Nine months later...still missing

A group of people from our organization, associated with our preschool in Eastern Sri Lanka, when coming from there to Vavuniya, there purely on humanitarian services, were abducted…. Many youths are very eager to join TRO to help the people because they feel TRO is the only major humanitarian organization in the North and East. So far there has been no response from the Sri Lankan government, and no support for any humanitarian approach made by any organizations, to the top level of the Sri Lankan government. So they are still a question mark.

We have no ideas of giving up our humanitarian work, despite continuous obstruction of attacking our offices in the East, in the North, in Jaffna, as well as humanitarian people in other organizations like Action Against Hunger losing 17 lives recently in the East.

When we go back and see what has happened in the past several months, by abductions, attacking offices, not just TRO but also other humanitarian agencies, it’s a clear indication that the Sri Lankan government and the majority of Sri Lanka is not allowing the Tamil people to come up in their lives by putting all barriers to stop our efforts for development.

And by putting pressure on these humanitarian agencies the Sri Lankan government feels nobody will support the suffering people here and by that they can increase the starvation and so forth among the people and not think of their dignity and sovereignty and equality.

For the last couple of months, iNGOs have been prohibited from taking all the necessary assistance and materials to North and East Sri Lanka for development has stopped because of the blockade of materials to so-called LTTE-controlled areas. This has been continuously happening. And the latest is the order by the Sri Lankan High Court to freeze the accounts of TRO. All our efforts have been stopped by this.

INGOs have been pulling out and even expatriates are not allowed to come into Vanni, and over 40,000 families are displaced and suffering in Eastern Sri Lanka and another 12,000 families in Vanni. All these IDPs are suffering without proper relief supply to them — suffering for food, for shelter, clothes, health reasons, without medicine. We’re afraid this is going to be a very big hit on the humanitarian services here and I feel the international community should take some special interest in this and put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to see that under any circumstance humanitarian activities should continue in North and East Sri Lanka.

-Velluppilai Sivanadiyar, 34 years