Tamil men and boys are being kidnapped from Sri Lanka’s impoverished east by Army-backed paramilitary groups before being given weapons training and paid hefty salaries to engage in attacks on the Liberation Tigers.

The base salary for graduates in Sri Lanka is between 3,000 and 5,000 rupees a month, according to the Asian Development Bank. The Sri Lankan military is paying paramilitaries in its campaign against the LTTE 6,000 rupees a month.

Three conscripts who surrendered to the LTTE in recent weeks whilst on Army-sponsored missions to assassinate Tiger members and supporters in the Batticaloa district revealed the mechanisms of paramilitary recruitment at a press conference this week.

They also revealed details of the extensive involvement of Sri Lanka’s armed forces in sustaining a cycle of violence which has claimed almost 200 lives this year alone.

Apart from providing bases and training for the paramilitaries, the military is supplying weapons and coordinating the attacks, they said.

The LTTE says Sri Lankan military intelligence is deploying five paramilitary groups in a concerted campaign of violence against its members and supporters in the eastern province.

The military denies any involvement in the attacks and claims gunmen loyal to renegade LTTE commander, Karuna, are responsible.

Karuna, the Tigers’ most senior commander in the east, defected to the SLA in April 2004 following the collapse of his six-week rebellion against the LTTE leadership.

Since then several LTTE cadres and supporters, paramilitaries and security forces personnel have been killed in violence that has come to be characterized as a ‘shadow war.’

Suresh Kandasamy (16), Babu Selvam (15), and Shanmugam Sarwarajah (21), who addressed the press conference this week surrendered to the LTTE on separate occasions in the recent weeks.

Suresh and Selvam, from the Tamil village of Karapola in the Polannaruwa district, were kidnapped in August this year by cadres of the Karuna Group.

Suresh said he was first held in a bunker in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp at Kakachiaveddai, before being processed by a senior member of the Karuna Group, Jim Kelly Thatha.

He was given weapons training and sent on missions against the LTTE. He was paid a salary of 6,000 rupees a month to work for the Karuna Group.

Suresh surrendered whilst on another mission against the Tigers: he had been given a pistol and sent to gun down a person on the Mandoor bridge.

‘I was staying at the home of my relatives in Murakadanchenai and receiving daily wages through my jobs at the mill and the paddy field. The Army came to my relative’s house after I returned from work one day and arrested me,’ he told reporters.

‘They sent me to the Karuna Group and placed me in a dark room. The next day, a man named Sitha, from the Karuna Group, forced me to work for them and said they would pay me Rs. 6,000 each month,’ he said.

‘They trained me for six days. After the training, they sent me and another boy to Kaakaachiveddai, which is an LTTE-controlled area with orders to shoot an LTTE cadre.’

‘Sitha commanded the other boy to shoot the LTTE cadre and then steal the cadre’s ID and other personal belongings. I wanted to escape from the Karuna Group, so when I arrived at the camp I took refuge with the LTTE,’ Suresh said.

Selvam was kidnapped by paramilitary cadres riding in a Dolphin van and taken to a paramilitary camp in Thivuchenai, Welikanda, located close to an SLA base. He was also pressed into the Karuna Group’s ranks and paid 6,000 rupees a month.

Selvam said he knew of the murders of at least seven Tamil youths who were brought into his paramilitary camp.

Although the paramilitaries are being sponsored by the Sri Lankan military, the Karuna Group boosted its revenue by carrying out robberies in Oddamavadi area in Valaichenai, Batticaloa, he said.

Selvam told reporters: ‘as I was returning from work one night, three people kidnapped me. Their names are Rajikumar, Rangan and Majakan. They told me to stay with them and they would pay me Rs. 6,000 each month.’

‘I was sent to Theevuchenai, where there is a paramilitary camp. They trained me for five days and took me with them when they performed an attack that happened on 30 October in Kaddumurivu.’

‘The SLA also came with us for this attack and they spoke in Sinhala,’ he said.

After that attack, he was ordered to use a grenade to kill an LTTE member named Mahesan, Selvam said.

‘They told me that if I did this, they would give me Rs. 10,000. I took the grenade and went to the LTTE camp and that is when I escaped and told the LTTE about this.’

Shanmugam, said he had been lured back from a job in Qatar by Markan, a Karuna Group cadre who promised him a job in a Sri Lankan embassy.

‘I believed him and went to Colombo and Markan met me at the airport. We went to Theevuchenai and introduced me to the SLA forces from the Senapura camp. They told me that now I am one of their members,’ Shanmugam said.

‘Markan asked the SLA to help me while I travel, requesting that they not ask for my ID, passport or other documents so that I can travel easily,’ he said.

Shanmugam said there were at least 65 persons in the paramilitary camp in Thivuchenai where he was given training.

He said that many were unemployed when the paramilitary group approached them and promised to provide a job and Rs. 6,000 each month.

After a month of training Shanmugam was taken in a Sri Lanka Army armoured vehicle to an SLA base in Chenaipuram in Welikanda where he was introduced to Captain Kumarasinghe, the camp commander.

The paramilitary group received supplies, instructions and was under the complete supervision of the SLA, Shanmugam said. Paramilitaries drew rifles and grenades from SLA camps before attacks on the LTTE, he said.

Notably, Shanmugam accompanied Sri Lankan Navy commandos during the killing of a Sea Tiger commander, Dikan.

Shanmugam was supervised by a Sri Lanka Army officer, Kumarasena, who leads a unit of military intelligence soldiers based in the toothpaste company in Batticaloa.

Shanmugam escaped on September 25 when he was sent on his own to assassinate a senior LTTE member.

Kumarasena had driven him in a vehicle belonging to the elite counter-insurgency force, the Special Task Force (STF) to Manmunai and sent him by a fishing boat with a rifle to Kokkaddicholai to kill his target at an LTTE camp there. Instead, Shanmugam surrendered.

The cycle of killings that escalated in the wake of Karuna’s rebellion and defection has alarmed international truce monitors who fear for the February 2002 ceasefire.

‘The way the two parties have been behaving in the last few months is not exactly in the spirit of the ceasefire agreement,’ said Helen Olafsdottir of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

‘If (the Tigers) are committed to peace, then they had better well sort themselves out, and that goes also for the government,’ she said. ‘The killings will not stop until you have the LTTE and the government sitting down to find a political solution.’

Last Saturday, paramilitary cadres abducted three young men at gunpoint in the area of Kaluvankeni, Eravur. Uthayan Selvaraja (25), Subramaniyam Kanapathipillai (32) and S. Leethan (31) were forced into a white van and then taken away in the evening. In the preceding week, at least five people were reported to have been abducted.

The people of Jaffna this week quietly marked the tenth anniversary of the ‘Exodus’, one of the lowest points of their nation’s decades-long struggle against the Sri Lankan state. On October 30, 1995, the entire population of Jaffna town fled advancing Sri Lankan government troops to other areas held by the Liberation Tigers. This week they remembered the exhausting, panic-stricken, monsoon-soaked trek, the Sri Lankan shelling and strafing and the miserable overcrowded refuges they reached, first in Chavacachcheri and, for many, later in Kilinochchi.

They will also remember, with bitter disappointment, the shockingly muted response of the international community to one of the most significant mass displacements of the conflict. They also recall that the crisis was not unheralded. Sri Lanka’s military had already inflicted heavy civilian casualties in the months preceding the assault on Jaffna. International humanitarian groups, including UN agencies and the ICRC were acutely aware of the massacres at Navaly and Nagerkoil as well as the many deaths elsewhere on the peninsula.

The scale of the destruction being wreaked on the Tamil region by Sri Lanka’s newly modernized and overwhelmingly Sinhala military was certainly no secret. On the eve of the exodus, for example, The Times of London reported: “Many civilians have been killed by government shelling and bombing, which has hit residential areas of the town. There is panic among the 600,000 Tamils on the Jaffna peninsula. The greatest humanitarian crisis of the war is in the making.” Not only should this awareness have caused alarm amongst the international community, it should have invoked an effort towards alleviating, if not preventing, the impending humanitarian crisis.

If a conviction the war is in fact winnable takes hold, there is no guarantee the international community will not simply ‘revert to type’

Operation Riviresa in 1995 was a central plank of Colombo’s strategy for breaking the back of the Tamil liberation struggle. Advised by an array of foreign militaries, Sri Lanka massed its might for a devastating blow against Jaffna, the Tamil cultural capital – and the heart of the LTTE’s de-facto state. The intent was to compel the Tigers to concentrate their fighters in the town’s defence and then wipe them out, as the late analyst Dhameratnam Sivaram pointed out in March 1996.

But it couldn’t have escaped Sri Lanka’s allies that the plan required the focusing of overwhelming firepower on what also happened to be largest concentration of Tamils in the island. It was almost certain that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of the half million people trapped in the town could perish in the impending maelstrom.

Jaffna’s residents are no strangers to the fury of a full-blown military offensive. Exactly eight years earlier, it was the Indian military which stormed the town, killing deliberately and indiscriminately, brutality symbolized by the massacre at Jaffna hospital on October 21. The stoic silence of the international community as tens of thousands of Sinhalese troops bore down on the town thus spoke volumes, confirming that implicit international sanction had been given to Sri Lanka to bring the ethnic conflict to an end through a quick, albeit bloody, military effort.

If commonsense didn’t suggest that a humanitarian crisis and heavy bloodshed would ensue, then certainly recent history from other ethnic conflict zones ought to have. A year earlier, the Rwandan state and the Hutu majority had turned on its Tutsi minority with devastating results. In Europe, Serbian military forces had graphically demonstrated the consequences to civilians of ethnically driven war using modern weaponry. The bloody repercussions for the residents of Sarajevo and Sebrenica would have been fresh in the memories of the international diplomatic community.

The Sri Lankan military’s human rights record was equally abysmal, with a history of massacres and ethnic cleansing operations in the country’s eastern districts and, before that, in the south, against its own community. Whether Jaffna fell quickly or came under protracted siege, enormous suffering and bloodshed was inevitable.

Several international governments did provide much aid – not to the refugees who fled, but to the Army-occupied town

In an effort to stem any international criticism that might ensue, the military censored coverage of the offensive and its aftermath. But this did not prevent the news from getting out. The Times of London, no less, reported on October 31: “Tamil civilians in Jaffna are evidently terrified by the advancing of the soldiers and are looking to the Tigers to save them from what they are convinced will be a massacre.”

That very day the town’s half million people fled across Navatkuli bridge into the Thenmaradchchi sector to the east whilst the Liberation Tigers fought desperately to keep the Sri Lankan military from reaching the narrow crossing.

That the international community was well aware of the extent of the crisis was amply demonstrated by swift expressions of “deep concern” by the United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali who called for “humanitarian assistance on a significant scale to minimize the suffering.” Some prominent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) tried to mobilize help, albeit timidly: “Relief workers are so afraid of making the [Sri Lankan] government angry, they refuse to photograph or shoot video of the refugees suffering and smuggle the pictures out to reporters,” the Toronto Star reported.

In any case, protests on humanitarian grounds were given short shrift by Colombo: “We do not intend to permit any outside agencies, including the UN...to carry out independent operations,” Foreign Minister Laksham Kadiragamar bluntly said. He also expressed displeasure at the comments by Mr. Boutros-Ghali, whom he accused of exaggerating the situation.

There is no doubt that months later, after the capture of Jaffna, several international governments did provide much aid – but not to the refugees who had fled to LTTE controlled areas in southern Jaffna and the Vanni. Instead, international aid was dispatched to the Army-occupied town. The message was simple: come back to the government and get this help or stay with the Tigers and suffer. International aid was thus seen as an integral part of Sri Lanka’s counter-insurgency strategy.

In a further effort to force hundreds of thousands of Tamils out of LTTE held areas, Sri Lanka tightened its embargo on food, medicine and other vital supplies to LTTE-held regions. The international community, including the INGOs were, implicated in this movement-inducing strategy. They pushed aid into government-controlled parts of the Northeast whilst withholding it – citing official restrictions, of course – from LTTE-controlled areas.

In the meantime another predictable outcome was underway in Jaffna. Abductions, disappearances, torture, extra-judicial killings and rape were increasingly being reported from the Army’s ‘liberated’ zones. Any seasoned observer of Sri Lanka’s conflicts (i.e. in the north and in the south), as many members of the international community in fact were, would have anticipated this. But Sri Lanka’s ‘security’ was, as ever, prioritized over humanitarian principles.

The indifference of leading members of the international community, whom barely months earlier had condemned similar assaults on towns in the former-Yugoslavia, was a wake up call to the Tamils both in Northeastern Sri Lanka and the Diaspora.

But there was more to come. As the war continued in the subsequent years, hundreds of thousands remained displaced. Whilst the state imposed a famine on the Northeast, it received over US$ 11 billion of financial assistance from the United States and various international donors, including the World Bank. INGOs carried on with their developmental work in the south and Army-controlled parts of the north. President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s so-called ‘War for Peace’ received the full sanction of the international community.

The substantial financial, military and political backing Sri Lanka received from the international community during some of its most repressive years was a clear message that the strategic interests of international actors in the region had taken precedence over the welfare of the Tamil people. The common objective, it was clear, was to wipe out the Tamil challenge to the state once and for all, whatever it took.

But the ‘War for Peace’ failed. Instead, the LTTE got stronger, both militarily and politically amongst the Tamils. Even casual analysis of the conflict would discern a straightforward connection between the extraordinary suffering inflicted on the Tamil people, the complicity of the international community and the growth of the LTTE.

Matters came to a head at the turn of the century, when the LTTE struck back with a ferocious six-month campaign that drove the Sri Lankan military out of the Vanni. The battlefield reversals culminated in April 2000 with the fall of Colombo’s largest military base on the island at Elephant Pass.

The u-turn in international policy was just as dramatic. Within two years the international community would be backing an indefinite ceasefire and peace talks between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE. Moreover, future aid to the war-shattered state would now be conditional upon the progress of the negotiations. In the span of a decade the Sri Lankan state had suffered an ignominious demotion from impending victor in the ethnic conflict to negotiating parity with the LTTE.

This message, too, has not been lost on the Tamils. Military strength, it appears, has greater force in international calculations than humanitarian principles. Whilst Tamil appeals to the international community – to back their self-determination goal, for example – are couched in terms of the latter, the is little doubt that it is the former which is underpinning international backing for a peace process.

Which is why the international community’s extraordinary focus in the recent past on humanitarian standards has been received with considerable skepticism. The Tamils are also perplexed by the disparity in reaction to human rights abuses blamed on the LTTE and on the state.

The assassination of Foreign Minister Kadirgamar in August, for example, drew a strident response from the European Union which, blaming the LTTE, refused to meet with delegations from the organizations and, moreover, threatened punitive measures against the Diaspora. Yet, from 1995 (leaving aside the period before then), amid well documented human rights abuses, Sri Lanka’s envoys continued to be readily received across the Western world. Janaka Perera, one of the more brutal Sri Lanka generals was accepted as Ambassador to Australia, despite five hundred disappearances documented by Amnesty International as having occurred under his command.

Defendants of the Western policies towards Sri Lanka in 1995 and subsequent years would no doubt highlight the state’s sovereignty as a crucial impediment to foreign intervention. However, Colombo’s excessive reliance on foreign financial aid had rendered Sri Lanka’s sovereignty oxymoronic long ago. And the same sovereignty proved no bar when a peace process was unceremoniously imposed on Sri Lanka in 2000.

International humanitarian norms have come to have little force in Sri Lanka’s conflict today because they have been so blatantly ignored by so many key players for such a long time. Indeed, the day-to-day dynamics of Sri Lanka’s Northeast today reinforces this. Many of those displaced by Operation Riviresa over a decade ago are amongst the three quarters of a million yet to be resettled, even after four years of ‘peace.’ As in 1995, the international community has again demonstrated that plight of the Tamils is a lower priority than Sri Lanka’s ‘security’.

This stark inconsistency inevitably leads to the conclusion that the international community cynically wields human rights as a political stick to pursue its particular interests. This is not to say that human rights have no value. But they are demonstrably not an overriding principle even for their most vocal advocates.

From a Tamil perspective, the implications of this are that the welfare of the people of the Northeast can but continue to depend upon the LTTE maintaining its strategic parity with the state, measured best, perhaps, by the preparedness of international defence analysts to maintain that the war is not winnable. In the event a conviction the war is in fact winnable takes hold, there is no guarantee the international community will not simply ‘revert to type’, backing Sri Lanka again to crush the LTTE.

The international community’s conduct before, during and, for a long time, after the Jaffna exodus has significantly affected Tamil political thinking, quite separately from the LTTE’s. In order to engage Tamils in a constructive manner, the international community needs to regain credibility lost in recent times.

Meanwhile, the logic of self-reliance from which extraordinary efforts to promote the Tamil struggle have sprung since 1995 can be traced back to this betrayal of ideals. So can Tamil prioritizing of security over international norms. Meanwhile, the international community’s continuing unevenness when it comes to defending human rights principles in Sri Lanka only serves to reinforce the sense of their fragility.

Whilst the Tamil resurgence rally in Trincomalee passed off peacefully weekend before last, tensions flared around the sister event in Vavuniya last week with Sri Lankan troops stopping people trying to attend the event at the main crossing point and others returning after it.

The event was held Thursday, with thousands of people, including academics, religious leaders and social activists, gathering in Vavuniya Urban Council grounds to reaffirm the Vavuniya Declaration, a political statement issued at the first of the Resurgence rallies in the Northeast held also in Vavuniya on July 27.

Last Friday’s rally is the last but one of a series of ‘Tamil Resurgance’ rallies which have been held since then in every district of the Northeast bar one – and the concluding event is to be held in Amparai on November 12.

Tensions had already risen in Vavuniya last Wednesday after grenades were tossed into the building at which the rally’s organizing committee was meeting. No was injured and the two attackers rode off on a motorbike. Vavuniya is a Sri Lanka Army garrison town.

Tensions escalated Thursday when a large group of Tamil youths on their way to the event on bicycles carrying a large poster of Tamil Tiger leader Vellupilai Pirabakaran were blocked at the Thandikulam check point.

There is no official bar on either organizing the event or attending it, and tempers quickly flared. With the soldiers’ actions breaching Article 2 of the February 2002 Ceasefire agreement which prohibits harassment of civilians traveling through checkpoints, international truce monitors were brought into the fray.

Unable to proceed, the youths slept in the demilitarized zone – as did many others traveling to the rally from LTTE-controlled parts of the Vavuniya district -and following morning blockaded the A9 highway with their bicycles in protest.

Meanwhile, many participants from the Convention were forced to stay in Vavuniya overnight after the rally when the military closed the border two hours before the time agreed with organizers.

Tension heightened again Friday as these participants returning to the Vanni were again denied access by Army officials at the checkpoint.

Additional Sri Lankan security forces and police personnel were brought in to maintain control the crowd. Earlier soldiers and policemen were deployed in large numbers in the town and civilians were subjected to severe checking.

The situation grew hostile after the police used tear gas on the crowd, and protestors responded by smashing up a police vehicle - prompting the arrest of two University students.

To defuse the situation, Tamil National Alliance Parliamentarians, Sri Lanka military commanders, police officials, an official of Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission and officers from the International Red Cross (ICRC) met in Vavuniya.

After this meeting, the SLMM official, ICRC officers and TNA Parliamentarians met the LTTE political leader of Vavuniya and the district’s Students Federation Organizer to consult with them.

The SLA agreed to allow those crossing into Vanni first, but refused to allow those traveling into Vavaniya to do so carrying Mr. Pirapaharan’s photograph.

Compiled from TamilNet reports.

October has bitter memories for Jaffna’s people. Ten years ago they fled their city as a Sri Lanka Army offensive neared. Eight years earlier, Jaffna had been the target of another military onslaught, that time by the Indian Army.

Last month a remembrance ceremony was held in the town’s teaching hospital to mark the 18th anniversary of the slaughter by advancing Indian troops of several doctors, nurses and patients in its wards and officers eighteen years ago.

As Deepavali was celebrated by Tamils around the globe this week, many recalled that the joyful occasion fell on a bloody October 21 in 1987.

At the memorial service last month to honor those slain in the massacre, several surviving doctors recalled the atrocities carried out troops of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) when it overran Jaffna.

The massacre occurred amid a full-scale IPKF assault on Jaffna town intended to disarm and destroy the Tamil Tigers as a fighting force.

Having fought their way past bitter resistance by the Liberation Tigers, Indian troops reached the hospital treating civilians wounded earlier by their heavy weapons.

The troops indiscriminately opened fire in the wards of the hospital, mowing down doctors, nurses and labourers alike. Patients were shot in their beds. 21 people were killed outright and 55 seriously wounded.

The pitiless and wanton slaughter has remained at the forefront of Tamil memories of India’s role in Sri Lanka, having become emblematic of the Indian Army’s conduct there.

“Point blank gunfire and grenade explosions were how the Indian ‘peace-keepers’ responded to staff with raised hands as a gesture of peace and surrender,” Adele Balasingham, who was in the northern town at the time, wrote in ‘A Will to Freedom’, her account of her times with the LTTE.

In contrast to the Sri Lanka Army’s conduct, it had been expected Indian troops would honour international humanitarian law stipulating hospitals and other civilian targets be protected in times of war.

As such patients and staff were unconcerned at the IPKF’s approach, believing the troops would enter and, upon being presented proper identification, would move on peacefully.

However, witness accounts described doctors such as pediatrician Dr. Sivapathasundaram attempting to surrender and being immediately gunned down.

Some reportedly attempted, unsuccessfully, to save themselves by proclaiming their support for Indian Premier Rajiv and his pro-Tamil mother, Indira Gandhi.

Some argue the victims’ expectations were naively unfounded and point to the IPKF’s use of heavy weaponry against the densely populated town - despite a campaign by leading citizens of Jaffna who pleaded with the Indian Embassy to cease the shelling.

When confronted with claims of massacres and killings of civilians, the Indian government flatly denied any wrongdoing.

“The IPKF were given strict instructions not to use tactics or weapons that could cause major casualties among the civilian population of Jaffna, who were hostages to the LTTE,” Premier Rajiv Gandhi declared 19 days after the hospital massacre.

“The Indian Army have carried out these instructions with outstanding discipline and courage, accepting, in the process a high level of sacrifices for protecting the Tamil civilians,” he declared.

Even the anti-LTTE University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna (UTHR-J), describing a climate of terror by the IPKF, said: “it left us among the dead, the debris and the crumbling structures. The smell of putrefaction clung to the fresh morning air. The terror of the army on every street corner, molestation and even rape became facts of life.”

Covert Indian involvement began at the time of the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom, when Delhi’s intelligence service provided training and arms to build the Tamil independence movement.

The objective was to exploit the Tamil insurgency to pressure the Jayawardane regime in Sri Lanka into a negotiated settlement that would accommodate Indian geopolitical interests.

The strategy was successful with both states concluding the Indo-Lanka Accord which offered limited devolution as the solution to the ethnic trouble, gave Delhi control of Trincomalee and obliged the uninvolved LTTE to disarm.

However, both the Sinhalese and Tamils opposed the Accord and the introduction of IPKF troops into Tamil areas to ensure its implementation.

With the LTTE refusing to settle for the terms laid out in the Indo-Lanka accord and disarm, the IPKF moved to destroy the organization, sparking a guerilla war with horrific consequences for the Tamils.

“The Indian troops behaved as an occupation army and committed war crimes that shocked the Tamil nation, which had previously looked to India as guardian and protector” LTTE political advisor Anton Balasingham wrote in his book ‘War and Peace: Armed Struggle and Peace Efforts of Liberation Tigers.’

Having been fought the IPKF to a stalemate on the battlefield, the Indian government was politically outmaneuvered by the LTTE, which entered into peace talks with the new Premedasa regime, which under simultaneous pressure from anti-Indian Marxist insurgents, ordered the Indian troops out of Sri Lanka.

The Jathika Vimukthi Peruma (JVP) led a rebellion against the Sri Lankan government had used the presence of Indian troops on Sri Lankan soil as a powerful mobiliser amongst Sinhala nationalists.

In March 1990, the last of the Indian troops withdrew from the humiliating historical experience Delhi’s intervention in Sri Lanka had become.

After the Indian withdrawal, the LTTE released a publication titled ‘The Satanic Force’ that included eye witness statements of rape, torture and unprovoked violence that revealed the severity of the human rights abuses by the IPKF.

On May 21, 1991 Rajiv Gandhi, now out of office, was killed by a suicide bomber whilst campaigning at Sriperumbudur, about 30 miles from Madras, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

India blamed the LTTE for the killing and banned the organization. The LTTE has denied involvement.

A sharp upsurge this week in the violence that has plagued the Northeast for months has created widespread anxiety and confusion amongst the region’s residents who fear a breakdown in the almost four year old ceasefire.

Numerous attacks on the Liberation Tigers, Sri Lankan security forces, and civilians have resulted in several deaths and injuries amid tensions between Tamil civilians and security forces.

International ceasefire monitors warned again this week the February 2002 ceasefire is being undermined and called on the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to work together to end the cycle of violence.

The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) said the number of politically-related killings in Sri Lanka this year is nearing 200.

‘The killings have gradually undermined the ceasefire and resulted in mistrust and a bad atmosphere between the parties,’ the SLMM said in a statement issued after the assassination in Colombo of a senior military intelligence officer.

Whilst there have, as has become commonplace, several attacks on the LTTE ad the security forces in the restive Batticaloa district, violence has escalated in the Jaffna peninsula too. Apart from clashes between local residents and Sri Lankan troops which left one protestor dead, there have been a number of attacks on security forces in the northern peninsula.

Three Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and two policemen were injured in 3 different grenade attacks in Jaffna Wednesday night.

Two policemen were wounded when assailants lobbed a grenade into their post in Navanthurai, a coastal suburb of the Jaffna town at 9pm. Two soldiers were wounded in Malusanthi junction near Nelliyadi in Vadamaradchi when a grenade was thrown at their sentry point.

Two men on a motorbike on Valvetithurai-Atchuveli Road lobbed a grenade into an army post in Atchuveli town, wounding a soldier.

Troops blocked civilian movement in Gurunagar, another coastal suburb of Jaffna, after a grenade was lobbed at a checkpoint but did not explode.

In the last of four grenade attacks in Jaffna last weekend, a policeman was killed and three were injured Monday when unidentified men lobbed a grenade into a police truck on the Palaly Road, north of Jaffna town. Travelers at the scene were beaten up by furious policemen and soldiers following the incident.

A grenade lobbed into a police post located in front of the Kondavil post officeSunday night seriously wounded two policemen and a SLA soldier.

Earlier, two men on a motorbike had followed a SLA truck in Thenmaradchy and hurled a hand grenade into the vehicle near Mirusuvil junction, wounding at least two soldiers. Their colleagues opened indiscriminate fire after the incident, but no one was injured, press reports said.

On Saturday two men on a motorbike lobbed a grenade into the bunker of a SLA checkpoint in Jaffna town, but no casualties were reported.

Tension surged in Jaffna last week after troops fired on residents of Puthur protesting Friday against an attempted rape by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers. A 20-year old youth was killed and several other demonstrators wounded, as troops reportedly fired 250 rounds. There have been demonstrations outside the Jaffna offices of international truce monitors as well as Army camps in the area.

A three-wheel driver was shot in Trincomalee town last Thursday in the only recorded incidence of violence in that town last week.

But in Batticaloa Army-backed paramilitaries staged several raids into Tamil Tiger-controlled areas, in one case using local residents as human shields as they withdrew into Army-controlled areas.

A LTTE cadre was killed when the Tigers launched a counter attack on a raiding paramilitary party which penetrated into their controlled areas in Vaharai on Sunday.

The LTTE said paramilitary cadres and Sri Lankan military intelligence operatives retreated with their dead and wounded behind a human shield of local residents.

The paramilitaries in the area are operating out of the SLA’s Singapura and Mankerny bases, the LTTE said, adding another Tiger cadre had been killed a week earlier in another incursion.

A series of grenade attacks on Sri Lankan troops and police have also claimed lives and caused injuries. Two SLA soldiers were seriously wounded when men riding in a motorbike lobbed a grenade into a sentry point 5 km east of Batticaloa town Sunday night.

A little later, a 32-years-old mother and her 16-years-old daughter were injured when two motorbike-riding men lobbed a grenade into their house, located behind a Special Task Force (STF) camp 6 km south of Batticaloa. The motive for the attack is not clear.

In Batticaloa town, two civilians were wounded when two motorbike-riding men lobbed a grenade in front of a shop near Batticaloa Railway station.

Also on Sunday, three refugee children were injured in Batticaloa when SLA soldiers returned fire at gunmen who had fired at their sentry point. One soldier was wounded in the attack.

Two gunmen riding a motorbike shot a rice mill worker on his way to work in Akkaraipattu last Saturday. The 38-year-old Sinhalese father of one who was married to a Tamil woman was residing at Kannakipuram Refugee Camp.

In Batticaloa town itself, the Sri Lanka Army and paramilitary forces conducted a cordon and search operation herding over a thousand young men and women into common grounds and searching them.

Masked paramilitary cadres wearing military uniforms assisted over 500 SLA personnel to round up the youth and parade them to common grounds for identification in an operation that took 10 hours, reported TamilNet.

Twenty Tamil youths, identified by the masked-men were detained by the SLA for further questioning.

The raid follows a similar operation in Pottuvil in the Amparai district, where masked motorbike-unit-soldiers of the SLA cordoned off and searched the town and its suburbs, holding residents at gunpoint for 4 hours Sunday evening.

In another search operation in northern suburbs of Batticaloa town, SLA troops arrested four Tamil youths and seized two assault rifles, a pistol and grenades.

Civilian organisations in the Northeast have complained that the return to arbitrary round-ups by the Sri Lankan armed forces on a large scale involving large number of personnel and masked paramilitary cadres, harking back to pre-ceasefire days, are causing panic among the population.

ON a related theme, an LTTE delegation from Trincomalee met with international ceasefire monitors Monday to outline the increasing restrictions being placed on civilians by the SLA in the eastern district.

Aside from curtailing the movement of civilians through a checkpoint and subjecting all travelers to body checks, the SLA has also begun to restrict the transporting of fuels such as kerosene and diesel, the LTTE officials told the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM)

The LTTE delegation also said it had evidence to prove that SLA soldiers are attacking Tiger cadres with the assistance of paramilitary Tamil groups in the LTTE held Vaharai division in Batticaloa district.

The increasing securitisation is not restricted to the Northeast, with reports that young Tamil men living in rented apartments in Colombo are being threatened by men in military uniforms and warned to leave Colombo immediately and return to their own towns.

Compiled from TamilNet and local reports.

Amid a close race between the two leading contenders to be Sri Lankas’s next President, election monitors are increasingly concerned that Tamil paramilitaries in the Northeast could affect the outcome of the November 17 polls.

Although there are thirteen candidates entered, the two leading contenders by far are main opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse.

Although the Tamil Tigers have said they will remain neutral and detached from the elections to elect a successor to President Chandrika Kumaratunga, political analysts expect Tamil voters and other minority community voters to back Wickremesinghe, who signed a ceasefire with the LTTE and held several rounds of talks with the Tigers.

The chief EU election monitor, John Cushnahan, says he is worried there could be trouble in eastern areas where the Karuna Group, named after the renegade LTTE commander who lead it, is operating under the aegis of the Army.

And reporters in the garrison town of Jaffna say the paramilitary Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), which has a history of electoral fraud, is campaigning for Rajapakse, ironically the Sinhala nationalists’ candidate of choice.

‘What has happened in previous elections is that there was serious malpractice in a number of areas, but it wasn’t enough to affect the overall result,’ Cushnahan told Reuters.

‘[But] in a very close run presidential contest, it could make a very significant difference.’

In previous years, government forces had set up checkpoints to slow the movement of voters from ethnic Tamil areas in the north and east to polling stations, Cushnahan said, adding LTTE pressure had reduced the vote for Tamil parties opposed to it.

On November 17 there would be no polling in LTTE-held areas and government-sponsored buses will be deployed to bring voters in those areas to cast their votes at polling booths set up across the front line in Army-held areas, officials said.

‘I’m worried what will happen in the north and east. There’s been a lot of speculation over what Karuna will do,’ Cushnahan said referring to a former Tiger commander who defected to the Army after his rebellion against the LTTE leadership was crushed.

Election Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake says he will not hesitate to cancel voting in the North and East if any irregularities are reported.

‘If the numbers of cast votes are not tallying with the number of registered voters in specific locations in the North and East, I would definitely stop the counting of those votes in the respective polling center,’ Mr. Dissanayake said.

Dissanayake says he will hold a re-run in affected areas two days later. Cushnahan said the EU was ready to monitor this too.

The EU, one of Sri Lanka’s leading donors, has said that it will send 72 experts to join observers from Asia, the Commonwealth, and around 33,000 local officials in monitoring the election in the violence-prone island.

‘It is crucial for the peace process in Sri Lanka that forthcoming elections are seen as credible by all communities,’ EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement.

Families near a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp in Puthur, Jaffna are fearful of returning home after weekend violence in which troops fired on villagers protesting the attempted rape of a local woman by a soldier, killing one person.

Demonstrations continued this week as a day of mourning was observed for protestors injured during the protest demanding the removal of the SLA camp. Simmering anger at the Army’s violent reaction to the protests is mixed with fear of further violence against residents by soldiers.

The trouble began last Friday, after over a hundred, mostly female, protesters gathered outside the SLA camp in Puthur to protest the attempted rape by at least one soldier of a local woman and to demand the attackers be brought to justice.

As tensions rose, soldiers opened fire discharging at least 250 rounds. The Army insists it fired into the air, but several people were wounded, one fatally.

At least six people were severely beaten by soldiers and, along with those wounded by gunfire, were delayed from receiving medical treatment.

The Army blocked ambulances from reaching the area for over four hours. Nirojan Tharmarajah, a 20 year old, was pronounced dead when he finally arrived in hospital, succumbing to heavy internal bleeding.

Some reports said four of the demonstrators were wounded while running away from the camp, after soldiers began shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. Details regarding three other injured are unknown since the Army has refused to let them be taken from the site.

Residents reported soldiers using batons to beat up protestors as they fled from tear gas fired at them.

The SLA initially denied having opened fire, but later military spokesman Brig. Nalin Witharanage said they were forced to fire in self-defense after suspected Tamil Tigers among the protesters threw six hand grenades into their camp, of which three exploded and injured one soldier.

However, residents of the area denied any involvement by the Tamil Tigers, describing the tense climate in Jaffna due to recent killings by Army-backed paramilitaries.

They said their protest was triggered by the attempted rape, but residents also said the tension is reflective of underlying hostility against the continuing Army occupation of the northern peninsula.

Demonstrations continued on Monday after a day of mourning was observed outside the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the international observers overseeing the ceasefire between the Liberation Tigers and Sri Lankan security forces.

The demonstrators, again predominantly women, called for the dismantlement of the Army base in Annamar Kovil and demanded the troops vacate the area and allow the residents to lead lives free from harassment.

Hundreds of locals attended Sunday’s mourning service to pay respect to Tharmarajah, including several Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians. The following day, protestors marched to the SLMM in Nallur and called attention to their fear of escalating Army violence upon returning to their homes.

The incident which sparked the protests occurred Thursday night when three SLA soldiers in civilian clothing entered the house of four Tamil women while they were sleeping and reportedly attempted to rape a 16-year old girl.

Upon hearing her screams, neighbors rushed in and disturbed the soldiers, who then fled to the SLA camp according to residents.

Civilians in the area gathered around the SLA camp in Puthur to demand the soldiers are brought to justice. The situation escalated as protestors began throwing stones and the Army opened fire. According to the security forces, the protestors set fire to tires and torched an Army vehicle, prompting soldiers to use their weapons to regain control.

‘I dropped to the ground, placed my hands together and pleaded, ‘don’t shoot!’ But they still shot at me and one bullet struck my fingers,’ Sabapathy Nagalingam, one of the injured protesters, said.

Residents meanwhile complained although the SLMM was informed of the escalating tension and the planned demonstration at 9 am Friday morning, SLMM members only arrived after 12 noon. Protestors claim that if the SLMM had responded without delay, the death and injuries could have been averted.

However, the SLMM stated the violence occurred while they were present at the scene, and protestors’ allegations were misleading.

A day of mourning was called by the Tamil National Resurgence Convention as a sign of respect to the youth who was killed. Black flags were displayed while patriotic and somber music was played throughout the peninsular.

The situation remains tense in Jaffna. The region has grown increasingly troubled in the past weeks, with escalating levels of violence and high levels of crime that many say are being deliberately ignored by the security forces.

Sri Lankan military and the police ‘have not taken any constructive efforts to curb the incidence of violence and killings in Jaffna’ Mr. Rohitha Priyadarsana, Jaffna Coordinator for the National Human Rights Commission stated recently.

‘Many civilians are forced to live in hiding because of imminent threats to their life and the failure of the security forces to take meaningful steps to curb this trend of violence.’

Latent anxieties of sexual violence against women by security forces are based on a history of attacks which have been a persistent feature of Sri Lanka’s conflict. There are an estimated 40,000 troops in the peninsula, which has a population of half a million.

International human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have condemned the culture of impunity that allows Army and police officials engage is sexual assaults against civilians, particularly in conflict zones, without fear of reprisal.

Japan takes greater role in self-defence

A US-Japanese agreement announced Saturday is intended to strengthen military cooperation, draw down US Marines from Okinawa and give Tokyo greater responsibility for security in the Pacific.

The interim report, issued after Japan-US ministerial security talks in Washington on realigning US forces in Japan, envisions more integrated cooperation between the Japanese ‘Self-Defense’ forces and US forces.

The planned integration includes better information sharing and joint manoeuvres to boost interoperability.

7,000 US Marines will leave strategically located Okinawa for the US Pacific territory of Guam, a move that is expected to take six years. Okinawans have long complained about the American bases. There are 14,460 Marines in Japan, the largest contingent based overseas, and nearly all are in Okinawa.

Calling the alliance the anchor of regional stability, the agreement gives Japan more responsibility for its own defense and an enhanced security role in the region.

The United States will deploy state-of-the art radar in Japan for ballistic missile defense and coordinate command and control systems with the Japanese, the document says. At the same time, the accord reaffirms the role of US forces in the defense of Japan, which dates back to the end of World War II.

Last week, the two governments agreed to close the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in crowded south Okinawa and move its functions to Camp Schwab in the north.

Delhi bombers’ identity remains uncertain

Questions remained over the identity of bombers who triggered three serial blasts in Indian capital killing 61 and injuring about 210, though a militant group in India-controlled Kashmir has claimed responsibility.

Officials said they had several leads on the group behind the bombs and were checking the obscure Kashmiri militant group’s claim of responsibility.

Analysts say the Islami Inqilabi Mahaz (Islamic Revolutionary Group), which claimed responsibility, is likely a front for the better-known Pakistan-based Islamic radical group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The Indo Asian News Agency also reported that the group’s spokesman, Ahmad Yar Gaznavi, had once acted as a spokesman of the hardline Al Badr Mujahideen in January 2003. He had then threatened that his group had formed a suicide squad to target the Kashmir police chief.

According to the police, Inqilab was founded in 1996 but had not been active over the past few years. The militant group, little known before the blasts, called the Kashmir News Service on Sunday in Srinagar, summer capital of India-controlled Kashmir, claiming they triggered the serial blasts.

The Delhi police also carried out an intensive operation to track Pakistani nationals that came to the city illegally. ‘We have people coming in our cities from different countries and we will look into why and when they come,’ said Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil.

New abuse claims in Afghanistan

The US military said it would not tolerate abuse by its soldiers after new claims against American troops in Afghanistan who were this month accused of burning the bodies of Taliban suspects.

The US-led coalition also said two US soldiers had been charged with allegedly assaulting two detainees in their custody in southern Uruzgan province.

‘These alleged offences do not reflect the values of … this command,’ coalition spokesman Colonel Jim Yonts told reporters on Monday. ‘We will not tolerate the kind of behaviour that is alleged.’

He said the US military was conducting three investigations into television footage broadcast this month showing US soldiers burning the bodies of suspected Taliban fighters in contravention of international law and the tenets of Islam, which says the bodies of Muslims must be buried.

The soldiers reportedly used the burning to taunt other Taliban fighters in an attempt to goad them into battle.

Besides a criminal investigation into the claims, the military was looking into how US forces were taught to handle human remains on the battlefield, Yonts said.

It was also investigating psychological operation techniques, doctrine and training - measures used to influence an enemy.

Coalition soldiers in Afghanistan have also been accused of abusing Afghan detainees, at least eight of whom have died in US custody since 2001, when the coalition entered the country to help topple the hardline Taliban government.

India train crash kills 110

Over 110 people were killed when seven coaches of a passenger train fell into a rivulet at Valugodu, around 80 km from Hyderabad in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

The Delta Fast passenger train derailed in the early hours on Saturday (29 October) while on its way to Secunderabad. Most of the passengers were asleep at the time of the derailment.

‘While over 100 bodies have been recovered from the site, 20 to 30 passengers are feared to have been washed away in the swirling rivulet,’ State Home Minister K. Jana Reddy said.

Close to 1,100 passgengers had been rescued so far. Nearly 250 military personnel along with locals were involved in rescue operations which stretched on for another day due to heavy rains and breaches on roads.

The home minister said the flash floods caused breaches on the single track between Ramannapet and Valugodu Railway stations resulting in collapse of the bridge.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy and Federal Minister of State for Railways L. Velu visited the site and announced ex gratia of 100,000 rupees to each bereaved family.

Employment to one member each of the families which had lost their breadwinners would be given in railways, officials said.

CIA seeks exemption on cruelty

The White House wants the CIA to be exempted from a proposed ban on the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects being held in United States custody.

The Senate defied a threatened presidential veto three weeks ago and passed legislation that would outlaw the ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ of anyone held by the US.

But the Washington Post and the New York Times, both quoting anonymous officials, said Vie-president Dick Cheney, proposed a change so that the law would not apply to counter-terrorism operations abroad or to operations conducted by ‘an element’ of the US government other than the defence department.

Although most detainees in US custody in the war on terrorism are held by the US military, former intelligence officers say the CIA is holding several dozen detainees of particular intelligence interest at locations overseas, including senior al-Qaida figures, the Post said.

Human rights groups said creating parallel sets of rules for military personnel and intelligence agents was impractical in the war on terror, where soldiers and spies often work together and share techniques.

‘You can’t tell soldiers that inhumane treatment is always morally wrong if they see with their own eyes that CIA personnel are allowed to engage in it,’ Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch told the New York Times.

Northern Ireland group stands down

A pro-British paramilitary group in Northern Ireland said Sunday it had ordered its armed units to stand down after rival guerrillas opposed to British rule scrapped their weapons earlier this year.

In a statement, the outlawed Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) said the move was in response to the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) decision to give up the weapons that had sustained its campaign against British rule in the divided province.

The IRA’s decision to disarm removed one of the biggest hurdles to a political settlement in the province, where 3,600 people died in 30 years of violence.

Last month an independent arms watchdog said the IRA had scrapped its entire arsenal of illegal weapons.

‘This decision is taken as a direct response to recent IRA actions and statements. While we remain skeptical about their intent ... we believe there is sufficient evidence to allow for the exploration of a peaceful process within Northern Ireland.’

Pressure has mounted on pro-British Protestant loyalists - so-called because of their fierce allegiance to the British crown - to lay down their arms since the IRA said it was ending its campaign.

Ceasefires in the 1990s and a 1998 peace accord largely ended sectarian violence but pro-British and pro-Irish militants had been reluctant to give up arms they said are needed as much to protect their communities as to fight.(Reuters)

US rebuffs call for Iran’s expulsion

The United States declined last week to support Israel’s call for expelling Iran from the United Nations for advocating Israel’s destruction.

‘Iran is a member of the United Nations,’ State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. ‘What I think we would encourage instead is Iran to start behaving in a responsible manner as a member of the international community.’

McCormack said Iran should stop seeking development of nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian program, end support of terrorism, and stop oppressing its own people.

‘Our concern is with Iran’s having the know-how, the technology and the capability to enrich or reprocess on its territory,’ he said.

While other nations express shock and disapproval of the Iranian president’s call for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map,’ Israel’s call for expulsion from the United Nations did not draw support.

In a speech Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced Israel and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks ‘will wipe this stigma from the face of the Islamic world.’

Citing the words of the founder of Iran’s Islamic revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ahmadinejad said: ‘Israel must be wiped off the map.’(AP)

Gorbachev: No security amid poverty

Curbing poverty and building stronger international alliances are key to maintaining security and spreading democracy, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said last Wednesday.

‘It is hard to imagine a calm, safe and secure world’ where so many people live in poverty, Gorbachev said through an interpreter at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacremento, California.

‘If people’s lives are not becoming better, people begin to change their minds and say democracy is worthless,’ he said during a question-and-answer session before an audience of about 400.

Gorbachev has been touring the United States since last week, celebrating the 20th anniversary of ‘perestroika’ — the government reforms he led in the former Soviet Union.

The reforms were accompanied by the fall of communism, the spread of democracy in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev also criticized the lack of cooperation from governments, particularly the United States, in facing environmental issues. The failure of the U.S. to adopt collaborative agreements, such as the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gases, shows ‘there is a gap between words and deeds,’ he said.

The UN Security Council voted last Friday not to give up on its peacekeeping mission in the disputed territory of Western Sahara but black clouds continue to hang over talks on the three decade-old problem.

The new UN envoy, Peter van Walsum, announced that the positions of the key players were ‘quasi-irreconcilable’ after holding a series of meetings earlier this month with the leaders of Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and the Polisario Front.

Nevertheless, the Security Council accepted UN Secretary General Kofi Annan''s recommendation of a 28th mandate extension for the mission, known as MINURSO, despite its lack of concrete progress and US $650 million price tag to date.

‘The deadlock between the parties over how to achieve a mutually acceptable solution that would enable the people of Western Sahara to exercise their right to self-determination has persisted,’ Annan said in his report on the territory this month.

The Polisario Front has been demanding independence since before Spain withdrew from its former colony on Africa's northwest coast in 1976, only to be replaced by Morocco in the north and Mauritania in the south.

While Mauritania gave up its territorial claims in 1979, Morocco has held on to a territory rich in phosphates, fish stocks and, perhaps, offshore oil.

Following the 1991 ceasefire, MINURSO began preparations for the referendum on independence which was to be held the following year. But endless disagreements over wording and procedure have meant that, 14 years later, there is still no vote in sight.

As the dispute lingers on, so do the difficult conditions for both the inhabitants of the territory and the more than 150,000 refugees in camps in western Algeria whose government supports the Polisario Front.

‘I am concerned by the allegations of human rights abuses made by the parties, whether in the territory or in the Tindouf area refugee camps,’ Annan said in his report.

One bright spot highlighted by Annan was the Polisario Front's release in August of its last 404 Moroccan prisoners, some of whom had been detained for over 20 years.

In 2003, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker proposed a settlement plan which called for a four- or five-year period of autonomy after which there would be a referendum on integration into Morocco, continued autonomy or outright independence.

The so-called Baker Plan was accepted by the Polisario Front but rejected by Morocco. After seven years of trying unsuccessfully to broker a solution to the dispute, Baker resigned last year.(IRIN)

The United Nations welcomed India and Pakistan’s agreement on Sunday to open their Kashmir border to earthquake survivors and relief supplies but said getting aid to millions remained a logistical nightmare.

After talks in Islamabad, India and Pakistan agreed to open crossings at five points along the military Line of Control dividing Kashmir from November 7.

Military officials from both sides are to hold talks on the clearing of tens of thousands of mines along the de facto border of disputed Kashmir to facilitate earthquake relief, V.K. Singh, army chief of staff who heads anti-insurgency operations in Indian Kashmir, told AFP.

A UN-led effort to get food and shelter to survivors of the October 8 earthquake that killed more than 56,000 people, mostly in Pakistani Kashmir but including 1,300 on the Indian side, has been hampered by landslides blocking many mountain roads.

As much as 30% of the areas affected have not been reached, which could translate into at least 200,000 people not getting the assistance they need, says the UN.

With a bitter Himalayan winter approaching and three million people homeless or needing shelter, aid workers fear hunger and exposure could kill as many as the number killed in the quake unless help reaches them quickly.

The United Nations, which says the world’s slow financial response to the disaster is threatening lives, welcomed the agreement but warned huge difficulties remained.

‘It will certainly not do any harm, but it will certainly not solve the logistical nightmare we are facing,’ UN emergency coordinator Jan Vandemoortele told Reuters.

‘It is absolutely positive, but it will not turn mountains into plains. We are still planning to get a major airlift going throughout the winter.’

Some Kashmiri families will undoubtedly benefit from the agreement, but large movements of people are unlikely given the massive damage to roads and the complex bureaucratic process involved in getting permission from both governments to cross.

Amanullah Khan, head of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said only a few people would benefit, while the agreement could help make the contested border permanent. ‘The benefit will be much less than the political costs,’ he told Reuters.

Natasha Hryckow, UN logistics coordinator in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, told Reuters the agreement should make a huge difference when it came to getting aid to people cut off near the border, such as in the Neelum river valley.

‘If we had the potential to open it from the other side, we start getting road access to areas we can only fly helicopters to at the moment,’ she said. ‘That’s obviously going to make a huge impact on how much we can shift in and how many people we can keep in those areas.’

Getting aid across will mean much more work. A Friendship Bridge opened to allow the start of a bus service between the two sides of Kashmir this year has been badly damaged and army engineers on both sides are battling to clear many landslides.

Aid donors have provided $120 million for a massive relief effort, but that is far short of the $550 million the United Nations has asked for. While $580 million was promised at a donor conference in Geneva, Switzerland on October 26, the timing for receipt and purpose (emergency, rehabilitation, reconstruction) of pledges has not been confirmed.

Ann Veneman, the head of the UN Children’s Fund, visited the quake zone on Sunday and said the world had to wake up to the scale of the disaster or many more lives would be lost.

‘There is a tremendous need for continued resources. Winter is coming on. We could see very difficult times ahead,’ she said.

Although globalization carries with it enormous benefits for least developed nations, growing disparities in the standard of living and level of human security are driving workers from the world’s poorest countries across borders in search of better opportunities, the United Nations representative for least developed countries says.

Anwarul Chowdhury, the High Representative for LDCs, Land-Locked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, was speaking to the General Assembly’s Economic and Financial Committee last Thursday.

‘Globalization has opened unprecedented opportunities for the free flow of capital, goods, services, information, skills and technology and offered new perspectives for integration of developing countries, especially the least developed countries (LDCs), in the world economy,’ he said.

African countries – which make up the majority of all LDCs – lose 20,000 skilled workers to the developed world every year, he said.

And although ‘brain drain’ is having a negative impact on LDC growth, migrant workers bring back knowledge and technology which can boost productivity in countries of origin, Mr. Chowdhury added.

Migrant workers are also a big source of foreign remittances, which are ‘the largest, as well as a very predictable and stable source of financing for many poor countries,’ are second only to foreign direct investment, and by far exceed official development assistance, Mr. Chowdhury said.

Reducing remittance transfer costs and enhancing the use of remittances for development purposes would be discussed in detail at the forthcoming Ministerial Conference for LDCs in Benin in early 2006, he said.

At the same time, he emphasized the need for development partners to support the integration of LDCs into the global economy as outlined in the Brussels Programme of Action adopted in 2001.

That plan calls for LDCs to participate in international economic decision-making processes, multilateral policy-making, and regulatory issues affecting development.

Each minute of every day a child somewhere in the world dies because of AIDS, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said last week ahead of a major push to address the plight of the disease’s youngest victims.

‘For young people in the most affected countries, where life-expectancy has plummeted from the mid 60’s to the low 30’s, turning 18 can mean reaching middle age,’ UNICEF chief Ann Veneman told a press briefing in New York.

‘An estimated 15 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, but only a fraction of the children and parents who need help are getting it,’ she added.

Outlining the new initiative, the Chief of UNICEF’s HIV/AIDS Section, Peter McDermott, said it aims to prevent mother-to-child transmission, provide pediatric treatment, stem new HIV/AIDS infections, and help orphans affected by the virus.

Specifically the campaign seeks to increase services to women in need to 80 per cent by 2010 from the 10 per cent currently served. It also hopes to cut in half the 500,000 children who die from the virus before the age of 1, out of the 600,000 that are born positive.

‘With simple Cotrimoxazole for about $10 a year, we can improve their chances of living beyond one year of age by 15 per cent, and with antiretrovirals, we can improve their life expectancy after their first birthday,’ Mr. McDermott said.

Through prevention, the programme hopes to reduce by 25 per cent the number of children aged 4 to 15 who are infected annually by the virus. Altogether, the programme hopes to reach 80 per cent of the children in need in 5 years, he added.

But he warned that there remains a ‘massive funding gap’ between what has been committed to fight the virus among children. and what is needed.

For the past few months, people across Sri Lanka’s Northeast have been attending a series of rallies under the ‘Tamil Resurgence’ slogan. A number of smaller events – and one major event in Brussels – have taken place in Diaspora centres also. Since July, major rallies have been held in Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, Mullaithivu, Mannar, Jaffna and Trincomalee. The last district with a significant Tamil population, Amparai will hold its event this month.

There are common themes to the rallies, outlined in the first of the present series, held in Vavuniya in July. The participants demanded that “occupying Sinhala forces must vacate Tamil land and sea areas with immediate effect” and proclaimed that “an environment must be created to enable us to decide our destiny.” They asserted: “our people are continuing to rise as a force to procure the goal of a sacred and higher life of freedom”. Participants called on the international community to recognise their “basic rights to a life of freedom with peace” on the basis of their traditional homeland, nationhood and right to self-rule.

Inevitably, some have dismissed these mass rallies as charades organised by the Liberation Tigers. They argue that the LTTE’s hegemonic presence in the Northeast leaves no room for civil political activity that is not influenced to a great degree by the LTTE. While it is true that the LTTE has significant sway in the Northeast, it is too simplistic to just ignore expressions of civil opinion on this basis. While the LTTE was undoubtedly in the background of the Resurgence rallies, the crowds were not mere rent-a-mobs or threatened into attending. Indeed, among the organising structures were prominent civil groups, including student bodies and community organisations and their attendant networks.

On past occasions – during the ‘Pongu Thamil’ rallies, for example – some Sinhala newspapers dismissed those participating as doing so under duress. But the sheer number of attendees brings suggestions of force into question. Furthermore, counter-coercion by Sri Lankan security forces and army-backed paramilitaries is also very real – indeed, grenade attacks on organisers and harassment by troops of civilians travelling to the rallies have occurred frequently in the past weeks.

And the issue of coercion definitely does not apply to the Diaspora events, where expatriate Tamils also turned out in significant numbers to back calls for self-determination - the only ‘coercion’ at play here is that by the governments of the host states in which they reside, underlined most forcefully by bans on supporting the LTTE, for example.

Given Sri Lanka’s political dynamics, where issues of Tamil self-determination or collective rights cannot be discussed without triggering a violent reaction from the Sinhala polity, for many people these gatherings are the only practical means by which to express their sentiments (apart from the elections in which they backed the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance). Indeed, it is not only the ‘core’ political issues but day-to-day frustrations stemming from slow resettlement, the lack of rehabilitation aid and so on, that have driven participation.

But then there is a question as to whether the gatherings will have the desired effect?

While the call at all the proceedings was for action by the international community, there has been complete silence in response. Either the international community is not listening or is not prepared to address the demands being made on it. The attitude is reflected in the non-Tamil press’s coverage: the first few events were ignored, and while the sheer scale and magnitude have prompted limited coverage of recent ones, it was dismissive and cynical.

Even if the Resurgence events are being monitored by the international community, this is not say foreign governments either care or are prepared to consider the demands. The call of the first Pongu Thamil event four years ago was for the withdrawal of Sinhala troops from Tamil population centres and recognition of the Tamil right to self-determination. The same calls are still being made. Nothing has changed in the intervening years to suggest that the international community is now more willing to act.

This inevitably leads to the suggestion that those participating in the rallies are living in a fool’s paradise. Why, as some have mockingly asked, do the Tamils continue to engage in these futile mobilisations when the reaction is uncompromisingly indifferent?

But perhaps it is not that the Tamil people expect the international community to actually respond to their call. Perhaps the rallies can be viewed as having achieved their objective simply by being held.

Local factors arguably drove participation at each event – be it the humanitarian needs of those on the ground, or the political constraints of those in the Diaspora. But the sense of community engendered as a result of the rally series transcends the value of each event on its own. People in Trincomalee might have been seeking resettlement and those in Brussels might have been trying to ward off punitive measures by their governments. The point is they did so as part of the wider Tamil body politic.

The series of events taking place in every corner of the Tamil homeland and the Diaspora have contributed to the sense of a united community with one aim. Divided by geography but united by purpose. Diaspora Tamils are linked to ‘the ground’ while Tamils of the Northeast see their brethren abroad rising in support. As a result, the series as a whole has become the manifest expression of the Tamil national body. In this way, large numbers of people come to participate in their locality, in a national project.

Both the sentiments expressed (the call for liberation of the Tamil lands) and the trappings (flags, anthems, silence, speeches) have served to reinforce the connection across the distances. It is in this process that the indifference of the international community and the non-Tamil press becomes a contributing factor. The common feeling of being isolated and ignored wherever we are protesting serves to unite us, forging even stronger ties of a distinct identity through a shared sense of alienation and neglect. The international community, both as the target of our various appeals and by impassively ignoring us, contributes to our national identity.

This resulting reinforced sense of unity thus makes these events a success for the Tamil national struggle, irrespective of the response or otherwise of the international community. They suffice, therefore, as an expression of Tamil solidarity and a reaffirmation of intent to stand together as the only reliable support the Tamil people have known – each other. In this way, the rallies are a critical part of the Tamil nation building project.

Whilst outgoing President Chandrika Kumaratunga has, throughout her decade in power, been frequently economical with the truth, some of her statements have been extraordinarily fallacious. A case in point is her musings this week about her term in office. “It gives me pride to say,” she declared, “that I have not stained my hands with mud or blood.” Most Sri Lankans would agree she is wrong on both counts. Her invectives against her political opponents, her own party members and even international figures have startled friend and foe alike – to say nothing of supplying this newspaper with some excellent copy. And rather than having clean hands, Kumaratunga’s term as President is stained with an extraordinary amount of blood, most, though not all, of it Tamil. And that is not to include the thousands of Sinhala soldiers she sent to their deaths.

To begin with, Kumaratunga has presided over the bloodiest phase of Sri Lanka’s protracted ethnic conflict. Several thousand civilians and combatants from both sides perished in her self-styled ‘war for peace’ - a military adventure fuelled by Sinhala nationalism that laid waste to large, predominantly Tamil, parts of the island and brought the country to its knees economically. At the outset of her term she assaulted and occupied the Tamil cultural heartland of Jaffna, displacing its entire population (indeed as she leaves office, 1 in 4 Tamils is a refugee or internally displaced). She crowed with an archaic Sinhala victory ceremony in Colombo, even as the ‘disappearances’ began in the northern peninsula.

Whilst she ingeniously engaged the international community in a discourse on human rights, her military cloaked in impunity, engaged in torture, extrajudicial killings and rape. Navaly, Nagerkoil, Chemmani, Binderenuwa - these are some of the iconic names of her term. Her human rights record made even her international allies blanch. Once, confronted by the BBC with a US State Department report on her rights record, she dismissed it as ‘lies, all lies.’ And she starved the Tamil north with a vengeance her predecessors could not match. The embargo - which remained in place, despite her promises, throughout her charade of negotiations with the LTTE - was tightened to excruciating levels during the war, ending only in 2001 when her government was toppled.

Ultimately she failed in her objective - to crush the Tamil liberation struggle. Paradoxically, she instead gave it a test of fire which hardened both its steel and its resolve. As she exits, the LTTE stands dominant over much of the Northeast, with a standing army and an administration that can no longer be described as fledgling. She has made internal self-determination – co-existence of any form - a compromise, rather than an aspiration for the Tamil people. In doing so, she wrecked Sri Lanka’s much-vaunted sovereignty, however one may understand it, beyond repair and shredded the fabric of its society. Fractured, impoverished and crime ridden, even southern Sri Lanka, is no achievement. One wonders whether even the Sinhalese will laud her period of rule.