Plight of the civilian population in Sri Lanka’s civil war

Plight of the civilian population in Sri Lanka’s civil war

More than 100,000 civilians have fled the fighting zone in Sri Lanka since April 20th, when the army burst a mud embankment built by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at Putumattalan. Since January, an estimated 190,000 people have fled. According to the UN, some 50,000 civilians, most of which are Tamils, remain trapped in the rebel territory in a „no fire zone” in the northeast of Sri Lanka. The area of fighting between the government and the LTTE is a tiny coastal strip now consisting of 7 square kilometers. Though the government had previously declared the zone of Mullaitivu district a „no fire-zone,” over the past weekend the Sri Lankan military allegedly used intense shelling and air strikes against the LTTE rebels. The ongoing indiscriminate shelling of densely populated areas, including hospitals, violates the laws of war. Medical sources say that as many as 1,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in this attack, including 106 children. On Tuesday May 12th, a mortar shell struck the last functioning medical facility in the fighting zone. According to a health worker, 47 patients and bystanders were killed and more than 50 others were wounded. Up to 50 people were killed Wednesday when the field hospital was shelled. There are allegations that at least 30 permanent and makeshift hospitals in the combat zone were attacked. Independent confirmation of the numbers is impossible since the fighting zone has been isolated by the army for weeks. Most of northern Sri Lanka is off limits to foreigners.

Serious press freedom violations continue as well: Three foreign journalists from the British Channel 4 were briefly detained in Trincomalee and then expelled from Sri Lanka by the authorities. Their journalist visas were cancelled and they were banned from visiting Sri Lanka. They had produced a broadcast that showed the terrible living conditions of civilians in the camps for displaced people. At the end of April, the 32 camps run by the government held more than 200,000 civilians. Only 10 days before, the number was approximately one third of that. Thousands in the camps are living without access to clean water or adequate sanitation facilities. As a result, the danger of waterborne diseases has inmensely increased. 30 percent of the displaced are childre who are at increased risk of getting ring worm, chicken pox and diarrhea because of contaminated water supplies and dehydration.

Foreigners working in the restricted area report an urgent need of staff members, especially nurses. Aid agencies say that getting visas and security clearance for their staff is very difficult. There are reports that at least 30 people who died of starvation belonged to a group that escaped the fighting zone to camps run by the government for the displaced.

The LTTE violated the laws of war by using civilians as human shields, violently preventing civilians from fleeing the combat zone, deliberately deploying their forces to densely populated civilian areas. The LTTE continues to recruit young children through force.

There is an increasing number of Sri Lankans trying to reach Indian shores with boats. These refugees do not want to be quarantined in a Sri-Lankan-government-controlled camp. Many of them die due to a lack of food and water. Refugees who made it to India’s Andhra Pradesh to a human rights organization allege that Sri Lankan government forces still use heavy weapons in the so called „no-fire-zone” in the Mullaitivu district. The government in Colombo still claims that it stopped using heavy weapons in the fighting zone three weeks ago.

The 26-year civil war has killed over 100,000 people and injured thousands more. Many communities have been uprooted from their homes and subsequently forced to take refuge in ares such as Vavunia, Jaffna and Trincomalee, which are more densely populated and not able to cope with the thoundands of internally displaced people. Since the beginning of 2009 and up until the end of last week, more than 6,500 civilians were killed and another 14,000 wounded, according to a UN document.

Society for Threatened Peoples calls on the Human Rights Council to:

urge the Sri Lankan government to stop the offensive and let relief supplies into the fighting zone during a humanitarian pause monitored by the UN,

urge the Sri Lankan government to stop using heavy weapons in the so-called „no-fire-zone” in case the government does not stop its offensive,

urge the LTTE to allow civilians to leave the fighting zone, stop executing or maiming those who flee and stop forced recruitment,

urge Sri Lanka’s donors of development aid to put pressure on the government in Colombo in order to stop its offensive.