IDPs Are Sri Lankan Too
I hear that IDPs need to be kept in camps for their own good. Because their homes are mined, because you can’t have so many people wandering around Vavuniya, etc. All well and good, but that’s still not legal grounds for detention. The people in the camps are not children and we cannot actually decide what’s best for them. Even from relief workers I sense that many look down on the IDPs and are OK with deciding things for them. But that’s not right. They are Sri Lankan and they have rights, including the right to movement. They can be detained under Emergency for a while, but at some point they have to be given a choice to stay or go. Because they are Sri Lankan too.
Even from relief workers I get various arguments for keeping people in camps indefinitely. I agree with many of them. Last night I met someone doing demining in Mannar and it’s damn serious. The UN requires a 99.6% clearance rate before resettlement and the only way to get that is through slow, manual clearance. That is, walking around with metal detectors and then scraping gingerly with a rake to find mines. You have to check up to 10 cm and there are a lot of false positives. There is also a lot of paperwork and approvals through the Army and Ministry of Nation Building. The whole process costs $1-2 million dollars per square kilometer and it’s going to take a long time. Much respect to the Sri Lanka Army, Indians and other parties doing the work. That’s real and we really can’t resettle people until.
However, that is still not legal grounds for detention of 300,000 people. You can take people into protective detention for insanity, but the people I’ve met in the camps are not insane. You can close the roads to mined areas, but people with families in Vavuniya or south should legally be able to stay with them.
Of course, the camps are completely outside of the law, possible only within Emergency Law, which is basically the lack thereof. People are being kept because many are actually LTTE and all are suspect. Beyond mine clearance, they are being registered and army camps being set up in the north to occupy and keep these areas under long term monitor and control. Which scares me, but I honestly do understand.
However, I simply cannot stand the argument that these human beings and citizens need to be kept in camps for their own good. I personally find it offensive and rude. I am in contact with a few people from the camps and I could never tell them something so patronizing to their face. I recently met a woman at an isolated hospital where they weren’t getting enough food (a rarity). She said if she could just go home she could grow enough vegetables to feed her child. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable desire.
Demining and re-establishing a functioning state in the North has to go on, but we also have to give Sri Lankan citizens at least a choice. I’m sure many would want to stay in the camps for now, but we need to give them a choice, as human beings, as adults and as Sri Lankans. There is ongoing screening, but once people are screened and ID’d they should be given the choice to go stay with relatives or friends if they can. If only because we are spending $2.5 million dollars a day and we could use a few less mouths to feed.
But I say again, that this is ‘for their own good’ is not a good enough argument and it’s insulting to the respectable adults living in the camps. They are Sri Lankans and they have rights. It is not for you or I to decide what is best for them. You can say it’s for our good in the south because we’re scared they’re LTTE. That is a legitimate argument. However, it is patronizing and insulting to say it’s for theirs and that we need to decide for them. They are Sri Lankan and no better or worse than you or me. At some point they need to be able to choose.
yeah….I heard there are like 50,000 Ltte supporters within these camps. And 100′s more of weapon dumps(in the woods etc). So if you let all of them out at once, it will only be a matter of time, before those guys get activated and start blasting stuff to bits.
So I think a lil bit of more patience would be needed, till the mines are cleared and weapon dumps are destroyed.
We can destroy the weapons dumps but what can we do with the supporters?
Treat them with care. Rehabilitate them, develop the areas…with electricity and running water and give them a taste of good life so that they would not resort to having to smuggle in weapons all over again.
But if we let them out as it is…its only a matter of time before they go dig up and start doing hit and runs.
Well, LTTE has done a great service by clearing all the people from the Wanni which will ease the garrisoning. Once this is complete they will not lift their heads.
Only issue it has dumped the people in the government’s lap, which is not an expense that can be afforded. Recovering the cost of this from outsiders is the game that has to be played. Play hardball and get something, but only on our terms. Look to the examples of our true friends in Asia, they know how this game is to be played.
Bleeding heart NGO’s and the West will eventually cough up if we hold out long enough and these IDP’s are used to being held to ransom anyway. Besides they have a better life than under the LTTE, no?
@ AKC – You’re a stupid git and a shame to be called a Sri Lankan!
Welcome to the truth James. Take off the pink glasses and see the truth. US held millions of Japs under house arrest and in camps during the 2nd world war. War and the aftermath needs to be contained and this is just one of the ways of containment. That is all there is to it.
First of all, I don’t think Japanese people like being called Japs, the same way you might not like being called a Paki. Second, the US held Japanese people who may have been living in the US for years and years. People who were born in the US. US citizens. The comparison is all the more ridiculous since there really was no threat of some Japanese uprising in the US. It was all racism and stupidness. The lesson to be learned from all that isn’t the one you seem to have learned.
Per sri lankan Kings deffinition I dont think you can call AKC a Sri Lankan.
He does not sound as if he honestly loves Sri Lanka, because no one who loves a country would want it garrisoned.
So he is one of those traitors that stand in the way of a peacefuly united Sri Lanka.
Lèse majesté is a crime and so is false prophesy.
This is just the pirce of the war. Hopefully very last payments. This is why start of a war should be avoided at all costs . Or ratther the need for one.
[...] contradicts the idea that the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka need to be kept in camps for their own [...]
Have you considered the possibility of the following –
“People don’t blow themselves up just like that: they do so with a purpose. So far, that purpose was to bring about Tamil Eelam, which today is a lost cause. But wait a few months, let resentment in the camps fester, and the pro-LTTE diaspora may well be able to recruit suicide bombers from the camps, especially since, as the International Center for Strategic Defense reports, corruption is rife among those running them, and a bribe of Rs 1-3 lakhs can secure anyone’s release. This report warns that ‘Although the structures and the mechanisms of the LTTE were fully crushed, massive IDP Centers will be an ideal place to re-group and re-organize if there is the will and the need. In other words, this is ideal breeding grounds for LTTE ideology.’ The best way to counter this threat is freedom for the IDPs, which would immediately disperse a large number as well as win hearts and minds, and their speedy resettlement back in their homes.”
from http://www.groundviews.org/2009/07/07/setting-the-record-straight-challenges-of-internment-for-idps/
Indi,
Have u seen this article in The Times today?
It would’ve been so much more humane to nuke ‘em all.
You can say it’s for our good in the south because we’re scared they’re LTTE. That is a legitimate argument.
It is absolutely not a legitimate argument. What are you saying? That people are guilty until proven innocent? Is this the country we live in?
I don’t understand how anyone can justify this. The papers reported the MoD website as saying that certain lawyers who have a history of defending LTTE suspects are “traitors”. Don’t people have the right to a legal defence? Is an LTTE suspect guilty by definition? What if tomorrow Mahinda was accused of being an LTTE suspect? Would his lawyers be traitors too?
This country is going nowhere as the law is non-existent. Let’s ask ourselves if there would be the same indifference if this was happening to Sinhalese people…
Well said Akbar. My sentiments exactly!
Why should they be given such special privileges when millions of Sinhalese and Muslims live without electricity or running water.
Tamils may cry the loudest, but that doesn’t mean their pain in the greatest.
Er, freedom of movement isn’t a privilege, it’s a constitutional right.
If you detain people you kinda have to take care of them.