Casualties of war await final battle

About 200,000 reportedly displaced by Sri Lankan conflict

Stewart Bell, National Post  Published: Saturday, May 09, 2009

She was just 18 and trapped behind rebel lines, and her family was worried. Then they got a phone call. She had made it out of the war zone to a displaced-persons camp. The bad news was, she had been injured by an artillery shell while escaping across a lagoon.

The next day, her older brother left Colombo to see her. He talked his way past the guards and found her, but he was taken aback by the conditions at the camp.

His sister was living in a cramped tent and suffering from a skin disease he attributed to poor hygiene. Water was scarce and there weren't nearly enough toilets. People were crying and asking him for food, he said.

Independent accounts of the conditions inside the government-run camps set up in northern Sri Lanka to house the roughly 200,000 people displaced by this country's civil war are hard to come by.

Reporters and foreign dignitaries have only been allowed to visit on escorted tours, but the National Post interviewed several people who had recently been inside the camps.

Their accounts are impossible to verify because of government restrictions on journalists, but they suggest Sri Lanka and aid agencies are struggling to cope.

Determined to finish off the separatist rebellion that has plagued the country for three decades, the military has pushed the Tamil Tigers rebels into a coastal strip about the size of Vancouver's Stanley Park.

As the troops have advanced into the northern jungles, tens of thousands of civilians and ex-combatants have fled to the government side of the front lines.

They have been bused to temporary camps, mostly around the north-central city of Vavuniya, where almost 180,000 are now living at two dozen centres. The government says people must stay in the camps until their villages are cleared of land mines and local facilities, such as schools and hospitals, reopen.

"Once these things are done we will definitely send those people back to their homes and that will happen over the next 12 months," Palitha Kohona, the Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary, told a recent news conference.

He said the camps were "first class." They provide shelter, food, medical care and schooling, and would soon have their own water supplies. About 20 non-governmental organizations are working in them. While the camps were initially overwhelmed when more than 100,000 people fled the fighting in a few days in April, conditions have improved, say Sri Lankan and foreign officials.

But with up to 50,000 still trapped inside rebel-held territory, according to United Nations' estimates, another influx could soon be arriving in need of food and shelter.

After touring one camp, Nick Osborne, the country director for CARE, one of the major recipients of Canadian aid money, said the Sri Lankan government, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations had done substantial work in recent weeks, particularly in providing shelter.

"I think the emergency for tents had slightly subsided," Mr. Osborne said. "The immediate need is going to be looking at the water and sanitation."

A diplomat also said there is a shortage of qualified doctors. A Colombo man said in an interview he had visited his nephew last Sunday at a hospital in Vavuniya where he was being treated after stepping on a land mine as he was fleeing the fighting.

The man said the hospital was so crowded it was difficult to move, and many of the casualties were land mine victims. The hospital was short of drugs and dressings were changed only every four days.

Another man, whose name is also not being published for safety reasons, described his frustration at being unable to take his teenaged sister out of a camp. He said she had been living with an aunt when the fighting came close and fled east to Putumathalan, inside a government-designated "no-fire" zone.

He said the Tamil Tigers told the civilians not to leave, but when firing began and the rebels were distracted, his sister made a dash across the lagoon toward the government troops.

Along the way, a shell landed nearby, he said, and the shrapnel struck her in the leg and head. She is not certain which side fired the shell. The Sri Lankan forces brought her to the camp at Cheddikkulam.

He said his family has tried to get her out of the camp and home to live with her mother in Colombo, but only the elderly and those with mental health problems have been allowed to leave.

Canada committed $3-million in humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka this week, in addition to $4.5-million it had already pledged. The money will go partly to aid groups working at the camps.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan President, has ordered families at the camps to be reunited.

Troops advanced further into the rebel enclave yesterday, the military said. It said the "safe zone" for civilians was now just two kilometres by 1.5 kilometres.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan military released photos it said were seized from the hideout of guerrilla leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, and show him and his family enjoying a "cushy life." In the photos, Mr. Prabhakaran swims with his son in an above-ground pool, sits down before a hearty meal and plays with his children, who are seen with a bicycle, toy Jeep, Dalmatian and giant birthday cake.

As the longtime leader of the Tamil Tigers, Mr. Prabhakaran has been accused of forcing families to hand over one of their children for the rebel cause and sending his cadres on suicide missions. He also conscripted hundreds of child soldiers.

"It was quite poignant that in one of the pictures he is feeding his daughter [in her childhood] with sweetmeat and fruit juice and in another he is dishing out cyanide capsules to newly trained child combatants," wrote the Colombo newspaper The Island, which republished the photos this week.

"While he is 'gamboling' in clean water with his son, some child combatants are having a bath in a muddy pool in the bush during a training session. To cap it all, there is a solitary child soldier standing guard, while Prabhakaran's children are celebrating their birthdays and playing with expensive toys."

The military, which says it found the photo albums in a captured bunker, has posted the pictures on its Web site. It said they depict a "smiling psycho" and called the photos "bare evidence of the luxurious life [Prabhakaran and his family] had led as thousands of forcibly recruited children were thrown into battle."