Rajiva Wijesinha

“ For instance we talk of the 10,000 who fought for the Tigers, we are doing our best with them and recognise most of them were forced to fight. If I may point out these pictures, these are girls who 3 months or 6 months ago would have killed me if I had gone there. This is them in the camp, you can see they are perfectly nice young ladies who want to have fun in life and learn to do better. ”

“ I think we are a bit confused when we talk about journalists and the UN. The UN is there, it is working, it does not have what western journalists describe as free access but they are there all the time, they work in partnership with us. ”

“ It is really particularly bad in this country perhaps because of our long colonial ties. But there is a lost of prejudice and while lots of negative things are there which we need to improve there is no recognition of the positive. ”

“ The basis question I suppose, before getting into any detail is why (around the world this is said about your land) won't you let journalists and the UN people into these camps. For 300,000 people you must have something to hide otherwise you will let the journalists in. You are familiar with this argument but why, unless you have something to hide, why not let the journalists in? ”

“ Of course we do recognise that Tigers sometimes applied pressure on people and made them do things and because these people worked for the UN they were particularly subject to pressure from the Tigers. ”

“ When you talk of people saying 'clear the camps', we too work on this in a sensible way, I have prepared memos and suggested ways in which they can be de-congested and perhaps the process is slower than people want. ”

“ But what we can argue - and this I think is in accordance with international practice - is that unless there are good reasons for people to be kept we should move quickly towards returns and release. But we do recognise that many of them want to leave and we have to fast forward this. ”