The Impossibility Of Camps
Plans for Menik Farm
Sri Lanka can’t afford to keep people in camps. I’ve seen direct requests for 1,000 latrines and 15,000 garbage bins. A latrine is about 15,000, so 15 million ($150,000). A garbage bin is like 1000 (I think) so another 15 mil. That’s like $300,000 for a lot of ‘infrastructure’ in the middle of nowhere. No one will be living in Menik Farm in 5 years, but I’ve heard requests for 50,000 bags of cement. It’ll be this weird parking lot in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps they could make it a civil war themepark. Eelam War IV, the ride.
This phase is weird. We should really be building infrastructure in Mullativu, Kilinochchi, Jaffna pennisula, where people live. However, if we don’t build more permanent structures in Menik Farm then the rains will cause a lot of disease and downright misery. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s wet feet. Plus the latrines are overflowing already, and the garbage isn’t being picked up, and if that gets in the ground water everybody will get sick. Now don’t go freaking out about like Sri Lanka is a horror story and forwarding stuff to all your friends. If you’re actually concerned please contact Rotary Colombo Regency and buy a latrine. Then talk all you want.
Catch 22
Honestly, it’s a Catch 22. Do you build permanent infrastructure when people should really be resettled? You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. Personally I think we need to supply the concrete and bins and stuff because it’s pointless letting the IDPs suffer.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been stuck in a government office for any extended period of time, or jail. I’ve never felt physically threatened in Sri Lanka, but they just waste so much time. I used to think it was utterly pointless, but now I kinda get it. The state is some kind of lumbering behemoth and it just takes a while to process you. It has to sniff you, pass your information around, fill out forms, pass them around, wonder about it, put stuff in giant books, check your story again, forget about you for tea, forget about you for lunch, forget about you overnight, get your report again, ask for photocopies, ask for signatures, have tea, etc.
I have never felt scared in a cop shed, but I have felt insufferably uncomfortable and bored. Menik Farm is kinda like that, except it’s hot, and the water is bad, and there’s like 5,000 people in line in front of you. Everyone has a cough, and there’s flies everywhere and weak people are, like, dying. While it sucks on a human level, it’s simply going to take the state a while to process these people. I mean, they many come with nothing but the clothes on their back, no paperwork at all. Plus they were physically with the LTTE and a few of them actually are LTTE.
I don’t know. I mean, I get the broader issues of justice and human rights, but it’s politically limp. This shit is happening. All we can do for the next three months is improve conditions in the camps. It’s wasteful laying concrete in Menik Farm, but the alternative is that people suffer. So I say just do it. Right now there’s a global pissing contest when we really need latrines. Personally, I think we should we might as well get digging and sort the shit out later.
It’s wasteful laying concrete in Menik Farm, but the alternative is that people suffer. … Plus they were physically with the LTTE and a few of them actually are LTTE.
I have seen this trotted out as justification for the camps from many parties, but it seems like a poorly thought out argument. This isn’t a threat that is going to disappear when the camps disappear. Any random Tamil dude/dudette could have been with the LTTE, sympathetic to the LTTE, or part of the LTTE. It’s not like all of the LTTE was camped up in the North.
This humanitarian crisis is man made. The alternative isn’t to build better camps, it’s to tear the camps down and send people home.
Probably could be done a lot quicker if the LTTE, being the champion for the rights of the Tamil people, hadn’t rather inconsiderately laid all those mines helter skelter.
they certainly did. it would be edifying to know how much and where-did they keep a map plotting out ‘fields’ of placement?. i’m sure the GOSL wouldn’t use something as cruel as an anti-personnel mine…
So the barbed wire is there to protect people from mines in the jungle? There is absolutely no place better for the Tamil civilians than these internment camps? I find that hard to believe.
Nope, the barbed wire is to keep the IDPs in so that they can be screened. You say that it is a poorly thought out argument, yet you provide no alternative method of removing LTTE cadres from the civilians. Your assertion that not all of the LTTE was camped out in the north and that some could slip through the net is somewhat obvious, but it is better catching some than none.
My comment RE the mines was directed towards your rather blithe recommendation to tear the camps down and send everyone home. It simply isn’t that simple.
Mines are slightly a weak argument. These people aren’t stupid; the majority of them have been displaced multiple times, and have been coexisiting with war and landmines for many years now. They are fully aware of the dangers involved in moving around an area that is potentially minedlittered with mined and UXO.
What I’ve heard is that some people would like to stay with family in other parts of the country, and move back to their land/villages when it’s possible/safe. Some people won’t have anywhere else to go, and may choose to stay in camps until resettlement.
The point is that people should have a choice.
Okay. Your ‘look at me, I was in jail for a night for being a moron’ card is being used way too often. Seriously, it sounds lame.
What about condoms, free contraception n stuff? If these peeps in the IDP camps are so bored, they will definitely be going at it.. If they don’t stop breeding, many kids will compound the problem at the camps in areas such as infant mortality & health issues for them n mothers etc
Original goverment ideas were told hold people for three years. They have backed down a bit and said some will be let out sooner but I have a feeling these camps will be around for a while, at least until the heat dies down internationally – these people were witnesses to what went on and the the government does not like witnesses. Also the military garrisons in the conquered areas needs to be built and until that is finished these people are going nowhere.
and? what happens when they find someone who is/was ltte after they’ve screened him/her? amnsty or a bullet at the back of the head? the leaders are well known and dead, so whats the point? maybe keeping them in will increase mortality rate… ?
They send them to Rehab camps in Kalimoddai and Sirukandal. One for males the other for females and children.
TYFR
It’s a good thing the government of Sri Lanka is world renowned for its human rights records, or one might worry about these people who are taken away to secret camps.
What secret camps?
Oh yes, they’re secret, no? So you don’t know where they are. No one does. How convenient. What’s next? Invisible men?
Sorry if I came off as a conspiracy nut. Do people have access to the camps where the LTTE cadres are being held as they are found? I didn’t think this was the case. This is what I meant when I said ‘secret’. Perhaps private would have been a better word. My point stands. The government doesn’t have a good human rights record. I don’t see why they’d suddenly clean up their act now. They certainly have no pressure on them to do so.
Recently there was a western media report on the rehabilitation camp at Ambepussa for child fighters. I can’t remember whether it was a report by a journalist who visited the camp, or an interview with an aid worker who visited, but it ran on http://www.transcurrents.com too. You can probably find it there if you search a bit. So there obviously is access.
“… we might as well get digging and sort the shit out later”
or we could kill ‘em all and let god sort ‘em out?
Lets just finish this bloody terrorist problem once and for all. Take ‘em out of the tents and shoot ‘em at dawn, roll up those tents, tear down the barbed wire, bulldoze the place clean and use that latrine destined cement to build the Freedom Cricket Stadium. If the death of a million people was only a statistic, then 300,000 would be a typo we could tip-ex. With these bloody IDPs out of the way, we can get back to business. Whats the point building latrines and house for 300,000 people? If we do that, we’d then be tempted to leave ‘em there a while longer…
The people in Harlem know they are living there because white people do not think they are good enough to live anywhere else. No amount of “improvement” can sweeten this fact. Whatever money is now being earmarked to improve this, or any other ghetto, might as well be burnt. A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.
— James Baldwin, “Fifth Ave, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem“