Cost of closing borders -Infants life put at risk
If it were two separate states, the Northeast of Sri Lanka, aka Tamileelam, would have its own sea port and airport that will connect it with the rest of the world. It will also have its own well resourced hospital.
In the present situation, the only connections that the island has with the rest of the world are the international airport in Colombo and the shipping port also in Colombo. It is by using this as the rope the GoSL is throttling the Tamil people in Northeast, economically as it did during the war in the past. With the hospitals in LTTE area poorly resourced by the GoSL because they are LTTE areas, all serious cases are transferred to the hospitals outside this area. Therefore, when the borders are closed the potential for health related tragedies are enormous as was proved on 21 August. On 12 August, following clashes between the GoSL forces and the LTTE, the GoSL forces closed the borders at Omanthai and Muhamalai. It has remained closed until now, 22 August. It is not difficult to imagine the fate of seriously ill patients caused by the closure of the borders. On 21 August morning when it was well known in Kilinochchi that an ICRC convoy was taking more than 140 foreign nationals from Kilinochchi to GoSL areas, the Kilinochchi hospital decided to send five seriously ill patients to Vavuniya hospital. Among them were two new born infants, two pregnant mothers and an elderly man. The SLA refused to let the ambulance proceed even after waiting for two hours. The patients including the two infants remain seriously ill at Kilinochchi hospital without receiving adequate treatment The District Medical Officer, Dr Sathananthan, in a statement said that the hospital is also running low on fuel and medicine. Fuel is needed to generate electricity for the hospital because main electricity supply has been cut due to shortage of fuel also caused by the border closure.
22 August 2006
|
Europe which has a total population of 800 million is made up of 45 language based nation states. South Asia which has a total population of one billion, (1000 million) is comprised of four states. Who is preventing and therefore benefiting by limiting new nation-states in South Asia?
Print this
Email this
more
