UN Jaffna officials accused of misreporting in favour of Sri Lankan State

Civil society sources in Jaffna raised accusations against United Nation (UN) Jaffna officials for releasing facts and statistics, related to the detainees held in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps, provided by Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and SLA, instead of the true situation prevailing in the camps, to the outer world.

For instance, the UN officials in their June 15 report said that only four detainees had died in the past six months in Jaffna camps where as many have died including a woman due to septicemia, in a meeting held in Jaffna town Thursday, participants in the meeting said.

The meeting was attended by UN Jaffna officials and organizations working with the UN in Jaffna.

The UN report created a furore among the representatives of civil organizations attending the meeting who said that the UN officials in Jaffna are helping the government and the SLA to hide the true situation in the camps from the world.

Another glaring misrepresentation in the UN report was the number of Vanni civilians held in Thellippazhai SLA Special Rehabilitation Camp (SRC).

The report says that only a hundred detainees from Jaffna camps, where there are around 11,223 detainees, have been taken to Thellippazhai SRC while the number of young men and women detainees held there is around 800 hundred, civil society representatives said.

Apart from this, Education Officials who had visited Thellippazhai SRC say that more than a hundred children between the ages of 14 to 18 are detained there.

Particularly, June 15 June report does not mention these children and pregnant women held in Thellippazhai SRC.

The UN officials in Jaffna have betrayed the Tamils by having failed to collect the true facts and figures related to the condition of the detainees in the camps and to have helped the government and the SLA to release reports based on false statistics fed by both, civil society representatives raised accusations.

Meanwhile, 35 types of infectious diseases have been observed in the camps and among these typhoid fever and jaundice are found to be spreading fast, health officials said.

Cases of tuberculosis too exist in the camps but no action has been taken to isolate these from others let alone providing the needed medical treatment or preventive measures, they said.

Malnutrition, particularly among the children and elderly in all the camps in Jaffna is conspicuous and the condition of the victims may prove critical in the coming days, they added.