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Sri Lanka

UN: Address Sri Lanka crisis

Security Council Should Urgently Take up Humanitarian Situation

(New York, February 27, 2009) - The United Nations Security Council should without delay address the humanitarian crisis for civilians in northern Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said today. The under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, briefed the Security Council on February 27, 2009 on his recent three-day trip to Sri Lanka to look at the humanitarian situation and the safety of civilians in the north.

"Visiting the Vanni left me stunned by the escalating humanitarian crisis there, and the need for an urgent Security Council response," said Anna Neistat, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch, who returned from the northern Vanni region two weeks ago. "Civilians who manage to escape the Tamil Tigers and the shelling soon find themselves locked up in military camps by the government, surrounded by barbed wire and cut off from the outside world."

Last week, Human Rights Watch issued a 45-page report, "War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses in the Vanni," which describes laws of war violations by both government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the mistreatment of persons trapped by the fighting.

According to local relief worker who visited a government "welfare center" for displaced persons:

"I spoke to one woman in the camp - she was crying and screaming. It turned out that her elderly mother, who had been injured and admitted to the hospital, died there on February 7. The elderly woman's body was given to the son, who lived in Vavuniya, but her daughter was not allowed to leave the camp even to attend her mother's funeral. She was in agony because she couldn't pay respects to her mother."

Human Rights Watch also expressed concern that international humanitarian agencies were no longer allowed to adequately monitor the government's screening process of new arrivals to government-controlled areas, and that there were reports of the security forces taking away LTTE suspects to arbitrary detention and possible enforced disappearances.

"People who flee abuses by the Tamil Tigers should not have to fear abuses by government forces," said Neistat. "But so long as international agencies are kept away from the screening process, they will have reason to be afraid."

Human Rights Watch called upon the Security Council to address the humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka, including violations of international humanitarian law by both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. Human Rights Watch's recommendations to the government and the LTTE can be found in "War on the Displaced".

Anna Neistat, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch, testified before the US Senate on February 24, 2009. To read the full trasncript, please visit: http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2009/hrg090224p.html

To read the February 2009 Human Rights Watch report, "War on the Displaced: Sri Lankan Army and LTTE Abuses in the Vanni," please visit: http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/02/19/war-displaced

More information on Human Rights Watch's work in Sri Lanka can be found at: http://www.hrw.org/en/asia/sri-lanka

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