Transferring IDPs, instead of releasing them, must stop: Anglican Bishop

If [IDP] persons said to be released [from the internment camps in Vavuniyaa] are in fact being transferred to camps in different regions, this is misleading and must stop, says Anglican Bishop of Colombo Rev. de Chickera. The Bishop has urged Rajapaksa government to allow media access to areas in the North and provide public updates on the work regarding resettlement of displaced persons.
Extracts from the statement by the Bishop follow:
"If the decision [to release persons in the camps] has been put on hold it must be reactivated. If the response of relatives has been slow, more time and wider publicity should be given. If persons said to be released are in fact being transferred to camps in different Regions, this is misleading and must stop. Reports of the lack of co-ordination amongst State Authorities are disappointing, and all those responsible for implementing this decision should be required to ensure co-ordination, compassion and speed.
"The decision to release, should however be clearly seen as an interim measure. The much more urgent task is to expedite the process of resettlement. Once the ‘home areas” of the Displaced are cleared of mines and the required infrastructure built, persons displaced, whether in the camps or with relatives, should be resettled in their original homes.
"I finally urge the Government to provide the Media with access to areas being de-mined and reconstructed, (subject to their safety and security precautions) and to also make regular public updates on this work. This will in turn provide information to all Sri Lankans, whether displaced or not, on the progress being made in this regard. In doing so the Government will demonstrate transparency in its management of the crisis and State Ministries and Officials will quite rightly be held accountable by the people."

SLA shoots 6 including women, children in Cheddiku'lam camp

Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on Saturday around 6:00 p.m. opened fire and injured six civilians including two women and three children in Cheddiku'lam internment camp, according to initial reports reaching from Vavuniyaa. One 8-year-old child, seriously wounded in the episode, was transferred to Anuradhapura hospital from Vavuniyaa hospital, medical sources in Vavuniyaa said.
 The unfortunate group of six is said to have gone for collecting firewood in the surroundings of the camp.

World Food Programme (WFP) has stopped supplying cooked meals from 17 September. The inmates are dependent on dry rations (rice, sugar and dahl), but they lack proper facilities to cook the meals.
Civilians inside the camps are forced to get other materials, firewood, salt, tamarind etc., from external sources.
The civilians who tried to cross over the camps to get firewood were shot by the SLA.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan military officials in Colombo said the SLA opened fire when civilians who tried to 'escape' started to stone the SLA soldiers when they were blocked from leaving the camp. The military officials put the number of wounded civilians at three.

‘Paranoid Colombo machinates IDP human shield’

A whole world is duped in what Colombo is machinating in the name of resettlement of IDPs, Tamil circles in Jaffna commented, citing Sri Lanka Navy’s new internment camps around its installations in the island sector of Jaffna. Colombo’s aim is threefold: a human shield of civilians for its occupying forces, prevention of rightful owners reoccupying houses and lands around its military installations and eventually confiscating those lands in strategic areas for its expansion and other demographic conspiracies in the very heart of Tamil homeland, pointed out Tamil circles adding that a paranoid Sri Lankan state can never deliver justice to Tamils. The core truth is that the barbed-wire camps came up because the world powers wanted it. But some powers by not directly taking responsibility and some others like India by sitting on international action continue injustice, Jaffna circles said.
The SLN ‘resettled’ nearly 2000 civilians brought from the internment camps of Vavuniyaa in new internment camps created by using abandoned houses around its naval installations in Kaarainakar and in Kayts, this week.

For nearly two decades now, Colombo’s armed forces are occupying vast tracts of potential civilian land along the northern coast of the peninsula in the name of High Security Zone. A so-called ‘development model’ for Jaffna that is now being circulated shows that this tract is not going to be returned to people, but is going to be used for resource exploitation and a new city for the occupiers, with harbour, airport and military installations, as a joint venture of Colombo and New Delhi. Reviving the cement factory in Kaankeasanthurai is the biggest environmental crime that is going to affect hundreds of thousands of civilians, discouraging them from inhabiting the northern part of the peninsula, academic circles in Jaffna said.
Meanwhile, the SLA installed landmine blast that seriously injured three recently resettled civilians in the Ariyaalai tract is alleged to be another trick of Colombo to discourage the call for expediting resettlement. Unless the international community takes direct responsibility and removes Colombo’s occupying armed forces, peace and ‘reconciliation’ is a mirage in the island, opined a veteran Tamil politician in Jaffna.