Sri Lanka’s government was colluding in the recruitment of children by anti-Tamil Tiger paramilitary groups, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. Warning that the links between the Karuna Group and the government “seem to be very clear,” HRW senior legal adviser James Ross said a new worry for HRW was the abduction of children by the Karuna Group. Ross also condemned the LTTE for recruiting fighters under the age of 18 – a practice the LTTE says has ceased.

“The linkages between the Karuna group and the government... seem to be very clear,” Ross told Reuters on a visit to Sri Lanka.

“In order for the Karuna group and others to abduct children in government areas they would have to go through government checkpoints.”

Only a handful of states are accused of using children to fight, and Ross said it was not a list the Sri Lankan government would want to be on.

“I think the Sri Lankan government would be very unhappy to be compared to the Burmese government, one of the most abusive governments in the world,” he said. “Any involvement of the military in child abduction is something they should take very seriously.”

Hundreds of teenage boys have been abducted by Army-backed paramilitaries in the eastern province this year amid an escalating cycle of violence.

Escapees and deserting paramilitary cadres say youngsters are being forcibly recruited into the Army-backed shadow war against the LTTE.

Most recently complaints were made to Eravur Police that at least 20 Tamil youngsters playing with their friends near Vishnu Temple surroundings were abducted by unidentified persons in a white van on August 15.

About fifteen unidentified armed men in a van took the boys away at gunpoint. The area is controlled by the Sri Lanka Army.

Amid the furore triggered by international truce monitors’ findings that Sri Lankan security forces carried out the massacre of 17 aid workers, other conclusions by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) lost focus, including the charge the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) carried out “deliberate, planned and coordinated offensive military operations” against LTTE cadres and civilians in LTTE-controlled areas from April 1, weeks after Norwegian facilitated talks in Geneva to de-escalate rising violence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Also all places of worship are protected under the CFA and International Humanitarian Laws and Parties to the CFA should refrain from using or execute attacks at places of worship such as the Madhu area, including such roads leading to and from the Shrine.”

The new head of Sri Lanka’s truce monitors takes over a team cut by nearly half this week amid warnings by his predecessor of “mission impossible” to satisfy both sides in the vicious conflict.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henricsson - who blamed the EU’s ban on the Tigers for fuelling the rise in violence - had wanted to increase the size of the monitoring force but despite Norway and Iceland bolstering their numbers, his successor Solvberg must monitor the ceasefire with a team cut from 57 to 30.

Seventeen Sri Lankans working for an international aid agency were slain execution-style, and ambulances ferrying wounded civilians have been blown off the road.

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

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

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

Thiagarajah cited two recent incidents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AP reporter Bharatha Mallawarachi contributed to this report.

Accused by international ceasefire monitors of being responsible for the massacre of 17 aid workers, Sri Lanka reacted with indignation, rejecting the findings and launching a blistering personal attack the outgoing head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Swedish Maj. Gen. Ulf Henricson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emphasising that there was no military solution to the island’s problems, the Indian Minister was quoted by PTI as saying there was a need to initiate talks between the Sri Lankan government and LTTE to resolve all issues.

A group of Pakistan Air Force officers stationed in Colombo have been guiding the Sri Lankan military in carrying out air-mounted operations against the LTTE, a former counter-terrorism chief of India’s External intelligence says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pakistan, which has already been playing a discreet role in assisting the Sri Lankan security forces in their operations against the LTTE even before Mr.Rajapakse became the President, has further increased its involvement in the counter-insurgency operations [since November 2005],” Mr. Raman says.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa pledged not to “bow down to terrorism” as security forces moved to capture Sampoor from the Tamil Tigers.

Rajapaksa told fellow party men at the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) convention that the government has already proved “brave enough” not to be threatened by “LTTE terrorism in the north east”.

He announced to the party colleagues that the security forces captured LTTE’s strategically important Sampoor camp.

“Our troops have captured Sampoor,” he told delegates of the SLFP 55 convention to thunderous applause.

Addressing the convention as the party leader for the first time, Rajapaksa said the SLFP should now commit itself to create undivided Sri Lanka.

“The SLFP should create a free atmosphere in Sri Lanka for peace loving Sri Lankans irrespective of the race or the religion”.

The President recalled the hardships faced by former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike in safeguarding the SLFP.

Mahinda Rajapaksa became the leader of the SLFP replacing former President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, in June this year.

It was the first time the SLFP, founded in 1952 by former Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike, elected a leader from outside Bandaranaike family.

An estimated 60,000 Tamils displaced by Sri Lankan military attacks in the eastern province are caught in a humanitarian crisis which aid workers say is being deliberately deepened by the Colombo government. The most recent displacements in the east join tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes by military attacks in Vanni and the northern Jaffna.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But in a defiant response to international criticism stemming from the SLMM’s report, the Sri Lankan government enforced new controls on foreign aid workers, AFP reported last Friday, quoting aid officials.

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

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

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

Then there is the ad-hoc difficulty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The international [humanitarian] community is being prevented from responding effectively, the TRO said. “We fear that humanitarian services are being used as a weapon of war in violation of the rules of international law.”

Milk and clear honey, wild rice and lentil
These tasty four have I fed thee
So hear me, beloved

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May he who dances for the world
Dance for me,
Show me the worlds that I do not know
Beloved, lets do it now.