Impending Disaster for the IDPs if they are released

"If Menik Farm is going to be flooded, the villages and roads of the Vanni will also go under floods when the monsoons come. I have appended a photo of a typical Vanni flood from some years ago when the roads, sewers, and villages were intact. Today, what we have are ravaged villages, broken culverts, bombed out sewers, and roads decorated with land mines."
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By Sebastian Rasalingam

(August 24, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian)On the fifteenth of August, at the the hallowed feast of Madhu, the Right Reverend Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith called for the "the immediate release of the IDPs". Top officials of the US government, probably still following the briefings of Robert Blake, have stated that "Release from confinement is an issue that friends of Sri Lanka continue to raise." The Island Editorial on the 21st of August has reviewed some of these calls to release the IDPs, and stated some of the ground realities in very clear terms.

The ostensible reason for the new call for the immediate release of the IDPs is that the Menik Farm area is flooded. Additionally, we are told that there is no reason to keep the young and the old in the camps. So, are they suggesting forcible separation of the young and the old from their families? If the Vanni villages are to be reconstructed, surely it is the able bodied who should be released, while the young and the old are retained and cared for in the camps!

If Menik Farm is going to be flooded, the villages and roads of the Vanni will also go under floods when the monsoons come. I have appended a photo of a typical Vanni flood from some years ago when the roads, sewers, and villages were intact. Today, what we have are ravaged villages, broken culverts, bombed out sewers, and roads decorated with land mines. Cover all that with some rain, and surely the situation would be much much worse than in Menik Farm. I think the mal effects of flooding in Menik farm can be averted by cutting drains between the encampment. The earth dug out can be used to raise the floors of the camp sites.

On the other hand, if the people were released to these villages, they have to be once again rescued, and brought back to refugee camps. The young and the infirm who it is alleged should have been sent to these villages would be the very individuals who would perish.

So how does one make any sense of the demand of the Right Reverend Bishop to release the IDPs immediately? The princely life of the Aristocrats of the church can some times affect the judgment of the Bishops of the church. Or is it that they simply parrot what the Americans and other powerful people say? Not long ago Father Dulip Chikera stated that Prabhakaran was a most human man, and followed it up with a call to use Killinochchi wine in church rites. So we need to understand that the Church Fathers make these statements to be in resonance with the strong men of the International Community and follow the opinions of the well-healed Tamil diaspora; it is NOT because they are thinking of the well being of the IDPs.

The demented client intellectuals and LTTE fellow-travelers

who write to the "Groundviews", Eelam in Exile, TamilNet etc, have also called for the "immediate release" of the IDPs. They seem to take particular delight in there being barbed wire around the camps. Clearly, they consider that these are prison camps. I visited Menik Farm in July, and talked as a Tamil with Tamil inmates, and I completely disagree with the claim that these are "prison camps".

In fact, the camps are a wonderful melting pot. I have been told of individual water faucets in Indian IDP camps designated for specific castes. That is thankfully absent, even though in the Vanni, of the Chelvanayagams and Ponnambalams, certain castes could not even draw water from a well.

I live in Toronto, where we have the largest concentration of expatriate Tamils in the world. The level of misinformation and the wish to be misinformed that I see here are mind-boggling. It is the standard cry of these expatiate Tamils that the IDPs must be immediately released. They don’t seem to consider that such hasty release is totally disastrous to the IDPs. These IDPs are men and women who have been pushed around for years. Some are people who were evicted from Jaffna by the LTTE in the mid 1990s, and made to follow the meanderings of the disastrous LTTE military program.

Is the government going to send the IDPs into devastated flood-prone Vanni just before the monsoon, simply because the Government made a rash and ill-considered promise to release every one in six months? Such promises may have been made to please the Blakes and the Menons who have been interfering in Sri Lankan affairs. Or it may be the pressure from the Malcolm Ranjiths and Dulip Chikeras?

I say, to hell with them. I say, it is the interests of the IDPs that are paramount, and NOT pleasing the Americans or the misguided Tamil expatriates and fellow travelers who have still failed to take out their pro-LTTE-blinkers.

-Sri Lanka Guardian