OUR PEOPLE IN EAST 
The government is presently talking about local government elections and development of the East and appealing for aid from the international community. The urgent priority, however, is humanitarian assistance and human rights protection for those displaced and affected by the recent military offensives. If the East is not to hop from one humanitarian crisis to another amidst the reign of a state of terror and anarchy, there also has to be a shift in the politics in the East, with democratisation, rebuilding of independent institutions and respect for the pluralistic fabric of society. We [UTHR(J) ] request all concerned to ensure that,
Humanitarian assistance should be based on principles of equity, non-discrimination and conflict sensitivity. The international community at large and especially UNHCR has an important responsibility to study government policies related to IDPs and identify various violations and advise the government to take corrective measures.
The issues of IDPs, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, abductions, child recruitment, land expropriation on ethnic grounds and other human rights abuses should be raised in the upcoming session of the UN Human Rights Council and pressure brought on the government of Sri Lanka to immediately address such abuses.
The UN Human Rights Council should raise the need for a UN Human Rights Field Operation at the upcoming session, and pressure the government of Sri Lanka to accept such a monitoring mechanism to support efforts towards addressing the human rights crisis in Sri Lanka in general, and the North and East in particular.
Local and international organisations should put pressure on the government to halt any overt and covert ideological agenda which creates insecurity among the Tamils and Muslims in the East and promote the participation of local community in any reconstruction and development plans.
Militarisation of the Eastern administration and promotion of the Sinhala majoratarian agenda should be challenged locally and raised internationally, and an environment conducive to democratisation should be created.
LTTE politics of promoting an environment of insecurity for the Tamils and reinforcing the extremist elements in the South should be condemned for undermining the future of the Tamils. The international community should continue to put pressure on the LTTE to abandon its path of violence and separatism and pressure it to agree to a negotiated political solution within a united Sri Lanka.
The opposition political parties should shed their short-term opportunistic agendas and take a principled position vis-à-vis a political solution.
The government in word and deed should take the APRC process seriously and put forward credible proposals for a political solution. Here the SLFP should retract its retrogressive proposals and support proposals along the lines of the Majority Report of the Experts Committee.
Any elections in the East should follow credible proposals for a political solution to the ethnic conflict. Human rights abuses should be reined in and measures to address pre-election violence such as a UN Human Rights Field Operation or an international election monitoring mission should be instituted prior to any elections in the East, as elections are bound to be controversial and prone to violence.
Photos by our Special Correspondent in Colombo, Nuwan Jayatilleke from Batticaloa
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