Reality check shows the hollowness of official claims. The Express story based on agency despatches with Colombo date line shows that the Lankan Tamils from the Menik camp were ‘left in the jungle’ with no means of rebuilding their homes or their lives.
The Menik camp for displaced people in Sri Lanka was once one of the largest in the world, and the final 1,160 residents of camp left on Monday. But 110 families from one village, Keppapilavu, said that they have been prevented from going home and were relocated to a patch of cleared jungle.
What is the reality check? Here it is.
The 361 families who left the farm were taken to a school building at Vattrapalai where they spent Monday night. On Tuesday morning, they were taken to Seeniyamoddai village where a jungle area was bulldozed to clear space for them close to an irrigation tank.
Once the jungle was cleared they were allocated land. They said they were not given any lights, no tents, they only had tarpaulin sheets for shelter. They spent that night in the open space where snakes and insects were also about.
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, a Tamil politician, said “the government hurried to empty the Menik Farm camp because of the universal periodic review on Sri Lanka’s human rights situation coming up soon in Geneva’.
‘Putting Paid to the Government’s false claims’, reads the headline of an investigative story on post- Menik camp scene by Dilrukshi Handunnetti. Minutes after it appeared on Sri Lankan website Groundviews.org, the report has gone viral on the internet. What gave depth to the report are the accompanying photos since a photo tells more than a thousand word story.
