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  • ‘War not way to peace’ - India

    Sep 06
    As Sri Lanka’s military launched a new offensive against the Liberation Tigers this week, India re-iterated that war was not the way to resolve the island’s conflict.

    “We do not believe that war is the way out...We do not think violence, whether from LTTE’s side or an armed conflict, can resolve any issue,” press reports quoted India’s Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran as saying in Delhi Monday. Meanwhile, The Hindu newspaper reported that, worried over the violence in Sri Lanka, peace-facilitator Norway and India “are engaged in quiet consultations to defuse the situation.”

    Responding to diplomatic correspondents’ questions, Mr. Saran said: “we have not accepted that the LTTE is the sole champion of Tamil interests.”

    “There is the larger issue of welfare, interests and aspirations of the Tamil-speaking population,” he also said.

    With regard the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, Mr. Saran said the situation there has a “certain sensibility” for India “because as soon as there is an armed conflict or any hostility, a large number of Tamil-speaking people try to take shelter [in this country].”

    Asked about India’s position on a solution, Mr. Saran said: “India does not support the issue of a separate state being carved of Sri Lanka. India is committed to territorial integrity and sovereignty of that country.”

    Diplomatic correspondents say India, along with many other backers of the Norwegian peace process, has been advocating powersharing along federal lines as a way of resolving the decades long conflict. India stresses that a solution must be acceptable to all Sri Lankans.

    With this in mind, India has been pushing for a southern consensus on a power-sharing model that Sri Lanka could offer to end the conflict. But the ruling SLFP of President Mahinda Rajapakse and the main opposition UNP haven’t been able reach a bi-partisan approach.

    Maintaining that India had very “big stakes” in Sri Lanka, Mr. Saran said India had not joined the “co-chairs’ process” because its “sensitive relationship” with Colombo “does not lend itself to group responses as envisaged by the co-chairs.”

    But India could not afford a “hands-off” attitude towards Sri Lanka as New Delhi had too much at stake, Mr. Saran was also quoted by The Hindu newspaper as saying.

    The Co-chairs – the United States, European Union, Japan and Norway – have been the main international grouping backing Olso’s peace initiative. India, which declined to join despite intense lobbying by the quartet, has been kept informed of moves and developments by Oslo.

    The Sunday Leader newspaper reported this week that “given the seriousness of the situation, the Co-Chairs were discussing the possibilities of advancing their September 12 meeting for the first week especially with India also pushing for urgent steps with an assurance they could participate at an observer level.”

    That was before the Sri Lanka military offensive on Monday to recapture the LTTE-held area of Sampur in Trincomalee. In heavy bombardments by the military, 20 Tamil civilians were killed and 26 wounded.

    11 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed and 79 wounded, AFP reported. LTTE officials in Trincomalee said 3 Tiger cadres were killed and 5 wounded.

    On Monday The Hindu newspaper quoted Indian officials as confirming that Mr. Saran had been in Oslo a few days ago for an exchange of views on the situation in Sri Lanka and to discuss possible ways to de-escalate the crisis.

    “India and Norway are perturbed over the unending cycle of violence in Sri Lanka. Mr. Saran made an unannounced visit to Norway last week to review the situation as well as to consider what the Co-Chairs and others engaged in the peace process could do to put a break to the hostilities,” The Hindu quoted a senior Indian official as saying.

    On August 8, Delhi urged Colombo to pursue the peace process when India’s Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed to visiting Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera

    Emphasising that there was no military solution to the island’s problems, the Indian Minister was quoted by PTI as saying there was a need to initiate talks between the Sri Lankan government and LTTE to resolve all issues.
  • Pakistan ‘guiding’ Sri Lanka’s war
    A group of Pakistan Air Force officers stationed in Colombo have been guiding the Sri Lankan military in carrying out air-mounted operations against the LTTE, a former counter-terrorism chief of India’s External intelligence says.

    The Pakistani officers have also been involved in drawing up plans for a decapitation airstrike with bunker-buster bombs to kill LTTE leader Vellupillai Pirapaharan, Mr. B. Raman says.

    The appointment of recently retired Deputy Chief of the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) as Islamabad’s representative to Sri Lanka is a deepening of Pakistan’s support, he says, adding the move is a concern for India’s national security.

    “About 12 to 15 members of the Pakistani Armed Forces, including four or five from the Pakistan Air Force, are stationed in Colombo to guide the Sri Lankan security forces in their counter-insurgency operations,” Mr. B. Raman, wrote on August 18, quoting reliable Tamil sources.

    “The Pakistan Air Force officers have reportedly been guiding the SLAF officers in effectively carrying out air-mounted operations against the LTTE,” he said.

    “They have also been reportedly involved in drawing up plans for a decapitation strike from the air, with bunker-buster bombs, to kill [LTTE leader Vellupillai] Pirapaharan.”

    Mr. Raman served as additional secretary at the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external espionage agency, and headed the counter-terrorism division at RAW for more than a decade till his retirement in 1994. He is presently Director of the Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.

    “Pakistan, which has already been playing a discreet role in assisting the Sri Lankan security forces in their operations against the LTTE even before Mr. [Mahinda] Rajapakse became the President, has further increased its involvement in the counter-insurgency operations.”

    “Of all the three [Sri Lankan] services, the SLAF has the closest relations with its Pakistani counterpart,” Raman says.

    Technical personnel of the PAF play an important role in the repairs and maintenance of the aircraft and other equipment of the SLAF. Sri Lankan aircraft have been sent to Pakistan for overhauling.

    Recently Sri Lanka has accepted Pakistan’s proposal to appoint Air Vice-Marshal Shehzad Aslam Chaudhry as the new Pakistani High Commissioner to Sri Lanka in place of Col (retd) Bashir Wali Mohammed.

    Col. Wali Mohammed, a former Director of the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau and a former senior officer of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has completed his two-year tenure in Colombo.

    On August 14 he narrowly escaped an explosion which killed four commandos in his security detail. The Sri Lankan government blamed the LTTE for the attack, the first on a foreign ambassador in the conflict.

    Hours earlier the same day, SLAF bombers levelled a children’s home in Mullaitivu, killing 51 teenagers and four staff and wounding 150 more youngsters.

    “The posting of Air Vice-Marshal Shehzad Chaudhry, who had in the past handled air-mounted operations against the Baloch freedom-fighters, is expected to further step up the Pakistani involvement in [Sri Lanka’s] use of air strikes to subdue the LTTE and intimidate the Tamil population,” Mr. Raman says.

    “While India cannot justifiably object to it, the increasing involvement of Pakistan in the counter-insurgency operations is a matter of serious concern from the point of view of India’s national security,” Mr. Raman says.

    “The clandestine co-operation between the armed forces of Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which has been there even in the past, picked up momentum after an unpublicised visit by Gen. Mohammed Aziz Khan, then Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, to Colombo in September 2003,” Mr. Raman says.

    India had never objected in the past to the close military-military relations between Sri Lanka and Pakistan, but Gen. Aziz Khan’s secret visit upset Delhi, Raman says.

    This is because Gen. Aziz Khan “had co-ordinated Pakistan’s proxy war against India through various jihadi terrorist organisations [and] played an active role in the clandestine occupation of Indian territory in the Kargil”

    “Under the influence of the Pakistani advisers, the Sri Lankan Government’s counter-insurgency operations are becoming increasingly ruthless,” Mr. Raman says. “There have been many instances of targeted killing of innocent civilians through actions on the ground as well as from the air.”

    “This will only drive more Tamils into the arms of the LTTE,” he fears.

    “Since Mr. Rajapakse took over as the President in November last year, more innocent civilians have been killed by the Sri Lankan security forces than in the [recent] past.”

    “Pakistan, which has already been playing a discreet role in assisting the Sri Lankan security forces in their operations against the LTTE even before Mr.Rajapakse became the President, has further increased its involvement in the counter-insurgency operations [since November 2005],” Mr. Raman says.
  • 60,000 Tamils despair
    An estimated 60,000 Tamils displaced by Sri Lankan military attacks in the eastern province are caught in a humanitarian crisis which aid workers say is being deliberately deepened by the Colombo government. The most recent displacements in the east join tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes by military attacks in Vanni and the northern Jaffna.

    There are two aspects to the unfolding humanitarian crisis: the continued targeting of civilian areas by Sri Lankan military bombardment and the government’s blocking of relief agencies and emergency supplies to the displaced.

    Fighting since July has displaced over 200,000 people, nearly all Tamils, and international press reports quote local and international aid workers charging the government is intentionally limiting humanitarian access to the newly homeless.

    Last week, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), which has been in the front line of relief work in the Northeast, warned: “the current humanitarian situation in the NorthEast of Sri Lanka is reaching a critical stage.”

    “Humanitarian assistance to the recently displaced people by local NGOs, INGOs and even UN agencies has now been effectively shut down by the actions of members of the Sri Lankan security forces,” the TRO warned.

    The Sri Lankan government has “severely restricted, and in some cases enforced a complete embargo, on humanitarian aid to internally displaced persons who are fleeing the shelling and bombing,” the TRO protested.

    Jeevan Thiagarajah, executive director of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), an umbrella for international and local aid agencies in Sri Lanka, said many of the displaced are running low on food and water.

    “Part of warfare is to batter people psychologically, and physically prevent them from getting help,” Thiagarajah told the Associated Press.

    Other local and international NGOs have for several weeks been protesting the imposition of bureaucratic restrictions by the government.

    The government clamped down further in the wake of findings last week by international truce monitors that Sri Lankan troops massacred seventeen aid workers in the Trincomalee district. All the Action Contre La Faim (ACF) staffers except one – a Muslim – were Tamils.

    Aid workers have been targeted even before the massacre of the ACF staff. Seven TRO workers abducted by Army-backed paramilitaries in January are feared dead. TRO workers and some Tamils working with INGOs, particularly in the east, have been harassed by the security forces.

    “Even in a war, there are certain (groups) that are not touched, such as the Red Cross symbol and NGOs,” CHA’s Thiagarajah said.

    “[But in Sri Lanka] both have been blown off the road, literally,” he told the Associated Press.

    He cited two instances: on August 21 a Tamil working for the Red Cross was shot and killed in the northern district of Vavuniya and in early August, two ambulances ferrying wounded in Muttur, Trincomalee were blown off the road.

    Also in August, a claymore bomb destroyed an ambulance in LTTE-held Vanni, killing five medical workers, including a doctor. International truce monitors last week blamed SLA commandos for this and other attacks in Vanni.

    The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) described the execution-style killings of the ACF staffers in Muttur as “one of the most serious recent crimes against humanitarian aid workers worldwide.”

    But in a defiant response to international criticism stemming from the SLMM’s report, the Sri Lankan government enforced new controls on foreign aid workers, AFP reported last 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 (LTTE-controlled) east,” the official who declined to be named, said.

    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.

    Then there is the ad-hoc difficulty.

    At checkpoints into LTTE controlled areas in the North as well as the East troops demand that all vehicles and personnel travelling to LTTE controlled areas must have Ministry of Defence (MOD) clearance or permits.

    But when contacted by the TRO, the Ministry of Defence in Colombo insists that no permits are necessary and the MoD thus does not need to give any permission.

    “This has left [our] vehicles stuck at the checkpoints with no means of transporting vitally needed humanitarian relief to the IDPs,” the TRO said last week.

    The Sri Lankan government’s strategy towards relief work in Tamil areas was summed by Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, an NGO. He told AP: “there is a general climate that is hostile to non-governmental organizations working in the northeast and on the peace issue.”

    At a stroke the new government directive on permits for international NGO staff had drastically reduced the humanitarian assistance available to the growing numbers of displaced people.

    “Currently, due to the pullout of most international agencies from the NorthEast, [we are] one of a handful of organizations assisting those recently displaced by war,” the TRO said.

    Inevitably, the TRO has now become a target. Last week the government froze all the bank accounts of the charity, on the grounds of investigating the financing of terrorism.

    But no specific allegation has been leveled to support the government directive against the TRO, a registered charity in Sri Lanka which last year won the President’s award for tsunami reconstruction but which is repeatedly accused of being supportive or even linked to the LTTE.

    And neither had the TRO – which prides itself on being the most effective and one of the largest relief organization in the Northeast – been contacted by the government about any accusations or investigations.

    Even before heavy fighting broke out in the Maavil Aru area of Trincomalee on July 21 - when the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) began a major ground offensive against the Tamil Tigers –thousands of people had become displaced, dwindling the supplies of relief organizations.

    The escalation of violence this year has seen repeated waves of displacements Trincomalee and Batticaloa, spurred by regular bombardments by Sri Lankan artillery bases in the remote corners of the eastern districts.

    A long-standing undeclared embargo on building materials and other supplies on LTTE controlled areas, particularly in the east, has prevented the regeneration of civil infrastructure while the gradual destruction of further residential areas has thus resulted in those fleeing becoming long-term displaced.

    Since shortly after the December 2004 tsunami, Sri Lanka’s military in the east has maintained an unofficial blockade on cement and other building materials, as well as on supplies for agriculture and other requirements for tens of thousands of post-ceasefire returnees in LTTE controlled areas.

    Grievances over the 18-month economic blockade on cement and fuel entering LTTE-controlled areas led directly to the water dispute at Maavil Aru, which provided, what some analysts say, a pretext for a planned SLA offensive.

    Indeed mass displacements have occurred in Trincomalee since April 25 when Sri Lankan jets and artillery pounded several villages in Sampoor and Eacchilampatru.

    Tens of thousands of people fled their homes, many of which were destroyed by the bombardments, preventing their return. Fifteen people were killed and 25 wounded.

    Since then there have been several bombardments of LTTE-held parts of the district, resulting in further displacements and destruction of homes.

    With the latest Sri Lankan military onslaught into the Sampoor area, displaced numbers have swollen to a staggering 50,000 from Trincomalee – along with 6-10,000 people from northern Batticaloa.

    The TRO is assisting the displaced families in Kandalady (982), Vammivedduvan (2934), Vaharai (1764), Kathiraveli (1999), Palsenai (843), Verukal (1802) and Kathiraveli (1999).

    Among them are almost 1,500 infants under a year old and over 3,600 other children under the age of 5.

    This week, amid reports violence in the Trincomalee is easing, Sri Lankan artillery bombarded southern parts of the district, killing five displaced people and wounding dozens more.

    “There is a desperate need [in the Northeast], recognized by all who are involved in humanitarian work,” the TRO said.

    “The international [humanitarian] community is being prevented from responding effectively, the TRO said. “We fear that humanitarian services are being used as a weapon of war in violation of the rules of international law.”
  • No Fear
    The arrests in the United States and Canada last month of a handful of Tamil expatriates in connection with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) shocked the Tamil Diaspora communities there and elsewhere. Those arrested were charged with a number of crimes, including attempting to buy missiles and rifles for the LTTE and, incredibly, with attempting to bribe US officials to lift the ban on the LTTE. The strength of the cases against the individuals concerned will, quite rightly, no doubt be tested in court in the fullness of time.
     
    But one side effect of the shock has been to make some Tamil political activists and supporters of the Tamil struggle cause anxious about their own well-being in the West. The lurid reporting in the mainstream US and Canadian – and of course Sri Lankan - press of the arrests has fuelled this.
     
    The anxiety is understandable, but entirely unwarranted. Thousands of expatriate Tamils around the world are engaged, entirely legally, in political activity to promote the Tamil cause and, in particular, to highlight the grievances and sufferings of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. In none of the countries where the LTTE is banned has such politically activity been deemed illegal. Indeed, in the United States, it is not illegal to extend political support to the LTTE or even to raise the Tamil Eelam flag - as the US embassy in Colombo spelled out last month. It is illegal, however, to provide funding or weapons.
     
    Expatriate Tamils around the world should not be put off political activity by the arrests of the handful of expatriates last month. Let’s be clear: the individuals concerned were found to have broken specific laws in the US and Canada. The charges are purchasing weapons and attempting to bribe state officials. Whether the charges are warranted or not will be decided in court. But these charges have nothing to do with the rest of the Diaspora. The overwhelming majority of Tamil Diaspora political activists are not engaged in such activities and the overwhelming majority of Tamils in the Diaspora are law-abiding citizens.
     
    But that is not to say they are politically inactive, either. What constitutes ‘support’ for the LTTE in countries where it is banned is a question of what the law says, not the media or amateur commentators. The ban on the LTTE in US, Canada, UK and other European countries is framed under different pieces of legislation, setting out different restrictions and permissible conduct for citizens or residents. Tamil expatriates must make themselves thoroughly aware of what exactly they are allowed and not allowed to do – and continue to be politically active. None of the Western democracies are demanding Tamils simply withdraw from the public sphere. On the contrary, as with other citizens, naturalised or otherwise, we are expected to participate in public politics.
     
    We should therefore not be deterred by high-profile incidents like the arrests last week from promoting the legitimate grievances of our people in the West and elsewhere. The imprecise, emotive and sinister connotations of the term ‘terrorism’ should not frighten us into simply withdrawing from civil politics – though that’s what the enemies of the Tamil cause desperately want. It should compel us to understand the law and pursue our cause more vigorously, so that that we resist the wider criminalisation of the Tamil community and its legitimate political0 demands.
     
    As some Tamil activists in Canada forcefully pointed out in the aftermaths of the arrests last month, the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka is not framed by the question of ‘terrorism’, as Sinhala nationalists, the Sri Lankan states, and the LTTE’s ideological opponents abroad argue. Rather, the ethnic problem is framed by that of racial subjugation and oppression. It is this oppression by the Sinhala-dominated state that since the early eighties compelled so many of us to flee our homeland initially in quiet unnoticed departures and later in panic-stricken and desperate efforts to get out.
     
    And this oppression continues unabated today in more virulent and destructive forms. It is the vicious violence and racial contempt of the Sri Lankan state and significant sections of the Sinhala polity and populace which continues to fuel the conflict and thwart its resolution. All of us with a natural sympathy and affection for the Tamils of Sri Lanka owe it them – and ourselves – to become increasingly politically active and ensure their case is articulated in the West.
     
    Those who would deny the Tamils their rights use the language of terrorism to demonise and discredit our legitimate grievances. But self-determination, homeland and nation are not facets of terrorism. These are the pillars on which our people’s identity rests. And they are not illegal concepts which we should shirk from defending or promoting, especially in the democracies of the West.
  • Just not good enough
    In the past two weeks there has been a chorus of international protest against some of the Sri Lankan state’s abuses: extra-judicial executions, disappearances, aerial bombing of civilian targets, have all drawn criticism. Understandably, many Tamils have expressed their appreciation for this willingness on the part of some international actors to speak out.
     
    But herein lies the problem. We should not be grateful that they take the trouble. Because these same actors, well meaning or otherwise, that condemn Sri Lanka’s recent atrocities have, over the years, never accorded the same rights to the Tamils that they take for granted for their own national communities, be they American, Canadian, British or European.
     
    Take for example the French Canadians. When the people of Quebec aspired to liberation from a broader Canada, they simply held a referendum. Even though the majority of Quebequois voted ‘No’ in 1980 and 1995, new legislation was introduced to allow future referendums (in case the Quebequois eventually changed their minds).
     
    In the case of the Tamils, the international organisations and the governments of the United States, Japan and the European Union (the ‘Co-chairs’) have set far lower standards. And have consistently failed to meet these.
     
    But even on simple issues – human rights, say – the Tamils are accorded much less.
     
    For example UNESCO condemned the murder last month, in Sri Lankan army controlled Jaffna, of the editor of the Tamil language Namathu Eelanadu (‘Our Eelam Nation’). But the UN agencies have previously consistently ignored the killing of Tamil journalists. BBC correspondent Mylvaganam Nimalrajan was shot dead by pro-government paramilitaries in late 2000. So was popular Virakesari columnist Aiyathurai Nadesan. The most well known Tamil analyst, Dharmeratnam Sivaram (also editor of TamilNet) was abducted from a Colombo street and murdered one night in May 2005. In all these cases, UNESCO said nothing.
     
    In the past year, all the major Tamil newspapers have seen their offices searched and their staff targetted by pro-Colombo forces. If the standard is to prevent the abduction or killing of journalists then the UN agencies have been shockingly silent when it comes to Tamil ones.
     
    Last week the United Nations also condemned the execution, by the Sri Lankan Army, of seventeen staff of French aid agency ‘Action Contre Le Faim.’ All but one (an ethnic Muslim) were Tamils.
     
    But no such international outrage was expressed when seven workers of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), a Tamil Diaspora funded aid agency were abducted by Army-backed paramilitaries in January 2006.
     
    They are still missing. But there has been no investigation. And unlike the hand wringing that followed the massacre of the ACF staff, the TRO disappearances brought no international demands for an investigation.
     
    The North East Secretariat for Human Rights (NESOHR), headed by Rev. Fr Karunarathnam, has seen two of its founding members murdered in the few years since its inception.
     
    If the international standard is that state-backed forces cannot abduct and murder aid and human rights workers then the international silence over Sri Lanka has consistently been deafening.
     
    Last month 55 Tamil schoolgirls were killed when the Sri Lanka Air Force bombed the Sencholai girls’ home in Mullaitive. UNICEF issued a vague statement criticising the deaths – but avoided even mentioning the words ‘air force.’
     
    And this is not the first time a Tamil school has been targeted by the air force. Nagerkoil school was bombed in September 1995 with scores of kids being killed. There has never been an investigation, and little international pressure for one. Not even from UNICEF.
     
    Tamil students in Jaffna have regularly been arrested by the Sri Lankan armed forces. In one infamous case, 18-year old Krishanti Jumanarswamy was raped and murdered. Jaffna University has been attacked by troops several times last year; its lecturers and students assaulted and injured. Five Advanced-level students were executed by soldiers on a Trincomalee beach in January this year.
     
    UNICEF, UNESCO and the governments that funded them have remained silent on all these. If the international standard is that children should not be at risk from a state’s armed forces, then, as far as Tamil children are concerned, the international community has consistently ignored this standard.
     
    And it is not simply a case of apathy on the part of the international community. Many international actors are also hostile and obstructive towards the Tamils own efforts at self-help.
     
    In a recent discussion with Brad Adams, Director of the New York based Lobbying group, Human Rights Watch I pointed out that his agency was creating a political environment which was inherently hostile to all Tamil Diaspora fund raising, including for tsunami reconstruction and emergency relief for internally displaced through organisations such as the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO).
     
    He blithely responded that the Diaspora Tamils should donate to the ICRC instead. Never mind that many international organisations use up as much as 40% of donations on overheads whereas the TRO, staffed by volunteers, uses less than 5%. Never mind that with international agencies, one’s money goes to a general pool from which it will be allocated around the world as they please. Never mind that the TRO has shown itself, in the Tsunami crisis to be simply the most capable NGO on the ground in the Northeast.
     
    And, above all, never mind that, fundamentally any humanitarian NGO should have the same protection irrespective of the ethnicity of its staff. But clearly this standard does not extend to the TRO.
     
    Whilst lecturing the Tamils on their ‘lack of capacity,’ foreign governments, including the United States, where Human Rights Watch is primarily based, have been fostering a culture of dependency on international agencies. Simultaneously, they have actively campaigned against Tamil Diaspora fund raising - in effect, destroying our own capacity for self-help.
     
    The tragic effects are endured only by the Tamils of the Northeast. And this week those effects are particularly acute.
     
    While trucks loaded with supplies from the ICRC and the UN are blocked at Sri Lanka Army checkpoints, frightened by the violence, both the UN and the ICRC have threatened withdraw staff over safety concerns. Other INGOs have already deserted Army-controlled Jaffna.
     
    The TRO, more than any other NGO, has also lost staff – and that too amid a disgraceful international silence. But the TRO does not threaten to leave. It has, instead, reiterated its commitment to a grateful people.
     
    Meanwhile the international strategy of demonising Diaspora fund raising has come home to roost in the freezing of TRO funds by the Sri Lankan Central Bank last week. Without the climate of hostility towards Tamil fundraising engendered by the United States and its international partners, such a blatant seizure of Tamil money would not be possible.
     
    As such, we don’t need to be grateful for the belated – and occasionally half-hearted – protests that some international actors have been compelled to utter recently.
     
    Instead we should view with contempt how little these international actors have knowingly done for us.
     
    We should instead be grateful for our own: the journalists who fearlessly reported on the Sri Lankan state’s atrocities against our people, the aid workers who, with equal disregard for their own safety, tend to the needs of our people under attack by the state’s armed forces and for the political activists who strive to ensure our ‘legitimate grievances’ –which the international community occasionally mentions in between sermons on terrorism – are pursued against the hostility of the international community.
  • Watching the watchdog: the politics of extrajudicial killings
     
    In the wake of the execution-style killings last month of 17 aid workers by Sri Lankan government forces, three United Nations Special Rapporteurs (Special Representative of the Secretary-General) jointly sought an immediate and independent investigation into the atrocity. They also demanded the perpetrators be brought to justice.
     
    Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) supervising the 2002 truce blamed the Sri Lankan military for the massacre of the 16 Tamils and 1 Muslim aid workers of Action Contre Le Faim (Action Against Hunger).
     
    “The deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers is a serious violation of the basic principles of international human rights and humanitarian law and the Declaration of Human Rights Defenders,” a UN statement said afterwards.
     
    But the UN statement was a significant departure from the organisation’s usual silence on the extrajudicial killings of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces.
     
    The UN has pointedly ignored, for example, the disappearance in January of seven aid workers of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation - for which Army-backed paramilitaries are blamed.
     
    Similarly, when Mr. Joseph Pararajasingham, a senior Tamil parliamentarian and a founder-member of the North East Secretariat For Human Rights (NESOHR), was gunned down, also by suspected Army-backed paramilitaries, in Church during 2005 Christmas Mass the UN was silent.
     
    Last month’s massacre of the seventeen aid workers was different for two reasons. Firstly the victims worked for an international – i.e. a French – aid group, not a Tamil one. Secondly, the UN’s own aid agencies are working in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. A dangerous precedent has been set by the massacre, which if unchallenged, threatens the protection of the UN’s own workers globally.
     
    Notably, the three Rapporteurs who issued the statement were those concerned with ‘Human Rights Defenders’, Hina Jilani, ‘the Right to Food’, Jean Ziegler, and ‘Extrajudicial, arbitrary and summary executions’, Philip Alston.
     
    The first two represent divisions of the UN which are involved, like ACF, in Food and Human Rights work: their concern is as much for the precedents set for their own work globally as much as for the Tamil people.
     
    Dr Alston, on the other hand, has a mandate that is specifically focussed on extrajudicial executions. Nevertheless, this is the very first time that he has issued a strong statement on the execution of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military.
     
    Dr Alston issued another statement this month, again recommending an international human rights monitoring body.
     
    “The situation in Sri Lanka has deteriorated significantly since I visited Sri Lanka (at the end of 2005). Recent events have confirmed the dynamics of human rights abuse identified in my report and demonstrate the urgent need for an international human rights monitoring mission,” he said.
     
    In Sri Lanka, he argued, “civilians are not simply caught in the crossfire of the conflict: Rather, civilians are intentionally targeted for strategic reasons.”
     
    Dr Alston’s new observations are remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, arbitrary executions by Sri Lankan government forces of Tamil civilians were not identified as a serious problem in his April 2006 report on Sri Lanka. In fact, it was a glaring, and seemingly quite deliberate omission.
     
    So while it is true to say that things have become worse since his last trip, it is not true for him to say that recent events confirm his report.
     
    On the contrary, if his 2006 had been more accurate to start with, and if he had properly addressed the extra-judicial executions by the Sri Lankan armed forces as an area of concern, dynamics to prevent the massacre of the Action Conte Le Faim aid workers may even have been set in potion.
     
    Particularly as, to use Dr. Alston’s own words, the massacre of the aid workers are a quintessential example of where “civilians are intentionally targeted for strategic reasons.”
     
    If Dr. Alston had followed his own reasoning with concrete action within his considerable capacity, the Sri Lanka government would have understood, back in January 2006, when its military ‘disappeared’ TRO workers that the killing of aid workers is not an acceptable strategy. Notably, Amnesty International called in March for the protection of TRO workers.
     
    But if did not address extra-judicial executions of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan military, what did Dr. Alston’s report look at? Under the heading dynamics and causes of post cease fire killings, he has four headings (excluding two introductory general sections) as follows: ‘Tamil political parties and paramilitaries, the Karuna split, the use of civilian proxies by the LTTE, killings to control the Tamil population.’
     
    In the first of these he argues that it is simplistic to consider the non-LTTE groups as paramilitaries, since they may be doing legitimate political work. Consequently he is concerned that the LTTE is wrongfully targeting them, thereby preventing Tamils from expressing a diverse set of opinions.
     
    Under the second heading a similar logic is applied but specifically to the Karuna group. Sr. Alston argues that the group represents a political reality that now needs to be taken into account because, he says, the government may be unable to disarm the Karuna group, regardless of the government’s obligations to do so under the terms of the ceasefire.
     
    On the other hand, as the third heading suggests, Dr Alston believes the LTTE also has proxies, but these proxies can be controlled by the LTTE, unlike the government, which, according to him, cannot control its paramilitary proxies.
     
    But the main focus of Mr. Alston’s work comes under the final section: ‘killings to control the Tamil population.’ Essentially, Dr. Alston says, it is the LTTE and not the government which is killing most Tamil civilians, because it sees them as ‘traitors’.
     
    Astonishingly, Dr Alston doesn’t include under ‘killings to control the Tamil population’ any of the murders by the Sri Lankan military of pro-Tamil intelligentsia including politicians, journalists, civil society activists, etc. The executions of Tamilnet editor Dharmeratnam Sivaram and many other prominent Tamil journalists, Tamil parliamentarians such as Pararajasingham and a number of pro-Eelam civil society activists are ignored in the analysis.
     
    Neither does Dr. Alston include in this category, the targeted killings of family members of LTTE fighters.
     
    Neither does he consider the rape and murder of Tharsini (December 2005), the torture and massacre of entire families, including young children, killings of five students executed on a beach in Trincomalee, and the numerous disappearances painstakingly documented by the NESOHR and the Human Rights Commission.
     
    Indeed, Dr Alston completely ignores those murders whose sole purpose is to demoralise and terrorise the Tamil population.
     
    Meanwhile, Dr Alston’s seven-day itinerary shows he gathered evidence in Amparai, Batticaloa, Colombo and Kilinocchi.
     
    But unsurprisingly, for some one who was there at the invitation of the Sri Lankan government, Dr. Alston did not bother to visit Army-controlled Jaffna peninsula, where the vast majority of extra judicial executions of Tamil civilians had taken place.
     
    It is arguable that if Dr Alston had done his job in January and raised the scrutiny and pressure on Sri Lanka’s government, many of the recent events such as the disappearances and executions of hundreds of people this year as well as the massacre of the aid workers may have been precluded.
     
    But by his strategic omissions, Dr. Alston in fact signalled tacit international approval for the armed forces to murder Tamil civilians whom they saw as viable targets: aid workers who help Tamil refugees, journalists who report on rights violations, Parliamentarian who argue for the Tamil cause and so on.
     
    The core of Dr. Alston’s political values and professional focus is revealed in his latest statement.
     
    “As it stands,” he says, “no outside observer could wish rule by the LTTE on the entire Tamil community, much less on the Sinhalese and the Muslims of the North and East.”
     
    As far as he is concerned, it is not what the Tamil people would wish for that matters. Outside observers, such as he, the UN Special Rappateur who visits the island at the government’s invitation every couple of years for a few days; and who cannot be bothered to visit key Tamil areas where the extrajudicial killings he is meant to report on are taking place, will decide what the Tamils should or shouldn’t want.
     
    Dr Alston’s April report makes clear his core view: the Tamil people should accept rule by the majority Sinhala government and wait patiently for two things: firstly that competent authorities such as himself will eventually suggest to Colombo it should desist from extra-judicial killings; and secondly, that the Tamils should then wait for the Sri Lankan government to reform itself.
     
    But we’ll need to wait another two years before he comes along to take a look - on our behalf, naturally.
  • The Crunch
    When the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed in February 2002 by the Liberation Tigers and the Sri Lankan government, there were good reasons to believe it would last longer than previous truces. The most important aspect of this truce was the role of the international community. It was not only the transparency accorded by the Nordic-staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), but the sense amongst many in Sri Lanka that the international community was underwriting the truce - as well as the wider peace process. The emergence of the self-appointed 'Co-Chairs' in 2003 was arguably an explicit acceptance of this role. And despite the oft-stated mantra that it was up to the two protagonists to solve the ethnic question, the international community has intervened time and again to pursue its vision of the end result. It did so with a barely disguised bias towards the state. This bias, moreover, was often - and still is - justified on the basis of the interests of the 'peoples of Sri Lanka.'
     
    Yet today the international community has repeatedly failed to discharge the responsibilities it claimed for itself. The CFA is in tatters. Both sides may express commitment to 2002 agreement, but a state of undeclared war exists. The fiction is maintained by the international community also. International diplomacy is today centred on 'saving' the truce. To some extent, this is understandable; any peace process must rest on a stable ceasefire. But throughout this year the violence has escalated as the international community has watched. The talks in Geneva afforded a short pause, but the 'shadow war' grew in intensity and exploded into direct confrontations. There has always been a depressing inevitability to this, not least due to international inaction. The fact is the international community simply has no response to when the Sri Lankan state is the aggressor.
     
    The Sri Lankan military's invasion and occupation of LTTE-controlled Sampoor is a new rubicon in this sorry decline. Even when Colombo launched its first offensive on LTTE-controlled parts of Trincomalee on July 21 (four months after it began bombarding the region) the international community was conspicuously silent. The first call for restraint only came on the day the LTTE struck back, overrunning government-controlled Muttur. Norway, spearheading international peace making efforts, demanded both sides return to their borders as of February 2002.
     
    But the occupation of Sampur marks the first forcible occupation of territory since the truce. And it has taken place at a horrendous civilian cost. An estimated 60,000 Tamils are displaced in the east. The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of Muslims there also and tens of thousands more people in Kilinochchi and Jaffna. Sri Lanka's justification of this onslaught - that it was necessary to protect Trincomalee harbour - is utterly spurious. By the same logic, any offensive against LTTE can be justified - to safeguard Batticaloa, Jaffna, Vavuniya, even Colombo. What does the CFA mean then?
     
    Expectations of the international community have never been greater than now. The question is what value can be placed on the international promises which have underpinned the peace process thus far. Can the international community get Sri Lanka to respect the CFA? Can it ensure the over 200,000 people displaced in the recent violence receive desperately needed help, despite Sri Lanka's punitive blockade on relief agencies and supplies? Press reports say the Co-Chairs are scheduled to meet next week. In the meantime, large numbers of people, mainly Tamils, are caught in a humanitarian crisis which has been deliberately engineered by Sri Lanka. The dynamics of the infamous 'war for peace' have resumed in earnest.
     
    Amid all this is the war psychosis that has gripped the Sinhala people. A barely disguised supremacist nationalism is now rampant, fuelled most by the Sri Lankan state itself. Emboldened by a sense the Liberation Tigers are weak, the entire Sinhala nation is adopting bellicose and aggressive stances on the peace process. Even the darlings of the international community, the opposition United National Party has hailed President Mahinda Rajapakse's military onslaught against Sampoor - instead of condemning it for the blatant breach of the CFA that it is.
     
    And where now the talk of pluralism, federalism and liberal values that the international community has long advocated for Sri Lanka? This moment of poised Sinhala mobilization is why every previous agreement of the past sixty years with the Tamils has collapsed.
    Except this time, it is the international community - which, at the outset, pointedly usurped the LTTE's claim to speak for the Tamils - on which the greatest expectations have been placed.
  • In memory of the lives lost at Sencholai
    Milk and clear honey, wild rice and lentil
    These tasty four have I fed thee
    So hear me, beloved

    I made glitter the floor of thy home
    With garland of flame lily adorned thee
    I have lit the lamps of thy mother
    Begged her for an auspicious marriage

    Kali, the demon-slayer, demanded
    Her sacrifice of innocent blood
    She dances on my girl companions
    Mother, we are thine

    Let them not mourn me
    For I have been as the grass, the worm,
    the slug, rooted as a tree
    in this land where the old gods roam

    For all these reasons, beloved
    Fan out thy elephant ears
    Open thy slumbering eyes
    Concentrate on my prayer

    Make speedy as light thy law
    May the boomrang of action begin
    May I see the circle complete
    the universe reverberate thy voice

    Measure out our lives in spoonfuls,
    The madness of our mothers,
    Our broken fathers, the village elders
    Who must outlive the last child

    Forget not for any his portion
    All action has consequence
    Each step makes marks, before and after
    Measure with diligence

    Portions for the global politicians
    For the airmen, the gunmen, the suppliers of munitions,
    For the newsmen who will deny us,
    The bureaucrats who will not confirm us

    All good men who look the other way
    May they know, the madness of our mothers,
    Our broken fathers, our hollowed elders
    May we see the circle complete

    Forgive me that I do not forgive
    May the wheel turn for me again
    Thou art light beyond all imagination
    Mercy is thy form

    May he who dances for the world
    Dance for me,
    Show me the worlds that I do not know
    Beloved, lets do it now.
  • Race War
    August has been the bloodiest month in Sri Lanka for five years. Hundreds of combatants have been killed and many more wounded in heavy fighting on the Jaffna peninsula. As was the case during President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s infamous ‘war for peace’ the details are obscured, but what is clear is that the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Liberation Tigers have clashed substantially. War reporting is a difficult matter, particularly when the battlefield is inaccessible and both sides are revealing little. But nonetheless, the fighting has dominated the headlines. The unfortunate consequence of that is the fascination with casualty figures and maps has obscured another grim consequence of Sri Lanka’s armed forces going to war: at least 160,000 civilians have been displaced, hundreds have been killed and many more are wounded.

    Whilst trotting out the tired counter-insurgency rhetoric of ‘hearts and minds’ and a glib insistence that Tigers, not Tamils, are the target, Sri Lanka’s military has always been ready to punish the Tamils for the LTTE’s violence. There are several reasons for this. Some argue that the state is fuelled by a ‘just war’ mentality - ‘in defence of the Dharma’, as one respected academic put it. This goes back to the Mahavamsa and posits the Tamils as brazen interlopers on Sinhala soil. Of late, many international voices have been muttering about language rights and anti-discrimination measures as a step - in their misguided view, a big one - towards getting Tamils and the Sinhala-dominated state to accept each other. But the Tamils know it runs much deeper than that. The post-independence history of ethnic relations in the island is one framed by a paranoid, bitter majoritarian loathing of the non-Sinhala minority. It began with the 1956 Sinhala Only and is today enshrined in a majoritarian constitution, a racist bureaucracy and chauvinistic military.

    This is why, despite its Buddhist pretensions, the Sinhala state invariably and swiftly resorts to a strategy of collective punishment when faced with what- in moments of forgetful sincerity - it calls ‘Tamil terrorism.’ Embargos on entire districts, bombardments of whole villages and towns, massacres of entire neighborhoods, pogroms. These are the tools Sri Lanka’s state intuitively deploys against the Tamils. The racism is manifest even in peace, though the starry-eyed peaceniks refuse to acknowledge the signs: the police statements in Sinhala the Tamils have to sign, the ready demand Tamil households - not all Sri Lankans, just the interlopers - must register at the local station. Even the Sri Lankan military’s websites publish in English and Sinhala only.

    The massive forced displacements of the past month, and the earlier waves that began in April, have all been directed to punish the upstart Tamils for defying Sinhala rule. Some Tamil writers have again raised the charge of genocide. How else to describe a strategy of driving 160,000 Tamils from their homes and then denying them access to food and clean water? How else to describe the readiness with which heavy artillery and air strikes are unleashed against Tamil villages, places of worship and children’s homes? And what other logic can underpin the blocking of aid convoys to the displaced Tamils or the massacre of aid workers seeking to help?

    Amidst the international hand wringing over the slide back to war and natural prejudice against the LTTE that has underpinned so much patently useless analysis over the past few years, the reasons for the present escalation have been forgotten. Sri Lanka’s military started this war. It did so most openly on July 21 with a major ground offensive under the pretext of a closed water sluice, of all things. But that clash is the culmination of a three year cycle of shadow violence that has steadily grown in intensity.

    The simple fact is that Sri Lanka’s government doesn’t give a damn for international opinion. For a very good reason: the state will always be backed, irrespective of its infractions. Peace conditionality collapsed because the international community gave itself too many excuses. Unfort-unately that has left the Tamil community as exposed (as it always was) to Sri Lanka’s racist ambitions. The violence will now soar. Sri Lanka, unfettered by notions of ‘legitimacy’ will prosecute the war. The LTTE will strike back. It is no good lamenting the slide to the war or calling for both sides to ceasefire. The international community must restrain the state.

    Above all, it is the policy of collective punishment that must be stopped. Else Sri Lanka will establish its own norms and develop its own local dynamics. Internat-ional humanitarian law and other international norms will dissolve in a mutually intelligible cycle of atrocity amongst the island’s communities.
  • Low intensity violence continues
    August 20

    A Sri Lankan Police Sergeant was injured in a claymore blast at Saalambaikulam, Vavuniya. The claymore was fixed to bicycle, targeting the police patrol.

    Gunmen riding a motorbike shot and killed a Sri Lanka Red Cross (SLRC) employee, Nagarasa Thavaranjitham, 24, at his residence in Chettikulam, Vavuniya. The motive behind the killing of Mr. Thavaranjitham, a long time employee of the SLRC, is not known.

    Unidentified men shot dead a Tamil trader, Vasthiampillai Arul, 40, in the Grand Bazaar area in Trincomalee town. Assailants on a motorbike called out the trader from the shop and shot him in his head. The trader is the brother of a senior LTTE commander, Col. Sornam.

    Gunmen shot and killed Subramaniam Chelvakumar, 18, a day before his planned wedding. The gunmen took him from his house in Vinayagapuram, Valaichchenai, shot him dead and placed a note beside his body labelling him “traitor,” according to the Police. “Ellalan Force” has claimed responsibility for the killing, Police said.

    Sri Lanka Army (SLA) troopers and police cordoned off and searched several villages falling within the Valaichchenai police division in Batticaloa, arresting more than 200 Tamil men. The arrested residents were taken to Kalmadu SLA camp where they were photographed and interrogated. Many were later released but the SLA continues to hold an unknown number. The areas cordoned and searched were the villages of Puthukudiyiruppu, Pethalai, Vinayagapuram, Union colony, Valaichchenai, Kurinchinagar, Maruthanagar, Pandimadu, Kalmadu and Kannaki Kiramam.

    The managing director of the Jaffna Tamil daily “Namathu Eelanadu” and the veteran chairman of Multi-Purpose Co-operative Society (MPCS) in Tellippalai, Jaffna, Sinnathamby Sivamaharajah, 68, was shot and killed at his temporary residence 300 metres inside the SLA High Security Zone (HSZ) in Tellippalai. Mr. Sivamaharajah is a former Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) parliamentarian and a senior member of Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), the main constituent party of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).

    August 19

    Unidentified gunmen shot and killed Karuneeswaran Kandeepan, 23, at Ellapar Maruthankulam, Vavuniya. Kandeepan was riding a bicycle towards his house in Asikulam when he was killed.

    Unidentified gunmen fired at a police party at Kurumankadu, Vavuniya. Two AK rifles were recovered during the subsequent search of the area. About 75 SLA soldiers and police personnel cordoned off Kurumankadu and conducted a house-to-house search operation.

    The mutilated body of Pushparaja Suthan, 18, a mason from Thiraimadu, with stab wounds in the neck and abdomen was found in near clock tower in Kallady, Batticaloa.

    Four young men were shot dead by gunmen in the Jaffna Peninsula after curfew was relaxed in the Valikamam sector. Nageswaran Mayoorathan, 24, was shot dead at Aarukal Madam in Aanaikoddai. Sooriyapatham Mayurathan, 26, a trader, was shot dead near Nallur temple. Balasubramanium Raju, 25, was shot dead at Koddady near Jaffna town. Another unidentified young man was shot dead at Kasthuriyar road, near Jaffna Hindu College.

    SLA soldiers cordoned off and arrested three brothers from their house in Punkudutheevu, an islet north of Jaffna. However, the SLA’s Civil Administration authorities have informed the relatives that they do not have any information about the arrest of brothers Wincent Natpirathapan, 28, Wincent Maxi, 24 and Wincent Jeyaprathapan, 17, a pupil of Punkudutheevu Mahavidyalayam.

    August 18

    A trader was shot and killed in Thalankuda, Batticaloa by unknown gunmen. Maniam Nallaiya, 47, was sleeping in his shop at Thalankuda main road when he was shot with a 9mm pistol. Maniam who owned the business, was living in the shop premises with his wife and three children.

    Gunmen shot dead a Tamil civilian at Vinayagapuram in Valaichchenai, Batticaloa. The victim has been identified as Poopalapillai Koneswaran, 45, a father of four. A note signed ‘Ellalan Padai’ was found near Koneswaran’s body. Gunmen went to his house and took him to Koraweli temple and shot him. Koneswaran was abducted five months ago and was released recently. His son who was earlier in Karuna paramilitary group was also shot dead by unidentified gunmen.

    A large number of SLA soldiers surrounded Jaffna University, broke open the office of the Jaffna University Students Federation, arrested a student activist and took away the computers and documents, while a curfew was being strictly observed. Hundreds of SLA troops arrived at the scene, asked the employees to gather in a certain spot, searched every nook and corner thoroughly, and even broke open some closed doors. The troops arrested T. Paherathan, 24, a 3rd year student from Mullaithivu reading Arts.

    SLA soldiers shot and killed two men in their early thirties in Vadamaradchy East, Jaffna. The killing comes in the wake of the increased activity by the SLA in Karaveddy area.

    Four unidentified armed men burnt down the warehouse of the Uthayan, the Jaffna Tamil daily, while a curfew was in force. The warehouse is located along Rasa Veethi in Kopay. Armed men set fire to the warehouse Friday night after ordering the watcher to move away. The watcher was blindfolded and his hands tied and the men ordered the watcher to keep quiet or he would be shot.

    August 17

    Sixteen Tamil civilians were arrested by SLA soldiers conducting a cordon and search operation in Chavakachcheri, Jaffna. About five thousand civilians were taken to Chavakachcheri Hindu College and were produced before a masked man who identified the sixteen civilians. They were detained in the Varani SLA camp. Relations of the arrested civilians immediately lodged complaints with the Jaffna regional office of the Human Rights Commission.

    Sugunaraja Nimalan, 26, was shot dead at Kottai Rasa Veethi junction by gunmen while a group of SLA soldiers were conducting search operation about one hundred-meters away from the site.

    The body of teacher R. Sureshkumar, 33, was recovered from Irupalai, Jaffna, and handed to the Jaffna teaching hospital.

    August 16

    Three Tamil youths were shot dead by the Special Task Force (STF), the elite counter-insurgency arm of the Sri Lankan police, in a cordon and search operation in Akkaraipattu, Amparai district. The STF and Police claimed that the youths were attempting to lob a grenade at them. The three youths were identified as M. Mathavarajah, 22 of Murakoddanchenai in Batticaloa district, C. Vinayagamoorthy, 23 of Alayadivembu and V. Vadivel, 23 of Ward 8, Akkaraipattu in Amparai.

    August 15

    Nine Muslim civilians buying provisions and a Policeman on guard duty near the Oddamavadi Bridge were injured when two assailants riding a motorbike hurled a hand grenade targeting the policemen at Oddamavadi Public Market in Valaichchenai. The injured Policeman, M. Nilantha, 34, and bystanders A. Sihamudeen, 15, M. Subair, 18, M. A. Mohammad Safeek ,32, Mohammad Abusali 36, Usanar Makkem, 36, M. I. Ahamed Lebbai, 43, M. Ismail, 48, A. Ismail, 80 and M. Meera Lebbai, 83 were admitted to hospital.

    The mutilated body of a fisherman, with stab wounds in neck and abdomen area, was recovered in a stream by the Lagoon in Veddaththimunai, Oddamavadi by Valaichchenai Police. Kanthasamy Thiruvesvaran, 28, a father of two, from Kinnayady, Valaichchenai regularly goes fishing in the lagoon from Kinnayady to Oddamavadi. He disappeared after setting out to fish on 13 August at 8.30 pm.

    Unidentified armed men forcibly entered a house in Mavadivembu village, Eravur, and indiscriminately fired at a family, killing a one and half year old baby boy and injuring his father and mother. The dead child has been identified Nimalan Nilukjan and the injured father Kandiah Nimalan, 22, and mother Jegatheesan Jeyamalar, 19.

    SLA soldiers fired at a delivery van of the Uthayan at Puthur junction near Atchchuveli, killing the newspaper agent. The delivery van was on its way after distributing parcels of the Uthayan newspaper during the relaxation of the curfew. The victim, the driver and agent, was identified as Sathasivam Baskaran, 44. He is the fourth employee of the Uthayan newspaper to be slain in the recent past. One employee working in Sudar Oli, sister paper of Uthayan was killed in Colombo and two others in Jaffna recently in its Jaffna office.

    Two motorbike gunmen gunned down a final-year medical student and a passed out student awaiting convocation near the Jaffna University hostel inside the campus. Medical faculty final year student Sivasankar and Theepan, currently studying at the Technical College, were walking towards the student hostel when motorbike gunmen opened fire using an automatic rifle.

    A body of an unidentified youth, with gun shot wounds, whose face was burnt with tyres to hide his identification, was found at Potpathy Road, Kokkuvil, Jaffna, in front of the LTTE’s former Cultural Wing office. Local residents alerted the Jaffna Magistrate after hearing gunshots and noticing an object burning the previous night.

    August 14

    55 schoolgirls were killed and over 150 injured when Sri Lankan airforce jets dropped 16 bombs on the children’s home they were gathered at for a first aid workshop (see pages 8, 9, 10 and 15).

    Seven persons, including four special commandos of Special Diplomatic Security Unit, providing escort to the vehicle of Pakistani High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, were killed in a three-wheeler explosion that targeted the military convoy in the heart of Colombo city (see box story 11).

    An unidentified assailant, using a 9mm pistol, shot dead H. Puyalavan, 22, a resident of Kallady, Uppodai, Batticaloa. His body was taken to the Batticaloa Hospital for post-mortem examinations.

    Police Sergeant M. Vijayaratne, 38, was injured when unknown gunmen hurled hand grenades at the Chenkalady Police Post located near the Eravur Pattu Divisional Secretariat.

    Gunmen attacked the STF sentry point at Semmankulam, Mannar. In the retaliatory fire by the STF, one person was killed and another injured. Mannar Police said the person killed in the incident was a LTTE cadre and they recovered a T56 rifle and three magazines with 98 live bullets from him. He has been identified as Vettivelu Arumugam, 26 of Semamadu, Vavuniya. The injured was identified as K. Premadasa, 60, a Sinhalese, whose Mannar bound lorry from Madawachchi got caught in the firing.

    August 13

    Paramilitaries grabbed 4 motorbikes from residents in Arumuhaththan-Kidiyiruppu, Iyankerny and Thalavai in Eravur, Batticaloa. Gunmen also seized a motorbike from an Iyankerny resident, Mahalingam Tharma at the Iyankerny Level Crossing.

    August 12

    Kethesh Logananathan, Deputy Secretary General of Sri Lanka Government’s Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP), and a former member of the Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Dehiwela, Colombo. Mr Loganathan received serious gunshot wounds and died on the way to hospital (see box story p13).

    Cadres of the paramilitary Karuna Group working with the SLA abducted 15 Tamil civilians in Batticaloa and Amparai Districts in the past two days, , the Amparai District LTTE Political Head, Jeya, said. He further said the incidents have been reported to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

    Relatives have lodged complaints with the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) that 9 Thirukkovil residents and 5 Thampiluvil residents were abducted Saturday evening by unidentified persons in a white-van and a car.

    Further north in Eravur, a farmer, K. Vamathevan, 24, a father of one, was abducted by gunmen travelling in a white-car. More than 10 youths were abducted in the recent past from Puthukkudiyiruppu, Vinayagapuram, Peththalai, Kalkudah and Nasivanthivu in Valaichchenai but their relatives have not complained to the Police fearing reprisals from the Military and Police.

    August 11

    Unidentified men shot dead Subash Chandrabose Suganthan, 25, a member of the paramilitary Peoples’ Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) group, at Ookulankulam, Vavuniya. The body of Suganthan was handed over to the Vavuniya district hospital by the SLA.

    Mr. Tharmalingam Yogeswaran, was shot dead by unidentified men at Kovilkulam in Vavuniya.

    A young boy working in a rice mill in Ninthavur, Amparai District, was kidnapped by unidentified persons when he went outside the mill. Saravanamuththu Santhiravathanan, 16, of Sittandy, Batticaloa, joined the mill only in July.

    Seven Tamil civilians returning from a pilgrimage were killed by SLA artillery fire north of Muhamalai, Jaffna. Forty-eight civilians were returning from the Kathirgamam Hindu temple by bus when the SLA stopped them. As heavy fighting broke out, the civilians took cover. Four survivors, Subramaniyam Packiyaluxmy, 65, Arumugam Sivasubramaniam, 61, Nadarasa Indra, 51 and Thurairajah Thavamani, 68, said that they escaped by hiding behind latrine shed.

    August 10

    One SLA soldier was killed and two seriously injured when a claymore mine placed along the KKS Road between Kokuvil junction and Nachchimar Hindu Temple, Jaffna, targeted at a SLA road patrol. Additional reinforcement of SLA soldiers taken to the area in heavy military vehicles, cordoned off Nachchimar Temple and surrounding areas and conducted search operations, but no one was reported arrested.

    Sinnarasa Vasanthan, 31, was killed when two gunmen riding a motorbike fired at him at close range in front of his house. Vasanthan, from Maruthadi Lane, Sandilipay, died on the spot. Iyathurai Selvatheepan, 26, who was talking with Vasanthan was seriously injured during the shooting and admitted to hospital.

    A policeman and a civilian were injured when unidentified gunmen fired at them inside the public market in Kattankudy, Batticaloa district. Police constable M. Ranasinghe, 36, of Manchanthoduwai Police was buying daily provisions in the market when he was shot. In the firing, Abdul Lathiff, 35, a Muslim trader, also sustained injuries.

    The Paramilitary Karuna Group abducted a Tamil youth of 4th Division, Vinayagapuram, Valaichchenai. Nesarasa Guruparan, 17, a mason, was resting at home when unidentified gunmen forcibly took him at gunpoint, according a complaint filed by Guruparan’s mother with the Valaichenai Police.

    Akkaraipattu Police discovered the body of a youth with gun shot wounds at Panankadu junction, Amparai. Samithamby Mohanathas, 17, of the same area, was abducted from his house Wednesday night by unidentified gunmen, who shot him dead and dumped his body by roadside.

    August 9

    A police constable was injured when unidentified men fired at police sentries in Murunkan police division. The injured officer, identified as Premachchandra, was immediately rushed to hospital.

    SLN troopers recovered a live claymore mine placed along Thalvupadu road aimed at the SLN personnel from Sunny Village SLN camp.

    A paramilitary cadre belonging to the Eelam Peoples’ Democratic Party (EPDP) was shot dead by gunmen in Meeravodai, Valaichchenai. K Rajanikanth, 32, a father of two children, from 18th mile post Sunkankerni, was operating with the SLA troops based at the nearby Kommanthurai SLA camp. He was initially a paramilitary Karuna group member and changed allegiance to EPDP, recently. He was abducted from his home by unidentified persons before being shot. His body was found the next morning. The EPDP, a former militant group, is registered as a Sri Lankan political party but operates primarily as an Army-backed paramilitary group against the Liberation Tigers.

    A medical services vehicle belonging to the Tamil Eelam Health Services, carrying four civilians, three health officials and the driver, was hit by a SLA claymore in Nayinamadu, Vavuniya. The civilians were injured but no one died in the attack.

    August 8

    A senior official of a pro-government paramilitary group and 9 other people were wounded in a bomb explosion in Colombo. Sankarapillai Sivathasan, a senior advisor to the EPDP and one of its former parliamentarians, was rushed to hospital. A security personnel and a 3-year old child in the vehicle were killed in the blast. Sivathasan is also a relative of EPDP leader Douglas Devananda. (photo page 16)

    Two SLA soldiers were killed and 3 others injured in a claymore mine attack at Velveri, Trincomalee. The soldiers were on a road clearing operation along Trincomalee-Anuradhapura road when they were attacked. Sri Lankan Government troops launched a cordon and search operation in the surroundings of the area.

    Unidentified men riding a motorbike shot dead a home guard in Akkaraipattu, Amparai district. The home guard was identified as Subair (26), a native of Addalaichchenai. The victim was on duty about 100 yards from the Akkaraipattu Police Station located along Akkaraipattu-Pottuvil main road when he was shot.

    A STF soldier and a police constable were killed when a claymore hit a water carrier truck along in Amparai District. The truck was transporting water for the Uganthai Murugan temple festival. The STF cordoned off and searched the area following the attack.

    The STF confiscated 5 tractors and 2 motorbikes belonging to Tamil farmers in Akkaraipattu, Amparai, allegedly in retaliation for the hijacking of a tractor belonging to a Sinhalese man two days earlier. When the farmers went to the Akkaraippattu STF Camp, they were told the vehicles were seized in retaliation for hijacking a tractor belonging to a Sinhalese farmer by LTTE, and the vehicles would be returned only if the hijacked tractor is released. Until then the seized vehicles would be held in Ingulana, Amparai for investigation purposes, the farmers were told. The LTTE denied any involvement in the disappearance of the Sinhalese farmer’s tractor.

    A Sri Lanka Red Cross (SLRC) vehicle was hijacked by a group of armed men as it was returning from LTTE controlled territory in Arippu, Mannar district. The occupants, a medical officer, a dispenser and the driver, were asked to get down from the vehicle and the armed men drove off in the vehicle. The SLRC vehicle was returning after conducting a mobile medical camp in Arippu. The hijack took place near Aruvi Aaru (Malwathu Oya) which is located in Sri Lanka Army controlled Nanattan division.

    Five medical personnel were killed when the ambulance they were travelling in was the target of a claymore attack in LTTE-controlled Vanni (see box story page 12).

    August 7

    A senior commander of the STF was mortally wounded when his vehicle was ambushed by attackers with a claymore mine. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Upul Seneviratne was seriously wounded in the blast at Digana, 10 km southeast of Kandy, and succumbed to his wounds at hospital. SSP Seneviratne had served in the eastern province, including as head of the STF in the region. The STF’s top commander, Inspector General Nimal Lewke blamed the LTTE for the claymore attack.

    Paramilitary cadres working with the SLA shot a young family man dead in Kurinchi Nagar, Valaichchenai. Kanapathipillai Kamalanathan, 22, was sleeping at his home, when paramilitary men took him away from his house and shot him dead at the near by Maruthanagar junction.

    A police constable was shot and killed by unknown gunmen about 50 meters from the Batticaloa police station. Police constable G Wickremesinghe, 44, who was on duty at the Batticaloa police station, was shot dead when he went to a nearby shop.

    Two houses located along Batticaloa-Kaluwankerni main road were burnt down by a paramilitary group working with Sri Lanka State security forces. One house belonged to Mylvaganam Arumugam, who is related to Gnanatheepan, the paramilitary Karuna group cadre who surrendered to the LTTE after killing five Karuna group members, including Iniyabarathy, last year. The other house destroyed by the fire belonged to family with four school going children. The arsonists were travelling in a white coloured van and on motorbikes. Two sisters of Puhalventhan, who escaped from the Karuna paramilitary group with Gnanatheepan, were killed on 8 December last year.

    Kandasamy Govindarajah, 25, a resident of Meeravodai and one of the two Tamil civilians taken into custody during a cordon and search operation conducted by paramilitary forces with security cover by SLA soldiers and Sri Lanka Police Monday afternoon, was shot dead the same day night at 18th mile post in Kalodavi, Batticaloa. The whereabouts of Mylvaganam Sasi (23) who was abducted along with Govindarajah, are not known.

    Paramilitary cadres shot and killed Seenithamby Sankar, 20. His sister’s husband, Thandavam Selvarajah, 36, was also injured in the attack in Vantharumoolai, Batticaloa. Members of the Karuna group had gone to their house, located in Alaiyadi Road, and fired at the victims while talking to them. Sankar was an agricultural labourer working in LTTE controlled Mylavedduwan. Eravur Police recovered a live grenade lobbed at the house by members of Karuna group after killing Sankar and injuring his sister’s husband. The group allegedly were searching for Sankar’s brother who is in the LTTE.

    An LTTE cadre was shot dead by SLA troopers and paramilitaries hiding near the Santhiveli Kannaki Amman Temple, said Mr. Daya Mohan, Batticaloa district LTTE political head. Kaaththamuththu Jeyananthan, 25, from Thikiliveddai, Santhiveli was going to Santhiveli village for political work when he was shot by SLA soldiers and paramilitary Karuna Group men, he added.

    The STF arrested two brothers, Mohansunthar Nathees, 19 years, and Mohansunthar Pirabakanth, 24, on a tip off in Arayampathy and handed over them to the Kattankudy Police for further investigation. The police claimed that 650 gram of explosives, bicycle balls and wires were recovered from their house.

    A youth who worked in a garage as an auto-mechanic was shot dead by gunmen in Siruppidy, Valigamam East, Jaffna. Tharumu Theesan, 24, was returning home from work along Sripiddy Cemetary road when he was fired at by two men who followed him. According to eyewitnesses SLA soldiers were seen in the area several minutes before the crime was committed but had disappeared from the scene when Theesan was killed.
  • Tamils flee war for Indian shore
    ARICHAL MUNAI, India - They wade through the surf, their suitcases on their heads and plastic bags in their hands, refugees from war in their homeland.

    Behind them, the small fishing dinghy that brought them is already speeding away through the waves.

    Every day, boatloads arrive on the shores of southern India, leaving their fields and fishing boats behind and even selling their jewellery to pay for the passage.

    And as conflict and fear escalate, what started as a trickle of refugees in January is turning into a flood -- about 8,000 this year, including 785 arriving on Sunday and Monday alone on this narrow spit of sand which juts out from a small island on India’s southeastern coast.

    They are men like Chinnathambi Pakiaraja, cradling his 15-month-old daughter in his arms, overcome with tears as he set foot on the sands of Arichal Munai after a three hour, 29-km (18-mile) boat journey.

    “There were 14 of us in the boat, and the waves were high,” he said. “We got drenched and the children were crying. We left our relatives and most of our belongings behind.”

    Everyone has a tale of terror in their homeland, of gunfire and shelling, violence and threats by one side or the other in Sri Lanka’s two-decade civil war, which now seems to be raging once again after four years of ceasefire.

    “The army told us, if there was any incident, any violence by the militants, they would come and kill my wife, kill my child,” said Pakiaraja, a painter from Trincomalee in northeastern Sri Lanka. “How could I take that risk?”

    The refugees are from Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority, mostly Hindus heading for the safe haven and relative familiarity of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

    Many are fishermen, too scared to ply their trade at home after clashes between the Sri Lankan navy and the “Sea Tigers”, the naval wing of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who say they are fighting for an ethnic Tamil homeland.

    On land, night-time was the worst time.

    “Six or seven families used to sleep huddled together in the open, the sound of gunfire all around us,” said 41-year-old Prinsa Lambert from Vankalai in northwestern Sri Lanka.

    “We didn’t know who was being killed. I can’t remember when I last slept in peace.”

    Lambert first fled her homeland with her husband Devaraja in 1990. Fourteen years later they took advantage of a ceasefire to return home on a ship provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

    They arrived home one day before the Asian tsunami struck.

    “We survived the tsunami and for a year we were happy,” she said. “But then war started, and it is misery. My children can’t study, my husband can’t work, his nets and huts on the beach have been burnt by the navy.”

    Refugees pay anything from 5,000 to 8,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($50-80) per person to cross the narrow strait on a fibreglass boat. Most get across safely, but some -- like the family of Pushpam Miranda -- pay a far higher price.

    “The boat was hit by a big wave and overturned,” she said, a week after arriving in a refugee camp on the Indian mainland. “My husband and the boatman tried to save my sister-in-law’s children. But the next wave took them away.”

    The children were just 5 years old and 18 months. Both of their parents also drowned. Miranda’s 22-year-old son Rothman struggled and failed to save his own wife.

    “They had been married just the day before we left,” she said. “Since we arrived here, he just stares at the sea.”
  • Tamil Nadu united against Sri Lanka
    Tamil Nadu’s political parties reacted angrily to the Sri Lankan airstrike on a children’s home which killed 51 schoolgirls and wounded 150 more last Monday.

    The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly last Thursday passed a resolution condemning the killings.

    The Speaker, R Avudiayappan, brought the condolence resolution, and expressed shock and grief over the Vallipunam killings.

    The House unanimously passed the resolution, characterising the attack as “uncivilised and inhumane act” of the Sri Lankan military.

    M Karunanidhi, the Chief Minister (CM) of the south Indian state condemned the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombing, describing it as an “atrocious and inhumane act.”

    The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu state, home to 60 million Tamils in India, urged the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, to pressure the Sri Lankan government to hold talks to settle the conflict peacefully and stop killing innocent Tamils.

    “There should be a full stop to such incidents which cannot be forgiven... There cannot be two opinions on this,” Chennai Online reported Chief Minister Karunanidhi as saying.

    Meanwhile, the opposition MDMK Floor Leader M Kannappan urged the Tamil Nadu Government to convince the Centre to invite the Tamil parliamentarians from NorthEast Sri Lanka, and to send an Indian delegation consisting of Tamil Nadu MPs to Sri Lanka.

    This Monday, Karunanidhi appealed to political parties in the state not to indulge in any “siblings’ war” over the cause of Tamils from Sri Lanka.

    “Now the war is against the Sinhala racist forces,” Karunanidhi said, adding that in the war against Sinhala dominance, there may be competition in redeeming the lives of Tamils, but there should be no “infighting among the brothers”.

    “When we want them (Lankan Tamil groups) to be united, we should also follow the same,” the DMK leader said.

    The DMK patriarch made his appeal on the floor of the assembly, ahead of a public meeting by MDMK leader Vaiko, called to “focus on the protection of the Sri Lankan Tamils”.

    The appeal follows several days of acrimonious spat between Vaiko, whose party is a splinter group of the DMK, and Karunanidhi, with each leader calling the other a liar.

    The Communist Party of India (CPI) urged the Centre to take action, at political and diplomatic levels, for facilitating resumption of peace talks between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

    Deploring the recent attacks on civilians, he exhorted the international community to play a positive role in providing humanitarian assistance to the affected persons.

    Meanwhile Pondicherry’s AICC, which last month urged Delhi to impose a ban on political parties and movements supporting the LTTE also joined the chorus of outrage.

    AICC General Secretary, V Narayanasamy, called on India’s central government to condemn the “assault the Sri Lankan Army had been inflicting on innocent Tamils” in the island.

    Talking to reporters here, Mr. Narayanasamy said the Tamils, facing an “insecure situation and mayhem” in Sri Lanka, had been moving out of the country and were coming as refugees to India and particularly to Tamil Nadu.

    The Pataly Makkal Katchie (PMK), an ally of the DMK led Tamil Nadu government said the Sri Lankan government must take full responsibility for the renewal of war in the island.

    PMK President Ramadass charged that the Sri Lankan government is pretending to be interested in peace in order to convince India and obtain military weapons. “The Indian government must avoid collusion in such activities.”

    Dr. Ramadas also appealed to the international community to condemn the Sri Lankan state for killing its own citizens.

    Referring to reports of India’s proposal to send essential food items by ships to Colombo on humanitarian grounds, Dr. Ramadas expressed doubts whether they will safely reach the suffering Tamil masses in the peninsula by-passing pilfering by the Sinhala army.
  • Eight on LTTE-related charges in US
    US authorities this week charged eight men with providing material support to the Tamil Tigers the US Justice Department said. The LTTE has said the individuals, all expatriate Tamils, have nothing to do with it.

    Amongst the charges are conspiring to buy surface to air missiles for the Tamil Tigers and bribing US officials to have the LTTE removed from a list of terrorist organizations and to obtain classified intelligence, a statement said.

    Incredibly, the evidence included consensual recordings of telephone conversations and meetings with US officials, it added. The Tigers deny any involvement in the activities of the arrested individuals whilst Sri Lanka hailed the move.

    “We don’t have any connection with those people. It is not our way of operating,” LTTE military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan told Reuters.

    Sri Lankan government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella was quoted by AFP as saying “this is tangible support in the global war against terror. They [US] not only banned the Tigers in 1997, but have been cracking down on the group.”

    The men arrested Monday were involved in “the procurement of military equipment, communications devices and other technology, fundraising and money laundering through charitable organizations and a myriad of other criminal activity, including conspiracy to bribe public officials,” the US statement said.

    The US charges say the defendants are “closely connected” with LTTE leadership in Sri Lanka, and many of them have “personally met” with LTTE leader, Velupillai Pirapaharan, and other senior leaders of the terrorist group.

    The defendants -- Sathajhan Sarachandran, Sahilal Sabaratnam, Thiruthanikan Thanigasalm, Nadarasa Yograrasa, Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy, Nachimuthu Socrates, Vijayshanthar Patpanathan, and Thirukumaran Sivasubramaniam -- were being held without bail and had initial appearances before a federal judge in Brooklyn on Monday,

    Socrates, described in court papers as a Tamil Tigers supporter based in North America, is a US citizen of South Indian origin. The others are said to be Canadian or Sri Lankan nationals.

    In a police operation, undercover agents posing as Department of State officials were offered millions of dollars during a series of secret meetings in a New York apartment, one of the two complaints setting out the charges said.

    According to the US authorities, at a meeting in July 2005, Socrates asked undercover agents whether they “could stop the United States government from sending arms to the Sri Lankan government” and “provide intelligence about this issue,” the papers said.

    Reached at his home in Simsbury, Connecticut, Nachimuthu Socrates’ son, Aristotle Socrates, told CNN that the charges were “absurd,” that his father was innocent and that he would be contesting the charges.

    Socrates said his father was a businessman who had lived in Simsbury for 24 years, adding: “They’ve made a gross miscalculation.”

    Full US statement: http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=71049
  • Tamil media caught in ‘hellish cycle of violence’

    A Tamil newspaper editor and former member of parliament was killed outside his home on the besieged Jaffna Peninsula late Sunday, international and local media reported.

    Sinnathamby Sivamaharajah, managing director of the Tamil-language Namathu Eelanadu newspaper was shot dead in Vellippalai. Police are investigating the murder, according to news reports. The motive for the killing is unclear.

    “We are concerned that the killing of Sinnathamby Sivamaharajah could be part of a pattern of violence against Tamil journalists and media workers covering this conflict,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

    “The targeting of journalists must cease. Authorities should conduct a thorough investigation into this murder and prosecute those responsible.”

    Sivamaharajah, 68, was a former MP of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), and a member of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). His newspaper, Namathu Eelanadu, is sympathetic to the Tamil nationalist cause.

    T Sivamaharajah’s home was inside a security zone controlled by the Sri Lankan military, and was under curfew at the time of the killing.

    The Ministry of Defense denied that Sivamaharajah’s house was in the zone, and it accused the LTTE of the murder.

    Three Tamil journalists—Subramaniyam Sugitharajah, Dharmeratnam Sivaram and Relangi Selvarajah—have been killed for their work since the beginning of 2005.

    Warehouses containing printing equipment of another Jaffna-based Tamil newspaper, Uthayan, were burned down on Friday August 18 by unidentified men.

    The Uthayan also has a Tamil nationalist editorial policy.

    On Tuesday August 15, an Uthayan driver was killed in Jaffna, the fourth employee of the newspaper group to be killed in recent months.

    Reporters Without Borders joined a chorus of rights groups in condemning the killing of a former minority Tamil politician and newspaper director gunned down in Jaffna at the weekend.

    “All parties, especially the pro-government Tamil paramilitaries, must stop targeting civilians, journalists and humanitarian workers,” the group said in a statement. “The press is again the victim of Sri Lanka’s dirty war, and the government is partly to blame for this hellish cycle of violence.”
  • Claymores destroy ambulance, kills 5
    A doctor, his wife, two nurses and the driver of an ambulance belonging to Nedunkerni hospital, were killed on the night of August 8 when a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Deep Penetration Unit (DPU) attacked the ambulance with claymore fragmentation mines.

    The next day a civilian bus with 75 passengers narrowly escaped another claymore attack 10 kilometres from the Nedunkerni ambush site. A medical vehicle that was following the bus was hit, but no one was wounded.

    International truce monitors, returning from inspecting the Nedunkerni site, were within a kilometre of the bus when the second mine attack took place.

    The attack on the ambulance occurred at Pandarakulam on the Nedunkerni - Oddusuddan Road.

    The doctor, Kathirkamathamby Jeyamalina, 68, the only doctor in the Nedunkerni area, was returning with his crew and his wife to Nedunkerni hospital after admitting a pregnant mother at Puthukudiyiruppu hospital around 11:30 p.m.

    The DPU attack killed Jeyamalina Ponnamma, the wife of the medical doctor, Rasalingam Gnaneswari, 22, a nurse, Jehananthan Nahuleswari, 37, nurse and mother of three, and the driver Kasupathy Gopalasundaram, 54, father of three.

    Mr. Kathirkamathamby Jeyamalina succumbed to his wounds while he was being taken to Puthudiyiruppu hospital.

    Three claymore mines were exploded in a row, throwing the ambulance 50 meters away. The attackers had taken position 15 meters from the explosion site. Pieces of wire and biscuits were recovered from a bush, Tamileelam Police said.
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