Sri Lanka: The Situation in the East
At last news has begun to trickle through about the situation along Sri Lanka’s East coast—and it looks bad.
It was not before Wednesday that the first aid-lorries reached the area around Trincomalee via the road to Colombo. The Sri Lankan government is responsible for allocating aid in the first instance and it is clearly overwhelmed by the scale of this disaster. But BBC correspondents in Colombo keep emphasising the (apparent) difficulties in reaching “rebel-controlled areas”—this sounds fishy. Tensions are flaring up already, with both sides accusing the other of hampering relief efforts. There have been angry protests in Jaffna. (Most of these links are from TamilNet which is of course biased, but there has been only silence from most other news sources—the enormity of what happened is such that many regions outside the major cities and resorts cannot possibly be covered.) Thankfully, US military planning teams have arrived in Colombo to help with planning and distribution of aid.
Around Kalkudah, the relief effort is hampered by displaced land mines. Worse, the destruction of the coastal road from Kalmunai to Pottuvil means that many towns and villages are effectively cut off from any aid.
Arugam Bay and the surrounding villages are reported to be destroyed.
Here in the UK, the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella organisation of leading NGOs (several with bases in the affected countries) handles the co-ordinated relief effort—and all most of us can do right now is to donate money.
Tags: The Whales of Trincomalee, Tag Index
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