WATCH THIS AND TELL ME THIS IS OKAY.

Additionally I’m sure that you are intelligent enough to know that it will NOT take 3 years for the Indian (and Sri Lankan) army to de-mine the area, this is just a fig leaf story proposed to keep Tamils locked in the camps, and for the Indians to attempt to maintain some influence on the island. I have spoken to members of my family who were in touch with Tamils in the “Safety Zone” during Sri Lankan Army shelling, to some of those who were ‘fortunate’ enough to ‘benefit’ from the Sri Lankan military’s “liberation” operation – unfortunately your point about the Sri Lankan government forcing Tamilians to walk on landmines is not untrue.

Here are some relevant links…

Yesterdays channel 4 news report – http://www.athirvu.com/target_news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1251225978&archive=&start_from=&ucat=4&

Just wait till the US decides to release the pinpoint accurate satellite images, evidence of sri lankan artillery shelling of no fire-zone, the massacre of the last few weeks, and the massive clear up operation after that constituted of burning the thousands of dead bodies and dumping the ashes in the sea in order to hide/destroy evidence. in the meantime we will have to rely on these… - http://shr.aaas.org/geotech/srilanka/srilanka.shtml - http://www.innercitypress.com/UNOSAT19April09.pdf

The Indians have once again fudged their foreign policy on Sri Lanka but then again the Ministry of External Affairs is renowned neither for its prescience nor its ability. - http://truthdive.com/2009/08/25/sri-lanka-india’s-latest-security-nightmare/

here is an interesting piece on groundviews…”As a Southerner and a Sinhala Buddhist, I am ashamed of what we have become, and how we silently countenance, nay justify, this significant post-war violence against fellow Tamil citizens.” - http://www.groundviews.org/2009/08/23/the-shame-of-menik-farm/

Unfortunately the Singhalese Left are, for the most part, an irrelevant and impotent (when not rabidly supremacist – see Dayan Jayatilleke et. al) bunch, there seems not to be much point in hoping for too much from them. See… - http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=135&id=2575

“As this monograph suggests, however, irrespective of when the civil war ends, Sri Lanka’s Tamils and other minorities may have no choice but to continue to live as subordinated citizens in a state dominated by political ideology. Taming or vanquishing the LTTE may be a prerequisite for peace, but those who support eradicating the LTTE as a prerequisite for federalism or expansive devolution fail to understand the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist agenda (and may be inadvertently assisting that agenda). Consequently, the international community’s entreaties notwithstanding, Sri Lanka is unlikely to institute in the foreseeable future any devolution that satifies basic Tamil aspirations.… …Buddhist monks will continue to play a pivotal role in Sri Lankan politics unless drastic changes take place within the sangha. So will Buddhist nationalists, whose influence has now reached new heights. Once the LTTE separatist struggle is neutralised, Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists may even renew campaigns against Christians and Muslims, for their ideology is fundamentally anti-minority and requires agit-prop to mobilise and survive.” - p.53, Neil DeVotta, ‘Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology: Implications for Politics and Conflict Resolution in Sri Lanka’, 2007

“But concerned with stabilising the Sri Lankan state for the sole purpose of furthering their own strategic and economic interests, the international community pretends to be unaware of the justice of the struggle of the Tamil people. They are not asleep. They pretend to be asleep. And therefore, for Tamils to respond to the international community on the basis that it is all a question of waking up the international community to the facts and to the justice of our cause is to act out a surreal dream drama.”
Nadesan Satyendra, ‘Black and White Pebbles’ - http://www.tamilnation.org/saty/060910pebbles.htm

Given the above then, the best hopes for the Tamil people would appear to stem from groundroots civil society awareness of the Sri Lankan ‘Singhalese’ problem [n.b I put the phrase in this order, as what is usually written is "the Sri Lankan Tamil problem", wherein the blame is seemingly assigned to the Tamils - whilst we all know that Tamil nationalism and the Tigers, with all their accoutrements, were reactive phenomena.]. This is especially important in India and the ‘West’ – EU countries and the US. In addition to this, cold-blooded geopolitical machinations need to be carefully read, registered and eventually manipulated to the benefit of the Tamils.

I shall leave on this final assessment…Tamils will be rotting in these same camps this time next year and for many years after that, if the Sri Lankan government has its way. It is certain that outright conflict will resume, perhaps in a few years time, in the meantime the Tamils will slowly and inexorably be wiped off the Sri Lankan map [note the long term malnourishment, wasting and stunting of upto 40% of Tamil children in the North+East is no accident but one part of wider strategy]. Whilst it is notable that though the war in Sri Lanka has ended, the army is to be expanded to 300,000, it is not so frequently noticed however that aside from being used to settle into ‘empty’ tamil lands, this disproportionately sized military force will potentially be used to deal with the restless Singhalese poor in the south who may begin to glean that they are STILL poor and that maybe the Tamils were not the enemy after all. The impact will be especially felt once the IMF conditions begin to kick in, as we all know an increase in food prices leads to all sorts of interesting outcomes of which “food riots” is but the most obvious.

I sound exceedingly pessimistic? It is because I am.

I speak only negatively about the Singhalese? I do because unfortunately nothing positive has emanated from the modern manifestations of Singhalese nationalism and identity politics for the last 60 years, and seems only to be getting worse.

I speak provocatively about the inevitability of renewed war with glee? Absolutely not. Aside from an abhorrence of war, the fundamental unity and brotherhood/sisterhood that should exist between the Singhalese and Tamils makes it all the more painful. For those of you in the Human Rights ‘industry’ and those who lounge intellectually in the “false category” camp of ‘reconciliation’, I beg you to wake up and open your eyes. This conflict started way back in 1948, when over 1million Indian Plantation Tamils were disenfranchised. [arguably it started in 1883 at the riot between Christians and Singhalese Buddhists in Kotahena] It most certainly did not begin with the LTTE in 1983, it is not over now the LTTE are seemingly finished and lastly, it will not end until there is a radical restructuring of the state.

i’ll get you some sources later but on why groundviews (and much of the lankanosphere) is ignoring the Amnesty call for opening the camps is that, in a nutshell, international human rights groups have been speaking in bad faith, without regard for the possible, without knowledge of what IDPs need first, second and third. Amnesty’s letter, to many lankans, is simultaneously pompous, self-indulgently patronizing and offensively lacking in substance (i.e. whether building concrete structures would mitigate flood-borne diseases).

The call doesn’t even include a guide for real stake-holders, the Lankans, on how they may force their govt’s hand in doing the obvious (opening up the camps) or why international humanitarian organizations feel as if they must be a part of everything that happens to the IDPs.

1.) They provide a good source of income from rather naive foreign nations.

2.) The Sri Lankan Government is trying to turn the predominantly Tamil North into a full-fledged militarized zone. By its own admission, there are plans to recruit 50,000 more Sinhalese soldiers to the Sri Lankan Army and build 3 new high security zones in former LTTE controlled-areas.

3.) Most of the people held in the camps sympathize with the LTTE on one level or another. Therefore, the Sri Lankan Government has taken the extreme measure of confining these people (behind barbed wire) indefinitely to prevent such sympathy from blossoming into a full-fledged rebellion, so to speak.

4.) There are plans to colonize the now-empty Tamil villages with ethnic Sinhalese people, backed by the direct presence of the Sri Lankan Armed forces. Imagine Israel building an army camp in the West Bank, if you will, to protect Jewish settlers. Of course these settlements start small, but they are directly subsidized by the State, and eventually the percentage of “new settlers” will exceed the “older ones” relative to demographics. This is actually the moral of the story behind Sri Lanka’s East. Thus, it is logical that the Sri Lankan Government will attempt to colonize the North the same way it did the East.

Given all these reasons, the one that bothers me the most is (1). These camps are funded mostly by Western nations through various aid agencies. Most of these agencies, however, do not have unfettered access to the inmates, e.g. they can’t talk freely to the inmates. Furthermore, none of these agencies has been allowed to take a head-count of the number of inmates, and thus build a database to keep up with people’s whereabouts.

In my opinion, the best way to get rid of the camps is for (1) the UN to impose sanctions on Sri Lanka and (2) Western nations ban their nationals from visiting Sri Lanka. This might create a bit of a humanitarian crisis, but it would force the Sri Lankan Government to amend its ways fast. I do not see the point of this needless charity; most of these people being held in the camps are able-bodied men and women who can look after themselves – thousands of them have relatives abroad who are willing to send money (given the right circumstances). The behavior of the Sri Lankan Government is not very surprising; considering that Buddhist monks are in the government (yes, they sit in the Parliament), and the Constitution is all but defunct. What is surprising is the complicity of the international community, not least of all, India, in giving the go-ahead and a big thumbs-up to Sri Lanka’s strangling of every last vestige of freedom possessed by a Tamil.

SL army and Indian contractors are working tirelessly to remove those land mines. Land mine detection and removal is a time consuming process – especially in Lanka where no sort of any documentation exists by either parties on where they were laid.

Till land mines are removed no point in allowing citizens to go back. If SL govt did allow them and people get killed/maimed same bloggers will be shouting from rooftops “SL Govt does not care about Tamilians! They force Tamilians to walk on mines!” blah blah.

Anything coming out of bloggers in West/Australia about Lanka situation should be read with boat loads of salt considering most of them are from fake asylum seeking Tamilians who have used “SL Govt kills us” excuse to get easy asylum/Greencard in Western Countries and Australia. War is over – but SL Tamil Asylum Industry is still alive and kicking.

1) how many people live in them. The number is not relevant not as a way of establishing ‘importance’ or ‘not importance’ in the media in your own mind but both for kjnowing the actual scale (i have been told 300,000) as well as the politics of the number.

2) who is taking responsibility and for what ends – my friend told me the u.n. has been unwilling to address sanitation issues because it would contribute to establishing the camps as a permanent structure, which would be in violation of what the camps are tolerated for by the international community.

3) where people are resettled to and how much agency they have in their choices – if they are resettled in a way to minimise concentrations of Tamils in particular areas, that’s potentially problematic. so what is actually happening and where poeple are going if they are going or why they are being kept there if they are being kept there is worth looking into. More broadly, this begs the question of the relationship between the government and the refugees in the camps.

4) What the exit strategy is from the conflcit, if the government has one. If they believe that the military victory has resolved the issue, it will just lead to further bloodshed, now, or in the future, while people, for lack of a better word, are left to rot.

just thoughts- i’m sure they’re not wholly accurate, but i thought they were worth posing.

Here are couple of short films to highlight the current situation. The picture is worth 10000 words

http://youthful.vikatan.com/youth/document21082009.asp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spkxWbDt-bQ