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  • Sri Lanka pushing island to ‘full scale war’ - LTTE

    Sep 19
    In an exclusive interview with Reuters, the head of the LTTE’s Political Wing, Mr. S. P. Thamilchelvan said the Sri Lankan military’s offensives and continuing forcible occupation of Tamil areas had rendered the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) “meaningless” but “since the facilitators and the international community are eager to strengthen peace efforts, the LTTE is also continuing to examine options for strengthening the CFA.”
     
    The full text of Mr. Thamilchelvan’s interview to Reuters follows:
     
    Reuters: What will the Tigers do if the army continues to mount offensive operations?
     
    Thamilchelvan: If the Sri Lankan armed forces continue with their military offensive attacks, violating the CFA in the most serious manner possible, then, unfortunately, LTTE too will be forced, from their current position of having to take defensive military operations, into the situation of having to launch offensive operations. I am afraid there is a possibility that this will turn into a full scale war.
     
    Reuters: Is the CFA now completely dead? Do the Tigers now consider it to be void?
     
    Thamilchelvan: Within the context of the military offensives by the Sri Lankan armed forces and their continuing forced occupations of the Tamil homeland, we do consider that the CFA has become meaningless. However, since the facilitators and the international community are eager to strengthen the peace efforts, the LTTE is also continuing to examine options for strengthening the CFA. In this regard the LTTE continues maintain its communications with the facilitators.
     
    Reuters: Are the Tigers prepared to resume talks with the government and the mediators?
     
    Thamilchelvan: The LTTE is ready for talks. However, the opportunities for resuming the talks will be much stronger when the Sri Lankan government ceases its military attacks and all the CFA articles are fully respected and implemented.
     
    Reuters: What will it take to stop this new chapter of the Sri Lankan war?
     
    Thamilchelvan: The present CFA had greatly contributed to bringing peace in this island that had been torn by two decades of civil war. This CFA helped to avoid large scale war for four and half years and maintain semblance of normalcy. It is only by implementing 100%, this CFA that came into being with the support of the international community and the efforts of the facilitators that this situation can be halted.
     
    Reuters: Do the Tigers think peace talks with this administration are destined to failure given President Rakapakse’s refusal to consider a separate Tamil homeland?
     
    Thamilchelvan: Beyond considerations of what is and what is not useful, everyone must understand what is realistic and come to a common position accordingly. At some point in time in the future, everyone has to arrive at such a realistic and practical position. I believe it will be meaningful if we all continue to search for opportunities to arrive at that realistic position. Mahinda Rajapakse also most certainly needs to change his position. No one can deny the rights of the Tamil people. At some stage everyone must accept this. Therefore Mahinda Rakapakse too must take up a decent position in this regard.
     
    Reuters: What will the Tigers do if the government does not vacate Sampoor?
     
    Thamilchelvan: Since the Sri Lankan government, in violation of the CFA, has occupied new areas that were administered by the LTTE under the CFA, we believe we must take all necessary actions to recover these areas according to the CFA.
     
    Reuters: If attacks by the army on the Tigers continue, will the Tigers bring war to Colombo?
     
    Thamilchelvan: If the Sri Lankan armed forces continue with their cruel war all over the Tamil homeland, and continue to put the people in the Tamil homeland in great misery, I do believe that the spread of this war to all parts of the island will be unavoidable.
  • Army will capture more and more ground, vows Premier
    Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister vowed Friday to capture “more and more” territory from the Liberation Tigers and said the international community was coming forward to help his government root out terrorism from the island.
     
    Ridiculing the LTTE’s assertion that there can be no moves towards peace as long as the Sri Lankan military occupied the Sampur region which it captured last week in a ground offensive, Premier Ratnasiri Wickramanayake said “not an inch of Sampur will be relinquished now or in the future.”
     
    “We will capture more and more territory from the LTTE but not give an inch, even from Sampur,” he told officials in Kohana district from his party, the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).
     
    "We are not in the habit of giving away territory we have captured from the enemy" he said.
     
    Mr. Wickramanayake said the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has more such plans to systematically capture more territory from the Tigers.
     
    “More countries are coming forward to help us with getting rid of terrorism in Sri Lanka by pledging modern weapons to seek them out from any jungle in Sri Lanka,” he said.
     
    “There are modern weapons to seek out terrorists from any jungle in Sri Lanka but we do not have them now,” he explained.
     
    “However friendly countries who have the same interest as us to rid the world of terrorists are coming forward to help us precisely with that kind of weapons.”
     
    Within 5 years of this government in office, it will make that a reality, he said, of ending terrorism. "Nobody can stand against our will.”
     
    Mr Wickramanayake dismissed protests by Tamil parliamentarians and Diaspora over the invasion and occupation of Sampur.
     
    “The TNA MPs who stated we would eat humble pie should we try to capture any part of Sampur are themselves rather quiet today,” he said of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
     
    “He asked why the TNA MPs were rather quiet at last Tuesday’s Parliamentary sitting to extend the emergency state by a further month.
     
    “There have been demonstrations around the world against the capture of Sampur. But those who stand by Sri Lanka and support our cause were not involved,” he said.
     
    “The capture of Sampur is to punish those who did stand against us," the Premier said.
     
    60,000 Tamil civilians in areas of Trincomalee and Batticaloa district controlled by the Tigers have been displaced by repeated Sri Lankan bombardments and ground offensives.
  • Rajapakse: LTTE is a ‘dictatorial terrorist group’
    Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse, under pressure from the international community to negotiate peace with the Liberation Tigers launched a blistering attack on the movement during his address to Summit of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) in Havana, Cuba. Without referring to it by name, he described the LTTE as “a dictatorial terrorist group” and said that “all efforts that have been taken by successive governments, including mine, to enter into dialogue with this group, have so far failed.”
     
    “Terrorism is, without doubt, the most de-humanizing and politically de-stabilizing phenomenon of our time,” President Rajapakse, who speech was published on SriLankan government websites, said.
     
    Addressing the leaders of 118 members of NAM, President Rajapakse theorized on the difference between liberation and terrorism.
     
    “Terrorism and liberation differ from each other, as much as the sky differs from the earth. Liberation, unlike terrorism, is a creative and a humane force. It is a humane vehicle of new visions for the progressive change of power structures on the one side and socio-economic structures on the other. Terrorism, by contrast, is a destructive force, - a de-humanizing force, - that cannot in any way be justified,” he said.
     
    “The people of my country have suffered for long years at the hands of a most ruthless terrorist outfit which resorts to the most hateful forms of terror,” he said.
     
    “Suicide bombing, mine attacks, massacres, indiscriminate armed assault, and the forcible conscription of young children for battle, comprise their modes of action,” he said. “They indulge in the progressive elimination of all political leaders, human rights activists, journalists and all those who do not approve their methods and agree with their views and objectives.”
     
    “All efforts that have been taken by successive governments, including mine, to enter into dialogue with this group, have so far failed. Yet, even in the face of extreme provocation, we continue in our attempts to transform this dictatorial terrorist group that engages in violence, into a political force that would engage peacefully with the state and with other political parties and participate in a democratic political process,” he said.
     
    President Rajapakse did not elaborate.
     
     “Let us call upon the Non-Aligned Movement as well as the United Nations to strongly renew the commitment to fight terrorism whenever and wherever it decides to raise its ugly head,” President Rajapakse said.
     
    “At the same time all of us together need to find innovative means and ways to combat terrorism, as it poses a grave threat to the political and economic well-being, sovereignty and territorial integrity of nation states,” he told the NAM leaders.
  • Sri Lanka's war of the words
    While Sri Lanka's government and Tamil Tigers trade daily accusations of truce-breaking and threaten each other with all-out war, observers and reporters keen to understand what is really happening are forced to try and read between the lines.
     
    There was talk of a “stealth war” in December, and now Sri Lanka has reportedly gone to the “brink of full-scale war.”
     
    In those less than 10 months some 1,500 people have been killed despite assurances from both sides that they are continuing to “uphold” a ceasefire arranged by peace broker Norway in February 2002.
     
    Reporters have struggled with synonyms and cliches. “Tenuous”, “crumbling”, “collapsing,” “faltering,” “shaky” and “fragile” have been liberally used to describe the ceasefire.
     
    For bureaucrats on both sides a return to “war” means going back to the pre-truce era when bombing economic targets and civilians was fair game. However, the actual number of killings was far less then than it is now.
     
    “We are not at war,” says government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella. “A low-intensity conflict maybe, but not war.”
     
    Former Swedish brigadier general Ulf Henricsson, who ended his term as a top peace monitor last month, said he could not decide if the country was at war or not. However, he was certain that the truce was holding only on paper.
     
    “It is a problem of a definition,” he said when asked if Sri Lanka was at war. “A Stockholm peace institute had said that if more than 500 people are killed in a conflict during a year, then it is war.”
     
    In May last year, the then truce monitoring chief Hagrup Haukland said the use of a clandestine airfield by the Tamil Tigers was a violation of the ceasefire and the military bombing of it would be “war.”
     
    “If bombs fall, we pull out,” Haukland told the Foreign Correspondents' Association in Colombo.
     
    Instead of pulling out, the monitors have increased their numbers in recent months and government planes have continued to pound secret Tiger airfields and other LTTE targets.
     
    Reporters trying to see things for themselves on the ground face great difficulty getting close to the action, but even so, seven media personnel have been killed this year.
     
    Last month, a Tamil newspaper editor was shot dead by unidentified gunmen.
     
    “Six other journalists and media assistants have been killed in Sri Lanka since the start of the year,” the Paris-based media watch dog, Reporters without Borders (RSF), said.
     
    “The attacks on the press have increased since the resumption of fighting between the government and rebels.”
     
    There is no official censorship, but reporting the nuances is a challenge and some local journalists are adopting self-censorship amid the rising physical and verbal attacks against the media.
     
    “I regret my inability to express myself freely in the light of these constraints and the resultant restraints imposed,” defence columnist Iqbal Athas wrote in the Sunday Times two weeks ago.
  • Sri Lanka sets conditions for talks
    Sri Lanka’s government (GoSL) is demanding a written assurance from Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Pirapaharan that the LTTE would end its violence before GoSL will agree to hold talks with the Tigers, newspapers reported last Friday.
     
    The government demand was spelled out to Norwegian facilitators by Sri Lankan officials who met Norwegian Ambassador Hans Brattskar last Thursday.
     
    Meanwhile the government’s Defence Spokesman, Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, told the Daily Mirror that Norway had been informed that “a single bullet fired by the LTTE after [Pirapaharan’s] agreeing for talks would compel the government to withdraw from the Ceasefire.”
     
    The Sri Lankan government’s Chief negotiator Nimal Siripala de Silva and Foreign Ministry Secretary H. M.G. S. Palihakkara met Norwegian Ambassador Hans Brattskar Thursday, the Daily Mirror said.
     
    “[They] insisted that Pirapaharan should assure the Government, the Co-chairs and the peace facilitators that his group would end the killing spree,” the paper said.
     
    According to the Daily Mirror, Mr. de Silva and Mr. Palihakkara told Ambassador Brattskar that the Sri Lankan government – and by implication, not the Co-Chairs - would make a final decision as to when and where talks should be held.
     
    The Co-Chairs – the United States, European Union, Japan and Norway – met Tuesday in Brussels welcomed the willingness of both the LTTE and the Colombo government to hold talks unconditionally.
     
    The Co-Chairs also said the LTTE-GoSL meeting “should take place urgently in Oslo at the beginning of October,” adding: “[We] will meet at the end of October to review progress of the talks.”
     
    Defence spokesman and Minister Keheliya Rambukwella told The Island newspaper that on receipt of the demanded letter from LTTE leader Pirapaharan the Sri Lankan government – not the Co-chairs - would fix the date, venue and the modalities for unconditional talks.
     
    “The government will decide the date and venue for the talks,” Minister Rambukwella also told the Daily Mirror.
     
    The government delegation which met Ambassador Brattskar on Thursday “had taken the Norwegians to task” for the Co-Chairs statement Tuesday which said the government was ready for unconditional talks, the paper said.
     
    “They also protested over the facilitators’ charge that government troops were involved in the killing of 17 aid workers and the killing of some 50 school children in a bombing attack at Mullaitivu. They said the accusation was made without sufficient evidence.”
     
    Minister Rambukwella also reiterated to the Daily Mirror that Norway was informed that a single bullet fired by the LTTE after agreeing for talks would compel the government to withdraw from the truce.
     
    He was referring to the frayed Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) signed on 22 February 2002 by Mr. Pirapaharan on behalf of the LTTE and by then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on behalf of GoSL.
     
    Friday’s reports appeared to contradict the head of the GoSL’s Peace Secretariat who Wednesday told media that in the wake of the Co-Chairs call for unconditional talks, the government now working on possible dates.
     
    “Having the talks is something that the government is very strongly committed to,” Mr. Kohona told AFP. “What we have to clarify is the date.”
     
    Mr. Kohona’s comments had raised optimism over future talks, given the vehement rejection of the Co-Chairs call for unconditional talks by Mr. Rambukwella – who, though more senior than Mr. Kohona, does not usually comment on the peace talks
     
    "We will put forward our conditions," Mr. Rambukwella told the Associated Press Tuesday night.
     
    He criticized Norway for allegedly not having consulted the government before announcing a date and a venue.
     
    "The government has not been consulted on any future discussions. Norway, or anybody, can't announce dates and venues," Rambukwella told AP.
     
    "We will take it up very seriously, we are a sovereign state, they (Norway) are only facilitators. We have not delegated any of our powers to them," he added.
     
    Last Tuesday representatives of Co-Chairs said they had received “signals” from the Liberation Tigers and the Colombo government that they were ready for talks “without preconditions,” and urged both parties to meet “urgently” in Oslo in early October, saying the Co-chairs would review the progress of the talks later that month.
     
    "We got today the expression of willingness, we got signals from the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, to come to talks unconditionally," EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner was quoted as saying.
     
    Provided both sides agree, she said, "the meeting should take place urgently, at the beginning of October in Oslo."
     
    Asked about talks earlier Tuesday the head of the LTTE’s Political Wing, Mr. S. P. Thamilchelvan said: “The LTTE is ready for talks. However, the opportunities for resuming the talks will be much stronger when the Sri Lankan government ceases its military attacks and all the CFA articles are fully respected and implemented.”
     
    Ms. Ferrero-Waldner called on both sides to immediately end the violence, which she said was damaging prospects for lasting peace.
     
    "There is a huge challenge, we want both sides back to the table," she said, adding the EU has decided to send experts to Sri Lanka to assist the government with human rights issues.
     
    "We rejoice at the announcement conveyed by both the government and LTTE to our Norwegian facilitator that they are willing to come to talks without any conditions," Japan’s Special Envoy Yasushi Akashi was quoted by AP as saying.
     
    Norwegian International Development Minister Erik Solheim told BBC’s Sinhala Service, Sandeshaya, that both parties informed the facilitators of their willingness to come back to the table.
     
    “The international community insisted that the two parties sit immediately and also stop the violence,” he told bbcsinhala.com.
     
  • Terrorised Tamil traders flee to India
    Several Tamil traders and businessmen have fled Sri Lanka following a spate of killings and abductions that activists say has led to one of the most traumatic periods for the island's minority community.
     
    The flight of the Tamils has been reported from the eastern port town of Trincomalee, a region that has seen terrible violence involving the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Many have made it to India.
     
    The businessmen's hurried exit - quite different from the thousands of mainly poor Tamils who have reached Tamil Nadu - comes after the unprecedented mass displacement of Tamils and Muslims in the northeast.
     
    Among the businessmen who have left Trincomalee after being threatened are the owners of a leading cycle store, another store that has existed in the town for 40 years, a business providing mobile services, three hardware stores, a centre dealing in aluminium fitters, a transport company and a hotel.
     
    According to them, they had to take the threats seriously because some of their colleagues who ignored similar threats got killed later.
     
    Trincomalee residents provided the names of the businesses but requested that they be not published. They said they feared that local authorities might end up taking action against the establishments for publicising their grievances.
     
    A senior member of the chamber of commerce has also fled Trincomalee, locals told IANS. "We have information that a Sinhalese (extremist) gang has prepared a hit list of 40 prominent Tamils of Trincomalee," one Tamil source said.
     
    And what is happening in Trincomalee has spilled over into Colombo in the form of threats, extortion and abductions directed at Tamil businessmen. Many of them are conveniently dubbed as LTTE sympathisers.
     
    A Sri Lankan official admitted that many ordinary Tamils in the capital were gripped by a "fear psychosis" but claimed that the authorities were doing all they could to end a wave of targeted shootings and abductions for ransom.
     
    But residents say there is no end in sight to the crime wave.
     
    "The last six months have been the worst period for Tamils compared to any six months since militancy began (in 1983)," said one Tamil resident in Colombo.
     
    The dominant fear among the businessmen in Trincomalee is death -- at the hands of gangs they allege are linked to security forces or anti-LTTE Tamil groups. The LTTE too has been blamed for many murders, turning the region into a killing field.
     
    A worse situation prevails in the Jaffna peninsula, where fighting that erupted in August between the military and the LTTE has virtually cut off the sprawling region, leading to crippling shortages and long hours of curfew. The prices of essential commodities have soared. Some commodities are simply not available.
     
    None of those who shared information with IANS was ready to be quoted by name.
     
    International aid agencies have put the number of people displaced in Sri Lanka's northeast, the virtual war zone, at well over 200,000. Most of them are Tamils, although Muslims have also been hit hard in the east.
     
    "Thousands of poor Tamils have fled Mutur East and Sampoor and moved into LTTE areas further south. Many are living under trees or have shifted into government territory," said a Tamil source.
     
    Newspaper reports speak of gunmen in Colombo coming in vans or on motorcycles without number plates and grabbing people they want.
     
    A few have been released after being abducted. Others have disappeared without a trace. In some cases the victims were murdered and the bodies dumped for families to find.
     
    Several Tamil businessmen who were kidnapped from Colombo's roads were released reportedly after their families paid ransom running into millions of rupees.
  • History Repeats
    The bloody confrontations between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Tamil Tigers that marked late July and August have subsided. But this is a mere pause. Despite the exhortation of the international community, the Sri Lanka military is preparing another offensive in Jaffna. Colombo's determined aggression is fuelled by a confidence that the LTTE is militarily weak. As has always been the preference, the southern polity again believes a military solution is feasible. Consequently, this confidence has underpinned a number of moves by President Mahinda Rajapakse's government that are pointedly antithetical to dialogue, ethnic reconciliation and negotiated peace. The proclivity of Sri Lankan leaders to heap vitriol on the LTTE, even though the former claim an interest in constructive negotiation with the latter, is one. The complete and defiant disregard for international calls for urgent talks is another - along with pointedly derogatory comments about Norway and Oslo's senior facilitators - is another.
     
    But perhaps the most telling sign of the nature of the Sri Lankan state is the manifest transformation in its attitude towards the Tamil people. Amid the government's mocking assertions about being concerned about the Tamils' welfare, Colombo's military has unleashed a campaign of terror amongst them. Each week scores of people are being abducted and 'disappeared.' The bodies of many others picked up by the 'white van' death squads are being dumped along roadsides. Many others are being shot out of hand on the streets of the Army-controlled towns in the Northeast. The masked killers depart casually afterwards. These tactics are not new to Sri Lanka - nor indeed to any country that has witnessed a major counter-insurgency campaign where human rights are discarded at the outset. The logic is terror. But it is not merely one of denying guerrillas the support of the public; it is about teaching the upstart minority a lesson on whose country Sri Lanka is.
     
    The international community's response to this appalling state of affairs is also straight out of the history books: murmurs of disquiet amid manifest apathy - whilst specific bi-lateral interests are pursued anyway. In the past few years the Co-Chairs - the United States, European Union, Japan and Norway - have hectored much about human rights. Yet amid the Sri Lankan military's sustained campaign of extrajudicial killings, the best the international community can manage is a feeble call to prosecute 'those responsible' and to demand 'independent monitoring.' The call for the latter is, understandably, being made vociferously at the UN's Human Rights Commission in Geneva this week. But, as the Tamils across the Northeast will attest, it is not a question of monitoring, but of protection. With the international community demonstrably unable to restrain the Sri Lankan military from its now undisguised excesses, what is the point of better monitoring?
     
    The Sinhala south's confidence that a military solution can be effected also permeates its wider political moves. It remains very much to be seen if the much-vaunted SLFP-UNP arrangement will emerge and, more importantly, if it does whether it will be on a basis that can allow a lasting and just solution to emerge. If there's one thing the entire international community is agreed on, it is that a bi-partisan offer is a sine qua non for a solution. This is true. But, as the international community also insists, any southern offer must meet the legitimate aspirations of the Tamils. The Tamils have ample experience of governance of both mainstream Sinhala parties. The international community has fervently maintained faith in the present UNP leadership. The Tamils know full well why the UNP won't take an open and strong anti-war stance. We also know why the 'main opposition' won't take the lead in mobilizing resistance to the state's militarism or even to the wave of abductions and killings occurring not only in Jaffna, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Vavuniya, but even in the capital.
     
    And it is not just that the Tamils doubt the southern polity will come up with a credible powersharing arrangement. More importantly, the Tamils also doubt the international community can hold Colombo to any deal. The past few years have demonstrated the impotence of the international community, including the self-styled Co-Chairs, in this regard. Competing interests, diplomatic orthodoxy and tepid commitment to the Tamils' wellbeing are demonstrably to blame. Just consider the serial failures of agreements reached within the Norwegian peace process - not least the much-vaunted P-TOMS. India is taking a more pro-active approach to peace, but other actors are providing countervailing dyanamics. And amid the prevarication, Sri Lanka's deepest ethnic tensions are surfacing.
  • Death squads unleash wave of terror
    Death squads run by Sri Lanka’s military are killing dozens of Tamil civilians in the Jaffna peninsula each week. Many more are being killed in all the Army-controlled districts. People are disappearing and bodies are being dumped every day in Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Amparai and Vavuniya.
     
    Masked Army-backed paramilitaries and troops in plainclothes are knocking on doors in the middle of the night and calling their victims out. Many people are being dragged off the streets in broad daylight in the unmarked minibuses and vans, collectively referred to as ‘white vans’.
     
    Many of those abducted simply disappear. The bodies of others are found dumped by the road side or secluded spots, bearing the signs of torture and riddled with bullets or single, execution-style gunshot wounds.
     
    Emboldened by a new-found sense of battlefield superiority over the Liberation Tigers, Sri Lanka’s military has unleashed a campaign of terror amongst the Tamil community, mirroring a similar campaign unleashed against the Sinhala youth during the late eighties.
     
    The counter-insurgency campaign was directed against the Marxist insurrection launched by the Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP).
     
    This campaign is directed by Sinhala unltranationalists in the Sri Lankan military and state sympathetic to the JVP’s hardline anti-LTTE, anti-Tamil politics.
     
    An average of six people are being abducted or killed each day in Jaffna.
     
    In August alone, at least 67 Tamil youths and young adults disappeared in the Jaffna peninsula, according to Thurairaja Surendraraja, the coordinator for Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission (HRC).
     
    The HRC puts the number of the disappeared alone from the Jaffna peninsular since December last year at over 400.
     
    Press reports say the targeting borders on the indiscriminate. People who put up posters for political rallies supportive of the LTTE or even supporters of political parties sympathetic to the LTTE are being murdered.
     
    In Batticaloa, a vicious shadow war between Military Intelligence-backed paramilitaries and the LTTE has escalated with many people being killed. Terror has gripped residents.
     
    Even in Colombo, scores of Tamils have been abducted. Many are businessmen, from whose families millions of rupees are being demanded as ransom. Some are released on payment. Others are turning up dead.
     
    In Vavuniya paramilitary groups backed by Sri Lankan military intelligence are stepping up the terror campaign also.
     
    And as in Jaffna and Batticaloa, the gunmen here are also robbing houses at will.
     
    A United Nations investigator said Tuesday that ‘political killings’ continued in Sri Lanka and called for international human rights monitors to be sent to the island.
     
    Philip Alston, U.N. special reporter on extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions was addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is holding a three-week session to examine abuses worldwide including in Sri Lanka.
     
    "Many people are killed for the purpose of keeping them from speaking freely, assembling freely, participating in politics, and so on," he added.
     
    Despite the involvement of Tamil paramilitaries, many residents have no doubt who is behind the masked campaign. As one family told the Asian Human Rights Commission: “the men spoke irregular and unfamiliar Tamil but fluent Sinhala”
     
    Whilst they have reached new highs for recent times, ‘disappearances’ are not a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka’s conflict.
     
    Earlier this year reporters with The Toronto Star visited Jaffna to investigate the rising numbers of killings and disappearances - which the paper subsequently reported, had “created a culture of fear among Tamil civilians.”
     
    “It’s schematized killing,” A Roman Catholic priest told the Toronto Star newspaper.
     
    “To threaten the people. To keep them under pressure. To send the message that the government can save the life and the government can destroy the life.”
     
    “There is very good evidence that the security forces have once again started killing civilians and quite indiscriminately,” a Western diplomat in Colombo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Toronto Star.
     
    “Things are switching back to their old ways and tactics,” an international analyst who also spoke on condition of anonymity told The Toronto Star.
     
    “Maybe it’s too far to say it’s a calibrated strategy, but the signals and so forth come from the top.”
  • UN rights body faces test over Darfur, Sri Lanka
    The United Nations Human Rights Council needs to take action on crises in Darfur and Sri Lanka to secure its credibility and usher in a new era of rights monitoring, activists said on Sunday.
     
    Rights groups want the forum, launched this year to succeed the largely-discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights, to confront a wide range of violations when it opens its second regular session on Monday.
     
    The three-week-long meeting is seen as a litmus test for the Council's 47 member states, who will have their first chance to examine and condemn atrocities after a mainly procedural initial meeting in June.
     
    "This is going to be the session which tell us whether the Council is serious. Now is the time for action," Reed Brody, legal counsel of the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, told Reuters in an interview.
     
    "There are a number of areas like Sri Lanka and Darfur where it could take action to save lives," he said.
     
    U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned last week of "yet more death and suffering, perhaps on a catastrophic scale" in Darfur, a region of Sudan where fighting between government troops, rebels and militias has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 2 million since 2003.
     
    Brody said the Council should send fact-finding missions and support the deployment of human rights monitors in places where civilians are at risk, including Sri Lanka, where a new bout of fighting between government forces and Tamil Tigers has caused the island's worst bloodshed since a 2002 ceasefire.
     
    WORRYING SIGNS
     
    The Council was created to sidestep the bitter political acrimony and selectivity which plagued its 60-year-old predecessor, which was widely criticised for allowing rights abusers to block efforts to address atrocities.
     
    But the new body is already showing worrying signs of slipping into old divisive patterns, activists warned.
     
    At the request of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Muslim body, it held special sessions in July and August condemning Israel for alleged rights violations in the Palestinian territories and for its war in Lebanon.
     
    The militant groups Hamas and Hizbollah escaped rebuke in the Council's resolutions, which were dismissed as one-sided by Israel and its ally the United States -- neither of which holds a seat at the Geneva-based body.
     
    "The Council's two special sessions were the old Commission at its worst. It got off on a bad foot," Peter Splinter, Amnesty International's representative in Geneva, told Reuters.
     
    "We hope the Council will have something to say about the critical situations on the ground in Darfur and Sri Lanka which are getting much worse," he added.
     
    Others said the upcoming session will test the Council's ability to move past political sensitivies over the Middle East and tackle a wide range of issues.
     
    "The vast majority of the world's human rights abuses have been ignored," Hillel Neuer, executive director of the non-governmental group U.N. Watch, told a news briefing.
     
    The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) called on the Council to condemn "massive human rights violations" in Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, Central African Republic and Iran.
     
    Abuses in China and Russia also deserve scrutiny, the Paris-based group said in a statement.
  • Continuing violence in the Northeast
    September 3

    Baskaran Suresh, 31, the owner of a garage at 5th Cross Street in Jaffna and a native of Sandilipai, was shot dead in Jaffna by unidentified men on motorbikes.

    C. Mathan, 28, of 4th Cross Street Pt. Pedro and a tailor by profession, was shot dead in Jaffna in a separate incident by gunmen on a motorbike.

    SLA soldiers cordoned off several hamlets in Karaveddy, Vadamaradchi and conducted a search. Around 600 villagers were herded to a temple and were interrogated in front of masked spotters, with 3 detained for further interrogation.

    Anathamoorthy Sathiyaseelan, 28, was abducted while he was ridding in a motorbike from Chavakachcheri to Kaithady.

    Selvarajah Iynkaran, 24, a trader, was abducted from his house in Kopay South by men in a white van.

    The SLN handed over 56 members of 16 Tamil families and seven boatmen to Talaimannar Police on a report that they were taken into custody in Mannar Sea as they were attempting to flee to Tamil Nadu to seek refuge. Forty-two of them were taken into custody while fleeing in three boats and the rest were arrested while staying in a church in Thalvupadu.

    Paramilitary gunmen attached to the SLA Batticaloa Palpody camp rounded up Pethalai and Pattiyadichenai in Valaichchenai-Kalkudah in Batticaloa and shot and killed three Tamil civilians in the area. A group of paramilitary cadres who claimed that they were conducting a search operation in the area Sunday evening took three victims to the roadside and shot them. Thiayagarajah Senthooran, 22, owner of a hair dressing saloon and a resident of Pattiyadichenai, was taken out of his house on School Road and shot and his pregnant wife was attacked by the paramilitary cadres. Shanmuganathan Nagendran , 26, father of one, was taken out of his house on Nagathambiran Kovil Road in Karunkalichcholai and shot dead. Kandiah Karunakaran, 23, father of one and a native of Vakaneri and a resident of Peithalai, was shot close to his house on Vishnu Kovil Road. He succumbed to injuries later in the Batticaloa Teaching Hospital. Local civilians allege the killers were EPDP gunmen. Paramilitary cadres of the EPDP and Karuna group operate from a camp attached to the Batticaloa Palpody SLA camp.

    September 2

    Reginald Jesudasan, 31, an Actuarial Manager at Union Assurance in Colombo and the son of a retired Tamil Inspector of Police, was found dead at Thotalanga, Grand Pass in Colombo after being abducted on Friday night as he left work. The victim’s body, bearing marks of severe torture, was wrapped up from head to knees with polyethylene. Since 20th August more than 25 Tamil civilians including females have been abducted in Colombo and its suburbs.

    SLA troops conducted a cordon and search operation in Manipay, Jaffna, and detained 15 persons, of whom 10 were later released.

    Gunmen shot and killed Ganesharajah Thiyagarajah, 28, father of two and a former paramilitary cadre of the EPDP, in Eravur, Batticaloa. He was shot while returning along School Road after closing his shop for the day.

    September 1

    A SLA Lance Corporal was killed and five troopers wounded in a claymore blast when a group of SLA soldiers on a road clearing patrol were ambushed near Karaveddy Predeshiya Sabha office in Vadamaradchi, Jaffna. The SLA re-imposed the curfew in Vadamaradchi sector from Friday noon and launched a cordon and search operation in Karaveddy. Several civilians were assaulted by the soldiers following the attack. Lance Corporal Ratnayake was killed and Lt. Tharsan, 22, Lt. Thisanayake, 28, Corporal Nimal, 22, soldier Sandirasena, 28, and Thilakaratne, 43, were wounded in the attack and rushed to hospital.

    A planning officer attached to a Sewalanka Tsunami reconstruction project was shot dead at his home in Karaveddy, Jaffna. His 55 year-old mother, who attempted to block the killers, was also killed by the armed men. The officer’s wife and brother were admitted to hospital with injuries. The family had gathered to hear a news broadcast when unidentified armed men stormed their house and opened fire. The bodies of Sathiyamoorthey Selvaroopan, 25, and his mother, Sathiyamoorthy Thangaratnam, 55, were taken to hospital. Selvaroopan’s wife Shopana, 21, is a undergraduate at the University of Jaffna, and his brother Gajaroopan, 20, is in shock, according to staff at Manthikai hospital.

    A Tamil woman, employed in the computer section of Maharaja Televion (MTV), was abducted in Wellawatte, Colombo and released later in the day (see separate story).

    Three employees, including a female Finance Director of the Aero Lanka Air Line, were abducted in Colombo by unidentified persons in a white coloured van on 22 August, according to a complaint lodged with the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL). Longendrarajah Gomathi, 36, was abducted from her residence located along Porupana Road in Valgambaya Mawatte in Ratmalana. Abductors who conversed in Sinhala had taken the computer and other documents from her house. Earlier on the same day, Lal Premaretna, 28, and Lal Premaretna, 25, were abducted, from their residence in Borella.

    Armed gunmen from the ENDLF, a paramilitary group working with the Sri Lankan military, forcibly occupied the Trincomalee district office of TELO, after chasing away party officials and two families residing in the office, said Ranga, the Trincomalee District Organizer of TELO. The TELO leader and TNA parliamentarian Selvam Adaikalanathan, condemning the forcible occupation of TELO office said the party would initiate legal action against the intruders. The party has lodged a complaint with the Inspector General of Police and the SLMM, according Vino Noharathalingam, another parliamentarian of the party. “As a democratic party, represented in the Sri Lankan Parliament, we have the right to run party offices. Nobody can deny our right to run our political offices. Noone would be allowed to forcibly occupy our right to run our political offices,” said Mr. Adaikalanathan.

    August 31

    A police constable was injured when unidentified men lobbed a grenade in front of the Chenkalady Vellimalai Pillayar Temple in Eravur, Batticaloa district. The grenade attack targeted three policemen on their way from Chenkalady police station to buy provisions. A Tamil youth was arrested by the Police regarding this incident.

    A police constable who was shot by armed man succumbed to injuries. He was identified as Meerasahibu Riyal, 37, father of three. The shooting took place along Punnaikuda road in Eravur police division in Batticaloa district. Armed man in hiding had shot the policeman when was on his way home after duty from Eravur police station.

    About one hundred Tamil civilians were arrested in Vavuniya town in a combined cordon and search operation by SLA soldiers and the police. They were taken to Vavuniya Police Station and subjected to severe interrogation. About eighty of them were released Friday after being fingerprinted and with one surety each, said Mr. Sivanathan Kishore, Vanni district parliamentarian.

    August 30

    Nadarajah Guruparan, news manager of Sooriyan FM Radio broadcast from Colombo, was abducted on his way to work Tuesday morning and released the next day (see separate story).

    K. Thavarajah, 44, a father of 4, from Kayanmadu was killed about 200 metres from the Vavunatheevu SLA camp, while he was returning home from Batticaloa town. The soldiers allowed the man to cross the check point after questioning him and then shot him dead.

    The SLA released the mutilated bodies of 16 Tamil youth in Vavuniya, claiming they were Tamil Tiger cadres. The genitals of some of the youth had been hacked off and the faces of some bodies had been burnt off by acid. The bodies of 10 youths were claimed by their families in Vavuniya, with the families saying the men had gone missing after leaving for work. The LTTE accepted the remaining six bodies to see if they are those of 7 cadres who went missing while on a patrol. The SLA had earlier displayed the bodies of sixteen youth and said they were LTTE cadres who attacked its front defence lines at Puvarasankulam in Vavuniya.

    Seven Tamil civilians were arrested during a combined cordon and search operation by SLA troops and Police along Vavuniya-Horowopottana road following the shooting of a home guard by unidentified persons. The arrested people were staying in welfare centres located in Vavuniya town and they were taken into custody while returning from their worksites.

    August 29

    Two bodies with gun shot injuries were found near Kandaswamy temple, in Vavuniya, where an attack on the SLA left a soldier killed and another injured.

    Jesuthas Deminian, 31, was shot dead at Kali Kovil Road, between Clock Tower Road and Kannathiddy Junction in Jaffna town.

    Ariyaratnam Sathyaseelan, 26, was shot near Muththirai Junction, along Chemmani Road.

    Tamil civilian Periyathamby Veluppillai, 27, a fisherman by profession and a father of two, of Kalmadu in Valaichchenai, was shot and hacked to death by SLA soldiers and paramilitaries at Kannahipuram, Batticaloa. He took refuge in a neighbouring house when unidentified gunmen tried to abduct him from his home. He was shot in the leg as he was trying to escape. Gunmen thereafter conducted a search operation in the area with the help of SLA and took him out of a house where he was hiding. The gunmen fired indiscriminately at him and chopped his head and face with axe and knives despite plea by occupants of the house not to shoot him as there were children inside.

    August 28

    Sellathurai Gopalasingham, 53, the former President of the Supparmadam Fisheries Society, was abducted from his house situated close to a SLA High Security Zone (HSZ) and shot dead by gunmen. His body was found close to Kali Temple in Supparmadam. The assailants went to his house, took him for questioning to Athisoodi Pillaiyar temple and shot him in his head.

    Rasaratnam Ganeshalingam, 40, was shot dead at his home in Thampalai in Achchuveli, while curfew was in force.

    August 27

    At least seven SLA soldiers, wounded in a claymore attack at Selvanagar, a SLA controlled gateway towards LTTE controlled Muthur East, were rushed to Polonnaruwa hospital.

    Armed men set fire to building which functioned as the political office of the LTTE in Jaffna. Armed men on foot set fire to the two-story building, which has been closed since the LTTE’s political wing withdrew from Sri Lanka Government controlled areas in December 2005.

    Seventy-six Tamils, including 8 women, were arrested during a combined search operation by Sri Lankan Military troopers and Police in Colombo and its suburbs. Road blocks were put up on main roads leading to Colombo centre and all vehicles were thoroughly checked. According to the police, 68 men and 8 women were arrested during the search operation in Borella, Kotahena Bambalapitiya, Kollupitya and Wellawatte, between noon and midnight.

    August 26

    Six SLA troopers on a road clearing mission were killed in a bomb explosion between Eluthumadduval and Muhamalai. Four troopers were wounded in the explosion. The military claimed the bomb was an ‘improvised explosive device’.

    Sithamparapillai Sivashankar was shot dead by men who followed him, while he was ridding in a motorbike along KKS in Mallakam. The assailants escaped with his motorbike.

    C. Vijeyakantharasa, 38, was shot dead near police station in Punnalaikadduvan while the curfew was in force.

    Armed men shot and killed two members of the same family on Udhayan Street, Sithandy, Batticaloa. The civilian victims, the brother and sister who had come to visit their sick mother, were identified as Sinnarasa Wimalakumari, 44, and Sinnarasa Ratnavel, 36. Armed men who approached their hours called them out by name. When the sister and brother answered the door, both were gunned down at close range. The killings took place in the wake of two attacks on SLA troopers in the area. An SLA soldier, K. M. Sisirakumara, was wounded 3 hours before the killings, in a shootout near Vanthaumoolai school. On Friday, an SLA trooper, W. Vasanthakumara, 34, sustained injuries when a group of gunmen attacked a SLA road clearing patrol in Mavadivembu, Nagarkovil area.

    August 25

    Armed men on a motorbike shot dead a worker employed by the UN agency UNOPS in Amparai district at Munaiyoorkalam in Thambiluvil, Amparai district. The man, identified as P. Jestly Julian, 29, a native of Komari and father of two, was taken from his office to Munaiyoorkalam and shot.

    A SLA soldier in mufti and another person were shot dead in Vavuniya. The soldier was identified by an SLA officer who visited the site, as D. M. Dissanayake, 33, while the other man was identified as Andare Uppul, 30. Both are natives of Anuradhapura. Nine mm bullets were recovered from the site.

    STF personnel from Navatkerny, a suburb of Batticaloa town, where an STF patrol was targeted in a grenade attack, shot and killed five Tamil men in the nearby New Muhathuvaram Road Cemetery Junction. The killings were carried out by STF men as “revenge killings” for the grenade attack, civilians said. The STF claimed the five were Tigers carrying weapons. Meanwhile, the STF trooper, Hevajalage Jayantha, 25, wounded in the grenade attack at Navatkerny, later succumbed to his wounds. The STF men went inside a rice-mill, asked for a vehicle, and left the rice-mill as there was no vehicle available. Few minutes later, the STF counter-insurgency men came back to the site in a Jeep and a truck, and picked five Tamil youths, including a rice mill worker and gunned them down near the railway track in the area. Two of the victims were identified as Tharmarajah Anandarajah, 28, and Soosaipillai Sutharsan, 26.

    Motorbike riding gunmen shot and killed a fish salesman, C. Lingeswaran, 40, near Kaddudai Junction, in Manipay, Jaffna, after following the trader as he rode to work in a motorcycle.

    A LTTE cadre was killed and two policemen riding in a three-wheeler were wounded in a shootout on Thambiluvil Road, Amparai. The LTTE cadre was gunned down when the policemen retaliated after an attack, police claimed. Meanwhile, LTTE Political Head in Amparai, Jeya, said the person shot dead was a political cadre of the Tigers. Mr. Jeya said STF personnel gunned down Mr. Sudar, 21, and said Sudar was a political cadre who had gone to the town, controlled by the Sri Lankan armed forces. STF claimed that a micro handgun, its magazine, hand grenade and a cyanide capsule were found on the deceased. The policemen wounded in the shootout were identified as M. Dharmaratne, 35 and W. Abeyaratne, 33.

    August 24

    Paramilitary cadres operating with the SLA in Batticaloa district, sent Sathyaseelan Tharsan of Market Road in Thimilathivu, 19, on a motorbike with explosives towards an LTTE Forward Defence Line (FDL) and detonated the bike. Denying a SLA claim that five Tigers were killed in the Karuna Group suicide attack, the LTTE said the bike exploded 80 meters away from the Tiger FDL in Vavunatheevu. The boy was an innocent captive of paramilitary cadres, LTTE Batticaloa district political head Mr. Daya Mohan said. “Sathyaseelan Tharsan was abducted by an armed group few days ago and he was sent to our FDL in a motor bike fitted with a bomb. The bomb in the motor bike was detonated by remote control when Sathyaseelan Tharsan was about to reach the FDL. The bomb exploded about 80 meters away from the FDL”, he said.

    A SLA soldier from Kommathurai camp in Eravur, Batticaloa, was injured when armed men ambushed a group of soldiers on patrol duty in Vantharumoolai.

    Armed men riding a motorbike shot dead Vasuthevan Raguthevan, 26, the driver of a three-wheeler, at Sathurukondan, Batticaloa, when he was about to leave to Batticaloa town.

    A claymore mine exploded on Talaimannar Road in Pesalai, Mannar district targeting a group of SLN soldiers on patrol. Four soldiers were on duty at the site, but no casualties were reported. Two Tamil youths were taken into custody by SLN soldiers in a cordon and search launched immediately after the explosion.

    A Christian Church of the Apostle priest has been missing in Jaffna since August 11, according to a complaint made by a fellow priest at the Jaffna office of the HRCSL. Rev. Fr. Vincent Vinodharaja, 35, father of one, was last seen leaving his home in Meesalai in Thenmaradchi.

    August 23

    A group of armed persons, believed to be paramilitary men working with the SLA, entered the Jaffna District Secretariat of the Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) and smashed computers and accessories and set-fire to the building, destroying tools and data inside the office. The TRO Jaffna office, opposite the UN officials’ residence and close to many UN offices including UNHCR, UNICEF and UNDP, and several international organizations, is located 200 meters away from the SLA checkposts at Kailayapillayar temple. At least six armed men entered the office, forced the watchman to leave the premises and stayed at the office for two-hours destroying the tools, documents and data, finally setting fire to the office. The events took place during curfew hours. TRO officials said all the documents including the North East Community Organisation Restoration and Development (NECORD) project documents, were destroyed. The NGO officials estimated at least one-million worth of equipment, tools and accessories were lost in the attack. The Fire Brigade, notified by another NGO in the area, only managed to save the building complex from total destruction.

    Armed men shot dead Ms Balasingham Puvaneswary, 40, along Aboobucker Road close to Vaitheeswara Junction in the heart of Jaffna town. She was shot when she came out of her house on the orders of assailants.

    Armed men entered the premises of Nelliaydi Central College in Jaffna and destroyed the memorial and the statue of the first Black Tiger, Captain Miller. The statue, interpreted as the symbol of the destruction of Nelliyadi SLA camp during Eelam War I in 1987, was later hidden and saved by the residents during the occupation of Jaffna in 1996, before being raised again in 2002. Armed men entered the college premises and bound the hands of the watchman and destroyed the statue and the memorial.

    Unidentified men riding in 3 cars abducted three Tamil youths in a lodge on Grandpass Street in Colombo 14. The lodge owners have informed their relatives and police about the abduction. The abductors had claimed they were taking Kunasegaram Mahindan, Kandasamy Sreetharan, both from Varani in Kodikamam and Ramakrishnan Rajkumar from Trincomalee, for interrogation.

    Armed men shot dead Mr. Shanmugarajah Suthakar of Bharathipuram, an auto driver, on Beach Road in Trincomalee town. The assailant had hired Suthakar’s three-wheeler and later shot the driver.

    Mr. Malaka Gunawardene, 19, a police constable, was killed in claymore mine explosion near the office of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) located along Batticaloa Ottamavadi road. He succumbed to injuries on admission to hospital.

    Mayuran, 20, father of two, was killed in a landmine explosion when he was on his way to collect firewood in no-man zone located in Vaddamadu jungle area. He succumbed to his injuries when he was taken to the Special Task Force (STF) camp located in Sagamam.

    August 22

    Sri Lanka Police recovered a claymore fitted to a bicycle used for selling vegetables at Borella in Colombo city. An officer of the Traffic Police on patrol first noticed the abandoned bicycle and on inspection found the claymore mine. A SLA bomb disposal squad rushed to the site, in front of a shop, and deactivated the claymore mine. The claymore mine weighed about 10 kg could have been placed in the bicycle targeting an important personality, police claimed.

    Rev. Fr. Thiruchelvam Nihal Jim Brown, 34, Parish Priest of Allaippiddy, Jaffna, was reported missing since 20 August, according to a news release issued by the NorthEast Secretariat of Human Rights (see separate story).

    Armed men shot dead Mrs. Manoharan Rajini, 40, mother of four, in front of the welfare centre at Sakkotai in Vadamaradchchi, Jaffna district, where she had been residing on being displaced from Palaly, which is located in the SLA HSZ. SLA soldiers arrested 22 year-old Annalingam Ajanthan within 15 minutes of the attack, alleging he had been in the shooting incident. But Ajanthan’s parents appealed to the HRCSL in Jaffna that Ajanthan was an innocent who had been arrested by the SLA to falsely implicate him in the killing.

    An alleged SLA informant, Perumal Chandrakumar, 44, was shot dead at Kilavi Thoddam in Karaveddy, Jaffna. Separately, a vegetable vendor, Kandiah Ganeshalingam, 34, was shot dead by assailants travelling by car while he was on his way to Chunnakam public market soon after the curfew was lifted.

    Three people were shot dead by unidentified men in separate incidents in Trincomalee. Mr. Balachchandran, a three-wheeler driver, was shot dead at Murugapuri. Another Tamil youth, abducted a day earlier, was found dead in Sampaltivu with gun shot injuries. The unidentified body of a third person was found in Iqbalnagar.

    August 21

    The bodies of two women washed ashore in Pungudutivu, Jaffna district. Civil authorities said that these two bodies belonged to Tamil civilians drowned in mid sea while fleeing from Talaimannar in Mannar district to seek refuge in Tamil Nadu. Several residents of Mannar and Trincomalee have reportedly fled from the Mannar coast to Tamil Nadu by boat due to volatile situation in the North East. Some of these civilians are reportedly drowned when their boats capsized while fleeing.
  • Tamil parties protest abductions, disappearances
    Tamil political parties Friday said they are going to hold awareness meetings among Tamil people in Colombo from this week against the increase of abduction by the intelligence service of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA).

    Several Tamil youths in Colombo had been abducted by SLA intelligence unit in past and immediate action should be taken to stop this, they said.

    Mr. T. Maheswaran, Colombo district parliamentarian of the main opposition United National Party (UNP), Mr. R.Yogarajan, Vice President of the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), Mr. P. Chandrasekaran, Nuwara Eliya district parliament and Mr. P. Radhakrishnan, Colombo district parliamentarian of the Upcountry Peoples Front ( UPF) and Ms Padmini Sithambaranathan, Jaffna district parliamentarian of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) held a joint press briefing.

    But Mr. Chandrasekaran, leader of the UPF is a Minister in the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government. Mr. Radhakrishnan of UPF also holds the post of Deputy Minister. CWC is now a constituent of the UPFA government and its President Mr.Arumugan Thondaman holds a cabinet portfolio.

    UNP MP Mr. Maheswaran said that it has been reported that about thirty Tamils had been abducted in Colombo recently, according to the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL).

    Even Mr. Maheswaran’s niece, an employee of well known Colombo media group, was abducted last week, but released a day later.

    Six armed men, riding in a white-van, abducted Thavarajah Thavamani, 26. More than 10 Tamil civilians, including three females, have been abducted in Colombo city and its suburbs during in just one week, weekend reports said.

    “Every one knows that army intelligence unit has been responsible for these abductions. We directly blame the Government for this. We would move for a debate in the Parliament when it resumes its sitting on Tuesday. The Government should answer to these abductions in Colombo,” Mr. Maheswaran said.

    “Extra judicial killings are taking place in Colombo and North East. The President is keeping silent although he knows the force behind these crimes. Well-planned pogrom against Tamil people is taking place,” Mr.Maheswaran said.

    TNA MP Ms Sithambaranathan said in the last two months about 61 Tamil civilians were reported disappeared in Jaffna district.

    Fifty persons were reported disappeared since August 11 alone, she said, adding that some more complaints are yet to be registered with the HRCSL.

    A nineteen year old advanced level student Renuka Selvarajah of Uduvil Girls College was reported abducted when she was on her way to buy provision after curfew was lifted.

    Mr. Chandrasekaran, said the SLA intelligence unit is monitoring his activities even after he become a minister.

    “Recently when I came out of State Rupavahini Corporation premises after attending a programme I saw a white van halted close to my vehicle. When my security officials went near to the while coloured, persons seated inside it said they were from army intelligence unit. I immediately brought this matter to the notice of Inspector General of Police (IGP),”said Mr.Chandrasekaran.

    The government should take responsibility for the abduction of Tamil civilians in Colombo and in the North East. Tamil parties should exert pressure on the government to take step to stop these abductions, said Mr. Chandrasekaran.
  • ‘Coordinated, deliberate’ SLA campaign in LTTE areas – SLMM
    Amid the furore triggered by international truce monitors’ findings that Sri Lankan security forces carried out the massacre of 17 aid workers, other conclusions by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) lost focus, including the charge the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) carried out “deliberate, planned and coordinated offensive military operations” against LTTE cadres and civilians in LTTE-controlled areas from April 1, weeks after Norwegian facilitated talks in Geneva to de-escalate rising violence.

    “[Our] findings and internal analysis of both individual claymore mine attacks, as well as of the pattern arising from the same show that deliberate, planned and coordinated offensive military operations were conducted between April 1 April and June 15 2006 in LTTE-controlled areas,” the SLMM said.

    The SLMM also verified two attempted claymore mine attacks carried out by the Sri Lankan Special Forces units in LTTE controlled area on June 13 and 15, 2006: two soldiers were killed and returned to the Sri Lankan government (GoSL) through the ICRC.

    The SLA campaign in LTTE-controlled areas came six weeks after GoSL and LTTE negotiators met in Geneva in late February to de-escalate a simmering ‘shadow war’ that had begun to escalate in December 2005.

    The GoSL delegation, which initially refused to recommit to the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, reluctantly agreed to implement the truce, in particularly disarming anti-LTTE paramilitaries which the Tigers said were backed by the Sri Lankan military in a campaign against LTTE cadres and supporters.

    But the SLMM says SLA regular forces escalated a campaign in LTTE-controlled areas weeks later.

    “The executed and attempted attacks are part of a pattern of a deliberate strategy against LTTE cadres and civilians in LTTE controlled areas in Mannar and Vavuniya Districts by the GoSL Security Forces or by other armed elements with the substantial assistance and support from the GoSL Security Forces,” the SLMM said.

    “It is clear that the units/groups executed these attacks with the possibility to escape into GoSL controlled areas where safe exit/entry points, logistic and other assistance must have been provided by the Security Forces and/or GoSL/police units deployed along the Forward Defense Line (FLD),” the SLMM said.

    “Based on the verified activities of the SLA Special unit soldiers in LTTE controlled areas there are firm indications of the involvement of the SLA in such attacks,” the SLMM said.

    “Despite the binding laws and regulations it is particularly serious to notice that, the vast majority of the attacks have been directed or resulted in death and serious injuries to civilians,” the SLMM said.

    Seven of the attacks/detonations using claymore mines have taken place in and around the area where the Holy Madhu Shrine is located, the SLMM also said.

    “The GoSL Security Forces, having the motive, capability and capacity to carry out such attacks against the LTTE in the Northeast, bear the responsibility for killing and injuring the LTTE cadres and the civilians caught in the blast from these attacks,” the SLMM.

    The monitors blamed the LTTE for a devastating mine attack against a bus transporting Sinhala civilians in GoSL-controlled area which killed almost 70 people.

    The SLMM rejected the LTTE’s claim Army-backed paramilitaries of the Karuna Group were responsible for the attack on the bus at Kebitigollewa.

    “Taking specifically into account the prevailing circumstances and obtained findings there are strong indications that the attack on Sinhalese civilians had been a deliberate retaliation for the recent killings of civilians and LTTE cadres in LTTE controlled areas in the North and the East.”

    “Both under the clauses of the CFA, International Human Rights Law as well as treaty based and customary International Humanitarian Laws it is absolutely forbidden to deliberately attack civilians or without due care for civilian lives and property carry out attacks against an adversary in an armed conflict,” the SLMM protested.

    “Also all places of worship are protected under the CFA and International Humanitarian Laws and Parties to the CFA should refrain from using or execute attacks at places of worship such as the Madhu area, including such roads leading to and from the Shrine.”
  • ‘Mission impossible’ for SLMM
    The new head of Sri Lanka’s truce monitors takes over a team cut by nearly half this week amid warnings by his predecessor of “mission impossible” to satisfy both sides in the vicious conflict.

    Former Norwegian army chief Lars Solvberg will run a 30-strong group after members from the European Union were ordered to quit by the end of the month by the Tamil Tigers.

    The 25-nation bloc branded the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) a terrorist group in May, prompting it to retaliate by demanding the ouster of EU members Sweden, Finland and Denmark from the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

    Retired Swedish general Ulf Henricsson who formally steps down this week. Henricsson said the monitors had come under fire from both sides during his attempts to rule on violations.

    “It’s very easy just to realise that with 50 percent of the people (now), you are doing 50 percent of the job. That’s a concern,” he added.

    “It’s much easier to hide the shit that both parties are doing,” Henricsson said, highlighting extra-judicial killings and attacks using fragmentation mines blamed on both sides.

    Solvberg, who arrived in Sri Lanka last week, joined Henricsson in meetings with senior figures from both sides before the Swede’s departure.

    As a “goodwill” gesture, the Tigers released a Sri Lankan policeman held for nearly a year following a request by Henricsson.

    But Henricsson warned peace hopes were not high even though the two sides are in a military stalemate.

    He said there were few signs of a negotiated settlement and said the reduced monitoring force faced a tough task at a time of increasing violence with at least 1,500 people killed since December.

    Mine attacks, airstrikes and mortaring of enemy positions have become daily events along with claims of abductions, recruitment of child soldiers and killings.

    Henricsson - who blamed the EU’s ban on the Tigers for fuelling the rise in violence - had wanted to increase the size of the monitoring force but despite Norway and Iceland bolstering their numbers, his successor Solvberg must monitor the ceasefire with a team cut from 57 to 30.
  • Aid workers targeted in Sri Lankan clashes
    Seventeen Sri Lankans working for an international aid agency were slain execution-style, and ambulances ferrying wounded civilians have been blown off the road.

    The attacks in northern and eastern Sri Lanka took place during fierce fighting between Tamil Tigers and government troops dominated by the Sinhalese majority, and agencies say the conflict is becoming among the most dangerous for aid workers in recent years.

    “Even in a war, there are certain (groups) that are not touched, such as the Red Cross symbol and NGOs,” said Jeevan Thiagarajah, executive director of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, an umbrella for international and local aid agencies in Sri Lanka.

    But in the recently resurgent Sri Lankan conflict, “both have been blown off the road, literally,” he said.

    Thiagarajah cited two recent incidents.

    On Aug. 21, a Tamil working for the Red Cross was shot and killed in the northern district of Vavuniya, an area controlled by the government.

    Earlier in the month, two ambulances ferrying wounded were blown off the road during a fierce artillery battle for the eastern town of Muttur, killing one driver, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

    Also in August, a road-side bomb exploded near an ambulance in a LTTE-held part of Vavuniya, killing five medical workers, including a doctor, the ICRC said.

    “Who shot them off the road, I do not know,” said Thiagarajah, one of the few aid workers willing to speak publicly about the dangers facing humanitarian workers in Sri Lanka.

    Others expressed similar concerns, but would only speak on condition of anonymity for fear of exacerbating risks to staff and their operations, which are already threatened by the near-daily air strikes, gun battles and artillery duels on the battlefields of northern and eastern Sri Lanka.

    Then there was the discovery on Aug. 7 of 17 dead aid workers, all shot execution style. All but one were Tamils working for Action Against Hunger, an international aid group, in a part of Muttur controlled by the government.

    It was the worst single attack on aid workers since the bombing of a U.N headquarters in Baghdad in 2003, and Action Against Hunger’s president, Denis Metzger, called the killings “deliberate.”

    He did not say who he believed was behind the as-yet unsolved killings, but many here suspect the military was involved, largely because the slayings took place in a part of town firmly in the grip of security forces.

    “There is a general climate that is hostile to non-governmental organizations working in the northeast and on the peace issue,” said Jehan Perera, an analyst at the independent National Peace Council.

    Decades of discrimination against the largely Hindu Tamils, who account for about 3.2 million of Sri Lanka’s 19 million people, by the 14 million predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese led the Tigers to take up arms in 1983 to fight for a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east.

    Several thousandpeople were killed before a 2002 cease-fire, which has all but disintegrated since late July as open warfare erupted along frontiers separating LTTE - and government-held territories in the north and east.

    Fighting since July has displaced about 204,000 people, nearly all of whom are Tamil, and aid workers charge the government is intentionally limiting access to the newly homeless.

    “Part of warfare is to batter people psychologically, and physically prevent them from getting help,” Thiagarajah said, noting that many of the displaced were running low on food and water.

    The government counters that the restrictions are in place because it cannot guarantee aid workers’ safety in conflict zones.

    “We don’t want to take a chance as the conflict is still going on. We are allowing them to go on a measured basis,” said Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe.

    While most international agencies say relations with Tamil Tigers are good, the insurgents are no strangers to extra-judicial killings, and the military last week blamed them for killing an ethnic Sinhalese aid worker in the Tiger-held eastern town of Ampara.

    The Tigers say the employee of the United Office Project Firm, a local group funded by New Zealand, was killed by a breakaway faction allegedly supported by the military.

    Apart from obstructing aid reaching those forced from their homes by the latest fighting, the clashes are also hampering efforts to assist hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting before by the cease-fire and left homeless by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

    Most of those people remain in squalid camps, many of which are in areas that are now too dangerous to work in, forcing several agencies - such as Oxfam, Care and Caritas - to suspend relief projects.

    AP reporter Bharatha Mallawarachi contributed to this report.
  • Sri Lanka defiant over aid massacre charge
    Accused by international ceasefire monitors of being responsible for the massacre of 17 aid workers, Sri Lanka reacted with indignation, rejecting the findings and launching a blistering personal attack the outgoing head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Swedish Maj. Gen. Ulf Henricson.

    And whilst its senior representatives lambasted the SLMM, the Sri Lankan government slapped new restrictions on other international aid workers. Meanwhile, reflecting international reaction to the SLMM’s findings, the United Nations threatened to stop its agencies’ activities in the country, a warning it subsequently toned down.

    In a damning report published Wednesday August 31, Maj. Gen. Henricsson blamed Sri Lankan security forces for the execution style killings a month ago of 16 Tamil and one Muslim staff of international aid agency Action Contre La Faim.

    The killings have been described as the worst mass murder of aid staff since a 2003 bomb attack on the United Nations compound in Baghdad.

    They took place after Sri Lankan security forces took control of the eastern town of Muttur after three days of fierce fighting with the Tamil Tigers.

    Called the massacre a “committed act of assassination” and “one of the most serious recent crimes against humanitarian aid workers worldwide,” the SLMM said it is, “with the obtained findings, convinced that there cannot be any other armed groups than the Security Forces who could actually have been behind the act.”

    The Sri Lankan government responded Thursday by flatly rejecting the SLMM’s findings and attacking the mission’s head.

    “Maj. Gen. Henricsson’s statement is totally baseless. It is sad and we vehemently reject it,” defense ministry spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters.

    “We deny it, and it’s a totally baseless statement,” Rambukwella said. “It’s pathetic and it’s biased and they have no right make such a statement because they are not professionals in autopsy or post-mortem.”

    Of Maj. Gen. Henricson, Rambukwella said: “we ... condemn this unethical and unprofessional statement of the outgoing head of SLMM.”

    “I am not calling him (Henricsson) a liar but I am calling it a very, very irresponsible statement,” Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera told the BBC.

    But the SLMM said “highly reliable sources” had discussed the killings with chief monitor Henricsson.

    “The views [of the sources] have not proved contradictory and the security forces of Sri Lanka are widely and consistently deemed to be responsible for the incident,” it said.

    On Thursday the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, an umbrella group of NGOs in Sri Lanka, said it hoped the SLMM’s findings would bring increased international scrutiny, especially on the issues of “human principles and accountability”.

    But in a defiant response to international reactions to the SLMM report, the Sri Lankan government has enforced new controls on foreign aid workers, AFP reported Friday, quoting aid officials.

    Sri Lankan authorities had also begun harassing their staff in the aftermath of the SLMM’s findings, an official of an international charity told AFP.

    “Our vehicles are not allowed to go in or come out of the (restive) east,” said the official who declined to be named.

    A spokesman for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) told AFP about 500 foreign nationals working for about 90 charities had already applied for work permits but were still awaiting them.

    Aid officials said the government’s measures against relief organisations did not apply to United Nations agencies or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

    Minister Rambukwella defended the restrictions, saying the authorities wanted to keep track of the work of relief agencies and ensure that their facilities “were not made available” to the LTTE.

    “We have had some bad experiences in the past,” Rambukwella said, without elaborating. “We have a right to know who is doing what.”

    Rambukwella, who is also policy planning minister, said relief agencies must hand over their assets to the military if they were quitting embattled areas and not let them to fall into LTTE hands.

    His remarks came after the United Nations, reacting strongly to the SLMM’s findings, threatened to halt its aid aid operations, including refugee and tsunami relief.

    “We have no independent information ourselves in the U.N., but I say we cannot continue in this area unless people will be held accountable for the execution of 17 of our colleagues,” the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, told reporters in New York.

    “It was unacceptable that the government had not provided any explanation regarding the executions,” Egeland said in a statement Thursday.

    “Humanitarian assistance could not continue unless the people responsible for those actions were held accountable,” he said.

    Later a spokeswoman for Egeland’s office in Geneva described his statement as “a warning” and said the U.N. had no immediate plans to pull out.

    “U.N. humanitarian workers continue their efforts and will continue to do their jobs, taking into account the current security conditions in Sri Lanka,” Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said.

    “At the moment, there is of course no withdrawal. But if a tragedy were to occur like what happened, we would have to think things over.”

    The international community has demanded an independent international inquiry into the aid workers’ massacre.

    Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Samaraweera claimed ‘forensic investigations’ were ongoing and as such the SLMM’s findings were ‘premature’

    “I will have some problems to trust a government investigation now because they are too involved in this case,” Henricsson said in an interview.

    “A democratic and accountable government should support an international commission to look into this case.”

    “This is not just a Sri Lankan problem. This is a worldwide problem if you can kill aid workers without any punishment.”
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