Sri Lanka refugees face tug-of-war

Sri Lanka refugees face tug-of-war

COLOMBO (Reuter): More than 250,000 refugees are at the center
of a tug-of-war between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil
rebels seeking a homeland called Eelam in the island's north and
east, political commentators said yesterday.

They say the fate of those displaced by the fighting between
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the army will
determine the battle for the hearts and minds of the people.

Political commentator Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu said the LTTE
and its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, have suffered a military
defeat with the fall of the Eelam's spiritual capital of Jaffna
town to the Sri Lankan forces last month.

But the victory for Colombo was tempered by the fleeing of
Jaffna's civilian inhabitants, once numbering nearly 100,000, to
neighboring areas and in the mainland south of Jaffna lagoon.

"If the refugees go back, they are deserting Prabhakaran and
his claim that Eelam is the people," Saravanamuttu said.

Diplomats believe many of the displaced may be held back by
the LTTE to reinforce its claim to being the side the people
favor in the 12-year conflict that has claimed over 50,000 lives.

"The people are voting with their feet, this is the essence of
the hearts and minds approach," Saravanamuttu said.

In their attempts to woo the displaced Tamils, both the LTTE
and Colombo have pulled out all the stops in a war that has cost
more than 50,000 lives in the past 12 years.

Colombo campaigns mainly through leaflets airdropped on the
refugees urging them to return to government-held territory.

It has also promised to restore basic services to Jaffna, such
as transport and power supplies, after troops clear the maze of
mines and boobytraps left behind by the rebels.

The LTTE, fighting for 12 years for the homeland for the
island's minority Tamils, is using the radio to warn refugees
that the situation is bad in government-held areas.

It charged through its Voice of Tigers radio that the army had
restricted medicines to those areas, causing a shortage of drugs
that resulted in 297 civilians dying in hospitals at Manduvil and
Chavakachcheri in the district of Thenmaratchi.

This was denied by the army, which captured a part of the
peninsula from the LTTE last month after a seven-week battle.

Independent relief agency officials also believe the situation
is not as serious.

They say that nearly 80,000 displaced people living in camps
and houses of relatives in Chavakachcheri face no shortage of
medicine and food or medical help.

There are far fewer doctors and nurses for the 200,000 odd
refugees who crossed the lagoon on the Jaffna peninsula and
landed at Killinochchi and other nearby areas.

One international relief agency official said there were no
outbreaks of disease beyond the normal cases for those areas and
that the ministry of health was supplying enough medicines.

"But the large influx of people across the lagoon may change
the situation," he warned.