Despair among Sri Lanka’s refugees

The true figure of the total number of war refugees is unknown but the UN now calculates that 192,000 people have fled the conflict zone in north Sri Lanka in recent weeks.

Aside from the terrible humanitarian cost, this is a crisis which has proved particularly heavy for a relatively small country and its 20 million population.

The UN, foreign governments and NGOs have all given aid but there’s been deep concern about the conditions in which many refugees are being held by the Sri Lankan government.

We visited several collection points for aid in the capital, Colombo. Charities, whether Tamil, Muslim or Buddhist, have all been collecting what they can from people - rich and poor. Boxes of soap and biscuits, sacks of clothes and rice and packets of water and noodles are all pouring in.

While it’s been easy to report from these centres, it’s been much more difficult for the western and local media to gain access to the refugee camps themselves.

After several failed attempts to gain the relevant government permission to visit the most recent camps for refugees in the north around the town of Vavuniya, we decided to try our luck at gaining access to some of the more established refugee camps in the eastern town of Batticaloa.

Government armies finally forced the Tamil Tigers (or LTTE - Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) from much of the east of the island a year ago but it has used Batticaloa as a centre for many of the refugees caught up in the fighting over the last three years.

At one point there were approximately 200,000 people in camps here. Now the figure is closer to 8,000. But there is mounting desperation for those who remain to be resettled.

We visited a camp based near the centre of the town and spoke to the people there. It was made up of 30 large single tier huts of corrugated iron each holding about four families. In total, the camp holds approximately 340 Tamil people.

At first inspection, the conditions at the camp seemed to be reasonable, if rudimentary. There was water for drinking and washing, a well-maintained channel for waste, a small shop on camp selling basic supplies and even a play area for children.

Families appeared to be well fed, comparatively free to move and, above all, together and safe.

At the time of our visit, everyone knew how long they had lived there: three years, ten days and counting.

“One minute here is like a year,” said one man. “We’re counting the days. We’re trying our best to go home, but the Sri Lankan government is not allowing us.”

A grandmother told us: “We were living very happily with a lot of opportunities for our children.

“We had good agricultural facilities and a good fishing business. We had good wealth and high living standards. But here our children have nothing.”

Others had a similar story - including a carpenter who had been forced to give up a thriving business in his home town 140km away.

A fisherman from the same town said: “It’s been difficult for me because I don’t know any other occupation. Sometimes we use the boats of our friends in Batticaloa. But it’s not like using our own boats and it’s not like being in our own home village.”

According to some, conditions in some of the more recent refugee camps in the northern conflict area may be much starker. We interviewed one aid worker who asked not to be named. She had recently visited camps around Vavuniya and also knew of the conditions in the camps we visited in the east.

She told us: “The crucial difference [between the north and the east] is that people are imprisoned in the camps [in the north].

“They can’t go out to trace missing family members and that’s a lot of human suffering. I think the government considers the north to be much more sensitive and the chance of infiltration by the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] is considered higher than in the east.”

Charitha Herath, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Peradeniya, acts as a consultant on the media to the Sri Lankan government’s department of mass media and information.

He criticised sections of the western media for its double standards, claiming that it used different vocabulary when describing Sri Lanka’s war against terror in the form of the LTTE, as compared to the language it used when describing the west’s battle against al-Qaeda and Taleban-sponsored terrorism.

He told us that the government had been angered by what it had saw as a much more hostile approach to its own struggle against the LTTE.

Sri Lankan government ministers see many western media outlets as supporters of the LTTE, whether tacitly or openly. He said this support was also expressed through criticism of Sri Lanka’s humanitarian efforts coupled with demands for a ceasefire.

“A lot of foreign media cannot understand the sensitivity and the gravity of the situation in a country that’s facing violent terrorism,” says Mr Herath. “The western media can come and get information from this country. This is not a completely closed country.”

Although surrounded by five army divisions, the Tamil Tigers still hold a coastal strip of about 4km and are staging a desperate last stand under their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

And although the army says the figure is lower, some leading Tamil moderates calculate there could be as many as 100,000 men, women and children with them in the so-called No Fire Zone.

In the short term, the humanitarian crisis is likely to get worse before it gets better.

South Africa’s Zuma revives anti-apartheid song

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The man who is to become South Africa’s next president rarely misses an opportunity to entertain supporters with a rousing, hip-swinging rendition of the anti-apartheid song “Bring Me My Machine Gun.”

Not to be outdone, Jacob Zuma’s rivals have come up with catchy tune of their own. They’ve taken to singing that their party “has no machine guns.” It also doesn’t have any “showers,” they chant, dangling their fingers over their heads to suggest running water.

They’re ridiculing Zuma, who in 2006 said he showered after having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman because he believed it would reduce the risk of being infected with the AIDS virus.

South Africa’s political scene has long been a raucous, musical affair but the tempo’s been stepped up a beat with this month’s elections.

Old freedom songs that evoke the struggle against apartheid have been revived and newer ones have been composed to reflect the political battles of the day. The anti-Zuma song sprung up among members of a party that broke away from Zuma’s African National Congress last year.

“People are so creative,” said Sipho Jantjie, who was among those voicing their support for the new breakaway Congress of the People party at a recent rally in Soweto. “They are composing songs all the time.”

Songs long have been a powerful weapon of resistance in South Africa. During apartheid when leaders were jailed and their voices silenced, songs became a rallying cry.

They were sung at trials and on the way to the gallows. At mass funerals, thousands hummed mournful hymns as coffins were lowered into the ground. From across the borders came songs of exile and armed struggle.

But as South Africa’s past grows more distant, there is a fear that the songs are fading into the background.

Until Zuma put the song and dance into local politics with “Umshini Wami,” or “Bring Me My Machine Gun” — his call for that worldwide symbol of revolution — the AK47.

The stirring Zulu song with its strong, soulful rhythm has become a national hit. It is heard in taxis, taverns and is sung by church choirs. It is even available as a mobile phone ringtone.

Villagers in the Zulu heartland sang it outside the school where Zuma voted on April 22 and the song rang out at an ANC victory party in downtown Johannesburg a few days later.

Still, critics say in a country with South Africa’s violent past and where at least 50 people a day are murdered, the song is divisive and inciting. It remains to be seen whether Zuma will continue singing the song after his inauguration Saturday.

Strains of the song could be heard during the bloody anti-immigrant riots that swept South Africa last year.

“The song recalls an earlier and more dangerous way of being,” says Liz Gunner, research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research.

In a paper published last year, Gunner traces the “life” of the song and its role in Zuma’s rise to prominence.

The song has its roots among the ANC military training camps where frustrated guerrillas wished for weapons so they could return to fight apartheid. It was also sung by the students in the famous Soweto 1976 uprising, which drew world attention to the apartheid regime’s violence and injected new life into the struggle to topple it.

The brutality of the police response to the unarmed students sparked nationwide rioting in which more than 500 youths are estimated to have been killed. Thousands of others were maimed, disappeared into detention or fled the country to join the guerrilla fight.

Like many “freedom songs,” the authorship of “Bring Me My Machine Gun” is not clear and it has been adapted over the years.

Today it has become the anthem of the poor who favor Zuma over his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki — who preferred quoting Yeats to singing and dancing.

Zuma began singing the song about five years ago amid claims by him and his supporters that criminal charges against him were part of a conspiracy by Mbeki to thwart his ambitions.

The claims and a bitter power struggle between Zuma and Mbeki for leadership of the party left many South Africans nervous about the future of their new democracy.

Mbeki was eventually ousted by the ANC as president last year and Zuma is to be inaugurated on May 9.

Coming at a time of “national confusion and anxiety,” Zuma’s choice of song was “superbly timed,” Gunner writes.

“The icon of the heroic guerrilla fighter was melded with that of the beleaguered senior politician,” she says in her paper.

But Zuma rivals are determined not to have their voices drowned out by his deep baritone.

Sung in Sotho, one of the most widely spoken languages in the country, the “shower song” first captured attention at the breakaway party’s launch in December last year. And it has caught on fast.

At COPE’s Soweto rally in February, a crowd of a few thousand sang the easy melody, repeatedly, each time with more gusto.

“Today we are reviving the spirit you used to get in 1976,” said Lloyd Phillips. “We are reviving the spirit of the songs.”

China says 5,335 children dead, missing from ‘08 quake

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Thursday put the official number of dead and missing schoolchildren from last year’s devastating Sichuan earthquake at 5,335, far lower than the number compiled from news reports at the time.

Talks between Russia, Georgia, separatists break off

MOSCOW/TBILISI (Reuters) - A planned second meeting between Georgia, its rebel region of South Ossetia and Russia under EU auspices was broken off Thursday, with accusations traded over who was to blame.

NATO holds Georgia war games, Russia fiercely critical

TBILISI (Reuters) - NATO launched military exercises in former Soviet Georgia Wednesday under a storm of criticism from Russia and following a rebellion in the Georgian military.

Russia has condemned the month-long war games as “muscle-flexing” on its southern border, where it sent tanks and troops in August last year in a five-day war to crush a Georgian assault on breakaway South Ossetia.

Georgia said Tuesday it had put down a mutiny at a tank base east of the capital Tbilisi, and accused Russia of trying to disrupt the exercises and foment a wider rebellion against President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Russia said the accusations were “insane” and accused Saakashvili of trying to shift the blame for weeks of opposition protests demanding he resign over his record on democracy and last year’s disastrous military defeat.

The exercises, which will not be in full swing until next week, involve over 1,000 soldiers from more than a dozen NATO member states and partner nations.

They are being held at a former Russian air force base east of Tbilisi and a few kilometers from the Mukhrovani base, where the government said tank commanders had rebelled Tuesday and were arrested several hours later.

NATO insists the exercises in “crisis response” and field training pose no threat to Russia. They are seen as a gesture of solidarity with Georgia, whose NATO membership ambitions have effectively been put on hold since the August war.

“The NATO secretary-general (Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) thinks that nobody should misuse the exercise,” spokeswoman Carmen Romero said Tuesday. “This is not a NATO exercise, it is an exercise of NATO with its partners.

“This exercise has nothing to do with Georgia, it has nothing to do with Russia,” Romero said. “Georgia is just hosting the exercise and nobody should interpret the exercise in a different way and use it for other purposes.

Armenia, Russia’s strategic ally in the South Caucasus, on Tuesday joined Kazakhstan, Serbia and Moldova in pulling out.

Russia fiercely opposes membership for Georgia and Ukraine as an encroachment on its ex-Soviet backyard and traditional sphere of influence.

(Additional reporting by Dabid Brunnstrom in Brussels; Editing by Charles Dick)