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RIGHTS: Disputes Over Treatment of Displaced People in Sri Lanka

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 26 2007 (IPS) - The number of displaced persons within Sri Lanka is increasing, and the international community does not have access to that population, said the representative of the United Nations secretary general on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Walter Kälin.

"There have been reports of internally displaced people in Sri Lanka being forced to return to their homes, although I cannot confirm these reports," Kälin, a Swiss law professor, told IPS.

"I very much call on all the actors to respect the basic principles of humanitarian and human rights law, and in particular to distinguish between combatants and the civilian population. I also urge the government to ensure that all the returns are voluntary," he said.

Sri Lanka&#39s three-decade conflict pits the separatist ethnic movement Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the Colombo regime, which represents the population of Sinhalese origin.

Kälin&#39s report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is holding its fourth session in Geneva until Mar. 30, provoked intense debate when the cases of Sri Lanka, Sudan and Colombia were discussed.

Sudan has the highest number of internally displaced persons, more than four million. Colombia is second, with three million, and then Uganda, with one and a half million, according to U.N. figures. C- te d&#39Ivoire has less, between 700,000 and one million people.

"However, in terms of living conditions, internally displaced persons in Iraq are facing an extremely high degree of insecurity. That&#39s very bad," Kälin said. And in Darfur, in western Sudan, there is a very well-known situation where displaced persons face acts of violence, including gender based violence, he added.

"A lot of humanitarian aid is reaching people in these countries. In contrast, I&#39ve just come back from a mission to the Central African Republic where people are living in the bush without humanitarian support. Each and every situation of internally displaced people has its own specific problems of violations that the victims have to face," he said.

The non-governmental International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) remarked that Sri Lanka was characterised by escalating conflict and human rights crisis. Since the last Human Rights Council session in December, Sri Lanka&#39s civilian population has been further brutalixed by all parties to the conflict, ICJ&#39s Laila Karimi said.

More than 220,000 people have been displaced since the renewal of hostilities with the LTTE in the past year, said Sébastien Gillioz of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The New York-based HRW sent a team of experts to Sri Lanka, who reported a situation that "is deteriorating tremendously in terms of disappearances and abductions, and particularly in terms of violence against children," Gillioz told IPS.

"We know that the government is aware of this, and that the government is participating to some extent. We feel that it&#39s urgent that the Council address this situation in the current session," he said.

Kälin said he was maintaining a dialogue with the government, and has received an invitation to visit Sri Lanka on an official mission later this year. "I think that we will have a constructive dialogue and we will be able to provide advice on how to deal with some of these specific challenges," he said.

During the debate in the Human Rights Council, the Swedish delegation agreed that the conflict in Sri Lanka has deteriorated, and said that civilian areas had even been shelled, leading to a large number of people displaced from their homes.

The Swedish delegation stated that since Mar. 12, the Sri Lankan government has transported people back to their places of origin in the eastern area of Batticaloa, where the situation is critical. There have also been an increasing number of abductions in the internally displaced persons camps, the Swedish delegates said.

A member of the Sri Lankan delegation to the Human Rights Council, senior lecturer in political science at the University of Colombo Dayan Jayatilleka, admitted that the situation was serious, "because wherever there is displacement, violence and human suffering, it is serious."

But Jayatilleka told IPS that the international community should take note of the manifest direction of the flow of displaced persons, whom he said had been moving overwhelmingly towards the areas controlled by the Sri Lankan armed forces and government, not away from the armed forces.

"Tell me, where in the world do refugees move in the direction of the army that is criticised for doing all these things I heard today, including indiscriminate shelling of civilians," he said.

The Sri Lankan delegate compared this with what happened in the conflict in Lebanon, in July and August 2006, between the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas and the Israeli army which invaded Lebanese territory. The people moved away from the attacking army, because that was where the danger was coming from, Jayatilleka said.

In contrast in 2000, during the LTTE offensive in Jaffna, in the north of the island of Sri Lanka, or today, in 2007, the Tamil people are not moving into the zones held by the LTTE, into "the so-called &#39liberated&#39 areas which are actually areas of tyranny," Jayatilleka said.

"With all their difficulties, the people are moving into areas controlled by the Sri Lankan army and the government. That&#39s the best evidence that there is something wrong with the horrifying picture" described to the Human Rights Council, he said.

Jayatilleka did not accept as credible the reports of displaced people being forced back to their original homes by the Sri Lankan armed forces, although he acknowledged that "coercion, wherever it occurs, is wrong." He said it struck him as ironic, though, that "I have many Palestinian friends who would be very happy if their people were forced to return to their original home."

With regard to Colombia, Kälin said it is faced with "a huge crisis of displacement," with up to three million people having been displaced by all the parties in the armed conflict which has lasted for over four decades.

The war-torn South American country has very good legislation, probably the best that exists in the field of internal displacement. However, there are enormous problems with regard to its implementation, he said.

Colombia&#39s Constitutional Court has ruled that the government is failing to implement these laws, and has provided the government with very clear guidance on how to enforce them. "I very much support these calls," Kälin said.