By Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's government should ensure freedom of movement for civilians fleeing the heavy fighting in the far north and allow the return of aid agencies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.

The rights group, which called government welfare centres "badly disguised prisons", said some 1,000 Tamil civilians who fled the violence in the country's far north, were being detained under military guard at these welfare centres.

"The Sri Lankan government should stop arbitrarily detaining civilians fleeing fighting in the northern Vanni region," the New York-based rights group said in report released on Tuesday.

It said around 230,000 people are trapped in war zone where Sri Lanka's military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are locked in a bloody and decisive phase of one of Asia's oldest civil wars.

HRW also said the government should urgently allow humanitarian agencies to return to the war zone to provide desperately needed aid. Sri Lanka had ordered humanitarian agencies including the United Nations to leave the area due to security concerns.

"The government's policy violates the basic rights of displaced persons. Conditions in the camps are sub-standard, with inadequate shelter, a lack of sanitation facilities, and limited humanitarian assistance," HRW said.

The HRW report based on in-depth interviews with officials ranging from humanitarian organisations to war-hit civilians, mostly minority Tamils, said the government's "detention policy is hurting the very people that the government should be helping."

SECURITY RISKS

But Sri Lanka's government said it could not take security risks by allowing displaced people to leave welfare centres individually.

"We cannot take the risk of them vanishing," said Rajiva Wijesinghe, secretary, ministry of disaster management and human rights told Reuters.

Fighting continued on Tuesday as soldiers seized defences around the separatist Tamil Tigers' self-proclaimed capital Kilinochchi, killing at least 12 combatants, the military said.

The military has been moving towards Kilinochchi town since September, but in the past two weeks has been assaulting heavy earthen "bunds" and defences encircling the town's outskirts.

The LTTE started fighting the government in 1983, saying it was battling for the rights of minority Tamils in the face of mistreatment by successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority since Sri Lanka won independence from Britain in 1948.

On Dec. 15, HRW accused LTTE for increasingly subjugating Tamils into forced military service or labour and keeping them trapped in the war zone adding "treatment of the very people they (LTTE) say they are fighting for is getting worse".

The LTTE could not be reached for immediate comment.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa asked the LTTE to free civilians trapped in the war zone before end 2008 or to face listing as a terrorist group.

(Editing by Valerie Lee)

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