Millions of pounds of British aid are being channelled by the Sri Lankan Government into controversial internment camps where it plans to hold and screen up to 200,000 civilians fleeing the conflict with the Tamil Tigers, reported The Times newspaper in
Mr Foster visited two camps and met Sri Lankan officials to urge them to call a ceasefire and allow aid agencies to help tens of thousands of civilians still stuck on the front line or on their way to the camps.
The government officials told him that aid agencies could help the civilians once they were inside the barbed wire enclosures – which some Tamil activists and Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil MPs have likened to concentration camps.
“It’s not an ideal situation but it’s important that we do this to help people who’ve been living in awful circumstances,” Mr Foster told The Times.
He said that the British tents, able to shelter 20,000 to 30,000 people, had been given to the United Nations refugee agency to distribute in the camps, which are already holding an estimated 113,000 refugees.
“We made the case for a humanitarian ceasefire,” he said. “It was noted.”
The UN says that there are 50,000 inside, and tens of thousands making their way to the camps, which are already severely overcrowded.
Mr Foster said that he had visited two transit camps where 6,400 civilians were being held before being moved into internment camps, where they are to be screened to make sure they are not Tigers.
He was not taken to the three main camps in Vavuniya – called Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3 – where an estimated 80,000 civilians are being held, according to aid workers there.
Conditions in those facilities are far worse, with drinking water in short supply, according to Lisabeth List, the medical co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical aid agency.
“They’re desperate for water – it’s extremely hot so more and more people are severely dehydrated,” she said.
“Because there are so many elderly and children, at any moment somebody could die because of this lack of water.” She also said that there was insufficient food in Zone 2 and Zone 3.
“People are getting so desperate they’re having to throw food off the back of a truck and people are getting trampled,” she said. “We’re in full blown emergency mode now. We still expect a lot more people to come.”
Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, had made a personal appeal for a humanitarian team to enter the no-fire zone but the Government has said repeatedly that it would be too dangerous.
Meanwhile, children are being separated from their families, reported The Independent newspaper in
An eight-year-old girl, who had witnessed her father and sister die from shelling in Vanni, and then seen her mother shot, was separated from her brother – her only remaining relative – at the camps the Sri Lankan government is using to screen and inter civilians, the paper reported an aid worker as saying.
“A fifth of children in the camps where we're providing aid are either missing or separated from one of their parents,” a Save the Children worker was quoted as saying.
“Those who have reached safety speak vividly of the terror of separation from their families, while others describe the horror of fleeing from the "no-fire" zone. Many youngsters are trying to cope with the trauma of what they have experienced entirely on their own.”
