Children ‘being kidnapped from Sri Lanka refugee camps’

October 6th, 2009 COLOMBO - A British cabinet minister began a two-day visit to Sri Lanka Tuesday to assess the government's resettlement plans for an estimated 250,000 people displaced by the country's civil war, officials said. Mike Foster, British Parliamentary under secretary of state for international development, was scheduled to visit refugee camps in the north, a British-funded child soldier rehabilitation centre in Vavuniya and a demining programme also backed by Britain.

September 22nd, 2009 NEW DELHI - The executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, a nonpartisan advocacy group, has said the only thing likely to change the Sri Lankan Government's behavior towards the minority Tamil community is democracy. According to Jehan Perera, as more elections are held in Tamil-heavy areas once ruled by the LTTE, the government, "will need to build up Tamil votes." "At the moment the government does not see the price it will have to pay [for its treatment of the Tamils] but it will have to pay - and that, we hope, will make it change," the Christian Science Monitor quotes him, as saying.

September 12th, 2009 LONDON - The United Nations has strongly warned Sri Lanka that the world body cannot continue funding indefinitely the huge refugee camps in the north of the country, and asked the authorities to allow the hundreds of Tamil civilians to leave. The senior UN official in the country hardened their stand when they said the camps should be a last resort for civilians with nowhere else to go.

September 6th, 2009 Sri Lanka expels UN official over reported commentCOLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A United Nations official has been banished from Sri Lanka reportedly after discussing how the government's decades-long battle with Tamil Tiger rebels took its toll on children in the war zone. The residency visa of U.N.

August 6th, 2009 CHENNAI - Tamil Nadu Government on Thursday sent the fourth installment of relief material worth Rs 15 crores for Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka, who are confined to displacement camps. More than 2,80,000 civilians are held in sprawling camps in the north since May, when government troops crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to end a 25-year-old war.

July 28th, 2009 LONDON - Despite the end of hostilities, children in Sri Lanka continue to be at risk of forced recruitment, arbitrary detention and other human rights abuses, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said Tuesday. In a new briefing to the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, the Coalition urged the Sri Lankan authorities to act immediately to protect conflict-affected children.

July 5th, 2009 COLOMBO - A lone Tamil rebel killed a soldier in eastern Sri Lanka and injured two in a shootout marking the first military casualties after the guerrilla leadership was crushed six weeks ago, a military spokesman said Sunday. The incident took place in Kirankulam, Batticaloa, 300 km east of the capital when soldiers attempted to ambush a rebel riding a canoe in a lagoon Saturday.

June 3rd, 2009 COLOMBO - Sri Lanka is reportedly hampering international relief efforts by forcing dozens of British and other foreign aid workers to leave the country because it considers them sympathetic to the defeated Tamil Tigers, The Times has learnt. Aid organizations say the policy is costing them tens of thousands of pounds of donors' money as they struggle to help 280,000 Tamil civilians in internment camps.

May 24th, 2009 COLOMBO - The Government of Sri Lanka on Sunday said that it would allow UN aid workers access to Tamil refugees housed in camps after weeding out elements suspected of links with the LTTE. Responding to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's demand for unhindered access after visiting the Menik Farm camp housing 200,000 Tamils, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa warned of "the likely presence of Tamil Tiger infiltrators among the large numbers who had come to the government areas." The government describes the camps as "welfare villages" and says it wants to resettle all displaced civilians as soon as possible.

May 22nd, 2009 COLOMBO - A report by the Save the Children charity has suggested that a fifth of all children were either missing or separated from one or both of their parents in northern Sri Lanka. The charity said that while the Sri Lankan government had taken some measures to reunite such families, the situation remained dire.

May 22nd, 2009 COLOMBO - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to offer further assistance to people displaced by Sri Lanka's war, a senior UN official in Colombo said Friday as the government for the first time released updated military casualty figures. Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa released details of military casualties in the final phase of the operations against Tamil rebels.

May 21st, 2009 COLOMBO - Thousands of Tamil civilians who had been forced from their homes by the conflict in Sri Lanka could be interned in refugee camps for up to two years before they are permitted to return, authorities in Colombo have said. The revelation comes as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said that it has been forced to suspend its aid supply to the refugees after it was refused access to the camps, reports The Independent.

May 20th, 2009 COLOMBO - More than 200,000 refugees are facing 'very critical' circumstances in northern Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the recent war, the Red Cross said. Andreas Lindner, head of the German Red Cross team in the region, said the situation facing Sri Lankan refugees presently was 'one of the most complicated and dramatic' worldwide.

May 18th, 2009 COLOMBO - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to visit Sri Lanka Friday to assess the humanitarian situation after an estimated 250,000 civilians fled the Tamil rebel controlled areas in the north of the country, Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said Monday. Ban is due to meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa and is expected to tour refugee camps, following the declaration of victory Monday by the Sri Lankan military over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

May 6th, 2009 COLOMBO - Amid mounting international concern over the plight of civilians caught in the war between the troops and Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa has invited UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon 'to see for himself the situation' in the island's north. 'President Mahinda Rajapaksa has invited UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to Sri Lanka to see for himself the situation regarding the action for the accommodation and treatment of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who have recently come to government controlled areas in such large numbers, and plans for their resettlement,' a statement from the president's office said Wednesday.