Hold Special School Examinations for IDPs to Restore Confidence
Full Text of Statement by National Peace Council of Sri Lanka
The end of the war has brought with it the opportunity for a restoration of normalcy and reconciliation after 30 years of suffering and trauma. However, the plight of the nearly 300,000 internally displaced persons who are being kept within welfare centres in Vavuniya is a continuing source of much suffering and heartburn. The situation within these camps is reported to be very poor and cannot easily be verified as entry into them is severely restricted. The National Peace Council urges the government, as a priority measure, to specify a time frame for the release of these people from the welfare centres and their resettlement.
Other important measures would include systematic and transparent screening and registration of these people, and the reunification of families that have been divided without further delay.
Another urgent matter is the education of children. We have learnt through reports that there are between 35,000 to 50,000 children of school going age in the welfare centres. Around 750 of them will be eligible to sit for the Advanced Level examinations that will be held in August.
However, these unfortunate children will be disadvantaged as their studies would have been severely disrupted in the past months.
Nearly all the people in the welfare centres were living in the war zone of the North until May this year. Most of them were living displaced from their homes and with the barest of facilities. They clearly need to have more time to prepare for their Advanced Level examinations. NPC urges that special Advanced Level examinations be held for them at a later date. We have written to the Minister of Education and appeal to him to make this provision for the school children in the welfare camps.
There have been precedents for this practice in the past. Such an action, if coupled with the other measures specified above would do much to restore confidence in the internally displaced persons, and arger population, that the government is committed to the restoration of normalcy and reconciliation.
Governing Council The National
Peace Council is an independent and non partisan organisation that works towards a negotiated political solution to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. It has a vision of a peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka in which the freedom, human rights and democratic rights of all the communities are respected. The policy of the National Peace Council is determined by its Governing Council of 20 members who are drawn from diverse walks of life and belong to all the main ethnic and religious communities in the country.
2 Comments
How can they sit for exams when their entire lives are disrupted and they have no way of pursuing their studies? What are the chances of these 750 getting into University?
It would be better to allow them the freedom to continue their studies in Jaffna, Colombo or even abroad. Perhaps they could be sponsored or given scholarships.
My dear Jehan:
The idea in the past decade or so - in evicting the Tamil people from their homes and making them IDP's on the pretext of the war - is a carefully planned out conspiracy to destroy the educational opportunities of the Tamil young. The faceless architects of the "Final Solution to the Tamil Menace in Sri Lanka" have this as a priority - and this is just one. Getting 40+ students to sit the GCE (AL) exam from the Menik Camp vicinity is for propaganda purposes to fool the world. These twisted architects rightly fear if the Tamil young are given recourse to education, in spite of all the crime imposed on them, many of them will somehow find their way out of the country and will be a thorn in the flesh of the anti-Tamil Buddhist Sinhala extreme lot. VP and gang thought so too which is why the LTTE placed a premium on education of the Tamil youth.
Even during fighting the LTTE insisted schools must remain open. If I do not apportion some blame in this matter on the inhumane LTTE of latter years, I will be accused of lacking balance.
My friend, use whatever influences you have to get these innocent civilians
out of the prisons they are forced in. Many of them are out of their minds
(trauma, is a more decent word you will say) by all the tension they have been
subjected to these years. That too is part of this grand strategy. There was a report that said over 20% of the Tamils in the North are subject to some form of extreme stress factor that will affect their rational behaviour. That the architects also have a different plan is clear. The construction of permanent buildings, banks and other infra-structure in the region of the Camps gives away the blue-prints of a long plan to "politically control the Tamil people of the area" Once quislings Dogloose, Karuna Pillaiyan and company are out one way or the other recent Sinhala settlers will out-populate the Tamils of the area. DSS's plans in that respect in the Trincomalee Districts in the 50s to the 90s and in Batticoloa in the 80s to now have given handsome results. So why not stay to plan is the thinking behind the Sinhala-dominated govts in Cbo. Not bad from the Sinhala point but too bad from the Tamil.
ISS