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| Sunday, 16 June 2002 |
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Over 100,000 Lankan refugees return home - UN COLOMBO, June 14 (Reuters) - More than 100,000 Sri Lankans displaced by the island's 19-year ethnic war have returned home this year on hopes a Norwegian-brokered peace deal would lead to a lasting settlement, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday. The wave of homecoming is a fresh sign that refugees have placed their trust in a February ceasefire agreement signed by the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels, who are expected to meet for peace talks by July. "It's been the longest stretch in years when there hasn't been major fighting," Michael DeSisti, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters. "People will be more confident of returning if things continue this way," he added. The war has driven about 1.3 million people, or about seven percent of the country's 19 million population, from their homes. Of them, some 800,000 settled elsewhere in Sri Lanka with their relatives or endured poverty in government camps. The agency said more than one third of returnees went back to the war-shattered northern Jaffna peninsula, where a successful army campaign in 1995 to wrest control of the strategic area from rebels displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The UNHCR reported in late May that 71,000 people had gone home, and said the new figure showing an increase of 29,000 people did not mean they had all moved in the last three weeks. Sri Lankan refugees have also fled to India, North America and Europe where many displaced ethnic Tamils continue to support the rebel cause for a independent homeland in the country's north and east. |
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