Govt to repatriate more Lankan refugees from India

The Sri Lankan Government is to step up efforts to repatriate more Lankan refugees from India next year.

"In 2013, we will address the repatriation of Sri Lankan refugees living in southern India," Minister of Resettlement Gunaratne Weerakoon told IRIN in Colombo.

According to Indian Government figures, there are more than 100,000 Sri Lankans in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu, including 68,000 in 112 government-run camps and 32,000 outside the camps.

The Government is keen to welcome thousands of them home after two and a half decades, Weerakoon said, noting, however, that Colombo's current priority is the resettlement of those who were displaced in the final stages of the decades-long conflict which ended in May 2009.According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 440,000 displaced persons have returned to the North.

"We will soon start talking to the Indian government, but not this year," the minister said.Asked how a larger repatriation effort might be implemented, Weerakoon said: "It will happen in stages and will be carried out with the assistance of the Indian Government and UNHCR [the UN Refugee Agency...] There needs to be special support for such returnees."

More than 5,000 Sri Lankans have returned to the island nation under a UNHCR-facilitated voluntary repatriation scheme.

Most were from refugee camps in Tamil Nadu, and originally hailed from Trincomalee, Mannar, Vavuniya and Jaffna districts, with smaller numbers from Kilinochchi, Batticaloa, Colombo, Mullaitivu, Puttalam and Kandy.

"UNHCR in India helps Sri Lankan refugees who want to return home to do so. We pay for their airfare back to Colombo and help them get their exit permits from the Indian Government and their travel documents from the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission in Chennai," Nayana Bose, Associate External Relations Officer for UNHCR in New Delhi, explained.