Posts Tagged ‘Tamil refugees’

Tamil detainees in Sri Lanka: “Almost living in hell”

September 25, 2009

By our correspondent, wsws.org, Sep 25, 2009

The Sri Lankan government has underscored its determination to keep 280,000 Tamil civilians in internment camps indefinitely, in blatant violation of their basic democratic rights.

UN Under-Secretary, Lynn Pascoe arrived in Sri Lanka last week for further talks on resettling detainees. Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse told him his government had a target of resettling 70 percent of the people within 180 days. But he added that this target would depend on the de-mining of the former war zone in the island’s north.

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Tamil death toll ‘is 1,400 a week’ at Manik Farm camp in Sri Lanka

July 10, 2009

The Times /UK, July 10, 2009

A Tamil girl in a refugee camp in Cheddikulam in the northern district of Vavuniya

(Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images)

A Tamil girl at a refugee camp in the northern district of Vavuniya

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai


About 1,400 people are dying every week at the giant Manik Farm internment camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the nation’s bloody civil war, senior international aid sources have told The Times.

The death toll will add to concerns that the Sri Lankan Government has failed to halt a humanitarian catastrophe after announcing victory over the Tamil Tiger terrorist organisation in May. It may also lend credence to allegations that the Government, which has termed the internment sites “welfare villages”, has actually constructed concentration camps to house 300,000 people.

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