The black out of the Batticaloa refugee crisis
According to figures from the Batticaloa District Secretariat, to date, close to 100,000 refugees have displaced from LTTE parts of Batticaloa to GoSL part due to deliberate artillery fire from the Sri Lankan Government forces. This refugee influx into GoSL part of Batticaloa was over and above the 60,000 refugees who moved there from Sampur, Mutur and Vaharai areas over the last few months. In total, more than 150,000 refugees are crowded inside the GoSL part of Batticaloa district, of whom 100,000 displaced over the last one month.
While it is true that humanitarian agencies have made some statements warning of the crisis, the response has been woefully inadequate in comparison to the seriousness of the crisis. It will be revealing to look back to see how this black out was created. Three leading journalists who reported on the Batticaloa situation without fearing reprisals were murdered over a period of one year starting with the murder of internationally acclaimed Dharmaratnam Sivaram and then G Nadeson followed by Suhirtharaj. The result of these three murders of Tamil journalists and the resulting fear among the surviving Tamil journalists are starkly visible today. Despite the fact that the human catastrophe is inside Government controlled area with all the communication facilities, the black out has been effective. Adding to this black out is the international agencies’ continuing pattern of going soft on the GoSL. The soft approach of the UN Human Rights Council towards Sri Lanka came under fire even from the Director of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, when she spoke in Geneva during the March 2007 UN Human Righst Council sessions (AI Index: IOR 30/005/2007). The end result of all these is that the international community is able to conveniently ignore the refugee crisis in Batticaloa and continue to pat the GoSL on its back for its dramas on appointing “international human rights monitors”.
20 March 2007
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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?
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