policy of deliberate “ethnic cleansing” to change the population balance.
Colombo’s order puts the Red Cross in a difficult position. Historically, it has rarely spoken out — even about Nazi concentration camps — so as not to jeopardise access to those in greatest danger. It was the only aid agency allowed inside the war zone in the final stages of the conflict. But its few statements angered the Government. Sri Lanka wants no witnesses to what is now being done in these modern concentration camps.
If the Red Cross is forced to withdraw, however, the outside world should step in. The Sri Lankan Government is awaiting a $1.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to address its balance-of-payments crisis and postwar development. None of this money should be paid until independent aid agencies are guaranteed access to the Tamil camps and until Sri Lanka starts to release those detained. Other world bodies — the Commonwealth, the United Nations and even world cricketing organisations — should boycott Colombo until reconciliation begins. A nation cannot run concentration camps and expect the world to look away.
On 8th July 2009, Sri Lankan Government paraded 5 Tamil Doctors (Dr. T.Sathiyamoorthy, Dr. T.Varatharaja, Dr V.Shanmugaraja, Dr. Illancheliyan Pallavan and Dr. S. Sivapalan ), who are currently under Sri Lankan Military Intelligence custody for nearly 2 months, in an effort to cover-up its War Crime Evidences. Those five doctors who acted as the eyes and ears of the world during Sri Lankan Government’s War Without Witness waged in Vanni recanted their previous reporting under duress, sources close to their families confirmed to “War Without Witness”.
The whole drama was staged at Sri Lankan Defence Ministry, ‘Media Centre for National Security’ and moderated by Mr Jeyarajan Yogaraj, son of a Sri Lankan Police Officer and a full time employee of Sri Lankan State Media, Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation & Rupavahini TV ‘eye’ Channel.
Under duress, The doctors said that only up to 750 civilians were killed between January and mid-May in the final battles of the war in 2009, a number far below the 20,000 Civilian casualty documented with identities confirmed and published by War Without Witness on 13th June 2009 ( http://warwithoutwitness.com/SLCasualityReport/ ).
Sam Zarifi, the Asia-pacific director for Amnesty International, said that the statements from the doctors were “expected and predicted”. “There are very significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary, and they raise serious concerns whether the doctors were subjected to ill-treatment during weeks of detention,” he said. “From the time the doctors were detained, the fear was that they would be used exactly this way.”
” The doctors, who appeared physically well but extremely nervous at the press conference”. ”Their recantation, clearly made under duress, was as ludicrous as it was humiliating. Mechanically rehearsed but clearly nervous, they drastically reduced the death toll estimates, denied that a key hospital had been shelled and insisted that they had been forced to exaggerate the totals by Tiger fighters. “ said The Time, UK
Considering the below facts, War Without Witness, urge main stream media, Human Rights organisations, Governments and Policy makers to be vigilant of these type of Sri Lankan Government Propaganda and also urge United Nations to not act like “club-of-governments” but rather act as a true voice of people & bring those perpetrators of Sri Lankan War Crimes into justice without fail & further delay.
Facts speak for It-Self
1) 20,000 Civilian casualty in 2009 has been documented with identities confirmed (including photos of the victims) and published by War Without Witness on 13th June 2009 ( http://warwithoutwitness.com/SLCasualityReport/ ).
3) UN withheld casualty is 20,000. U.N. official figures show more than 7,000 civilians were killed between January and May. Human rights groups accused the government of shelling heavily populated areas and accused the rebels of holding civilians as human shields. Satellite photos showed densely populated civilian areas had been shelled. Both sides denied the accusations. When asked about the doctors’ latest comments, U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said: “We stand by our statements.”
Source: http://www.innercitypress.com/3832_001.pdf , http://www.innercitypress.com/untrip3may3srilanka060209.html
4) Injured causality of more than 12,000 Tamils were transferred from Puthumattalan War Zone to Trincomalle by ship (more than 20 times) with assistance of I C R C. In addition, I C R C was assisted to transfer the injured people through land route to Vavuniya hospital and Mannar hospitals.
Full Name List ( First 10 Ships ) : http://warwithoutwitness.com/SLCasualityReport/Annex02_ICRC_Ship_PatientList.pdf
6) On 2nd July 2009 , an eyewitness said, “There 35,000 children in the camps and out of which around 1,800 are orphans. “ This would equate to a minimum of 3600 causality ( ie both parents have been killed ).
Social Welfare Deputy Minister Lionel Premasri, officially confirmed on 9th July 2009, that there are 2,800 disabled people in camps amongst 300,00 detained IDPs. Who caused this huge scale of injuries ?
Source: http://www.groundviews.org/2009/07/02/an-eye-witness-account-of-idp-camp-conditions-in-sri-lanka/
7) Mr Rajiva Wijesinha, permanent secretary in Sri Lanka’s ministry of disaster management and human rights, confessed to Guardian on 4th June that the civilian death toll from the last stages of the war as 3,000 to 5,000. Will there be another parade by Rajiva ?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/04/sri-lanka-civilians-tigers-battle
If the hospital and civilians were not indiscriminately targeted by Sri Lankan Armed Forces, how one of the doctors paraded by Sri Lankan Government have injuries in his hand ?
9) S Kanthasamy Tharmakulasingham, Administrative Officer Health Department Mullaithivu – Makeshift Hospital was killed in an indiscriminate attack on hospital on 12th May 2009. On 2nd Feb 2009, A nurse who was attending a wounded patient at Udaiyaarkaddu makeshift hospital was killed when 3 shells hit the hospital. How they have been killed if there is no such indiscriminate attack by Sri Lankan Armed Forces on Hospitals?
10) Dr. T.Sathiyamoorthy, Dr. T.Varatharaja, Dr V.Shanmugaraja, Dr. Illancheliyan Pallavan and Dr. S. Sivapalan who served the many thousands of civilians stranded in the so called “no fire zone” under the most difficult conditions of continuous aerial and artillery attacks, and have been hailed by the UN as heroes, Will the Sri Lankan Government release them immediately and recommend them for their well deserved UN award?
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has been told by Colombo to scale back in Sri Lanka.
“They have communicated that the war is now over,” a spokesman told the BBC, referring to years of bloody conflict between troops and Tamil Tiger rebels.
The news comes amid continuing concern over the fate of hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the war.
In the last months of fighting, tensions rose between the ICRC and the government over the fate of civilians.
The ICRC was the only outside agency with access to the area of combat, taking in aid and evacuating wounded people by ship.
Government troops defeated the rebels in the east in mid-May after months of heavy fighting.
The full scale of casualties is still disputed – hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and are now in government-run camps.
‘Outstanding issues’
As a first step the ICRC says it is to pull staff out of the Eastern Province “while winding down operations in the area”.
ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno told the BBC the ICRC had to respect the government’s decision.
He said: “Two sub-delegations are closing, Batticaloa and Trincomalee. A total of 140 national staff and about 10 expatriates worked in these offices.”
The Tamil Tigers were driven from Batticaloa and Trincomalee two years ago and the area has been relatively peaceful since then.
It is not clear what will happen to the ICRC’s presence in other parts of the north and east which saw more recent fighting.
Mr Schorno said: “There are still outstanding issues which we will discuss with the government.”
The Times : Victims of Tamil Tiger war hit by Sri Lanka tax on aid workers
The Sri Lankan Government is trying to siphon off millions of pounds of humanitarian aid by imposing a 0.9 per cent tax on all funding for aid groups, including the British charities Oxfam and Save the Children Fund, The Times has learnt.
Aid workers said that Burma was the only other country that they could remember imposing such a tax — one of several new measures hampering their efforts to help victims of Sri Lanka’s recent civil war…
“This is money on which people have already paid tax in their own countries and which is supposed to be helping people in need,” said one aid worker. “This is a desperate money-making measure by the Government.”
Shelling killed a Red Cross worker inside Sri Lanka’s war zone on Wednesday, the aid agency said, while troops and the Tamil Tigers battled in an intensifying fight to the finish of Asia’s longest modern war.
ABC News : Red Cross forced to abandon Sri Lankan aid mission
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been forced to abandon a mission to evacuate hundreds of injured civilians from northern Sri Lanka.
WATCH THE VIDEO
“The latest attack alleged targeted a makeshift hospital where wounded civilians were being treated. That was confirmed by a government health official initially but emphatically rejected later on by a senior minister.”
If the hospital and civilians were not indiscriminately targeted by Sri Lankan Armed Forces, how one of the doctors paraded by Sri Lankan Government have injuries in his hand ?
