November 2004 No.133

Rally Calling for Emergency Relief to Victims of Tsunami of December 26

On January 17, 2005, BLHRRI, together with the BLL Osaka Association, IMADR (the International Movement against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism) and other human rights organizations in Osaka, organized a rally calling for emergency relief for victims of the December 26 tsunami in Sri Lanka and India. Nimalka Fernando was invited from Sri Lanka to the rally as a guest speaker. The date of the rally also marked the 10th anniversary of the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake of 1995 that killed more than 6,000 people. Mr. Kimio Hashimoto from Hyogo Association of the BLL was invited to speak about their recovery efforts from the devastation caused by the earthquake in Buraku communities 10 years previously.

Nimalka Ferando is the Executive Director of IMADR and the president of the IMADR Asian Committee. She reported that tsunami hit most of the eastern and southern coastal areas of Sri Lanka, killing 30,500 people (as of January 17). One third the people killed were children. More than 830,000 people have been relocated due to loss of housing and livelihood and 798 temporary evacuation centers were established to accommodate them.

However, the government does not provide relief equally to all affected people. According to Nimalka's report, the government tends to place priority on the reconstruction of military facilities. Provision of food, blankets and other materials is controlled by the military. Women and young girls in affected areas face danger in the form of violence, rape and human trafficking. To protect them from such dangers, Nimalka and her colleagues put up posters in shelters asking people to keep an eye on the vulnerable. They go from village to village knocking on the doors of individual houses and shelters to see if they are in need of anything. Sri Lanka had only just begun to recover from the wounds and destruction of the 20 year civil war that ended in 2003 only after 650,000 people had been killed. The tsunami mercilessly hit in the midst of the recovery efforts to devastate one third of the country.

BLHRRI has been fundraising for victims of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu, India, where Dalits (oppressed) people are concentrated. Money raised will be given to Nimalka Fernando in Sri Lanka and Fatima

Burnad (a board member of IMADR) in Tamil Nadu.

Below is an excerpt from Nimalka's letter, which was sent to IMADR IS immediately after the tsunami.

(For more : http://www.imadr.org/index.html)

Those of you who had visited Sri Lanka will NOT be able to bear this devastation.

Those of you who have enjoyed the coastal beaches will NOT be able to comprehend that they are NO MORE.

One can only see dead bodies and destruction, as if we have just experienced another WAR in the South and all over the coastal region.

I am safe and all our staff and partners all over the country are safe. We cannot even say "THANK GOD" we are safe in the face of the massive loss of life that occurred over just a few hours.

I have of course lost a friend ? a human rights lawyer and former Member of Parliament, Mr E, who was also a well-known peace activist. His family was coming out of their house on the coast of Hambanthota to the garden before heading to Colombo on the fateful day of December 26 and he had gone back to retrieve some files from a shelf when disaster struck. His wife and the daughter were thrown up by water and got stuck on a tree top. This was in Hambanthota, one of the most beautiful coastal areas in the South.

Some colleagues in the Rural Women's Organisation in Hambanthota have lost family members. Another friend lost his mother from their ancestral home.

A friend of ours who is a prominent feminist activist in Batticaloa survived by climbing on to the roof of her house. She lost everything ONCE AGAIN. This is the second or third time she has been displaced. First, displaced from the North as a result of the war, then back in Colombo and other places, and then just as things were returning to peace ? tsunami.