Sinhala journalists visit Jaffna IDP families

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 September 2004, 15:27 GMT]
A group of Sinhala journalists Friday visited several welfare centres in the Jaffna district where large number of internally displaced families (IDP) are given shelter and inquired from them their difficulties living as refugees, civil group sources said.

Earlier they met with Mr.C.Ilamparithi, Jaffna district political head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at the Potpathi Road, Kokuvil, political office and discussed about the current situation in the peninsula.

Mr. Ilamparithi briefed the journalists the sufferings of the hundreds of thousands of IDP families who are languishing in welfare centres without basic and essential facilities for several years, sources said.

Mr. Ilamparithi said that normalcy has not returned to the lives of the Tamil people in the Jaffna district even after more than thirty months have passed since the signing of the ceasefire agreement by the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and LTTE, sources said.

Mr.V. Thavachchelvam, President of the Jaffna Journalists Association and Mr.Arulchelvam, Co-ordinator of the Media Training Institute in Jaffna later briefed the Southern journalists the problems faced by Jaffna district journalists. The discussion took place at the Jaffna Media Training Institute, sources said.

The IDPs are unable to return to their houses or resume cultivation in their agricultural plots as their houses and lands are located inside the High Security Zone (HSZ) demarkated by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA).