Five Sri Lankan doctors who witnessed the bloody climax of the country’s civil war in May and made claims of mass civilian deaths as a result of government shelling of Tamil Tiger positions recanted much of their testimony.

 

Their U-turn raises fresh fears that Sri Lanka, known as a holiday paradise to millions of Western tourists, has quietly become a quasi-Stalinist state.

 

The doctors, who appeared physically well but extremely nervous at a press conference on Wednesday, July 9, claimed that they had deliberately overestimated the civilian casualties suffered as the war reached its bloody endgame.

 

The Tigers had forced them to lie, they said as government officials looked on from the sidelines, adding that only up to 750 civilians were killed between January and mid-May in the final battles of the war.

 

The five men were taken back to prison, where they have been held for the past two months for allegedly spreading Tiger propaganda. The doctors added that they now hoped they would be released.

 

The number was far below the 7,000 fatalities estimated by the United Nations. An investigation by The Times uncovered evidence that more than 20,000 civilians were killed, mostly by the Army, which has claimed, incredibly, that it did not harm a single civilian.

 

As occupants of the tragically misnamed “no-fire zone” — a strip of coconut grove and beach in the northeast which was the last redoubt of the Tigers and where government guns directed a vast amount of ordinance — the doctors would have come under the control of the rebels.

 

It would be surprising if the Tigers, who were no slouches when it came to the manipulation of the media, had not attempted to modify the doctors’ testimonies.

 

The tragic thing is that having been picked up by the Sri Lankan Army and kept in custody for the past two months, the doctors find themselves in a terrible mirror image of their previous predicament — under pressure from the Government to deliver a story that fits its own agenda.

 

The doctors now deny former testimony — such as the government shelling of a hospital in the conflict zone on February 2 — for which there are also witnesses from the UN and the Red Cross.

 

“I have serious doubts over the latest statements,” one senior Sri Lankan journalist said. “What we’re seeing is that the LTTE (the Tigers) and the Government are in some respects mirror images of each other.”

 

There is little to surprise those familiar with Sri Lankan politics. Dissent is not tolerated by President Rajapaksa, who enjoys a massive amount of support from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

 

Journalists who have disagreed with his policies have regularly been abducted or killed. “The discourse used by the Government is of traitors and patriots,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuthu, of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Sri Lankan analyst who himself has received threats. “There is no indication yet that this mode of thinking is slipping.”

 

Sam Zarifi, the Asia-pacific director for Amnesty International, said that the statements from the doctors were “expected and predicted”.

 

“There are very significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary, and they raise serious concerns whether the doctors were subjected to ill-treatment during weeks of detention,” he said. “From the time the doctors were detained, the fear was that they would be used exactly this way.”

 

The methods used by the President’s regime have raised doubts over the sincerity of his pledge to forge a lasting peace by reaching out to Sri Lanka’s minority Tamils.

 

A slew of poisonous proposals from prominent Sinhalese figures — such as the suggestion that Tamil villages could be renamed after Sinhalese generals — have done little to soothe those fears.

 

Suggestions that the internment camps set up in recent months to house an estimated 300,000 displaced Tamils will be made permanent have also stoked concerns.

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross revealed that it had been ordered to scale down its operations in Sri Lanka — more worrying news for those who feel that there should be more, not less, neutral witnesses to conditions inside the country.

 

Provincial elections due to be held in Tamil areas in the north early next month may give an indication of the community’s mood. It is not guaranteed, however, that these will be free and fair.

 

Meanwhile, in between the two distortions generated by the Tigers and the Government lies the truth. If ever there was a demonstration of why an independent enquiry is needed into the end of the war, the oscillating doctors’ testimonies is it.

Even as concerns are being raised by aid workers about the conditions in the internment camps the Sri Lankan government is running in the NorthEast, President Mahinda Rejapaksa spoke of how good life was in the camps.

 

"I would say the condition in our camps is the best any country has," President Rajapaksa told The Hindu newspaper in an interview.

 

"We supply water. There is a problem with lavatories. That is not because of our fault. The money that comes from the EU and others, it goes to the NGOs and the U.N. They are very slow; disbursing money is very slow.

 

"We supply the water tanks. We have spent over 2 billion rupees. Giving electricity, giving water, now we are giving televisions to them. They have telephone facilities. Schools have been established. Some of the leaders are using mobile phones. I had a special meeting on the disposal of waste. I sent a team of specialists to see how mosquitoes can be eradicated.

 

"We know there are shortcomings. Slowly, we have to overcome them. In some camps there are no problems. What these people I sent told me: they are satisfied with the housing, shelter. They have undergone much worse conditions earlier [when they were under the LTTE's control]. Their problem is movement, freedom of movement. Since there are security concerns, I don't know how to do that immediately.

 

"I said on 20th of May that as soon as possible, we must send them to places where they can stay. My problem is that we have to get the certificate of de-mining from the U.N. We have already sent people back to several places. As soon as we get the clearance, I'm ready to do that. But before that I must get the clearance from the U.N. about the de-mining. We can't send them back to a place where there are just jungles. Every square centimetre has been mined by the LTTE. If something happens, I am responsible.

 

"My personal feeling is that as soon as possible, we have to resettle these people. We have to send them to the villages. But my problem is that to provide security for them, I will have to recruit another 200,000 (soldiers)! I don't want to do that."

Around 65,000 soldiers deserted their ranks during Sri Lanka’s brutal war against the Tamils and are at large, according a Sri Lankan Ministry of Justice and Law Reforms official.

 

The number, which indicated the brutality of the war in the last stages, is in addition to the 2,000 soldiers already in prisons across the south for deserting.

Since the Defence Ministry had stepped up arresting those who deserted the service the Prisons Department will definitely face a problem of space, Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and Law Reforms Suhada Gamlath told reporters.

Once an army deserter is captured he is produced for a Court Martial and usually sentenced to an imprisonment not exceeding one year.  However Gamlath says it is dangerous to put army deserters together with other criminals behind the bars.

 

"There is a dangerous problem of putting the army deserters with other criminals behind the bars. The criminals have the background, know how of crime and social deviance while the deserters have the training in firearms and many other skills that could be abused for the accomplishment in various crimes. Most of the time, prisons had served as linking grounds for them," Gamlath said.

 

"Therefore, we suggested that the term of the army deserters must be reduced to six months. Their energy could be used through methods such as community service as practiced in developed countries. We recommended that they should be allowed to engage in community service either for six months of their term or the entire term."

 

"This method is beneficial for all. For the convict, the department and the society. A Bill had been drafted and been presented for the Parliamentary approval after being endorsed by the Cabinet of Ministers," he said.

 

Prisons officials say out of the 31,653 prisoners in Sri Lanka, 37.5 percent are drug addicts and drug related offenders and 60 percent are those who have been prosecuted for offenses including rape, murder and other criminal activities. 

Even as Sri Lanka’s new Chief of Defence Staff announced that 800 cadre belonging to the paramilitary group, Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), have been inducted into the Army, UN Children’s agency UNICEF has announced that the outfit has more than 100 child soldiers.

 

According to Colombo based Daily Mirror, the latest UNICEF database, as of May 31, shows 107 outstanding cases of child soldiers with the TMVP of which 30 are under the age of 18 and 77 were underage at the time they were recruited but are now adults.

 

The TMVP had announced a few months back that it had handed over the last of the remaining child soldiers to UNICEF who in turn placed them at rehabilitation camps where several child soldiers, mostly from the LTTE are being rehabilitated, reported the Daily Mirror.

 

The newspaper further said, that when it contacted TMVP spokesman Azad Maulana, he confirmed that UNICEF had in fact contacted them over an outstanding number of child soldiers but added that the children may have been recruited by “other groups” operating in the East.

 

“We don’t have any child soldiers with us. We have been approached by UNICEF over some 30 outstanding cases. We feel there might be some other groups taking these children using our name. Our party leader Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan will meet UNICEF officials to discuss the issue,” Maulana told Daily Mirror. 

"When it comes to regional issues, Clinton should make the case that the expanding US-Indian relationship gives Indian leaders more strategic flexibility.
They can stop trying to match their Chinese counterparts in backing regimes, such as those in Burma and Sri Lanka, that have committed gross human-rights abuses against their own people. If a shared respect for democratic values forms the foundation for the burgeoning US-India partnership, Indian leaders should be able to heed any such counsel from Clinton," the Saturday July 18, editorial in Boston Globe said.

Full text of the editorial follows:

Clinton’s architectural plan

IF THERE is any part of the developing world that has bright prospects for stability and prosperity, it is southern and eastern Asia. Yet Asia also has the potential to become the battleground for a destructive confrontation between rising powers India and China. So Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to India this weekend should allow her to gauge the chances for what she recently called a new “architecture of cooperation.’’

India presents both the most promising and the most challenging test case for cooperative relations with the emerging powers of the 21st century. The US-India nuclear deal negotiated by the Bush administration has provoked anxieties in some quarters about a dangerous precedent for nuclear proliferation, but the deal has indisputably cleared the way for a closer relationship between Washington and New Delhi.

Under the agreement, India can now buy nuclear fuel and technology from the United States for its 14 civilian reactors. Opponents have warned that the deal could enable India to divert domestically produced nuclear fuel to its eight military reactors. On the plus side, however, India must now allow intrusive IAEA inspections of its civilian nuclear facilities, continue observing its moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons, enhance the security of its nuclear stockpile, and work with Washington to negotiate a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty that would prohibit the production of fuel for nuclear weapons.

Now that the nuclear accord is a done deal and the Congress Party of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has won a smashing victory in recent parliamentary elections, Clinton can address other outstanding issues in US-Indian relations. These include pending defense agreements between the two nations’ militaries, cooperation in the fight against terrorism, more educational exchanges, more US visas for Indians with advanced skills, and, perhaps most important of all, a meeting of minds on the need for coordinated actions to reduce the danger of catastrophic climate change.

When it comes to regional issues, Clinton should make the case that the expanding US-Indian relationship gives Indian leaders more strategic flexibility. They can stop trying to match their Chinese counterparts in backing regimes, such as those in Burma and Sri Lanka, that have committed gross human-rights abuses against their own people. If a shared respect for democratic values forms the foundation for the burgeoning US-India partnership, Indian leaders should be able to heed any such counsel from Clinton.

She could tell her Indian interlocutors that friends don’t let friends become the enablers of abusive neighbors.

After providing medical services to thousands displaced by war, Indian soldiers will now go to Sri Lanka to help de-mine areas once held by the Tamil Tigers, it was announced Monday.

The military personnel will be part of Indian experts who will assist authorities in Sri Lanka to detect and defuse thousands of mines laid by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told the media here.

 

“We will send experts and equipment to Sri Lanka. Yes, this will possibly include army experts,” Menon said.

 

India deployed troops in Sri Lanka’s northeast in 1987. The soldiers returned home in 1990 after suffering nearly 1,200 dead in a dragging war against the LTTE.

 

As the Sri Lankan military battled the Tamil Tigers this year, India sent military doctors to take care of the thousands escaping from LTTE territory. The medical personnel were first based in Sri Lanka’s east and are now located in the north.

 

Menon’s comments came shortly after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in his budget speech that India would grant US $100 million for the relief and rehabilitation of Tamils displaced by the fighting in the island’s northeast.

 

Strong support from India at the IMF board and the need to match China’s growing clout in the island nation have resulted in the US giving up its opposition to the international funding agency’s extending a $2.5 billion standby facility to Sri Lanka.

 

Sunday Island reported that IMF Executive Board would meet on July 24 to sanction the facility following the submission of a letter of intent by Sri Lanka agreeing to abide by certain conditions imposed by the funding agency.

 

On May 14, at the height of the war against the separatist Tamil Tigers, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had said that it was not appropriate for the IMF to give a loan to Sri Lanka in the absence of a resolution of the conflict.

 

The US was leading a Western campaign to secure a ceasefire. But recently, after the war, a top US official met the Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary to say that his government had, at no stage, campaigned against the grant of the loan to Sri Lanka and that the IMF was guided by economic considerations alone.

 

According to Sunday Island reason for the softening of the US attitude was Sri Lanka’s apparent willingness to carry out some structural reforms in its financial system and its impeccable record in loan repayment.

 

However, some analysts feel that the US may be influenced by a Sino-Indian factor too. Sunday Island noted that the Indian member on the IMF board, who represents a group of countries including Sri Lanka, had been strongly advocating Sri Lanka’s case.

 

Then there is China’s increasing economic clout and a growing strategic interest in Sri Lanka, which has made Washington sit up. Like India, the US may be veering round to the view that the only way to prevent Sri Lanka from going wholly under Chinese influence is to meet Sri Lanka’s demands.

 

The paper pointed out that it was when the West was putting heavy pressure on Sri Lanka to give in to the LTTE’s demand for a ceasefire, that China signed an agreement to give Sri Lanka a $1.2 billion long term soft loan for a huge housing project. The Exim Bank of China issued a letter of interest in funding the Matara-Kataragama railway.

 

This railway would help build up the hinterland of the Chinese-built mega port at Humbantota in the deep south of the island.

More than 2,000 years ago, a Sinhalese king named Dutugemunu saddled up his elephant and headed north to fight and kill Elara, an invading Tamil king from India.

 

The battle between the men is one of the most celebrated moments in Sri Lankan history, and the last time, until two months ago, that a Sri Lankan ruler won such a decisive victory over a mortal threat.

 

Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that fans of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president of Sri Lanka, have taken to calling him a modern-day incarnation of King Dutugemunu.

 

After all, he presided over the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, among the world’s most enduring and vicious guerrilla separatists, hardened fighters who have humiliated four presidents over nearly three decades.

 

Asked about this comparison earlier this month, Mr. Rajapaksa laughed it off, insisting that the legend was misunderstood as a triumph of one ethnicity over another.

 

After his victory, the story goes, Dutugemunu made peace with the Tamils and honored the memory of Elara, who was beloved by his people.

 

History will decide whether Mr. Rajapaksa will be remembered as a nationalist avenger or a unifying peacemaker.

 

But in a wide-ranging interview this month at Temple Trees, the former prime minister’s residence that now serves as the president’s office, Mr. Rajapaksa emerged as a man bent on total victory, no matter the cost, who was convinced that his government’s actions in crushing the Tamil Tiger insurgency after 26 years were not only justified but humane.

 

“All governments tried to discuss with them,” Mr. Rajapaksa said of the Tigers.

 

“All failed. Because when they are weak they came to talks. Within a few weeks they walk out of the talks, but better equipped and strengthened.”

 

Mr. Rajapaksa’s determination to vanquish the insurgency once and for all lifted him to the presidency in 2005, in the midst of an informal election boycott enforced by the Tigers.

 

Now, the stunning and total defeat of the Tamil Tigers in May, accomplished with an enormous loss of lives — tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians through the years — has made him a hero to many Sri Lankans.

 

His fleshy, mustachioed face beams down from billboards across the country.

 

Often his brothers, who control key portfolios in the government, flank him in these portraits.

 

One, Basil Rajapaksa, is a senior adviser who was the prime architect of the war strategy against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

 

His other brother, Gotabaya, is the powerful secretary of defense.

 

President Rajapaksa is careful to use conciliatory language and speak about the importance of winning the peace, not just the war.

 

In his speech to the nation after the Tigers’ fearsome leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, was killed, he pointedly spoke in Tamil.

 

He has repeatedly invoked the maxim that the war was against the Tigers, not the Tamil people.

 

But so far talk of reconciliation has been just that, according to politicians, analysts and diplomats here, and there have been no concrete steps toward a lasting political solution to Sri Lanka’s thorny ethnic problem.

 

The Tamil minority has suffered discrimination and violence at the hands of various Sinhalese-dominated governments through the decades.

 

Tamils have sought, first peacefully, then violently, the right to a measure of self-rule in Tamil-dominated areas.

 

While publicly pledging to seek a political solution, Mr. Rajapaksa has put off for the moment the question of how to share power with the Tamil minority, saying that any agreement would have to wait until after the next presidential election, scheduled for November.

 

“I was given a mandate to defeat terrorism; I have defeated them,” he said.

 

“Now I must go and tell them now I want a mandate to settle this problem forever, a political solution.”

 

Mr. Rajapaksa is all but certain to win a second term.

 

The opposition is fragmented.

 

Journalists and analysts have to choose their words carefully or risk arrest.

 

One popular astrologer was recently arrested after predicting that the president would be ejected from office.

 

Mr. Rajapaksa made it clear that he would tolerate only a limited amount of devolution, something that may poison negotiations right from the start.

 

“Federalism is out of the question,” he said. “It must be a homegrown solution.”

 

Most Tamil political leaders want a single, Tamil-speaking majority state in the north and east of the country that would have authority over most matters except foreign policy, trade and the military.

 

But this is a nonstarter for many of the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist politicians who make up the core of Mr. Rajapaksa’s coalition government.

 

The most hard-line nationalist party has threatened to leave the coalition if even a watered-down law to share power is passed.

 

“Peace will require a more federal power-sharing arrangement,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Center for Policy Alternatives, a nonpartisan research and advocacy institution in Colombo, the capital.

 

“But there has been this primordial fear that federalism is a precursor to seccession.”

 

But the opposite is true, he argued.

 

“It is the refusal to share power that has led to the armed conflict to begin with,” he said.

 

Understanding this refusal requires a reach back to the time of Dutugemunu and Elara, the Tamil king who came from India.

 

Just 20 miles off Sri Lanka’s coast, India looms large over the island.

 

The great size of India’s Tamil population — more than 50 million people — helps explain why the Sinhalese majority here may feel threatened, thinking and acting more like an endangered minority even though it makes up more than 70 percent of the Sri Lankan population.

 

India has been pressing Sri Lanka to move quickly to resettle the Tamil civilians displaced by the war and reach a deal to share central power with the country’s minorities.

 

Mr. Rajapaksa has pledged to get most of the displaced, who are living in closed, military-run camps in the north, back to their homes within six months.

 

Mr. Rajapaksa said he had taken a number of steps aimed at forging a sense of national unity and bringing minorities more fully into the fold.

 

The government is offering a one-time payment of about $250 to any civil servant who learns another Sri Lankan language, part of an effort to start requiring that officials and bureaucrats speak Tamil as well as Sinhala.

 

The president said he was also seeking ways to recruit more Tamils into the Sri Lankan military and the police force.

 

But the government’s mood since the end of the fighting in May has been one of triumphant victory.

 

Alongside the billboards of Mr. Rajapaksa and his brothers are huge, Rambo-style photographs of the bandolier-draped commandos who penetrated deep behind the Tamil Tigers’ lines to whittle at the rebel fighting force and weaken its resolve.

 

Many Sri Lankans see these soldiers as heroes, but given the controversy that remains over how many Tamil civilians were killed in the last weeks of the fighting, some people find the air of martial triumph unseemly.

 

“They are trying to get a great deal of political mileage from the fact that they militarily defeated” the Tamil Tigers, said Rajavarothiam Sampanthan, a member of Parliament for the Tamil National Alliance.

 

“We don’t see any movement toward ending the political conflict.”

 

Riding high on his big victory, Mr. Rajapaksa said he needed only one verdict on his leadership: that of the Sri Lankan people.

 

“I am not fool enough to call myself a king,” he said with a laugh.

 

Churchill, he mused, was thrown out of office after victory in World War II.

 

“If anyone doesn’t want me, I must not be the president of this country,” he said. “It is democracy.”

US and Canadian law makers have called for Sri Lanka’s request for an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan to be linked to unimpeded access to refugee camps and adherence international human rights rules.

 

The north American politicians calls comes amidst an announcement by IMF that a loan accord has been agreed with Sri Lanka and the Executive Board of the organisation will meet on Friday July 24 to approve it.

 

US democratic senator Patrick Leahy, from Vermont, has introduced language into the soon to be passed Appropriations bill requiring the US Treasury Secretary to instruct the US Executive Directors of international financial institutions to vote against any loan, agreement, or other financial support for Sri Lanka except to meet basic human needs, unless the Secretary of State certifies to the Committees on Appropriations that the Sri Lankan government is meeting the requirements of humanitarian conditions demanded by the US.

 

The language inserted in the Department of State Appropriations bill S.1434, has virtually blocked U.S. Treasury Secretary from authorizing the projected $1.9B IMF loan to Sri Lanka, unless Hilary Clinton certifies that Sri Lanka "is treating internally displaced persons in accordance with international standards, including by guaranteeing their freedom of movement, providing access to conflict-affected areas and populations by humanitarian organizations and journalists, and accounting for persons detained in the conflict," and Sri Lanka is promoting "reconciliation and justice including devolution of power to provincial councils in the north and east as provided for in the Constitution of Sri Lanka."

 

Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, reported the original bill which was read twice and placed on the calendar.

The bill makes appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.

 

Meanwhile, the Liberal Party in Canada has said that conditions need to be strictly applied to any potential loan to Sri Lanka from the International Monetary Fund, based on humanitarian concerns, the proper treatment of internally displaced persons and a restoration of peace and security to the country.

 

“We must be responsible in our economic assistance to Sri Lanka,” said Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae.

 

“The government of Sri Lanka cannot expect massive economic assistance without paying full attention to their humanitarian obligations.

 

“The situation in Sri Lanka remains dire and requires international attention. Our efforts must be focused on helping those in need,” he said.

 

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has stated a similar position, saying that any use of IMF money must be in an appropriate and responsible manner.

 

“The international community is in full agreement on this point,” said Mr. Rae.

 

“Canada should be a leader in calling for the responsible use of international financial loans and be a vital partner in ensuring that these conditions are met.”

 

It is also learnt that the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations has asked US State Department to submit a report on possible war crimes committed in Sri Lanka between January and May this year.

The model indictment document produced by Washington Attorney Bruce Fein, and the submittals to the District of Columbia District Court on Tamils Against Genocide (TAG's) legal action against IMF loan have also been forwarded to the Leahy committee, according to TAG officials.

 

India has long aspired to a role in redefining the global order. Ask why they deserve it, and most Indians will point to their nation's size, its rich culture and tradition, and its special legitimacy—the product of the nonviolent freedom struggle against British rule and India's triumph as a secular democracy.

Ask for more detail on exactly how India should redefine the global system, however, and things get murkier. That's because, for much of its life, India's foreign policy has been about saying no—playing out a Gandhian boycott on the international stage. Throughout the Cold War, New Delhi refused to take sides, avoiding international pacts and steering clear of markets and trade, all of which it saw as skewed in favor of the powerful.

This approach was initially a product of India's economic and military weakness. Today, however, India is an economic powerhouse and, increasingly, a diplomatic one as well. The country's economic boom seems likely to continue, thanks to a high savings rate, strong investment, and a young population. The global crisis will temporarily slow India's rapid growth, but its economy is less export-dependent, and its financial system is more regulated than many, ensuring a quicker recovery. The country may not be poised to become a superpower, as some of its citizens like to imagine. But as its might expands—including military muscle (defense spending is up by a third this year)—New Delhi needs a clearer sense of how to use it.

Analysts like to lament the fact that India lacks a grand vision on the scale of Beijing's "peaceful rise" doctrine. But formulating a decisive strategy is much more difficult in an open democracy with many different definitions of the national interest. This lack of cohesion is not necessarily a disadvantage. It ensures that when India does finally get around to defining its world view, that will be after intense debate among its diverse social and economic groups, which should ensure that the new policy reflects something like the true will of the people—not just that of policy wonks in New Delhi. For a sense of how this process works, consider the bruising battle over confirmation of the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement: what may have sounded like cacophony actually helped to refine the terms, ensuring that the final deal better reflected India's interests—for instance, by keeping several plants off-limits to inspectors.

Given the complex nature of Indian politics, it's too soon to say what any grand strategy will eventually look like. But one can get at least a sense of it from looking at the various external pressures it will have to account for. Here several facts are key. First, India is still home to the world's largest concentration of poor people. New Delhi is going to have to use its growing global clout to inject their interests into international debates. As India negotiates on agricultural terms of trade, access to energy, or climate change, this or any future government must push for greater equity—not by rejecting globalization, but by making it more inclusive.

Second, India finds itself in the world's most threatening regional environment, surrounded by unstable or authoritarian states: Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, and, above all, Pakistan. To manage, New Delhi will need to balance toughness with magnanimity; unilaterally offering trade liberalization, for example, could help integrate the fractured region.

Finally, whatever policy India adopts will have to take into account Asia's two other great players: China and the United States. New Delhi is currently building strong ties with both Beijing and Washington by following the "Manmohan Singh doctrine," which stresses economic diplomacy and engagement. But this doesn't guarantee that relations with either country will be easy. India's bond with the U.S., though strong, will be seriously tested if India suffers another terrorist attack originating in Pakistan. As for China, Asia's other most dynamic economy and dominant civilization, the potential for conflict is greater. The two countries may share many interests on economics and trade, but experience shows how easily nationalism can trump such rational concerns.

India's emerging strategy should not try to balance these or other great powers. Instead, Delhi should use its diplomatic skills to strengthen its voice—in order to win permanent membership to the U.N. Security Council, for example. But India must also show the courage to venture into zones of conflict and meet threats with vigor. It is as a bridging power—between rich and poor, between the world's most powerful state (the U.S.) and its most populous one (China), and between the various religions that make up its own rich mosaic—that India can best define its new global identity.

 

Professor Sunil Khilnani is the author of The Idea Of India and is The Starr Foundation Professor at Johns Hopkins’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Hundreds of thousands of Tamils remain locked in camps almost entirely off-limits to journalists, human-rights investigators and political leaders. The Sri Lankan government says the civilians are a security risk because Tamil Tiger fighters are hiding among them.

 

But diplomats, analysts, aid workers and many Sri Lankans worry the chance to finally bring to a close one of the world's most enduring ethnic conflicts is slipping away, as the government curtails civil rights in its efforts to stamp out the last remnants of the Tigers.

 

"The government told these people it would look after them," said Veerasingham Anandasangaree, a prominent Tamil politician who has been a staunch supporter of the government's fight against the Tamil Tigers. "But instead they have locked them up like animals with no date certain of when they will be released. This is simply asking for another conflict later on down the road."

 

The Sri Lankan government has portrayed its final battle against the 26-year insurgency by the Tamil Tigers, which ended in late May with the killing of the group's leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, as a rescue mission to liberate civilians held hostage by one of the world's richest and most ruthless armed groups, branded terrorists by governments around the globe.

 

"We can't say this was a war; it was a humanitarian operation to safeguard the people of the area," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in an interview last week. "They knew we were not against the Tamil people, against the civilians. This was only against the terrorists."

 

Although many of the camps' residents are grateful to the government for freeing them from the rebels, frustration and anger are building as it becomes clear that reconciliation and finding a political solution to the grievances of the Tamils and other minority groups in Sri Lanka will have to wait.

 

Rajapaksa said the residents of the camps, which the government refers to as "welfare villages," must be confined because anyone could be a hidden rebel. The government says about 10,000 fighters have been identified so far, most because they turned themselves in.

Doctors treating displaced Tamils in the government-run camps in Sri Lanka's north have written a letter to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse complaining about the inadequate facilities and shortage of medical staff.

 

"It is difficult to stay in these shelters. The doctors examine patients from 7 o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock in the night (in the Menik camps in Vavuniya). They need a proper place to sleep. The doctors do night shift.

 

They are virtually alone there. There is no adequate nurse or staff members," a representative of the doctors told media persons in Colombo.

 

Spokesman for the Government Medical Officers Association Upul Gunasekara said that only 50 doctors were available for treating over 250,000 Tamils in these camps.

 

The doctors even had to perform the duties of nurses as there was a shortage of medical staff, he said.

 

Gunasekara said though the government has increased the number of camps to minimise the congestion, it was essential to have more medical officers.

 

"What plans does the health ministry have to provide doctors?" he asked.

 

Gunasakara said the GMOA had written to President Mahinda Rajapakse requesting him to appoint a high-level committee to manage the healthcare needs of the Internally Displaced Persons living in those camps.

 

Meanwhile, a Sri Lankan Health Ministry official assured that measures will be taken to provide facilities for the doctors with the support of the World Health Organisation and the state pharmaceutical corporation.

 

The ministry spokesperson said that construction work on the two official residences for doctors serving in the Menik welfare camp in Vavuniya is near completion.

 

However, Gunasekara said the lives of these IDPs at the camps in Vavuniya and Chettikulam (in Vavuniya district) were at risk as the health ministry had failed to deploy enough nurses, pharmacists, family health workers and midwives in the welfare centres.

 

Though services of 300 nurses were required for the camps, only five to 10 nurses had been deployed and that too without adequate pharmacists, he said.

 

Doctors serving in IDPs were taking high risks and some of them had contracted typhoid fever, chicken pox and some respiratory diseases, Gunasekera said.

 

Last week, around 5,000 IDPs were found to be suffering from chicken pox and doctors were treating them without assistance of adequate nurses, he added.

Meningitis and encephalitis have erupted in Sri Lanka's northern Vavuniya district where over 300,000 Tamil civilians forcibly held in temporary shelters behind barbed wires, a local newspaper has reported.

 

Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain. Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. Also, encephalitis with meningitis is known as meningoencephalitis.

Encephalitis has been on the increase among Vanni Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) held in internment centres located in Vavuniyaa, according to medical sources in the district hospital. Thirty-four Vanni IDPs of the sixty-four afflicted by encephalitis have died in three months. Majority of them who succumbed to brain fever were less than 24 years of age, medical sources said.

Over the past week 14 new encephalitis cases were detected in the hospital.

Vavuniya-based United Nations staff providing relief services to the Internally Displaced People (IDPs) have been advised to keep away from the Vavuniya General Hospital due to the outbreak of meningitis and encephalitis, health officials in Vavuniyaa said.

 

The UN warning to staff came amidst reports that hospital employees at Vavuniya had failed to inform authorities of the outbreak, the Sunday Times reported.

 

Dr. Hemantha Herath, Health Coordinator of the IDP camps, told the newspaper, “It is only now that we are getting a regular feedback from the hospital. They have not done in-depth investigations into these cases.”

A team sent by the Health Ministry is studying the causes for the outbreak of these diseases.

Meanwhile, according to a World Health Organization report, diarrhoea and hepatitis A are still prevalent in some of the IDP camps.

Dr. Herath said the number of cases of diarrhoea and hepatitis A was not going down and they were closely monitoring the situation.

According to the report, health care, water distribution and supply of food items still need more attention. The report has warned of the effect the approaching rainy season might have on the camps, especially in low-lying areas. It has called for an improved drainage system and shelters before the rainy season begins.

The paper also reported that there is a shortage of complementary food items in the camps as NGOs which were supplying such items are pulling out.

The report said there is not enough suitable land to build more toilets. The camps currently have only about 9,215 toilets while 15,000 are needed.

 

In June, chicken pox was rampant and cases of typhoid, tuberculosis, skin and respiratory infections, hepatitis A, scabies and diarrhoea have begun cropping up, according to U.N. reports.  

Sri Lanka has asked aid agencies to scale down operations on the island. The government claims that now it has claimed victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), there is no longer a need for agencies like the Red Cross. 

                  

The move has raised concerns among aid groups about the care of the 300,000 Tamils who were uprooted during the last phase of the fighting that ended in May and are now being held in government-run concentration camps.

 

Although the government has announced its intention to dismantle the so-called "welfare villages" as soon as possible and plans to return the displaced in six months, aid workers are worried about Sri Lanka's treatment of its displaced, according to press reports.

 

These concerns include the lack of access to camps, continuing restrictions on aid going into the camps and the lack of movement to resettle the inmates of the camps.

 

Aid workers have complained about a lack of access to the camps which are run by the military. Sri Lanka’s military has already been accused by rights groups of abuses against the Tamil population, and are known for their poor record in dealing with civilian populations, both in Sri Lanka and overseas – Sri Lankan soldiers on a UN mission in Haiti were accused of rape and running prostitution rings, while Tamils have documented numerous instances of human rights abuses including rape, torture, disappearances and murder.

 

Many aid workers view the government's call for a scaling down of aid operations as a deliberate move to prevent outsiders from witnessing conditions inside the camps, saying that the lack of free movement for the displaced in the camps is tantamount to arbitrary detention.

 

Aid workers and rights groups are also concerned about violations such as abductions and disappearances that are reportedly taking place in the camps.

 

Separately, many aid workers say their ability to work continues to be hampered by the government denying visas to colleagues, interfering in recruitment and setting out rules that lead to a quick turnover of staff.

 

The restrictions on the types and quantity of goods that can enter the camps is an further hindrance they say.

 

According to a report in The Times, the government has imposed a 0.9 per cent tax on all funding for aid groups, saying the tax is designed to crack down on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that abused Sri Lankan law and squandered their funds on their own staff after the tsunami.

 

Aid workers are also concerned the Colombo government intends to keep the camps running indefinitely despite its vow to resettle most of the displaced in six months.

 

They say the government has been pushing for semi-permanent structures to be built in the camps and are worried the government may use slow progress on de-mining as a pretext for stopping people from going back home.

 

Rights groups say the government needs to have a more comprehensive plan to return and resettle all internal refugees in the country, including those displaced in previous phases of the conflict.

 

Some aid workers have even questioned whether it is worth staying in Sri Lanka given the restrictions on their activities, saying Sri Lanka is not an aid dependent country.