Norwegian Special Envoy John Hanssen-Bauer has questioned the European Union’s decision last May to classify Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers as terrorists, the BBC reported Sunday.

Mr. Hanssen-Bauer told the BBC that the EU move had damaged the chances of renewed talks, aimed at ending the recent upsurge in violence.

The Norwegian Special Envoy, whose visit Sri Lanka two weeks ago coincided with an eruption of violence between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, said the EU ban had only served to harden the Tigers’ position.

The LTTE is insisting that ceasefire monitors from EU countries must leave Sri Lanka, as they cannot be considered neutral observers.

SLMM spokesman Thorfinnur Omarsson told BBC Sinhala service, Sandeshaya, that members from three EU countries would leave by 31 August due to the demands of the Tamil Tigers after the EU ban.

Mr. Bauer said the reduced numbers of monitors with the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) were clearly insufficient.

“We see now that the SLMM will be reduced to half its original capacity in a situation where it’s badly needed, and where the work has been more demanding than ever. I would have hoped that the situation would have been different,” Mr. Bauer told the BBC.

The non-EU members of SLMM have meanwhile decided to increase the number of monitors from their countries as members from Sweden, Denmark and Finland are leaving soon.

Iceland and Norwegian governments have decided to increase their members from 4 to 10 and 16 to 20 respectively.

Norwegian officials are yet to announce the replacement for the current head of SLMM, Swedish national Ulf Henriccson, Omarsson added.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s Military affairs spokesman, Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, criticised the Special Envoy’s comments.

“I would like to remind that the Norway has merely repeated the initial response by the LTTE just after the ban,” he told bbcsinhala.com.

Mr. Rambukwella said the EU took its decision to ban the LTTE after “long scientific research.”

He did not elaborate.

Shortly before the EU imposed it ban on the LTTE, the movement’s Chief Negotiator and Political Strategist Anton Balasingham warned the move “will seriously impact negatively on the already weakened peace process in Sri Lanka.”

“The hardliners in the south are urgently seeking the international isolation of the LTTE as a prelude to taking up the military option in earnest,” Mr. Balasingham said.

Sri Lanka has rapidly descended a spiral of violence since the EU ban, with hundreds of combatants and civilians dying the past month alone after Sri Lanka launched a major offensive against the LTTE mid-July, sparking fighting on several fronts.

Amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka’s Northeast, the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse came under pressure this week to end its offensives against the Liberation Tigers.

At a meeting with the President on Monday, representatives of the Co-Chairs of Sri Lanka’s donor community – the United States, European Union, Norway and Japan – raised a number of concerns, reports said.

The envoys had discussed the mushrooming humanitarian crisis sharply triggered by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) offensive against the LTTE in Maavil Aru, Trincomalee on July 21.

That SLA offensive triggered confrontations with the LTTE on many fronts. Heavy fighting has taken place elsewhere in Trincomalee, but also in Batticaloa district and, especially, in the Jaffna peninsula where hundreds of combatants on both sides have died in bloody clashes this month.

The envoys had also discussed the Sri Lankan military’s targeting of civilians in airstrikes and the slaying of NGO workers in Muthur – widely blamed on the security forces, press reports said.

Last week scores of Tamil teenagers were killed when Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) jets bombed a children’s home at which residential first aid course was being run and three weeks ago, 17 local employees of a French aid agency were lined up and shot dead in the wake of SLA troops entering a contested town in Trincomalee district.

Overall, an estimated 160,000 people, mainly Tamils, but also tens of thousands of ethnic Muslims, have been displaced since April, the UN refugee agency said over the weekend.

They join hundreds of thousands of long-term war displaced, badly stretching the resources of local and international aid agencies in the Northeast.

The violence in Trincomalee in late July triggered a major displacement of Tamils and Muslims in the district.

But Sri Lanka’s military has since unleashed a systematic bombardment campaign against Tamil areas in Trincomalee, Batticaloa, southern Jaffna and Vanni.

“Some 15,000 to 20,000 people are now displaced in the Killinochchi area as a result of repeated [Sri Lankan] artillery shelling and air strikes,” UNHCR said.

Amid reports Sri Lankan forces were preventing people in the Jaffna peninsula from escaping intense fighting near the government’s southern defence lines, UNHCR appealed for the parties to the conflict “to permit freedom of movement to all civilians displaced by their conflict.”

Conditions for the displaced in LTTE-held areas are being compounded by a military blockade, including on aid workers.

Amid mounting criticisms by aid agencies, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke directly to President Rajapakse on August 16, urging him to allow relief workers into the LTTE areas.

Foreign diplomats in Colombo have pressed Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera on the same issue.

But the government only allowed the International Red Cross (ICRC) to visit LTTE-held areas near Vakarai last Friday August 19, a full two weeks after tens of thousands of Tamils were driven from their homes by Sri Lanka air and artillery bombardment which has killed scores of civilians.

“We and our partners are now seriously concerned about the welfare of civilians in areas inaccessible to humanitarian agencies because of strictly enforced travel restrictions, as fighting continues in the north and east of Sri Lanka,” UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told journalists in Geneva.

“Eastern districts face a similar crisis,” Pagonis said. “Thousands of displaced families in Muttur and Eachchilampattu divisions of Trincomalee district, and Vaharai division in Batticaloa district, are in desperate need of sustained humanitarian relief.”

“We have gained limited access to Vaharai [in Batticaloa],” Pagonis said, referring an area of Batticaloa receiving many thousands of displaced people from neighbouring Trincomalee.

About 12 thousand displaced Tamils trapped in LTTE held villages in Eachchilampathu division in the Trincomalee are not being supplied by NGOs and local government relief agencies since the fighting broke out, reports said.

Furthermore, most of the school buildings and concrete structures in these eastern areas have been damaged due to frequent Sri Lankan artillery fire and aerial bombardment which first started on April 25 and has regularly taken place since.

Only volunteers of Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) staying in Eachchilampathu division are looking after these IDPs with limited stock of food available on the ground.

The entry points to LTTE held Muttur east through Kaddaiparichchan SLA camp and to Eachchilampathu division through Mahindapura SLA camp have been completely closed for civilian movement and transport of food and essential items since the outbreak of fighting.

Indeed, since fighting began to flare up in April, UNHCR has recorded 162,000 Sri Lankans who have fled their homes but remain within the country, as well as 7,439 who have crossed the Palk Strait to become refugees in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state.

More than 80,000 people from the eastern province are now in camps at Kantali and Serupura in government-controlled areas and at Vakarai in LTTE-controlled territory.

Around 50,000 of the former refugees come from or near the eastern town of Muttur, which was devastated in the fighting which erupted on August 2 as the LTTE counterattacked near the town to stifle the SLA offensive on Maavil Aru.

After the main access road to the Jaffna peninsula through the LTTE-controlled Killinochchi district was closed, supplies of food and water have fallen to what Pagonis described as “alarmingly low levels” in many locations.

“Unfortunately, we have limited stock [in LTTE-controlled Kilinochchi] and are not sure when new stock will arrive because of restrictions on road transport,” said Pagonis.

Humanitarian agencies in Kilinochchi are targeting their help to those displaced people – some 9,500 individuals – living outdoors under trees, or in communal buildings, the UNHCR said in a statement from its Geneva headquarters.

In Jaffna, a week of fighting and the LTTE’s severance of air and sea supply lines to the 40,000 strong SLA garrison in the northern peninsula has provoked further displaced and hardships.

Thousands of people including foreign nationals are stranded in Jaffna town and have joined lengthy waiting lists to leave by sea.

The LTTE says it counter-attacked an imminent SLA offensive at Muhamalai, sparking two weeks of bloody fighting (see page 3).

Over the weekend, the LTTE ceased its shelling of the Palaly airbase.

On Monday, the Air Force resumed limited flights between Ratmalana air base in Colombo and Palaly. But taking off and landing at Palaly is restricted to late evening or night and only two trips are being made each day.

In the meantime, prices for essential items, such as rice, sugar and vegetables, have skyrocketed in the peninsula, which is cut off from the south by a large swathe of LTTE-controlled territoriy.

Fuel, including petrol, diesel and kerosene, is in very short supply. Much of the area has been subject to continuous electricity blackouts. After moving most of their cash to the Palaly base for security, the banks restricted withdrawals to just 1,000 rupees ($US10) last Friday.

Following pleas from aid agencies and government officials in Jaffna this Tuesday, a ship with relief supplies for the peninsula’s residents was scheduled to depart from Colombo port.

The move came the day after the international envoys met to pressure President Rajapakse.

Last week the United States’ Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Steven Mann, made an unscheduled visit to meet with President Rajapaksa in Colombo.

He also met with representatives of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a coalition of Sri Lanka’s four largest Tamil parties.

Mr. Mann also met with Sri Lanka Army (SLA) chief Sarath Fonseka.

Recently, some sections of the international community have begun to demonstrate an understanding that addressing the root causes of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict will go a long way toward its resolution.

A number of states, human rights groups and media organisations have begun acknowledging that Tamil grievances do exist. Many have asserted a need to recognise Tamils’ fundamental rights - to live free from discrimination and language rights amongst others.

The most prominent recent convert to this ‘Tamil grievance’ position has been the United States, which in a promising step forward, acknowledged the legitimate political aspirations of the Tamil people and their claim to a homeland.

Yet some of the most powerful new proponents of this position still offer impractical routes as to how the Tamil people should go about achieving these basic rights.

Whilst finally acknowledging Tamil grievances, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher, also rejected their backing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a means of securing redress. The LTTE, he said, has to eschew violence and join Sri Lanka’s democratic process. In other words, surrender.

Boucher’s statement on Tamil rights marks a welcome shift in the right direction by Washington. It was only five years ago, that US Ambassador Ashley Wills, speaking in Jaffna told the Tamils that they were not a people, that there was no Tamil homeland and the Tamil struggle was a form of racism. It was uncompromising statements such as these which convinced many Tamils that the International Community would always prioritise ties with Colombo over the rights of downtrodden minorities.

The recent US move to distinguish between the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil people and the LTTE as a vehicle for achieving them has been mirrored by other international actors peers. In several meetings between European governments’ and Tamil representatives, such as parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the donor community has been keen to emphasize that they would be much more supportive of the Tamil cause, were it not for the existence of the LTTE.

Another example of this newfound international empathy for the Tamil plight are the recent comments by the British Deputy High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. Mr. Dominic John Chilcott admitted that the British system of governance passed on to Sri Lanka had been flawed in its inability to protect minorities from abuse.

In light of the various unconstitutional measures enforced by subsequent Sinhala governments this seemed unnecessarily self-critical. Nonetheless it demonstrated that the international community has a keen understanding of the insurmountable constitutional challenges to reforming the Sri Lankan state.

Unsurprisingly, associated media and non-governmental organisations have also begun to endorse this new paradigm; that Tamil aspirations can only be met after the LTTE has been disarmed.

Another new believer in legitimate Tamil aspirations seems to be Human Rights Watch (HRW), whose Asia Director, Brad Adams, also recently acknowledged Tamils may have grievances, but also insisted the Tamil Diaspora pressure the LTTE to relinquish violence as step towards addressing them.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, this is a peculiar position, given HRW’s last report on Sri Lanka claimed the Tamil community did not support the LTTE and any assistance was due to widespread intimidation. The implicit reversal of HRW’s position is welcome, but does result in scepticism amongst the appeal’s target audience, the Tamil Diaspora.

The Times newspaper in London echoed the same demand that the Tamils dump the Tigers in a violently anti-LTTE editorial on August 15. The paper accused the LTTE of spurning “every gesture” of President Mahinda Rajapakse - who it also admitted was aligned to hardline Sinhala nationalists.

The paper simply overlooked the refusal of the Rajapakse government to implement the agreements reached in the last round of talks with the Tigers in February. The talks, termed Geneva I, had called for the dismantling of state-backed paramilitaries, but nothing has happened, except the violence has deepened. The paper also omitted mention of the numerous paramilitary attacks on LTTE cadres and supporters and, most importantly, the offensive launched by the Army since July 21.

The Times made a glancing mention of legitimate Tamil grievances before concluding that the LTTE’s armed struggle is an unacceptable vehicle for resolving such issues and demanding that the Tamil Diaspora disown the organisation. The Tamils, it added darkly, “will have no peace” until they do so.

Perhaps when compared to CNN’s coverage of the Sencholai massacre last week, The Times might seem balanced: the US media organisation simply reported Sri Lankan government’s version of the incident, saying an LTTE base was bombed - and that moreover, despite the statements from the site of the massacre by UNICEF and the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission, that the victims were in fact school children at a first aid course.

Tamils have come to expect various international media organisations to be biased towards the state when reporting this island’s decades long conflict. However, the critical aspect of recent statements, press articles and NGO releases, is the overall effort to get the Tamil Diaspora to give up their backing of the LTTE in return for - as yet to materialise - international support for their recently acknowledged legitimate grievances. In other words, to split the Tigers and the Tamils.

The problem is one of credibility. To date there is no sign of international understanding what exactly Tamil grievances are. More importantly, even if the international community were able to appreciate Tamil aspirations, there is little evidence that it is capable of delivering them.

Revelations by Canada’s deputy foreign minister of how his country is encouraging reform in Sri Lanka are particularly disheartening for the Tamils. Donors such as Canada had shifted, he said, from providing infrastructure-focused aid toward reform-focused assistance as a way to encourage state reform.

It is obvious that such incentive systems have failed to impact successive Sri Lankan governments, largely due to the intense competition between donor nations to lend money in a bid to secure political influence in the country.

The reality is that Sri Lanka is offered substantial amounts of aid by countries ranging from the US to Korea and even China, each seeking to secure political influence in the region. With this variety of suitors courting Sri Lanka, securing political influence alone will prove a challenge, let alone demanding any sort of reform in the process.

The various institutional and constitutional challenges in Sri Lanka are also virtually unassailable. The ethnic ‘outbidding’ politics which has dominated the island makes the two-thirds majority necessary for reform of the state impossible, particularly with the rising influence of extremist Sinhala parties.

With no extra-constitutional measures being considered by external actors to overcome such hurdles, there is no tangible evidence as to how the international community intends to deliver on any political commitments it seems to be offering the Tamils sans LTTE.

Even more concerning than the inability of the International Community to effect reforms in Sri Lanka is their apparent unwillingness to do so.

The appalling international silence in the aftermath of the Sencholai massacre last week suggests that concern for Tamil grievances is merely rhetoric. The Sri Lankan military has consistently terrorised Tamil civilians as part of its efforts to defeat the LTTE. But, as during the infamous ‘war for peace,’ the International Community appears to consider Tamil civilian (and child) casualties an acceptable price of defeating the LTTE.

Tamil welfare and rights have been sacrificed in the past, long before the emergence of the LTTE. In the aftermath of the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, there were few voices demanding reform of the Sri Lankan state. The three decades that preceded that landmark pogrom had witnessed state sponsored ethnic cleansing, other anti-Tamil riots and ever-deepening institutional racism.

Despite all this, Canada says that international focus at the time was aimed at developing the Sri Lanka’s infrastructures and not in reforming the transparently chauvinistic state.

So how can the international community now expect to convince the Tamils that in a future without the LTTE’s leverage over Sri Lankan affairs, international interest in Tamil welfare will remain?

The appalling international silence over the Sencholai massacre and the widespread recent displacement of Tamils doesn’t inspire confidence. This alone tells the Tamils that international interests will always determine external responses to Tamil suffering - and that the Tamils will require their own security apparatus in any final settlement to the conflict.

The most disturbing aspect of al this is that recent international policy statements reveal the substantial knowledge about the island’s conflict that the international community has.

Tamil academics and journalists have repeatedly produced papers and articles toward ‘informing’ international policymakers, based on the assumption that their policies are not malevolent but merely misinformed.

But there is clear international understanding of Sri Lanka’s flawed and irreversibly majoritarian constitution - as Mr. Chilcott underlined. Mr Boucher’s acceptance that Tamils are a people with a homeland and legitimate grievances suggests that the International Community has been well versed on of ethnic dynamics in the island. The Canadian Deputy Foreign Minister acknowledged that despite knowledge of the Sri Lanka’s oppression of the Tamils, aid has flowed unfettered to state’s coffers.

In light of this nuanced understanding of the ground situation, Tamils must reflect on the efficacy of ‘informing’ the international community. After all, when it suits their interests, it is pretty clear the international community will engage the Tamils, and most probably in a more genuine manner.

Moreover, international statements tow-ards recognising Tamil grievances, whilst welcome, are linked to the ever-changing military situation on the island.

International actors and media expect the Tamils to abandon the LTTE at the first whiff of any acknowledgement of legitimacy of their struggle.

But the Tamil community, assisted by virtually no other power than its invaluable Diaspora, have been one of the few peoples in history to halt genocide on their own, with no external assistance.

If the international community is genuinely supportive of Tamil grievances, it ought to focus on challenging the Sri Lanka state’s discrimination and violence, rather than seeking for ways to give the Tamil liberation struggle routes to legitimacy.

In a complete reversal of their position, New York based NGO, Human Rights watch (HRW), which earlier this year described the Tamil Diaspora as caught in a ‘culture of fear’ of the LTTE this week turned to Tamil expatriates to exert their influence on the LTTE in support of human rights.

In March this year, HRW published a damning report claiming Tamil expatriates were being terrorised by LTTE fund-raisers extorting money from them to finance the war in Sri Lanka. The report, which was specifically cited by the Canadian government when it banned the LTTE in April, caused outrage amongst expatriates.

But on Saturday August 5, HRW Asia Director Brad Adams joined Professor Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings in asking for the Diaspora to exert their influence on the LTTE to implement their recommendations on human rights.

At an event in London, Professor Alston launched a Tamil version of his report, which says, among other things that “the diaspora has a responsibility to use its considerable political and financial influence and funding to promote and to insist upon respect for human rights.”

Professor Alston and Adams said it was vital that the Diaspora make it clear to the LTTE that the war would not be won by territorial and military considerations alone but by considerations of legitimacy and respect for international human rights standards.

The Diaspora had a duty to ensure the LTTE met these standards, they argued. Supporting the LTTE unquestioningly, said Professor Alston, was like bringing up your child to do whatever he liked; it was counterproductive and not helpful to the child because he would not learn to act as a responsible adult.

The metaphor where the LTTE was likened to a ‘child’ of the Tamil Diaspora is astonishing in the context of previous policy statements by HRW and United Nations.

On the face of it, the event should have been a walk in the park for the organisers. After all, who doesn’t subscribe to human rights standards as a matter of principle? Philip Alston provided an additional incentive (as if the matter of principle was not sufficient). He said one had to be seen to be meeting international standards of legitimacy in order to achieve political goals, including that of a separate state.

But instead of support, the organisers were met with anger and a litany of complaints against their organisations’ conduct from many of the Tamil Diaspora. The event highlighted systemic disagreement between the panellists and the sections of the Tamil Diaspora being addressed by the former’s appeal.

After the conference, a clarification was sought from HRW on their understanding of the extent of voluntary support for the LTTE compared to the proportion that was being reportedly being pressured by the Tigers.

Adams replied on behalf of Human Rights watch that he had absolutely no idea. A member of the audience had claimed that the LTTE had the support of eighty percent of the Tamil Diaspora. Mr Adams thought that might well be true, but he admitted he did not really know.

In essence, Adams admitted they had no statistical information on the extent of LTTE support among the Diaspora, and further that they had no capability to obtain such information. The Asia Director of HRW said this was the first time he had been to London to meet the UK Diaspora.

But Adams did not even accept that statistics had any bearing on Jo Becker’s controversial report on fund raising by the LTTE and related organisations. In short, HRW did not know if the people who had alleged intimidation by fundraisers were a statistically significant proportion of the overall population or not – even though the report had repeatedly alluded that it was.

Adams argued that, in any case, HRW’s position was not a question of mathematics or science. He refused to accept there was even a question of proportionality. He said that if even one person felt that they were being intimidated then HRW would find itself obliged to report on it.

But for anyone who read the original HRW report this comes across as a major shift in position. The report painted a picture of a community gripped by fear and ill served by British or Canadian police or their parliamentary representatives. An entire section of the original report was dedicated to why no prosecutions had been brought in the western democracies where these offences were allegedly taking place.

It even claimed: “in Canada, the Tamil community forms a powerful voting bloc, and many members of Parliament from ridings (electoral districts) in the Toronto area are dependent on Tamil votes. Some Canadian Tamils suggest that as a result, many members of parliament are reluctant to address LTTE intimidation.”

Jo Becker, the author, in an interview with the BBC Sinhala service had countered allegations of an underlying political agenda by saying “Our only agenda is to safeguard the human rights of the expatriate Tamils.”

But Adams’ revelation that he has no idea what the Diaspora really thinks or wants and that further they had not taken trouble to find out sharply contradicts Miss Becker’s emphatic need to save the community from the LTTE.

HRW had previously issued a qualification of its report, saying it was ‘qualitative rather than quantitative’. Brad Adams said on Saturday was that the estimated several dozen people interviewed worldwide (the HRW report itself prominently leaves out the sample base) between October last year and February for Becker’s report had “appeared to give credible accounts.” Readers have to take Jo Becker’s word for it because the witnesses remained anonymous.

But even on a ‘qualitative’ basis the report runs into difficulties. A search of the HRW website reveals that Becker, an experienced human rights researcher, has written only two reports on Sri Lanka, both of them virulently anti-LTTE. This despite the fact that of the over thirty five thousand civilians killed in the Sri Lankan conflict the overwhelming majority have been Tamil civilians killed by government forces.

Becker’s March report was leaked to the Sri Lankan minister of foreign affairs before it was published. The report immediately preceded and was cited in the Canadian government’s ban of the LTTE.

The UK launch of Miss Becker’s earlier (November 2004) report (on child soldiers) had been organised by well-known anti-LTTE radio station, TBC (Tamil Broadcasting Corporation). One of Miss Becker’s co-panellists at the launch was Virajah Ramaraj, the TBC’s program director. Ramraj, a veteran of an anti-LTTE paramilitary group, ENDLF, was arrested by Swiss police in March on long-standing criminal charges.

Ms Becker used a self-selecting sample for her March report. In other words, people who wanted to complain and who were linked into the network were invited. Ramaraj, also appears in Becker’s report, this time as a witness, rather than as a fellow author. The interviews had been conducted, in many cases, by long distance telephone calls to the UK and Canada.

The report accepts that the Metropolitan police in UK concluded in the face of specific complaints that there was no evidence of an offence. But Jo Becker went on to say that Scotland Yard turns a ‘blind eye’ due to political considerations. Adams reflected the same thinking when he insisted last week that for Diaspora witnesses, HRW (and not the local police force) was the ‘first place’ to which they could turn.

Yet Adams confessed that HRW did not have much knowledge of any of the local Diaspora communities. By extension, the organisations does not have the capability to assess the credibility or qualifications of its sources. To counter this failing, HRW contends that in many ways it does not matter: Adams says if even one person feels intimidated by LTTE fund raising strategies, then that is enough.

But this position has deep flaws. Lobbying for proscription of the LTTE (which is what HRW’s report does – successfully in Canada’s case) is to deny the expatriate Tamils their right to support the LTTE’s political project; politics. The politics of an entire community of respectable citizens is being tarnished by a select few associates of the likes of Ramaraj: the disregard for their views verging on the racist.

By ignoring ‘big picture’ analysis, Adams is holding on to a very simplistic view of truth. There are lies of distortion and lies of omission. HRW has indulged in both.

By focussing disproportionately on one human rights problem, others are marginalised. In the Sri Lankan conflict there are a plethora of abuses, including disappearances in government custody, torture, massive proportions of long term displaced, military occupation, arbitrary executions to name just a few.

HRW chose to prioritise a small group of people who unverifiably claim their rights are being violated over many of those who argue their rights are being defended against the Sri Lankan state by the LTTE. The point here is that HRW, when it writes on Sri Lankan affairs, even on a Diaspora issue, is intervening in the Sri Lankan conflict.

Even the merest respect for the numbers of rights abuses within the Sri Lankan question would have led to very different set of priorities from that chosen by HRW.

Almost a quarter of Tamils in Sri Lanka are internally displaced. Arbitrary, racially profiled, mass arrests of Tamils in cities such as Colombo are commonplace. So are cases of torture and disappearances.

In contrast to HRW, many of the Diaspora prioritise Sri Lanka’s rights abuses differently. Stopping the greatest abuser, the state military, is their concern. Many Diaspora Tamils argue for self-rule and autonomy on this basis and back the LTTE’s political struggle on this basis.

They are aware the LTTE does not have a clean sheet, but, in their view, this is not a concerning as securing the overall cause of self-determination which, when realised will protect Tamils from the Sri Lankan state.

Little surprise then that HRW has difficulty establishing credibility with the Diaspora: the human rights goals of the two groups may be broadly aligned in theory but in practice there is no agreement on implementation.

HRW enunciates human rights principles but are (at best) dangerously careless of the wider political impact of their work. The Diaspora on the other hand pursues the collective human rights of their community through the goal of self-determination and the LTTE.

For example, HRW deplored the impending exit of international truce monitors because with fewer people on the ground it would be harder to track human rights issues.

But the Diaspora saw the exit of the monitors as an inevitable consequence of their countries’ proscription of the LTTE. The Diaspora instead deplored the ban as a violation of their community’s human rights. They are also well aware HRW’s controversial (and now suspect) report contributed to the ban.

HRW deplored the large number of internally displaced people in the island. But Tamil Diaspora activists with organisations such as the TRO (Tamil Rehabilitation Organsiation) were furious because the ban also indirectly obstructed their humanitarian fund raising. Again, such activists see HRW as having targeted their struggle (in support of the Sri Lankan state that caused those displacements in the first place.)

HRW’s apparent recognition that the Diaspora matters to Sri Lankan politics comes somewhat late in the day. Notably, the Diaspora’s views were not consulted before the proscription of the LTTE - in fact all of the protests and appeals by the Diaspora were bluntly ignored. Instead, HRW’s report was cited as evidence for a need to save the Diaspora from the LTTE.

Ironically, Alston’s original metaphor of the parent-child is correct: the LTTE relies on the Diaspora for financial, intellectual and moral support.

But then it is impossible to seek a cooperative relationship with the parent having just helped in the demonising and condemnation of the child. If the organisers of last week’s meeting with the Diaspora were shocked by the anger they were met with, they had only themselves to blame.

This confrontation is not about water. Despite the talk of ‘humanitarian’ missions, the truth, as the head of the international monitors, Ulf Henricsson, suggested, is that this war is about something else.

After all, the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE have resolved numerous other far more controversial issues in the past four years of ceasefire than a blocked water channel. And not once, but twice, Sri Lankan bombardments have destroyed deals with the LTTE to open the sluice gates.

It is now quite clear this is about Sri Lanka pursuing a military campaign against the LTTE despite the constraints of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). Whilst some observers are perplexed at the government’s actions, an examination of its stated objectives suggest this is not inconsistent behaviour.

President Mahinda Rajapakse’s administration has relentlessly pursued two objectives since he assumed power. The first, like all his predecessors, is to ensure he maintains power and secures a second six-year term. And the second is to implement his manifesto, unsubtly titled ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ (Mahinda’s thoughts).

What might appear crass, even stupid, on the international stage is, in the Sinhala heartland, honest, even honourable. A promise to the people is being kept.

The abrogation of deals with the LTTE is easily explained. After all, the Tigers are the Sinhala nation’s arch foes and all is fair in love and war. And this internal constituency is far more important to Rajapakse than the self-interested members of the international community.

Even at the internationally transparent talks in Geneva in February, the Rajapakse government struggled to accept the legitimacy of the CFA. And even though it finally agreed to implement it, soon after its delegation arrived back in Colombo, it repudiated the Geneva 1 deal.

Within weeks, Army-backed paramilitaries resumed their campaign against the LTTE and its supporters, sparking the low intensity hostilities that has escalated steadily to war this month.

And it is not only agreements with the LTTE that have been scrapped.

Rajapakse’s administration has repeatedly assured the foreign powers backing Sri Lanka’s peace process that it is committed to peace and welcomes their support - and there is no doubt it certainly welcomes their fiscal support.

However, in the face of increasing international pressure to deliver on his various pledges, including Geneva 1, President Rajapakse’s response was to court new allies abroad and to attempt to marginalize the Norwegians by seeking direct talks with the LTTE.

When this clumsy political chicanery failed, Colombo had to respond to new pressures from the international community.

But he got an unexpected break: having virtually conceded that President Rajapakse was never going to disarm the paramilitaries, the international community changed focus from demanding Geneva 1 to efforts pushing for a permanent political solution.

Pressure grew for a bi-partisan agreement with the main opposition UNP that could reduce the influence of the ultra-nationalist JVP and JHU. Rajapske’s response was to dust off an old Sri Lankan trick: the All Party Conference (APC).

And he wasn’t very subtle, not even bothering to invite the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), even for show.

Furthermore, he sent an unambiguous message to the JVP and its allies – and for that matter, the Sinhala and Tamil communities – by appointing a group of Sinhala ultra-nationalists to the committee to draft his administration’s proposals for power sharing.

Meanwhile, a ground breaking deal engineered by India between the UNP and Rajapakse’s ruling coalition collapsed: no sooner had Delhi’s Envoy left Sri Lanka, the President resumed poaching UNP parliamentarians to the government benches.

Why, observers might ask, is the man deliberately damaging the necessary steps to a stable negotiation process and a permanent solution?

The answer lies in the twin objectives Rajapakse has never concealed: his political future and Mahinda Chinthana.

The UNP crossovers enhance his government’s stability whilst spreading discord and disharmony within the UNP’s already disarrayed ranks. It also makes joining the (more stable) government a more attractive option for the savvy JVP.

At the same time, the delaying of a bi-partisan deal with the UNP also put paid to any hope of the APC coming up with a pan-southern platform for peace talks. It also bought time for the committee tasked with coming up with power-sharing proposals.

Rajapakse’s most important success is outmanoeuvring Delhi’s interventions on behalf of the stuttering peace process.

Having politically re-engaged in Sri Lanka at the behest of both protagonists, India could not have expected the degree of duplicity that Rajapakse demonstrated with regards the bi-partisan deal that Delhi’s envoy set up. Else India would not have staked its prestige on it.

And then there is the military escalation by Colombo, despite India’s reported insistence of restraint. Within a week of assurances to India to prevent further escalation of the conflict and to pursue a negotiated solution, Rajapskse unleashed a major military offensive against the Tigers.

The only way to determine Rajapakse’s intentions is to understand his interests.

Bottom line, Rajapakse needs to pursue a solution to the ethnic problem which is within a unitary state. Any other option risks alienating the JVP and, more importantly, the Sinhala vote bloc which backed him last November.

Besides, a federal or autonomy solution is at odds with Mahinda Chinthana. There is no need for a bi-partisan agreement with the UNP if you don’t need the two-thirds majority. You don’t need the majority if you don’t intend to substantially change the constitution.

What about international opinion? Rajapakse knows full well that international support for federalism is not based on any fundamental commitment to the Tamils, but as a bid to buy off the Tamil separatist campaign. If the threat from the LTTE was to diminish, so will international pressure for autonomy, in his view.

This column has argued before that international guarantees against the LTTE’s struggle means that even if a military effort by Colombo goes awry, there will be no great political cost – Rajapakse would only still need to agree to a federal model (and the JVP or JHU could not fault him then for selling out).

But were he to be successful on the battlefield, Rajapske knows he won’t be pressured to offer that much to the Tamils, a point reinforced by the stated commitments to Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity by several leading members of the international community.

He is much more likely to continue in power in either solution. But not if he were to sell out to the Tamils by making a serious offer of autonomy now.

These calculations have been apparent to Rajapakse even before he filed his papers for last November’s Presidential polls.

And since coming to power, he and his hardliner defence officials have been preparing the ground for a military confrontation. That is why the paramilitaries were not disarmed, but expanded and reinforced. That is why the embargoes were not lifted.

Columnists in this newspaper argued as early as June 2005 that Sri Lanka was planning a war in the east. This column did so again in April 2006.

The reasons for the present Sri Lankan military offensive in Trincomalee are nothing to do with water or any other humanitarian issue.

With the international community focused on the Middle East, President Rajapakse has acted swiftly to take advantage of a fortuitous controversy that erupted in the strategic eastern theatre.

Hence Rajapakse’s haste to escalate the violence despite the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) in the area being on the verge of resolving this otherwise mundane water dispute.

Contrary to many international actors, the political vision behind Rajapakse’s military offensive is not to weaken the LTTE and secure a better position at the negotiating table.

It is to create the conditions under which a solution within the unitary constitution can be offered on a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ basis to the Tamils.

The international community has in the past backed similar weak offers. Federalism entered the negotiating field only after the ferocious LTTE violence of 2000-1.

In any case, there cannot be a limited war. If Rajapakse is successful initially, the JVP and other Sinhala nationalists will insist the war goes all the way to a total victory. As the National Movement Against Terrorism declared in its recent poster campaign, the goal is ‘Onward to Kilinochchi.’

As this column argued earlier, if the LTTE is able to resist his military onslaught, then the most Rajapakse will have to offer is a federal solution.

But that is sometime in the future. The question can be revisited then. Right now, neither of Rajapakse’s objectives – staying in power for the next decade, or delivering his vision of Sri Lanka, ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ – can be achieved through offering a federal solution. So war it is.

Tamil Guardian: Sri Lanka’s war aim is to take the east [April 19, 2006]
Tamil Guardian: Will new war be in the east? [Jun 29, 2005]

In the past two weeks Sri Lanka has seen unparalleled levels of violence. The Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE have clashed directly in set piece battles. Localised clashes, yes, but of a ferocity not seen since 2001. Colombo has unleashed all three service arms against LTTE-controlled areas - airstrikes and artillery have levelled vast areas in LTTE-controlled Sampur and Eachchilampathu. Large numbers of people have joined the tens of thousands displaced since April. The LTTE has attacked Army camps in Muttur and the town itself and shelled Trincomalee naval base. Little wonder that last week many insisted that ‘Eelam War IV’ had begun. Yet, incredulously, both sides continue to insist they are committed to the February 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). Various reasons have been suggested for how this appalling state of affairs has come about. Inevitably many, including key external actors who have actively contributed to the collapse of the peace process, have fallen back on that uncomplicated of analyses and simply blamed the LTTE. Some have blamed the Sinhala nationalist government of President Mahinda Rajapakse too. But of one thing they are clear: the fault lies within Sri Lanka.

They are half right. The ascension of the Sinhala far right though this year has been steady and by no means stealthy. The JVP and JHU which helped Rajapakse comprehensively defeat his rival, Ranil Wickremesinghe, in the Sinhala heartland last November have since cemented their grip over the levers of power. And yes, Rajapakse and his ultra-nationalist cabal have been planning a war against the Tigers despite the international community’s regular missives. No one should be surprised, save the ideologically blinded opponents of the LTTE. Sri Lanka’s weapons were ordered openly. The threats to resume hostilities against the Tigers were made openly. President Rajapakse despatched a team to Geneva to publicly render the CFA null and void. The sophisticated scenario planning by the expert observers left out the most pertinent, if banal, of facts: the JVP and its nationalist allies have got the war they have been openly calling and planning for.

Yet a fixation with the malevolence of the LTTE has resulted in several international actors simply closing their eyes to these very public events in Colombo. Even now, a question too many bewildered analysts, ask is: ‘what is the LTTE up to?’ President Rajapakse, his military and his hardline political allies have taken Sri Lanka to war stage by stage. Yet, lamenting that Wickremesinghe did not win last year, these observers have failed to notice that the powerful nationalist forces Rajapakse has mobilised for war did not appear with him - they are an integral part of Sri Lanka’s body politic. They dogged the Norwegian initiative from the start and destroyed its meagre achievements one by one. Not surreptitiously, but openly.

And the international community has been involved all along. The self-styled Co-Chairs dictated terms and conditions then broke the conditionality to suit. They threatened on behalf of peace, but did nothing as the state escalated the shadow war. They hectored the protagonists and Sri Lanka’s communities on human rights, democracy and the rest, but did nothing as these principles were breached time and again. Except where the LTTE was concerned, of course. The Tigers were lectured to, vilified, marginalized from aid flows, and ultimately proscribed. Yet the war which this newspaper and so many other Tamil voices have been warning about is breaking out.

And where are those international commitments to human rights as tens of thousands of our people flee the artillery shells? Where are those commitments to the wellbeing of ‘ordinary Sri Lankans’ - on whose behalf so many international actors are ever ready to speak? A humanitarian crisis has erupted in Trincomalee. Not over the past two weeks, but over the past five months. The aid conditionalities, the proscriptions, the declarations, are all international interventions. Yet when they fail, their architects deem themselves faultless.

A not so little measure of international hubris is to blame. There is no self-awareness. Nor any recognition that the state has simply ignored international directives on peace and proceeded with its own Sinhala hegemonic project - a project, lest the democracy advocates forget, Rajapakse has the backing of the majority of Sinhalese for. The Rajapakse regime has been left to its own devices whilst various analysts with no understanding of what is going on openly in the Sinhala and Tamil streets have risen repeatedly to certify the strength of ‘a peace constituency.’ And now that the dying has begun in earnest, the international community seems utterly impotent. So much for commitment.

Sri Lanka is massing troops in Trincomalee for a major ground offensive against the Liberation Tigers held parts of the district. The intense bombardment of the LTTE-controlled Eachchilampathu and Sampur in recent days are the opening phases of what Sri Lanka hopes will be a significant military victory.

The LTTE, whilst pointing out that a Sri Lankan offensive is in the works, have avoided commenting on what its response is likely to be. That the Tigers will resist fiercely is not in doubt. The question for many is how and whether the war will widen to engulf other parts of the island. Whilst various military analysts speculate, the LTTE itself is maintaining a studied silence.

But of one thing there can be no doubt. Sri Lanka’s return to violence was inevitable. The international community’s failure to disentangle their own ambitions from the peace process is largely to blame. Moreover, that it would erupt in Trincomalee was not only analytically predictable, the road to war was amply signposted by numerous developments over the past two years.

To being with, Trincomalee has always been a contested site. The Sri Lankan military has been seeking to drive the LTTE, if not the Tamils, from the eastern district for years. The strategic harbour, coveted by more than one geopolitical actor, its abundance of natural resources and its centrality to the Tamil national identity meant it had a special place in every one of a number of competing ambitions.

But that is not why the present confrontation was foreseeable. It was inevitable because Sri Lanka began to mobilise for war during the peace process with increasing brazenness and the international community simply ignored it.

A survey of key events over the past two years and the international community’s attendant acti-ons is in order to defend what might seem an outlandish claim.

A central actor in this regard is the international monitoring mission overseeing the February 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA). The CFA was drafted by the protagonists based on what (in their view) were necessary safeguards.

Whilst the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) was tasked with ensuring compliance, the mission quickly lost focus. It became preoccupied with details, with cataloguing individual incidents and investigating them to attribute blame.

This micro-focus meant the SLMM simply ignored the macro-breaches of the CFA. The focus on individual killings and attacks, combined with a predilection for amassing statistics, meant that manifest trends were simply ignored by the SLMM.

An example is the Sri Lankan military’s failure to vacate thousands of schools, places of worship and private homes. This macro-failure meant that hundreds of thousands of displaced were never settled. It is not that killings and individual incidents are not important, but rather that the SLMM was meant to ensure compliance with a wider normalisation process and not merely to count complaints.

It is in this context of a monitoring mission focussed on minutia - and an international community preoccupied with ‘containing’ the LTTE - that Sri Lanka’s military began its build up. Just as it had done during the ill-fated 1994-5 talks, the military simply ignor-ed obligations imposed by agreements reached by its political masters. Instead it concentrated single-mindedly on its war preparations.

The extensive purchases of weaponry over the 2002-4 by all three service arms are well documented now. The Navy and Air Force doubled their numerical strength. The Army tripled its tank strength and doubled its artillery power. Amid the handwringing over what the LTTE might or might not have acquired, the implications of Sri Lanka’s substantially ramping up of its military capability wasn’t even considered.

But it is in Trincomalee that Sri Lanka’s multiphased strategy for military capture was most clearly discernable - even to the point of brazenness.

Preparations for the present Sri Lankan offensive began a very long time ago. It even predates President Mahinda Rajapakse’s ascension to power.

Soon after the December 2004 tsunami smashed into the eastern coastline, the military reimposed an embargo on fuel, cement and other building materials from being taken into LTTE-controlled areas of Trincomalee particularly.

Even amid the ultimately futile discussions over the Post Tsunami Operational Management Structure (PTOMS), LTTE officials in the east were protesting that there was no point to the exercise as long as the embargo continued on the ground.

With regards to the present crisis, this is the first failure of the SLMM. Despite repeated complaints, the SLMM did nothing. Embargos are not easily catalogued. The mission monitored incidents but completely ignored the wider picture.

The sanctions on LTTE-controlled parts of Trincomalee have thus been in place for 20 months. They were imposed in complete violation of the CFA, but no SLMM report has covered their deleterious effects.

Over time, the Sri Lankan military also imposed an embargo on food and medical supplies entering LTTE-controlled areas, particularly in Trincomalee.

There were widespread protests by the Tamils. Even amid the controversy over the Buddha statue in Trincomalee central bus stand, the protestors were agitating over the embargo. But these were ignored as LTTE-inspired.

As long ago as last December, the Trincomalee District Tamil Peoples’ Consortium (TDTPC) appealed to newly elected President Mahinda Rajapskse “to take necessary steps in alleviating the hardships of the people living villages in the Muttur east and Eachchilampathu divisions by lifting the restriction on transport of essential food items and building materials through Kaddaiparichchan and Mahindapura SLA camps to their villages.”

No one paid any attention to the protests. But now both Kaddaiparichchan and Mahindapura have come to attention of the dimmest of analysts studying Sri Lanka.

This and numerous other appeals fellow on deaf ears. Not only in Temple Trees, where it might be expected to, but in the numerous diplomatic missions in Colombo and, in particularly, SLMM HQ.

This was the second strategic failure by the SLMM. Not only were the normalisation aspects of the CFA being ignored, the entire range of ‘goodwill measures’ put out by Ranil Wickremsinghe’s government had now been rolled back. Yet alarm bells failed to ring.

That the Vanni was not as badly affected is partly due to other mitigating circumstances - including the goods flow to Jaffna - but mainly due to Sri Lanka’s particular focus on Trincomalee.

The SLMM thus failed to appreciate the emergent crisis and invoke international pressure to reverse what was now clearly taking pace.

Whether this failure stemmed from an inability to grasp the complex dynamics of Sri Lanka or a deliberate focus on the LTTE’s violations over Sri Lanka’s is a matter of conjecture. In either case, it failed if its intent was to prevent a return to war.

Amid the rapid escalation since December of the long running ‘shadow war’ into a ‘low-intensity war’ the SLMM became prolific note takers and data collectors. But yet it missed the big picture: LTTE-controlled Eachchilampathu and Sampur were being starved and subject to systematic deprivation.

Even the much-vaunted report compiled by the SLMM between Geneva 1 (in February) and the abortive Geneva 2 focussed, as ever, on killings, claymores, abdu-ctions and other individual incidents. There was still no interest in the strategic picture.

It was in late April that Sri Lanka’s military showed its cards. Within hours of the attempted suicide bombing of Army commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, the military launched air and artillery strikes against Sampur and Eachchilampathu. There were attacks against elsewhere too, but these were sideshows. LTTE areas in Trincomalee bore the brunt.

This was the third failure of international monitoring. The details of destruction and casualties inflicted were duly noted.

But the SLMM did nothing to put the pieces together, even when LTTE officials warned of a resumption of war by Colombo. LTTE protests were dismissed as inevitable complaints of one party to a conflict against the other.

But something important had begun to happen on the ground. Civilian casualties in the late April were light - certainly in comparison to the dozens of civilians killed by rockets and shells in the past few weeks.

But the purpose of the Sri Lankan bombardment was primarily to create a humanitarian crisis which, coupled with the now year-long embargo, would begin to rapidly deplete any remaining stockpiles of food and medicine in LTTE-controlled areas.

The massive displacement did trigger international concern and occasionally even anger. But, as past experience has shown the Sri Lankan state, these sentiments dissipate as quickly as they emerge. Once relief is pledged and NGOs tasked to begin rehabilitation, things return to normal in international capitals.

Between April and July, Sampur and Eachchilampathu were regularly hammered by Sri Lankan air and artillery strikes. In the first three weeks of July there was near daily shelling of Muttur East and Sampur. MBRL and artillery fire was directed on July 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 15, 16 and 18.

All of these produced further waves of displacement, adding to the forty thousand people displaced in April. The significance of the massive humanitarian requirement this imposed on a region which had been subject to embargo since early 2005 was completely lost on the SLMM.

It was on July 20 that the Maavil Aru sluice gates were closed and the present crisis is said to have started. This is probably the first time the SLMM (and the international community it reports to) began to take a close interest in events in the Trincomalee district.

But it was certainly not the beginning of the crisis. Rather it was the opening phase of confrontation.

For Sri Lanka’s military, confident it had weakened the LTTE’s ability to withstand a major offensive by depleting its stockpiles of food and medicine, began to scout around for a suitable reason to initiate a shooting war.

The closing of the sluice gates provided just such an opportunity. Which is why within two days, Colombo launched airstrikes and vowed a military offensive. For all the proclamations about ‘humanitarian war’ this was about something much bigger: a project to destroy the LTTE in Trincomalee.

But things went wrong when the Tigers put up unexpected resistance. Despite fighting in a awkward corner of Trincomalee’s variegated geography, the Tigers stalled the Army advance and inflicted casualties.

What should have been a short sharp clash, which would have drawn more LTTE cadres into suicidal open confrontation before the Army’s massed heavy weapons, became the reverse: the SLA found itself committing more and more troops to overrun a relatively minor target.

Then last Tuesday the LTTE struck back with a ferocity that took the Sri Lankan military by surprise. The Tigers took Muttur town with little effort having bypassed a number of SLA camps whose outer defences had been quickly overrun and whose central positions remained under siege.

When the LTTE suddenly withdrew from a devastated Muttur three days later, it declared its mission over. It said it had pre-empted a major offensive by the SLA against its controlled areas.

This claim has been misunderstood. The LTTE did not expect to permanently thwart a Sri Lankan onslaught, but to create specific difficulties for Colombo. In particular, the LTTE sought to demonstrate that there would be no quick victory in Sampur and Eachchilampathu and that its defence of Maavil Aru was no fluke.

In short, there will be no short, sharp war, but a grinding mess.

The immediate implication of that is the Sri Lankan military’s change in strategy.

In the past week, Colombo has unleashed a torrent of rockets and shells on the two LTTE controlled areas, destroying roads, bridges and major buildings. Colombo intends therefore a ‘broad-front’ onslaught as it did in Jaffna in 1995, Kilinochchi in 1996, Mankulum in 1998 and Elephant Pass in 2001.

Yet when the SLMM chief, Ulf Henricsson, fled to an LTTE bunker on Sunday to escape the dozens of Sri Lankan shells fired at him he had no idea what was happening. Even though the SLMM has been taking notes in Trincomalee every day for the past two years.

“Trincomalee has been paralysed by the violence. There have been blasts close to the navy camp and people in the surrounding area are evacuating.

“They are carrying their belongings away, but there is no real place for them to go. The fighting is 20km away, but everyone fears that violence will spread towards the town.

“All the offices are closed now and people don’t really know what is happening. There is a war out there, there is fighting. It is very heavy and I feel the casualties will be high.

“We can hear the action but we can’t really see it. It’s very frightening. I live near the navy base which has been attacked by shells.

“Fighter planes are also in the surrounding areas. We can hear the noise of the planes overhead.

“We know there is fighting in the middle of the sea. Our home is very close to the sea - and so we are glued to the news trying to find out what exactly is happening.

“This is the second time I have experienced a wave of violence like this. I am from Jaffna originally but we had to come here after 1987 when there were bombardments and aerial attacks in our area.

“Trincomalee is different to Jaffna. The city is divided equally between Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim.

“But we fear that the armed forces support the Sinhalese. They are fully Sinhalese themselves and we feel totally unrepresented.

“Community relations have been getting much worse. There is a lot of distrust these days. Last April, I had a bad experience in the bank where I work.

“There was a bomb blast near the marketplace and in the aftermath, a largely Sinhalese crowd gathered outside the bank and threw stones at the building. We narrowly escaped but a lot of damage was done.

“People walked in and broke the computers, threw our flower vases about. The army troops were around but they didn’t take any measures to control the crowd - in fact, we felt they were laughing at it all. It was terrible.

“It is actions like that which make us feel that the politicians, the people in power and the security forces only support the Sinhala population here.

“We are innocent too, and we don’t have any safety or security. The last few months have seen a real deterioration in quality of life for people living in this town.”

In the heaviest fighting since the February 2002 ceasefire, the Liberation Tigers last week launched a ground offensive against Sri Lanka Army positions in Trincomalee, saying they were pre-empting a major onslaught against their controlled areas in the district.

Hundreds of LTTE fighters backed by artillery and mortars last Wednesday stormed into government-controlled areas, attacking four major Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps and entering the government-controlled town of Muttur.

Up to seventeen SLA mini-camps had fallen to a multi-pronged LTTE advance into the Muttur district, reports said.

The overnight offensive took the government by surprise, reports said. The SLA had for the week prior to the LTTE attack been engaged in an offensive against an LTTE-controlled resevoir in Maavil Aru in southern Trincomalee district.

Muttur was the scene of the heaviest fighting. The predominantly Muslim town lies on the coast directly across the bay from the famous Trincomalee harbour.

Muttur’s jetty overlooks the mouth of Trincomalee harbour and the town is seen as strategically important.

The harbour itself came under fire by LTTE artillery based in Sampur, with almost 36 shells hitting government installations.

A troop transport coming into Trincomalee carrying Sri Lankan soldiers on leave from Jaffna had a narrow escape after being targeted by LTTE artillery and Sea Tiger gunboats.

On Wednesday intense fighting raged in Muttur as hundreds of heavily armed LTTE cadres who have taken control of the town centre laid siege to four Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps on its periphery, residents said.

Resident Abdul Rauf told the BBC Tamil service that hundreds of LTTE cadres who moved into Muttur could be seen in all parts of the town and that Sri Lankan troops had retreated into camps located at four corners of the town.

“The LTTE has completely surrounded the camps. Sri Lankan troops cannot come in or break out,” he said.

Major Rajapakse, Sri Lanka’s Deputy Defence spokesman, denying the eyewitness reports told the BBC LTTE cadres were ‘desperately’ withdrawing before an SLA counterattack and have taken refuge in Muttur hospital, banks and government buildings.

“It is a total lie,” he said of reports that SLA was not in control of the Muttur town.

After four days of fighting, which killed 30 odd troops on each side and scores of civilians, mainly by artillery shells, the LTTE withdrew to its controlled areas.

The LTTE pull-back came after days of shelling and mortar and artillery duels around Muttur which, after its entire population fled, was left a ghost town, buildings badly damaged and riddled with bullet holes.

Aid workers estimate 20,000 to 30,000 civilians fled from Mutur on Friday to escape shelling, several thousand of whom have reached the government-held town of Kantale around 20 miles (30 km) southwest.

The SLN ferried journalists south across Trincomalee harbour into Mutur for the first time since the fighting, landing them on the beach in small assault boats.

A Reuters correspondent amongst them said Sri Lankan troops looked exhausted, their faces covered with grime and weapons hanging loosely at their sides.

Along the water line, houses already damaged by the 2004 tsunami stood deserted. The navy camp at the jetty was devastated and just two civilians were seen on the streets.

As troops checked buildings for booby-traps, reporters heard mortar and small arms fire nearby. The navy said between some Tiger fighters were moving from house to house in the outer suburbs of Muttur.

On Thursday, artillery shells hit locations in Muttur where the town’s residents were sheltering, prompting a panic-stricken exodus after dozens were killed.

Sri Lanka’s largest Muslim party Thursday accused the Sri Lankan government of killing the civilians.

Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader, Rauf Hakeem told AFP: “the people were killed in attacks carried out by the security forces.”

“The government must take responsibility for the killing of civilians,” he told AFP, calling on both sides to stop their offensives and return to the positions held at the time the 2002 truce came into being.

At least ten Muslim civilians who sought refuge in Arabic College in Muttur town were killed when an artillery shell hit the college Thursday around noon. About nine thousand Muslim civilians, men, women and children had sought refuge in the Arabic College.

Twelve Muslim villagers in Al Nuriah Muslim school in Thoppur were killed Thursday evening when SLA artillery shells hit the school.

Five Muslim civilians were killed in artillery fire on Friday that hit a school in Thoppur. The civilian victims were about to leave the Al Hamra Muslim Vidyalayam when artillery shells fired by Sri Lankan artillery in Trincomalee base began hitting civilian areas.

The LTTE’s military spokesman, Irasaiah Ilanthiayan, told TamilNet that the LTTE troops returned to their original positions as per February 22, 2002 Ceasefire Agreement by midnight Friday.

32 LTTE fighters, including a Lieutenant Colonel and another senior cadre of the Tigers were killed in the operation that was mean to exert pressure on Colombo’s military offensive to resolve a civilian dispute, Mr. Ilanthirayan said.

Two Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) Dvora Fast Attack Crafts (FACs) were destroyed and sunk, 3 boats were damaged. The LTTE said two Black Tigers and seven Sea Tigers were killed in the seas off Trincomalee harbour on Tuesday.

Mortars, Light Machine Guns and ammunition were seized from SLA camps attacked by the LTTE in Mahindapura, Selvanagar, 64th Mile Post, Kaddaiparichchan camp, Muthur Jetty and Pachchanoor. SLA camp attached to Muthur Police was also attacked.

The speedy operation was brought to an end as most of the targets were overrun, Ilanthirayan said. Lt. Col. Kunchan (Isayamuthan) was one of the two senior LTTE cadres who were killed.

“Every military operation is limited till the objective of the mission is achieved. Our objective of the mission, with a defensive character, was accomplished and our forces returned to their positions as per February 22, 2002 Ceasefire,” Ilanthirayan said.

“The operation aimed at giving a military pressure was speedily carried out and ceased the same way, as our national leader was highly concerned of the humanitarian situation in the entire Trincomalee district,” Ilanthirayan further said.

“We launched the operation after notifying the Muslim leaders in Muthur Mosque Society two hours in advance Tuesday night. We launched the operation at 2:00 a.m. Community leaders were notified midnight to evacuate civilians to safe locations.”

Announcing the start of its offensive, the LTTE said Wednesday its military activities in Trincomalee, including the operation against Sri Lankan military camps in the early hours Wednesday, were intended to disrupt Sri Lanka’s indiscriminate onslaught against Tamil civilians in LTTE-controlled areas.

The LTTE’s military spokesman, I. Ilanthirayan, said that amid the indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas by the Sri Lankan armed forces as part of their offensive in the Mavil Aru region, there was an “urgent humanitarian need” that had compelled what he described as “defensive actions.”

For several days Sri Lankan forces had unleashed indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets, prompting the Tigers to take proactive defensive measures, Mr. Ilanthirayan said.

As such, the LTTE had targeted the Sri Lankan military’s artillery bases as well as the supply lines to troops massed in the Mavil Aaru area, he said.

The naval clashes that erupted in the seas of Trincomalee Tuesday were also part of efforts to disrupt Sri Lanka’s offensive, he said.

The SLN vessel ‘Jet Liner’ had got caught up in the LTTE’s such efforts. “It was not a specific target but entered the LTTE’s theatre of defensive action,” he added.

Mr. Ilanthirayan slammed the Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapakse for launching a military offensive on the pretext of a dispute over water – a dispute, he added, which had been in the process of being resolved before Colombo’s military intervention.

Mr. Ilanthirayan also confirmed that the Sea Tigers had clashed twice last Tuesday with the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) in the seas off Pulmoddai. He characterised these as ‘defensive

Diplomats and analysts say the February 2002 truce holds only on paper and that a two-decade civil war that has killed over sixty thousand civilians since 1983 has resumed.

“The government can play with semantics, but it’s hard to see what’s going on as anything but a war,” one Western diplomat told Reuters.

Joined the rest of the humanitarian community in condemning of the massacre of the 17 ACF staff members in Muthur, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) said the failure to investigate and punish those responsible for attacks on its own aid workers in the past had contributed to a climate of impunity.

“This horrific crime has taken the lives of 17 persons who were engaged in bringing relief and humanitarian assistance to those who were suffering as a result of the 2004 tsunami and the ongoing conflict.”

“These 17 persons dedicated their lives to helping others and their lives were taken by the deliberate act of some criminals. This act can not go unpunished.”

“Since the abduction, and disappearance, of the 7 TRO employees in January 2006 there has been an air of impunity. The investigations produced no results or reports and the criminal acts against humanitarian workers continued.”

“This [latest] incident is the end product of this lack of investigation and accountability by the authorities.”

“It’s unfortunate that the myriad of initiatives and appeals undertaken by the TRO (appeals to the International Community, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, President of Sri Lanka, press conferences, etc) to release the abducted TRO humanitarian workers went unheard and remain unsolved, thus reinforcing the deep-rooted culture of impunity that exists in Sri Lanka,”

The repeated plea of the TRO to provide safety and security for all humanitarian workers in the NE from the GOSL and the International Community was ignored and never given due attention, the Tamil agency said.

“This is yet another incident which sadly reflects the indifference and lack of empathy afforded to people working under volatile political conditions.”

Ten TRO staff members were kidnapped by Army-backed paramilitaries in Batticaloa district on January 30, 2006. Three were released, but the other seven have ‘disappeared’ and many believe they have been killed in custody.

Despite repeated appeals by local and international human rights groups, the TRO workers have never been found. Promises by the Sri Lankan government to investigate the disappearances has been dismissed by the TRO which insists the security forces and its paramilitaries are responsible.

Shortly after the TRO abductions, Army-backed paramilitaries entered the offices of MAG (Mines Advisory Group) in Batticaloa on February 22 and beat a local staffer working at the office, and threatened the British national heading the Batticaloa office of MAG

On May 21, 2006, grenades were thrown at the Muttur offices of Nonviolent Peaceforce, injuring a Serbian peaceworker and two passing civilians.

At the same time, the offices of two humanitarian NGOs in Mutur, including ZOA Refugee Care, were also attacked with grenades.

Other aid workers in Muttur have been attacked by Sinhalese mobs in recent days. Supplies sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for displaced Muslims and Tamils have been blocked by angry Sinhalese in the Trincomalee district.

Sinhala hardliners in Sri Lanka routinely accuse aid agencies and NGOs of being pro-Tamil and backing the Tamil Tigers.

Relatives of some of the 17 aid workers shot dead execution-style in Muttur town last week blamed Sri Lankan security forces Tuesday whilst diplomats were skeptical of government claims the Tamil Tigers were responsible.

Correspondents with Reuters news agency interviewed relatives of some of the seventeen staff of international aid group Action Contre La Faim (ACF).

The father of one aid worker said another son was amongst five Tamil students shot, also execution-style by Sri Lankan commandos in Trincomalee earlier this year.

15 of the ACF staff had been found dead on the floor of their ruined office, while two had been gunned down while apparently trying to escape in a car.

In the office, the bodies of fourteen Tamil and one Muslim aid worker, clad in ACF T-shirts, had bullet wounds and most of them lay face down.

“We believe it was the army,” 50-year-old Richard Arulrajah, whose 24 year-old son was among those shot dead, told Reuters.

“On Friday he phoned and said he would be back by Saturday. After that, we heard the military personnel came and shot them.”

Some Sri Lankan hardliners have in the past accused aid agencies of being pro-Tamil, ignoring the majority Sinhalese and backing the Tigers.

Other aid workers have been attacked by Sinhalese mobs in recent days, and troops had been under strain in heavy fighting.

The deaths were the first in the French agency’s 25-year history. A furious French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned what he called “the appalling and cowardly murders.”

The Sri Lanka Army accused the LTTE, but diplomats are sceptical, Reuters reported Tuesday.

“All of our initial information suggests the government was involved,” the news agency quoted one western diplomat as saying. “The government’s only option is to have a full independent investigation with international support.”

It was all too much for Ponuthurai Yogarajah, 62, who lost one son in the killing and another in January when five Tamil students were shot dead, also execution style, on Trincomalee beach by Sri Lankan special forces.

“There is no use in living,” he told Reuters as coffins were prepared for the bloated corpses. “Better to have died before them.”

The United States, a key backer of the island’s faltering peace bid, condemned the killing of 17 aid workers of a French charity.

Aid workers and diplomats say the reason for the murders of the 17 aid workers was unclear, but troops had been under days of strain in heavy fighting.

Most of the victims, 13 men and four women aged 23 to 54, were engineers specialised in water sanitation and agronomy as well as project managers, ACF said.

The staff had travelled to the eastern town of Muttur last Tuesday by ferry from Trincomalee, aiming to return the same day. That afternoon, a Tiger attack on a troop convoy in the harbour trapped them there. The next day the LTTE launched an offensive government troops in Muttur town and district.

“They said the LTTE came and told them to leave,” said Arulrajah, who believed the Tigers would not have killed the ethnic Tamil workers. “They said: We are leaving this place so you must also leave or we can do nothing to protect you.”

“They called on the phone and you could hear shelling,” Sinathambi Navaratnarajah, 52, who lost his son-in-law told Reuters. “They called ACF and were told to stay in the office.”

After three days of heavy fighting, the LTTE pulled out Friday.

By this time, Action Contre La Faim vehicles were trying to break through from the south, but could not get past columns of displaced Muslims and frequent mortar fire. The last radio transmission was recorded early on Friday morning, ACF says.

Most of the aid workers’ bodies had several bullet wounds, mainly to the head. The pathologist said they likely died later on Friday.

Outside the hospital in the Trincomalee, where the bodies of the aid workers arrived late on Monday night, relatives wailed while policemen covered their noses and mouths with scarves against the stench of death.

Tamil correspondents were not allowed to approach the site. Some said they were photographed by security forces who threatened to find and kill them if they reported on the massacre.

There has been strong international condemnation of the massacre. It was the highest toll of aid workers in a single incident since the 2003 bombing of the UN’s Baghdad headquarters which killed at least 24.

“We are deeply shocked by the spate of violent attacks on civilians and humanitarian aid personnel in Sri Lanka,” European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement, demanding an immediate investigation.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned what he called “the appalling and cowardly murders.”

The French charity Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger) said Monday it was suspending its mission to Sri Lanka after the killings.

“These humanitarian workers were clearly identified by their T-shirts as members of a non-governmental organization,” the group’s director, Benoît Miribel told AFP.

“We are appalled at what happened to the ACF staff,” said Yvonne Dunton, head of the ICRC’s sub-delegation in Trincomalee.

“This was a deliberate attack on a humanitarian organization that was doing valuable work for the people of Muttur.”