Sri Lanka under fire

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) estimated on Thursday that around 280,000 people had fled the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka in the past months, out of which 80,000 escaped heavy fighting in the last three days alone.

Those numbers have placed a huge burden on already crowded camps housing thousands of displaced ethnic Tamils, aid groups working on the ground say.

Andreas Lindner, head of the Red Cross delegation that visited Sri Lanka, told German news agency dpa the crisis was one of the most "complicated and dramatic worldwide."

"Prisons under the open sky"

Lindner said many of the refugees were suffering from dehydration and undernourishment, some had gunshot wounds or other injuries and there were thousands of cases of Hepatitis A and chicken pox.

Typhoid too had broken out in some pockets, he said, adding that the last time he witnessed a comparable situation was after the genocide in Ruanda in 1994.

Lindner criticized the supply of food to the camps, saying the distribution of drinking water was hugely insufficient. He also said the government was restricting access to the camps by aid agencies.

Aid group Caritas Internationalis has slammed the government in Colombo for failing to improve conditions in the camps.

Caritas said the Sri Lankan military was patrolling camps in the Vavuniya region in the northeast of the country and refugees were not allowed to leave or have any contact with the outside world.

Its aid workers on the ground had described the camps as "prisons under the open sky," the group said.

Calls for political solution

The criticism comes amid fierce international condemnation of Colombo's handling of the crisis. Heavy fighting broke out between government troops and Tamil Tigers in the last rebel stronghold in the northeast in the past months. Thousands of civilians were reportedly caught in the crossfire.

Earlier this week, the European Union called for an independent inquiry into alleged human rights abuses by both sides.

The rebels started fighting in the 1970s for a separate state – Eelam – for Tamils in Sri Lanka's north and east, complaining that Tamils had been discriminated against by successive majority Sinhalese governments.

The conflict has killed an estimated 80,000 people, displaced tens of thousands more and put a brake on the island's growth and economic development.

Calls are growing louder for a long-term political solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka and one that takes into account Tamil aspirations.

The German government this week urged Colombo to step up efforts to initiate a process of reconciliation with the Tamil minority.

Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said the government in Sri Lanka needed to do everything it could to heal the divisions in society and give the Tamil population a chance to participate in the political process.

On Thursday, Sri Lanka's Reconciliation Minister, Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, a former rebel commander who was known as Col Karuna, said elections would be held in areas affected by recent fighting once displaced people have been resettled.

He also promised the polls would address the grievances of the Tamil minority.

sp/dpa/AFP
Editor: Nancy Isenson