'As the shells fell, we tried to save lives with no blood or medicine'Damilvany Gnanakumar witnessed Sri Lanka's bloody conflict from a Tamil hospital - then spent months detained in a camp. She tells Gethin Chamberlain her story

The young mother was standing by the side of the road, clutching her baby. The baby was dead.

Damilvany Gnanakumar watched as she tried to make a decision. Around them, thousands of people were picking their way between bodies strewn across the road, desperate to escape the fighting all around them.

"The mother couldn't bring the dead body and she doesn't want to leave it as well. She was standing … holding the baby. She didn't know what to do … At the end, because of the shell bombing and people rushing – there were thousands and thousands of people, they were rushing in and pushing everyone – she just had to leave the baby at the side of the road, she had to leave the body there and come, she had no choice. And I was thinking in my mind 'What have the people done wrong? Why are they going through this, why is the international government not speaking up for them? I'm still asking."

Four months later and Gnanakumar is sitting on a cream leather sofa in the living room of the family home in Chingford, Essex, reliving the final days of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war.

For most of those four months, the 25-year-old British graduate was imprisoned behind razor wire inside the country's grim internment camps, home to nearly 300,000 people. She was released last week, partly as a result of pressure from this newspaper, and flew back into London on Sunday.

The last time she publicly spoke about the conflict was from the hospital where she was working inside the ever-shrinking war zone in Sri Lanka's north-east. Then, the national army had surrounded the small sliver of land where the remnants of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas held out and where hundreds of thousands of civilians had taken refuge. She had been in despair: a shell had just struck the hospital and dozens were dead. "At the moment, it is like hell," she said then.

Gnanakumar was one of a small group of medics treating the wounded and providing a running commentary to the outside world from behind the lines. For months she had managed to stay alive while around her thousands died. At night, she lived in bunkers dug in the sand. During the day, she helped in the makeshift hospitals, dodging the shells and the bullets, tending the wounded and the dying, as the doctors tried to operate with butchers' knives and watered-down anaesthetic.

Now her damning account provides a powerful rebuke to the claims of the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, that the defeat of the Tamil Tigers was achieved without the spilling of a drop of civilian blood.

Born in Jaffna in the Tamil-dominated north of Sri Lanka in 1984, Gnanakumar and her family moved to Britain in 1994. Until 28 February last year, she had not been back. She had just completed a biomedical degree at Greenwich University, but her short-lived marriage was on the rocks and she decided it was time to make a clean break. She left the house, telling no one where she was going.

Arriving in the capital, Colombo, she headed for Vanni, the Tamil heartland, to stay with a relative she calls her brother (her real brother is back in the UK, along with her two sisters). There seemed little sign of danger, but by June 2008 fighting was getting worse: the Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), still thought they would be able to negotiate a ceasefire, as they had done in the past, but the government had other ideas. They were determined to destroy the LTTE once and for all. Gnanakumar decided to stay on to try to help those who were trapped by the advance.

Even before the arrival of the government's ground forces, there had been regular air raids by air force Kfir jets. But in early January artillery barrages began, forcing the population to move.

That was when the reality of the war hit Gnanakumar for the first time.

"It was raining and … you could see everywhere on the road the blood is running with the water and the bodies were left there because there was no-one to identify who was dead and who is alive, the bodies were just laid down on the floor and that's the first time I saw dead bodies and wounded people crying out, shouting."

Wherever they stopped, they built a bunker, digging down until they could stand up in the hole, cutting down palm branches and laying them across the top for a roof and packing sandbags on the top and around the sides.

As the frontline advanced, trapping as many as 300,000 people inside a shrinking enclave of LTTE-held land, Gnanakumar went to the makeshift government hospital, which had moved into a former primary school, and volunteered to help, dressing wounds and administering first aid.

Her laboratory training had not prepared her for anything like this, but she learned as she went along. As the fighting intensified, they were treating as many as 500 people every day in two rooms. "They had a shortage of medicine but they had to somehow save the people. The last two weeks or so there was a shortage of everything."

With replacement blood running out, she had to filter what she could from the patients through a cloth before feeding it back into their veins. When the anaesthetics ran short, they diluted them with distilled water. "I watched when there was a six-year-old boy," she said. "They had to take off the leg and also the arm, but they didn't have proper equipment, they just had a knife that the butchers use to cut the meat, and we have to use that to take off his leg and arm. He cried and cried."

As the army closed in, it got worse.

"People were running and running to get them safe away from the shell bombing, but they couldn't and it came to a point where we thought we are all going to die, there is no way we can be safe anymore here, but we just have to take it. I mean, you can't get out of the shell-bombing. I didn't think that I would be alive and I would be here now. I said OK, I'm going to die, that is the end of it.

"One day I was inside the [operating] theatre and the next room was bombed. We had a lot of the treated people left in the room for the doctors to go and monitor and they all died in that shell bomb. And they [the Sri Lankan forces] again bombed the hospital and one of the doctors died in that."

Inside the hospital, there was no respite. Gnanakumar cannot forget the day a mother was brought in, injured, clutching her baby.

"She had the baby on her lap, the baby is dead and the mother didn't know and the doctor said: 'Don't tell her, because if we tell her now she will start crying out and shouting and … we have to save the mother first.' So we said: 'OK, give the baby to us, we'll look after her you go and get the treatment from the doctor,' and only after she got the treatment we told the truth, that your baby is dead. I can easily say it, but at that moment I was in so much pain, the innocent baby, the mother didn't know the baby was dead, she thought 'my baby is sleeping'.

"There were so many incidents. Another time the mother was dead and the baby was still suckling."

The fighting was getting closer. They ate what they could find and slept, those who could, in the occasional lulls.

"You have to be ready to run, you can't relax and go to sleep, any minute you just have to be ready," she said.

Gnanakumar could not take any more. On 13 May the hospital had been hit, killing about 50 people. "The bunker right next to ours had a shell on top of it and there were six people in the same family died and three were wounded.

"I saw them … suddenly I start hearing people are crying out and I thought, it has to be somewhere really close … I came out of my tent and I saw blood everywhere and the people – I couldn't even imagine that place, there was blood and then the bodies were into pieces everywhere and my brother said: 'Just pack up and let's get away from this place.'"

In the last five days, she says, she believes about 20,000 people died. It is a very high estimate, though the UN has acknowledged the true death toll may never be known. Tamil groups such as the Global Tamil Forum say her account corroborates their own figures drawn from interviews with survivors.

Over the course of the three-decade war, it is estimated that up to 100,000 people died. But independent confirmation of the death toll in the final days has been impossible. The Sri Lankan government has barred independent journalists from the war zone to this day, and has expelled UN officials and aid workers.

Meanwhile, the survivors of the final assault have been spirited away inside sprawling camps in a militarised zone.

It was to those camps, at Menik Farm, that Gnanakumar was taken. Following that last bombing, she joined thousands fleeing towards the government lines. "We start moving and after walking about one hour or so we saw the Sri Lankan army. They were saying: 'Come, you are safe now, food will be provided for you.' There were bodies everywhere, like into pieces. We had to just walk." That was when she saw the mother agonising over what to do with her dead baby. No one had time to bury the bodies, she says. Some pushed them into bunkers and covered them with a little sand. That was the best they could do.

That night, they slept in a school, then they were taken by bus to the town of Vavuniya. She called her mother: "I said, Mum, just get me out of here, I just want to get out of this place. And the phone got cut off."

The Sri Lankan government has built a series of camps to house the estimated 300,000 people who poured out of the war zone. It claims that it needs to hold the civilians until it can weed out the former Tamil Tiger fighters; its critics, including many UN organisations and independent aid groups, question why, even if that is true, it needs to imprison children and the elderly behind barbed wire, and why it has not more quickly identified the rebels. Despite pledges to start sending the internees back to their homes "at the earliest possible opportunity", the UN says only 2,000 have so far been released.

There was no food the first day Gnanakumar arrived, and she had lost contact with the people she had been with. She slept in a tent with strangers.

Even after the privations of the war zone, conditions in the camp still came as a shock.

"Wherever you go there are big queues, whatever you want you have to queue. The toilets are terrible, I can't describe how disgusting. Flies everywhere, mosquitoes, unhygienic … People had all sorts of illnesses.

"People have lost their family members, they are separated from their families … and they are going through depression."

Accounts circulated of rapes and murders, of people disappearing. Some people committed suicide: a teacher was found hanging from a tree.

Military intelligence officers were roaming the camps, looking for former Tamil Tigers, she said. "It is an open prison, you are free to walk but you are inside a prison, you are not allowed to step out. You can't. There were guards everywhere and checkpoints."

A couple of days after she arrived, the British high commission made contact through the UNHCR. An appeal from her parents in the Guardian brought fresh hope and a flurry of activity: she was moved from the overcrowded zone two to zone one, the part of the camp the authorities show to visitors.

"I was there when the UN secretary Ban Ki-moon came in … He stayed there for about 10 minutes and just went. Why didn't he go into the camp and talk to the people and spend some time asking them what their problems were? I thought he has a responsibility and people were expecting something from him. They expected much from him and he just spent 10 minutes and that's it."

The officials told Gnanakumar she would be staying for a couple of days and would then be released. "And then the 48 hours turned into three days and then it turned into weeks and months and I thought OK, now I understand it is not going to happen." She was interrogated five times – what was she doing there? Why had she been in the hospitals?

The call to say she was going home came last week. She was taken to Colombo to meet the president's brother, Basil Rajapaksa.

"He said OK, you went through so much in the country and now you are released you can go and join your family and be happy. He wasn't sorry about it." She was then handed over to British officials.

She speaks in a matter-of-fact way, rarely betraying emotion. Her hair has been tied back tightly – she had beautiful hair before she left, she says, but lost most of it in the camps. She is not sure what she will do now, maybe something in the field of medicine.

"I'm happy and proud of myself that I was able to help the people. I still think it is unreal that I am in the UK … I never thought I would be alive and coming back, even in the camp.

"After looking at the people dying and dead bodies everywhere, it is like nothing threatens me any more, it is like I have had the hard time in my life and I think I am prepared to take up whatever happens in life now.

"I'm not that old Vany that sits down and cries for little things. I'm stronger now after going through and seeing all that problem. My mind is clear now."

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/1...on-tamil-tigers

Edited September 16, 200916 yr by கந்தப்பு

TO Watch the Video : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009...sri-lanka-tamil

தமிழில் வாசிப்பவர்களுக்காக-

வன்னியில் யுத்தம், வவுனியாவில் முகாம், மீண்டுவந்த வாணியின் குரல்

சிறிலங்காவின் வட பகுதிக்கு, உறவினை பார்க்கச்சென்ற பிரித்தானிய குடியுரிமை கொண்ட, தமிழ்வாணி ஞானகுமார் சிறிலங்கா அரசு மேற்கொண்ட பாரிய இறுதி யுத்தத்தில் சிக்கி, வன்னி மக்களுடன் இடம்பெயர்ந்த வேளை, இடைத்தங்கல் முகாம்களில் தடுத்து வைக்கப்ப்பட்டிருந்தார். பிரித்தானிய அரசின் கடும் அழுத்தத்திற்கு மத்தியில் கடந்த 8 ஆம் திகதி, அங்கிருந்து விடுவிக்கப்பட்டு, பிரித்தானியா செல்ல அனுமதிக்கட்டார்.

சிறிலங்காவின் இறுதி யுத்த நடவடிக்கைகளின் போது மக்களோடு மக்களாக இருந்த அவரின் அனுபவங்களை கண்டிறியவும், இடைத்தங்கல் முகாம்களின் உண்மையான நிலைமை பற்றி தெளிவுறவும் தமிழ் மக்கள் சார்பில் தற்போதுள்ள ஒரே ஒரு ஆதாரபூர்வமான நபரகாக இவர் இருப்பதால் அவரை பேட்டி கண்டுள்ளது கார்டியன். காரிடியனின் இணையத்தளத்தில் வெளியான அவரது செவ்வியில் தமிழ்வாணி ஞானகுமார் கூறியவை :

எனது பெயர் தமிழ்வாணி ஞானகுமார். 25 வயது. எனது மைத்துனர் வன்னியில் இருந்ததால் அவரைப் பார்ப்பதற்காக வன்னிக்குச் சென்றேன். எனக்கு ஆறு மாத கால விசா இருந்ததால் நான் சிறிது காலம் அங்கு தங்கியிருக்க எண்ணி தங்கியிருந்தேன்.

பின்னர் அங்கிருந்த நிலைமைகளைப் பார்த்த போது உடனடியாக அங்கிருந்து என்னால் வெளியேற முடியாதென்று எண்ணினேன். உடனடியாக அங்கிருந்து வெளியேறுவது பாதுகாப்பானதல்ல என்றும் உணர்ந்தேன்.

அங்கு மக்கள் பட்ட பெருந்துன்பங்களை நேரில் பார்த்த போது அங்கு தங்கியிருந்து அந்த மக்களுக்கு என்னாலான உதவியைச் செய்ய வேண்டும் என்று எண்ணம் வந்தது.

இராணுவம் முன்னேறி வருவதை அவதானிக்கக் கூடியதாக இருந்தது. விமான மற்றும் செல் தாக்குதல்கள் தொடர்ச்சியாக அண்மித்துக் கொண்டு வந்தன.

பெருமளவான மக்கள் கொல்லப்பட்டும் படுகாயத்திற்குமாளானார்கள். மழை வேறு பெய்து கொண்டிருந்தது. இரத்தம் தண்ணீருடன் கலந்து ஓடிக் கொண்டிருந்தது. பாடசாலைகள் வைத்தியசாலைகளாக மாற்றப்பட்டன. எல்லாத் தெருக்களிலும் தண்ணீருடன் இரத்தமும் கலந்து ஓடிக் கொண்டிருந்தது. அப்பிராந்தியத்தில் இருந்த அனைவரும் தமிழர்கள் என்பது தெரிந்தது தானே.

கடைசி இரண்டு வாரங்களும் மிகவும் ஆபத்தானவையாகவும் கடும் மோதல்கள் நிறைந்தனவாகவும் இருந்தன. படுகாயமடைந்தவர்களுக்கு ஏற்ற இரத்தம் இருக்கவில்லை. பாதிக்கப்பட்டவர்களுக்கு உதவ விரும்பினாலும் மற்றவர்களால் உதவ முடியவில்லை. ஏனெனில் போதுமான மருத்துவ வசதிகள் அங்கிருக்கவில்லை. மருத்துவத்திற்குத் தேவையான உபகரணங்களும் அங்கிருக்கவில்லை.

செல்லிலிருந்து தம்மைப் பாதுகாத்துக் கொள்வதற்காக அந்த மக்கள் ஒவ்வொரு இடமாகத் தொடர்ந்து ஓடிக் கொண்டிருந்தார்கள். ஆனாலும் அந்தத் தாக்குதல்களிலிருந்து தங்களைப் பாதுகாத்துக் கொள்ள அவர்களால் முடியவில்லை.

ஒரு நாள் நான் இருந்த சத்திரசிகிச்சைக் கூடத்தின் அருகில் செல்லொன்று வந்து விழுந்தது. படுகாயமடைந்து சிகிச்சை பெற்றுக் கொண்டிருந்த அந்த அறையில் இருந்த அனைவரும் கொல்லப்பட்டனர்.

நீங்கள் ஒரு கணமும் ஆறுதலாக நித்திரைக்குப் போக முடியாது. உங்களுக்கு எதிரி இருக்கிறான். அவனிடமிருந்து உங்களைக் காப்பாற்றிக் கொள்வதற்காக நீங்கள் ஓடிக் கொண்டே இருக்க வேண்டும்.

அங்கு கடமையாற்றிய வைத்தியர்கள் அங்கிருந்து வெளியேற விரும்பினாலும் அவர்களால் வெளியேற முடியாதவாறு நிலைமை இருந்தது. நாள் தோறும் அப்பாவி மக்கள் கொல்லப்பட்டுக் கொண்டிருந்தாhர்கள். எனவே ஆரம்பத்திலிருந்து இறுதி வரை அவர்கள் அங்கேயே இருந்தார்கள்.

அங்கிருந்த மருந்துப் பற்றாக் குறையாலும் ஏனைய நிலைமைகளாலும் அவர்களால் பெருமளவானோரைப் பாதுகாக்க முடியாமற் போய்விட்டது.

செல் மற்றும் விமானக் குண்டு வீச்சுக்களால் இறுதி ஐந்து நாட்களில் இருபதாயிரத்திற்கு மேற்பட்ட மக்கள் படுகொலை செய்யப்பட்டார்கள்.

நான் முதலில் இரண்டாவது வலய முகாமிலேயே முதலில் இருந்தேன். பின்னர் என்னை முதலாவது வலய முகாமுக்கு அழைத்து வந்தார்கள். 48 மணி நேரத்துள் என்னை விடுவிப்பதாகச் சொன்னார்கள். ஆனால், அது வாரங்களாகி மாதங்களானது. நான் நினைத்தேன். இனி இங்கிருந்து மீள்வதற்கு வழி ஏதும் இல்லை என்று. இக்காலப்பகுதியில் வௌ;வேறு தரப்பினரால் நான் ஐந்து முறை விசாரணைக்குள்ளாக்கப்பட்டேன

தமிழ்வாணி போல வன்னியில் பலர் பல்வேறு விதமான சோக அனுபவங்களைக் கண்டிருக்கிறார்கள். இவற்றை வாசிப்பதோடு மட்டுமல்லாது உங்களுக்கு தெரிந்த வேற்று நாட்டவர்களுக்கும் அனுப்புங்கள்.

17 வயதுடைய வின்ஞெஸ்ரர் உயர் பாடசாலையில் கல்வி கற்கும் பிரியா சுந்தரலிங்கம் அவர்கள் சிறிலங்காவின் மனித உரிமை மீறல்கள் பற்றிக் குரல் கொடுத்து வருகிறார்.

Winchester High School senior fights for human rights in Sri Lanka

Winchester, MA - At first glance, Priya Suntharalingam, a slender, polite, 17-year-old Winchester High School senior, is not a particularly physically imposing figure.

Politically, however, she is becoming a major force in the movement of numerous human rights organizations to publicize what they believe to be gross atrocities taking place on the war-torn island nation of Sri Lanka.

A member of the People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), Suntharalingam was one of eight Americans who went on a 12-day hunger strike to bring awareness to what she believes is genocide taking place in the country.

“There are 300,000 people interned in camps, innocent civilians, and they need to be freed immediately,” Suntharalingam told a group of Tamils who gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston last Saturday to discuss the issue. “Thousands are dying every day.”

According to an event handout, since the British left Sri Lanka in 1948, conflict has abounded on the island between the two main peoples, the Sinhalese and the Tamils, who differ in language, religion and customs.

The Sinhalese constitute the majority, and since independence have gradually enacted legislation that restricted the freedoms and quality of life for Tamils, Suntharalingam said.

Since 1983, she said Tamils, whom the government deemed terrorists (“Tamil Tigers”), have been fighting for independence from the Sinhalese.

Suntharalingam’s connection to the issue runs deep. Though her mother, a Tamil, came to America after getting married, Suntharalingam said she feels responsibility to all her relatives who have suffered and are still suffering.

“My uncle was abducted when he was 12, and taken to a camp and tortured because they said he was a Tamil Tiger,” she said. “In order to get him to talk, they tied him upside down, put his head in a can of gasoline and beat him.”

Suntharalingam said her uncle managed to escape his captors and the country, but says she can’t sit by and let the same thing happen to other Tamils without taking action.

Faces in the crowd

Audience member Thaya Paramanathan has experienced firsthand too much of what Suntharalingam, who was born in the United States, has only seen and heard.

Like many Americans, Paramanathan recently graduated from Northeastern University on a scholarship.

The similarities end there.

“When I was 10 years old, my whole house was burned to ashes,” he said. “When I grew up in Jaffna, which isn’t even in the war zone, I didn’t have much. I didn’t even have Coke or chocolate. It wasn’t allowed.”

Paramanathan said he was lucky to get a scholarship and come to the United States.

“When I got here, I drank a lot of Coke and ate a lot of chocolate,” he said, adding that he feels guilty when he thinks of his parents, whom he said are still stuck in a country in which they cannot enjoy the same freedoms.

“My parents are in Jaffna, which is much safer than the war zone,” he said. “But still, when I visited the capitol last year for a wedding, I could not see them because travel to the north is prohibited.

“I feel very guilty, because they are suffering there, and I have freedom here. But, for my own sake, they said they never want me to come back.”

A different perspective

Also in attendance at the meeting was Thusith Mahanama, who said he was probably the only Sinhalese Sri Lankan in the room.

Mahanama, now the CEO of a Boston-based software company, grew up in Sri Lanka without many of the hardships faced by those surrounding him, and said he is trying to do all he can to help.

“What happened, happened,” he said after the event. “It’s in the past, almost like slavery in America, and … we need to cut through that and meet as humans.”

To that end, Mahanama has started a Web site, srilankansforunity.org, through which he hopes to bring members of the two groups together.

“I have many Tamil friends and coworkers, and I don’t even think of them as Tamil,” he said. “I think what’s happened is a broad socio-economic problem. It’s time to go beyond anger and disunity so that citizens of Sri Lanka can move forward as one voice.”

Mahanama said he believes the country can survive without splitting in two — a sentiment not shared by Paramanathan.

“I think only a two-state solution is viable,” said Paramanathan. “We’ve seen what’s happened over the past 50 years. It hasn’t worked out.”

Mahanama admitted much in the country must change before trust can be built.

“I agree that the problem of the [internment camps] needs to be solved,” he said, adding that he did not believe, however, that any form of genocide was occurring.

“For the 300,000 people who are in camps, there are 1.7 million who are not,” he said, adding that the United States government would not be providing aid to the Sri Lankan government if it suspected it of slaughtering the IDPs (internally displaced persons) for whom the money is intended.

According to an Aug. 19 press release from the U.S. embassy in Sri Lanka, the government has given $8 million in aid this year to Sri Lanka to “support the welfare and safety of IDPs until they can return to their homes.”

Recent controversy

Human rights groups, however, believe that IDPs are being treated inhumanely, and the debate has been sparked further on the heels of a crudely shot video that depicts savage beatings and executions of Tamils supposedly carried out by the Sri Lankan government.

“It’s genocide,” Suntharalingam insisted, adding that the atrocities she believes are being committed are what sustained her during the hunger strike — so much so that she had to be force-fed by her mother, who feared for her health, putting an end to the strike.

“Most people say hunger strikes are useless,” she said. “But this one had results.”

Indeed, media accounts of the strike prompted Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) to invite her to Washington, D.C. over the summer, as his personal guest while the senate discussed the issues in Sri Lanka.

She vowed to continue to fight for what she believes is right, and plans on holding a number of events at Winchester High this year to raise awareness among classmates.

“That could be me over there,” she said earnestly. “I feel it’s my obligation to use my luxury of freedom to speak out against such atrocities.”

She urged other similarly minded people to visit www.pearlaction.org.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/winchester/news...ts-in-Sri-Lanka

பிரித்தானியா கார்டியன் பத்திரிகையில்

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/1...camps-sri-lanka

Harrassed Tamils languish in prison-like camps in Sri Lanka

Living by a palm-fringed golden beach on the edge of the Indian Ocean, Suganthinhi Thesamanikam considers herself lucky to be alive after living through the hell of war.

Caught between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan army, she dodged bullets and shells for two years before ending up on the sandy littoral where the rebel leadership was routed in May, in a bloody ending to a 25-year-old civil war. Three of her cousins were killed during the last days of heavy aerial bombardment.

Herded by the army, the 22-year-old then lived for four months under a tin roof, surviving on dry rations and going days without clean water in a vast, overcrowded camp behind barbed wire and armed soldiers.

"We were harassed day and night and the men were hit with rifles if they talked back to the soldiers. I don't know why, we were not LTTE, we are ordinary poor people," she said.

She was one of the first Tamils to be resettled from the camps last month, and says she has found some solace in her mother's shack on the seashore near the harbour town of Trincomalee. But her husband remains inside one of the camps. "He is not [a member of] the rebel LTTE. But the army says he cannot go home because his home village is near [the north Sri Lankan city of] Jaffna, where the LTTE were strong. We met during the war ‑ but now that is over I cannot have peace."

With less than 5% of the 300,000 Tamils released from what the United Nations describes as "internment camps", tales such as Thesamanikam's have only just begun to be told.

The 22-year-old was kept in Manik Farm, 160 miles north of Colombo, where 280,000 people were initially housed – more than double the number the camp was intended to cope with.

The camp, say former inhabitants, is packed, with two or three families sharing a tent or tin shack. There are complaints of stinking, overflowing toilets, water shortages and inadequate healthcare. Journalists are rarely given access and those inside Manik Farm are not allowed to cross its fortified perimeter. The government says it has to use extreme measures because hiding in the civilian population are LTTE soldiers.

Speaking on a phone that had been smuggled into the camp, one civilian being held in Manik Farm, who did not want to be named, said two families had "been taken away and not seen again after saying some wrong things" to a reporter last month.

"People are scared to tell anyone of the problems we are facing. But it is a prison here. There are not enough health facilities for the problems in the camp and we don't have enough water."

The Sri Lankan authorities recently allowed humanitarian relief workers into Manik Farm. The immediate criticism was that there were persistent water shortages. Then heavy rains sent rivers of sewage cascading through tents and tin sheds.

Now there are growing fears that with monsoon rains due in October, the camps could become a sea of thick mud and slop.

Doctors in the main hospital in Vavuniya, the largest town near the camp, say that more 1,000 people have died since May, mainly due to "malnutrition-related complications", and warn of an impending disaster if conditions do not improve.

"Things have improved in the camps as aid workers have come. But we will have to face a big disaster when the monsoon arrives here," said Muthulingam Lavan, the judicial medical officer in Vavuniya.

"The problem is that the camp lies on a flood-prone area. We'll have malaria, sewage and dengue fever. It will be very bad unless [people] are moved."

On Friday, nearly 10,000 refugees were sent back to their villages and the government has said it will move 100,000 people back to their homes in October. But ministers have yet to give detailed plans.

Attempts so far to send back people to their "native places" have also been criticised for being chaotic and underfunded.

A number of elderly people who had lived in LTTE territory for decades were taken back to towns they had not seen since they were children.

"I was left on the road with just the clothes I had carried from that prison," said Elizabeth Sarvanamuttu, who was "returned" to Trincomalee. "That is all I had with me. I was only saved because a local family adopted me. I am 68 and look, I had to be adopted like a baby."

Others, whose families were torn apart by the war, are waiting to be reunited. Ravi Ravidharan, living in the eastern city of Batticaloa, said he had been ferried out of the war zone in February after his wife was killed by an army bomb – an attack which shattered his baby son's leg. He left his two other children with his in-laws and has not seen them since.

Once his son was released from hospital the government provided no further assistance and he has eked out a living doing odd jobs while looking after his disabled two-year-old son.

"I traced my other children to Manik Farm," the 42-year-old said. "Because I lived in LTTE territory and all my possessions are lost I have no record to say my children are mine. Their mother is dead. How do I get them out?"

Jehan Perera, of Sri Lanka's National Peace Council, said tales such as these "evoke such sorrow, and stem from the government focus on security as its first priority. "We need some measure of assistance for innocent civilians."

There is growing pressure on the government to free the tens of thousands of Tamils still being kept in camps. The UN, which has provided funding of $188m (about £113m), says it cannot pay for the camps indefinitely. "We need not only for the government to let people go but also to allow freedom of movement," said a UN spokesman in Colombo.

But Sri Lanka insists it must screen everyone to weed out any rebels.

Authorities also fear that once the civilian population is returned, the Tamil Tigers will be able to regroup, despite claims that the organisation is all but finished.

"The military wing is dead," said a former fighter who was a commander with the Tigers' navy. "For now we have to live under the occupation of the army in our historic homeland. An uprising failed, that is all."

நேற்றைய அவுஸ்திரெலியாவின் முன்னனிப்பத்திரிகைகளில் ஒன்றான சிட்னி மோர்னிங் கரலின் ஆசிரியர் தலையங்கத்தில் வந்த செய்தி. 2வது தலையங்கம்.

Sri Lanka versus United Nations

TO KICK out one Australian working for the United Nations, as the Sri Lankan Government has just done with the UNICEF official James Elder, would be a coincidence. When we learn that another Australian with the UN, Peter Mackay, from the technical body UNops, has been expelled and that a third Australian with the UN in Colombo, Gordon Weiss, is threatened with the same fate, it becomes a disturbing and insulting trend.

Strangely, the Sri Lankan diplomatic chief handling these expulsions, the Foreign Secretary, Palitha Kohona, is also an Australian citizen and previously worked for our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Whether Mr Kohona has advised the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, that Australia is a soft target for his anti-Western foreign policy line, is something that only Mr Kohona can enlighten us about.

To add a public accusation that Mr Elder was ''doing propaganda'' for the now defeated Tamil Tigers, while the UN official and his family are still in the country packing up, has been a nasty twist. It could signal the attention of the notorious men in white vans who have been beating up, abducting and murdering government critics with impunity during Mr Rajapaksa's time in office.

Colombo's charges of pro-Tiger partisanship by UN officials carry little weight outside its own government circles and its cowed media. The Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, told Parliament this week that he had studied Mr Elder's offending remarks and that ''they do not cause me any difficulty''. Indeed, Australia's position is like that of other democracies: relief that the war with the sinister Tamil Tigers is finally over, concern at harm to civilians during the conflict, and mounting worry that 250,000 Tamil civilians remain in harsh internment camps four months after the conflict ended. To which might be added a deep concern at continued repression of critical minds, like the Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam, just sentenced to 20 years' jail for ''causing communal disharmony''.

Mr Mackay's expulsion, in particular, suggests Mr Rajapaksa is trying to brush away the lingering accusations that war crimes were part of his offensive against the Tigers. Colombo has been unconvincing in instantly rejecting as a fabrication a smuggled mobile-phone video of apparent executions of bound men by its forces. Through his own experience behind the lines and then through satellite pictures, Mr Mackay contradicted the Government's claims it was not knowingly shelling trapped civilians.

When he moves to the United Nations shortly as Sri Lanka's ambassador, Mr Kohona will find he represents a government carrying little trust, as much as the world welcomed the apparent end of the Tiger insurgency.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/su...90915-fpkq.html

சேரமான் 16/09/2009, 23:31

வன்னி மக்களை தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள் மனிதக்கேடயமாக்கவில்லை! முள்ளிவாய்க்காலில் இருந்து இலண்டன் மீண்டிருக்கும் தமிழ்வாணி வாக்குமூலம்!

வன்னி யுத்தத்தில் மக்களை மனிதக்கேடயங்களாக தமிழீழ விடுதலைப் புலிகள் பயன்படுத்தவில்லை என்று, முள்ளிவாய்க்காலில் இருந்து இலண்டன் மீண்டிருக்கும் செல்வி ஞானகுமார் தமிழ்வாணி என்ற யுவதி தெரிவித்துள்ளார்.

பிரித்தானியாவின் சனல்-4 தொலைக்காட்சிக்கு இன்று (16.09.2009) இரவு வழங்கிய செவ்வியிலேயே இவ்வாறு செல்வி தமிழ்வாணி குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளார்.

வன்னி மக்களின் வாழ்விடங்களை இலக்கு வைத்து சிறீலங்கா படைகள் நிகழ்த்திய தாக்குதல்களில் நாள்தோறும் பெரும் தொகையில் மக்கள் பலியானதை சுட்டிக் காட்டியிருக்கும் செல்வி தமிழ்வாணி, உலக சமூகத்தின் மீது தமிழ் மக்கள் ஏமாற்றமடைந்து நம்பிக்கையிழந்திருப்பதாகவு