Tamil IDPs inside the barbed-wire internment camps in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) controlled Vavuniya are not only medically underserved, but are subjected to degrading interrogations and there are reports of regular rapes and killings, reveals a well known German writer and Human Rights activist, Thomas Seibert, who recently returned from Sri Lanka after a humanitarian trip, conducting personal interviews that described the plight of civilians kept as near-prisoners under the SLA occupation.
Tens of thousands of people who flee from the battle field have been identified and housed by the Sri Lanka Army and its paramilitaries in several camps located around Vavuniya.
"Many are tortured or simply shot. There are also reports of regular rapes," Medico International quoted Thomas Seibert in a press statement.
Mr. Seibert said that the Sri Lankan military was attempting to expand the scope of the current internment camps to house the civilians there for years.
Meanwhile, more than 100,000 civilians remaining within a 15 square kilometre coastal strip in Vanni, according to the estimated figures by the UN and Sri Lankan Humanitarian organisations, are under siege and subjected to shelling, Seibert further said.
He warned of a tendency for massacre unless an immediate ceasefire is declared.
"Should the lives of the civilians be saved at least, an immediate cease fire must be declared. Everything else is an acceptance of a foreseeable massacre."
Frankfurt-based relief and human rights organisation Medico International is a Non-Governmental Organization, which provides emergency relief and supports human rights and development projects to secure access to health care.
Separately, in the so-called ‘safe zone, starvation is compounding the problem for civilians already affected by the daily shelling of Sri Lankan government forces.
The LTTE charged last week that 165,000 Tamil civilians belonging to 40,000 families within the ‘safe zone’ on the Mullaiththeevu coast are faced with serious crisis due to the deliberate denial of food and other humanitarian supplies by the Sri Lankan Government.
Dr. Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi, a top government health official in the war zone, told The Associated Press that there was a severe shortage of food and medicine in the area and people were dying of starvation.
The humanitarian situation "continues to be critical, civilian casualties have been tragically high and their suffering horrendous," U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.
Last Tuesday, Sri Lankan authorities delayed the departure of a ship with World Food Program supplies scheduled to travel to the Vanni.
On one hand the essential food and other important food items are not available in the District and on the other hand the people do not have income / money to buy the items. Thus, the distribution of food is entirely depending on arrivals of ships and the quantity brought, officials in the area told TamilNet. Civilians in the Vanni were only eating once a day for the last 4 weeks, the officials said.
