Sri Lanka’s president promised on Friday to send nearly 300,000 Tamil war refugees in military-run camps back home in four months. A UN official welcomed the pledge and warned that any delay in resettlement would undermine efforts to reconcile with the country’s estranged minority.
UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe also urged the government to investigate allegations of human rights abuses during the civil war with the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa made the promise at a meeting with Pascoe amid international criticism of the government’s treatment of those displaced by the war.
Rajapaksa told Pascoe he expects that new demining equipment will allow all the ethnic Tamil civilians in the camps to be resettled by the end of January, a statement from the president’s office said.
Sri Lanka has said it can’t send the displaced people home until their villages are cleared of mines and can’t release those in the camps because of fears some may be rebel fighters.
Pascoe, who visited the camps on Thursday, welcomed Rajapaksa’s commitment.
“I found this quite encouraging ... I think that would be a very positive step and look very much forward to it becoming a reality,” he said.
He said the UN is concerned about the “lack of freedom of movement and the closed nature” of the camps.
“As the situation currently stands in the camps there is a real risk of bringing resentment that will undermine the prospect of political reconciliation in the future,” he said.
Pascoe also asked the government to start an investigation and hold accountable those found guilty of human rights violations during the final phase of the war.
Scores of civilians died in the fighting as the rebels mounted their last stand on a shrinking strip of beach, with both sides accusing each other of ignoring civilian safety.
“Coming to grips with the past is difficult. Sweeping it under the rug could be a tempting shortcut, but it can have a high price at a later time,” Pascoe said. “We feel that ideally, the Sri Lankans should carry out a national process of truth-seeking and accountability. But at the same time, the process has to be serious, independent and impartial.”
An opposition ethnic Tamil lawmaker also welcomed the government’s decision on resettlement but said it was doubtful that demining could be completed before next month’s monsoon rains, which can scatter the weapons.
Mavai Senathiraja, a lawmaker for the Tamil National Alliance party, said the government must move the people away from low-lying, congested camps into better buildings before the rains.
Approximately 280,000 ethnic Tamil civilians have been detained in the camps since the island nation’s civil war ended four months ago.
Human rights groups say the government is illegally detaining the war refugees. Aid groups say the camps are overcrowded and prone to disease, and fear monsoon rains will create a public health crisis.
The government previously had promised to resettle 80 percent of the camp residents by the end of the year, a feat demining experts and other aid workers said appeared unrealistic. Instead, they called on the government to allow the camp residents to live with relatives or host families until they can return home.
The government said last week it had already resettled about 20,000 people in areas cleared of mines.
But Senathiraja accused the authorities on Thursday of simply shifting hundreds of these people to other camps, while thousands of others promised freedom were never moved at all.
The government denied the allegation.
Government troops routed the Tamil Tigers in May, ending their 25-year fight for an independent homeland for the country’s ethnic minority Tamils after decades of discrimination by successive governments controlled by majority ethnic Sinhalese. Some 80,000 to 100,000 people were killed in the violence.
Women’s accessories sold by some of the world’s most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said yesterday. Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in popularity around the world in the past few years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at low prices. The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the EU and South Korea, where Seoul officials have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by online platforms. In the most recent inspection, 144 products from
The US on Monday confirmed that it would resume sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, as concerns over human rights in the kingdom’s Yemen war give way to US hopes for it to play a role in resolving the conflict in Gaza. More than three years after imposing limits on human rights grounds over Saudi Arabian strikes in Yemen, the US Department of State said that it would return to weapons sales “in regular order, with appropriate congressional notification and consultation.” “Saudi Arabia has remained a close strategic partner of the United States, and we look forward to enhancing that partnership,”
Russia yesterday ordered more evacuations in a region bordering Ukraine as it battled to contain an unprecedented push onto its territory by Kyiv’s forces. Ukraine last week sent troops into Russia’s border region of Kursk, in the largest cross-border operation by Kyiv since Moscow launched its offensive more than two years ago. The assault, which has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing, marked the most significant attack by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War II. A top Ukrainian official said that the operation was aimed at stretching Moscow troops and destabilizing the nation after months of slow Russian advances
DEMOCRACY: The Brazilian president’s shifting attitude toward leftist authoritarians is because he does not want to be seen as supporting dictatorships, analysts said Brazil and Nicaragua have expelled each other’s ambassadors in a tit-for-tat diplomatic row, as Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva appears to recalibrate his approach to authoritarian leftist rulers who were once seen as allies. The dual expulsions this week came amid growing tensions between Lula and another supposedly progressive leader, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose claim of re-election the Brazilian president has yet to acknowledge. Lula and his counterparts in Colombia and Mexico have called on Maduro to release voting tallies from all polling stations to support his win. On Thursday, Brazil announced the expulsion of the Nicaraguan ambassador as