COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
as they do in the camps. An additional requirement of the surrenderees release is that they are
taken every week by bus to sign-in at military camps and attend camp meetings.
There are four components to the reintegration programme; education, training, on-the-job
training and job placement. Surrenderees suggest what they want to do and where they would
like to go and a reintegration plan is drawn up. Originally there was a limit on the cost of
reintegration of between Rs 80 – 90,000 (£450 – 505), but this has now been limited to Rs
75,000 (£421). There were 3,000 surrenderees in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu with outstanding
reintegration programmes, some of whom had been with the LTTE for between 20-25 years,
and some with excellent skills and qualifications. So far 300 surrenderees had gone through the
programme in Kilinochchi. IOM had been told not to refer any of the surrenderees to large
enterprises for employment as it was often difficult to get them accepted by the employer. It was
felt easier to set them up with their own enterprises.
We asked the team what they considered the biggest challenges faced by the surrenderees
following their release:
� Acceptance in the community, as during the war they may have taken sons and
daughters away to fight for the LTTE
� Harassment by CID and/or the military e.g. surveillance, threats, potential
abduction/kidnapping etc. One surrenderee had disappeared in Kilinochchi 7 months
ago.
� Community flashbacks
� Social stigma/guilty feelings. Many are heads of household and the families suffer from
the same stigma.
� Once the release package was received, they may not receive further support
� Many married during the war and were immediately separated. Many are now considered
divorced and many women are described as widows, yet there is no official registration of
the marriages and they have no documentation to produce.
� Many still have no identification documents
� All suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma
To mitigate some of these challenges IOM have:
� An awareness programme for the police and the military
� A psychological referral programme and made government health services available
� Whilst the main objective was for the surrenderee to be in a position to support their
family, once able to do so they had to make a contribution to the community e.g. to
schools
The team told us that they too were feeling the pressure to deliver the reintegration programme.
They told us that out of the 300 that had gone through the programme in Kilinochchi, 250 of
them had successfully found professions. They saw that there were still several thousand more
to go though the programme, yet the profiling of the surrenderees is set to expire by 31
December 2011.
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The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February 2012.
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section
to 2 March 2012.
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