Through the barbed wire, a forest of hands reach, holding notes, begging for news of their loved one, separated in the war. Close by stand government soldiers, cradling their guns, watching. This is Zone 1, Manik Farm, one of the largest displacement camps in the world with more than 200,000 inmates. The people were corralled inside the camps by soldiers after escaping entrapment between the guns of the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military.

For such a place it is surprisingly unsqualid, a testament to the Government’s military precision in its planning.

Shelter is laid out in neat blocks and grids. The civilians’ complaints are common to emergency camps around the world: poor sanitation and insufficient drinking water; scant food and tents or corrugated iron shelters that grow sweltering in the heat. In Manik Farm, it is their missing families they cry over.

Missing are the “tracking” tents — usual in displacement camps — where people can come looking for relatives; also missing are the protection shelters where lost children can be brought to safeguard them against abuse. In their place are the soldiers, the guns and the razor wire.

Aid agencies are torn between their duty to help the civilians and what amounts to their material support for de facto internment camps.

John Holmes, the leading UN humanitarian official, called on the Sri Lankan Government this week to allow more freedom of movement and the reunification of families before their early resettlement.

“If that does not happen, then very serious questions will have to start being asked,” he said.

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