Main office of the Uthayan Tamil daily in Jaffna came under grenade attack Tuesday night around 11:10 p.m., the administration of the paper told media in Colombo. Tamil media circles said the attack had come after verbal instructions by the top officials of Rajapaksa government not to publish stories related to civilian casualties in Vanni or reproduce the contents of interviews given by the LTTE officials to news agencies and media outside Sri Lanka. Uthayan and Valampuri papers had recently printed photos of children being killed in Sri Lankan attacks in Vanni.
A police guard deployed to provide duty at Uthayan paper office was wounded in the explosion caused by the grenade lobbed in the lowest floor. The two editors of the paper have been living in this floor without leaving the office premises since May 2006 when two of their employees were killed by alleged paramilitary gunmen.
One of the editorial staff of the paper told media that it was an attempt to stop the paper office from functioning. However, the grenade explosion didn't stop the printing of Wednesday's issue of the paper.
The attack comes 27 days after prominent Tamil editor of the paper, N. Vithyatharan, was abducted and later claimed arrested by the Sri Lankan police in Colombo.
"Mentioning the editor's name provoked a surprising response from Gotabaya Rajapksa, the Sri Lankan defence secretary and the brother of the SL president, said Amos Roberts, reporter for Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), who produced a documentary on media freedom in Sri Lanka for SBS Dateline program recently.
Gotabaya's response was: "He is involved in recent air attacks. I am telling you: If you are trying to give a cover-up for that person, you have the blood in your hands."
High Commissioner for UNHRC is in India on an official visit; Ms Navanetham Pillai raised the Sri Lankan issue during her discussion today with the Indian external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee. Commenting on Sri Lanka to the reporters, she said ‘I have asked the Sri Lankan government to allow human rights monitors there. I have not got any response. I am going to press for that.’
She further said, ‘our view is that you can never succeed through military solution, the problem can be solved politically. UN wants Sri Lankan government to ensure safety of the civilians.’
More to this, today Human Rights Council concluded the general debates on human rights situations that require the council’s attention. At the debate, it listened from a series of non-governmental organizations about violations of human rights in countries around the world.
Karen Parker, of International Educational Development, said the lack of attention given to the situation in Zimbabwe left the international community to help prevent mass starvation. In Sri Lanka, the Tamils had been suffering in the country since 1948. In February 2009 at the invitation of the United States Senate, the speaker had made a statement on Sri Lanka. There was now support by Senators to address the need for humanitarian assistance for the Tamils, and that they not be driven by Sri Lankan authorities into concentration camps. The Council could not afford to abate genocide. The Council was urged to hold a special session in this regard.
Gotzon Onandia-Zarrabe, of Franciscans International, in a joint statement with Pax Romana, said the situation in Sri Lanka continued to deteriorate, and the number of victims was increasing. According to local sources, the condition of civilians in Vanni was desperate. The Human Rights Council should hold a special session on Sri Lanka.
Yasantha Kodagoda, Representative of Sri Lanka, speaking in a right of reply, said the speaker for International Educational Development had continued to utter complete falsehoods regarding the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka - this organization only supported the LTTE, which was now going through its final round of terrorism. The LTTE lobbying was not uncommon at the Council. The situation in Sri Lanka, as clearly observed by the United Nations coordinator on humanitarian affairs, was an exceptional one. There was no genocidal situation - the Government was engaged in a legitimate humanitarian and military operation aimed at liberating its own people from LTTE terrorists, who did not even spare the people they falsely claimed to represent, and were abusing the humanitarian gestures of the Government. It had positioned itself inside the no-fire zone that was observed by the Government of Sri Lanka and was attacking the security forces who were fast approaching the shrinking territory. The LTTE was using people as a human shield. Sir John Holmes had personally visited the villages being administered by the Government, in which persons were being sheltered and ensured decent conditions of living. It was a complete falsehood to refer to these shelters as detention camps.
The Tamils entrapped in Vanni have undergone many displacements, now they are herded into a 14 sq miles barren land with extreme difficult living conditions. Amidst all the troubles they want to live where they belong to rather than living in detention camps. Especially the elderly prefer freedom than facility, they say they want to live on their native place and earn for their living until death
When speaking to the reporter, an elderly man said whatever food India said they have sent did not reach them. It is better for those sending food and medicine to arrange to send it direct to reach people.
Suffering Wanni civilians in Vavuniya - Sunday Leader 22nd Mar 2009
The tragic plight of displaced civilians from territory controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the Northern Province worsens with each passing day. Entrapped civilians in the rapidly dwindling Tiger dominated space face displacement, death, destruction and despair on an almost daily basis.
Despite a proliferation of media reports inspired by defence-related sources about the northern fighting, relatively very little is revealed about the tragic predicament of these displaced Wanni civilians in Vavuniya.
In the latter part of February a group of concerned civil society representatives undertook a fact-finding mission to Vavuniya to obtain first-hand knowledge of the situation there. Interacting with some of the civil society members and reading extracts of a report being compiled, provided a great deal of insight into the prevailing situation in Vavuniya.
Children of a lesser god
Some relevant excerpts of the report coupled with pertinent viewpoints expressed are combined here in the hope that some light at least may be shed on the fate of these people in Vavuniya who are indeed children of a lesser god under the existing circumstances.
Vavuniya currently has an estimated population of 183,046. In April 2006, UNICEF estimated that there were 36,908 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Vavuniya. According to the Ministry of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services, the movement of IDPs into the Vavuniya District from April 2006 to August 2008 was 12,250. It is estimated that by February 25, there were 32,125 IDPs in the Vavuniya DS Division. There were a further 5,324 in the Chettikulam DS Division.
The current influx of IDPs from the Wanni therefore adds to Vavuniya's displaced and will place a severe burden on the infrastructure and services available in the district for both the host population and the displaced.
According to Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF), their surgeon together with two local surgeons of the Vavuniya Hospital have operated on 144 patients. Some 107 of these patients needed surgery as a result of injuries sustained during the violence.
MSF is looking to support the Ministry of Health with an anaesthesiologist and other medical staff, and has also provided the hospital with 100 mattresses and bed linen, anticipating a new influx of patients.
Injuries direct result of fighting
MSF notes that "ninety percent of the injuries seen are a direct result of the fighting. People are being brought to hospitals with gunshot and shrapnel wounds. In the past two weeks, MSF has performed over 300 operations on patients."
According to figures from the Vavuniya Hospital, the total number of beds is 335 and the total number of patients has reached 653. Therefore, Vavuniya Hospital is now operating nearly 100% over capacity. IDP surgical casualties have increased to over 300 and 90% of the injuries seen are a direct result of the fighting. It seems that this number is just the tip of the iceberg.
The number of patients coming from Trincomalee now stands at 131 and patients transferred to Mannar Hospital is 184. There is also a serious shortage of medical staff: only two surgeons (one permanent and one temporary), one anesthetist, 90 nurses and 12 operating theatre nurses.
It is apparent that there will be a further influx of casualties to the Vavuniya Hospital as the fighting continues unabated. The hospital staff and resources are heavily overstretched. The hospital in Vavuniya received 131 patients from Trincomalee Hospital.
Struggling to cope
This indicates that despite all efforts at the Vavuniya Hospital to provide medical attention, it is now working well over capacity. Despite reaching full capacity, the hospital transferred only 184 patients to the Mannar Hospital and is still struggling to cope with the workload.
To compound matters further, most patients who need post-operative care and psychosocial assistance cannot be moved to transit welfare centres, which are already overcrowded, under-resourced and under-staffed. Decisions to move patients to transit welfare centres or seek alternative places are recommended by the Ministry of Health, but the overall authority and decision taken is by the Ministry of Defence.
Security imperatives determined that the IDPs from the Wanni should be located in transit or in temporary shelters in Vavuniya and therefore the Vavuniya Hospital had to take on much of the burden of caring for the injured and the sick as well as pregnant mothers and new born infants severely overstretching its capacity.
The post natal ward at the Vavuniya Hospital was caring for about 20 young women with newborn infants. Many of them were separated from family members who had no option but to remain in the Wanni. Some of them had family already located in welfare centres. However, the welfare centres with large populations of IDPs are not at all suitable to accommodate newborn infants due to overcrowded wards.
Mothers with day old infants
Shockingly, mothers and newborn infants were being released to transit welfare centres one or two days after delivery. Many of the women who had no close family members in Vavuniya were anxious about the welfare of their babies and worried about the safety and security of loved ones forced to stay behind in the Wanni.
There were about 50 women, a few with young children in the pre-natal section of the ward. While the women and children had been provided with clean clothes, the ward staff were concerned that adequate surgical garments were not available to meet demands since none of these women were able to bring their own linen to hospital as required of all pregnant women.
The staff were also short of sanitary napkins: another constant need of internally displaced women that must be provided through a well-coordinated mechanism of assistance, both to women in medical facilities as well as to women living in welfare centres.
A number of women who were brought to Vavuniya due to complications during childbirth were in the hospital but had no information on the whereabouts of family members.
It was obvious, that in the first instance priority is being given to the evacuation of the injured and the sick. Heavily pregnant mothers were moved out of danger and evacuated while husbands and family members had to stay behind;an injured father would be taken out while his wife and children were forced to remain in the war zone; women fled across battle lines with children in the hope that they would be spared.
Injured badly
A woman with injuries to her right thigh, recalled how she left the bunker she was sheltering in at the Sudanthirapuram camp (in the safe zone) because one of her children wanted water. She got caught in the shelling and injured her thigh badly; she was subsequently evacuated to Vavuniya.
She believes her children are in a welfare centre but does not know what happened to her husband who was left behind.She has relations in Vavuniya and she appealed to have the children sent to them.
Civilians were often put into groups and evacuated by the military as a matter of expediency and family members were inevitably separated from each other. The first separations occurred at this point.
The military then follow a screening process beginning from the first point of contact till the government agent allocates welfare centres to those arriving in Vavuniya.We were informed that screening takes place in Killinochchi and Omanthai by the military. At the time of our visit no independent monitoring of the screening process was yet in place.
No evacuations from Omanthai
According to Minister of Human Rights and Disaster Management, Mahinda Samarasinghe, UNHCR and ICRC have now been granted access to the Omanthai checkpoint, but not to Killinochchi Town. However, according to UNHCR there have been no evacuations from Omanthai checkpoint since this new development (March 1). Speaking at the Consultation on the National Human Rights Action Plan, the Minister also said that approximately 250 LTTE cadres have been identified at the screening points.
A further separation occurs when the injured are warded in hospitals and others are taken to welfare centres. Those evacuated by the ICRC accompanied ships from the beach at Puthumathalan, are screened at the Trincomalee General Hospital by the military.
IDPs are not aware of this process and are fearful and anxious at any separation. Many of them have never travelled out of the Wanni and are now fleeing a brutal war. They need to be reassured about the whereabouts of loved ones. We saw no indication that the simple procedure of issuing receipts indicating where each person is moved to - whether a hospital, welfare centre, rehabilitation centre, etc. - is being followed at any of the screening points.
There is no such process in place and information about the IDPs is kept classified by the Ministry of Defence. There needs to be an effective process in place to track the movement of IDPs at every point of screening and this process has to be monitored by independent observers.
We were informed by aid workers in Vavuniya and Colombo that UNHCR and ICRC are in the process of negotiating a reunification process with the government to bring families together but when and how this will be implemented has not been confirmed.
As noted earlier, at the time of our visit we were informed that there were 13 welfare centres in Vavuniya. These were considered transit centres and were located in school premises, community halls, existing IDP facilities and so on.
Housed in schools
As of February 25, 26,801 IDPs were divided between the Nelukkulam School, Pampaimadu Campus, Gamini MV, Poonthottam MV, College of Education, Technical College, Kovilkulam Hindu Vidyalaya, Vavuniya MMV and the Saivapragasa School. The above buildings were not constructed with the present use in mind and do not provide the necessary facilities to shelter this number of IDPs. Nor are they able to provide for the specific needs of people displaced by conflict.
Given the large influx of people, it now appears that the earlier belief that IDPs would be moved from transit centres within three months to semi permanent welfare centres will now take close to six months.
Their next destination will be the welfare villages which are now under construction. We were informed that resettlement in the Wanni would be possible only after two to three years. However, no one had definitive information.
In the short term, it should be noted that the weather in Vavuniya reaches high temperatures of 38 to 42 degrees during the months of April to August, which could exacerbate disease and give more discomfort to the IDPs. We were told that most IDPs are to be settled in semi-permanent shelters in a 500 acre area within Chettikulam.
Shelters are being built and whole families and communities are to be settled there. Schools, hospitals and other amenities are to be provided by the government. We were informed that the government would utilise its own resources as well as depend on international donor agencies and INGOs to fund this enterprise.
No freedom of mobility
Since there will be no freedom of mobility and the people settled here will not have access to traditional livelihoods, everyone will have to depend on free government or I/NGO provided rations and provisions, creating a new set of socio cultural and economic problems and challenges.
This also risks creating tension between the IDP population and the host community, as the host community may feel hard done by that they have to work in difficult conditions to earn their living while the IDPs get 'free handouts' and will not be expected to work for a living.
We also found that the IDPs from the Wanni had suffered multiple displacements in the course of the past year as they moved in search of safer locations as the fighting engulfed all civilian habitats.
There were people who had fled from the Mannar District into the Wanni to escape the fighting in February last year. They had first moved to Madhu and then to Killinochchi and finally to Mullaithivu and from there to Vavuniya.
On the move
Many of the Wanni residents had been on the move every two weeks since the fighting intensified.They are afraid, tired and traumatised.They have no idea of what is going to happen to them next.We were informed that one of the camps had a Sinhalese family - who had lived in Killinochchi for 30 years, doing business - in the IDP Centres with no possibility of leaving.
No Wanni IDPs are allowed visits from family members in Vavuniya or elsewhere in Sri Lanka. According to aid workers in Vavuniya, government servants from the Wanni are at the IDP transit centres, including an assistant government agent and a zonal director of education.
There are also university students at the IDP welfare centres, including from the University of Jaffna. These students need to resume their education in institutions situated outside Vavuniya and need to have safe passage and support to recommence their courses. According to the Minister for Human Rights, only men and women over the age of 60 will be allowed to leave the camps to live with friends and family whether in Vavuniya or outside.
The transit welfare centres are temporary in nature: some are brick and concrete structures; some cadjan roofed shelters; some were of makeshift plastic, canvass or tin structures. Most are inadequately equipped to meet the water and sanitation needs of the population of IDPs and also offer limited shelter and privacy. It was reported to us during the visit that the limited bathing facilities for women and the scarcity of water meant that women were bathing only once in three days.
Facilities inadequate
Although certainly better than the open air spaces and hastily dug bunkers in which the IDPs were forced to seek shelter in the Wanni, it appears that the facilities in Vavuniya remain inadequate to receive the large influx of IDPs, despite the expectation since September that the civilian population in LTTE controlled areas of the Wanni would flee to government controlled territory.
Government frontline workers from the lowest level of the Grama Seva Niladhari (GN) to the highest civilian authority of the Government Agent (GA) are working to their optimum capacity to deal with the emergency but are sorely under resourced and overwhelmed.
There is also increasing pressure to vacate the schools commandeered for IDP shelter since this is creating another problem - depriving the children of the host community a right to their schools and education.
During our visit, access to welfare centres was severely restricted to civil society organisations.However I/NGOs were called upon to assist in the meeting of basic needs via the Government Agent, Vavuniya.
We were informed that they assisted with the provision of cooked meals and some non-food items. Since our visit we have been informed that I/NGOs have secured more direct access to the welfare centres which has to be negotiated through the Ministry of Defence.
Heavily guarded
The welfare centres are heavily guarded. No unauthorised entry is permitted and those living in the centres are not allowed any freedom of movement. While some centres had brick walls around them - schools, social service centres and so on, other more open structures, in public spaces were heavily ringed with razor wire: very sharp, inflexible roles of steel wire used commonly to barricade and secure military installations. The centres are also guarded round the clock by armed forces personnel.
While the government's fear of LTTE infiltration and potential suicide attacks is well founded and understandable, it is imperative that thousands and thousands of Tamil civilians are not made to pay the penalty and held in incarceration-like conditions. The civilian aspects of welfare centres must be quickly put into place.
There is no guarantee yet that civilians may be allowed out of the welfare centres and will be able to move freely in the town of Vavuniya or leave the area at all. We were informed that the Wanni IDPs will be issued identity cards.
Since every citizen of Sri Lanka is issued with a National Identity Card this additional means of identification may only serve to further mark the Wanni IDPs and may in fact prove to be another barrier to their freedom of movement rather than an asset.
Inalienable rights
It is understood and accepted that the government must be security conscious in handling this influx of displaced persons from Tiger-controlled territory. At the same time the government must also ensure the inalienable human rights of these unfortunate victims of war.
The guiding principles enunciated by the UN on treatment of internally displaced persons are being flagrantly flouted. Being a democratically elected government it is imperative that these UN principles are adhered to strictly by the Rajapakse regime.
More importantly, the government is surely aware that much anti-Sri Lanka propaganda is being generated by interested parties citing the way in which Wanni civilians are being allegedly treated by the authorities in Vavuniya. If the government was to address the very genuine difficulties faced by the displaced Wanni civilians much of this propaganda will be rendered irrelevant.
The Rajapakse government is on the verge of a military victory against the LTTE. But territorial conquest is not everything. Of paramount importance is winning the hearts and minds of the long enslaved captive Tamil population in what was once Tiger controlled territory.
If the government fails to rectify the difficulties faced by the displaced Wanni civilians in Vavuniya and remedy the situation, it may once again be a classic re-play of the saying about winning the war and losing the peace.
Joan Ryan, a Labour MP, said: “If the Sri Lankan government does not respond to this call for a ceasefire within 24 hours, Gordon Brown should call for the suspension of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth.”
A THOUSAND amputees were among the wounded and dying waiting to be rescued from a beach in northeast Sri Lanka yesterday, according to aid agencies. Frightened Tamil families, the latest victims of the country’s 26-year civil war, were hiding in makeshift trenches as they came under artillery fire while waiting to be evacuated from Puthumathalan beach.
Last week the International Committee of the Red Cross removed 460 injured and their families from the area, using local fishermen to carry the wounded on wooden dinghies to the Green Ocean ferry leased for the operation. The ferry was due to return last night to rescue more of the injured.
Sophie Romanens, a Red Cross representative in Sri Lanka, said the scene was desperate. “The capacity for evacuation is far below the need,” she said. “We have to decide to take the casualties who are more badly injured and leave behind the ones who are less badly injured.” They are among 150,000 civilians trapped in an area of 13 square miles after fleeing a government offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the Tamil Tigers.
