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| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lanka Says 164,000 War Refugees Remain in Northern Camps |
| 2009-11-10 |
| Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka said 164,000 civilians displaced by the civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels remain in camps in the north and the government intends to reduce the number to less than 50,000 by the end of January. “We are now moving with incremental swiftness” to settle people from the camps, Rajiva Wijesinha, the secretary at the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said late yesterday, according to the government’s Web site. More than 280,000 mainly Tamil civilians have been held in the camps since the army defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in May, ending the group’s 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka’s north and east. The U.S. and United Nations are leading international calls for the swift release of the displaced people. The need to ensure security in the north, the slow pace of clearing mines from former conflict zones and a lack of infrastructure as a result of the war are delaying the program to settle the civilians, Wijesinha said. “The pressure from the West was quite extensive” to get people out of the camps, he said, adding that countries such as India, Pakistan and China understood the security concerns of the government in Colombo. “These countries also had questions about the refugees and their rehabilitation, and a political map for the devolution process, but they did not pressure us,” Wijesinha said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |