Sri Lanka releases 4,300 detainees

Hundreds of thousands of minority Tamil civilians were forced into the camps after fleeing the final months of the government’s decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.

Rights groups have condemned the detention as an illegal form of collective punishment for the ethnic group. Aid groups say the camps are overcrowded and prone to disease, and fear monsoons will create a public health crisis.

Sri Lanka has said that it cannot release the Tamils until they are screened for rebel ties. The government also says their villages must still be de-mined.

The Tamils released yesterday piled on tractors and into buses to head home.

“We will take steps to give you all that you lost, other than the lost lives,’’ Basil Rajapaksa, a senior adviser to his brother, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said at a public meeting in the village of Kathankulam.

Top government officials pledged to compensate the villagers for their losses but did not give specifics.

Sebastianpillai Rasanayagam, a 42-year-old rice farmer, was one of 1,225 refugees bused home to northern Mannar district. Rasanayagam said his family had fled after a shell slammed into their house, killing his 8-year-old son.

The family crossed the front lines in February 2008 and was taken to a camp, where Rasanayagam described harsh conditions, including a lack of clean water.

The United Nations, foreign governments, and human rights groups have repeatedly asked Sri Lanka to release the estimated 270,000 people who are still detained.

Authorities said the 4,300 released yesterday are the first of 41,000 people who have been cleared to return home in four northern districts - Mannar, Jaffna, Kilinochchi, and Mullaitivu.

The government promised a visiting UN official last month that it will send all the displaced people home by the end of January.