UK to withdraw funding
The British government has said that soon it will withdraw all but emergency funding for the camps where about a quarter of a million Tamil displaced people are confined in northern Sri Lanka.
The announcement came from the UK’s [junior] development minister, Mike Foster, after he visited the huge Menik Farm camp. BBC correspondent Charles Haviland accompanied him on the visit. Mr Foster said that once the imminent monsoon is over, Britain will only fund life-saving emergency interventions in the camps, which he described as “closed” as their inhabitants cannot freely leave. Sri Lanka’s government says it’s installing adequate drainage to ward off any flooding. But the UK, the UN and others disagree. Visiting Menik Farm, the British minister said he feared heavy rainfall might cause devastation and spread disease. He said some 70 percent of the camp-dwellers could leave and stay with host families. The BBC was able to meet refugees who clamoured to talk about their situation. Refugees voice One woman after another said the conditions were poor – that there wasn’t good drinking water, the drains could not cope, and that people were falling ill in the hot conditions. “Please send us home as soon as possible,” one said. Media access to the camps, and the north in general, has become rare. But the army which is in overall charge of the refugee facility didn’t stop the BBC having brief but spontaneous meetings with people. The former military boss of the camp, now governor of the Northern Province, defended the slow progress of refugee releases, saying people couldn’t just go back to areas from which landmines hadn’t yet been cleared. The government says about 240,000 people remain in Menik Farm and just over 20,000 have been resettled or released – this figure also includes those who have died.