Sri Lanka Unveils Tamil Slavery as Economic Stimulus

by Uthaya Nannayakara

Colombo: The government of Sri Lanka has proposed a prison system where more than four hundred thousand Tamils will be kept to work free of charge while aid agencies to feed them according to a document released. The draft plan, which the government has circulated among international aid groups and donors in recent days, surfaced as tens of thousands of civilians fled the northern battlefield where Tamil Tiger rebels and government forces have been waging heavy battles.

Aid workers and Western diplomats have expressed concerns about the treatment of the ethnic Tamil civilians in the concentration camps. “Western governments requested the rebels to guarantee freedom of movements of civilians in the rebel held area”, said an aid worker. “When the civilians enter the government held area, they either disappear or kept in the concentration camps as prisoners. Tamil civilians safety and freedom of movement is not guaranteed when they enter the cleared area” points out an international aid worker who doesn’t want to be identified.

Tamils think the proposed system as modern day slavery. “More than four hundred thousand would be kept as prisoners and forced do work for the government free of payment or bare minimum cost” said a displaced girls school teacher. “Since the military is going to be involved, the women and children are going to be treated as sexual slaves in the camps”, she further said.

According to the draft proposal, the government estimates 40,000 to 50,000 internally displaced families totaling more than 200,000 people would flee the war zone. The "virtual prisons" would be set up to house them for two to three years, the report said.

Rajiva Wijesinha, secretary at the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said the government would run the camps but the military would have "great involvement."

“When the Tamils work in the villages or in the open prisons, it is going to help the government recover from the hard economic times and the increasing war cost” said a storeowner in Colombo. “It is like unveiling an economic stimulus package for the country while the international aid agencies would feed them free.”

For many Tamils, the proposal is the worst realization of their life long fear. Tamils are united in angry while world blames the victims for the crime committed against them. “The western opinion makers are forcing us to live with the perpetrators of horrendous crimes committed against a groups of people”, said a retired professor who now lives in Colombo. “Would in any civilized society in the west, let their kids and family live under the same roof a rapist or murder?” ask the professor. “But they not only want us to live with them, but they are forcing us”, the professor further explained.

The retired Professor blames the European union and the United States for highly taken it up in the hospitalities and comfort given by the Colombo and not taking any action for the atrocities committed against the Tamils.

The government proposal calls for creating four villages of prisons, totaling nearly 1,000 acres, in the Vavuniya district and a fifth 100-acre camp in the neighboring Mannar area. The village style prisons would have 39,000 semi-permanent homes, 7,800 toilets and 780 septic tanks, as well as parks, post offices, banks, stores and about 390 community centers with televisions and radios, according to the plan.

A second proposal called for the construction of 40 schools to hold an expected 86,171 students. That plan asked international donors to fund everything from a photocopying machine for each school to instruments for the school band, at a total cost of about $14 million.

“These school will be used to teach the Tamil kids with less identity in Tamil and more emphasis in Sri Lanka”, said a military personnel who would play an important role in the running the day-to-day affairs of the prison schools.