UN Humanitarian Chief concludes three-day visit to N. Sri Lanka Special

On Thursday, UN Humanitarian Chief John Holmes ended his three-day visit to Northern Sri Lanka and urged the government to free the remaining 130,000 men, women and children who are inside the internal displacement camps, according to AFP. Prior to his visit, City News reported that Holmes would visit President Mahinda Rajapaksa. “Months after the conflict ended, our main concerns haven't changed. People are still not given free access to leave these camps on their own free will. We are very much encouraged by the government's progress to resettle people. There were about 288,000 people in May (when the conflict ended) and now it’s much less.” The Undersecretary had visited the camps and noted that the living conditions inside the camps must be improved. He also asked the Sri Lankan government to give the freed Tamils the opportunity to have a greater involvement and stake in their resettlement. “People need to be consulted as much as possible on where they are going, the status of their homes, their livelihoods. But I must say that those who have been allowed to return are quite relieved to get out of the camps and rebuild their lives with what little they have.” Nevertheless, Holmes believes the government is on track for their goal of releasing all Tamils out of the camps by January 2010 but other reports suggest the President will delay the initial goal and now wants to have only 50,000 Tamils inside the camps by that projected date. Other reports seem to suggest that the Tamil people are not being released just transferred to different camps. Digital Journal reported that thousands of Tamils who were initially released were just given to the Sri Lanka Navy and put in a separate camp. Others who went home were immediately reprimanded without any notice and put back into the camps. In a news conference with Holmes, the country’s Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagmaa continued his government’s promise of allowing the war-displaced people to leave at their will. However, according to Asia Times Online, many humanitarian groups and the international community have accused Sri Lanka of holding Tamils against their will. Bogollagma also wants more assistance from the UN to help clear mines that are in villages. It has been estimated that 1.5 million mines are scattered around the country’s north. Senthan Nada, a Toronto spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop the War in Sri Lanka, told Digital Journal in an e-mail that any top humanitarian official who can visit Sri Lanka is a good thing, which he then further elaborated saying the hundreds of thousands of “unfortunate Tamils” need assistance “[including] children who are being illegally detained and locked up against the international law for the past six months without adequate food, medicine, water, and other basic essentials.” Nada notes that Holmes has visited the war-torn nation twice but Dr C P Thiagarajah, of Tamil Canadian, believes it didn’t solve nor help anything, “Nothing was remedied nor anything new revealed and few positives came out of the three day trip that was popularly believed to fix the problem of genocide of Tamils in Sri-Lanka.” The Toronto spokesperson added that Holmes was called a “terrorist” by government ministers in Sri Lanka. In April of this year, Holmes wrote an op-ed piece in The Guardian, which he states, before the end of the 30-year civil war, “As a full-scale, long-term ceasefire is unlikely to be agreed now, the only way to get the civilians out of harm's way is a temporary humanitarian lull, during which aid workers and relief supplies must be allowed into the conflict zone, and those who want to leave must be given the chance to do so.” In September, Inner City Press spoke to the country’s newest Ambassador to the UN Palitha Kohona, which prompted them to ask how long the people would be “locked up in the camps.” Kohona responded that they would all be home by the end of the year. They then asked about the reports that of the 10,000 released from Manik Farms that half of them were taken to other camps and Kohona said that there are interim camps and asked about the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States who still have not returned home. Nada concluded, "The international community’s speedy actions of holding Sri Lanka accountable, doing utmost to release IDPs speedily from the camps, forcing sustainable and acceptable political solution to address the root cause of Tamils very urgent now than ever before."