About 1,400 people are dying every week at the giant Manik Farm internment camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees at the end of the Eelam War, The Times reported Friday quoting senior international aid sources.
The Manik Farm camp houses 300,000 mainly Tamil civilians. Conditions at the site are inadequate. ‘Most deaths are due to water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea’, the report said.
The International Red Cross was not being allowed in to the camp. The Red Cross was closing its offices at Trincomalee and Batticaloa, saying that it has been asked to scale down its operations. The Sri Lankan authorities assert that they have the situation under control.
Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said: “The challenges now are different. Manning entry and exit points and handling dead bodies, transport of patients, in the post-conflict era are no longer needed.”
