WORLD BRIEFING / SRI LANKA
More than 4,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by civil war left government-run camps, the latest to be released amid international criticism that Sri Lanka is moving too slowly in letting thousands of others go.
Hundreds of thousands of minority Tamils were forced into the camps after fleeing the final months of the government’s decades-long war with the Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.
Rights groups have condemned the detention as an illegal form of collective punishment. Aid groups say the camps are overcrowded and prone to disease. Sri Lanka has said that it can’t release the Tamils until they are screened for rebel ties.
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