IDPs left to face harsh conditions in thick jungles

BY RAMANAN VEERASINGHAM-01 OCTOBER 2012

Although the government has hurriedly shut down the Menik Farm internment camp – described as the world’s largest refugee camp – in the northern Vavuniya district, over 100 war displaced families are left to face harsh conditions without any basic infrastructure facilities in thick jungles.

In what is widely seen as an image building exercise, the government on September 24 dismantled Menik Farm and 1160 war-displaced people belonging to 361 families left one-time the notorious camp in total disarray.

No assistance

According to Selvarajah Kajendren, the general secretary of the Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF) who visited the families, about 110 families with children and elders from Keppapilavu in the north-eastern Mullaitivu district are virtually left to die in a patch of cleared jungle in the name of post-war resettlement program.

“The government has brought these people and left them in the middle of a thick jungle. They do not have a roof to sleep under. They need to walk a couple of miles to fetch water or for schooling for their children. Their original lands have been swallowed up by the military to establish High Security Zones,” he told the JDS via phone.

According to the TNPF politician, the military has just cleared barely an acre of jungle land using bulldozer and these war-displaced people “are forced to manage their own affairs without any assistance from anybody whatsoever”.

“They are in the middle of the jungle and there are facing dangers from animals, deadly snakes and insects in the area. It is a monsoon season and these people have no place to protect themselves from the downpour or hot sun. I saw even the temporary tarpaulin tents they set up are getting blown away by the winds,” he further said.   

Government targets Geneva review

Commenting on the issue, Jaffna district parliamentarian of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Suresh K. Premachandran said that it was yet another attempt by the incumbent Rajapaksa regime to pull the wool over eyes of the international community, which has been pressing for the early resettlement of the war displaced civilians.

“All what the government wants to show it to the world is that the post-war resettlement is successfully completed, everybody has been settled in their own lands and that they are no more refugees in Sri Lanka. But this is not the correct situation here. This completely contradicts the situation on the ground,” MP Premachandran told the JDS.

“The government desperately wants to tell the world before the upcoming review in October in Geneva that everything is fine in Sri Lanka and that the displaced people have fully been resettled in their own lands. But there the reality is that there are still thousands of refuges in Sri Lanka. There are over 7000 war refuges in the Eastern Muttoor and over five refugee camps in the northern Jaffna district to name a few,” he said.

“Even though the Menik Farm camp is closed down there are thousands of Tamil people still remain very much as refugees. This is apart from 150,000 people taken refuge in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. They too want to come back if the situation improves”.

“We, the TNA, cannot simply accept the position of the government. We will be telling the world and the international community that the government is just shifting these people from one camp to another, but not to their original places,” MP Premachandran said, urging the international community and the Human Rights organisations to act based on factual realities.

Issuing a statement on the closure of the Menik Farm Camp, the United Nations (UN) Humanitarian Coordinator in Sri Lanka, Mr. Subinay Nandy said that the UN “is concerned about 346 people (110 families) who are returning from Menik Farm to Kepapilavu in Mullaitivu District who are unable to return to their homes which are occupied by the military”.

“Instead, they are being relocated to state land where they await formal confirmation about what is happening to their land in future, and plans for compensation if they cannot return,” he said, stressing the need for an “urgent solution” for the people of Keppapilavu.

© JDS

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