Resettled survivors of Vanni onslaught languish in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2013, 17:14 GMT]
95% of the 1080 families of Batticaloa Tamils who survived the 2009 genocidal onslaught in Vanni and resettled back in Batticaloa district have been completely neglected from any help and still languish without basic facilities. When the families displaced from Batticaloa to Vanni in 2004 from different places of the district, Karuna group paramilitary destroyed their houses and their possessions were robbed. When they returned to their district, surviving the genocidal onslaught, Europe-based NGOs and UN agencies provided temporary huts to these families. All support stopped there, and these huts became the ‘markers’ for these families to get isolated from further aid, the families complain. They have also been sidelined from the Indian housing assistance. 

These families are systematically discriminated in the provision of humanitarian aid in the district through the influence exerted on the civil administration by the SL military operated paramilitary elements. 

Of 4,000 houses to be constructed in the Eastern Province under the Indian housing plan, 2,000 units are allocated to the victims in Batticaloa district. The Vanni survivors are neglected also from the provision of housing scheme due to various interferences in the selection of beneficiaries, the affected families complain. 

The families of Vanni survivors, who were originally displaced from Koa'ra'laip-pattu North (Vaakarai), Koa'ra'laip-pattu South (Kiraan), Vavu'natheevu, Koa'ra'laip-pattu, Paddip-pazhai, Poara-theevup-pattu and Ma'n-munaip-pattu were resettled into 10 DS divisions when they came back to the district surviving the genocidal onslaught, barbed-wire internment and SL military detention.