Church in the World

Colombo ‘withholding tsunami aid money’

Sri Lanka

A bishop caught in the midst of the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict has said aid given by the West after the 2004 tsunami is among the resources the country's majority-Singhalese Buddhist Government is withholding from areas held by Tamil Tiger rebels, as part of an economic blockade, writes Abigail Frymann.

Bishop Thomas Savundranayagam of Jaffna, in the far north of Sri Lanka, said that in his diocese the tsunami claimed 3,500 lives and made thousands more homeless. The wave that struck on Boxing Day 2004 devastated the east and north coasts. But he added: "There are a lot of restrictions by the Government; cement and steel cannot be taken to our districts because they say the Tamil rebels also use them for their own purpose." He said another reason why building materials were not getting through was that the only road connecting predominantly Tamil Jaffna to the rest of the island had been cut after the fighting resumed in the north and east in 2006.

He also said fishing families whose homes had been washed away by the tsunami should have been less vulnerable than before, because of the quality of the replacement homes being built. But in some eastern areas "most of the tsunami work became ineffective because of the war". A Cafod spokesperson said most of Cafod's work was in the east, but they had not heard of any of the homes they had funded being destroyed.