EVEN as Sri Lanka's central bank chief announced that the country was in a ‘comfortable position right now’ and can go on without a major IMF bailout, the country’s trade minister toured Western states pleading for financial assistance to take care of the Tamils.  

Sri Lanka in March sought a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan to avert a balance of payments crisis, after spending half its reserves defending the rupee and paying foreign investors who sold off treasury securities after the global downturn.

However, Sri Lanka's request for IMF financing was delayed after the United States and other Western states became hesitant to support it after the Sri Lankan state’s conduct over the final phase of the war against the Tamils.

Observers say Sri Lanka not doing enough to avoid civilian casualties in the last few months of the war and not allowing aid agencies access to the 300,000 Tamil civilians held in internment camps has raised concerns amongst Western states.

Realising that the IMF loan is not going to be made available any time soon, Sri Lanka has changed tactics and is now asking for financial assistance to support the war ravaged Tamil population, the Observers added.

Speaking to media, Central Bank of Sri Lanka Governor Nivard Cabraal said the final defeat of the Tamil Tigers had helped alleviate the island's balance of payments concerns.

"The reserves are now at over $1.6 billion as of today and it is enough to finance more than two months of imports," Cabraal said.

"We have over 1.6 billion dollars in reserves, enough to pay for over two months of imports. And the figures are steadily climbing," Cabraal said.

Foreign reserves, which fell by more than two thirds when the central bank sold dollars to defend the local rupee last year, had climbed to 1.3 billion dollars by the end of April, according to central bank figures.

Cabraal said inflows had come from higher remittances, donor funds and foreign investors buying rupee-denominated treasury bills and bonds. The bank has also raised cash by selling dollar debt.

But he said some investors would still be more comfortable with an IMF loan.

"If the IMF funds come, it will give us a comfortable buffer stock. I hope we get it. But we are otherwise in a comfortable position right now," he said.

Meanwhile, G.L. Peiris, Sri Lanka's minister of export development and international trade who is in Washington for meetings with the IMF, World Bank and the U.S. government said post-war reconciliation process needs international financial support, urged swift assistance.

"If the developed countries are going to cut off resources at this time, that is ironical, because now is a time to infuse greater resources," Pieris said.

Sri Lanka's government needs to resettle war refugees, create jobs in depressed areas formerly run by the Tamil Tigers, and get the economy growing again amid a world recession that has hurt textile and tea exports, he said.

Peiris said he delivered a similar message in London and other European capitals, where some governments angry at Colombo's war conduct have threatened to suspend the "GSP plus" scheme that allows duty free exports from Sri Lanka.

The textile industry, which tallied exports of $3.2 billion in 2008, is largely based in rural and underdeveloped areas, he said.

"If GSP plus were to be withdrawn, the hit would be taken not by the government of Sri Lanka, but by the most vulnerable sections of the community," said the minister.

With each passing day, more reports of atrocities emerge from Sri Lanka's concentration camps where three hundred thousand Tamil people are detained by the Sinhala government. Young men and women are 'disappearing' every day, while bodies are found with throats cut and villagers report fresh mass graves in other parts of Vavuniya, the garrison town near which the military-run, barbed-wire ringed camps are located. Amid increasing reports of rapes, a prostitution ring run by government officials has been identified in at least one of the camps. Even as the people - the entire population of the Vanni - were herded into the camps in from March, thousands came bearing grievous injuries sustained during the indiscriminate bombardment by the military which killed 20,000 Tamil civilians this year. They have largely been denied sufficient food and medical assistance. Disease has swept through the camps in recent weeks while malnourishment is widely reported. Sri Lanka's genocide of the Tamils is proceeding steadily.

With customary contempt for international humanitarian and human rights norms, the Sri Lankan state has rejected all criticism of its 'welfare camps' and instead blamed the international community for the suffering of the Tamils. That the Tamil detainees are starving is the fault of the United Nations agencies'. So, apparently, is the revolting sanitary conditions that inevitably came about when hundreds of thousands were crammed into the tented camps. Colombo's contempt for international norms was underlined when President Mahinda Rajapakse this week mockingly boasted that his camps "are the best in the world."

An increasing number of international observers and scholars have begun taking a close look at ongoing events in Sri Lanka. Former skeptics are increasingly agreed that something is seriously wrong in Sri Lanka. As Prof. Martin Shaw, an expert on genocide, puts it, "the continuing concentration of over 250,000 people in the camps … itself constitutes a most serious crime." Human Rights Watch has condemned the "illegal detention of 300,000 Tamils" as a "national disgrace."

None of this international criticism is going to make an iota of difference to Colombo. The Rajapske regime is enjoying the highest popularity of any Sinhala government. It is whipping up a wave of Sinhala chauvinism that had been simmering under former governments but is now rampant. The defeat of the Liberation Tigers' conventional strength in May, despite the horrific - and still hidden - casualties suffered by the Sinhala military, has triggered undisguised triumphalism and daily acts of racism.

More importantly, the Rajapakse government has set about transforming Sri Lanka from the market democracy that - on the surface, at least - was engaging with Western notions of good governance, free markets, ethnic equality and other liberal concepts, into an archaic model of Sinhala governance straight from the pages of the Mahavamsa mytho-narrative. President Rajapakse has encouraged comparisons between him and the Sinhala king Dutugemunu in these chronicles. Whilst people in other countries may snicker at such conduct, the implications for the island's future of this re-enactment of a mythical past could not be more serious. For the Tamils, they are genocidal. It is worth remembering that in the Mahavamsa, the Sinhalese’ enemies are the 'Damils' - sub-humans.

The point here is that Sri Lanka's actions towards the Tamils are not merely the result of weak state capacity, indifference, corruption or the peculiarities of a particular Sinhala leadership, but the consequences of the pursuit - the 'making real' - of a particular ordering of ethnic value inherent to Sinhala mytho-narrative. Amidst a logic that places the Sinhala - the 'rightful' inheritors of the island - at the top of a hierarchy of ethnicities, no amount of 'engagement', 'capacity-building' or otherwise cajoling the Sinhala state is going to produce any change in its conduct. If the international community is going to stand by its humanitarian and human rights norms, then it is going to have to confront the Sinhala state head on. The Tamil Diaspora, settled mainly in the liberal democracies of the West, must continue to engage with these states and the associated international organizations and agencies. Whilst the Sri Lankan state can murder, threaten and block access to Tamil voices in the island, it cannot silence their fellow Tamils overseas. In the coming months and years, the Sinhalese will make it clear why 'reconciliation' is impossible in Sri Lanka. But in the interim, the Diaspora must ensure that the West-led international community makes good on its claim to defend human rights and other liberal values.

Advocating a fresh approach to the Tamil national question in Sri Lanka in the post-LTTE era, DMK president and Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi on Wednesday (July 1) declared in the assembly that achieving ‘Tamil Eelam’ was no more a realistic possibility.

He said Tamils should henceforth work for their livelihood rights in the island nation and struggle for equal rights, equal status for the language and devolution of powers at the regional level.

“Only this is possible, not Tamil Eelam,” he said, responding to views of members from various parties on a special mention on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue.

Counselling Tamil parties to adopt a flexible stand on the issue, Karunanidhi recalled that DMK founder C N Annadurai had shelved the party’s core demand — creating a separate Dravidian state (Dravida Nadu) — in 1962 to avoid proscription.

There was nothing wrong in changing stands for the “welfare of the people”, he said.

He said the conflict in Lanka between Sinhalese and Tamils was taking place for more than five decades now.

“I am the one who is aware of this problem since its beginning. I had even penned it in a detail way in my novel Pandaraka Vannian,” the Chief Minister said and added: “Both the Union and Tamil Nadu governments are keen to help the Lankan Tamils.”

“The Centre is now respecting State governments thanks to the pressure from our side on various occasions. Likewise, a Lankan government respecting the sentiments of Tamils should be formed,” he said.

The Chief Minister further said: “Like how Barack Obama from the oppressed community became the President of the United States, let us hope that a government led by Tamils would be formed soon in Lanka.”

Karunanidhi asked the parties not to make provocative remarks against the Sinhalese as that could further affect Tamils in the island nation.

He said that the only way to help Tamils in the present situation was through the Rajapakse government. “In order to help our brothers and sisters in the island nation, we should not come out with hard hitting remarks against Sinhalese. Because, in the present scenario, we could only reach Tamils through them,” he said.

Distancing himself from the demand by the AIADMK and the PMK that Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa be hauled up for war crimes, the chief minister said that it would be an exercise in futility, as it would only adversely affect the safety of the Tamils in that country. 

Three Tamil College students from Canada are on a 1000-mile walk from Chicago to Washington D.C. to "raise awareness with the general American population to what is happening in Sri Lanka,” Illinois Times reported. More than 50 people assembled on the steps of the Capitol Friday, wearing tan, gray and blue T-shirts that carried their message: Break the Silence in Sri Lanka, the paper added.

"Despite the afternoon’s stifling heat, these Sri Lankan natives and descendants showed up to rally behind Kannan Sreekantha, Vijay Sivaneswaran and Ramanan Thirukketheeswaranathan, three college students who are walking from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka," the paper said.

The crowd – with members young enough to ride in strollers and old enough to be grandfathers – chanted “Stop the genocide” and “We want justice.” They wielded American flags and handmade signs that reported the number of deaths, rapes and detainees in the war-torn island country. They even hit the street, passing out fliers to drivers stopped at the intersection of Second and Capitol, according to Illinois Times.

From Springfield, the three men will travel east through Indianapolis; Cincinnati; Dayton, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Cambridge, Mass. Wheeling, W.V.; and Pittsburgh before reaching Washington, D.C., during the week of Aug. 9., the paper further said. 

ALL the local newspapers of Jaffna that defied publishing an anonymous and defiling notice against the LTTE came under attack by an armed group in the early hours of Thursday.

The notice was brought out in the name of 'Tamil Front Protecting the Country' allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating with Colombo.

Thousands of copies of the local newspapers, Valampuri, Uthayan and Thinakkural (Jaffna edition), were burnt down wholesale in huge flames by the armed group allegedly operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence at Aanaippanthi and Kannathiddi junctions at 5:00 a.m. Thursday, June 25, while the newspapers were being taken for distribution.

The distribution workers were also brutally attacked.

A distribution worker of Thinakkural, 26-year-old Anojan, who was physically attacked was also robbed of his belongings by the armed men.

Newspaper editors of Jaffna were intimidated to publish the notice and warned of dire consequences the previous day through anonymous telephone calls. However, the editors sceptical of the contents of the notice decided not to publish it.

The Managing Director of Tamil-language newspaper, Uthayan, the biggest seller in the northern district of Jaffna told the BBC that his staff in Jaffna have been ordered to quit their jobs or be killed.

'Tamil Front Protecting the Country in a warning notice, delivered by men in helmets on a motorbike, accused Uthayan of being a "mouthpiece for terrorists" and of aiming to destroy peace, said Saravanapavan.

The security forces have laid on extra protection but Saravanapavan said he was especially worried about the ordinary workers and newsagents who, he said, should be able to operate without fear.

He said it was incumbent on the government to ensure no one was harmed.

Saravanapavan said that one of his colleagues had spoken to President Mahinda Rajapaksa who had promised to take necessary steps to protect media freedom.

Commenting on the attack, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarians Mavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran at a press conference said: "We do not believe that the elections are going to be free and fair. The burning of newspapers on the eve of nominations raises a big question about the circumstances under which the elections are going to be conducted,"

The government is fully responsible for the attack on newspapers that took place when two of its ministers are camping in Jaffna said Suresh Premachandran MP.

After the burning of the Eezhanaadu newspaper along with the public library in 1981 by the Sri Lankan forces, and again the burning of Eezhanaadu by the Indian military (IPKF), this is the third major burning of the newspapers of Jaffna by occupying forces.

In 1981, the burning of the public library and the newspaper office took place while two of Colombo's ministers were present in Jaffna and it is alleged they had a direct hand in orchestrating that. The present attack on newspapers took place when Sri Lanka's Education Minister and General Secretary of Mahinda Rajapaksa's ruling UPFA alliance, Susil Premajayantha and Social Welfare Minister Douglas Devandanda were camping in Jaffna.

Meanwhile, a Tamil journalist was kidnapped from outside her home in the capital Colombo and held for a day by people claiming to be the police.

Krishni Ifam, a Tamil reporter who works for media development NGO Internews, said the men had warned her to give up journalism altogether.

According to Ifam, men claiming to policemen forced her to get into their vehicle outside her Colombo home early on Wednesday and drove for several hours while keeping her blindfolded. She was then released in the central city of Kandy late on Wednesday, June 24 with a tiny amount of cash.

Ifam said the abductors took her belongings, asked if she was writing articles for foreign media outlets and warned her to give up journalism altogether before releasing her.

Ifam used to write for a prominent Tamil-language newspaper.

Earlier this month Poddala Jayantha, a press freedom campaigner, was abducted and assaulted while returning from work.

According to Amnesty International, at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists and other media workers have been killed by suspected government paramilitaries and rebels since the beginning of 2006.

A number of others have been detained, tortured or have disappeared, and at least 20 more have fled the country because of death threats, according to Amnesty. 

Former UN head of Humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland has accused the UN and the international community of letting the Sri Lankan state get away with denying the Tamils protection and access to humanitarian relief.

"Sri Lanka is the latest example of the world community letting a government get away with denying access, to witnesses, humanitarian relief, protection of civilians," Egeland said on Tuesday June 23.

Egeland further said that the Responsibility to Protest, enacted by the UN in 2005, was "not upheld in Sri Lanka, the heads of state have failed."

Predicting that conflict will brew as injustice against the Tamils are continuing, Egeland added, that he was not saying this as a UN official, that he is now with the Norwegian Institute on International Affairs.

Egeland who was in New York for a UN Colloquium on Conflict Related Sexual Violence in Peace Negotiations, told the media that we can "safely assume... horrors" in the treatment of "women in Sri Lanka, Tamils," due to the continuing denial of access not only to humanitarian review but also "witnesses."

Egeland’s comments were in contradiction to current UN humanitarian coordinator John Holmes, who has commended the Sri Lankan government for how they are running the UN-funded camps where they have detained 300,000 Tamil civilians.

What kind of violence has the Sri Lankan state been committing against its Tamil civilian population as the island‘s civil war ended; on what scale and with what intentions? Martin Shaw explores the difficult terrain where war, atrocity and genocide meet.

The civil war in Sri Lanka is receding from the international headlines, as crises in Iran and celebrity deaths occupy the media's limited space and attention-span.

A very large number of its Tamil victims are still, more than six weeks after the fighting ended, confined in government forces in a complex of forty camps in the north east of the country.

An estimated 280,000 civilians - originally displaced from their homes by the fighting between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers / LTTE), and in some cases fleeing from the brutal regime in the LTTE's former "liberated" zone - are being held, generally against their will.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his "victory speech", told Sri Lanka's parliament that "our heroic forces have sacrificed their lives to protect Tamil civilians", and he took "personal responsibility" for protecting Tamils.

Yet his government is now scandalously confining this huge population - who have already suffered not only from the LTTE but from Sri Lankan bombardments which caused probably tens of thousands of deaths and injuries - in squalid conditions.

The government has officially backtracked, under international pressure, on plans to hold the displaced, while screening them for potential "terrorists", for up to three years; it now says that 80% will be resettled by the end of 2009.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) comments: "The government's history of restricting the rights of displaced persons through rigid pass systems and strict restrictions on leaving the camps heightens concerns that they will be confined in camps much longer, possibly for years."

In the shadows

The eruption in Iran has in a twisted way done the Sri Lankan government a service.

In any case, Colombo has been ruthless in restricting international journalists and rights organisations: in May 2009 even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was barred from Menik Farm, the largest camp, and Channel 4's Nick Paton Walsh was deported.

Sinhala nationalism remains oppressively dominant within the majority population, and critics of the government face an atmosphere of intimidation and even terror: Sri Lankan journalists have frequently been murdered, assaulted and detained.

Although human-rights organisations and western governments have continued to protest at the situation, the Sri Lankan government has found friends in the United Nations’s new Human Rights Council; it was able to pass a resolution there on 27 May 2009 praising its own commitment to human rights (endorsed by such notable bastions of freedom as China, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan and Egypt).

The vigorous campaigns by members of the Tamil diasporas have ensured that the situation has not been entirely forgotten, but the interned Tamils don't have the mobile-phone access that (in the early post-election stages at least) so embarrassed the Iranian regime.

There are some pictures of the camps on the internet, but no iconic images of Tamil suffering have entered the commercial, established media in the manner of Iran's Neda Soltani - or indeed of Fikret Alic, the emaciated prisoner pictured behind barbed-wire in the Trnopolje camp in Bosnia in summer 1992.

A dire predicament

It is often said that pictures tell their own story.

However what is important is the media narrative and the momentum behind the issue: in both the Iranian and Bosnian cases the crises were much more strongly established in the dominant media (and the exposure of the experiences of Neda Soltani and Fikret Alic) fed this.

In the case of Sri Lanka, sadly, the level and intensity of coverage - despite the impressive Tamil campaigns - has not matched these.

Moreover, what was important in Bosnia was that Trnopolje was described as a "concentration" camp - so the image facilitated the connection between the atrocious treatment of Bosnian Muslim prisoners and the murderous history of concentration camps in Europe under Nazism.

The Bosnian-Serbian government that was responsible for Trnopolje naturally disputed this appellation, describing it merely as a holding centre for "refugees"; today the lowest-common-denominator descriptor seems to be a "detention" camp.

The Sri Lankan government also prefers its camps to be seen as "refugee" camps.

However once people are detained, camps are clearly more than that; and where there is a sustained policy of concentrating detainees then the term "concentration camp" applies.

In war, these camps - invented at the beginning of the 20th century to describe the enclosures in which the Spanish detained Cubans and the British detained Boerfarmers and their families during the South African wars - are usually designed to corral a civilian population seen as potentially sympathetic to a guerrilla enemy (as Tamils evidently are still seen despite the LTTE's defeat).

Totalitarian regimes, including Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, have also used camps to concentrate other civilian groups - actual and potential political opponents, trade unionists, and ethnic "enemies" such as Jews.

The complication in using the "concentration camp" category is that such regimes went on to develop their camps into something more - in the Soviet case, labour camps, in the Nazi case, extermination camps.

Clearly, not all concentration camps are "death" camps in the Nazi sense; but all concentration camps tend to produce death, as well as widespread physical and mental harm.

Since their premise is enmity towards the interned civilians, the history of concentration-camps has been marked, from the Boerwar onwards, by callous disregard for their welfare, and often worse.

As Human Rights Watch remarked of the Sri Lankan situation on 11 June 2009: "Virtually all camps are overcrowded, some holding twice the number recommended by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Food distribution is chaotic, there are shortages of water, and sanitation facilities are inadequate. Camp residents do not have access to proper medical services and communicable diseases have broken out in the camps."

What is more, "the military camp administration has imposed numerous restrictions on humanitarian organizations working in the camps, such as limiting the number of vehicles and staff members that can enter the camps, which has delayed the provision of much-needed aid. The military does not allow organizations into the camps to conduct protection activities, and a ban on talking to the camp residents leaves them further isolated.'"

If reports of violence and disappearances are added to this, the situation of the interned Tamils appears dire.

A "rolling" genocide?

The western fixation with the Nazi holocaust means that there is an obvious political temptation to link all anti-civilian violence with the Nazi model.

The pro-Tamil United States-based academic Francis Boyle, in his posts, sees a sixty-year "rolling" genocide in which Sinhalese governments of Ceylon (the country's name at independence in 1948) and Sri Lanka have sought "to annihilate the Tamils and to steal their lands and natural resources.

This is what Hitler and the Nazis called lebensraum - "living space" for the Sinhala at the expense of the Tamils."

In this perspective, the camp system is all too clearly the latest stage of genocide - although other Tamil advocates date genocide back to the anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 in response to which the LTTE campaign began.

The idea of "rolling" genocide, applied by Madeleine Albright to distinguish the Sudanese campaign in Darfur from the "volcanic" genocide in Rwanda, suggests discontinuity in a history of genocide - albeit, in the Darfur case, within two or three years rather than six decades.

However in many cases, there may be genocidal "moments" (as the genocide historian, Dirk Moses, has suggested of colonialism) in stories of oppression - decades or even centuries long - which do not, taken as a whole, constitute processes of genocide (see A Dirk Moses ed., Empire,Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History [Berghahn, 2008]).

There may be sporadic genocidal massacres, rapes and expulsions, or even sustained campaigns, at particular points in these histories.

Something like this seems to be true in the Sri Lankan case: no one doubts the long history of Sinhalese nationalist oppression against the Tamil community since independence, which includes moments like 1983 which can be plausibly seen as genocidal outbursts.

But the history as a whole is not simply one of genocide.

Indeed the dedication of the LTTE to armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state helped turn a history of oppression and resistance into one of brutal insurgency and counterinsurgency (see The trouble with guns: Sri Lanka, South Africa, Ireland", 10 June 2009).

We know however that counterinsurgency is one of the most common contexts of genocidal violence.

It remains to be seen - since most of the survivors are locked away from the world's media and the Sri Lankan government is blocking all attempts at independent investigation of the recent violence - how far the Sri Lankan army went in the direction of deliberate atrocity as opposed to brutal disregard for civilians.

Here, indiscriminate allegations of a long-running Sri Lankan genocide paradoxically blunt the real questions: what kind of violence did the Sri Lankan state commit against its Tamil civilian population in the concluding prosecution of the war, on what scale and with what intentions?

The continuing concentration of over 250,000 people in the camps both blocks the search for answers to these questions, and itself constitutes a most serious crime.

If the doors are not opened quickly, this will raise questions of whether the government seriously intends a restoration of Tamil society in the conquered zone.

This would indeed pose a question of genocide, in the sense of the deliberate destruction of a population group in its home territory.

Martin Shaw is a historical sociologist of war and global politics, and professor of international relations and politics at the University of Sussex. His books include War and Genocide (Polity, 2003), The New Western Way of War (Polity, 2005), and What is Genocide?(Polity, 2007).

Health experts warn that the expected rains could increase the risk of waterborne diseases for tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps in northern Sri Lanka.

More than 280,000 people who fled fighting between government forces and the now defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are staying in some 35 government camps in four northern districts - Vavuniya, Mannar, Jaffna and Trincomalee.

The majority, 220,000, are living at the Menik Farm camp, a sprawling site of over 700ha outside Vavuniya town.

“With such a large number of people concentrated together, there is always the risk of waterborne disease with the rains,” Laurent Sury, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières, told IRIN in Colombo.

MSF runs a field hospital in Vavuniya District where more than 23 of the IDP camps are located, housing 260,000 IDPs.

“There are around 115 patients at the MSF hospital now,” Sury said.

Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) says no major disease outbreaks have been reported, the risk factors for malaria and diarrhoea have increased.

WHO said the Ministry of Health had taken precautions to deal with a possible malaria outbreak, with proper surveillance mechanisms at all camps.

Until 19 June, only 29 cases of malaria had been reported, but health officials initiated a high alert when two cases were reported on 18 June from zone 4 in Menik Farm.

Field staff have been deployed to all hospitals and healthcare units assisting IDPs by the Regional Malaria Office for the Vavuniya District from 8 June.

“This is an alarming situation considering the very small number of malaria cases reported from the entire country in the recent past,” the WHO update said. “An active surveillance for malaria is ... [ongoing].”

Until 18 June, 1,060 cases of dysentery and more than 5,000 cases of diarrhoea had been reported from the camps, it said.

"There is a serious threat of waterborne diseases because of so many people living so close together," one humanitarian official said, highlighting the risk posed by improper disposal of solid waste and rubbish in the camps.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 27 June, the greatest needs were specialist doctors.

“IDP health workers, paid by the government of Sri Lanka, are working in the IDP sites. Thirty-seven new doctors are expected to be appointed at the Vavuniya District within a week. However, a shortage of specialists remain,” OCHA confirmed.

Thousands of Tamil civilians have fled the fighting in the north and are now staying at government camps in and around the northern town of Vavuniya

According to the latest communicable Disease Weekly Update released on 25 June, surveillance within the camps by the Ministry of Health staff was being strengthened.

The greatest disease outbreak reported so far was chickenpox, with more than 12,000 cases, but those numbers had since been decreasing, the UN reported.

The number of new cases reported is steadily declining and admissions to hospitals are 40–50 patients per day, OCHA confirmed on 19 June.

“In Vavuniya, the number of Hepatitis A cases is also declining. A total of 2,139 cases were reported as at 12 June,” the report added.

Medical officers working with the displaced suspect that most of the chickenpox patients contracted the disease before they arrived in camps. 

The United Nations’ continued silence on the abuses being committed by the Sri Lankan state was once again demonstrated with its handling of UN staff arrested by the Sri Lankan military.

Instead of demanding the Sri Lankan state to release it staff who have immunity, according to media reports, the UN has "hired a lawyer who has visited" the UN staff, who are "still detained in Colombo."

This is in complete contrast to its action in Kosovo. The UN Mission in Kosovo actively invoked immunity on June 26 in favour of a person charged with genocide. When Agim Ceku was arrested in Bulgaria, based on an Interpol warrant, it is reported that a UN documentary showing was made in order to get Ceku released.

In Sri Lanka, however, UN spokespersons and officials gave conflicting claims over the immunity status of the arrested staff.  Whilst the Associate Spokesperson Farhan Haq in New York acknowledging the immunity staus of the two local staff members who were grabbed up by the government using unmarked vehicles, John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief said that immunity only applied to international staff.

The head of the UN Refugee Agency in Sri Lanka Amin Awad went one step further than Holmes and issued a statement saying that the Sri Lankan government is free to detain UN staff as long as procedures are followed.

The UN Staff Union has disagreed with Holmes and countered that national staff have immunity within the scope of their work. It also criticized Awad's statement.

Accusing the UN of running scared of Sri Lanka, the Inner City Press reporter, Matthew Russel Lee, questioned rationale behind the immunity for those charged with war crimes and genocide, but non defense of immunity for UN staff in Sri Lanka.

MEDIA groups in Sri Lanka have urged the government to scrap moves to re-establish a media panel which could jail journalists. The reactivation of the Press Council is being seen as a means to control the media in a country where concerns have been voiced about intimidation and pressure on reporters critical of the government.                

The government's move to revive the powerful Press Council was announced by the Sri Lankan media minister, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena.

The Press Council was staffed with government appointees. It had the authority to hear complaints about inaccurate reporting or defamation and fine and jail journalists if found guilty.  It ceased operations in 2002, after it was criticized as an anti-democratic tool to suppress criticism of the government.

The government says it reactivated the body after a parliament committee found that council salaries were still being paid and office space was still being rented. Minister Abeywardena says the media has nothing to fear, and it has no intention of gagging the press or imposing restrictions on it.

But the move to restore the Press Council has provoked concern among journalists in Sri Lanka.

Seven media bodies, headed by the Editors Guild, have in a joint statement to President Mahinda Rajapakse, saying that a media culture cannot be based on placing charges against journalists, fining them or sending them to jail.

Vincent Borsell of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders calls the decision to restore the Press Council another step to suppress the independent media.

"It's very dangerous and also is unfortunately a new step in all this campaign against free media in Sri Lanka," he said. "I think the government should consider it again."

The Press Council is being considered in the wake of a number of threats and attacks on journalists who have been critical of the government and its handling of a war against Tamil Tiger rebels.

The war ended last month, raising hopes the situation would improve. But some people fear that may not be the case.

Just two weeks after the war ended, a strong advocate of freedom of expression, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted and assaulted in Colombo. 

Vincent Borsell says there has been a spate of attacks on journalists, in recent years, dealing a blow to investigative and independent reporting.  

"Since the war has restarted in 2007, there is a lot of incidents," he said. "It starts from killings, beatings, kidnappings and death threats. But it also goes on to pressure on the media, so it means now there is no let us say direct censorship in countries like Burma, but there is a huge self-censorship, especially on all the issues related to the army, and all sensitive issues. They are victims of self censorship on issues that were very well covered by the media."   

The government denies any interference with the media and says that police are investigating the attacks on journalists. It also says it is prepared to discuss any changes to the Press Council suggested by rights groups.

Amnesty International says at least 14 members of news organizations have been killed by suspected government paramilitaries and the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels since 2006. Twenty journalists critical of the government are said to have fled the country. 

A new group of eminent Tamil people in Sri Lanka has made a plea for those held in government camps to be given a timetable for their release.

The group said people were yearning to be released from their confinement.

The camps still house nearly 300,000 Tamils displaced in the final stages of the war which ended in May.

The Group of Concerned Tamils in Sri Lanka says Tamil voices are being stilled and members of the minority were nervous of speaking out.

In this, its third statement, the group says it is disturbed over persistent reports of poor living conditions and even political disappearances in the camps.

It said the refugees yearned to get away from the barbed wire enclosures where they are detained, adding that there must be steps to erase "their sense of being held captive".

The group urged that timetables be drawn up for ongoing screening of refugees for possible Tamil Tiger affiliation and for the de-mining of their home areas.

Then people could be given a release date which would ease camp congestion and remove "any fears of indefinite detention".

But the government's human rights secretary, Rajiva Wijesinha, told the BBC he believed many people were "quite relieved" to be in the camps and that on his recent visit to them people looked less miserable and less frail than before.

Mr Wijesinha said that people should have no fear that they might be held indefinitely and reiterated the government's promise that most will be allowed out by the end of the year.

A Coalition of six US-based Human Rights Organizations in a letter to U.S. President Obama wrote: "[t]o address abuses associated with the recent fighting [in Sri Lanka's north], there is an urgent need for an independent, international commission of inquiry into many credible allegations of laws of war violations, including possible war crimes, by both sides, as well as illegitimate detentions. Mr. President, we urge you to publicly call for an international commission of inquiry and to take necessary steps to achieve it. We also urge you to take steps for the full protection of internally displaced persons, including independent access to camps, former areas of conflict and to conflict-affected civilians by humanitarian and human rights organizations and the media."

The Coalition included the Carter Center, American Jewish Council through its Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), International League for Human Rights (ILHR), Freedom House (FH), and Amnesty International (AI) representatives signed the letter.

"Despite repeated warnings by several international organizations of impending mass killings of civilians and despite strong statements of concern by you and several other world leaders, more than 20,000 civilians are reported to have been killed. The Times of London and Le Monde have published investigations, based on reliable data, and suggested that most of the civilian deaths were caused as a result of shelling by the Sri Lankan government," the Coalition said in the letter.

The letter warned that "[t]he failure of the international community to take concrete action to protect civilians in Sri Lanka has given the green light to regimes around the world and has signaled that there is nothing that the international community will do when a government kills its own people under the cover of sovereignty."

On the 300,000 Tamil civilians still held in internment camps, the HR Organizations appealed to "urgently address the plight of those in de facto internment camps and to initiate action to hold accountable those responsible for the mass killings. There are reports that some in the camps have already died from starvation or malnutrition....there are consistent reports of widespread and serious human rights violations facing the displaced people, including enforced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, torture and other ill-treatment, forced recruitment by paramilitary groups and sexual violence."

Pointing out that "the Sri Lankan government’s record on investigating serious human rights abuses is poor and impunity has been a persistent problem," and that "[t]here have been serious ongoing violations of human rights and a backlog of cases of enforced disappearance and unlawful killings that run to tens of thousands," the letter drew attention to the the past failed efforts to address violations through the establishment of ad hoc mechanisms in Sri Lanka, such as presidential commissions of inquiry, the letter urged Obama to take steps to initiate an international inquiry into "allegations of laws of war violations, including possible war crimes, by both sides."

In the background of the failure of the United Nations to take any punitive action and realizing that effective leverage can only be exercised by the U.S., the letter said, "[i]t is now imperative that the United States assume the leadership necessary to mobilize the international community to protect the surviving civilians and to hold accountable those responsible for mass atrocities. Failure to do so would encourage governments to commit mass atrocities without fear of consequence. That is why your immediate action is important at this juncture," the letter said.

Sri Lankan police arrested an astrologer after he predicted serious political and economic problems for the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Chandrasiri Bandara, who writes an astrology column for a pro-opposition weekly, was taken in on Thursday June 25, police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said.

"The CID (Criminal Investigations Department) is questioning the astrologer," Gunasekara said, adding that they wanted to find out the "basis" for the prediction.

The astrologer had predicted that a planetary change on October 8 will be inauspicious for parliament and the government may not be able to arrest rising living costs -- a prediction already made by private economists.

Sri Lankan politicians take astrology seriously and most have their own personal seers who decide the auspicious times to launch any new programme or work.

Rajapaksa’s popularity has soared, with some supporters hailing him as a modern-day king, since the army defeated the Tamil Tigers last month, bringing an end to a 26-year civil war.

Politicians in his ruling party have gone so far as to propose giving him a second six-year term without holding an election — or perhaps changing the constitution to make him President for life.

The opposition United National Party condemned Bandara's arrest and accused the government of heading towards a dictatorship.

“The crime committed by Bandara is not making predictions favourable to the Government,” the party said in a statement.

The Sri Lankan Government is trying to siphon off millions of pounds of humanitarian aid by imposing a tax on all funding for aid groups, The Times newspaper reported Monday.

Aid workers told the paper that Burma was the only other country that they could remember imposing such a tax — one of several new measures hampering their efforts to help victims of Sri Lanka’s civil war.

Colombo is backdating taxes to 2005, the paper also said.

The government has started to insist that local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should pay the 0.9 per cent tax on all their funding.

That could amount to several million pounds, as there are at least 89 such international and local organisations in Sri Lanka, mostly helping victims of the 2004 tsunami and the civil war.

The new tax regime was unveiled in 2006 but not enforced immediately, the paper said.

Most agencies did not comply, as they hoped to persuade the Government to change it, according to aid workers.

In the past year, however, the Government has grown increasingly hostile towards foreign aid groups and Western donors, accusing many of sympathising with the Tamil Tigers, it said.

“If it’s non-profit work, it shouldn’t be taxed — there should be incentives to work in particular areas instead,” Jeevan Thiagarajah, the executive director of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, told the paper.

The Government says that the tax is designed to crack down on NGOs that abused Sri Lankan law and squandered their funds on their own staff after the tsunami.

Aid workers, however, say the new rules do not grant tax exemption for all the work they are doing — and want to do — to help 300,000 Tamil refugees in army-run camps.

Some say the tax contravenes the international disaster response guidelines drawn up by the Red Cross in 2007 with the participation of 140 countries, including Sri Lanka.

“This is money on which people have already paid tax in their own countries and which is supposed to be helping people in need,” said one aid worker. “This is a desperate money-making measure by the Government.”

Another charity worker said: “This runs contrary to everything that the humanitarian aid community stands for.”

Most aid groups already have to pay tax on imported equipment, such as vehicles, as in many other countries.

In 2005, Oxfam was forced to pay more than £600,000 in tax for importing 25 Indian four-wheel-drive vehicles to Sri Lanka for tsunami relief — despite the Government announcing a temporary waiver for aid groups.

World Vision, the US-based Christian relief group, has paid $120,000 for 2005-06, and made advance payments of $200,000 for the following three years, according to its accounts.

“There are vast discrepancies between individual agencies,” said Mr Thiagarajah. “There’s quite a few whose tax files are still open.”