‘Sri Lankan government has an obligation to release civilians and provide adequate assistance'

‘Sri Lankan government has an obligation to release civilians and provide adequate assistance'

Hans van de Weerd, General Director of MSF Holland, has recently returned from Sri Lanka. Here we ask him about the situation in the northern district of Vavuniya, where there are over 260,000 displaced people as a result of the now ended war between the Sri Lankan army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

What is the situation in the camps in Vavuniya?

"More than 260,000 displaced people are living in Vavuniya spread out over many different camps where they still don't have freedom of movement. They are not allowed to leave the camps and are not allowed to possess phones. The size of the camps differ from a few thousand to more than 60,000 people. The conditions vary immensely from one camp to another: in some, the water supply is a problem, in others, the delay in the distribution of food rations is the biggest concern.

"Overall, there is a concerning shortage of medical staff inside the camps and MSF staff still hear stories of people who say it has taken them days to see a doctor. The doctors and nurses of the Minister of Health are working very hard, but with these numbers of people the needs are enormous. There are many people with injuries and amputations and there is a huge need for physiotherapy. Often patients get discharged from overcrowded hospitals and sent to the camps where they do not receive the post-operative care they need, such as physiotherapy.

"Furthermore, in most of the camps, there are no adequate health services functioning at night, so it is down to the soldiers at the gates to judge whether a patient is ill enough to need to go to a hospital outside the camps.

"Mental health problems are another important issue for the people living in the camps, as during the conflict they went through traumatic experiences, many of them have lost loved ones or/and have been injured. Added to this, they are now in a situation where it is difficult to rebuild a normal life. People are living in crowded tents, there are very few jobs inside the camps, there is nowhere to go and very little to do other than wander from one food or item distribution, organised by either the government or humanitarian organisations, to the next. In many camps people cannot cook for themselves but have to rely on communal kitchens, parents worry about their children missing out on their education and the uncertainty about when they will be able to leave or get together with their relatives is a cause of great anxiety."

Apparently people in the camps are not free to leave. Why does MSF work there?

"MSF is working for the people in the camps, where freedom of movement is severely restricted, according to the government because of the concern about the presence of former fighters among the civilians. There are provisions under international law for such restrictions in states of emergency, which the Sri Lankan parliament has declared, but they are meant to be of limited duration. Of course MSF is deeply concerned that the longer these conditions exist, the more difficult life becomes for those who are living in the camps, particularly as they have experienced extremely traumatic events and many are still not sure where their families are or what has happened to them. To date, there has been no clear, systematic release of anyone from the camps, with the exception of children under 10 and adults over 60 who have relatives outside the camps.

"With the rainy season coming up, MSF is also concerned about any acute needs that could arise in the camps.

"It is true that the government has made an effort to set up the camps and ensure that assistance is provided. However, health care services, for example, are still not at the level we would hope to see. MSF has offered to the authorities its assistance in helping expand the existing services. MSF is of the opinion that the government has an obligation to release civilians and ensure that adequate assistance is provided."

What is MSF doing in Vavuniya?

"In 11 of the camps, MSF delivers high energy porridge to supplement the diets of particularly vulnerable people like children under 5, pregnant and lactating women and the elderly. In total MSF is giving out each day more than 23,000 meals to these people and makes sure that sick people and malnourished children will be referred to clinics and special treatment centres for malnourished children.

"In May, MSF set up a 150 bed hospital outside the camps of Menik Farm with two operating rooms and an intensive care unit. Since the opening, over a thousand medical and surgical patients were admitted. People are referred there by the Ministry of Health staff in the camps. We are mostly treating conflict related injuries, respiratory tract infections and paediatric cases. Maternity services have also recently started. We continue to support the Ministry of Health General Vavuniya hospital with MSF staff doing surgery, nursing and physiotherapy.

"Nine nutritional assistants work alongside ministry of health staff in the nutrition department of the paediatric ward and a Mental Health officer is assisting a local NGO with training their counsellors to provide mental health to the patients in the hospital. A team of about 135 caretakers help patients with day to day activities like eating and bathing and some of them are also being trained in physiotherapy and doing wound-dressings. MSF also distributed clothes, towels, water bottles, money, mats, pillows and bedsheets to more than 10,000 patients as most of them arrived with only their clothes on.

"In the Ministry of Health Pompaimadhu hospital MSF staff are taking care of 180 wounded patients, many with amputations. Fifty of them have spinal cord injuries. The main activities are dressings, physiotherapy and surgery.

"We are in a process of negotiations with the authorities to start a programme of orthopaedic and reconstructive surgery in the hospital of Vavuniya."

What restrictions do you face in your work?

"The process to issue visas for international staff is lengthy and very bureaucratic and this has hampered our work. Also the teams having to enter the camps on a daily basis for the feeding activities are often hindered by unclear procedures, which sometimes delays the work by hours or days.

"MSF is not allowed to enter camps where we do not work and we have not been able to carry out an independent assessment of the needs of the displaced people in the camps.

"MSF has the capacity to scale up activities and provide medical and mental health care for the people inside the camps. So far, the authorities have not accepted this proposal for assistance."

Posted by transCurrents on August 14, 2009 01:07 AM | Permalink transCurrents.com Contact Email: editor@transcurrents.com

Let our People Go Home!

Posted by transCurrents on August 14, 2009 12:51 AM

"Let our People go Home"

by Mano Ganesan

(English translation script of the Sinhala interview appeared in Ravaya weekly on 9th August, 2009)

How do you describe the current situation in the IDP camps ?

President Mahinda Rajapakse’s own advisor Vasudeva Nanayakara referred to the IDP camps as Hell. Former chief justice Sarath Silva called these camps as open prison camps. They commented in Sinhala language. I am looking for more suitable terms beyond these descriptions. It is a fact that these camps are being maintained contravening all accepted national and international laws. These camps symbols of disgrace to our national history, cultural traditions and people.

Do you propose actions beyond sending water bottles, clothing and food packets from the people of south to the refugees ?

Sure. These people are neither beggars nor homeless street people. They are proudful people who lived honorably in their traditional villages, the villages and land of our ancestors who lived and shaped our heritage for thousands of years. It is very true that Buddhism and Hinduism carry the messages of kindness and mercy. But these people do not require mercy. They need no to be at anybody’s mercy. This national problem cannot be restricted to water bottles, clothing, food packets and tents. Government is trying to cover it’s nakedness by using the media excessively to telecast the ‘merciful’ supplies of such goods to the IDPs.

I feel embarrassed as a member Sri Lankan state to note this shameless act of the government. This trend of portraying our people as poor beggars on the breadline should stop at once. Their legitimate rights to live freely in their own traditional villages should be treasured and respected. I am talking this from my heart. I address this to the hearts of my Sinhala Buddhist brethren. I wish to engage myself in efforts to win over the hearts and minds of our Sinhala brethren in view of ending this national humanitarian crisis. Government is trying to wrap this humanitarian problem under the carpet. I call upon the goodhearted Sinhalese people to unite and defeat this efforts of the government.

How do you look at government’s handling of the IDP issue?

The government had blundered from the very beginning. I am telling this because I believe that no lawfully elected government can perform similar to that of a terrorist group. All those human rights violations of LTTE are matched and even surpassed by this government. The violations continue to occur. I believe LTTE’s non state terrorism has come to an end. But this government’s state terrorism is existing widely. I cannot find any streak of humanism anywhere in the so called humanitarian operations of the government. At this very moment over three hundred thousands of our people are being detained behind barbed wires and their movements restricted against their free will. Is it not state terrorism? Governments initial statistics talked about seventy thousand people. But it is now over three hundred thousand. The numbers of people gathered today were not anticipated by the government. This government at that time air dropped leaflets calling the people to come into the government held territory. People accepted the invitation and came into government territory.

But the government had no ability of infra structure basis to house this large number of people. This government will never acquire that ability. Therefore our people are becoming mentally and physically sick patients on a daily basis. The physically sick die. The mentally sick commit suicide. Children, Women and Elders are becoming orphans. Especially the conditions of our women have become very vulnerable. Our people are forced to wait in long queues for toilets, baths, water, food and medicine from dawn to dusk. Our people are becoming members of a 24 hour line-up society. The government is behaving very indecently to cover these realities. Elected Parliamentarians and media personnel are not allowed to visit these sites independently. No such restrictions imposed in any such camps housing displaced people anywhere in the world. This is the reality. They are not welfare villages. I refer to these camps as open prison camps. This is the treatment meted out to our people by this government.

While some sections disapprove, certain others approve government’s handling of the displaced people. How should a responsible government act at such juncture?

Only politically cruel and communally insane persons approve such inhuman conditions. These are small numbers of persons. But through excessive media coverage they attempt to interpret this as the majority opinion. But I do not think that majority of our Sinhala Buddhist people approve this. This is not a private problem of the government. First of all this government should understand this. Therefore the ‘Northern Blossom’ (Uthurata Vasanthaya/Vadakkin Vasantham) program cannot be implemented according the plans drawn as per the government designs. At this hour of national crisis, the government should form an inter party commission powered to take independent decisions. This commission should be authorized to question and receive answers regarding the governmental executive decisions and acts. Need of the hour is transparency.

According to the reports received by us, over two hundred and fifty thousand people demand to go back to their villages independently. These people do not require any governmental assistance. This is the demand of the people who wish to continue living in their traditional village lands where their ancestors lived over thousands of years as an ethnic nationality. Neither this government nor any force on earth can deny this traditional and historical rights of our people. I wish to state this very categorically. We will never accept the efforts of the government to create new townships changing the demography. Government is magnifying this problem to undue proportions to suit it’s own political agenda. The less government we have the better said Emerson. But this government is administering everything from toileting to sleep bed and from birth to death of the displaced Tamil civilians.

This government has made everything government in every aspect of the displaced Tamil civilians by supervising and interfering in every stages of their personal lives. This is nothing but systematic insult and injury to the Tamil civil layers. Government by purposefully postponing the resettlements of the civilians. Government again and again talks about landmines. I will not buy this story. The mined territory is only about 10% of the total land. All knowledgeable civilians know this. Our security forces reached Vanni heartland from all directions well through the territory. Let our people go home. It should occur with immediate effect. It is the need of the hour. Under the circumstances, our priorities number one, number two and number three are letting our people going back to their homes.

Today rights to life and speech are under threat in the north and as well as in the south. What is your intervention in this regard?

I live in the south. But I never gave a round of applause when the rights to life and speech were violated in the north. I am for a undivided Sri Lanka. I always provide my highest most respect to our national flag. But when such rights were publicly violated in the north, I did not raise our national flag. I did not bring insults to our national flag by engaging in such activities. Do not wait until the arm of tyranny taps your door. Be on your alert. Get together. Join hands. This is my call.

Posted by transCurrents on August 14, 2009 12:51 AM | Permalink transCurrents.com Contact Email: editor@transcurrents.com