AI says LTTE, govt. endanger Wanni civilians

Source : LankaEnews

The Amnesty International (AI) has pointed out that thousands of Tamil families have been forced to flee their homes in the Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi districts as war refugees consequent to the raging war in the districts and are languishing in open air dwellings without access to essential humanitarian assistance. The government-imposed restrictions on transport of relief assistance and the LTTE’s rigid measures to prevent them from moving away to safer havens have reduced the families to a state of utter destitution and misery, the AI has noted.

Produced below is the AI report:
Thousands of families who fled the recent fighting between Sri Lankan forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) must be allowed to move to safer areas and to receive necessary humanitarian assistance, Amnesty International said today.

“These people are running out of places to go and get basic necessities,” said Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s Sri Lanka researcher. “The Tigers are keeping them in harm’s way and the government is not doing enough to ensure they receive essential assistance.”

Government aerial bombardment and artillery shelling since May has forced more than 70,000 people to flee their homes, primarily in Kilinochchi and Mulaitivu districts.

Amnesty International has established that around a third of these families are living in the open air with no shelter. Many cannot receive food, tarpaulin for temporary shelters and fuel because of a lack of access into LTTE-controlled areas and restrictions on goods going through Omanthai – the crossing point between government-controlled territory and that held by the LTTE. Some families have been forced to move several times.

In the LTTE-controlled Wanni area, the Tigers have hindered thousands of families from moving to safer places by imposing a strict pass system and, in some instances, forcing some family members to stay behind to ensure the return of the rest of the family. These measures seem designed in part to use civilians as a buffer against government forces — a serious violation of international humanitarian law. The LTTE has also engaged in forced recruitment.

Lack of cement to build adequate toilets and washrooms has forced people to use open bathing facilities. The lack of adequate privacy for women and girls has led to a notable increase in reports of sexual and gender based violence.

Amnesty International has also received reports that the government is housing those who have been able to leave LTTE areas in temporary shelters that often operate as de facto detention centres. Witnesses from Kalimoddai camp in Mannar district told Amnesty International that more than 200 families who are held there cannot exit the camp for any reason (except to go to school) without obtaining a pass from the government’s security forces.

“Both sides to this long conflict have again shown that they will jeopardize the lives of thousands of ordinary people in the pursuit of military objectives,” said Yolanda Foster. “In the absence of independent international monitors, Sri Lankan civilians lack protection and remain at the mercy of two forces with long records of abuse.”

Background
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The Sri Lankan military has launched a major offensive to reclaim areas of the north and east previously controlled by the LTTE. Families have been multiply displaced. According to UNHCR, as of 30 June, there are some 467,000 individuals displaced by conflict in Sri Lanka’s north and east. This figure includes an estimated 194,900 persons who were displaced after fighting intensified in April 2006.

Amnesty International Report

Read on (sinhala)>>as_PDF

ICT4Peace

What is ICT4Peace?

What exactly is ICT4Peace / ICT for Peacebuilding?

A recent telephone conversation with Amb. Daniel Stauffacher, President ICT4Peace Foundation, Geneva, prompted the need to clarify what exactly is meant by ICT4Peace.

Many of the ideas and research featured on this blog form what I believe to be the core of ICT4Peace – the use of technology to create hope even in the face of violent conflict. Seen this way, ICT for peace is not just about using technology to prevent violence, or bring about a lasting peace after a peace settlement between the main antagonists. On the contrary, it is the use of ICT to create channels of communication, frameworks of collaboration, and architectures of information and knowledge sharing even in the face of violent conflict. To create the designs for lasting peace, one needs to start at the heart of violence, the reasons for continued terrorism, the motives behind the killings, the root causes of conflict.

As such, ICT for Peace is both proactive and reactive. It can prevent violence from breaking out, it can help mitigate the fall out of communal violence and it can help engender the dialogues, virtual as well as physical face-to-face meetings, that foster hope in a final settlement and the larger process of social change that needs to occur apace to cement conflict transformation.

Not a single other ICT driven intiative – ICT for Health, ICT for Education, ICT for Development, ICT for Government – comes as close to the transformation of violent conflict as does ICT4Peace. For sure, acting in concert, all ICT initiatives aimed at various sectors can bring about lasting peace, but without an active, concentrated and sustained examination of the dynamics of peace and conflict, without mapping the actors and factors that give rise to hope in the midst of violence, without using technology to capture voices in support of peace even when they are being killed by the State, terrorists or both, any ICT for development or related initiative is doomed to failure, as they do not address the root causes in a given society that give rise to violence.

I’ve explored what ICT for Peace really means to me in a page I added recently to this blog (in addition to my own research in ICT4Peace) and hope the increasing readership of the thoughts herein exploring ICT for of peacebuilding and conflict transformation is an idea, based on practice and research, that needs to be noticed, supported and most importantly, promoted.

Sanjana Hattotuwa  also a Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Presentation at UN OCHA +5 Symposium from Sanjana Hattotuwa.

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