Vanni IDP detainees sent to Ampaa’rai detained again

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 14:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA), instructed by higher authorities, is constructing new detention centres to hold the Vanni Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) sent to Ampaa’rai district recently from Vavuniyaa SLA detention camps while the IDPs are being detained in the SLA camp located on Poththuvil road in Akkaraippattu, sources in Ampaa’rai said. The efforts made by Aalayadiveampu Pratheasa Chapai Secretary to handover the said IDPs to their relatives failed as the local SLA officer refused their release citing orders from above, the sources added.

SLA officials did not permit the relatives of the IDPs who wanted to meet them and even the Village Officers were not allowed to see them.

The IDPs, specially the women, are facing various difficulties and harassment being held in the SLA camp.

The government, in order to escape international condemnation of the conditions of the IDPs detained indefinitely behind barbed wires and subjected to untold difficulties, is trying to show off that it is releasing some of the IDPs from the detention camps in Vavuniyaa, civil society sources in Ampaa’rai pointed out.

The truth is that the government is determined in detaining the IDPs indefinitely under the control of SLA and it is engaged in constructing permanent detention centres in the North and East, they added.