The Sri Lankan government’s casual dismissal of international donors’ statement last week condemning rights abuses and ceasefire violations by its armed forces stems from confidence that, despite this criticism, military and financial support from the international community is not going to be disrupted.
After a key meeting last Tuesday (Nov 20), the Co-Chairs of the donor community – the United States, Japan, European Union and peace facilitator Norway – said they were alarmed by the rising violence gripping the island.
The quartet condemned “the continued and systematic ceasefire violations by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE” and “the growing violations of human rights by all sides and the fear that pervades civil society, politics and the media.”
The Co-Chairs wanted the “immediate, permanent and unconditional opening of the sea and road routes for humanitarian convoys of essential supplies.”
They also singled out the A9 highway which is being held closed by Colombo.
But these messages were contradicted by the strong messages of support for Colombo made by individual representatives of the Co-Chairs soon after the meeting in Washington.
US Under Secretary for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns; Norwegian Minister of International Development Erik Solheim, Japanese Special Envoy Yasushi Akashi, and European Commission and European Commission Director General for External Relations Herve Jouanjean addressed the press in Washington Tuesday evening.
"I'd just say on behalf of the United States that we have faith in the government and faith in the President of Sri Lanka. They do want to make peace," said Mr. Burns.
"We also believe that the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, is a terrorist group responsible for massive bloodshed in the country and we hold the Tamil Tigers responsible for much of what has gone wrong in the country.”
“We are not neutral in this respect," he said.
"We support the government. We have a good relationship with the government,” he said.
“We believe the government has a right to try to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. The government has a right to protect the stability and security in the country. We meet often with the government at the highest levels and consider the government to be a friend to our country.”
“We are working with Sri Lanka as a partner in counterterrorism as well as counterproliferation. All that is happening,” he said.
Crucially, the Co-Chairs, who represent the Sri Lanka’s donor community said that there would be no curtailment of international aid.
"We have not discussed the future of our [aid] cooperation during these discussions," the EU’s Mr. Jouanjean said of the Co-Chairs meeting in Washington.
“[But] together with our [Co-Chair] colleagues we [EU] are a major donor of assistance cooperation, assistance to Sri Lanka, acting both in the framework of the Tokyo Declaration as well as in the normal framework of our development policy,
“The amounts of money are quite huge. So I think the four of us are very active there. We have not discussed the future of our cooperation during these discussions,” he said.
Mr. Burns said: “we do have an assistance program for that government, in fact, a very intensive one and we intend to continue that of course.”
And despite peace conditionalities attached to $4.5billion pledged by donors who met in Tokyo in 2003, much of the aid had been disbursed anyway, Mr. Akashi said.
"The great bulk of this has already been delivered by the way of pledge to close linkage between the peace process and the assistance process," he said.
Since early 2004, Sri Lanka has seen escalating violence, initially between Army-backed paramilitaries and the LTTE and this year direct confrontations between the military and the LTTE.
Truce monitors say 3,000 civilians, troops and Tigers have been killed while extra-judicial killings and disappearances are soaring.
Unfazed by the criticism set out in the Co-Chairs’s formal statement last week, Sri Lanka’s government continued air strikes and bombardment against the Liberation Tigers.
Any criticism by the Co-chairs was because the donors had been “mislead” by international truce monitors and a UN envoy, government defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said.
He insisted that national security took precedence over the ceasefire and that the international community recognised this.
"It was rumoured that the co-chairs were going to come down hard on the government," Rambukwella he told AFP. "Nothing of the sort happened."
He also insisted the international community recognised that Sri Lanka had a right to defend itself when attacked by the Tigers.
"As long as the terrorists attack, we will respond," Rambukwella told AFP.
President Mahinda Rajapakse's government has repeatedly rejected allegations by international truce monitors of troop involvement in extrajudicial killings during a surge in violence this year.
U.N. envoy Allan Rock has also accused elements of the military of helping to abduct children to turn them into soldiers for a Tamil paramilitary group allied with it against the Tigers.
"The co-chairs would have been influenced by Allan Rock and the SLMM (Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission) and that is misleading," government defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told Reuters hours after the donors issued their damning statement.
"Obviously on the basis of national security, we have to react on certain issues. That can be ... systematic erosion or violation of the ceasefire," Rambukwella added.
