Aid hijacked by political extremists

Foreign aid in parts of Sri Lanka is being hijacked by an avowedly Marxist political party which has been accused of refusing to distribute relief to non-members.

In Weligama, on the stricken south coast, the Evening Standard saw how flood victims were being manipulated.

Two international aid workers, from the French charity Telecoms sans Frontiè²¥s, are providing free satellite phone calls for the town whose landlines were destroyed.

People eager to enquire about missing family or tell relatives they are safe, are crowding to enter the compound. But first they must show their identity cards to members of the People's Liberation Army, the JVP - extremists responsible for political murders in the Eighties and Nineties.

The JVP officials write down everyone's details. JVP banners hang over the compound where Telecoms sans Frontiè²¥s are working, branding it as an operation not of an international aid agency, but of the JVP.

Next door, the JVP is recruiting.

"Look what we have done for you," a JVP worker says to a reluctant local. "We have given you a free phone call to your family and we are bringing aid." Pascal, the Telecoms san Frontiè²¥s worker manning the satphones, denies the JVP hijack saying: "They lent us a place to work and tables and chairs, that's all."

In fact the furniture has been taken from nearby buildings and the premises "borrowed" from the shopkeeper who owns them.

There are other "JVP" help centres every few miles. They dispense medicine and food and are staffed by party members in JVP T-shirts. Water-tanks provided by local charities and water companies have been spray-painted "JVP".

At the Sri Sudarshna Ramaya refugee camp local people confirmed they had to sign up to the JVP before receiving aid. Puspa Punchihawa, flooded out of her seaside home, said: "Nobody refused."