With the sun glistening on waves that gently lap its clean sandy beaches and coral reefs, Hikkaduwa is the perfect tourist paradise. But there is one thing missing -tourists.
In the last one year Sri Lanka’s eastern Batticaloa district has seen two rounds of mass displacements as hundreds of thousands of people fled warfare between Tamil militants and the armed forces of the country. In late 2006 and early 2007, frightened civilians, mostly ethnic Tamils, fled their homes in areas held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as the Sri Lankan army fought its way in to dislodge the militants. As the government forces gained more and more LTTE territory, they also began a massive resettlement plan to get the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to return to their...
The Sri Lankan government is unlikely to heed the advice of donors to resume talks with the LTTE.