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DISPATCHING OF SRI LANKAN WAR REFUGEES BREAKS DOWN AND ONLY 300 COULD BE HELPED OUT OF 80,000 IN LEBANON

By Walter Jayawardhana

Sri Lanka’s Lebanon ambassador M.A. Farrok admitted in a BBC’s Sinhala language service interview that the steady dispatch of war refugees to Sri Lanka has broken down after the first batch has been flown home.

He said after sending nearly 300 people home monetary difficulties faced by an international organization in sending them home, prior engagements of Sri Lankan Airline planes for different jobs and difficulty of reaching Southern areas of Lebanon have all contributed to the break down of dispatching refugees to Sri Lanka.

So, far only a minute fraction of the war refugees of 300 out of the 80,000 have been helped and with the help of the United States sending ammunition Israel is heavily intensified its bombing especially civilians.

Farook and his staff who have been burning midnight oil in preparing emergency travel documents for the stranded Sri Lankans have been frustratingly working to figure out a way of sending home at least the Sri lankans who have reached the Beirut office of the embassy for help

He said the Foreign Ministry has instructed him to find out the availability of charter planes to fly out the stranded citizens of Sri Lanka in the absence of the Srilankan Airline planes. Meanwhile the government of Sri Lanka was negotiating with the Sri lankan Airlines to arrange to fly out the refugees home.as before

Farook said in his interview that since the major route to Syria has been heavily damaged alternate routes through Northern Lebanon had to be found to dispatch the Sri Lankans to Damascus.
The ambassador said since the International Red Cross, the local Red Cross and Caritas organization could not find vehicles he could not send them to fetch the stranded Sri Lankans to be picked up from the heavily bombed Southern Lebanon.

He appealed to those who were stranded to get together with other stranded Sri lankans and start walking to safer places and phone up the embassy so that they could be picked up by any humanitarian organization vehicles.

He said even if they lacked passports , visas etc. or illegally in the country impersonating others, they should come to the embassy to obtain emergency travel documents to be flown back home. Some have lost their passports since their employers have disappeared with their travel documents.

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