Jaffna priests: save us from silence and death
The appeal to stop the conflict is aimed especially at the EU, the United States, Norway and Japan. Within a week, 90 civilians were killed, 150 injured and 25,000 people were displaced.
Jaffna (AsiaNews) "We are heading towards an isolated and silent death". This is the appeal sent to AsiaNews by a group of Catholic priests from Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. They beg the international community to come to the rescue of the peninsula's residents, who have been trapped between curfews and crossfire for a week.
The priests wish to remain anonymous for security reasons. In their appeal, they said 90 civilians had been killed and 150 injured by air raids and crossfire in Jaffna since fierce clashes broke out there between the Sri Lankan army and the rebel Tamil Tigers on 11 August. The fighting has also displaced about 25,000 people, they said.
This urgent appeal is addressed "to the conscience of the world from war-torn Jaffna".
"In the last week, the situation has deteriorated drastically," wrote the priests. "We are heading towards an isolated and silent death. Are we going to be a people forgotten, uncared for? How can the international community, especially the European Union, the co-chairs of the Tokyo Donor Conference for Sri Lanka, and the peace envoys of Norway and Japan, remain indifferent when innocent, unarmed, people are killed? Please, please act in time and save us."
The donor conference chaired by the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Norway did make a call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to negotiations on 16 August. But the ceasefire and peace hopes seem like history now as all out warfare continues unabated, claiming a high death toll among combatants too. Latest army reports claimed 100 soldiers and 700 rebels were killed in the past week, including 75 Tigers in one overnight offensive.
Meanwhile, there is practically no news at all about the people of Jaffna, which has been virtually cut off from the rest of the country. The priests, who are trying to deliver aid to affected people despite the curfew, described a town shaken by shelling, with no water and severely limited electricity and telephone services, where "people are becoming increasingly panicky and tense".
According to the priests, the displaced people were living in churches, schools, public buildings and even under trees on the streets. "They are unable to move to safe places due to the curfew which the security forces are imposing in different areas in rotation, with only very short breaks. This prevents the people from moving."
The priests charged that the army was curtailing the people's movement to "use them as human shields against Tamil Tiger attacks". They said around 1000 people from the islet of Mandaithevu refused relief from aid agencies, pleading instead to be taken to a safe place in Jaffna peninsula.
Due to the curfew, humanitarian agencies are hard pressed to deliver aid. It takes "hours" to ferry injured people to nearby hospitals that are anyway unable to meet their needs due to staff and medicine shortages.
Jaffna is precious to the Tamil people of Sri Lanka who regard the town as the centre of their culture. It has often been at the epicentre of the conflict and was wrested from rebel control in the mid-nineties. Some analysts see the latest clashes in Jaffna as a rebel bid to retake the peninsula.
The clashes are another stark sign that in effect, the war between the Sinhalese army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has started again. The conflict has already claimed an estimated 65,000 lives in well over 20 years and although a ceasefire agreement was signed in 2002, no breakthroughs have been achieved in resolving the core issues at the heart of the so-called "ethnic problem".
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