SLN holds IDPs as prisoners in the islets of Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 October 2009, 17:49 GMT]
Nearly five thousand Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) brought to the islets of Jaffna from Vavuniyaa camps are being held by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) within newly constructed internment camps without allowing them to go out of the camps or to meet their relatives, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, some of the IDPs handed over to their relatives and held in abandoned houses too are not permitted by the SLN to leave their places or to meet their relatives, NGO representatives in Jaffna said.

The IDPs detained in the SLN camps are given only dry food rations while breakfast and lunch are given four to five hours behind time. Dinner is not given on most of the days, the sources added.

The IDPs are daily subjected to interrogation in the SLN camps and the IDPs express fear that youths among them are being screened and taken to special internment camps, religious priests who visited the IDP internment camps in the islets said.

The above SLN internment camps do not have sufficient basic facilities and the IDPs are not allowed to seek medical treatment in Jaffna Teaching Hospital, the sources added.