A lot has been happening in Sri Lanka since mid-May, when the 25 year conflict between the government and the Tamil rebels effectively came to an end.
Last week, Amnesty International posted a call for the government of Sri Lanka to start opening the camps, so people in them can either return to their villages, or, if those homes are destroyed, be relocated to new permanent housing. Earlier, the government justified keeping these camps open on the grounds that it needed to ensure that militants that are mixed in with the civilian population in the camps should be discovered and extracted. It’s now been four months, which should be enough time. The government originally said people would be resettled in 180 days — six months. But as of now (four months in), there is no progress at all on that front, leading one to think that the promise is unlikely to be met. Update/Correction: A commenter links to a report that re-settlement is in fact well underway: TheHindu. The minister in charge of resettlement is named Rishad Bathiudeen; there is more about him, and government reports on resettlement progress here.
The detailed Amnesty Briefing paper can be found here, for people who are interested.
I am curious to hear what readers think about this. How long will this go on? Are there any indications from Rajapaksa or others in the Sri Lankan government on a timeline for closing the camps? Might the government have other considerations or unspoken reasons for keeping these camps open for an indefinite period of time?
I looked at Groundviews to see their thoughts on the Amnesty call, but I haven’t found much specific coverage of the issue there.
Other updates:
First, as most readers probably heard, about two weeks ago, LTTE supporters won a majority of seats in a hastily called election in the Vavuniya district in north-central Sri Lanka.
That same New York Times story linked above also strongly suggests that the vote heralds a serious, ongoing political impasse between north and south in Sri Lanka. Many Tamils in the north, who may be willing to give up on the idea of an independent Tamil homeland, will continue to press for autonomy or federalism, while the Mahinda Rajapaksa and the government as a whole do not want to go that route. The continuing friction along these lines might become dangerous; anyone thinks everyone is just going to live happily ever after now that the LTTE has been defeated is surely mistaken.
Upwards of 250,000 people remain in camps, described by the government as “welfare villages” — but by some as “concentration camps”. (See this very interesting debate at Crooked Timber regarding the terminology that ought to be used to describe the camps.)
This summer, there have been reports of flooding and unsanitary conditions in the camps, though these are relatively scattered reports (also see this Groundviews link). The Government of Sri Lanka still is not allowing reporters to go into the camps very extensively. It is unclear how effectively foreign aid that has been sent to help the IDPs in the camps has been distributed; as I understand it, officials from India have come in to help oversee the distribution of that aid.
Indian government officials have also expressed an interest in helping to rebuild the north.
The new leader of the Tamil Tigers, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, was also arrested this week somewhere in Southeast Asia. Pathmanathan was thought to be heavily involved in moving money and materials from the diaspora to the LTTE forces in Sri Lanka. The government of Sri Lanka, having arrested him, now wants access to those overseas financial resources, thought to be worth upwards of $300 million.
Robert Kaplan has an essay on the post-conflict outlook in The Atlantic. As with much that Robert Kaplan writes, it feels a little off to me. The focus on religious communal dimensions (Buddhism vs. Hinduism) just doesn’t resonate.
