Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Colombo (Agenzia Fides) - Over one thousand people fleeing war in northern Sri Lanka have arrived in the southern Indian region of Tamil Nadu, most of them by boat across the strait which separates the two countries. A warning has been issued by the UN High Commission for Refugees in Chennai, India, numerous NGOs and local Catholic communities in Tamil Nadu, which are providing assistance for the refugees.
Most of the people who have arrived in recent weeks come from Trincomalee region which is some distance from the departure point for India. The new arrivals say they fled a rapidly deteriorating situation of insecurity. Many more refugees are expected to follow. On arrival in India these people are put in government camps and given basic assistance. Twenty years of civil war in Sri Lanka drove about 60,000 people to flee to India.
This latest arrival of refugees inverted a tendency consolidated in 2005 when UNHCR helped 1,173 to repatriate in Sri Lanka from camps in southern India.
In the meantime in north east Sri Lanka security conditions are still very unstable. Since the beginning of April when violence increased considerably about 31,000 people are reported as displaced in the district of Trincomalee, while 200 people have been killed in fighting in the past thirty days.
The situation of violence is of deep concern among religious leaders who called on the UN secretary general to take decisive measures to guarantee protection of civilians trapped in the fighting. Religious groups staged a demonstration front of the UNHCR office in Kilinochchi and handed in a memorandum for Mr Kofi Annan.
The memorandum expresses “horror and repugnance for the killing of innocent women, children and old people”, and calls on the UN to stop the escalation of killing, bombs and kidnappings. The religious leaders denounce that the state of emergency still in force is “abused for intolerable and humiliating atrocities against civilians”, calling on the authorities and all witnesses to denounce episodes which violate human rights. (Agenzia Fides 22/5/2006 righe 28 parole 280)
