The British Deputy High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Laura Davies, described in a blog post her recent trip to the Vanni, highlighting that army welfare shops were everywhere, with private businesses "not easy to find".
"Unlike in the rest of Sri Lanka, it is impossible to ignore how recent the end of the conflict was and how raw some of the scars remain," she said, adding that there were "a lot of [Sri Lankan] military memorials".
"The need to grieve and to know what happened to missing loved ones remains overwhelming. I met ex-combatants who were socially and economically excluded. Promised releases of political prisoners are slower than people would like," she said.
Ms Davies said the government's decision to release over 1,000 acres of land will be a "welcome development" if fully implemented, and an example of the government having "responded to the needs of victims".
See here for why the release of land was previously deemed unacceptable by Tamil families.
She further said in her post, the UK remained committed to the UN Human Rights Council resolution establishing an international inquiry last year, said the deferral of the report, supposed to have been released for next month's session, was "the right thing to do", but acknowledged the delay may be difficult to accept for witnesses who provided information.
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