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SRI LANKA: War Refugees Stressed by Mass Resettlement

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, May 28 2007 (IPS) - An army-supervised mass resettlement plan underway for more than 100,000 people, displaced by fierce battles with Tamil rebels in eastern Batticaloa district, may be causing new problems for the refugees rather than solving existing ones, say volunteers.

Over the past week, some 20,000 people have been resettled in their homes and, according to government authorities, everything was going according to plan. "There has been talk that this is forced resettlement – there is nothing like that, everyone is going back voluntarily," military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe told IPS.

Batticaloa, the nerve centre of eastern Sri Lanka, has been in the eye of the storm since last December when fighting engulfed the district that is home to all of the island&#39s ethnic groups.

The town and outlying areas were inundated by civilians fleeing their homes when fighting broke out between government forces and Tamil rebels first in areas north of the town and then the western side. By early March, the refugee count in the district had swelled to above 150,000 and they were everywhere – under trees, on the side of the roads.

Later they were housed in schools, community centres and with host families, but this affected civilian life in the district. At the height of the fighting 325 schools were closed with studies of 135,000 students disrupted, according Batticaloa&#39s civilian administrator S. Amalanathan. Eighty schools still remain shut.

However, the district is now limping back to normalcy with the Sri Lankan government undertaking a massive resettlement project to move the refugees back to their villages. Last week, three government ministers were on hand to see off the first batch of villagers returning to areas wrested from the control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers.


The military is playing a major role in the effort, registering the returnees and issuing security clearances. The plan is to send back 34,000 people to their homes before the month is through and resettle another 60,000 in the next phase, starting Jun. 1.

Most of the displaced prefer to return to their homes rather than remain in welfare centres or with host families. "Many IDPs were keen to return but are concerned of the security conditions. Many stated that with security guarantees from authorities, they would be willing to return," a team from the Colombo-based think tank, Centre for Policy Alternatives, said after a visit to the east.

Some of the displaced have been on the move since August 2006 when they fled villages south of the Trincomalee bay. They had to travel more than 100 km, often with just the clothes on their backs, before they could reach safer areas in Batticaloa.

There has been criticism that the return was not totally within internationally accepted norms. United Nations agencies like the United Nations Children&#39s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) have urged the government to adopt a step-by-step approach and be mindful of existing risks.

UNICEF chief field officer Natascha Paddisson said there were worries over lack of access to education, water and sanitation conditions and risk of underage recruitment.

However, the warnings were mild compared to how U.N. agencies reacted in March when the government resettled over 15,000 people in Vaharai, north of Batticaloa. UNHCR reports then spoke of forced resettlement and the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) distributed leaflets in the camps, educating the refugees on their rights, earning the wrath of the government.

Humanitarian workers described the current round of resettlements as ad hoc. "We could not go into the areas where the returnees were going, the security forces said that it was unsafe which was a bit surprising given that all these civilians were going there," Rukshan Fernando from the Law and Society Trust said after visiting Batticaloa.

The military however said that it was allowing the U.N. and other agencies access to the newly resettled areas. "We cannot let them into areas where the next phase (of resettlement) would take place because we haven&#39t cleared them yet," Brig. Samarasinghe said.

Maintaining the camps themselves was turning out to be a problem. Since March, the World Food Programme (WFP) sent out two emergency appeals accompanied by warnings of supplies running out.

In March WFP received additional funding but it is once again looking for new donors to keep supplies moving. "The pipeline appears to be safe till next month (June)," WFP head Jeff Taft Dick told IPS. WFP looks after 70 percent of the food needs of more than 130,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the district. IASC reports said that 13,000 people, mostly living with host families, were still not getting regular supplies.

"We would need longer term commitments to keep supplies moving, hopefully the funds will come in," Taft Dick said. The WFP requires one million US dollars per week to look after the food needs of all the IDPs in the island. It has already cut down on some of its programmes.

"I am very concerned by the deterioration of the humanitarian situation as a result of the resurgence in the conflict. And I am especially concerned about the impact of the conflict on civilians, many of whom have now been displaced multiple times by the fighting," Tony Banbury, Asia director for the WFP, said last week in Colombo.

The WFP and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), nevertheless, have received additional support to assist the IDPs. Japan, the U.S. and the U.N. Central Emergency Fund have contributed to WFP programmes that have helped supplies, Taft Dick said.

The Australian government last week pledged 5.25 million dollars to the WFP, ICRC and UNICEF programmes. Three million was to the WFP to provide emergency food aid, the Australian government said. "Abductions, extra-judicial killings and forced recruitment occur daily. All parties to the conflict are violating international humanitarian law on a regular basis. The Australian government is concerned by the trend towards increasing violence and the growing environment of impunity," it said in a statement.

Relief workers see no quick end to the suffering. "Let&#39s face reality. The conflict in Sri Lanka is an old one, over 20 years old. The 2002 ceasefire exists only in name and there is too much confrontation to be optimistic for the near future," ICRC country head Toon Vandanhooven said.

According to Amnesty International, over 215,000 people were displaced in the north and east as a result of renewed fighting, and at least 10,000 fled to India.

An estimated half a million people had been displaced earlier in the conflict and by the 2004 tsunami. Many of these remained vulnerable to harassment and violence from the LTTE, other armed groups and members of the Sri Lankan security forces, Amnesty said in a new report.

Humanitarian and medical workers were threatened, harassed and abducted and their work further hampered by new registration requirements, Amnesty noted.

 
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