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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not