In Pictures: Vanni Tsunami Memorial Events
Memorials were held throughout the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) held North-East areas marking the 2004 tsunami on December 26, 2007.
The following are pictures of a few of the events observing the enormous natural disaster, that was reported by Tamil news portal Puthinam.com yesterday:
These pictures are from memorials held in Vanni-Katsilai Madu, Uduththurai, Kallaru & Puthukkudiyiruppu
Many independent reports of non governmental organizations and news reports of the past few days indicated that Sri Lanka’s recovery from the devastating tsunami of December 2004 has been uneven. Rehabilitation work has been carried out and still on going in Sinhalese-dominated south, but it has suffered greatly in the war-torn North-East. Yet the deep impact of the tsumani was felt in the North-East parts of Sri Lanka.
As the military operations by Sri Lankan security forces escalated in the recent months, restrictions on physical movement of men and material is also coming along. The Government of Sri Lanka has imposed restrictions on the movement of strategic goods like fuel and building material to the areas in the North-East.
“Access to some construction sites is restricted and transportation of material difficult or impossible,” said a two-year assessment report of the International Federation of the Red Cross. World Vision had to abandon a plan to build 200 houses in Ichchilampattu in Trincomalee district because of military operations, according to news reports.
A report by news agency IANS said: “Not even 12 per cent of fully damaged houses in the north have been rebuilt, and only 26 percent in the east,” says NGO Action Aid in its report titled ‘Voice from the Field’. This is so even though 60 per cent of the damage wrought by the tsunami was in the east, especially Amparai district in the southeast.
