From War to Tsunami to War

When we were visiting projects in Sri Lanka last December, everyone we spoke to talked about how the war was starting up again. There was a heavy inevitability to it, as if people were describing a train bearing down on them that they were powerless to stop.

From January 2006 on, the pattern of strike and retaliation between the Tamil Tigers and the government forces continued to escalate particularly in the north and east. The heavily Tamil and Muslim populated east coast, still reeling from the 2004 tsunami which devastated an area already destroyed by three decades of civil war, is turning into a war zone again.

In April, the government bombed civilian areas south of Trincomalee on the east coast of Sri Lanka. Some of these are communities UUSC has supported in tsunami reconstruction through our partner Sewalanka. People in those communities were first displaced by the conflict in the 1990s, returned to rebuild, and then were displaced by the tsunami, returned to rebuild again and now are being displaced again by escalating armed conflict.

By now, there are between more than 50,000 people displaced on the east coast by the conflict, many of them tsunami survivors. “The entire framework of tsunami reconstruction has changed on the east coast,” said the project manager of our program partner Sewalanka, as she described the thousands of people, mainly Tamil and Muslim, flooding out of their communities to escape the violence.

The UNHCR estimates that there are now between 100,000 to 170,000 people displaced from their homes in the north and the east. Humanitarian aid organizations face serious obstacles to get assistance to the displaced, many of whom are in desperate need.

Aid convoys to Tamil and Muslim communities are harassed and there have been grenade attacks on nongovernmental organizations. However, the execution-style shooting of 17 aid workers from Action against Hunger, in their office in Muttur in early August, is the most horrific example of how the warring parties ignore international and humanitarian law.

Human Rights Watch has called for an international human right monitoring mission to document and report violations of international law by the warring parties in Sri Lanka. We continue to be in touch with our partner Sewalanka, working with them to figure out the best way to support the tsunami survivors who are now displaced by the conflict.