Sept 06, Colombo: Sri Lankan government yesterday refuted certain claims made by the human rights watchdog, Amnesty International on the plight of the internally displaced people in the North of the country and called upon AI and other concerned organizations to continue to pressure the LTTE to allow the civilians caught in the conflict to move to safer areas .

Appreciating the Amnesty's recognition of LTTE’s unwillingness to allow people to move freely into the safe areas, the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights said in a media release said AI's statement does not understand the complexity of the IDP situation in the country and called it a 'yet another extreme intervention.’

The government statement pointed out that despite the difficulties in sending supplies to the LTTE controlled areas which are knowingly misused by the LTTE without fully reaching the civilians, the Ministry of Nation Building has supplied nearly 10,000 metric tons of mixed food items to the Wanni in the January to August period.

Full text of the statement can be found here.