tagged w/ Humanitarian Crisis
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"Humanitarian access remains very restricted," the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) wrote in its latest report.
150,000 people flee South Waziristan as Pakistan begins bombing campaigns in that region, UN expects that number to rise above 250,000
South Waziristan has become a global hub for militants who were launching increasingly brazen bomb attacks in Pakistani cities. The United States and NATO are fighting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan"Humanitarian access remains very restricted," the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination... more
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Its not just about Politics, though Politics is also important here.
Its not just about numbers, though Numbers are important too..
It’s about Faces, So many of them…..
Faces who have seen too much in too little a time. …
Here you see many slums , but no millionaires.
You will find travellers but no destination….
These are internally displaced People of SWAT.
Many of them settled in IDP camps established..
at Mardan, Nowshehra and other areas,
while the majority chose to stay independent.
A large portion of these displaced people arrived at Karachi
where they are living with their relatives, or rented houses
with high rents. This is there story.
Bonier is situated around 60 miles from Islamabad.
An idyllic place with a history full of traditions, simplicity and peace.
All this changed one fine morning….
The terror had finally arrived Taliban’s.
They came with colourful Promises.
The promise of quick justice,
Divine Law, Sharia.
Soon the terror removed its masks and unveiled its true face.
The recent Operation by Pakistan against Taliban forces
For them this was a ray of light, a glimmer of hope.
But everything comes with a price.
The army needed space,
the collateral damage too much a political baggage;
they had to be removed from the war zone.
With in few days more than 1.5 million people left their houses…
and settled for different parts of Pakistan.
Even here, their miseries are far from over.
The new place offers them nothing but a reminiscence
of what they have left behind.
What could have been theirs?
These children are a product of fear;
these faces the faces under terror.
These faces need to be seen,
these voices be heard,
for they tell a story not covered in any of the debate rooms.
They tell why a combination of poverty, ignorance, deception and ultimate terror alters the course of human lives in such a short span of time.
These faces need to be helped.
Because in the end, they are all human faces.
Kazim Raza, Karachi. PakistanIts not just about Politics, though Politics is also important here.
Its not just... more
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Kazim
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added this
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5 months ago
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The water spouts from a broken pipe, forming a perfect circle before it is dispersed by the wind and falls on the breaking waves of the Mediterranean sea.
It looks like a fountain, but the pipe that runs from the town of Rafah to the sea by Gaza's border with Egypt contains raw sewage. It enters the sea by the Swedish Village, so-called because it was built by Swedish UN soldiers in the 1960s. In the overcrowded village it is impossible to escape the smell of sewage.
The discharge is one of at least a dozen which pollutes the sea off Gaza. The worst is Wadi Gaza, where a steady flow of raw sewage blackens the sea for kilometres. The currents in the eastern Mediterranean move northwards, bringing sand from the Nile delta and sewage traces from Gaza to the beaches of Israel.
Gaza's sewage problem is just one of several environmental issues which affect both Palestinians and Israelis. Friday 5 June was World Environment Day, and it is appropriate to take a moment to survey the environmental damage around us and ask what can be done to prevent it.
The river Jordan, which once nourished the Jordan valley and some of the world's oldest towns is a salty and polluted trickle. Before it was dammed, the river's flow was 20 times greater. Downstream, the Dead Sea recedes by a metre every year. In 20 years, it has lost a third of its surface area. One of the major sources of water flowing into the Dead Sea is the Kidron river or Wadi Nara, which brings raw sewage from Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
Some Israeli beaches are regularly closed by environmental officials, mainly because of deficiencies in Israel's sewage network. However, one cannot discount the human waste which travels from the West Bank via rivers such as the Soreq, Lakhish, Hadera and Alexander. According to Israel's Ministry of Environment, 58 million cubic metres of untreated sewage is dumped in the West Bank by Palestinians and settlers each year. This goes into the ground, where it pollutes aquifers, and into streams which ultimately reach the sea.
The effect of global climate change on the Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory is not yet clear. The region has suffered five years of drought and some forecasters estimate that temperatures will rise and rainfall will decrease. It will become much harder to make the desert bloom in such conditions.
Environmental issues affect everyone, yet here they are an unnecessary hostage of the conflict. It would take a small mental shift to remove environmental issues from the "pending peace process" tray and upgrade them to urgent. These problems will not go away or wait until the resumption of serious peace talks.
There are environmentalists on both sides of the Green Line who are committed to solving these problems but are frustrated by their colleagues in government who see environmental issues as minor in the grand scheme of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Expensive plans to avert disaster are being investigated and implemented. Israel is building a further three desalination plants in addition to the two it already has. A feasibility study is underway into transporting water from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea, via pumps, desalination plants and electricity-generating turbines. Both schemes rely on using huge amounts of energy to achieve their aims, which may affect global warming.
But it is the simple solutions that appear to be the most difficult, such as supplying water to communities and providing basic sewage treatment. In 1995 the Joint Water Committee was set up to manage water resources in the occupied Palestinian territory as part of the Oslo accords. It was an interim committee which was meant to operate by consensus. Fourteen years later, the committee does not seem temporary and consensus appears to have broken down. As a result, water networks and sewage treatment plants in the West Bank have not been built.
end of excerptThe water spouts from a broken pipe, forming a perfect circle before it is dispersed... more
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The President has said that bringing peace to the Middle East was a priority of his administration, yet neither his Peace Envoy George Mitchell nor his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been to Gaza.
Now that Obama is traveling to Egypt on June 4, let's ask him to take a side trip to Gaza so that he can witness the devastation firsthand and listen to the voices of the local people.
You can ask him at the link.
Peace will never come with just words.The President has said that bringing peace to the Middle East was a priority of his... more
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Some 77,000 people emerged from the former conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka and arrived in Vavuniya district in the five days following the end of the 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebel group. Many of them needed urgent medical care. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams have been providing medical services day and night at different locations in the district, including the hospital in Vavuniya city and at the checkpoint in Omanthai, close to the former frontline.
Treating patients at the checkpoint
Roughly 10,000 people per day have passed through the Omanthai
checkpoint since the war ended on May 16 before arriving in Vavuniya. A four-person MSF team has been working there to identify the wounded and sick who need to be transferred to the hospital, to stabilize patients for transfer, and to provide as much on-the-spot medical care as possible.
snip
Vavuniya hospital packed with patients
Patients are crowded into the emergency room in Vavuniya hospital, which makes moving around difficult. The hospital has 400 beds, but over 1,900 patients are presently packed into the hospital. MSF teams are supporting Ministry of Health staff to help treat the sick and wounded.
“I’ve been doing around 30 surgical procedures per day over the last few Days. Normally, I would do five,” said Dr. Matthew Deeter, one of four MSF surgeons working in Vavuniya hospital. “We sometimes work together on the same patient; one is amputating the leg and the other is amputating the arm. Or one is taking care of wounds in a foot and the others are treating chest wounds. The majority of the injuries are relatively mild, but we see lots of them on the same patients—something like 20 mild injuries for one person, caused by a bomb blast.”
Other MSF activities
The immediate priority for MSF is to treat the sick and wounded coming out
of the former war zone. In addition to providing support to Vavuniya
hospital, teams have set up post–operative care at the nearby Pompaimadhu
Ayurvedic Hospital to help with follow-up of patients. MSF has also
just set up a 100-bed field hospital with surgical capacity outside Manik
Farm, to the north of Vavuniya city, to provide emergency care to patients from surrounding IDP camps which hold approximately 160,000 people.Some 77,000 people emerged from the former conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka and... more
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Of all the hardships in this sprawling displacement camp, people most bemoan not knowing what happened to relatives who disappeared in the chaos of the decisive battle that ended the prolonged war between the Sri Lankan military and Tamil Tiger rebels.
Scores of ethnic Tamils clustered on both sides of the barbed wire perimeter Tuesday seeking news of their families. Some said they return day after day without success. Many held wedding photographs or portraits of their loved ones, hoping someone would recognize them.
A military-sponsored tour for journalists to a small corner of the camp revealed scenes of heartbreak and misery among the 200,000 displaced crammed into the vast tent city hastily constructed on scrub land.
Tens of thousands more war-displaced people are scattered in smaller camps near Vavuniya, which used to be the army's northern garrison on the edge of the territory ruled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The United Nations says together the camps house nearly 300,000 internally displaced people in wretched conditions.
One woman said her 2-year-old son was shot in the head while they were fleeing the unrelenting shelling and gunfire from both sides. When she reached Sri Lankan lines, she gave the child to soldiers who promised to take him to the hospital.
She's heard nothing of him since.
On Tuesday, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights demanded an independent investigation into atrocities committed in Sri Lanka's civil war.
Navi Pillay recommended to the U.N. Human Rights Council that both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers be investigated over the high civilian death toll since December.
Pillay said the government has an obligation to respect humanitarian law even when protecting people from terrorism.
Sri Lankan Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka said it was "outrageous" to suggest the government should be investigated, saying it was like asking the victorious allies of World War II to accept a war crimes tribunal for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Pillay's call for an investigation lacks support in the 47-nation council.
Back at the displacement camp, Veluppilla Selvaraj, 39, said he was given emergency leave from his job as a security guard in Saudi Arabia to try to find his mother and sister. "I was here yesterday and the day before and the day before. I am still searching," he said.
The Sri Lankan military has refused to release the internal refugees, saying they must be screened to weed out any Tamil rebels who may be hiding among them. Access for international aid agencies has been restricted for the same reason.
Many told reporters about relatives taken away for questioning who so far have not returned.
"They are calling most of the Tamils LTTE," said a man who identified himself as Seevalingam, a former worker at the hospital at Killinochchi, once the rebel capital. He feared the displaced masses would be held here a long time.
The United Nations has called Manik Farm the world's largest displacement camp. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after his own visit last week that he was saddened and moved by the experience.
Aid agencies have warned that a lack of sanitation and adequate medicine was allowing disease like hepatitis to spread.
Indeed, many of the inmates interviewed at Manik Farm said their children were suffering from diarrhea and other illnesses that stem from tainted water. One woman held up her baby who she said had diarrhea for three days. When she took him to the camp clinic the doctor said the child was fine and sent her away, she said.
end of excerptOf all the hardships in this sprawling displacement camp, people most bemoan not... more
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UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived Friday in Sri Lanka to press for humanitarian access to civilians displaced by the separatist conflict, as the island's president dismissed international concerns.
Ban is the first world leader to visit since Colombo's assertion earlier this week that the Tamil Tigers' bloody decades-long crusade for an independent homeland had been crushed once and for all.
"It's time for Sri Lankans to heal the wounds and unite without regards for religious and ethnic identity," Ban said after touching down to a red-carpet welcome late in the evening.
The secretary general said he had three priorities on his 24-hour mission, chief among them ensuring humanitarian assistance "to the more than 300,000 displaced badly in need of food, water and sanitation".
Tamil activists have likened the barbed wire "welfare villages" where civilians who fled the fighting are housed to concentration camps.
Ban also identified the need for the Tamil minority, long marginalised here, to be resettled and integrated into Sinhalese-dominated society.
The third goal of his visit was "national reconciliation" he said, adding: "I hope President Rajapakse will reach out in a inclusive dialogue with minority groups, including Tamils and Muslims."
But in a defiant speech delivered just hours before Ban flew in, President Mahinda Rajapakse brushed off widespread pressure from governments around the world who fear the Tigers' defeat came at the expense of civilians.
"There are some who tried to stop our military campaign by threatening to haul us before war crimes tribunals," said Rajapakse in a speech to hundreds of thousands of supporters outside the national parliament.
"I am not afraid. The strength I have is your support. I am even ready to go to the gallows on your behalf."
snip
Ban's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, told reporters that the secretary general would tour the sprawling Manik Farm area in the northern district of Vavuniya, where most of the people displaced by the recent fighting are housed.
Ban has also said Tuesday that any serious allegations of war crimes "should be properly investigated."
The conflict has cost up to 100,000 lives, according to UN estimates.
end of excerptUN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived Friday in Sri Lanka to press for humanitarian access to... more
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Sri Lankan television broadcast images Tuesday of what it said was the body of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, as the island's president hailed his army's victory over the rebels.
The images were shown after the Tigers claimed the guerrilla leader was still alive and well, and said they would continue fighting for a separate Tamil homeland despite President Mahinda Rajapakse's call to unite the nation.
The video showed the upper section of a corpse which was dressed in camouflage fatigues. The back of the head, which was resting on a bloodstained newspaper, appeared to be missing.
The face was intact, with the eyes wide open, and bore a clear resemblance to the stocky, moustachioed rebel leader.
"We are a government that defeated terrorism at a time when others told us that it was not possible," Rajapakse said in a nationally televised address to parliament.
"The writ of the state now runs across every inch of our territory."
Under international pressure to reach out to the Tamil minority, Rajapakse vowed that a political solution to the island's deep rooted ethnic divisions would be found.
"All should live with equal rights. They should live without any fear or doubt," he said. "Let us all be united."
His speech had been shadowed by a Tiger statement insisting that Prabhakaran was not dead and that his fight -- which he began in 1972 -- would go on.
"Our beloved leader is alive and safe. He will continue to lead the quest for dignity and freedom for the Tamil people," the rebels' international relations chief Selvarasa Pathmanathan said on the pro-rebel Tamilnet website.
Prabhakaran went on to accuse the government and military of "crimes against humanity," saying senior LTTE leaders had been shot dead after being invited to negotiate a surrender.
But the army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, stated categorically that Prabhakaran's body had been identified -- a day after defence officials reported he was gunned down trying to flee government troops.
"Reports from the battlefield confirmed this morning that they have identified the body of Prabhakaran, this ruthless terrorist leader," Fonseka said.
The conflicting accounts of the Tiger leader's fate came after a dramatic day Monday that effectively ended one of Asia's oldest and most brutal ethnic conflicts that has claimed 70,000 lives.
The army said its commandos overran the last sliver of Tiger-held territory, killing their remaining 300 fighters and decimating the rebel leadership.
But the Sri Lankan government's moment of triumph came at the cost of many innocent lives, according to the United Nations.
The UN and human rights groups have partly blamed indiscriminate shelling by the military for causing heavy civilian casualties, while accusing the rebels of using tens of thousands of people as a "human shield".
The European Union on Monday called for an independent inquiry into alleged human rights violations, while the Red Cross complained it was unable to reach the wounded in the northeastern conflict zone even after victory was declared.
UN relief agencies also said that access to some government-run camps housing tens of thousands of displaced civilians had been restricted in recent days and demanded that the camps be "demilitarised."Sri Lankan television broadcast images Tuesday of what it said was the body of Tamil... more
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If it's this hard for Democrats to agree on tough global warming curbs, polar icecaps beware.
With the greenest lawmakers in charge and the President cheering them on, the prospects of sweeping controls on greenhouse gases seemed rosy. After a month of fighting among themselves, however, House Democrats announced an agreement Thursday that reflects more about the legislative process than the need to stop the planet from heating up. (See pictures of the effects of climate change.)
The announcement indicates that sponsors have enough Democratic votes to push a bill past its first legislative hurdle, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as early as next week. But the patchwork of concessions necessary to win over champions of industrial and regional interests weakened the initiative, leaving it far short of the global warming gas reductions that scientists insist are necessary to stave off catastrophic climate change.
"It's unacceptable to base this bill on politics, instead of good science," said Greenpeace's Damon Moglen.
The biggest concession to all industrial burners of fossil fuels raised the national cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the original proposal of 5.7 billion metric tons (BMT) by 2020 to 5.9 BMT. The difference may seem nominal until you consider what the elite scientific body, the International Panel on Climate Change, urges for the same timeline — a cap of at least 1.3 BMT lower. Only then will there be 50% chance of avoiding a major warming.
The initial House proposal triggered opposition by many of the biggest polluters, including electric utilities and industries that burn carbon-heavy coal. They would have to obtain permits for each ton of warming gases — chiefly carbon dioxide — limited by the cap. The bill didn't specify how the permits would be allocated or how much those permits might cost. Environmentalists wanted the government to auction them, with the proceeds used to lighten ratepayer utility bills inflated by the higher costs of running power plants and to subsidize energy efficiency measures. (See pictures of this fragile earth.)
But Democrats devised a permit allocation system to line up committee support. To woo lawmakers from districts powered by coal-fired utilities in the Midwest and Southeast, the agreement would give away 35% of the permits to electric utilities until 2025 while they make a transition to cleaner fuels or develop carbon capture technology. Research for such technology would be subsidized by billions of dollars raised from government auctions.
end of excerpt.If it's this hard for Democrats to agree on tough global warming curbs, polar icecaps... more
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The Tamil Tigers admitted defeat Sunday in their fierce quarter-century war for a separate homeland as government forces raced to clear the last pockets of rebel resistance from the war zone in the north.
Far from the battlefield, thousands of Sri Lankans danced in the streets of Colombo, celebrating the stunning collapse of one of the world's most sophisticated insurgencies. But with rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran still at large, the threat of renewed guerrilla warfare remained.
Several rebel fighters committed suicide when they were surrounded, but it wasn't clear whether Prabhakaran or other leaders were among them.
The Tamil Tigers once controlled a shadow state complete with courts, police and a tax system across a wide swath of the north. By Sunday, troops had surrounded the remaining rebels in a 0.4-square-mile (1-square-kilometer) patch of land and were fighting off suicide bombs and other attacks, the military said.
Huge clouds of black smoke rose over the battlefield as soldiers inspected the charred remains of rebel trucks and heavy artillery pieces, according to footage broadcast on state television. Civilians carrying backpacks and rolling suitcases were escorted from the area.
Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said the civilians who had been trapped in the war zone — 63,000 in all — fled to safety during the past 72 hours. But rebel official Selvarasa Pathmanathan said the bodies of thousands of wounded and slain civilians lay strewn across the war zone.
"This battle has reached its bitter end," Pathmanathan said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press. "It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice — to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns."
Media Minister Anura Yapa dismissed the appeal. "We want to free this country from the terrorist LTTE," he said, referring to the group by its formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The military spokesman denied the rebels had laid down their weapons. "Fighting is still going on in small pockets," Nanayakkara said.
Rights groups have accused the rebels of holding civilians as human shields, and blamed the government for shelling the densely populated area where they sought refuge. Both sides denied the accusations.
With most journalists and aid workers barred from the war zone, it was not possible to verify the accounts of either side. Health officials in the area have said thousands of civilians were killed in shelling since the beginning of the year.
The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority after years of marginalization at the hands of the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said that after defeating the rebels, his government will begin talks toward power sharing and political reconciliation between the two communities. But many Tamils are skeptical that the victorious government will be willing to make real concessions.The Tamil Tigers admitted defeat Sunday in their fierce quarter-century war for a... more
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Tens of thousands of innocent civilians are trapped in a shrinking 3 square kilometer (1.6 miles) conflict zone - bombarded by government artillery, and used as human shields by the rebels. The Japanese government, Sri Lanka's major donor and close regional partner has the power to help stop this humanitarian disaster.
Act now by sending a pre-translated message below to the office of Japan´s Foreign Minister Nakasone. The message calls on the Japanese government to:
- demand that all citizens are protected from harm;
- push for UN Security Council access to the conflict zone and the capacity to deliver urgent humanitarian aid; and
- ensure Japan's aid achieves real peace and human rights.
________________
I don't know how far this will go to helping save lives, but it is at least worth a try.Tens of thousands of innocent civilians are trapped in a shrinking 3 square kilometer... more
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How many will have to die before this is seen as the humanitarian crisis it is?
From the article:
The United Nations condemned a "bloodbath" in Sri Lanka's northern war zone Monday after two days of shelling that a government doctor said killed as many as 1,000 ethnic Tamil civilians — including 106 children.
Volunteers dug mass graves in the marshland, putting 50 to 60 bodies in each pit, according to Dr. V. Shanmugarajah, who works at a makeshift hospital in the war zone. He said one nurse was killed along with his family in a trench that was then filled with soil and turned into their grave.
Shanmugarajah said the hospital was so short-staffed that many of those wounded in the first barrage late Saturday had still not been treated Monday morning. "The hospital death rate is increasing, but we are helpless," he said.
A rebel-linked Web site blamed the attacks on the government, while the government denied firing any artillery into the area.
"The U.N. has consistently warned against the bloodbath scenario as we've watched the steady increase in civilian deaths over the last few months," U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said Monday. "The large-scale killing of civilians over the weekend, including the deaths of more than 100 children, shows that that bloodbath has become a reality."
The first barrage struck the tiny sliver of northeast coast still held by the rebels Saturday evening and lasted through the night, health officials said.
Sunday evening, a new round of shelling — less intense than the first — pounded a newly demarcated "safe zone" where the government had urged civilians to gather, said Shanmugarajah.
A total of 393 people were either brought to the hospital for burial or died at the facility Sunday, while another 37 bodies were brought in Monday morning, he said. The dead included 106 children, he said. More than 1,300 wounded civilians came to the hospital as well.
However, the death toll was likely far higher, he said. Many of the dead were buried in the bunkers where they had taken refuge and then were killed, and many of the wounded never made it to the hospital for treatment.
"There were many who died without medical attention," Shanmugarajah said. "Seeing the number of wounded and from what the people tell me, I estimate the death toll to be around 1,000."
Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government bars journalists and aid workers from the war zone. The attacks marked the bloodiest assault on ethnic Tamil civilians since the civil war flared again more than three years ago.
U.N. figures compiled last month showed that nearly 6,500 civilians had been killed in three months of fighting this year as the government drove the rebels out of their strongholds in the north and vowed to end the warHow many will have to die before this is seen as the humanitarian crisis it is?... more
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Sri Lanka's rebels declared a unilateral cease-fire on Sunday as a top U.N. official pressed Sri Lankan leaders to let aid into the northeastern war zone where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped.
Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa rejected the call, saying the rebels were "running" from government forces, who have pushed deep into the Tamil Tigers' strongholds in the north in recent months, surrounding the beleaguered rebels and vowing to end the quarter-century war.
The United Nations and others have been pushing for a negotiated truce to allow civilians to escape, as reports have grown of starvation and casualties among those trapped by the fighting.
A rebel statement e-mailed to The Associated Press Sunday said all their military operations would "cease with immediate effect."
The rebels asked the international community pressure the government into also halting their campaign, saying the "humanitarian crisis can only be overcome by the declaration of an immediate cease-fire."
U.N. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes held meetings Sunday with senior officials in Colombo and was "underscoring the urgent need for humanitarian access by the U.N. to the combat zone," U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said.
Aid workers have been barred from the region since fighting escalated in September.
The U.N. says nearly 6,500 civilians have been killed in the fighting over the past three months.
Holmes, who arrived late Saturday, had previously called on the government to suspend its offensive to allow the estimated 50,000 trapped civilians to escape.
Holmes was to head Monday to the northern region of Vavuniya to inspect displacement camps and hospitals that have been overwhelmed by the more than 100,000 civilians who fled the war zone over the past week.
The U.N. says another 50,000 civilians remain trapped in the war zone. But the rebels say the number of trapped civilians is three times that estimate.
The rebels, listed as a terrorist group by many Western nations, have been fighting since 1983 for an ethnic Tamil state in the north and east after decades of marginalization by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. After more than three years of intense fighting, the military stands on the verge of crushing the group.Sri Lanka's rebels declared a unilateral cease-fire on Sunday as a top U.N. official... more
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Two top Indian officials headed Friday to Sri Lanka to demand an immediate cease fire in the bloody civil war as a private U.N. document reported that nearly 6,500 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed in the last three months of fighting.
Concern for the safety of the civilians trapped in the war zone has increased in recent weeks as the government pushed ahead with its offensive to crush the Tamil Tiger rebels and end the nation's quarter-century civil war.
On Monday, the military broke through rebel fortifications on the edge of a previously declared "no fire" zone along the northeastern coast, sparking an exodus of more than 100,000 civilians. The rebels said at least 1,000 civilians were killed in that battle and the Red Cross said hundreds had been killed or wounded.
Neighboring India, under pressure from its own Tamil population in the midst of a national election, was sending National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Monen to Sri Lanka on Friday to push for a cease-fire.
"We are very unhappy at the continued killing in Sri Lanka. All killing must stop. There must be an immediate cessation of all hostilities," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishu Prakash said in a statement Thursday.
International rights groups have accused the government of shelling densely populated civilian areas in the war zone and accused the rebels of holding the civilians hostage for use as human shields against the government offensive. Both sides deny the accusations.
At least 6,432 civilians were killed in the intense fighting over the past three months and 13,946 wounded, according to a private U.N. document circulated among diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka in recent days. The casualties were reported as "verified data" in the document, which was given to The Associated Press by a foreign diplomat Friday.
The U.N. has declined to publicly release its casualty figures and had no immediate comment on the document.
The level of civilian deaths has increased dramatically as the fighting has worn on, according to the U.N. An average of 33 civilians were killed each day at the end of January, a number that jumped to 116 by April, the document reported.Two top Indian officials headed Friday to Sri Lanka to demand an immediate cease fire... more
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Civilians are being murdered in the army's advance to end the calls for independence of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and yet even though media is being barred from this area it does not seem as though this is an important news item here. This is one of the biggest global news stories wherever else you look. On Current, nothing. Why is that? Thousands of innocent civilians are now walking targets not only for the Sri Lankan government but the desperate LTTE rebels boxed in. This is an humanitarian crisis of huge proportions.
We have no way of knowing how many people trapped there including an estimated 50,000 children have been slaughtered. And those who are "escaping" are being "registered" at camps. Can we call this a Tamil holocaust? This is a truly desperate situation where thousands of innocent people are at risk. Human rights groups are very concerned as they should be. Here?Civilians are being murdered in the army's advance to end the calls for independence... more
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In reading this account it would seem as though the Sri Lankan government was altruistic.
That is really far from the truth. While there are terrorist elements in the LTTE that have committed crimes as well, the stated purpose of the Sri Lankan government is to deny the Tamil people on the whole independence. I hardly believe thay "let" these civilians "escape" this area as an altruistic gesture. I believe their motive is to use these people to make them think that the LTTE is against them (and yes, I also do believe the LTTE has been using the civilians as well as shields, though I also believe they know what fate awaits those who escape as well, which is a doubled edged sword) and that a better life awaits those who escape (even though it is this same government that is denying them their right to sovereignty.)
They will allow them to "escape" right into concentration camps (and that is exactly what they are) where they will be assessed as "security risks" and have to stay there for up to a year in shoddy conditions with no contact with the outside world. And even though the Sri Lankan government claims conditions are good, Doctors Without Borders states the truth, and I would believe them before believing the Sri Lankan government that has done nothing but try to exterminate the Tamil people.
This is what they hope for through these camps. To break their will and to assimilate them which would be essentially be the same as exterminating their traditions and souls. And since aid groups and journalists are being denied entry we now have to go on what the govenrment says, and that is just not reliable enough.
I previously posted about the bloodbath that awaits if the people are caught in the middle. Of course, the Sri Lankan government doesn't want any bad press and that is surely what it would come to if no scrutiny were given this situation and thousands wound up massacred. So of course, they put on the guise through their own PR of it being altruistic in order to escape scrutiny for the abrogation of the Tamil people's inate human right to be free, to have proper shelter, water, food, medical attention, and control of their own destiny.
How despicable.In reading this account it would seem as though the Sri Lankan government was... more
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A recent report called "The Right to Survive" by Oxfam suggests that climate related disasters will stretch the humanitarian aid system to its limits. Small to medium sized disasters in developing countries attract little international aid, but have a profound impact on thousands of people's livelihood and access to food. As climate change is set to increase, so will the frequency of these disasters.
The Guardian writes:
"Analysis by Oxfam International of the 6,500 climate-related disasters recorded since 1980 show that the numbers of people affected by extreme weather events, many of which are linked to climate change, has doubled in just 30 years and is expected to increase a further 54% to more than 375 million people a year on average by 2015. The figure does not include people hit by other disasters such as wars, earthquakes and volcanoes.
Worldwide emergency aid spending will have to be nearly doubled to at least $25bn (£17.2bn) a year to cope"
The Guardian article contrasts the amount of money pledged and delivered to humanitarian organizations to deal with weather related disasters with the amount of money immediately handed by first world countries to their corrupted financial system. Nice one.
Check out more about the report out here: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/papers/right-to-survive.htmlA recent report called "The Right to Survive" by Oxfam suggests that climate related... more
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Unfortutately, this war (genocide) which now places at least 100,000 Tamils caught in a seven square mile area in mortal danger continues. I find it hard to takes sides here, except for the Tamil people weeping for their family members caught there in horrible conditions being used as pawns by both sides, and those willing now to die themselves to get this story the media attention it deserves. We must have more international participation to avoid a bloodbath.
This video must be seen by clicking on the link as embedding has been disabled.Unfortutately, this war (genocide) which now places at least 100,000 Tamils caught in... more
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More than 150,000 people are being shelled daily and are running short of water and medicine in a Sri Lankan-government declared "No Fire Zone", according to witness reports and United Nations briefing documents obtained by the Guardian.
Tens of thousands of people are caught between the last 1,500 fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the advancing troops of the Sri Lankan army. The civilians are trapped on a thin strip of land - estimated at 13.5 square miles (35 square kilometers) - on Sri Lanka's north-east coast.
The UN warns that if people stay they risk being killed by government shells and if they try to leave they will be in danger of being shot by the Tigers. Diplomats say there is a real danger that a bloody denouement to the 25-year-old civil war could result in an "all-out humanitarian catastrophe".More than 150,000 people are being shelled daily and are running short of water and... more
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March 5, 2009 – Sudanese authorities in Khartoum this morning demanded the immediate expulsion of a second section of the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from Darfur.
The decision to expel the French section of MSF, brutal and sudden, follows the expulsion yesterday of the organization’s Dutch section. MSF is appalled by this order, which clearly holds the needs of the population of Darfur hostage to political and judicial agendas. The organization protests the order in the strongest of terms and appeals to the government to repeal these decisions and allow MSF to resume independent and impartial humanitarian assistance immediately.
“The order to expel MSF from Darfur is a dramatic turn of events that will have unprecedented consequences for the people of the region. Much of the population of Darfur is totally dependent on international humanitarian aid,” said MSF International President Dr. Christophe Fournier. “The sudden halt of our medical programs, including vital surgical, nutrition, and basic healthcare programs in large areas of Darfur will have an immediate and devastating impact on the population.”
The vast needs of the population left unaddressed by the expulsion of so many aid organizations leaves a huge void in assistance, impossible for any remaining agency to adequately fulfill. The basic needs of hundreds of thousands of people will now go unmet, be they medical, food, and water and sanitation. Outbreaks of meningitis in Kalma Camp and Niertiti—where an estimated 130,000 people are in urgent need of vaccination—risk going completely unanswered.
The remaining sections of MSF working in Darfur are committed to continuing to provide medical care in the areas where they are working. However, this is a far cry from addressing the extent of the needs throughout Darfur.
”The ability to provide independent humanitarian assistance in Darfur has been drastically diminished over the past year, but the actions of the Government of Sudan this week risk cutting off humanitarian assistance for displaced and local populations in large areas of Darfur,” added Dr. Fournier. “The needs of the population are falling prey to political and judicial ends, which is wholly unacceptable. We appeal to the government to immediately repeal its decision and allow for independent and impartial humanitarian assistance for the people in Darfur.”
MSF firmly reiterates that the organization is completely independent of the International Criminal Court and does not cooperate with or provide any information to it.
MSF has been working in Sudan since 1979 and in Darfur since 2003. While MSF has now been expelled from delivering critical healthcare in five areas of West and South Darfur, including Feina in Jebel Mara, Kalma, Muhajariya, Niertiti and Zalingei, MSF teams continue to provide care in West Darfur in Golo and Killin, and in North Darfur in Kebkabiya, Kaguro, Serif Umra, Shangil Tobaya and Tawila. Prior to the expulsion, more than one hundred MSF international staff and approximately 1,625 MSF national staff worked tirelessly to deliver essential medical aid to hundreds of thousands of people throughout Darfur.March 5, 2009 – Sudanese authorities in Khartoum this morning demanded the immediate... more
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