Two Views on Sri Lankan IDP Resettlement

Published November 04, 2009 @ 11:18AM PT

The Sri Lankan government has announced it is nearing the halfway point for resettling the country's 280,000 predominantly ethnic Tamil families who were displaced in last year's fighting. The civil war reached it's climax this past year with the government surrounding and virtually destroying the rebel Tamil Tigers. When large numbers of Tamils were displaced, the government interned many of them in controlled camps. Many aid agencies were not permitted entrance and if they were could only bring certain kinds of supplies. Here are two views on the displacement and the new resettlement:

The predominantly Buddhist and ethnic Sinhalese Sri Lankan government considers the number of displaced to have been closer to 186,000. It claims that a military campaign against the Tamil Tigers was vital to bring back stability to the country, claiming that the Tamils were an extreme fighting force unwilling to compromise. When the Sri Lankan government forcibly displaced Tamils into unusually restrictive camps last year, it did so to limit the Tiger's access to support from that population. Now it is celebrating success in returning tens of thousands of people back to their home villages, claiming delays are mostly due to landmine risks which are being addressed.

Meanwhile, many of the region's Tamils feel that the government not only doesn't represent their interests but actively discriminates against them, which is why many rallied behind the Tigers despite the rebel's periodic lapses into extremism, which they see as less so than the government's repression. Tamils living in the West argue that even though there is one set of ethnic Tamils participating in the government that the northeastern Tamils are marked, required to show IDs to travel anywhere, are repeatedly stopped and questioned by police, and more. They claim that the IDP camps were more like internment camps. Foreign aid agencies back this up, claiming that many were not permitted entrance even to provide lifesaving aid. The resettlements are partly welcome, but also present a whole new set of questions about the future of the northeastern Tamils without substantial political representation. Here are viewpoints from Operation USA's Nimmi Gowrinathan and a political researcher named S L Neelavan who are both Tamils living in the US.

[Photo: Tamils in northeast Sri Lanka, Tro Kilinochchi.]

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Author

Daniel J Gerstle is a creative long form crisis journalist, human rights researcher, and humanitarian aid consultant who's covered Bosnia, Croatia, Karabakh, Chechnya, Ingushetia, the Ossetias, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia very deeply, spiced with highlights of Sudan, Palestine, Jordan, Tajikistan, and Georgia. Prior to all this, he served as a US Marine reservist stateside.