A small percentage of the Tamil refugees held in camps since May have allegedly been released amid growing international pressure on the Sri Lankan Government over its human rights record. But reports from the island suggested that the civilians were merely moved from one place of confinement to another.
About 5,700 refugees left the huge camp at Menik Farm, in the country's north, on October 22 to be resettled, the Government said.
Rehabilitation Minister Rishat Badurdheen told the press that 5,700 IDPs were allowed to return to their homes, claiming this was in keeping with a promise to release 80% of the inmates within a 180-day deadline.
The minister also claimed that another 36,000 would be resettled "over the coming weeks" as he spoke to the BBC.
Many of these civilians have been transferred to smaller transit camps or small shelters that have been set up in schools and other government owned buildings in other regions of the North and East, reports said.
On the same day, the US State Department released a report of possible war crimes committed during the final months of the civil war, citing actions by government forces and the Tigers between January and May 2009.
Senior Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa, brother to President Mahinda Rajapakse, had led a press conference week earlier, where journalists were taken on tour and a ceremony was held to mark the release of 1,200 IDPs.
The press were told that the people would be allowed to resettle back in their original homes in the Mannar district.
The ceremony was held at Manthai West transit camp, where thousands of “released” IDPs were being held. These civilians had been taken to Manthai West from the camps in Chettikulam.
But witnesses said the displaced boarded buses that merely took them back to the camps.
Sunday Times photographer Ranjith Perera, who was amongst the journalists taken on the tour, reported that he witnessed the IDPs board a bus, said to be taking them to their homes, and then return back to the same Manthai West transit camp.
“It was more of a photo opportunity for the journalists” reported the photographer.
“Every aspect of the exercise was a fraud designed to deflect criticism at home and internationally over the detention of Tamil civilians,” said Sarath Kumara of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
He called the event a “public relations charade”.
When government officials were asked by the paper about the IDPs of Manthai West they were told that “the original houses of the IDPs had suffered heavy damage due to the heavy fighting... it was not possible to send them directly to their homes as their houses needed repairs”.
There were also 144 Tamil students who were being held at Poonthooddam Child Protection and Rehabilitation Centre, a Vavuniya internment camp, being forcibly transferred to
The Sunday Times reported of another case of IDPs, originally from Mullaitivu, who the government claimed to have resettled.
It was uncovered that these Tamil civilians were being held in a transit internment camp in Thunukkai and were merely “allowed to visit their villages in Mullaitivu” and “(see) for themselves the damage caused to their houses”.
Even Minister Douglas Devananda confirmed that IDPs from Mullaiththeevu and Kilinochchi districts in Vanni are now being held in the detention camps in Mirusuvil, Kodikaamam Naavaladi and Kaithadi in
Separately, in Trincomalee fifteen IDPs were abducted from a transit camp located in the complex of Eachchilampathu Sri Shenpaga Maha Vidiyalayam in Seruvila division. They were all Tamil men, who were married and aged between 25 and 45.
A group of unknown persons dressed in army camouflage uniform were said to have taken them and their whereabouts are currently uknown.
This is a situation that is seen all over the North-East of
And this is now an open secret.
“The government has widely publicised recent releases from the camps yet Amnesty International has received reports that many are simply transfers to other camps where the displaced may be subjected to rescreening by local authorities,” reads a report by the international NGO.
The organisation “confirmed the location of at least 10 such facilities in school buildings and hostels originally designated as displacement camps in the north” while stating that there were “frequent reports of other unofficial places of detention elsewhere in the country”.
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“The danger of serious human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings increases substantially when detainees are held in locations that are not officially acknowledged places of detention and lack proper legal procedures and safeguards”, said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia Director.
Since the climax of the civil war in May, over 240,000 Tamil civilians remain forcibly held in internment camps by the Sri Lankan Government. Repeated promises by the government to send these IDPs home have been broken and pressure is mounting on
