Fwd: urgent help for newly displaced people
Bobby Kunhu
From: Priya Thangarajah <ipr...@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/4/25
Subject: fwd: urgent help for newly displaced people
To:
p
p.s if we can collect all the money together(if any) in each geographic location and transfer in one go it will save wire transfer costs.
Dear all,
As you may have read and heard there is a humanitarian crisis in Vavuniya and in the last few days over 100,000 people have fled LTTE controlled areas and are scattered around in Vavuniya in camps, schools and screening point at Omanthai. These innocent people have suffered tremendously in the last months having to leave their homes, be held captive by the LTTE and face continuing bombing and shelling by the military (ref. below news release). The government is struggling to cope with the numbers and local community based organisations have stepped in to help. We are working with two local NGOs (SEED and CTF) that have been delivering service to these people in this catastrophic situation specially in hospitals and Omanthai check point. Also please be aware that the numbers of people who need help is huge and it is increasing so please extend your generosity.
Thanks, shreen
This is an urgent appeal for donations, food, cloths and toiletries –
Just two or three hundred rupees can provide cooked meal for a family for a day so your money will go a long way. Please send your cash donations to the bank details below. If you wish to send a cheque (in favour of Social Economical & Environmental Developers) you can drop it in at No 29, 42nd Lane (sea side) Colombo 06.
If you are in Colombo you can help by collecting from friends and family the following products and dropping it at the following collection points.
Items needed: Milk food for children, panadols, toiletries (soaps for children, towels and sanitary towels for women), sarongs, shirts, sarees, kafftan, women’s under garments, baby clothes, dettol or other disinfectants and any other baby needs.
Drop in points: No 29, 42nd Lane Colombo 06 (Wellawatha). Between 9.30am to 8.30pm Call 2361482 before dropping off. Or 120A, Canal Bank Road, Off Hill street, Nedimala , Dehiwala between 6.30am and 10.30pm (call 0773649496 before dropping off).
Bank details for donations
Exact name of beneficiary or holder(s) of bank account: Social Economical & Environmental Developers (SEED)
Beneficiary's address and phone number: No 27, Vinayakar Vithiyalaya Road, Ganesha Purum, Vavuniya, Telephone: 0602244036 / 0602240409
Bank account number: 8610022125
Bank name: Commercial Bank of Ceylon Vavuniya Branch
Swift Code (REQUIRED FOR ALL WIRE TRANSFERS): CCEYLKLX
Tamil civilians died like flies, say survivors
By M.R. Narayan Swamy
New Delhi, April 25 (IANS) The mass of Tamil women and children struggling to walk out of Sri Lanka's war zone were so emaciated that an aid worker thought he was seeing a horror movie.
Some of them had become so thin that their bones could be seen under the thin layer of fleshless skin. They were in bloodstained, dirty and torn clothes that had not been washed for several weeks.
Many had untreated festering wounds. Some were so sick that they could not stand on their feet. At the first opportunity, they collapsed on bare earth.
Barring a few who were willing to speak, most were too weak to even utter a few words. When they did, they had only one wish: water.
And they were famished. Most of them had not had a proper meal for a long time. Their eyes begged for food.
Countless others never made it out of the shrunken territory the Tamil Tigers still hold in Sri Lanka's war-battered northern coast.
These were people who had retreated along with the Tigers as the military rapidly advanced from January this year, raining shells and mortars, at times tearing apart civilians fleeing with the rebels.
Those who have interacted with the civilians undergoing treatment in hospitals in Sri Lanka's north quote them as saying that innumerable people died like flies as they tried to escape the military's far superior firepower. These sources spoke to IANS on the strict condition of anonymity.
To add to the Tamil misery, the Tigers also fired from their midst, inviting ferocious reaction from the army.
One survivor described horrific scenes she saw in the rebel land. "People were blown up. People lost legs or hands. Families got separated. There was no one to care for the seriously injured and dying."
Two small hospitals in Tiger territory inundated with the dying ran out of life saving medicines.
The injured included those shot by the Tigers as they tried to escape.
Food was in short supply. What little was available was prohibitive. A population cowed down by armed combatants lived in bunkers, praying they would live.
The wounded tore parts of their clothes to dress themselves up. If the bleeding did not stop, then they would throw a lump of sand and then do the bandaging. Wounds festered.
Some who barely made it out of the war zone died in buses while being transported.
No one appears to know for certain how many civilians have died since the dawn of 2009 when the military seized Kilinochchi, the former political hub of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The toll ranges from measly figures put out by Colombo to a few thousand. Diplomats otherwise sympathetic to Sri Lanka believe the higher statistics.
The blood and gore have driven a handful insane. One Tamil woman has been tied to the hospital bed because she keeps running in the ward topless.
The human avalanche has overwhelmed Sri Lankan authorities, forcing them to seek international help.
By all accounts, the refugees are still in distress.
About 70,000 of the over 100,000 refugees have been sent to schools and detention centers in Vavuniya, whose main town is located 254 km north of Colombo.
The Vavuniya hospital can accommodate 600 patients. But it has over 1,500. Many are yet to get new clothes.
Some volunteers who managed to go there have said that many patients cannot do anything on their own because they are barely living. NGOs have stepped in because the hospital is unable to supply meals.
Bottled water, biscuits and glucose are in short supply in Vavuniya.
Thousands are still in Omanthai in the north that was the gateway to the once sprawling LTTE territory. NGOs in Mannar district were initially told to be ready to receive some 30,000 refugees.
But that plan has been spiked because some officials feared that the Tamils might sail away from Mannar to neighbouring India.
In any case, the Mannar hospital is full of war-injured civilians, victims of a war they never unleashed,
--Indo-Asian News Service
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"We shall have to repent in this generation , not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Bobby Kunhu http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/