Sri Lanka’s president promised on Friday to send nearly 300,000 Tamil war refugees in military-run camps back home in four months. A UN official welcomed the pledge and warned that any delay in resettlement would undermine efforts to reconcile with the country’s estranged minority.
UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe also urged the government to investigate allegations of human rights abuses during the civil war with the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa made the promise at a meeting with Pascoe amid international criticism of the government’s treatment of those displaced by the war.
Rajapaksa told Pascoe he expects that new demining equipment will allow all the ethnic Tamil civilians in the camps to be resettled by the end of January, a statement from the president’s office said.
Sri Lanka has said it can’t send the displaced people home until their villages are cleared of mines and can’t release those in the camps because of fears some may be rebel fighters.
Pascoe, who visited the camps on Thursday, welcomed Rajapaksa’s commitment.
“I found this quite encouraging ... I think that would be a very positive step and look very much forward to it becoming a reality,” he said.
He said the UN is concerned about the “lack of freedom of movement and the closed nature” of the camps.
“As the situation currently stands in the camps there is a real risk of bringing resentment that will undermine the prospect of political reconciliation in the future,” he said.
Pascoe also asked the government to start an investigation and hold accountable those found guilty of human rights violations during the final phase of the war.
Scores of civilians died in the fighting as the rebels mounted their last stand on a shrinking strip of beach, with both sides accusing each other of ignoring civilian safety.
“Coming to grips with the past is difficult. Sweeping it under the rug could be a tempting shortcut, but it can have a high price at a later time,” Pascoe said. “We feel that ideally, the Sri Lankans should carry out a national process of truth-seeking and accountability. But at the same time, the process has to be serious, independent and impartial.”
An opposition ethnic Tamil lawmaker also welcomed the government’s decision on resettlement but said it was doubtful that demining could be completed before next month’s monsoon rains, which can scatter the weapons.
Mavai Senathiraja, a lawmaker for the Tamil National Alliance party, said the government must move the people away from low-lying, congested camps into better buildings before the rains.
Approximately 280,000 ethnic Tamil civilians have been detained in the camps since the island nation’s civil war ended four months ago.
Human rights groups say the government is illegally detaining the war refugees. Aid groups say the camps are overcrowded and prone to disease, and fear monsoon rains will create a public health crisis.
The government previously had promised to resettle 80 percent of the camp residents by the end of the year, a feat demining experts and other aid workers said appeared unrealistic. Instead, they called on the government to allow the camp residents to live with relatives or host families until they can return home.
The government said last week it had already resettled about 20,000 people in areas cleared of mines.
But Senathiraja accused the authorities on Thursday of simply shifting hundreds of these people to other camps, while thousands of others promised freedom were never moved at all.
The government denied the allegation.
Government troops routed the Tamil Tigers in May, ending their 25-year fight for an independent homeland for the country’s ethnic minority Tamils after decades of discrimination by successive governments controlled by majority ethnic Sinhalese. Some 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed in the violence.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS