Aid agencies call for free access for humanitarian assistance
“While our pastoral ministry continues we encourage you to also engage in a prophetic ministry to voice the alternate gospel view in order to bring sanity and build bridges towards reconciliation. We need to reflect on biblical principles and on a kingdom spirituality in order to make a positive informed response and bring healing to all. We are reminded of the words of our Lord ‘Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called the children of God’?. — Joint pastoral letter from Sri Lankan Church Leaders. Full text.
The past month has witnessed the worst violence in Sri Lanka since the 2002 ceasefire between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels. The entire Jaffna peninsula in the north has been cut off following heavy fighting. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced and the capital Colombo has witnessed two bombings in as many weeks. Seventeen humanitarian workers of the international aid group Action Contre La Faim were found shot to death in the northeastern town of Mutur.
ACT International members working in Sri Lanka in response to the December 26, 2004, tsunami have called on the parties involved in recent violence to guarantee the access of all humanitarian agencies to people wounded and displaced by the current hostilities and to allow post-tsunami reconstruction work to continue.
Eight ACT members (Christian Aid, Church of Sweden, DanChurchAid, Diakonie Emergency Aid, Hungarian Interchurch Aid, Lutheran World Relief, Norwegian Church Aid, and the United Methodist Committee on Relief ) that are providing for the needs of tsunami survivors in the island nation said in a statement that “the current situation is having a devastating impact on the tsunami work in the northern and eastern parts of the country, bringing much of the work to a halt and severely setting back the reconstruction work.”
In the last several months, violent clashes between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, and government troops have forced thousands of people from their homes. Since April, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recorded 128,850 people newly displaced within Sri Lanka, including more than 50,000 who have fled violence in the past two weeks alone. The heavy fighting has prevented humanitarian aid workers from reaching the affected areas and providing for the additional urgent needs that have been created.
On August 6, the bodies of 17 humanitarian workers of the international aid group Action Contre La Faim were found in the northeastern town of Mutur. They had been shot to death. The killings have prompted many international humanitarian aid groups to call for parties involved in conflict to respect international humanitarian law and allow access to people in need.
All ACT members are required to adhere to The Code of Conduct of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief – as a basis of their membership in the alliance which commits them to offering humanitarian assistance regardless of religious or political persuasion.
In a separate statement, church leaders in the country called on both the LTTE and the government of Sri Lanka “to bring an immediate halt to their hostilities, declare a new cease fire with improved modalities for monitoring and to sit together and start talking to each other with the expressed objective of restoring normalcy and the free availability of basic human needs to all.”
Among the church leaders signing the statement were Rev. Dr. Jayasiri T. Peiris,general secretary of ACT member National Christian Council of Sri Lanka, which is also working in response to the tsunami. The leaders also issued a pastoral letter with the statement which will be read in churches in Sri Lanka this Sunday. The Anglican Bishop of Colombo, Rt. Rev. Duleep de Chickera is also a signatory.
No appeals have been issued at this point. PWRDF is currently in dialogue with ACT International and local partners on the island and in India on current man-made disaster.
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