By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Colombo, Sri Lanka
**More than 100,000 displaced people in military-run camps in northern Sri Lanka will be allowed “free movement” from Tuesday.**Up to now, Tamils in the camps who were displaced by the war were not allowed to come and go at will.
The government says the camp-dwellers will now be free to leave after giving their details to the authorities.
But with northern Sri Lanka devastated and mined, some of the displaced will want to stay on in the camps for now.
Sudden exodus
Many people doing aid work in these camps have felt ambivalent about giving assistance.
Some see them as “open prisons” because the people living there have had no free choice about staying inside.
The government says that is all changing.
It says there will not be limits on how long they can stay away.
But top officials have told the BBC that those still registered as living there do not have anywhere else to go and live and will not be allowed to “go missing”.
People living in the nearest town, Vavuniya, say they do not expect any sudden outflow.
Others who have been miserable there will want to escape completely, but with a heavy security presence in the region that won’t be easy.
The government, which faces elections in January, has in the past month stepped up the formal process of returning people to the villages; the numbers living in the camps have halved.
The authorities have been screening them all for possible links to the Tamil Tigers.