Refugees to be in "welfare villages" for 3 years
The government is planning to house 200,000 civil war refugees at five huge "welfare villages" -- complete with post offices, banks and libraries -- where they are expected to stay for up to three years.
The draft plan, which the government has circulated among international aid groups and donors recently, surfaced as tens of thousands of civilians fled the northern battlefield where there is heavy fighting between the security forces and the LTTE.
Government preparations appear to lend support to Red Cross estimates last month that 250,000 civilians were trapped in the war zone but the government said the number was less than half that number, and gave a much less dire assessment of the potential humanitarian crisis.
Aid workers and Western diplomats had expressed concern about the treatment of the ethnic Tamil civilians in the camps and were worried the proposed plan would keep the displaced from returning to their homes while the military spends years searching the jungles and villages for the remaining Tiger cadres.
The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state in the North for minority Tamils marginalized for decades by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority.
In recent months, the military has swept the rebels out of much of their 5,600-square-mile de facto state in the north and boxed them into a 58-square-mile strip of coastal land in the northeast where they hope to crush the group.
The draft proposal estimates 40,000 to 50,000 internally displaced families totaling more than 200,000 people would flee the war zone. The "welfare villages" would be set up to house them for two to three years, according to the plan said.
The Associated Press obtained copies of the document separately from two aid groups and a Western diplomat.
After being searched for weapons, the war refugees are being taken to 15 temporary transit camps located in schools and other buildings just south of the de facto state the rebels once ruled in a region known as the Wanni.
The government initially barred aid workers from the transit camps without explanation but has given them far more access in recent days as the need for international assistance grew.
The government eventually plans to move all the civilians into five more permanent camps south of the war zone.
Rights groups and analysts have raised a number of concerns over the plan.
Center for Policy Alternatives Executive Director Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu said a long stay in displacement camps could frustrate the displaced, exacerbate ethnic tensions and lead to a strong reinforcement of Tamil nationalism.
In December, Human Rights Watch criticized the government's treatment of the fleeing civilians, saying it was arbitrarily detaining them in camps that were little better than prisons.
In meetings with government officials over the new proposals, international aid groups raised concerns the camps would be run by the military and residents would not be allowed to leave, an aid official who took part in one of the meetings said.
He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing access to the camps.
The government however played down many of those concerns and said the camps would keep civilians safe.
Human Rights Ministry Secretary Rajiva Wijesinha said the camps would be run by the government but the military would have "great involvement."
"There is a very clear security threat and we are not going to play games with the lives of our people," he said.
Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told journalists on Tuesday the camps would not be detention centres but would provide residents with education and vocational training.
"I am quite sure those who are there will be at least happy to be there because they are out of a dangerous environment," he said.
The aid official said aid groups had demanded full access to the camps and said they would only make a three-month -- not a three-year -- commitment.
Diplomats and aid workers also expressed concerns about the lack of monitors to ensure everyone is registered and treated properly at the areas where the civilians are initially screened when they cross into government territory.
Mr. Wijesinha said the plan was for a "worst-case scenario and the government did not believe the number of displaced would be as large as stated in the proposal and hoped to resettle the civilians far faster than two to three years.
He said the population would have to stay out of the Wanni for some time so troops could clear mines and finish fighting the LTTE.
"There's going to be little pockets of LTTE for a little bit longer. With those security considerations taken together, it's going to be a little bit slower to resettle the civilians,” he said.
The government proposal calls for creating four villages, totaling nearly 1,000 acres, in the Vavuniya district and a fifth 100-acre camp in the neighboring Mannar area.
The plan speaks of villages having 39,000 semi-permanent homes, 7,800 toilets and 780 septic tanks, as well as parks, post offices, banks, stores and about 390 community centers with televisions and radios.
One agency chief familiar with the plan said it would be very expensive operation. Not only would the government and aid groups have to feed, clothe and house the residents, but since most of the civilians are farmers, the economy would suffer as their fields lay fallow.
A second proposal called for the construction of 40 schools to hold an expected 86,171 students. That plan asked international donors to fund everything from a photocopying machine for each school to instruments for the school band, at a total cost of about US$14 million. (AP)
From hell hole to heart break
With no end to the tragedies they face, a large number of displaced people who escaped to Vavuniya from un-cleared areas have now found themselves separated from all or some of their family members, Vavuniya Government Agent P.S.M. Charles said yesterday.
He said that even some of the displaced children now being housed in 12 welfare centres in the area, had to their utter dismay found their parents missing.
“We met married couples with their spouses missing and some parents searching for their children. It is a tragic situation,” Ms. Charles said.
She said the government was unable to ascertain whether these missing people were still in the Wanni or in separate welfare camps, and a programme had been launched to gather information from the displaced to highlight the problems faced by them especially where missing family members are concerned.
“Until we compile the required data, we cannot come to any conclusion,” she said.
Some 25,000 displaced people are being housed at 12 welfare centres in Vavuniya, and with the assistance of some INGOs and NGOs, the government continues to provide these people with their basic needs including cooked meals.
The GA has also identified six undergraduates who had suspended their university studies for two or three years as they had been stranded in the Wanni.
“Some of them are from the Jaffna University. We made arrangements to send them to the university and they will be provided with air tickets to Jaffna. There are one or two students from the Peradeniya University as well. We are awaiting University Grants Commissions to confirm the information we have provided it,” she said.
Meanwhile, another batch of civilians comprising 390 persons, including sick and wounded people, were rescued by the ICRC and ferried from Mullaitivu to Trincomalee yesterday.
Army headquarters said that the civilians had moved into the Putumattalan area -- the new safety zone in Mullaitivu -- for safety. The vessel Green Ocean took the civilians and some ICRC officials to Trincomalee.
Meanwhile, 57 and 58 Division troops, in the 12 hours ending 6.00 p.m. yesterday, received 546 civilians who had fled LTTE held areas. Some of them had reached Omanthai via Vishvamadu.
Another 822 civilians had arrived in Omanthai last evening after leaving LTTE held areas. All of them had been directed to IDP centres after being given refreshments and medical treatment, the Army said.
On Tuesday, the ICRC moved more than 350 trapped civilians, including sick and wounded patients, from uncleared areas in Mullaitivu, to Trincomalee by sea in a chartered vessel.
Chaos during exodus
TRINCOMALEE, Thursday Associated Press - Starving and trapped by fighting between security forces and the LTTE, scores of civilians tried to flee villages in the northeastern war zone but as they ran, the rebels opened fire, according to survivors' accounts.
Manoharan Mahendran said residents of Vishwamadu village begged to be allowed to cross into government territory last week, but the Tigers blocked their path and fired indiscriminately.
"People were helpless," 53-year-old Mr. Mahendran who went down with a gunshot to the leg told the Associated Press on Wednesday in a rare first hand account, recalling the panicked exodus.
He said at least 1,000 others escaped Vishwamadu. They are among the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled the fighting in northeastern Sri Lanka in recent weeks.
Mr. Mahendran was among hundreds of sick and wounded who made it out on a ferry commissioned by the Red Cross on Tuesday and waited for treatment at a hospital in Trincomalee.
He said the hospital in the rebel-held town of Puthukkudiyiruppu was shelled, and that many patients were killed or wounded.
They were evacuated to a makeshift medical camp and then to a school.
Hospital officials said that many arrived in a critical condition, and two had died while one girl lay waiting to be treated, the words "spinal injury" scrawled along her arm.
Survivors at the hospital described dodging rebel gunfire and surviving the shelling of the last functioning hospital in the northeast.
"My wife and child got killed in the shooting by the rebels," 23-year-old Selvadorai Thavakumar from Kilinochchi said.
About 200,000 civilians are still believed trapped in the remaining rebel-held territory as the security forces push forward with its campaign to crush the separatist Tamil Tigers.
The government accused the rebels of using civilians as human shields and on firing on fleeing civilians.
The LTTE however denied targeting civilians and accused the military of making "killing fields" of so-called safe zones inside rebel territory that the government promised not to attack.
Military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara dismissed the accusation.
"There is no reason for us to kill civilians," he said. "We were not even aware that civilians had been shot at until they came to us."
Confirmation of the government and rebel accounts was not possible because independent journalists and most aid workers are barred from the war zone. Communication to and from the North has largely been severed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the last major aid agency allowed to stay in the northeast, has not said how many civilians have been killed or wounded in the recent flight from the war zone.
At a camp for war refugees in government-held Vavuniya district, one woman described waiting for hours positioned between the army and rebel lines in the village of Suthanthirapuram.
"At dawn we started toward the army post waving a white flag," said 20-year-old Kesava Sarvananda Dharshika.
Just then, the rebels fired from behind, killing her husband, a Hindu priest, she said as she ran to the army post with their infant son in her arms.
Selvarani Sasikumar, a 31-year-old mother of four, said she feared her missing husband was dead.
In Trincomalee, war refugees described a scene of chaos and hardship.
The makeshift clinic in the school was overcrowded, with only two toilets for 500 people, said Dr. Thurairajah Varatharajah, the top government health official in the war zone.
"(Patients) are staying in the school building and under trees and on the floor and on the ground," he said by telephone. "Everywhere there are patients."
Dr. Varatharajah said patients were dying every day because of a lack of medicine, clean water and care.
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