RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'

• by IPS Correspondents (colombo)
• Friday, December 26, 2008
• Inter Press Service

Beside the altar a young man with a receding hairline was setting up a slideshow on the plight of the tens of thousands displaced in war-torn northern Sri Lanka, run to the accompaniment of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s 1984 number, ‘Do they Know It’s Christmas?’.

This was a special, pre-Christmas prayer service for civilians trapped in the Vanni or areas still under the control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

'I ask you to pray for our people, Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher,' Father Praveen Mahesen from the northern Jaffna Peninsula told his small congregation, referring to the country’s main ethnic groups. Sinhalese make up of about 74 percent while the Tamils follow with around 15 percent.

The teardrop shaped island has been ravaged, since 1983, by sectarian violence that now seems to have reached a decisive point. In January 2008, the Sri Lankan government officially pulled out of a ceasefire signed in 2002 with the LTTE -- called the ‘Tigers’ for short -- and pushed for a military solution to the conflict.

Sri Lanka’s army is now poised for a final assault on Kilinochchi, the once bustling town that serves as the political hub of the Tigers. The Tigers however have been putting up a stiff resistance and the weeks leading to Christmas saw hundreds of combatants killed on both sides.

Clashes were reported on Christmas Eve and even on Christmas Day.

On Dec.15, five Bishops -- three Catholic and two Anglican-- made a plea for a Christmas truce. 'A temporary truce will be of immense benefit to the people of Vanni in areas under Tiger control,' they said.

The Bishops also requested the ''two sides to explore setting up of demilitarised zones with the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross (CRC). If requested, leaders from all religions are ready to assist in this task''.

That plea for peace fell on deaf ears. The Sri Lankan government had declared that 2009 will be the year decisive victories while the Tigers have said that their cadres are dug in for the long haul.

'2009 will go down in Sri Lanka’s history as the year of victory. We will wipe out terrorism and liberate our people,' President Mahinda Rajapakse told a gathering of religious leaders on Dec. 22.

Christmas week saw the Tigers in a defiant mood with its political head B. Nadesan indicating that they were prepared for the government onslaught. ‘It is not the real estate that matters. Our freedom struggle will continue to create war towns until our struggle reaches its goal -- until we win,’ he told the Reuters news agency in an e-mail interview published on Dec. 23.

International humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that the fate of the over 230,000 displaced, now remaining in areas east of Kiliochchi, was precarious. Last week The Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Walter Kälin, became the latest dignitary to express concern.

In a letter to the Sri Lankan government he said that food and other essential items for those trapped in the Vanni were in short supply despite the World Food Programme (WFP) transporting supplies with the assistance of government agencies and other relief groups.

'The Representative acknowledged the Government's continuing efforts to enable humanitarian convoys to reach the estimated 200,000-300,000 internally displaced persons in the region but stressed that current supplies of food, medicine, emergency shelter and sanitation materials are inadequate to meet the severe and increasing needs of the displaced. The Representative has called on the Government to significantly improve access for more humanitarian relief and humanitarian personnel to reach all civilians in need,' a U.N. statement said.

Kälin also requested the Tigers to allow internally displaced persons (IDPs) to move out of areas under their control and raised the possibility of the Tigers using the civilians for military purposes.

'The Representative is concerned by reports that the LTTE is restricting IDPs' freedom of movement and ability to seek safety in another part of the country. Only the most limited and narrow exception would be allowed for a temporary relocation or restriction of civilians, and only then for imperative military reasons or when safety of the civilians so requires. The Representative also cautions that the intermingling of combatants or military objectives within a civilian population violates at a minimum the duty to take precautionary measures and to respect the principle of distinction.'

On Tuesday, the New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch called on the Sri Lankan government to ensure freedom of movement for civilians fleeing the fighting. 'The Sri Lankan government should stop arbitrarily detaining civilians fleeing fighting in the northern Vanni region,' HRW said in a report.

Food, however, is getting into the Vanni. The WFP said that it transported 870 MT of supplies on Christmas Eve, the largest weekly convoy since the relocation of U.N. and other international humanitarian agencies out of the Vanni in mid-September.

'Although WFP planned to send 750 tons of food weekly, delays because of technical, administrative and weather-related constraints (security, bad road conditions, flooding) have prevented the full requirements to be met,’’ a statement said. The government also says there is no food shortage in the Vanni. 'There was no food shortage in the Vanni and Jaffna and the Government is getting the fullest cooperation of all key actors including the WFP and ICRC in the endeavour to provide supplies to the civilians,’’ Commissioner General of Essential Services S.B. Divarathne said.

But those who organised the prayer service in Colombo felt that the plight of the civilians trapped in the Vanni was nowhere on the national psyche as this small nation of 22 million people went into the yearend holidays with crackers and fireworks and Christians and Catholics dressed resplendently for midnight mass.

'There were no prayers or mention of hundreds of thousands of displaced men, women and children, with inadequate shelter, food, medicine, education, water and sanitation,' Rukshan Fernando, the young man with the receding hairline, wrote in a blog post. He had just finished attending midnight mass.

© Inter Press Service (2008) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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