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Sri Lanka: Trapped by war and without assistance Since August, major fighting in northeastern Sri Lanka has forced more than 200,000 people to leave their homes. It has become increasingly difficult to deliver aid to populations affected by the conflict and several regions have been cut off entirely from outside assistance. Judith Soussan, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) head of mission in Sri Lanka, elaborates. What is the situation today for people living in the war affected areas? Tens of thousands of people find themselves completely isolated in combat areas where bombing is often very intense. As a result of insecurity and a blockage of humanitarian aid very little assistance is reaching these people. The situation is particularly serious for people living in the areas under Tamil Tiger (the Tamil rebels) control as the Sri Lankan government will not authorize humanitarian organizations to go there, and has placed serious restrictions on organizations who were already in the area before fighting broke out. This lack of authorization has prevented us from providing aid to the eastern part of the country where at least 40 000 people are displaced in the Tamil Tiger controlled area. These people remain trapped, without any type of assistance whatsoever. The situation has also deteriorated on the Jaffna peninsula, which is under government control and is the only war affected region where we’ve been able to open a project. Since December the situation had become increasingly violent with targeted assassinations occurring every day and causing some people to flee. Since August this has been coupled with heavy fighting and bombing, displacing 50 000 people living on the peninsula, out of a total population of 500 000. Following the outburst of fighting, travel in and out of the peninsula has been blocked: the road has been closed, and air and water traffic is extremely limited as a result of restrictions imposed by the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan authorities. The price of food has already quadrupled and the shelves have been stripped of basic goods as the population tries to stock up. Access to the hospital is limited due to the curfew which is only lifted a few hours each day. If this blockage continues much longer there will be serious shortages—particularly of food and fuel. What is MSF doing in the Jaffna peninsula? A three-person team is working in the Point Pedro hospital, primarily in the emergency room and supporting other hospital services when necessary. Although MSF has managed to maintain a presence in the hospital, our activities remain very limited as the hospital doesn’t have a surgeon and we haven’t been able to send an MSF surgeon due to travel restrictions and lack of authorizations. We have a surgeon and an anesthetist waiting to go to Point Pedro who have been blocked in Colombo for over three weeks. For now, we are unable to operate in Point pedro so we have to refer our patients to another hospital in Jaffna for surgery. However, transferring patients from Point Pedro to Jaffna is complicated, the MSF doctor is not allowed to accompany our patients in the ambulance. Even our movements within the peninsula are limited. How do you interpret the restrictions on aid operations? Read other articles on Sri Lanka
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