UK Church agency adds to calls for S. Lanka’s Tamil resettlement

(August 20, 2009) As heavy rain worsens the already poor conditions in Sri Lanka's refugee camps, the Catholic charity of England and Wales added its voice to calls for Tamils displaced by the civil war to be allowed to return home quickly. Pauline Taylor-McKeown, head of international programs of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, CAFOD, said, “It is now three months since the fighting ended but "like many of these situations, the dilemma is that the issue has faded from the headlines but the problem has not gone away." CAFOD is the UK partner of the international Caritas confederation. About 300,000 Tamil civilians - more than 30,000 of them Catholics - are still held in 30 military camps in the districts of Mannar, Jaffna, Vavuniya and Trincomalee. CAFOD has been working with Caritas Sri Lanka, which is feeding 83,700 of those held in the heavily guarded camps, providing drinking water and at least one cooked meal a day. But its work has been hampered in recent days by the monsoon rains which have turned the camps into a sea of mud. Earlier on August 15 Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo addressed pilgrims at the annual feast of the Assumption at the popular Marian shrine of Madhu, urging the Sri Lanka government to allow displaced people to return home. The call was echoed by Bishop Thomas Saudranayagam of Jaffna. The director of Caritas Sri Lanka, Father Damian Fernando, has also said: "These people have suffered massive hardship and have much more to face. It is freedom that they need."