A senior UN diplomat on Thursday urged the quick return to their homes of nearly 300000 minority Tamils forced from their homes by the civil war in Sri Lanka. B. Lynn Pascoe UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs was speaking in the capital Colombo after talks with Sri Lankan officials. Earlier he had visited camps in the North of the country for IDPs Internally Displaced Persons. Human rights advocates have warned that monsoon rains due to start next month could create a public health crisis in the crowded facilities. The government has refused to open the camp gates and release the IDPs but has said it would resettle 80 percent of the displaced by the end of the year after land mines are cleared from their villages. A week ago the government said 9920 people had been released and sent back to their homes in the country s east and north. But local politicians have said that many people the government claimed to have released have simply been moved to other camps and thousands promised an early release were still waiting. Mavai Senathiraja a parliamentarian from the Tamil National Alliance an opposition party representing ethnic Tamils said 6000 of those promised release last week were from his constituency in northern Jaffna but only 580 arrived back in the area and all of them were immediately sent to another camp where they continued to be detained. The government denies the charge. The camps result from a 25-year civil war which ended in May when the government routed the Tamil Tiger rebels. Pascoe is also expected to raise with the government reports of wartime human rights abuses. He is to meet President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday. The Tamil Tigers fought for a separate state for Tamils claiming decades of discrimination by the Sinhalese majority. The UN says between 80000 and 100000 people were killed during the war.

• published: 04 Nov 2013
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