15th August 2005
Subject: Sri lanka news
Akkaraipattu
Dear Friends,
Hello from a tense Sri Lanka. You probably have heard that Sri Lankas Foreign Minister was assassinated at the weekend allegedly by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). They have denied the allegation but it bears all the hallmarks of a Tiger assassination. Over the last 3 weeks there has also been an upsurge of violence in the East. Two weeks ago
there was a grenade attack on the security forces just by my office which caused the Special Task Force (STF) to seal off the road and close all businesses whilst they searched the area. We were escorted from the office to a safe area and told not to come back that day. The same day there were grenade attacks in Kalmunai and Sammanthurai, both in this area, killing another 3 people. Last week there was a gun battle between the LTTE and STF at Komari, a tsunami devastated village about 15 miles south of here when 2 STF were killed. Yesterday there was another grenade attack in my town of Akkaraipattu with 3 people seriously injured and similar attacks in Kalmunai and Batticaloa.
All of this has provoked the Government to impose a State of Emergency in Colombo and in the East. This means the security forces can detain anyone, search houses without warrants and shoot to kill if provoked. Certainly I saw an increased presence of police, army and STF over the weekend when returning to Akkaraipattu from Colombo. Its difficult for us to understand what is really going on, but it seems the LTTE know the Government cant afford to get
into another war for all sorts of reasons and are deliberately provoking them in order to get talks resumed on a separate Tamil state in the North and East.
I know that Trisha Palmer from Frittenden is due to arrive in Sri Lanka shortly for a holiday so I should assure her and anyone else planning a visit that the tourist areas of Sri Lanka are quiet and are not subject to any violence or restrictions.
In the meantime, the country is trying to rebuild after the tsunami but progress remains painfully slow. It is true that most of those made homeless are now out of temporary relief camps and are in transitional shelters. A typical shelter will consist of 2 rooms on a concrete base with tin or wooden walls covered with a tin or palm thatch roof. Water will come from communal wells or supplied by tanker. There is supposed to be 1 toilet per 6 families. Some of the luckier clusters of transitional shelters will be connected to an electric supply. Here the families will stay until permanent houses are available. It is in the building of these that progress is slow. Here none have yet been completed. I was talking to people in the transitional camp nearest my house and they have been told that they should be re-housed sometime in 2007 but they dont know where this is likely to be.
As far as your relief fund is concerned, the Tree Planting Project has just got underway and I will be visiting next week to see what progress is being made. You may remember that we arranged for the tailoring of school uniforms and I hear that the textbooks being donated to tsunami affected students are on the way from the UK and we will be paying the shipping cost.
Last week in Colombo I was able to present two potential projects to the committee both to be undertaken here in Akkaraipattu. The 1st concerns the regeneration of poultry farming in the area. With the help of friends in a small local NGO, we have identified 68 families in and around the town who lost their poultry farms in the tsunami. Like virtually all
the affected people they had no insurance and are struggling to get re-established. Whilst called poultry farms these were small scale back yard activities and the proposal is, for each family, to repair or rebuild the chicken sheds, re-fence the yard area and supply 50 chicks and enough feed to last 4 months by which time the chickens will be laying and the activity then self supporting.
The project will be supported by the local government veterinary department who will give training on husbandry and bird health and hygiene. Eggs have been scarce since the tsunami and the price has doubled so it seems a market is assured. We will ask the beneficiaries to donate 5% of their income into a fund which we can use to build a central hatchery for supplying chicks and training to outlying women headed families who would like to get started in their own income generating business. None of the families will get rich from this project but should earn between £30 to £40 a month which will be enough to get them off welfare and restore some degree of dignity.
The 2nd project involves children who have lost one or both parents in the tsunami. Another small NGO has been giving some care and help to 98 such local children working from 2 rooms in a supporters house. These children are all from families who were poor previously but whose situation is now much worse. If the father survived, he has to work and the children are left alone or with grandparents. Where it is the mother who survived, she now has to be the breadwinner which is not easy in a society where married women traditionally have no life outside of the home. For
those kids who lost both parents life becomes even more difficult. The relatives they live with often find an extra child a burden that they can ill afford. As a consequence, many of these children have to drop out of school and find jobs effectively to support themselves.
The proposal is to provide a permanent building to act as a care centre for these children. The centre will provide pre school activities for the younger children, educational facilities in the evening and at weekends for drop out children and generally a place where all the kids can socialise, play and enjoy some sporting activities. Additionally a small dormitory will be provided for 21 of these children who have no place where they can go until such time as permanent provision for them can be made. The centre will be built on land donated by a local citizen for the purpose. Plans have been drawn and costed by the local office of the National Housing Development Authority from which body authorisation for construction has provisionally been given. The committee approved these two projects and detailed
planning can now start to put both into operation. We hope you agree that both are worth supporting.
Finally, a rather shameful story. Some investigative journalists were able to establish that Rs 83,000,000 (Approx £450,000) of tsunami relief funds had somehow found its way into a private bank account controlled by the prime minister. He claims that this money was specifically donated to fund tsunami projects in his constituency although this was denied by one of the major donors he said had given the money. The money has now been given back to central government tsunami funds. Not too much fuss seems to have been made about this although of course the opposition parties have been trying to capitalise on it. The prime minister, still in office, has subsequently been endorsed as his
partys candidate for the next presidential elections. So much for the integrity of Sri Lankan politics and politicians.
Regards, John.