UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on Sri Lanka on Saturday to allow full access to nearly 300,000 refugees who fled during the final months of the war against Tamil Tiger rebels.
Ban planned to meet the country’s leaders and visit at least Rone of the refugee camps where people are being held in conditions that human rights groups have criticised as unacceptable.
”There should be promotion and protection of human rights and there should be unimpeded access to the sites of the displaced by international, humanitarian organisations including the United Nations,” Ban said at the airport after arriving in Colombo.
A senior UN official travelling with Ban’s delegation told reporters on Friday the secretary-general would press the government to ensure that members of the Tamil minority have equal rights in post-war Sri Lanka.
Having won the 26-year-old war earlier this week, the government needed to ”win the peace” and ‘’settle this conflict so it doesn’t go back to a guerrilla war,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said UN aid agencies still lacked full access to the refugees and that the government had hampered the delivery of aid by banning the use of motor vehicles by UN officials or aid workers from non-governmental organisations.
”If we don’t have free access to (the refugees), we can’t help,” he said, adding some camps where the UN had been denied full access were built with UN funds and other assistance.
UN diplomats say the government intends to screen camp inmates for rebels who might have succeeded in disguising themselves as refugees.
