Fate of the lonely destitute elders in the IDP camps

An open letter the President Mahinda Rajapaksha

By V. Anandasangaree

(May 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) A lot of elderly persons from the IDP camps had been handed over to the people who under-took to take charge of them. There are many still languishing in the camps alone, with no capacity to identify themselves. In this situation I do not hesitate to say that they are gradually dying. A good number of their children and other relations who are doing well and living in far off places and in foreign countries are living in agony, finding it difficult to know their whereabouts. Some who had become deaf do not respond to any call or announcement over the microphone. The difficulty some undergo while waiting in the “Q” to get their food, cannot be described in words. Hence please take immediate steps to re-unite them with their families and also order the release of a list of persons accommodated in the IDP camps with available details.

I regret to inform you that while writing this letter just now, I hear that a person named Vairamuttu Selvarajah aged 55 who came from France to see his brother-in-law in the Ramanathan Camp, died on 27.05.2009. This type of incidents occur frequently causing more worry for those who live in misery.

Last week alone bodies of 66 un-identified person were buried in a common grave in a highly decomposed state at the Vavuniya Poonthoddam cemetery. To avoid this type of unpleasant incidents, place take steps to have them identified and also to construct a large mortuary to accommodate more corpse. I had made this request earlier also.

-Sri Lanka Guardian