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| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lanka opens up war refugee camps |
| 2009-12-02 |
| [Dawn] Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka on Tuesday allowed nearly 127,000 Tamil refugees to leave squalid and overrun government camps where they have been detained since the country's civil war ended six months ago, an official said. Some 300,000 war refugees were forced into the camps after fleeing the war zone in the the final months of the government's decades-long fight with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May. The ethnic-minority Tamils were held against their will, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers in Vavuniya district, 260 kilometres (160 miles) north of Colombo. The government maintained that the Tamils had to be screened for rebel ties and that land mines had to be removed from their villages before they could return. 'Today more than 1,000 families consisting of about 6,000 persons have already exited the camps,' N. Thirugnanasampanther, a senior civil servant in Vavuniya, said on Tuesday. 'Transport out of the camps is a problem but people seem to be very happy to leave.' He said that the detainees were unlikely to be able to return to their homes immediately, and would probably remain based in the camps for now. Rights groups have called the detention an illegal form of collective punishment for the ethnic group. More than half were released in recent months amid pressure from rights groups and foreign governments, and the remaining 127,000 could apply to leave starting Tuesday under a plan announced by the government last month. After registering with camp officials, the detainees are free to leave, transfer to another camp or stay, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakara said. The camps will be closed completely by Jan. 31. The United Nations has welcomed the government's decision to close the camp, but has said it is waiting to find out how the registration process for departing detainees works. Government troops routed the Tamil Tigers in May, ending their 25-year fight for an independent homeland for the country's minority Tamils. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed in the violence. |
| Posted by:Fred |