UN to recommence food deliveries to Tiger-held areas
 Photo: IRIN  |
| The UN is to restart food distribution in the Vanni area |
COLOMBO, 26 September 2008 (IRIN) - The first convoy of food supplies since 16 September will travel under the UN flag to areas held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north in the next few days, Neil Buhne, the UN Resident Representative in Sri Lanka, told IRIN.
The World Food Programme (WFP) convoy will be the first since UN and other international agencies working in areas held by the Tigers in the north-central region, known as the Vanni, relocated to government-controlled areas following a state directive amid deteriorating security.
"The key for us is to get the distribution right, and to get food directly to those who need it most," Buhne told IRIN. "The success of the first convoy is important, because it will shape those that follow it."
There are between 200,000 and 230,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Vanni, according to UN statistics, and most are in areas north-east of Kilinochchi, the Tiger political headquarters, where the UN had also been based before the relocation.
New route
"The supplies will not be offloaded at warehouses, so the convoy will travel directly to where the IDPs are staying and distribute the supplies," Buhne said. "We're still determining the precise route, but it will be to the east of Kilinochchi."
Heavy fighting between government forces and the Tigers has been reported near Kilinochchi in recent weeks.
UN officials will accompany the convoy and supervise the distribution. They are likely to remain in the Vanni until the distribution is completed.
The government directive on 5 September had advised all international humanitarian organisations including UN agencies to cease all work in areas under Tamil Tiger control by 29 September.
Essential supplies 
Photo: 
Up to 230,000 people are displaced in the Vanni area
Government officials in Kilinochchi told IRIN that following the relocation of UN and other international agencies a series of discussions had been held to formalise the new distribution system.
"We held meetings with the WFP and other UN agencies in Vavuniya [south of Kilinochchi] this week and we have planned to send 60 lorries of essential items in one instant during next week," Nagalingam Vedanayagam, the Government Agent for Kilinochchi, told IRIN. "These goods will be for both Killinochchi and Mullaithivu districts [in the Vanni]."
He said that since the relocation no new supplies had reached the Vanni and more delays could lead to lowering of rations.
"At the moment the situation in the area is okay ... there was some fear because no supplies had come [into the Vanni] after the relocation," he told IRIN, "but after the new convoy arrives things will get better."
Buhne also said it was essential to continue with supplies transported by the UN into the Vanni.
"These supplies are a vital lifeline to tens of thousands of civilians forced by fighting from their homes. If they do not continue, their condition will deteriorate the longer the fighting and their displacement continues.
Reported by: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [irinnews.org]
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Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer, coined the word genocide and used it to describe an event in a court of law in 1943. To any social scientist, genocide embodies discrimination, dehumanisation and ultimate destruction, either in part or full, of a people of any national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It often starts up with unequal treatment and ends up with destruction of social and economic structure, and killing of fellow human beings.
When the constitution, the legislature and the judiciary of any country are ethically or religiously discriminatory, acts of discrimination, from being casual events, become a permanent feature with “justification”.
An ethnic “master-slave” attitude would become permanently established in the minds of individuals of the society, by this process of false “justification”.
Gradually, human dignity would be “justifiably” withdrwan from the “ethnic slave” and the “ethnic master” would consider the former as a property less than human beings. Non recognition of human rights becomes inevitable. Killing of any “ethnic slave” or gravely harming one would then be done with false “clear conscience”, without any guilt whatsoever.. Then humanness is lost to beastliness. Reasoning is lost to brutalness. Defiance replaces compliance.
Genocide is thus the culmination of a process. Genocidal acts of ethnic killing, disappearing, displacing, causing bodily harm, mass rapes etc; become widespread when the process is at its peak of ethnic “master-slave” phase.
Sri Lanka(SL) has now socially deteriorated into an ethnic “master-slave” graveyard. Sinhalese often say that they are very friendly with Tamils. Of course they could be and yet keep the collective status quo of ethnic “master-slave” intact.
During the days of American slavery, masters were friendly with the slaves to the extent of having even intimate sex to produce children; yet retaining the collective status quo of master-slave.
Legislation by Abraham Lincoln was necessary to abolish the collective rights of masters to own slaves and grant the collective rights of slaves to be equal to their masters. It was then, the master-slave syndrome from that country was extricated.
In a recent interview, Sarath Fonseka, the army commander, was aggressively defending the existing ethnic “master-slave” status quo in SL. Obviously, his war in the North East is to preserve this status quo. Even a green card from the country of Abraham Lincoln could not undo the harm SL had done to him, especially, to his mindset.
SL is badly in need of a leader of the calibre of Abraham Lincoln, with enough courage to abolish the rights of the Sinhalese to be masters over the Tamils and grant the legitimate rights to Tamils to be equal and free. Nothing else can prevent the ongoing genocide of Tamils in the North East.
The scenario in Vakarai, Mutur and Murigandy will go on repeating itself.