Foreign aid workers are being forced to leave Sri Lanka as the government considers some of them of being sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers.
Foreign aid workers are being forced to leave Sri Lanka as the government considers some of them of being sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers, which could hamper international relief efforts, a media report said.
The government is forcing dozens of British and other foreign aid workers to leave the island country. The policy is costing Sri Lanka tens of thousands of pounds of donors' money as they struggle to help 280,000 Tamil civilians in internment camps,
The Times said quoting aid organisations.
Sri Lanka had introduced new visa rules last year in an effort to weed out Tiger sympathisers. But aid workers said the rules were being used to purge foreign critics and to limit the ability of NGOs to operate and lobby the government, the report said.
According to an unnamed senior staff in an international aid group, the NGOs are extremely scared. "If you raise your voice you'll be the next one thrown out," they are warned. Sri Lankan government deported the Norwegian head of Forut, an Oslo-based NGO, on Saturday and stopped a British employee of Forut from re-entering the country last month, citing new rules that prevent them from staying in the country
for more than three years.
Two foreigners, including a Briton, working for Care International were forced to leave last month because their visas were not extended. A Briton working for the Norwegian Refugee Council, an Ethiopian working for the Save the Children Fund, and three
foreign members of staff for ASB, a German NGO, have been forced to leave.
The British head of Solidar, a consortium of NGOs, was asked to leave within seven days in December even though he had four children in school in Sri Lanka. He managed to negotiate a short extension. The programme manager of Zoa Refugee Care, a Dutch NGO, was expelled in September and there are problems in getting visa extensions for five of the NGO's foreign staff.
Sri Lankan government, however, claimed it was simply enforcing the new visa rules. Aid workers were granted one-year visas previously, which they could renew as often as they wanted.
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