13,000 IDPs missing from Sri Lanka camps – UN reports

Quoting reports of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Inner City Press today (Tuesday) reported that last week over 13,000 internally displaced people have disappeared from Sri Lanka’s internment camps for Tamil civilians.

“With the UN already under fire for withholding and downplaying the number of civilian casualties in Sri Lanka, another ongoing controversy has opened up concerning the number of internally displaced persons detained in the IDP camps in northern Sri Lanka. Between the May 27 and May 30 reports of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 13,000 IDPs simply disappeared from the camps”, Inner City press said.

OCHA’s May 30 report states that “276,785 persons crossed to the Government controlled areas from the conflict zone. This represents a decrease of 13,130 IDPs since the last report (Sitrep No.18) on 27 May 2009. The decrease is associated with double counting. Additional verification is required.”

UN sources in Colombo are telling Inner City Press that senior UN officials above them, Sri Lankan nationals who are Sinhalese, are deliberately downplaying the 13,000 “missing” IDPs, which would otherwise be of much concern given the reports of disappearances from the camps, the seizing of teenage males for detention and females for sexual purposes.

But earlier, OCHA had praised the “improved, systematic registration being undertaken in the camps,” Inner City Press said.

These UN sources are surprised, since even Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is under fire for downplaying what has happened to the Tamils, that the UN would be so seemingly cavalier about 13,000 “missing” persons from almost entirely Tamil interment camps, it added.