The immediate criticism was that there were persistent water shortages. The Sri Lankan authorities recently allowed humanitarian relief workers into Manik Farm. There are not enough health facilities for the problems in the camp and we don't have enough water." "People are scared to tell anyone of the problems we are facing. Speaking on a phone that had been smuggled into the camp, one civilian being held in Manik Farm, who did not want to be named, said two families had "been taken away and not seen again after saying some wrong things" to a reporter last month. The government says it has to use extreme measures because hiding in the civilian population are LTTE soldiers. Journalists are rarely given access and those inside Manik Farm are not allowed to cross its fortified perimeter. There are complaints of stinking, overflowing toilets, water shortages and inadequate healthcare. The camp, say former inhabitants, is packed, with two or three families sharing a tent or tin shack. The 22-year-old was kept in Manik Farm, 160 miles north of Colombo, where 280,000 people were initially housed – more than double the number the camp was intended to cope with. With less than 5% of the 300,000 Tamils released from what the United Nations describes as "internment camps", tales such as Thesamanikam's have only just begun to be told. We met during the war ‑ but now that is over I cannot have peace." But the army says he cannot go home because his home village is near Jaffna, where the LTTE were strong. But her husband remains inside one of the camps. She was one of the first Tamils to be resettled from the camps last month, and says she has found some solace in her mother's shack on the seashore near the harbour town of Trincomalee. I don't know why, we were not LTTE, we are ordinary poor people," she said. "We were harassed day and night and the men were hit with rifles if they talked back to the soldiers. Herded by the army, the 22-year-old then lived for four months under a tin roof, surviving on dry rations and going days without clean water in a vast, overcrowded camp behind barbed wire and armed soldiers. Three of her cousins were killed during the last days of heavy aerial bombardment. (September 14, London, Sri Lanka Guardian)Living by a palm-fringed golden beach on the edge of the Indian Ocean, Suganthinhi Thesamanikam considers herself lucky to be alive after living through the hell of war.Ĭaught between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan army, she dodged bullets and shells for two years before ending up on the sandy littoral where the rebel leadership was routed in May, in a bloody ending to a 25-year-old civil war.