01-11-2005, 04:40 AM
இந்தியா எக்ஸ்பிரஸ் வெளியிட்ட இந்த செய்தியை படித்து பாருங்கள் .....
Sri Lanka's north sees a revival of the great divide
JAFFNA, JANUARY 10: They wonder up here whether the south has forgotten the north and how this part of the island was also a victim of the tsunami. That they too have suffered and need aid. Questions are also asked why Kofi Annan was not permitted to visit the area during his weekend visit.
They are also still burying their dead and there is a lot of grief, but there is rehabilitation as well. After the clean-up comes the restructuring, but this part of Sri Lanka, that opened up in February 2002 and was in many respects seriously damaged during the insurrection against Colombo, is still coming to terms with the invasion from the sea.
There is also another side of the destruction that is slowly emerging. Family here in the north who have lost contact with family in the south.
One is Usha Ishini (32), a senior nurse from Galle, who tells her story in a ward full of children injured by the tsunami in a hospital near Kopal, to the east of Jaffna. As she changes a bandage on a child's arm, she admits she still has no idea who of her family survived. Her last contact with her older brother Sachit was on Dec 24, to wish him on his birthday. She has been unable to contact anyone nor go to the coastal town.
It is very depressing and I am fearing the worst, she said. I am hoping to get away from here later in the week. But I am also needed here in the hospital. We lost staff during the disaster and there is no one to take my place if I go back to Galle.
Usha fears if children see her sadness or tears, they will be disturbed as they have been through enough. Most have lost family, but not all are orphans.
As Usha explains, the feeling abandonment and isolation is largely tied to a visit to the area by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and other politicos, one from the despised Marxist JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna). It is the JVP who want the LTTE to drop their demand for an independent self-governing authority as a rider for peace talks.
Wimal Weerawansa was chased out of Jaffna when tsunami survivors discovered he was the JVP propaganda secretary during a conversation. They now feel that the JVP are trying to stop any meaningful aid from reaching the peninsula.
Just what he (Weerawansa) hoped to achieve by coming here is hard to understand. They should have known that no one from the JVP is welcome in this region. says Usha. Ironically, the area where her family lived is now partly controlled by JVP cadres who have been defying the non-political stand of parties in relief operations by openly wearing red T-Shirts and distributing packages that two NGO groups had brought into the south.
It is one of the ironies of this massive aid operation, that political opponents have to work together. But LTTE and the JVP are far apart in all realms of ideology, and even the tsunami disaster, as Usha points out, has further polarised the situation. We have promised her that we are going to contact colleagues in the south to trace her family.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.ph...ontent_id=62479
Sri Lanka's north sees a revival of the great divide
JAFFNA, JANUARY 10: They wonder up here whether the south has forgotten the north and how this part of the island was also a victim of the tsunami. That they too have suffered and need aid. Questions are also asked why Kofi Annan was not permitted to visit the area during his weekend visit.
They are also still burying their dead and there is a lot of grief, but there is rehabilitation as well. After the clean-up comes the restructuring, but this part of Sri Lanka, that opened up in February 2002 and was in many respects seriously damaged during the insurrection against Colombo, is still coming to terms with the invasion from the sea.
There is also another side of the destruction that is slowly emerging. Family here in the north who have lost contact with family in the south.
One is Usha Ishini (32), a senior nurse from Galle, who tells her story in a ward full of children injured by the tsunami in a hospital near Kopal, to the east of Jaffna. As she changes a bandage on a child's arm, she admits she still has no idea who of her family survived. Her last contact with her older brother Sachit was on Dec 24, to wish him on his birthday. She has been unable to contact anyone nor go to the coastal town.
It is very depressing and I am fearing the worst, she said. I am hoping to get away from here later in the week. But I am also needed here in the hospital. We lost staff during the disaster and there is no one to take my place if I go back to Galle.
Usha fears if children see her sadness or tears, they will be disturbed as they have been through enough. Most have lost family, but not all are orphans.
As Usha explains, the feeling abandonment and isolation is largely tied to a visit to the area by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and other politicos, one from the despised Marxist JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna). It is the JVP who want the LTTE to drop their demand for an independent self-governing authority as a rider for peace talks.
Wimal Weerawansa was chased out of Jaffna when tsunami survivors discovered he was the JVP propaganda secretary during a conversation. They now feel that the JVP are trying to stop any meaningful aid from reaching the peninsula.
Just what he (Weerawansa) hoped to achieve by coming here is hard to understand. They should have known that no one from the JVP is welcome in this region. says Usha. Ironically, the area where her family lived is now partly controlled by JVP cadres who have been defying the non-political stand of parties in relief operations by openly wearing red T-Shirts and distributing packages that two NGO groups had brought into the south.
It is one of the ironies of this massive aid operation, that political opponents have to work together. But LTTE and the JVP are far apart in all realms of ideology, and even the tsunami disaster, as Usha points out, has further polarised the situation. We have promised her that we are going to contact colleagues in the south to trace her family.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.ph...ontent_id=62479
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