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Sri Lanka has world's worst internal displacement of population
According to an August 12 study by the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, the ongoing ethnic strife between Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority has led to one of the worst crises of internal displacement in South Asia. This study was made before the recent Sri Lanka military offensive in the predominantly Tamil north of, which according to news reports have massively increased the numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
“In terms of the proportion of the population, Sri Lanka has one of the world's largest IDP populations”, concluded the study's author, Andres Angel.
Internal displacement in Sri Lanka predominantly stems from conflict-related violence caused by the clashing of the government's armed forces with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
“It is difficult to accurately gauge the number of IDPs in Sri Lanka due to several factors. Apart from the absence of appropriate monitoring mechanisms, there are divergent figures between civil organizations' and government data. The overall lack and ambivalence of existing data suggests that the precise number of IDPs is unknown. Conservative estimates report that the ethnic strife has left approximately 800,000 citizens internally displaced since the armed conflict broke out in the late 1970s. Other assessments estimate that one million Sri Lankans have been displaced at some point in the conflict. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, there are approximately 460,000 IDPs presently in Sri Lanka. There is no public document of the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) that indicates the number of IDPs in the nation today. Yet, the data that the government has made public indicates that 182,802 citizens have been displaced between April 2006 and May 2008,” said the IPCS study.
According to Catholic Bishop Thomas Savundaranayagam of Jaffna, in north Sri Lanka, nearly 200,000 civilians recently fled their homes because of the latest conflict between the army and separatist rebels.
He told a Catholic charity: “The battle with the Liberation Tigers has now reached a peak, and people are caught in the middle.
“As the troops advance, people are leaving their villages and running for their lives. They don’t know what to do.”
The refugees, who have been driven to the middle of Kilinochchy district by the fighting, face a bleak situation, living rough and taking shelter under the trees.
“There is no shelter, no water, no toilets, no food, and no medical assistance,” said Bishop Savundaranayagam.
Tents and other essential items were not being allowed in to the area, even though they were desperately needed to provide shelter for the homeless.
WHO alert
Meanwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert on August 24 about the dire conditions faced by IDPs in the island's north:
• “The situation in the northern Vanni district is tense due to intense clashes between Sri Lanka military and the LTTE. The fighting has pushed more than 20,000 people to seek refuge in Kilinochchi and Mannar during the recent weeks, bringing the total number of reported IDPs to more than 217 000.
• “The delivery of supplies such as drugs, supplementary foods and fuel to communities in LTTE-controlled areas is difficult. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation continues to be complicated by serious food, drugs and fuel shortages. District health facilities are suffering substantial medicine, personnel and fuel shortages.
• “Small-scale dengue and dysentery outbreaks were reported in Ampara, Kilinochchi, Batticaloa and Jaffna but inaccessibility and lack of human resources have caused much under-reporting.”
UNICEF warned that escalated clashes between Sri Lankan government forces and LTTE in the four northern districts of Mannar, Vavuniya, Kilinochchi and Mulaitivu, have forced tens of thousands to flee their homes, including thousands of students, some of whom were preparing to take their government exams this month.
Schooling disrupted
Twelve thousand students were among those who have been displaced by recent fighting in Mannar and Vavuniya districts alone, the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) said in a situation report on August 18.
"UNICEF reports 7,500 children in Madhu education zone, and 4,500 children from Vavuniya north zone, have been displaced," the report said. "Educational materials have been lost due to multiple displacements and the quantity of materials is insufficient for the upcoming term."
Military offensive, chronic human rights crisis
Aclaimed Sri Lankan human rights activist Professor Rajan Hoole, argued in an analysis published in Tamil Week that the Sri Lankan military “has been bludgeoning away at the Tamils for 25 years” ignoring human rights and a humanitarian disaster.
“Wars have become political shows, like a Roman Circus, for the Sinhalese electorate, run by politicians and aspiring politicians. They wear the mantle of tribal heroes and gloat over presumed body counts, presently of helpless boys and girls placed on the front under duress.
“Timetables for taking Kilinochchi and triumphalism compensate for abysmal failures in the real business of governance to improve the lot of the common masses. It has become so acceptable that hundreds of thousands of people, especially Tamils, should remain refugees without hope, while the government does everything to sweep the issue under the carpet. Journalists have been intimidated to an extent where papers with a sense of integrity have cautiously to quote Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to inform their readers. The number of refugees is much greater than appears, as even those who survived the massacres in the Weli Oya land grabbing exercise of 1984 remain forgotten refugees. A new generation of refugees has grown up in India. In the East, the displacement of Tamils by violence that began in 1956 and 1958 became a flood in the 1980s.
“While the government has been hectoring Muslim refugees from the North chased by the LTTE to return, it ignores the fact that what they want as reassurance is a political settlement to clear the air and not just an ambivalent military presence.
“The immediate problem concerns 150,000 displaced in the Vanni. They represent the endemic problem of a generation of Tamil refugees, who have been displaced and resettled several times in the last 25 years and many of them half a dozen times in the last year. The LTTE conscripted many of their children and blocks their escape, and the government herds them like cattle by shelling, driving them deeper into LTTE territory. In two of a series of typical instances, on October 25, 2007 artillery shells fell in Periyamadu killing three displaced persons including a pregnant mother. On August 8, 2008 shells fired from Weli Oya fell inside the Mullaitivu hospital and environs killing an 18 month old and injuring many others. In both cases the Government issued denials, but our sources rule out the LTTE having fired the shells in either instance. The hospital also treats LTTE injured. The result is that people leave their homes and temporary shelters and are forced to move towards Kilinochchi. On the western side of Kilinochchi, missiles recently fell in Akkarayan and pushed more people towards Kilinochchi, as also in Puthukkudiyiruppu and Kumulamunai to the east killing and injuring people.
International NGOs unable to cope
“The frequency and increasing numbers involved in the displacement has meant that INGOs that sheltered them earlier are unable to cope. A temporary shelter for a family costs Rs. 30 000 to 50 000. Thousands are under trees in jungles, receiving rations, but with no income to buy extras and medicines, and no schooling for their children. In desperation mothers try to raise money by selling gold. Gold, which fetches Rs. 30 000 a sovereign outside is hard to sell even for Rs. 10 000 in the Vanni. Snakebite is common in their situation and 23 cases were recently admitted to Kilinochchi Hospital from around Akkarayan, Anaivilunthan and Vanneri. There is no record of those going to native physicians. People have moved so deep into the domain of wild animals that cases of fox-bite have been admitted to the same hospital. Normally, foxes in local experience avoid humans.
“Adding to the misery of the people are frequent official intimations of their conscripted sons and daughters being killed on the war front. They do not have their home environment to mourn and expiate their grief. 
A list of 69 LTTE dead with details from a website for the first 15 days of July 2008 had 19 girls, and eight men from the auxiliary force, one apparently a Tamil displaced from the hill country in the 1970s. Twenty-five names were from the Jaffna district, very likely displaced in 1995, and four from the East. About 16 are listed as officers, two of them older looking from the auxiliary force.
“Most of the dead look barely 18, betraying signs of recent conscription. This would also place the deaths among those sent to the front at the order of 1000 for this year, around 80% of them recent conscripts. This is a very rough estimate and some recent battles may have been very costly for both sides. One day, during the latter half of July ‘40 funerals were held in Jeyapuram (100 houses scheme) near Kilinochchi. It was traumatic for many people.
“Displacement has also made conscription easy for the LTTE. Using its records the LTTE ‘plucks’ conscripts from refugee camps. At present it is applying pressure on families to hand over a second member, and even asking whole families to join. Former LTTEers who had left and raised young families have been ordered to rejoin. Two years earlier they rebuffed attempts to make them rejoin, protesting at the humiliating punishments inflicted on them when they wanted to leave.
“A pro-LTTE website places their number at 5000. While there have already been many deaths and injuries from bombing and shelling. Judging by previous operations such as Operation Liberation in 1987 and the two operations to take Jaffna in 1995, these are likely to rise to several hundreds, as the army gets closer to Kilinochchi. The government would then be in a state of automatic denial. One might recall the killing of 120 civilians by bombing at the Navaly Church in July 1995. President Kumaratunga and her government went beyond denial to harass and vilify those who confirmed the incident, which alienated many Tamils sympathetic to her inexorably.
“The present government’s claim that it is opening escape routes for civilians cannot be taken seriously. Even those who managed to escape from the LTTE have been confined in a camp in Kallimoddai as virtual prisoners. The government has opened two more camps, at Jeevanagar and Sirukandal, all in the Murunkan area, which might just house 1000 in all. Further, the army having advanced far to the border of Kilinochchi District, the LTTE this week executed a series of guerrilla attacks behind army lines, inside the areas it recaptured. Attacks have been reported at Andankulam, Pandivirichchan and Illuppaikkadavai and it reportedly blasted a bridge at Kalliadi. Several army casualties were admitted to Vavuniya and Mannar Hospitals. The army advance will not be smooth as government propaganda claims.
Flags and firepower no solution
“Taking Kilinochchi and substituting flags through sheer force of manpower and firepower may be the least of the Government’s problems. In the past 25 years, the army has not been able to ensure stability for the civilians in any area it captured. The LTTE’s killings are one matter, but the government’s political task of giving confidence to the civilians never got off the ground.
“Given the intemperate noises the government has been making against INGOs, how would the army, which has been free with its death squads, handle this situation? Many in Jaffna forcibly trained by the LTTE during the ceasefire had been the target of death squads.
“The government has intelligent people who know this is not the way to deal with the ethnic problem or to handle the LTTE. Governments have been happy to go on the offensive regardless of the civilians when they thought the LTTE was weak, get bogged down and then start talking about peace and a political settlement without ever understanding what makes the LTTE tick.
“The sooner those in the government and the opposition stop playing games with the ethnic problem and ask themselves some pertinent questions, the better for us all. What would be the consequences of denying that there is an ethnic problem and further pursuing a homicidal strategy for which the state has neither the resources nor stamina, as the last 25 years have shown?
“Is it morally or politically justifiable for a government to condemn a significant section of its people to the insecurity and deprivation of permanent refugees, because they are from a minority, while it blunders about endlessly in search of a Sinhalese peace?”
Source: Tamil Week, TransCurrents, ReliefWeb