The murders last week of two Jaffna high school principals produced a wave of anger and outrage amongst the region’s residents with protests and condemnations as well as fear that violence between Army-backed paramilitaries and the Liberation Tigers was set to rise.

Kopay Christian College principal Nadarajah Sivakadacham and Jaffna Central College principal, K. Rajadurai were shot dead by unidentified gunmen on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively last week.

The Sri Lankan government has accused the Tigers of carrying out the killings of the principals because they had refused to allow recruitment of students and lodged a protest with international ceasefire monitors.

But Cabinet spokesman Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva acknowledged to reporters the government’s claim was based on “circumstantial evidence.”

Jaffna residents said they believe Sivakadacham, an energetic pro-LTTE activist, was gunned down by Army-backed paramilitaries of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP).

They also believe Rajadurai, said to be a strong supporter of the EPDP and according to the paramilitary group’s leader, Douglas Devananda, a close friend of his, was killed in retaliation for Sivakadacham’s murder.

The killings sparked street protests by students and parents. Some reports quoting Sri Lankan military officials as saying students of Jaffna Wembady Girls School and Hindu College had also joined the protests.

Local news reports said shouted they shouted slogans condemning the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and the EPDP but the Army said students had shouted anti-LTTE slogans.

Troops assaulted students protesting after the funeral of Sivakadacham, local press reports said.

Sivakadacham was one of the chief organisers of the massive LTTE-backed Tamil Resurgence rally on September 30, which drew over 200,000 people to demand for their right to self-determination.

The LTTE conferred the title "Tamil national patriot" on Sivakadacham and condemned his killing, saying “Mr Sivakadadcham rendered invaluable service towards education of Tamil youths and for the social welfare of his community in Kopay. Above all, he worked until his death for the liberation of his people.”

The LTTE did not comment on Rajadurai’s murder.

The Association of Principals in Jaffna kept all schools in the peninsula closed until Wednesday this week, the Army said.

The Ceylon Teachers Service Union (CTSU), in association with the Ceylon Principals Service Union, observed a minute’s silence in schools during morning assembly last week, reports said.

Sivakadacham was killed Tuesday night outside his front door in Army dominated Jaffna by gunmen who fled on a motorbike. Mr. Rajathurai was shot the following day when he arriving for a religious function at the Weerasingham hall in the heart of Jaffna. Whilst some reports blamed a lone gunman, others said up to four were involved.

The Jaffna peninsula is dominated by the Sri Lankan security forces whose checkpoints and bunker networks crisscross the major towns.

Earlier high profile killings in Jaffna include those of BBC journalist M. Nimalrajan, who was fatally wounded at his home by unidentified gunmen. The EPDP is blamed for murdering Nimalrajan after his critical reports of the paramilitary group’s electoral malpractices and illegal activities.

Jaffna has seen rising violence in the past few weeks which many observers attribute to the widening shadow war between Army-backed paramilitaries and the LTTE.

The government has blamed the LTTE for the violence. But weekend press reports speculated Sri Lanka’s military has inducted several paramilitary cadres into the northern peninsula and suggested many alleged victims of the Tigers are in fact LTTE members themselves.

There was a sharp rise in violence in the already restive Batticaloa district this week as the shadow war between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers which has claimed scores of lives escalated.

A Police constable was killed and another was wounded when they were fired in Kaluthavalai, 28 km south of Batticaloa town Tuesday. Two gunmen on a motorbike shot at the policemen who were also riding a motorbike.

Two motorbike-riding gunmen shot and seriously wounded a 50-year old man on Hospital Road in the heart of Batticaloa town Tuesday whilst he was on his way to work. The victims sons are in the LTTE.

On Sunday unidentified gunmen attacked a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) patrol returning to Kinniyadi military camp, 30 km north of Batticaloa town, wounding two soldiers. Two civilians were also seriously wounded in an exchange of fire which lasted 30 minutes.

More than 500 SLA soldiers cordoned off the area and launched a search operation following the clash.

The evening before, two grenades were thrown at the Kinniyadi SLA camp, damaging its sentry point. Ten Tamil youths were arrested in an ensuing search operation but were released Sunday morning. Separately, a Muslim woman was arrested for possessing two hand grenades buried in the grounds of her property.

A week before this incident, a group of Tamil youths in Valaichenai were attacked by unidentified gunmen using grenades and automatic weapons. A 14-year old and a 26-year old were killed whilst another eight Tamil youths, all between the ages of 16 and 23, were wounded.

On Saturday at least five unidentified gunmen and S:A soldiers exchanged fire for more than fifteen minutes in Kaluwankerny, an Army-controlled village in Eravur, 20 km north of Batticaloa.

Earlier in the day SLA soldiers and armed policemen cordoned off and searched the Sithandy Divison no. 2 and no.3 areas in Eravur. The house to house search operation continued till noon, with soldiers blocking civilian movement, stopping vehicles and closing roads.

A soldier was mortally wounded when gunmen fired on a SLA convoy on patrol in Eravur on Friday. He died on admission to Polannaruwa hospital.

Suspected paramilitaries riding a motorbike fired at two civilians in Kiran also in Eravur earlier Friday, wounding both. Residents said cadres of the Army-backed Karuna Group had stepped up attacks on civilians engaged in political activities supportive of the Liberation Tigers.

Also on Friday, a SLA Lance Corporal was declared missing for six days from his sentry post at Kiran.

A cadre of the Liberation Tigers’ civilian militia was shot and killed Wednesday by gunmen wearing Sri Lankan military uniforms. The gunmen had moved beyond the no-man zone and fired at the National Auxilliary Force volunteer who was on duty at Mayilavedduvan, 3 km west of Sithandy. The gunmen withdrew to the Mavadyvembu SLA base after the attack.

On Thursday evening forty-eight Tamil rice mill workers, were arrested by Sri Lankan police in a cordon and search operation in Army-controlled in Polannaruwa. They were released Friday following registration and documentation of their identities.

More than 500 policemen participated in the search operation which was reportedly triggered by a tipoff had infiltrated the Batticaloa-Polonnaruwa border area, in which several Army-backed paramilitaries operated a number of camps and safehouses.

Earlier last week, a Tamil Tiger convoy was ambushed by men in military fatigues at Vavunathivu, 5 kilometers west of Batticaloa. The LTTE said three of their cadres were wounded and that the attackers withdrew to the Vavunathivu SLA camp after a firefight on October 11.

Compiled from TamilNet reports

Sri Lanka’s military and the Liberation Tigers are locked in a ‘subversive war,’ visiting Norwegian envoy Major Gen. (retd) Trond Furuhovde said Friday, calling on both sides to exercise restraint.

“This is subversive war [and] both parties are involved in this,” Reuters quoted Maj. Gen. Furuhovde, the former head of the international truce monitors in Sri Lanka, as telling the Foreign Correspondents’ Association.

“The parties, as they are involved in a subversive warfare, have to show self-discipline. We believe that peace talks is an alternative which is very useful,” Furuhovde said.

“If they use force, they have to be sure whether it is necessary to use force and the kind of consequences it could bear,” he added.

“It is alarming. All war is alarming. This is dangerous for the ceasefire and for the country. … There is no military solution to this conflict, that’s for sure.”

“We have seen similar warfare going on Iraq, the transformation of war into something else,” Furuhovde added. “What we see now, it’s not only criminal acts, it’s also acts of war.”

Scores of LTTE members, Army intelligence officers, paramilitary cadres and civilians have died in a cycle of violence which escalated last year in the wake of the defection to the Army of a renegade LTTE commander, Karuna.

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 violence, once predominantly occuring in Sri Lanka’s restive east and occasionally in the capitol, Colombo, has spread to almost other parts of the Northeast.

Last week, several people, including the principles of two of Jaffna’s well known schools as well as security forces personnel, suspected paramilitaries and LTTE members were killed in the northern Jaffna peninsula.

The LTTE last week called on international monitors to adopt a proactive role by intervening in matters that pose serious challenges to their mandate.

In a letter to Mr. Hagrup Haukland, head of Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the LTTE’s Political Head, Mr. S. P. Tamilselvan called for “effective steps be taken to drive home the reality that the SLA does in fact violate the spirit and letter of the CFA and the government adopts a condoning attitude and that this cannot continue unchecked.”

Accusing the Colombo government and the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) of operating with a “political agenda” to disrupt the Cease Fire Agreement and the peace process at large, Mr. Tamilselvan referred to the recent ambush on an LTTE convoy in Vavunativu.

“What stands out clearly in this episode and many others before, is the political agenda with which Colombo is manipulating matters to disrupt the CFA and the peace process at large, however much we as the other party strive hard and committedly to safeguard the integrity of the CFA,” Mr. Tamilselvan wrote.

The SLMM this week called for dialogue between military commanders on both sides to resolve growing tensions. But Gen. Furuhovde said last Friday there had been no breakthrough in arranging early negotiations between the parties and “I cannot say if the talks can be held in the near future.”

Last week visiting international human rights advisor Ian Martin, who is tasked with drawing up a human rights roadmap for Sri Lanka, believes introducing an international body with powers to investigate the ongoing killings could be the answer.

“The political killings are one of the most serious human rights issues, but the key problem there is to identify properly where responsibility lies and that’s why I think an impartial mechanism could be of assistance,” Martin was quoted by Reuters as saying.

“I raised the question of whether some international investigative capacity, the neutrality of which might be accepted by both parties, might not be useful,” Martin, a former head of Amnesty International, added, referring to talks he held separately with the Tigers and the government.

The shadow war between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers has spread far beyond the island’s restive east to almost all parts of the Northeast, with lethal attacks taking place almost on a daily basis now. Visiting Norwegian envoy Major General (retd) Trond Furuhovde was last week bluntly critical of both sides. "This is subversive war [and] both parties are involved in this," he said. Even during his visit several people, including security forces personnel, suspected paramilitaries, LTTE members and civilians, lost their lives.

The people of Jaffna were acutely shocked last week by the murders of the principles of two of the peninsula’s well-known high schools. While the Sri Lankan government has blamed the Tigers for both killings, LTTE officials in turn have blamed Army-backed paramilitaries. However Jaffna residents suspect that one killing – that of Jaffna Central College principal, K. Rajadurai – might have been retaliation for the earlier one of Kopay Christian College principal Nadarajah Sivakadacham. Nadarajah was a leading organizer of the spectacularly successful Tamil Resurgence rally last month, whilst Rajadurai had reportedly been close to the paramilitary Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP).

The killings have shaken the Jaffna community, bringing, as it does, the horrors of the shadow war frighteningly close to their children. The Sri Lankan government and anti-LTTE propagandists, particularly those aligned to the paramilitaries, have sought to exploit parents’ anxieties. The Tamil community is familiar with the role played paramilitary groups, which have - since the Indian intervention of the late eighties - waged a dirty war on behalf of the Sri Lankan state whilst masquerading as political parties. Today, as ever, debilitating terror is the objective behind their violence. The gunmen hope to export the climate of fear they are fostering in the east to other parts of the Northeast, assisted by a Sinhala military delightedly fostering Tamil fratricide.

Both Colombo and the LTTE have declared a preparedness for talks, as demanded by the Co-Chairs of Sri Lanka’s donor community. But declarations are not matched by developments on the ground. Sri Lanka’s military is expanding its paramilitary capabilities. As long as the paramilitaries remain armed and operative in the Northeast, the LTTE members and supporters face a security threat and inevitably the organisation will respond with counter-violence. The inclusion of Clause 1.8 in the ceasefire agreement (obliging Sri Lanka to disarm these units) was intended to preclude the very situation prevailing in the Northeast. Maj. Gen. Furuhovde admitted last week that talks to resolve security issues are not in the offing. Indeed, as this newspaper and other Tamil voices have argued, the paramilitary violence is part of the wider military onslaught against the Tamil struggle. Moreover, it cannot be separated from the Sri Lankan leadership’s decided lack of interest in pursing a negotiated solution to the ethnic question. Whilst awaiting clarity on the prospects for peace, the people of the Northeast would undoubtedly share Maj. Gen. Furuhovde sentiments when he argued last week “if [the parties] use force, they have to be sure whether it is necessary to use force and the kind of consequences it could bear.”

With the unveiling of Mahinda Rajapakse’s election manifesto this week, November’s Presidential election has become, as the hardline monks of the JHU predicted it would, a referendum on Sri Lanka’s peace process. Addressing leaders of his Sinhala nationalist allies and fellow Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) members, Rajapakse rhetorically wrapped himself in the Lion flag Tuesday. “I love my country,” he declared, as he put forward what is effectively a roadmap to renewed war with the Liberation Tigers. He rejected Tamil self-determination outright, along with the notion of a Tamil homeland. Having discarded what constitute core elements of the ethnic question insofar as the Tamils are concerned, he also swore by Sri Lanka’s “sovereignty, security and the unitary character of the state.” So much for powersharing as a solution to the island’s protracted conflict. Rajapakse’s campaign officials, moreover, outlined his first order of business were he to be elected: a review - in other words, the dismantling - of the Norwegian facilitators’ and the international ceasefire monitors roles in Sri Lanka.

The ethnic polarisation ahead of November’s elections is thus now complete. Whilst Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP) struggles to court the mainstream Sinhala nationalists whilst retaining the support of the island’s minority communities, Rajapakse is concentrating singlemindedly on the former. Both candidates are dangling subsidies – a crude but effective tactic – before the rural poor. But beyond that, however, Rajapakse is putting himself forward as a peerless champion of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism. The Premier’s differences with incumbent President Chandrika Kumaratunga notwithstanding, the SLFP now appears to have settled into the right-wing coalition. Thus, bearing in mind who both candidates are wooing, the race is understandably described as a close one. But there are factors beyond voter ethnicity and preferences at play. Tamil analysts are, for example, anxiously eyeing the rising tide of violence in the Northeast. With the Army-backed paramilitary groups engaged in a shadow war with the Tigers undoubtedly angling for a Rajapakse win, and given Sri Lanka’s history of election rigging, Mr. Wickremesinghe cannot be sanguine about the Northeast. Southern analysts are meanwhile worried about the possibility election violence in the south.

The point is that the Tamils and other minority communities in Sri Lanka must seriously consider the possibility of a Rajapakse presidency replacing Kumaratunga’s. Furthermore, his is not merely election rhetoric. The JVP and JHU have thrown their substantial support behind Rajapakse with every intention of following through on their programmes. And unlike Mr. Wickremesinghe’s clutch of contradictory agreements, Rajapakse’s coalition are broadly united in their core aim: the preservation and strengthening of the unitary state and Sinhala dominance of it. The likelihood of a resumption of the conflict would thus rise. Despite the Premier’s rhetoric about all inclusive dialogue and preparedness to talk to the LTTE, the peace process will undoubtedly begin to disintegrate. Besides, Rajapakse has already outlined what he expects to discuss with the LTTE: its disarming. The JHU has meanwhile started beating the war drum, arguing that Sri Lanka’s leaders have overestimated the LTTE’s military capabilities. An increased defence budget has already been put forward.

It has not escaped the Tamils that Mr. Wickremsinghe simply cannot attack the principles being enunciated by Sinhala-nationalists or commit to power-sharing without alienating many of his own supporters and party officials. Indeed, given the SLFP’s election platform, his invitation for it to join his party and form a southern consensus speaks volumes about concealed sentiments within the UNP also. In one sense therefore, Sri Lanka has not moved forward from the Sinhala supremacism which underpinned the SLFP’s sweeping victory in 1956. Fifty years on, however, the stakes are much higher. A renewed war will usher in destruction and casualties on a scale hitherto unseen in Sri Lanka. But Mr. Rajapakse and his coalition seem remarkably undeterred.

Armed conflicts have dropped 40 percent since the end of the Cold War and those that persist are killing far fewer people, says a three-year study that attempts to debunk current myths about war and peace.

“Over the past dozen years, the global security climate has changed in dramatic, positive, but largely unheralded ways,” the first Human Security Report said. “Civil wars, genocides and international crises have all declined sharply.”

And human-rights abuses have declined in five out of six regions in the developing world since the mid-1990s, according to the report prepared at Canada’s University of British Columbia in Vancouver and financed by five governments (Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Britain).

However, even if these are receding, “high-casualty” attacks by terrorists are not. But international terrorism kills only a “tiny” number of people each year compared to those who die in war, the report said.

“We no longer have huge wars with huge armies, major engagements, heavy conventional weapons,” said Andrew Mack, an academic and former U.N. official, who directed the study, funded by Canada, Britain, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland.

“Today’s wars are low-intensity fought with light weapons, small arms in very poor countries. They are often extremely brutal but they don’t kill that many people,” he told a news conference.

The much anticipated report, three years in the making, found the total number of conflicts declined by 40 percent since the Cold War ended.

The average number of deaths per conflict also dropped from 37,000 in 1950, during the Korean War, to 600 in 2002.

Between 1991 and 2004, 28 armed struggles for self-determination started or restarted while 43 were contained or ended, the study said. In 2004, there were only 25 such conflicts - the lowest number since 1976.

Even the number of refugees dropped by 45 percent between 1992 and 2003 as more conflicts ended.

And despite the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the massacres at Srebrenica a year later and the continuing targeting of civilians in Sudan, Mack said the number of genocide and “politicides” fell 80 percent between 1988 and 2001.

Genocide is defined as the murder of groups because of their ethnicity, religion or nationality. Politicides are communal victims in opposition to a regime or dominant group.

The findings, Mack says, should help debunk fears that global human security is deteriorating.

Why do those fears persist, despite countervailing evidence? Mack lays principal blame on the media, which he says dwell on conflict while paying less attention to “quiet successes” and under-the-surface trends.

The Human Security Report identifies three major political changes over the past 30 years that have altered the global security landscape, Ramesh Thakur summarised for the Japan Times.

“The first was the end of colonialism: Until the 1980s, colonial wars made up 60-100 percent of all international conflicts. There are no colonial wars today.”

“The second was the end of the Cold War, which had driven approximately one-third of all conflicts since 1945. Washington and Moscow have stopped fueling “proxy wars” in the developing world.”

“Third, after the end of the Cold War there was an unprecedented explosion of international activities designed to stop ongoing wars and prevent new ones from starting.”

Despite the U.N. failures in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Somalia, the world body has a 40 to 60 percent success rate in stopping conflicts, said Mack.

“There has been an explosion in very broadly based peace operations that are essentially exercises in nation-building,” he said. “They make a difference particularly with respect to stopping wars from starting again, and that’s important because about 40 per cent of the wars that have been stopped in the past tend to start again.”

The increasing weight of world opinion and action is also having an impact on leaders and warlords who in another era would have felt no constraints on warmaking, says John Norris, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group in Washington.

“There is an international rallying to the notion of a need to protect populations that are threatened in their own borders; it’s gained some traction,” Mr. Norris told the Christian Science Monitor.

But Ian Levine, program director at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters he was concerned that the report’s message might be construed as “we need not worry so much” and pointed to renewed debate on torture and the degradation of prisoners in Iraq.

“We feel at the moment we are fighting hard to protect international standards. There is a real danger of going backwards, “he said.

The United Nations Children’s agency, UNICEF, and the Liberation Tigers this week agreed to review a bilateral program drawn up two years ago to rehabilitate children affected by war, including former combatants.

“UNICEF concur with the LTTE that the Action Plan needs to be reviewed in the light of changing social necessities,” Ms. JoAnna Van Gerpen, the new Country Head of UNICEF in Sri Lanka was quoted as saying, following a meeting with the head of the LTTE’s Political Wing, Mr. S. P. Tamilselvan Tuesday.

The Action Plan was initially agreed in discussions between the LTTE and the then country head of UNICEF, Mr. Ted Chaiban, in March 2003. Based on the guiding principles of the best interests of the child, the plan spells out an integrated approach to programming for the welfare of children.

The plan covered Child Rights training, awareness campaigns, a mechanism for release and reintegration of underage recruits and a monitoring mechanism. It also included plans for micro credit facilities and income generation activities for children and their families and vocational training. The education, health and nutrition of all vulnerable children, as well as the provision of psychosocial care were covered under the plan.

Mr. Tamilselvan thanked the UNICEF Country Head Tuesday for her immediate and positive response to review and re-activate the Action Plan for affected children.

“UNICEF has a challenging job in this area to muster support from partners to provide livelihood for the families of children,” said Mr. Tamilselvan, while also acknowledging the difficulty UNICEF faced in organising gainful vocational training plans for youths.

“We will provide full support to implement projects for the betterment of children whether it is in health, education or employment through vocational training,” he promised.

Assuring the UNICEF Country Head that the LTTE is fully committed to working with the organisation and other partners interested in the welfare of children, Mr. Tamilselvan made a request that steps be taken to not allow the plight of children from war and tsunami affected families to be hijacked by people with political agendas.

“It is essential to look deeper into the problem of children seeking refuge with the LTTE, not just symptomatically but with a realistic causative perspective,” said Mr. Tamilselvan.

He said that the increasing numbers of youths volunteering to enrol are from the military occupied areas and is an indicator to the unbearable conditions of military harassment in those areas.

“There is no necessity to take in under-age children, but we have to look into the compelling circumstances that motivate these children to seek enrolment” Mr. Tamilselvan said.

“Unlike in the past, we have put in place a remuneration scheme for those between the ages of 18 and 40 and these are the recruits that are provided with military training,” he said.

Mr. Tamilselvan told the UNICEF Country Head that regardless of the political resolution to the conflict, the two organisations should work together to provide war and tsunami displaced families with a livelihood so that their children would benefit.

Expressing appreciation of the work done by UNICEF’s local representative, Ms. Penny Brune, Mr. Tamilselvan said that the other district representatives too should strive to understand the complexity of the problem of children seeking enrolment with the LTTE.

The time requirement for verification of age, wrong information and the family conditions are among the issues the organisation faces in determining the age of those seeking enrolment.

Japanese Red Cross in Trinco

Pointing out that 8000 families in the tsunami-devastated Trincomalee District, i.e. 10% of all households, are still suffering from unfavorable living conditions, the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) said it is despatching a team with supplies to help.

“They are living in shelters, temporary housing, or staying with relatives or friends. In response to the situation, the JRCS is sending its staff and is delivering relief goods, essential to the everyday lives of those affected, in cooperation with the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS).”

“After April 2005, relief distributions in the Trincomalee District by aid organizations became infrequent and there is now little coordination of distribution plans between the organizations,” JRCS said.

“However, evacuees without permanent housing are staying in shelters where the conditions are very rough and difficult, so the demand for the commodities is still high.”

Hygiene kits (comprised of everyday items such as soap, toothbrush sets and towels) from the Red Cross are in high demand along with clothes.

On August 8 to 9, clothes, sarongs and saris, and hygiene kits were distributed to 2,100 families in Kuchchaveli on the eastern coast. Distributions were also conducted on the 18th in Ichilampattai and on the 30th in Kinniya.

The JRCS says it “continues relief distributions and other assistance to improve the living environment of the evacuees who are excluded from the recovery process and are going to be forgotten by the international community.”

Chickenpox vaccinations

Medical staff with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) working in collaboration with Sri Lankan health department staff, last week organized a vaccination campaign against chickenpox for 200 children in Kallady, a camp for tsunami survivors near the eastern city of Trincomalee.

The vaccination campaign for children under twelve followed an outbreak of the disease in the camp in September, IOM said. Some 35 cases among children and adults were diagnosed.

"Chicken pox, like measles, is highly contagious particularly among children in a crowded camp environment and it is essential to act quickly and vaccinate as soon as it is identified," said IOM Colombo Public Health Coordinator, Dr Qasim Sufi.

IOM health workers and health department staff last week also carried out a house-to-house health education campaign in the camp and met camp and religious leaders to enlist their help in stopping the spread of the disease.

Health volunteers were mobilized to visit every house in the camp daily to monitor any further spread of the disease and plans are underway for a visiting mobile clinic.

French funds for Trinco rebuilding

France will provide 74 million Euros (about US$ 62 million) to Sri Lanka in a bid to facilitate the rebuilding of the tsunami affected infrastructure in the tsunami-hit eastern Trincomalee district, the presidential office said last Wednesday.

The two governments signed three agreements in Paris in the presence of Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga who was visiting France, the office said.

A 64 million Euro (about US$ 53.6 million) credit facility at a concessionary interest rate and re-payable in 20 years, will finance the rehabilitation of the highway network, pipe borne water supply and power transmission facilities in Trincomalee, damaged by last year''s tsunami.

The second agreement was a memorandum of understanding (MOU) about the Greater Trincomalee Integrated Water Supply Scheme, under which France will provide 10 million Euros (about 8.4 million dollars) credit facility to Sri Lanka.

The French government also agreed to differ Sri Lanka''s outstanding debt of 6.19 million Euros (about 5.19 million dollars). An MOU to this effect was signed last Wednesday.

President Kumaratunga thanked the French government and people for their immediate help after the tsunami.(Xinhua)

Although thirteen candidates are contesting Sri Lanka’s Presidential polls in November, the race is essentially between the two leading contenders, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party’s (SLFP) candidate and the main opposition United National Party (UNP) leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe. The winner’s foremost challenge will be the Tamil national question. He will inherit a stalled peace process, a simmering shadow war, and one of the world’s most entrenched ethnic divides. The question, then, is what prospects peace under one or the other.

The platforms on which Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe are campaigning are already in the public domain. Although Rajapakse, unlike Wickremesinghe, is yet to release his official manifesto, the texts of his agreements with Sinhala nationalist parties have been published. There is already a broad split. While Rajapakse has signed agreements with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Buddhist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) – both strongly Sinhala nationalist parties – Wickremesinghe has gained the backing of the main Muslim party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), and the main up-countryTamil parties - the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) and the Upcountry Peoples’ Front (UPF) - and the Colombo Tamil party, the Western People’s Front (WPF).

The Rajapakse coalition has a coherent and uncompromising approach to the peace process and the Tamil question. It stands by a unitary Sri Lanka, ruling out any form of powersharing with the Tamils, let alone the federal model proposed by the international community. Furthermore, the Rajapakse coalition goes further, calling for a review (i.e. redrafting) of the February 2002 ceasefire agreement underpinning the present peace process and questioning Norway’s continued involvement, saying “as it is axiomatic that Norway has shown unprecedented bias and partiality towards the LTTE in her role as a facilitator in the negotiation process … and in the monitoring mission of the Ceasefire Agreement and also as she has undoubtedly failed to act impartially in performing her obligations, it is agreed hereby to reconsider seriously whether the Norway should be allowed to engage in those activities further.”

With regards a political solution itself, the Rajapakse coalition sets out policies that reject the core elements of the Tamil demand for self-determination, insisting “no part of the Sri Lankan land shall be considered as the homeland of any racial group,” thereby rejecting the territorial principle on which powersharing could take place. In the interim, the coalition has explicitly rule out an interim administrative structure for the Northeast and vowed to nullify the Post Tsunami Operational Management Structure (PTOMS) aid sharing mechanism agreed by the Sri Lanka government and the Liberation Tigers.

Inevitably, these factors have alarmed the Tamils and Sri Lanka’s other minorities, not least they portend renewed conflict rather than resurgent peace. Some observers anxious about a Rajapakse win take comfort in the absolute power – and hence autonomy of action – the President’s office has, as Rajapakse, a relative newcomer to the levers of power, has no history on delivering to promises to allies. Indeed, recent press reports claim he has suggested to other potential allies that his agreements with the JVP and JHU are for election purposes only and will not actually be implemented.

Others even suggest that the JHU and JVP will be more pragmatic once Rajapakse wins, and less insistent their demands are followed through against international pressure. They argue that during the 2004 parliamentary campaign, the United People''s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), the SLFP-JVP alliance, challenged the ceasefire agreement but did nothing to negate it once in power. Given that precedent, it is argued that once, once elected, the right wing coalition will not change the status quo.

However, not fiddling with truce agreement is no longer enough. In 2004 the ceasefire was still holding comparatively well. At the end of 2005 the truce is unravelling amid a shadow war between Army-backed paramilitaries and the LTTE’s intelligence wing and pro-active efforts to shore it up are called for. Even the most optimistic observer has no idea what course of action a Rajapakse Presidency will follow to end the cycle of violence. If anything, Rajapakse’s Prime Ministership has been characterised by an absence of statesman-like leadership needed to carry out such a task, particularly in the face of resistance by the military and Sinhala hardliners.

When it comes to the question of a political solution, another factor that promptly weighs into the equation is the Sri Lanka’s powerful Buddhist clergy. Immediately after handing in his nomination, Rajapakse, an avowed Buddhist, was pictured before the prelates of the Maha Sangha seeking their blessings. At the moment, the Sangha is prepared to wait and see. And while it is possible that it will not create a public uproar if Rajapakse changes his stance on power sharing upon becoming President, that they will privately exert considerable pressure to support public protests by Sinhala nationalists and radical monks is undoubted. By way of comparison, the Sanghas did not publicly oppose the LTTE’s Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) proposal as there was no need for them to do so – President Chandrika Kumaratunga had already assured them the proposal would not be taken up.

Of course, this assumes, as the optimists do, that a victorious Rajapakse would contemplate such a transformation. But there are rational reasons why he would not – it will only serve to alienate his core constituency. Even if he does not plan to stand for a second term as President (and the deal with the JVP includes an abrogation of the role of Executive President during his first six-year term in office) he inevitably hopes to lead Sri Lanka as Prime Minister after that.

Many peace advocates are pinning their hopes on the international community stepping into ensure Rajapakse as President takes steps to gets the peace process back on track. While the efficacy of international pressure has recently been demonstrated by the shelving of the anti-conversion bill, the change in stance was effected under Kumaratunga, who has been vocal about her opposition to the agreements between Rajapkse and the JVP and JHU. Whether international pressure will have any weight on a President who is reliant on strongly anti-Western forces (and not forgetting that the JVP was anti-Indian when it thought that state was going to take a pro-Tamil stance) is questionable.

Another factor that will impact on the peace process after the Presidential election is the state of play in the parliament. The current minority Peoples’ Alliance (PA) government may regain its majority if the JVP rejoins it in the wake of a Rajapakse win. This will result in President and parliament coming under the right-wing coalition’s control – a unity of command that has not been seen since 2001 – strengthening Sri Lanka’s ability to withstand external pressure. This assumes moreover, that international actors can maintain their own unified position on peace in the face of their own competing interests.

If on the other hand the UNP were to gain the upper hand at a parliamentary election in the immediate future, this will result in different dynamics. Given that when Wickremesinghe was Prime Minister under Kumaratunga’s Presidency such a scenario is not unprecedented. Whilst Wickremesinghe may not have the bitterly acrimonious relationship with Rajapakse that he did with Kumaratunga, their competing interests does not auger well for the peace process, not least given Wickremsinghe’s record of deference to the President’s authority (on implementation of the normalisation aspects of the ceasefire agreement for example).

The historic antagonism between the two camps and the need to maintain his personal popularity in the face of a government led by the opposition will ensure Rajapakse is unlikely to take any steps to shore up the Norwegian peace process. And it is unlikely that the UNP, especially if Wickremesinghe leads it, will be in a position to present and push through a credible alternative – this is, after all, the party that accepted the dissolution of parliament even when it had a clear majority.

Therefore, the likelihood that the coalition’s agreements are merely rhetoric, and that a Rajapakse Presidency will in practice be based on a pragmatic willingness to “walk the extra mile for peace” seem slim. The question, though, is whether having Wickremsinghe in the President’s office is any better?

The UNP leader has launched a populist campaign with a market focussed election manifesto which also addresses the detail of the peace process. Promising to ‘defeat separatism,’ the former Prime Minister promises “a permanent solution … through a political solution based on United Sri Lanka” based on the Oslo and Tokyo declarations, which “guarantees the unity, democratic character and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka”. He also guarantees “the security and protection of the eastern province, while guaranteeing Muslim representation in the peace talks”. He vows a Muslim delegation shall be included in the peace talks and “views of the Muslim population will be ascertained at all times.”

Whilst his rhetoric about ‘defeating separatism’ is unlikely to seriously worry the LTTE, Wickremesinghe’s plans to include a Muslim delegation will face opposition from the Liberation Tigers who argue that peace talks should be between the parties to the armed conflict – the LTTE and the Sri Lanka state. Then there is the question of who the Muslim representatives should be – drawn from the fragmented political leadership, community or religious leaders, or simply Wickremesinghe’s divided political ally, the SLMC.

Similarly, while the manifesto promises to “establish a mechanism that will ensure the peace and security of all people living in the Eastern Province”, Wickremesinghe has a poor record as head of a government that, by failing to implement terms of the ceasefire agreement with regards to the disarmament and removal of paramilitary groups, precipitated the lack of peace and security in the region today. Admittedly he faced resistance from Kumaratunga, but there are questions about his resolve in facing down a belligerent military.

While on the surface Wickremesinghe has a good record on the peace front – he signed the ceasefire agreement with the LTTE, thereby kickstarting the process and held several rounds of talks with the LTTE – it does not stand up to close scrutiny. Wickremesinghe has a history of making promises that were not delivered. The collapse of the Sub-committees on normalisation, rehabilitation and de-escalation, the abrogation of the agreement to solicit international aid jointly with the LTTE and the failure to implement the ceasefire agreement eventually led to the LTTE walking out of the talks.

Wickremesinghe has also promised to “speed up the post-tsunami reconstruction and rehabilitation of the East under the to-be appointed competent authority”. What this means for the P-TOMS is unknown, but with a history of marginalizing the LTTE, contrary to the views of many, tsunami-related aid is likely to a source of acrimony, rather than amity.

While the international community may have more sway over Sri Lanka in a Wickremesinghe Presidency, given his history of working with Western nations (as demonstrated by his pursuance of an ‘international safety net’ during his Prime Ministership), it remains to be seen if he can implement crucial decisions – such as disarming the paramilitaries and sharing aid with the LTTE – in the face of vehement resistance from the Sinhala right. Thus, even if the international community does pressure Wickeremesinghe, what he can deliver may be restricted. If the parliament is controlled by the UPFA with a majority – which is likely if the JVP rejoins the PA after Kumaratunga leaves – then he will need to deploy the Presidency’s considerable powers to effect changes.

But, like his rival in the November polls, Wickremesinghe has no record of statesman-like leadership. Given his previous leadership of the country was characterised by an unwillingness to take bold decisions and the constant seeking of a political consensus, which was never forthcoming, it seems unlikely that he will challenge a UPFA parliament. All hopes rest therefore, on a Wickremesinghe Presidency supported by a UNP-dominated parliament. This is by no means certain. Although Wickremesinghe is backed in his Presidential bid by a number of minority parties, the Muslim bloc is not likely in parliament, given the fracturing of Muslim political representation, and the CWC has a history of pursing unabashedly interest driven alliances. In short, a decisive majority in Parliament may not prove forthcoming.

Then there is the Sangha. Powersharing in Sri Lanka ultimately means weakening the clergy’s grip on the state. Given Wickremesinghe’s proclivity for political consensus and his lack of firm leadership, only the hopelessly optimistic can expect him to demonstrate the determination, tenacity and resolve to force the peace process through to a solution in the face of the customary intense resistance the Sinhala right wing and the Buddhist clergy will put up.

Therefore while on the face of it Wickremesinghe may look like a more positive bet for the peace process than Rajapakse, the reality is that he is faces odds and is beset by weaknesses that ultimately make him a long shot too. While Rajapakse has already taken a fiercely anti-peace stance and has little incentive and almost no inclination to change after winning, Wickremesinghe’s all things to all people agreements and cautious and conservative temperament suggest that he will be unlikely to deliver the shot in the arm the peace process needs. In short, regardless of who wins the Presidential polls, the prospects for a revival of the Norwegian initiative look slim.

The shadow war between Army-backed paramilitaries and the Liberation Tigers continued to claim lives in Sri Lanka’s restive east, as talks to stabilise the ceasefire remained moribund.

The distributor of the Eelanatham newspaper in Batticaloa, Mr Yogakumar Krishnapillai, was amongst recent victims, shot dead by two gunmen as he was delivering copies of the LTTE-backed paper his motorbike

The attack took in the heavily militarised heart of Batticaloa town. The Sri Lanka Army controls the town and its environs as well as the eastern districts coast. The Liberation Tigers control the vast hinterland across the lagoon to the town’s west.

Krishnapillai’s murder comes months after the Amparai distributor of the same paper was killed in a similar manner. On 29 June, Mr Arasakumar Kannamuthu, was also shot and killed by gunmen.

Eelanatham, the only Tamil newspaper in Batticaloa, is printed in the LTTE held Kokkadichholai and distributed in all parts of the district. The paper has faced regular harassment from the Sri Lanka military. A month ago, the Special Task Force – the counter-insurgency arm of the Police - blocked the sales of the paper in military-controlled areas of Batticaloa and Amparai districts.

Last Wednesday a 70-year-old wathcman was killed when two gunmen on a motobike lobbed grenades at the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) office located on Station Road near Batticaloa Railway station.

The TRO said that the attackers had lobbed at least three grenades and fired on their office with automatic rifles for 35 minutes killing the watchman and wounding two Technical Officers.

There are two Sri Lanka Army sentry points within 100 meters from the TRO office.

The grenade and machinegun raid was a carbon copy of a previous attack at on the same TRO office, the charity said, adding that last Wednesday’s attack is the 4th attack on the Batticaloa Office since the February 2002 ceasefire.

On Monday this week, a group of armed men fired at a Sri Lankan Police jeep near Mandur35 km southeast of Batticaloa, wounding a Sub-Inspector of Police. Four policemen in the vehicle with the Sub-Inspector escaped unhurt and returned fire in the incident which took place near Palaimunai School.

Apart from the attacks on the LTTE-affiliated and security forces’ offices, there have been a series of murders.

Mr Karuppaiah Sasikumar, a resident of Kommanthurai, Chenkalady, went missing 22 September after travelling to Colombo to apply for a passport.

His parents received a call claiming to be from the paramilitary Karuna Group informed them he had been shot and killed by them and that his body had been buried. Mr Sasikumar was not involved in any political or armed activities, according to his parents.

Two electrical wiring workers working at a Pillayar Temple in Valaichenai, north of Batticaloa, were killed and a third injured Friday when the temple was fired on. The motive for the attack is unclear, police said.

The father of a paramilitary cadre was shot dead at his house in Kudapokkuna, a border-village between Batticaloa and Polannaruwa districts.. His wife was injured in the attack,

Police suspect the house may have been targeted as the victim’s son had recently left the Karuna Group. Kudapokkuna is located 15 km north of Welikanda and 70 km west of Batticaloa.

An auto-rickshaw driver and resident of Iruthayapuram was shot dead last Tuesday at Kallady in Batticaloa. The three wheeler driver whose mother is a Tamil and the father is a Sinhalese, was attacked by two gunmen on a motorbike.

The continuing violence comes amidst deepening antagonism between the Liberation Tigers and the Sri Lanka military forces.

Last month, a week after several LTTE cadres were killed and wounded in a deep penetration raid blamed on Army-backed irregulars, a top paramilitary commander was assassinated at his base within a HSZ.

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, a former LTTE commander, 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 characterise a ‘shadow war.’

Compiled from TamilNet reports

The Sri Lanka government has called for investors to exploit the ilmenite rich sands along a fiercely contested stretch of the island’s eastern coastline, renewing resentment among the region’s Tamil residents, who protest they are denied a share of the benefits.

Mining in the Pulmoddai region, 52 kilometres north of Trincomalee, came to a halt in the late nineties following the sinking of two ships transporting ore by the Liberation Tigers amid the escalating conflict.

Sandwiched between Trincomalee – the Sri Lankan Navy’s most important base – and Mullaitivu – the LTTE’s naval headquarters, Pulmoddai is already in a strategically sensitive location.

But its valuable sands have also been a source of intense contention between the region’s predominantly Tamil inhabitants and the Sinhala-dominated government in Colombo.

Last week Sri Lanka’s Public Enterprises Reform Commission called for proposals from investors to exploit the rich minerals sands deposit operated by Lanka Mineral Sands Ltd in Pulmoddai and to manufacture and export value added mineral sands based products, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Ilmenite, rutile and zircon are the minerals derived from sands on the seashore and, unlike other countries that have to mine heavily to excavate mineral deposits, in Pulmoddai the minerals only have to be separated from the sea sand.

Ilmenite and rutile are used to produce titanium dioxide and in the manufacture titanium metal while zircon is used in the ceramic industry as a refractory in the manufacture of moldings.

Lanka Minerals Sands Ltd operates the Pulmoddai deposit, one of the richest mineral in the world, with a very low cost of production.

However, production ceased in September 1997 when the Liberation Tigers sank a ship carrying the mineral rich sand and since then the company confined its activities to selling its existing stockpiles.

The LTTE stated that it had only destroyed the Chinese-crewed Panamanian registered ‘MV Cordiality’ because it was being used to move ilmenite ore from the traditionally Tamil Pulmoddai area for sale abroad.

The LTTE had already hit another cargo vessel, the ‘MV Princess Wave’ a month earlier. A large explosion, possibly caused by a sea mine or an underwater charge, ripped a hole in the hull as the ship was loading sand off Pulmoddai.

The LTTE said that the second strike was carried out because the Sri Lankan government had ignored the warning served by the first. The Tigers also said that the attack “should not be construed as an act of hostility directed towards any particular trade or shipping organisation”.

Tamil resentment over the Pulmoddai sands was summed up by the murdered journalist Mr Sivaram Dharmeratnam, writing for the Tamil language Virakesari newspaper in 2004.

“In countries affected by civil war, often disagreements on distribution of national wealth are a root cause of the conflict,” he argued.

“The Sinhala nation, which earned several millions of dollars exporting ilmenite, an important natural resource of the Tamil homeland, waves the articles of constitution when rejecting Tamils demand for a small portion of the revenue.”

Successive Sri Lankan governments have continued a strategic project to secure the area since independence from Britain.

A large Sinhala colony was established in the nearby Manal Aru region (since given a Sinhala name, Weli Oya) by driving out the Tamils living there.

A significant Sri Lankan military presence has since been established in the Weli Oya area and in the villages around Pulmoddai.

Apart from targeting ships deployed to transport the ore out of the region, the LTTE has persistently frustrated the Sri Lankan government’s attempts to secure the Pulmoddai region, launching repeated harassment raids in the area.

In the light of Sri Lanka’s efforts to resume mining, renewed acrimony seems likely.

Ilmenite could prove a valuable source of revenue for the cash-strapped Sri Lankan government and the LTTE have said they intend to prevent the ‘plundering’ of the Tamil region’s wealth by the state “particularly as the proceeds are being used to arm the predominantly Sinhalese Sri Lankan Army”.

The new investors are being sought to process the ilmenite after Lanka Minerals Sands Ltd recently began transporting Ilmenite from Pulmoddai to Trincomalee, with the aim of shipping from Trincomalee.

Company officials said they envisage prospective investors would process ilmenite to make synthetic rutile, titanium slag and titanium dioxide pigment, the Sunday Times said.

“We will short list the proposals and then negotiate with them on what sort of products to make,” a company official was quoted by the paper as saying.

The government re-commissioned the Pulmoddai Ilmenite factory last year sixteen years after it was forced to close when the Liberation Tigers blasted its fresh water supply lines from the Yan Oya River. The factory processes sand excavated from the beaches of Pulmoddai to separate ilmenite and rutile ores for export.

Almost 5 million tons of ilmenite are known to be in the region, which can theoretically be mined at the rate of 150,000 tons a year. In addition, rutile and zircon can be mined at the rates of 10,000 tons and 6,000 tons respectively.

The Pulmoddai beach deposit is replenished annually during the north-east monsoon and the reserve is estimated to last for over 25 years at an annual mining rate of 150,000 tonnes.

The Sri Lankan government’s main customers for ilmenite are Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha Ltd (Japan), ACI (US), Derby & Co (British), Currumbin Minerals Ltd (Australia), and Rare Earth’s Ltd (India’s state-owned firm).

Sandy treasures of Pulmoddai [SundayTimes,June 23, 2002 ]

The party representing Malaysia’s Tamils is in a crisis after its leader declared he wanted his long-serving deputy ousted in party elections, reports said Monday.

Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) party President S Samy Vellu said he would back his former press secretary to challenge the party’s deputy president of 24 years, S Subramaniam, when the party holds elections next year, The Star daily reported.

Samy’s open declaration of opposition to Subramaniam was likely to divide the party because both leaders have core groups of supporters, reports said.

Although the MIC is part of Malaysia’s ruling coalition, the rift it will not affect the stability of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s government or of his ruling National Front coalition, which is dominated by the United Malays National Organisation party.

The Star said Samy picked former press aide G Palanivel, who is now a party vice president, to challenge Subramaniam for the post of deputy president.

Samy, who is works minister and has been MIC leader since 1981, has often accused Subramaniam of trying to undermine his leadership.

‘I have to hand over the party to someone who cares for the community, cries for them and has the determination to serve the community,’ Samy was cited as saying by The Star. ‘That is why I have chosen a man and that is Palanivel,’ he said.

Samy enjoys strong support among the party’s branch leaders despite criticism that he is autocratic in running the MIC.

Subramaniam is seen as one of the few leaders in the party who is not subservient to Samy and has his own core of supporters.

In a veiled criticism against Subramaniam, Samy said he could no longer afford to ‘have ineffective leaders’ but needed new blood ‘who when we say walk, they must jump’.

The MIC is the third largest party in National Front, representing ethnic Indians, predominantly Tamils, who comprise less than 10 percent of Malaysia’s 25 million population. The second biggest players in the ruling coalition are the Chinese.

The MIC has long been a mainstay of the Malay-led government, delivering support of Indians at general elections, but it has been accused of doing little to uplift the economic status of the community.

Malaysian Indians, many of them who still earn a living tapping rubber and doing menial labor, lag behind ethnic Chinese and Malays with minimal participation in the corporate sector.

Two brothers killed in Canadian hit-and-run

Two Tamil brothers were killed by a speeding car following a dispute outside a Canadian night club, press reports said.

The Nagulasigamany brothers, Chandrasekar (Chandru), 21, and Soumiyan (Soumi), 19, died in Waterloo early Friday at the climax of a dispute between two groups, police said.

Police will not specify whether both groups were of Tamil origin, the Toronto Star said.

The brothers were attending a back-to-school party at the Revolution Night Club. A dispute began between two sides and both groups met again in an industrial area.

At 1:15 a.m., three men were struck by a vehicle. The brothers were pronounced dead in hospital. The third man, whom police have identified as the target, was released the same day from hospital.

The motorist fled and is wanted for homicide.

“What a devastating loss to our family,” Path Sithamparanatham, an uncle to the brothers, told the funeral gathering. “Two of them at the same time.”

“I request that everybody do the right thing,” he said. “Come forward with any bits of information.”

The family arrived in Canada in 1994 from the village of Jaffma in the predominantly Tamil region of Sri Lanka, he told the Toronto Star. The couple’s only other child, their firstborn son, died as an infant in Sri Lanka.

“The world lost two model youths,” the Tamil Youth Organization of Canada said in a statement distributed at the funeral.

Tamil boy missing in London

British police say they are increasingly concerned for the well being of a 14 year old Tamil boy who went missing in London last week.

Kajandgan Annanathuri was last seen around 08:15 last Thursday, outside North Primary School in Southall, which is the London district of Ealing, police said.

Kajandgan does not attend this school, but he walked there with his cousin, who is a pupil there.

Kajandgan Annanathuri

Police described the Kajandgan as 5’2” tall, thin built, with brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a black or blue t-shirt with two leaves on front, with dark jeans or trousers.

“He does not speak any English and has only been in the country for three months. He has not gone missing before and his disappearance is out of character,” Chris Mullally, the Ealing Police’s press liason officer said in a statement.

Police believe Kajandgan does not have any access to money of travel cards and described his disappearance as “totally out of character.”

Anyone with information that may assist the inquiry should call the Missing Person Unit at Southall police station on (0) 20 8246 1040, (or out of hours the control room at Ealing police station on 020 8810 1212).

Denmark Tamils hold volleyball competition

Ten clubs of Tamil expatriate youth took part in the annual volleyball competition hosted by the Tamil Coordinating Committee of Denmark Sunday.

The Great Heroes’ Challenge Cup competition got underway at 9am with the lighting of the traditional flame and the observation of a minute’s silence in tribute to the Tamils who fell in their people’s struggle for self-determination.

The Set-up category of the competition was won by Alkmaar Tamils Sports Club. Its namesake from Beverwijk came third while Rainbow SC from The Hague took second spot.

The Over-game tournament was won by Tamil SC’s first team from Beverwijk, while the second team from the same club took third place. Alkmaar’s Tamil SC came second.

Awards and prizes for the leading teams were handed out by officials from the Tamil Coordinating Committee. The all-day event, the first of many cultural and sporting events held each year to mark Heroes’ Day, concluded at around 7pm.

Introduction

It may be timely to pose the question of as from when did Tamil civilisation exist. The tsunami of December 26, 2004 vividly demonstrated the destructive force of tidal waves and what havoc the attendant deluges could cause. It was, however, not unknown to the ancient Tamils who occupied southern India from that time. Their traditions refer to extensive lands submerged in the remote past that had once existed in the Indian Ocean, south of Kanya Kumari or Cape Comorin. They had indeed a word for such happenings. They called it kadatkol - meaning the sea devouring the land.

The name of the lost lands is Kumari Kandam. At the time of those inundations, they were home to a high Tamil civilisation that hosted the First and Second Tamil Sangams or Acadamies of Advanced Learning. The Tamil language and literature as well as the philosophy and culture were cultivated and fostered through such Sangams. The works of these two Sangams were lost when the cities in which they were created were submerged by such inundations. Though the tradition of these Tamil Sangams and the deluges which destroyed them lived on, there was no historical evidence forthcoming to back them until very recently.

Recent Developments

The current state of play as known to history, until the recently emerging evidence, is that the history of the Tamils is said to begin in the pre-historic or more acceptably in the proto-historic period of about 500 BC. Tamil / Dravidian culture associated with the megalithic sites in places such as Adichanallur (more correctly Adityanallur) in the Tinnevely District of Tamilnadu and across the Palk Straits in Pomparippu in north-western Ilankai/ Sri Lanka are regarded by historians / archaeologists as belonging to the Dravidian peoples of whom the Tamils at that time were their first and foremost representatives.

Those finds from Adichanallur though dated earlier to be around 300 BC have now been shown to date back to 1,700 BC, following the currently ongoing excavations with advanced dating techniques. The archaeologists, studying the inscriptions on stones and artefacts, reported recently on that basis that Tamil civilisation existed more than 4,000 years ago. They went on to say that Tamil / Dravidian civilisation which began in present day Tamilnadu spread to the other parts of the world from there, as they considered Adichanallur to be the cradle of Tamil civilisation. Linguistic data of Tamil and other existing Dravidian langages too support only a movement from south to north of the spread of those languages, as Tamil is shown to be their parent language.

This present state of knowledge has however received a startling knock from another quarter with the recent underwater archaeological finds relating to the lost Tamil continent of Kumari Kandam. For what those discoveries reveal, though at the presnt moment only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, has been uncovered, is the existence of a lost continent and lost cities in an antediluvian era stretching back before the melt-down of the Last Ice Age and the inundations of those lands.

The evidence thus far reveals the existence of man-made structures twenty-three metres beneath the sea, five kilometres off the Tarangambadi- Poompuhar coast near Nagapattinam in South India. Its existence at such a depth is calculated as having taken place over many thousand years ago. This ties in with the geological evidence of such happenings at that time as well as the Tamil traditions of the first two Tamil Sangams referred to earlier.

The unfolding archaeological and geological evidence is proving to be the historical validation that Tamil civilisation which reached a high-point during those two Tamil Sangams had their beginnings 11,000 years ago or circa 9,000 BC. What is the evidence currently available, be it archaeological, geological or other which will substantiate the Kumari Kandam tradition?

Literary Evidence

According to th Kumari Kandam tradition, over a period of about just 11,000 years, the Pandyans, a historical dynasty of Tamil kings, formed three Tamil Sangams, in order to foster among their subjects the love of knowledge, literature and poetry. These Sangams were the fountain head of Tamil culture and their principal concern was the perfection of the Tamil language and literature. The first two Sangams were not located in what is now South India but in antediluvian Tamil land to the south which in ancient times bore the name of Kumari Kandam, literally the Land of the Virgin or Virgin Continent.

The first Sangam was head-quartered in a city named Then-madurai (Southern Madurai). It was patronised by a succession of eighty-nine kings and survived for an unbroken period of 4,400 years during which time it approved an immense collection of poems and literature. At the end of that golden age, the First Sangam was destroyed when a deluge arose and Then-madurai itself was swallowed by the sea along with large parts of the land area of Kumari Kandam.

However, the survivors, saving some of the books, were able to relocate further north. They established a Second Sangam in a city called Kavatapuram which lasted 3,700 years. The same fate befell this city as well, when it too was swallowed by the sea and lost forever all its works with the sole exception of the Tolkappiyam, a work on Tamil grammar. Following the inundation of Kavatapuram, the survivors once again relocated northward in a city identified with modern Madurai in Tamilnadu, then known as Vada-madurai (Northern Madurai). The Third Sangam lasted for a period of 1850 years and most scholars agree that that Sangam terminated around 350 AD.

Literary evidence of the lost continent of Kumari Kandam comes principally from the literature of the Third Tamil Sangam and the historical writings based on them. Many of them refer to the lost Tamil lands and to the deluges which ancient peoples believed had swallowed those lands. The Silappathikaram, a well known Tamil literary work, for instance mentions, “ the river Prahuli and the mountain Kumari surroundered by many hills being submerged by the raging sea”.

The Kalittogai, another literary work, specifically refers to a Pandyan king losing territories to the sea and compensating the loss by conquering new territories from the Chera and Chola rulers to the north. In his commentary on the Tolkappiyam, Nachinarkiniyar mentions that the sea submerged forty-nine nadus (districts), south of the Kumari river. Adiyarkkunelar, a medieval commentator, says that before the floods, those forested and populated lands between the Prahuli and Kumari rivers stretched 700 kavathams, ie for about 1,000 miles. As observed by Prof.(Dr) M. Sunderam, “The tradition of the loss of a vast continent by deluge of the sea is too strong in the ancient Tamil classics to be ignored by any serious type of inquiry.”

Archaeological & Geological Evidence

A discovery made by a team of marine archaeologists from India’s National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in March 1991 has begun to bring about a sea-change. Working the off-shore of Tarangambadi-Poompuhar coast in Tamilnadu near Nagapattinam, a research vessel equipped with side-scan sonar, identified a man-made object and described it as “ a horse shoe shaped structure”. In 1993, it was examined again and NIO’s diver archaeologists reported that the U-shaped structure lies at a depth of 23 metres and about 5 kms offshore.

The significance of that discovery is that it is a much older structure to any discovered earlier. Subsequent explorations carried out by Graham Hancock and his team, who working in association with Dr Glen Milne, a specialist in glacio-isotacy and glaciation induced sea-level change, were able to show that areas at 23 metres depth would have submerged about 11,000 years before the present time or 9,000 BC. The historical significance of that fact is that it makes the U-shaped structure 6,000 years older than the first monumental architecture of Egypt or of ancient Sumer or Mesopotamia (in present day Iraq) dated around 3,000 BC and traditionally regarded as the oldest civilisations of antiquity.

The Durham geologists led by Dr. Glen Milne have shown in their maps that South India between 17,000-7,000 years ago extended southward below Cape Comorin (Kanya Kumari) incorporating present day Ilankai/ Sri Lanka. It had an enhanced offshore running all the way to the Equator. The maps portray the region as no history or culture is supposed to have known it. The much larger Tamil homeland of thousands of years ago as described in the Kumari Kandam tradition takes shape. It supports the opening of the Kumari Kandam flood tradition set in the remote pre-historic period of 12,000 –10,000 years ago. The inundation specialists confirm that between 12,000-10,000 years ago Peninsular India’s coastlines would have been bigger than what they are today before they were swallowed up by the rising seas at the end of the Last Ice Age.

With its description of submerged cities and lost lands, the Kumari Kandam tradition predicted that pre-historic ruins more than 11,000 years old should lie underwater at depths and locations off Tamilnadu’s coast. The NIO’s discovery and Dr. Milne’s calculations now appear to confirm the accuracy of that prediction. At that period of time, Ilankai/ Sri Lanka was part and parcel of South India. It is, however, in the inundation map for 10,600 years ago as seen that the island to the south of Kanya Kumari had disappeared to a dot, and the Maldives further ravaged.

But more importantly, a neck of sea is seen separating Tuticorin in South India from Mannar in what is now Ilankai/ Sri Lanka. It is however in the map for 6,900 years ago that the separation of Ilankai/ Sri Lanka from the South Indian mainland is complete as it is today. Ilankai/ Sri Lanka’s separate existence as an island, so it seems, began 6,900 years ago or circa 4,900 BC.

Conclusion

At present, no civilisation, as known to current history, existed in the Tamil lands of South India around 9,000 BC. Yet the discovery of the U-shaped structure by India’s marine archaeologists leads us to seriously consider that it was the work of a civilisation that archaeologists had failed to identify as its ruins lie submerged so deep beneath the sea. As Mr. S. R. Rao, the doyen of Indian marine archaeology, stated in February 2002, “I do not believe it is an isolated structure; further exploration is likely to reveal others around it”.

Though it is understood that no further explorations have taken place since 1995, the Boxing Day Tsunami of last year can be expected to renew interest in them. There is ample scope for socio-anthropologists, archaeologists, geologists and scholars of Tamil and Tamil history to further research the subject. Given that the First and Second Sangams were a golden age of literary, artistic and musical creativity amongst the Tamils, we are looking at a civilisation which had reached a high level of development, organisation and cultural advancement from as early as 11,000 years ago from today.

N. Parameswaran is a writer on Tamil history. His latest book is ‘Tamil Trade and Cultural Exchange.’ His previous publications are ‘Early Tamils of Lanka-Ilankai’ and ‘Medieval Tamils in Lanka-Ilankai.’ He can be contacted on +61-8-3541039.