SRI LANKA: Goodwill Gestures Fail to Reach War-torn Area

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 30 2002 (IPS) - Residents of the war-torn Jaffna peninsula are still to enjoy a two-week-old goodwill gesture, including the lifting of an economic embargo, made by Sri Lanka’s new government to those living in conflict-affected areas.

Thus far, the medicines the predominantly Tamil civilians badly need have not been coming into the northern peninsula, once the heart of the rebels’ campaign for a separate homeland.

“The government says more than 90 percent of the peninsula is under the control of government forces. Then why is permission needed to brings goods into an area that is run by the government?” asks a frustrated Dr Sivarajah, head of the department of community medicine at the Jaffna University.

A steady supply of medicines was among the items that the newly elected United National Front (UNF) government approved to be sent to the rebel-controlled areas in the northern Wanni region, adjoining Jaffna, after the embargo on those areas was lifted earlier this month.

Other items on the approved list included food and general goods.

The relaxation is part of measures aimed at laying the groundwork for peace talks, due to start in May between the UNF government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

A ceasefire has been in force between the two sides since Dec. 24 last year. The 19-year long conflict has cost more than 60,000 lives since 1983.

But while all other areas with some rebel activity have been free of the embargo since mid-January, Jaffna, struggling for years without sufficient medicines due to restricted supply and a ban, has not figured in this equation.

Restrictions on medicines still apply to the peninsula, home to 500,000 mostly Tamil residents.

Even such basic medical needs as bandages are on banned list, due to fears by the former government that wounded Tamil rebels would be able to use them. When residents then turned to using sanitary pads as bandages, past government banned this item too.

At a seminar held here last week, Sivarajah and other top medical specialists from the war-ravaged region confirmed that badly- needed drugs were still not available.

Unlike other parts of Sri Lanka, they said, hospitals were unable to send vehicles across to another hospital outside the region to borrow supplies, because the Jaffna region is isolated.

Since the mid-1990s, road links between Jaffna and the rest of the south have been closed due to fighting between government and rebel forces, and only sea and air routes were available for such a journey.

Those two routes had restrictions, too, with civilian flights run only by the air force and passenger ferries to Jaffna available only twice a week.

Often, said the northern medical experts, if Jaffna hospitals were short of life-saving medicines, they were compelled to borrow supplies from the army hospital in the region or forced to witness the patient suffer further and even die.

“In 2000, three patients died due to unbearable pain as there was a shortage of painkillers,” recalls Dr M Ambalavanar, a general surgeon at Jaffna’s main Teaching Hospital. “Last year, during a week, I had to send patients (suffering from fractures) home with cardboard splinters as there was no plaster of Paris available.”

According to Keethish Loganathan, a Tamil affairs specialist and analyst at the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, there is no government explanation to justify the embargo’s continued enforcement in Jaffna.

“Military spokesmen at the seminar were also unable to give a proper explanation,” he says.

Since 1987, Sri Lankan governments have enforced an economic embargo, starting off with a few items that they feared would reach the Tamil Tigers and later expanding it to even drugs including aspirin.

“I can’t understand why the government bans a box of aspirin when the government has not been able to stop the Tigers acquiring surface- to-air missiles, rocket launchers, tanks and other war material,” says Dayala Deva, a pharmacologist and former director of the International Federation of the Red Cross.

Even getting approved drugs into the peninsula is a laborious and time-consuming procedure, adds Deva, who conducted a survey September last year on the prohibition and restriction of medicines to Jaffna.

Often, once permission is obtained to transport a certain amount of drugs, these are not available in the government medical stores in Colombo, he explains.

“Drugs and medicines are given to state hospitals after each hospital lists out its needs. Often the supply doesn’t match the need,” explains Deva. “In Jaffna’s case even the little supply we get can diminish as there have been times when stocks set aside for Jaffna have been given to other hospitals due to procedural delays in Jaffna getting permission.”

He said that 20 percent of the medical items sent to Jaffna have a short expiry date. Packages are sent by ship and examined and re- examined by security authorities so much so that when they reaches their destination, nearly 15 percent of the items are pilfered or damaged.

Besides that, environmental conditions like high temperatures and exposure to sunlight reduce the effectiveness of the drugs.

Deva’s study showed that last year, 21 medical items including x-ray developers, eye drops, a variety of bandage, surgical blades, skin cream and hydrogen peroxide were banned.

Forty-two items were restricted to between 25 percent and 50 percent of needs. These included x-ray film, anti-venom serum injections, oxygen cylinders, oral penicillin tablets, vitamin A and D capsules, folic acid tablets, surgical spirits, sanitary pads and dextrose among others.

Family planning drugs have not been spared either. Sivarajah says there is a shortage of contraceptives and some of the loops prescribed by him for women have an old expiry date. “I was forced to use them but now we have stopped.”

Deva and other doctors at the seminar urged government authorities to lift restrictions on all types of drugs and medicines, and to do away with the need for military clearance for these items, particularly in view of coming peace talks.