Canada’s proscription of the Liberation Tigers was not entirely unexpected. Domestic pressures, particularly from some interior arms of the state, coupled with the platform of the new Conservative government, ultimately decided in Sri Lanka’s favour. The move is regrettable, not only because it alters the calculations on which the protagonists in Sri Lanka decide questions of war and peace, but because its effect is the exact opposite of Canada’s stated expectations.

Announcing the ban last week, Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, also declared that Canada was supportive of a negotiated solution to the island’s conflict and was even prepared to host talks between the Sri Lanka’s government and the LTTE. To begin with, this is a contradiction in terms - on what basis could the offer be accepted by the LTTE, given the partisan position Canada has taken?

More importantly, the logic put forward for the ban – that it would assist, not hinder the Norwegian brokered peace process is fundamentally flawed, ignoring, as it does, the now undisguised trends in Sri Lanka, where a hardline Sinhala nationalist administration has resumed the war, albeit covertly, against the LTTE. The Canadian decision is based on the premise that it is the LTTE which is being intransigent and blocking progress towards a permanent solution. But as close observers of Sri Lanka’s conflict, not least the Norwegians, are well aware, the issue is much more complex. First, Sri Lanka’s new government has already ruled out any meaningful power-sharing. It has adopted a defiant and uncooperative stance towards the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement. Most importantly, violence has resumed anew. Whatever the fate of the next round of talks in Geneva, dozens are already dying as Sri Lanka’s military intelligence and its paramilitary allies accelerate the cycle of killings.

In this context, the Canadian ban is not going to contribute to peace. In fact, it is going to do the opposite by emboldening the hardliners in the Sri Lankan regime and the Sinhala nationalists who support it. These forces will undoubtedly feel vindicated by the Canadian decision and take it, not unreasonably, as support for their uncompromising positions on the ethnic questions. Why, they will ask, do we need to share power, when the organization spearheading this Tamil rebellion has been proscribed as terrorists by the US, UK, India and now Canada? Sri Lanka has stepped up agitations for the rest of Europe to follow suit and proscribe the LTTE. Some Tamils think an EU ban is a foregone conclusion.

But there are two important elements which the international community needs to consider with regards the Tamil armed struggle; firstly, the LTTE’s domestic legitimacy is not linked to international support or censure, but to the objective conditions of oppression in Sri Lanka. Secondly, it is security considerations on the ground and the overall progress of the liberation struggle that influence the LTTE’s strategy and tactics, not external censure. War or peace, in short, is decided by the possibility of tangible progress at the negotiation table and the prevailing conditions of oppression on the ground.

Following successive proscriptions of the LTTE in India (1991), the United States (1997) and, particularly, Britain (2001), the Tamil community has become increasingly unmoved by such international criticism. Instead, an understandings of realpolitik, combined with heightened cruelty by the Sri Lankan state, particularly amid the internationally-supported ‘war for peace’ fuelled a desperate struggle which has culminated in the de-facto state run by the LTTE today. These dynamics are not going to change now. The LTTE occupies a critical position in the struggle for Tamil rights. Why was the question of federalism placed on the table in 2002 – we, the Tamils, asked for that as long ago as the fifties? At what point did the international community decide the war was ‘unwinnable’ and talks paramount?

And therein lies the rub. The present peace process rests entirely on the balance of forces between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the LTTE, a point bluntly put forward even by a former head of the international monitors overseeing the truce. In this context, the Canadian ban – and any others that prove forthcoming – can only serve to upset this balance and undermine the peace process. The ban will encourage Sri Lanka to more intransigent at the negotiating table. It will embolden the Sri Lankan armed forces to step up the shadow war against the LTTE. Most importantly, however, it brings into question the efficacy (for the Tamil liberation struggle) of following a negotiated approach, as opposed to an armed struggle, in the first place.

Even amidst the wider escalation of violence in the past few weeks, the anti-Tamil rioting by Sinhala thugs supported by the Sri Lankan security forces marks a new nadir, reiterating, as it does, the enduring nature of Sinhala chauvinism in the island state. The first victims of contemporary Sinhala supremacy were Muslims, targeted in 1915 by Sinhala thugs egged on by monks envisaging a Sinhala-Buddhist utopia. Anti Tamil riots have occurred in every decade since independence - 1956, 1958, 1966, 1977 and, most savagely, in the pogrom of 1983, where three thousand people were slaughtered in an orgy of rape and murder. There have been other, smaller incidents, such as Bindunuwewa.

Last week’s violence in Trincomalee were almost a carbon copy of the dynamics of ‘Black July,’ bitter memories of which were instantly revived amongst Tamils. The Sinhala thugs who attacked Tamil and Muslim villagers were transported to the target areas by military vehicles. The security forces looked on as the killings and torchings were carried out. The violence was systematic and organised.

And just as in 1983, when President Junius Jayawardene, whose government organised the pogrom, maintained an impassive silence, so last week, President Mahinda Rajapakse didn’t say a word. Despite Tamil outrage and fear, there no apology, no assurances of protection, no commitment to prevent reoccurrences, no promises of investigations. Nothing. And it is reported that it was blunt intervention by India’s government that even prompted Rajapakse to call off the attackers.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has condemned the riots, as have the Lib-eration Tigers. The word genocide was immediately raised in Tamil characterisations of the event. The term is no hyperbole; it is used, not because of the scale of the violence - only a dozen people died before India intervened - but because of its specific dynamics: violence by one community, supported by the state armed forces, against another. Even the international monitors of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mis-sion, describing the town as ‘out of control,’ expressed justifiable fears of the violence spreading to the rest of the island. So much, then, for the communal reconciliation that peacniks often assert is waiting to erupt in the wake of a political solution to the conflict being reached.

The Trincomalee riots have touched a still very raw nerve amongst Tamils in the homeland and in the Diaspora. There is palpable rage at the attack and frustration over the absolute ineffectiveness of the international community to contain the Sinhala chauvinism that the Sri Lankan state is, for us, visibly shot through with - indeed, there is almost a dogmatic refusal amongst international actors to even recognise this racism. Meanwhile, this is not only a matter of the state. This paper has, at several times in the past few years, warned of a deepening chasm between the Sinhala community and the island’s minorities, particularly the Tamils. As with many other Tamil protests, these have been dismissed as inevitable utterances of ethno-nationalists. Yet there are frequent indications of the communal polarisation, from the surveys by some Colombo think tanks, to the repeated victories of the pro-autonomy TNA in parliamentary and local government elections. The series of mass demonstrations under the ‘Pongu Thamil’ banner have also been ignored.

The international community’s determi-ned refusal to recognise the all encompassing and insurmountable racism within the state, coupled with its procedural, even formulaic, approach to peacemaking has resulted in absolutely no progress in four years. Meanwhile, an insistence on repeatedly blaming the LTTE for the failures of the peace process while simultaneously absolving the Sri Lankan state has emb-oldened the Sinhala leadership to actively pursue the military option, confident as Colombo is, of international support for a punitive war against the Tigers.

This dynamic has severely undermined Tamil confidence in the international community and international norms as credible deterrents to aggression by the state (the intervention by India is, however, a welcome exception). The profound insecurity that has resulted from this statist international attitude has, for Tamils, positioned the LTTE as the only actor capable of defending their interests. In response to Tamil fears - sparked by the naked aggression exhibited by the armed forces and exacerbated by the Trincomalee riots - the Tigers have issued an unmistakable warning, one that comes amid the general degradation of security and peace in the Northeast: “If the genocidal attacks by armed forces [and] Sinhalese hoodlums continue, we would be forced to take steps to safeguard the lives and properties of innocent Tamil people. That would lead to undesirable serious consequence for the current peace process.”

Leaflets warning women to quit working for Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have been circulated across the eastern coast, after pornographic DVDs involving some female NGO workers surfaced last week.

Akkaraipattu Police Inspector A. Gaffar told the Daily Mirror one DVD contains explicit video clips of a foreigner sexually abusing a 19-20 year old Tamil girl. The DVD apparently contains shots taken in the Elle area in Badulla. The DVDs are available for Rs. 50 in open markets across the Eastern province.

The leaflets, distributed by an organisation calling itself the Tamil Eelam Women’s Uprising Army, warned all women working in NGOs to quit their jobs before April 15. The warning states that “your future life may be endangered” if this directive is not obeyed.

However, it has not yet been proved whether the foreigner or the girl in the pornographic DVD are employees of an NGO operating in the Ampara, Akkraipattu or Kalmunai areas, reported the Daily Mirror. However, Mr. Gaffar said investigations have not yet been completed in Trincomalee or Batticaloa.

The leaflet also quotes a statement made by the Batticaloa Tamil National Alliance MP Pakkiaselvam Ariyanenthiran which states that “183 Tamil speaking girls in Batticaloa and 163 in Ampara district have undergone abortions,” and that these women were “employees of NGOs”. This statement was made at a recent seminar on “Tamil women and culture” in Pawattan Thirukkovil.

The leaflet claims that “women working in NGOs are sexually abused” and that “in some cases where the abortions were not successful, they are on the verge of giving birth”. It also claims that parents who allow their daughters to work for NGOs should be held responsible for these supposed atrocities.

NGO sources also said two mosques in Kalmunai and Saindamaradu had publicly requested women to leave the NGOs. However, the Police did not corroborate this statement.

No complaints on sexual harassments have been recorded in the Akkraipattu, Kalmunai or Ampara Police divisions. Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) Executive Director Jeevan Thiagarajah noted that a joint plea has been forwarded to Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, IGP Chandra Fernando and the DIG East asking for protection for female NGO workers in the region.

LTTE Batticaloa head Daya Mohan said the LTTE was unaware of such an organisation that was said to have issued the threatening leaflets.

The Norwegian-facilitated peace process was adrift this week after the Liberation Tigers said Saturday they would not go to talks - postponed once already - that were scheduled in Geneva for April 24-25, due to Sri Lankan military interference with a requested safe-conduct transport of LTTE commanders for a crucial pre-negotiation strategy meeting.

Amid escalating violence and communal tension in many parts of the Northeast, the indefinite postponement of the second round of talks in Geneva has alarmed diplomats and Sri Lanka’s residents.

Having refused to provide the customary helicopter airlift for LTTE commanders in the East to travel to Vanni for the central committee, the Sri Lanka military also refused to let Colonel Sornam and Colonel Bhanu travel by Sea Tiger boats shadowed at a distance by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) boats.

The Tigers accepted international truce monitors’ offer to hire a civilian vessel for the transport, on the condition the SLN was not involved. That plan fell apart when at the last minute Colombo insisted the Navy would escort the civilian ferry. The Tigers called off the transfer and said they could not go to Geneva until the central committee had met.

If making transport arrangements for a LTTE conference ahead of the Geneva meeting was this hard, then the talks themselves could hardly be expected to be productive, diplomats told Reuters.

The impasse came amid a new high in violence which has left at least 70 people dead over the past two weeks. The US and other international actors have condemned the violence and demanded a return to negotiations.

The US has blamed the LTTE for the upsurge in violence and praised Colombo’s restraint.

However, diplomats say neither side is demonstrating enough flexibility to show commitment to the peace process, Reuters reported Monday.

The European Union, Japan, Norway and the United States, co-chairs of Sri Lanka’s donors’ group, expressed grave concern on Friday about the worsening situation in the country and condemned recent violence.

“The co-chairs also strongly encourage the parties to build confidence and an environment conducive for progressing toward lasting peace for all Sri Lankans,” a statement said.

The co-chairs are to meet in Tokyo on April 24 to review the situation and the peace process.

Many international actors have demanded Sri Lanka disarm Army-backed paramilitaries blamed for a series attacks on LTTE cadres and supporters. Meanwhile, the Tigers deny responsibility for the recent series of deadly ambushes against Sri Lankan security forces, but few analysts or diplomats believe them.

“There are various things that could be done that would not be very difficult that would allow the talks to take place,” one diplomat told Reuters. “But neither side is willing to allow them.”

Analysts point out that Colombo could easily pave the way for the LTTE strategy meeting and thus, the Geneva talks, by providing a helicopter to swiftly transfer the commanders to Vanni and bring them back a few days later.

Under the 2002 Norway-brokered truce that ended almost two decades of fighting, the Sri Lankan government had been providing helicopters for top LTTE officials traveling through government-held territory.

It has turned down several requests for air transport in the past, but started doing so with more frequency after relations became strained following a series of violent incidents since December.

Senior LTTE officials travelling through government-controlled territory have been murdered by Army-backed paramilitaries.

Without the talks as a safety valve, ambushes against Sri Lanka’s military and ethnic riots in the island’s northeast are expected to escalate further, Reuters reported. Some experts fear that could even include attacks within the capital Colombo, which would wreck investor confidence in the $20 billion economy.

Some diplomats believe neither side could win a war and so neither side will start one. But with both sides saying they could win if war was forced upon them, others fear that escalation could rapidly turn into a full-on conflict in the north and east that could devastate communities also hit by the 2004 tsunami.

It is the second time such attacks have pushed the island to the brink of war this year - the last was before the first round of talks was agreed. Some see them as a form of bloody brinkmanship and expect the meeting to eventually happen.

The government agreed at the first round of talks in Geneva to stop armed groups using its territory for attacks on the Tigers, but now says it cannot find any to disarm - a line that has upset the Tigers.

“I just see this as the LTTE playing tough,” analyst Rohan Edrisinha at the Centre for Policy Alternatives told Reuters.

“The immediate goal of the LTTE is to see that the government does something to rein in or restrain [paramilitary] forces and they are going to use the threat of postponing the talks.”

Swedish Major-General Ulf Henricsson, head of the unarmed Nordic mission overseeing the cease-fire, said he still believed both sides were not acting in the interests of their people but that he was also slightly more optimistic.

“I think it’s at its peak now,” Henricsson told Reuters in his Colombo headquarters, referring to the recent violence. “I’m not so afraid of a full scale war. If there was a military solution for one of the parties, we would have seen that by now.”

But for now, the Geneva talks remain off. The Tigers say they will not go until they can meet with their eastern commanders, and the government is preventing them from being transported to the Tiger headquarters.

“Until the hurdles in front of us to attend Geneva talks are removed and a more conducive environment created, our Geneva team is unable to come to the Geneva talks,” head of the Tiger political wing S.P. Thamilselvan said in a letter to Norway.

But the suspected Tiger ambushes are also seen as strengthening the hand of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s hardline Buddhist and Marxist allies, who oppose any concessions to the Tigers.

Rajapakse owes his election to a Tiger-inspired boycott that kept away Tamil voters seen as likely supporters of his more conciliatory opponent. At the time, some analysts took that as a sign the Tigers might have judged they were gaining too little from peace.

Sri Lanka’s stock market, closed for most of the last week due to the Sinhalese and Tamil new year, fell over 4 percent on Monday, with traders digesting the news of recent violence but still confident that talks would ultimately take place.

Norway, which brokered the original truce, said special envoy for the peace process Jon Hanssen-Bauer would fly into Colombo on Tuesday for urgent talks with both sides.

There has been a radical change in the world scenario since the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) engagement in northern Sri Lanka in the late 1980s. India has emerged as a major player on the world scenario both in economic and political spheres.

The other major powers, including the United States, recognise India’s new importance on the world scene, and they expect India to contribute to political stability in the world. So India has the additional responsibility to meet the expectations of other players in international affairs.

But Norway is playing the role of the mediator quite effectively, and the two sides to Sri Lanka’s conflict have made some progress. There is no need for India to participate in the peace process because that would only introduce a new element into a complex picture.

There is no armed resolution to the conflict. The Sri Lanka Army cannot win the war against the Tamil insurgents. The LTTE is also aware that it cannot achieve victory against the Lankans. There is no alternative to the peace process.

The basic parameters of the peace are recognised by both sides. The framework for the peace process has been spelt out in the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement signed in 1987, which speaks about ensuring the legitimate rights of the Lankan Tamils on the one hand, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka on the other. What remains to be done is to flesh out the principles of ‘legitimate rights’ and ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity.’

This comment is compiled from an interview with Gulf News. Lieutenant General A.S. Kalkat was once commander of the IPKF in Sri Lanka

In many ways, it’s a community that is still new. As their New Year arrived last Thursday, representatives of Scarborough’s Tamils - 70,000 of them, counting just those who speak Tamil as a first language at home - want to talk about their many successes.

Young people at universities. Thousands of businesses and professionals. Institutions taking shape.

They would like to hear less about their community’s so-called gang problem or what a human rights group last month alleged were “clear patterns of intimidation and extortion” by local fundraisers for Tamil Tigers rebels in Sri Lanka.

For members of the Canadian Tamil Congress, however, talking about all these things is part of moving to the mainstream in Canada - exactly where they say the country’s 250,000 Tamils are headed.

Most came here as refugees after anti-Tamil riots in 1983 made them feel it wasn’t safe to stay in Sri Lanka. “We came with a suitcase,” is how Scarborough resident Ted Antony put it this week.

But in the 1980s, the choice for Tamils fleeing the former British colony was London, not Toronto.

“Really, if you’re talking numbers-wise, our community is only a decade old,” community activist Parthi Kandavel said last week around a table with other CTC members in an Ellesmere Road real estate office where the group shares space.

Organizations such as the Tamil Eelam Society formed to take care of immigrants’ needs and speak for the community. “They saw the gap. They didn’t wait for the government to fill it,” said Neethan Shan of Markham.

Tamil-Canadians are looking to fill the next gap, which is becoming a voice in government, said Shan, among several Toronto-area Tamils running for municipal office this fall.

Though many came to Canada with a distrust of politicians learned at home, the community’s thinking is changing; its members are ready for the mainstream, joining school councils and hospital boards, Shan said.

“We’ve learned the art of politics, Canadian politics. This year, we’re confident there will be at least one Tamil representative.”

The community is also working with Toronto police to clear up misconceptions and hopes to see young Tamils go into policing, added Shan, who said police have lacked information about Tamils. That “my last name is my dad’s first name,” for example, could be confusing when identification from both are checked.

The issue of violence and gangs among Tamils here is “a Canadian-born problem” that stems from settlement difficulties and lack of support. Every immigrant community goes through such stages and it’s a mistake to say “this is because of where they are coming from,” said Shan, arguing groups of Tamil youth hanging around are called gangs by the media and such stories actually fuel crime by conferring them status.

“These are a bunch of boys trying to find recognition,” he said.

“The amount of incidents is a fraction of what it used to be” during the late 1990s, Kandavel added.

The Canadian Tamil Youth Development Centre, with its annual Awards of Excellence for young Tamil-Canadian role models, also helps to combat stereotypes of Tamil youth.

There are many, however, who remain concerned about the well being of Tamils who may still carry emotional scars from the conflict in their homeland.

In 1999, a Scarborough man named Jeyabalan Balasingam jumped on the tracks in Victoria Park Station with his three-year-old son Sajanthan in his arms and both died. The Family Service Association of Toronto’s advisory council was concerned about the tragic incident and some others.

With the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, it launched the Tamil Mental Health Project in 2001, a study with 1,600 interviews, so that the community could ask governments for more culturally sensitive programs. (The study was completed last year but remains unreleased due to lack of funds.)

“We know the level of trauma in the community,” said longtime FSA worker Naga Ramalingam, suggesting the realities of getting a job, finding affordable housing and adjusting to life in Canada can compound problems Tamil-Canadians already have. “People here always think about relatives back home. That also re-traumatizes you,” he said.

Last month, when community leaders thought they had finally banished the “bad headlines” of the previous decade, the New York-based Human Rights Watch released a report suggesting Tamil-Canadians live in fear of local supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Widely reported in the media, the report was based on around two dozen interviews, “on innuendoes, (from) nameless, faceless people,” charged David Poopalapillai, the official CTC spokesperson.

“We didn’t witness any extortion. That report portrayed the Tamil community as living in dark ages.”

HRW “were taken for a ride,” said Poopalapillai by people intent on tilting the balance at the current peace talks in Sri Lanka in favour of the Sri Lankan government. “There are government agents working all over the world.”

Shan said non-Tamil co-workers and schoolmates in Scarborough have been asking Tamil friends if they are indeed living in fear. “I got asked, a lot of people are asking,” he said. “This has put us backward. In the name of human rights, this report is a threat to our human rights in Canada.”

The community, with more than 20 newspapers and three television stations, is well informed and well connected, so HRW’s recommendation there should be a campaign to make Tamil-Canadians aware of their rights is “an insult,” Shan argued.

“We believe in open communication. Things we didn’t get in Sri Lanka we are celebrating.”

Though the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 devastated the Tamil community, it also brought more interaction with fellow Canadians and made the community stronger, Shan said. “A lot of people who got involved in the community because of the tsunami are still sticking together.”

Tamils are particularly grateful Canadians donated about $400 million for relief.

“It was so overwhelming how Canada showed its compassionate face,” said Poopalapillai. But he and others say they’re upset because the Sri Lankan government has so far prevented money from reaching the worst-hit areas on the island’s Tamil north and east coasts. “We all donated money and nobody knows what happened to it.”

Growing up feeling they are no different from other Canadians, the younger generation of Tamils expects equal treatment here, said Shanathela Easwarakumar, a student at University of Toronto in Scarborough.

This summer, the university will offer its courses on the Tamil diaspora and the Tamil language, the beginnings of a Tamil studies program for which Easwarakumar is on the board of directors. “I have full faith that it will rise to the highest of expectations.”

Organizations are also working on plans for a home for the aged and a Tamil community centre. “We need a central location where the community can celebrate its contribution to the country,” Shan said.

Canada’s recent listing of the Tamil Tigers as a forbidden terrorist group is not enjoying a lot of popularity in the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.

Talk among the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora at the beginning of April usually centers around the Tamil New Year that falls in the middle of the month, but this year, different announcements have eclipsed that attraction: the Canadian Conservative government’s ban on the Tigers, which would limit their fundraising for any future war.

The Tigers are now listed in Canada with 38 other terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda and Hamas. It is illegal for any person to provide funding for or participate in the activities of a terrorist group.

The Canadian government’s listing came after reports last month of alleged extortion attempts for “a war fund” by Tamil Tiger operatives in Canada.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter McKay has indicated the Canadian government is intent on helping to achieve a negotiated settlement to the ethnic problems in Sri Lanka. “The LTTE’s repeated use of violence since signing a ceasefire agreement,” he says, “is unacceptable and seriously calls into question its commitment to the peace process.”

While the Canadian government sees the move as forcing the Tigers out of their combat fatigues to the negotiating table with the Sri Lankan government, it may be a little out of sync with the Tamil community itself, who the listing is supposed to help by protecting them from extortion and intimidation.

Montreal-based veteran Sri Lankan Tamil leader V. Navaratnam insists on the futility of talks and agreements with the Sri Lankan government. “The Tamils can no longer trust the Sinhalese [in government],” he says.

The 96-year-old Navaratnam, a former member of the Sri Lankan parliament, is the only living co-founder of the defunct Federal Party. This political party is credited with starting the Tamil struggle for rights in Sri Lanka, sparked in 1956 by the Sinhalese-only language act. Navaratnam points out how the initial Tamil struggle was modeled on Gandhi’s principles of non-violence. “We had been struggling and carrying out our campaign in a non-violent manner. It didn’t pay.”

In 1957, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the founder of the party, entered into a pact with the then prime minister of Sri Lanka, Solomon Bandaranaike, for the devolution of powers to the northern and eastern provinces of the island that were predominantly populated by Tamils. Caving into Sinhalese political opposition, Bandaranaike abrogated the pact. Soon after, he was slain. His assassin is believed to have been a Buddhist monk angry with Bandaranaike for being soft on the Tamils.

According to Navaratnam, Sinhalese politicians since Bandaranaike have reneged on every promise they made to the Tamils. In his view, only an “absolute separation” could ever bring a true and lasting solution to the Sri Lankan Tamil problem. He doesn’t think federalism will work. “You cannot put the fate of so many Tamils in the hands of Sinhalese politicians,” he says.

Other members of the Tamil community are also convinced that the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict can’t be resolved peacefully. “The Sri Lankan government will never give us anything,” says Vakeesan Natarajan, who has lived in Canada for some 25 years and teaches Sunday school at a diaspora Hindu temple. “We [Tamils] have to fight for it.”

Kanthan Tharmalingam, a 34-year-old Tamil shopkeeper, says he and his wife have never supported any armed warfare “because people are only going to die” but he isn’t opposed to the Tigers either. He remembers the 2004 tsunami: “If the LTTE hadn’t been there, the government wouldn’t have helped our people [the Tamils].”

The Sri Lankan government entered into an agreement called the post-tsunami operations management structure or P-TOMS with the Tamil Tigers to share tsunami funds with the affected regions in the north and east, but it fell through after strident opposition from Buddhist political parties in Sri Lanka.

“The Sri Lankan government is split four ways,” says Tharmalingam. “They don’t carry out what they agree on. They just listen to the Buddhist monks and keep wavering. The LTTE has always stood firm.”

He doesn’t bank much hope on the peace talks in Geneva this year. “Even if they [the Sri Lankan government] implement what they promise in Geneva, the situation would be okay. But it appears as if they want to drag the LTTE into war.”

Taking a different stand, R. San, a Tamil jeweler who has been in Canada for 10 years, says the rebel struggle in Sri Lanka is now unnecessary. He is strongly opposed to the Tigers. “I don’t want any of this. The rights we have now in Sri Lanka are good enough. I want to live in peace.”

San says he was asked to contribute $5,000 to the rebel movement recently. “Where will I go for the money? I don’t have that much money.” San has a mother and two sisters still living in Sri Lanka whom he wants to bring here. „I have to have about $27,000 in my savings to be able to sponsor their immigration papers.”

But San doesn’t seem to represent the majority. The prevailing opinion in the diapora is that most Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada are sympathetic toward the Tigers.

Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Colombo-based Center for Policy Alternatives, when interviewed in July last year, offered some insight into why support for the Tigers runs so high among Sri Lankan Tamils, both in Sri Lanka and overseas.

“By and large, the vast majority [of Tamils] think the LTTE will get them the best deal. Historically, that’s been true,” he says. “I think the government’s failing has been to find a political and constitutional settlement that meets the aspirations of Tamil people within [a one-state] Sri Lanka.”

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In light of the inability of the international truce monitors to get the Sri Lankan government of Mahinda Rajapakse to abide by its commitments vis-à-vis the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) and disarm the Karuna Group, the EPDP and other paramilitary groups, a critical question is being asked by supporters of the LTTE, as well as a broad spectrum of pro-peace organisations in the South; ‘why is Colombo pursuing this highly destabilizing strategy and what does it hope to achieve’?

The ostensible answer to the first question is simple. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, following his reorganization of the SLA command structure in the past three months, now believes that the military is capable of waging and winning an aggressive war against the LTTE. The Sunday Times recently quoted him as telling troops: “we bravely faced the situation and retaliated on those who attacked us. Thereafter we took a proactive role by looking for those who attacked us and retaliated in places like Jaffna and Batticaloa”.

'Rajapakse, from the outset, showed no signs that he understood the extent of the crisis of legitimacy that the Sinhala state is in.'

Ironically both Jaffna and Batticaloa have been at the center of paramilitary activity since late last year while the Army Commander’s statements were in flat contradiction to those by the Defence Ministry’s denying the presence of paramilitaries in government controlled areas of the Northeast. But Fonseka has, in effect, let the cat out of the bag. It is an open secret that the Karuna Group receives both logistical and intelligence help from Sri Lankan Military Intelligence. The unseemly spat between Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse and the outgoing head of the SLMM, Hagrup Haukland, over the paramilitaries is another reflection of the extent to which the government, the President and Sinhala hardliners take for granted the collective will of the international community (particularly US and India) to underpin Sri Lanka’s security and territorial integrity.

The US in particular tolerated Colombo’s establishing of close links between Military Intelligence and the paramilitaries, probably with a view that it would send a message to the LTTE that a return to war was not an option. There has, however, since been a marked shift in the attitude of the US, most clearly demonstrated by the State Department Country Report on Human Rights for 2005. The report indirectly, but pointedly, lends weight to the charge laid by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the LTTE that a number of killings in the Northeast in 2005 was the work of the paramilitaries in collusion with Military Intelligence.

The Colombo government is now in a pickle of its own making as a consequence of its crass inability to read the signals being issued by the international community. Having somewhat overcooked the paramilitary pudding by letting violence escalate to unprecedented levels, Military Intelligence and the hardliners in the SLA seem to be unwilling or incapable of turning the tap off. This highlights either the utter weakness of the President, something that the international community has become fully aware of in the aftermath of Geneva One.

The killing of Vanniasingham Vigneswaran, president of the Trincomalee District Tamil People’s Forum on April 7, 2006, outside the Bank of Ceylon, Trincomalee where he worked, by (almost certainly) the Karuna Group, encapsulates the position of GoSL to the CFA. Vigneswaran, it should not be forgotten, was at the forefront of the campaign to remove the Buddha statue, which in 2005 had been provocatively installed at a bus stand in the center of the Tamil district of Trincomalee in a blatant act of Sinhalese Buddhist supremacy.

Colombo’s failure (or is it refusal?) to reign in the paramilitaries reveals an inability by the Sinhala hardliners (as demonstrated by the contempt that Fonseka displayed towards Ranil Wickremesinghe in a recent speech) to grasp a simple fact; that an imperfect CFA could have developed into an imperfect peace which, if given time to mature, (in absentia of the paramilitaries) could have led to the restoration of politics being pursued by means other than by war.

As LTTE political strategist Anton Balasingham wryly observed recently, “the Rajapakse administration has failed to grasp the immense value of the truce accord that effectively prevented the outbreak of an all-out war for the last four years in spite of violations by both sides.” Balasingham went on to point out that the “four year period of peace has benefited the south enormously in economic recovery, while the north east continues to suffer through military occupation, repression and violence of the paramilitaries.”

We can add to this the words of Haukland who, in a parting shot to Gotabaya Rajapakse, noted: “the CFA document is purely based on the willingness of the parties to keep the peace. It is ultimately the parties’ own responsibility to reach peace but only with the assistance of the international community, the Norwegian facilitator and with the backing from the SLMM. The Defence Secretary, in my honest opinion, was avoiding any responsibility for the conflict but rather tried to put the blame on those who are here sincerely in Sri Lanka trying to do whatever in their power to put an end to a conflict which has had a detrimental effect on this country.” We can expect that this is the also the view of US Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead and his bosses in Washington. Thus, what we are dealing with is a Sinhala political class who are completely out of their depth in the international arena.

'We are dealing with is a Sinhala political class who are completely out of their depth in the international arena.'

As an aside, we can add to that a Sinhala legal class, if the semi-literate constitutional antics of H.L de Silva and S.L Gunasekera are anything to go by. Rather than learn from his humiliation in Geneva One, H.L de Silva seems caught up in his own sense of self-worth and is determined to fly the flag for a discredited Sinhala (Buddhist) chauvinism. Gunasekera and de Silva are, of course, both Christians and seem to be intent on espousing the most chauvinist positions imaginable in order to prove their ‘Sinhalaness’ to their fellows. Gunasekera has learnt nothing from his own humiliation by Jeyathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) ideologue, Champika Ranawakke, when he questioned Gunasekera’s ‘Sinhalaness’ by pointing to his Christianity. Note the JHU couldn’t even accept Maj. Gen. (retd) Janaka Perera as its presidential candidate when it found out he was he Christian too, even though Perera had established his anti-Tamil credentials in the 1980s.

To return to the substance of my argument, just as President Rajapakse completely misread, in the aftermath of his election victory on November 17th, the extent to which Oslo’s role is a projection of American/Western (and now Indian) interests in the island, it beggars belief that his brother Gotabaya would seek to blame the international community for the structural crisis that the peace process is now in.

The Rajapakse brothers are essentially street politicians, but the President has compounded his dilemmas by surrounding himself with a coterie of hardline Sinhala advisers who barely acknowledge that the post-1948 Sinhala state engaged in institutional discrimination against its minorities (principally the Tamil and Burgher communities). Most significant among these is H.M.G.B. Kotakadeniya, who press reports blame for the sending of a Special Task Force (STF) contingent into Trincomalee with instructions to ‘be tough.’ The murder of five Tamil students in Trincomalee swiftly followed. It remains very much to be seen if the Sinhala state is prepared to act against the Sinhala police officers implicated in the execution style killings.

With the unfolding of tit-for-tat killings in the Northeast in the last two weeks, the partial exodus of Tamil civilians from Trincomalee suburbs and the fiasco over the transportation of the Eastern LTTE commanders to the Vanni over the weekend of 15/16th April, we can safely assume that, bar a miracle, Geneva Two is off. As the clouds of war loom, what does the future hold?

To begin with, if the Norwegians are ousted under pressure from the Sinhala Buddhist right, the international community will lay a significant portion of the blame for a subsequent war on Colombo. The President may well therefore resist this, keep the Norwegians in place and turn Fonseka loose, ensuring that the facilitators are in place once the wages of war become clear, say six months down the track.

It is noticeable that the Sri Lankan media, even the progressive Sunday Leader, have not mentioned the intervention of the Indian Prime Minister with Rajapakse as a prelude to ending the violence against Tamil civilians in Trincomalee. It is abundantly clear that the military in the Northeast is trying to bait the LTTE into a major retaliatory action. The dubious role of the Army and Navy during last week’s Sinhala mob violence in Trincomalee inevitably raised the spectre of July 1983 for many Tamils. But at this juncture, it is anyone’s guess if the LTTE will fall for the SLA’s trap given the international opprobrium that will follow if it launches the first strike of a war.

'Sinhala hardliners take for granted the collective will of the international community, particularly US and India, to underpin Sri Lanka’s security and territorial integrity.'

Could President Rajapakse have adopted a strategy that would not have ended up in this sorry impasse? Some commentators have argued that, had Rajapakse adopted a policy framework that recognized the extent to which the Sinhala state had discriminated against the minorities, he would have being able to win over a substantial number of the Tamils. Even if this was so, Rajapakse, from the outset, showed no signs that he understood the extent of the crisis of legitimacy that the Sinhala state is in.

Three recent incidents capture this legitimization crisis. First, on May 27, 2005 the Supreme Court acquitted 4 defendants, including one police officer, involved in the 2000 killing of 27 Tamil inmates by a Sinhala mob at the Bindunuwewa rehabilitation camp. They were acquitted on the basis that the defendants’ guilt had not been proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. Another defendant had been acquitted a year earlier. As a result, no one has been convicted for the Bindunuwewa massacre.

Secondly, the failure of either the government or the courts to remove an unauthorised Buddha statute in Trincomalee bus station suggests that the machinery of the Sinhala State is incapable of shedding its chauvinist shackles. The statue remains heavily guarded and no Buddhist actually venerates it. It remains a symbol of an un-Buddhist form of cultural supremacy that goes hand in hand with state sponsored moves to Sinhalise both place names and population concentrations in Trincomalee.

Thirdly, nearly fifty years after the passage of the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act 1958 no Tamil can receive an official communication from the State in Tamil. Although Tamil has been an official language since 1987 (under the Thirteenth Amendment), as the Language Commission recently observed, this is more symbolic than real.

Collectively these represent not so much a failed state, but a state which, if you are Tamil (or Muslim or Burgher), is so defective as to be beyond repair. In practical terms nothing has changed since the late 1990s when President Chandrika Kumaratunga once tried and failed to get Parliament to pass anti discriminatory legislation. Much blood has, however, been shed before and since.

Against this background, the LTTE remains fundamental to a solution to the Tamil national question. As long as the Sinhala state fails to address the policies that led in the first place to a demand for secession, it will misjudge the mood on the Tamil street, be it in Sri Lanka or overseas. The paramilitaries’ violence and associated political campaigns have done nothing to dent the support base of the LTTE and it demonstrates the utter naiveté of the Sinhala state to ever believe that they would, given the discriminatory milieu Sri Lanka’s Tamils live their daily lives in. As yet many progressive Sinhalas’ await a Sinhala political leadership that can begin the task of restructuring the state in a multi-cultural and inclusive direction.

Dr. Roshan de Silva Wijeyeratne teaches law at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. He is currently writing a book on Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism and the history of constitutionalism in Sri Lanka.

The international community, the Nordic truce monitors and other observers of Sri Lanka’s conflict have been visibly alarmed by the spiralling violence in the island’s Northeast. Amongst a series of lethal attacks on the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers, the riots against Tamils and Muslims in Trincomalee has ushered in another facet of violence.

The military-backed violence in the strategic port town was finally halted, reportedly after the intervention of India, ordering the Sri Lankan government curb the violence, but not before the panicking Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), describing the situation there as ‘out of control,’ expressed fears of an island-wide conflagration.

There are now incontrovertible signs that the hawkish new administration in Colombo is considering options other than continuing with a peace process which, in their view, would almost certainly result in a internationally–supported federal solution. President Mahinda Rajapakse and his right-wing allies last year pledged to the electorate that his presidency would staunchly defend a unitary state. The Sinhala electorate responded enthusiastically.

'The Sri Lankan military’s confidence that it is capable of defeating the LTTE has undoubtedly been fuelled by the emphatic statements of the United States and others.'

The President’s Sinhala nationalist coalition partners, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Janatha Hela Urumaya (JHU), have been engaging in belligerence over the ethnic question ever since his successful bid for power in November last year. The JVP, JHU, and now the Patriotic National Movement (PNM), a coalition of right wing organisations, have repeatedly called for the implementation of Rajapakse’s election manifesto.

In particular, they demand the scrapping or redrafting of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), the ejection of Norway from its role as facilitator of the peace process and, more pointedly now, the de-merger of the North and East (a new movement, including anti-LTTE Tamil groups and some Muslim groups has been forged to this end).

President Rajapakse has meanwhile rotated hard liners to key posts within the defence establishment. His brother, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, is now Defence Secretary and Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, an avowed opponent of the peace process and the CFA, is Army Commander. Both, notably, are now lead voices in setting policy on the peace process. The Defence Secretary most recently berated outgoing SLMM Head Hargrup Haukland for the latter’s insistence that Colombo follow through with its pledges at the Geneva talks in February and disarm Army-backed paramilitaries. Lt. Gen. Fonseka has been all but calling for a new war, accusing previous governments of cowardice in the face of the LTTE.

Since the Geneva talks, the Sri Lankan military has also stepped up its violence against the LTTE, with a string of paramilitary attacks on LTTE positions and personnel. Until recently, there was no counter-violence. The harassment and killings of alleged supporters of the LTTE has, amid the renewed violence, again resulted in thousands of families fleeing government-controlled areas to LTTE-held ones. Despite the pledges made in Geneva to disarm the paramilitaries, the military is now openly conducting joint operations with the Tamil gunmen.

The rioting which erupted in Trincomalee last week is another sign the military is stepping up its policy of retaliating against Tamil civilians. Eyewitness reports said that members of the security forces aided Sinhala mobs in attacking Tamils and Muslim and destroying their businesses and homes.

The rioting must be viewed in the context of threats by Sri Lankan foreign minister Mangala Samaweera, whilst in the US, that his government may not be able to ‘control the masses’ in the face of violence against the armed forces. His views were echoed thereafter by a JHU ideologue, who warned of a slaughter of Tamils in Colombo in response to the military suffering heavy losses in the north.

The Sri Lankan Military’s decision to form an exclusively Muslim regiment is also an indication of its renewed focus on the island’s east. The last time Sri Lanka created armed Muslim fighting forces was in the early 1990s when the government of President Premadasa chose to focus on securing the east - even at the cost of conceding the north to the Tigers. Muslim political leaders have rejected the government’s plans for a Muslim regiment, fearful of the consequences of being drawn into the Tamil-Sinhala violence potentially brewing in the east (though the appeal of a lucrative job in the army may prove too compelling for Muslim youth from the tsunami-devastated and struggling Amparai area).

The undisguised rationale of the Rajapakse administration is that the previous Sri Lankan government was incompetent and weak and that it (the new leadership) would be more than capable of eliminating the LTTE, where it not shackled by the international community and the CFA. The Defence Secretary openly declared to the SLMM that the Sri Lankan military, with the assistance of the Karuna Group, was more than capable of defeating the LTTE. The statement also underlined the rationale behind the army’s total reluctance to disarm the paramilitaries.

Notably, the Sri Lanka Army is also confident that it is responsible for the LTTE’s decision to go to Geneva. Lt. Gen. Fonseka claimed credit for his aggressive military ‘retaliation’ as “the reason why the LTTE returned to peace talks in such a short period.” He pointedly added that no one consulted the Army before signing the CFA and if their opinion had been sought they would not have accepted the conditions in the agreement.

Clearly, the military would like to be free of the restraints of the CFA and is gradually testing both international resolve to maintain it and the Tigers reactions. More generally, with the new administration believing its ambitions are being undermined by the unwitting policies of the previous government, Colombo is contemplating a strategy to free itself of these restraints.

'Some international actors feel that a dominant Sri Lankan military (and a defeated LTTE) could lead to a swifter conclusion to the conflict'

International perceptions being important, however, neither protagonist would wish to be seen as the party responsible for the CFA’s collapse. But the Sri Lankan military and state are convinced that should this occur then it would be most favoured to take advantage of a new war. It is in this light that the orchestrated mob violence in Trincomalee should be viewed. Had the violence not been curbed by Indian intervention, the number of Tamil civilian lives lost could have numbered in the hundreds. The LTTE would have been forced to intervene, ending the CFA, and the Sri Lankan military would have its opportunity.

But many observers continue to insist a new war is unwinable for both protagonists. The ‘hurting stalemate’ logic has underpinned the peace process from the outset. But while Sri Lanka may accept it is not capable of destroying the LTTE completely, it clearly believes its strategic objectives could be met by a short, sharp war that allows it to retake the island’s east.

Total military control of the east would not only destroy the notion of a Tamil homeland – facts on the ground could also be changed through a resumption of state-sponsored Sinhala colonisation of Tamil areas – it would undermine the LTTE’s ability to claim sole representative status for the Northeast Tamils too.

With the associated tearing up of the present CFA, a new ceasefire would be needed when the dust finally settles. Even the monitoring mission would need to be reconstituted, perhaps could be scrapped. In immediate, post- new ceasefire terms, taking control of the East would also be a major setback to the LTTE’s hopes of creating an interim Northeast administration. More generally, it would further allow the Sri Lankan government to negotiate from a position of strength at future negotiations.

It is with this in mind that the Sri Lankan military has been building its conventional and paramilitary forces in the east for some time. During the controversial Buddhist statue issue last year when the army inducted 2,000 men into Trincomalee under the guise of keeping the peace, despite provisions in the CFA preventing such repositioning of forces. The continued building of paramilitary units under the ‘Karuna Group’ banner and the recruitment to a new Muslim regiment are also indications of the military’s new strategic focus on the east.

The government is understandably attempting to portray the recent violence as solely the responsibility of the LTTE. However, covert violence by both the paramilitaries and the military, noted domestically and internationally, is an integral part of the strategy of escalation.

Though it backs a negotiated solution and an avoidance of a return to war, the international community is visibly in a bind. The Sri Lankan military’s confidence that it is capable of defeating the LTTE has undoubtedly been fuelled by the emphatic statements of the United States and others.

It should not be forgotten, however, that some international actors feel that a dominant Sri Lankan military (and a defeated LTTE) could lead to a swifter conclusion to the conflict, such as in post-tsunami Aceh. Indeed, in the past the international community has not been averse to backing the Sri Lankan state’s decision to pursue the military option (the ‘War for Peace’ for example), when there seemed a good chance of it succeeding.

Indeed, it is the perceived impracticality of such a victory today – despite the Sri Lankan military’s confidence – that is underpinning international support for negotiations and federal solution. However, it would be extremely difficult for the international community to prevent the Sri Lankan state from precipitating a fresh conflict should it wish to – a move that is now imminent, as Colombo’s unconcealed belligerence, reveals.

As such, it is more likely the international community will, whilst disapproving of the resumption of war, seek to wait and decide its policies once the haze of battle has cleared. Should the state be victorious, then the LTTE can expect to come under renewed pressure to engage in talks albeit from an inferior position and the Tamils can expect to be pushed to settle for a weaker political solution than federalism. However, should the Sri Lankan state prove unsuccessful in defeating the Tigers and suffer serious reversals, this could lead to a reformulation of the international community’s policy with regards to the Sri Lankan question more broadly.

The latest report on Sri Lanka by the New York based human rights advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, has caused something of a political furore amongst expatriate Tamils. The report, entitled – ‘Funding the Final War: LTTE intimidation and extortion in the Tamil diaspora,’ makes some damming claims, both about the LTTE and Tamils living in Canada and the United Kingdom. It argues that the LTTE is extorting funds for its final war under the cover of a fear - ridden atmosphere created through intimidation and violent reprisals.

According to HRW, Tamils living in the west have been subject to ‘death threats, beatings, property damage, smear campaigns, fabricated criminal charges, and even murder as a consequence of dissent.’ This pervasive atmosphere of fear and repression, HRW claims, forces all Tamils, regardless of political persuasion, to provide funds for the LTTE. At certain points the report qualifies some of its more damming allegations against the LTTE with the observation that many Tamils do willingly support the LTTE.

'This is not a cowed and moribund community, but one that is well integrated, massively skilled and deeply committed to what they see as their homeland. '

The focus of the report, however, and its major argument is that a minority of Tamils, argued to be a substantial minority, opposed to the LTTE are being forced to fund the LTTE through fear of violent reprisal. One informant in the report is attributed with the claim: ‘I think that most people who are giving money are not giving money for the cause. They give because of fear.’

Whilst the LTTE is portrayed as an essentially violent and anti democratic organisation that counts the forcible recruitment of children as one of its principal modalities of operation, the characterisation of Tamils living in the UK and Canada is hardly more flattering. They are, apparently, a community cowed into a moribund silence through the violence unleashed by the LTTE and its agents. Despite the occasional qualifications that stress that actual incidents of violence within the Tamil community are rare, the overriding characterisation is of a ghettoised people living in fear of their own mobs. According to HRW, the Tamils have learnt to keep their heads down and are completely lacking in any form of moral or political agency.

The controversy created by the HRW report is only to be expected, given the central role that human rights principles play in the legitimacy claims made by political actors, including the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. Neither can ignore the normative power of human rights as a standard through which political conduct is judged.

Moreover, the language of human rights is particularly important for the Tamil nationalist movement. The Tamil struggle is a demand for self - determination, a concept philosophically dependent on the understanding of individuals as rights bearing creatures. The demand for Tamil self - governance relies on an understanding of political rights, unlike Sinhala Buddhist nationalism that makes frequent recourse to the supposedly ancient history of a chosen people.

The centrality of human rights language both to the Tamil struggle and within the larger international arena places advocacy groups such as HRW in a very powerful position. However, HRW’s most recent report, especially when placed in the context of its wider reporting on Sri Lanka over the past two to three years, suggests that it is more interested in attacking and undermining the LTTE, to the advantage of its enemies, than in actually promoting a human rights culture within the Tamil independence movement per se.

Tamil expatriates’ fierce criticism of the HRW’s latest report is understandable given the disparaging and almost slanderous terms in which it describes their political and social life in the west. As a consequence of their criticism, HRW begrudgingly admitted that the extortion activities detailed in its report are being carried out by ‘a small number of individuals claiming to be from the LTTE.’

However, from this limited and qualified data set a gargantuan leap is made to assert that the LTTE as a whole is funding its ‘Final War,’ through systematic extortion in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. This suggests that the collection of evidence was guided not by the usual standards of accuracy and objective inquiry, but by the author’s determination to prove that the LTTE was indeed a brutal and cruel organisation completely beyond the bounds of human rights norms.

'The portrayal of the LTTE as the main culprit of human rights abuses creates a grossly inaccurate misrepresentation of Sri Lanka’s multifaceted and difficult human rights situation.'

The portrayal of the LTTE as the main culprit of human rights abuses, a theme echoed by the overall tenor of HRW material on Sri Lanka over the past two to three years creates a grossly inaccurate misrepresentation of Sri Lanka’s multifaceted and difficult human rights situation. For example, in characterizing the climate of fear allegedly produced by the LTTE both in Sri Lanka and abroad, the report bluntly ignores the complex and dangerous ‘shadow war’ that has been underway in the north-east of the island. It makes the blanket assertion that the LTTE inflicts violent reprisals for ‘statements, activities or even social interactions that may be critical of the LTTE.’ It is then suggested that the LTTE has even killed Tamils ‘solely for working in educational, social or religious programs funded by the Sri Lankan government.’

This not only misrepresents but also, sinisterly, helps to conceal the ongoing violence against civilians perceived to be sympathetic to the LTTE by anti-LTTE paramilitaries. The recent abductions of TRO workers, the killings of journalists in Trincomalee who reported on paramilitary activity, the ‘execution style’ murder of two women, sisters of a former ‘Karuna group’ cadre who had switched sides to the LTTE, and many more have not figured at all on HRW’s Sri Lanka radar.

The violence unleashed by paramilitaries and Sri Lankan armed forces against Tamil activists over the past few months has led over 15, 000 people to cross from army held territory in Jaffna to LTTE held areas in the Vanni. a fear - ridden atmosphere created through intimidation and violent reprisals, indeed. But this reality too is however completely occluded by HRW’s selective reporting on the island.

Tamil perceptions of bias and inaccuracy in HRW’s advocacy in Sri Lanka have been fuelled by the organizations’ reports over the past few years, which have had an almost exclusive focus on the issue of the alleged recruitment by the LTTE of under eighteens, to the near total exclusion of all other human rights issues.

This reporting has not only missed the wider issues of child rights (regarding access to education, healthcare, clean water and adequate nutrition for example), it has also presented a Dickensian caricature of the LTTE as an entirely sinister and predatory organization. For example, an HRW statement issued barely two weeks after the Tsunami accused the LTTE of recruiting children affected by the natural disaster.

Firstly, amid now widely recognized issues of the state’s blocking aid to Tamil areas and of privileging the south over the north and east, the focus is notably narrow. Indeed, for many observers, the HRW statement seemed timed to deflect international attention from Sri Lanka’s denial of humanitarian aid and access to Tsunami affected areas in the Northeast of the island.

Moreover, this portrayal of the LTTE as rapaciously extractive was starkly contradicted by the experience not only of expatriate Tamils, but also of many other international actors and aid workers, who witnessed first hand the vital role LTTE cadres played in containing the humanitarian disaster created by the tsunami and in progressing post tsunami rehabilitation.

The Tamil diaspora activists, who have led the criticism of HRW, should be important partners for human rights advocacy groups. The former are members of long settled communities who have overcome enormous material and psychological hardships to integrate well into their host societies. Tamils have achieved success in a wide variety of fields including medicine, law, banking, computing and journalism and are well versed in the norms and traditions of Western liberal cultures.

Nevertheless, since the 2002 ceasefire large numbers of Tamil expatriates have visited the Vanni and contributed their skills and knowledge to reconstruction and rehabilitation work in LTTE controlled areas. This is not a cowed and moribund community, but one that is well integrated, massively skilled and deeply committed to what they see as their homeland.

However, through its inaccurate misrepresentations of the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, HRW has forfeited any possibility of fruitful engagement with the Tamil polity. Many Tamil activists are now convinced, purely on HRW’s output material, that the organisation is actively working with the Sri Lankan government to undermine the LTTE and, by extension, the Tamil independence movement.

They point out that even before the latest report on alleged LTTE extortion and fundraising was launched in New York, the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera was quoting it in a speech in London. The Foreign Minister’s early and strategically important access to the publication when placed alongside the evangelical and zealous anti LTTE tone adopted by the report’s author suggest that HRW will continue to play an important role in the Sri Lankan government’s drive to gain international support for a military push against the LTTE.

The implications of this highly selective defence of human rights are two fold. Firstly, it brings into serious question the efficacy of human rights as a vehicle for pursuing the Tamil political struggle, even though it is understood broadly as predicated as resistance to discriminatory and chauvinist state policies. Secondly, and more, importantly, it weakens the moral force behind the human rights criticism directed against the LTTE, both amongst the Tamils and, as a consequence amongst the organization. It is, thus, the norm of human rights itself that is ultimately brought into question and weakened as a consequence.

Alarmed by the dramatic escalation in violence in Sri Lanka’s Northeast over the past two weeks, the international community called for its immediate cessation and the resumption of talks.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan joined the United States, European Union, Japan and peace broker Norway in condemning the violence and calling for talks.

“[It is of] utmost importance to find ways to implement the Ceasefire Agreement, start re-building trust and lay the foundations for a lasting peace,” Annan’s spokesman said.

The co-chairs of the Tokyo donor conference, the US, EU, Japan and Norway, last Wednesday urged the government and the Liberation Tigers to halt the violence and to live up to the commitments made in Geneva.

Peace broker Norway separately condemned the violence, as did the international ceasefire monitors, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the latter expressing concern that the violence could spread to the rest of the island.

In a press release issued Tuesday last week in Colombo, the United States condemned the “recent terrorist attacks carried out by the LTTE against the armed forces of Sri Lanka,” and “other recent incidents of violence, in particular the April 7 murder of Mr. V. Vigneswaran in Trincomalee.”

The US commended the continued restraint shown by the Sri Lanka government in the face of, what it called, ‘provocations’ and called upon the LTTE and the GOSL to “fulfill the commitments made at the February talks in Geneva and to take all possible steps to build a positive atmosphere for future talks.”

Japan also separately said it “condemns in its strongest terms such acts of violence.”

“The Government of Japan is seriously concerned with the recent escalation of violence in the North and East of Sri Lanka, including the claymore attack against the Navy bus [last] Tuesday in Thambalagamam Trincomalee,” said a press release issued by the Embassy of Japan in Colombo last Wednesday.

“It has been noted that the latest attacks took place no sooner than the Ambassadors of Co-chairs visited Kilinochchi on Monday [last week] and stressed the absolute importance of fulfilling commitments to stop violence, which was stated at the first round of Geneva talks on the implementation of Ceasefire Agreement,” the press release said.

The European Union also condemned the violence in the strongest terms and urged the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka to live up to the public commitments made in Geneva.

“The recent incidents illustrate a flagrant disregard for the commitments made in Geneva and places in serious jeopardy the upcoming talks. The attacks must be seen as an attempt to derail these talks”, the EU said.

The EU urged all involved not to return to the hostile situation witnessed at the beginning of this year. “The parties are urged to do all they can to ensure there are no acts of violence, intimidation, abductions or killings. In order to reach a lasting peace, it is imperative to engage in a discussion on a political outcome of the conflict, ensuring the democratic rights of all people in Sri Lanka,” said the EU.

Noting the heavy loss of life in Tuesday’s claymore attack in Trincomalee, Norway said that the assassination of the prominent Tamil civil society representative in Trincomalee, Mr V. Vigneswaran, and other serious incidents are adding to the vortex of violence that could eventually create a situation similar to that in December 2005 and January this year.

“I strongly urge the two parties to meet”, said Norwegian Minister for International Development Erik Solheim in the press statement. “This meeting will provide an opportunity for finding ways to implement the Ceasefire agreement and the promises the parties gave in their previous meeting.”

Sri Lanka’s Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa told the head of the international ceasefire monitors that the Army could easily defeat the Liberation Tigers with the assistance of the Karuna Group paramilitaries, the Daily Mirror reported Tuesday. Paradoxically, Mr. Rajapakse, appointed to his post by President Mahinda Rajapakse, his brother, had two weeks ago also told the then head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) that paramilitaries were not operating in government-controlled areas.

“The war of words between the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission and the Defence Ministry continued [Monday] with the monitors strongly denying reports that at a meeting with the Defence Secretary two weeks ago the former SLMM head described the LTTE as ‘Freedom fighters’” the Daily Mirror reported.

The Daily Mirror learnt that “the SLMM was also angered that at that meeting Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had told the former SLMM head Hagrup Haukland the LTTE could be easily defeated if the army joined forces with the Karuna faction while denying claims the armed group was operating in government-controlled areas.”

When contacted by the Daily Mirror SLMM spokesperson Helen Olafstdottir refused to comment over the Defence Secretary’s statement on the Karuna issue but denied claims that the former SLMM head had termed the LTTE as freedom fighters.

“It is not up to the SLMM to make such political definitions when it comes to the LTTE or in fact the government. The SLMM received this mandate from both the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE irrespective of the nature of any such definition”, Ms. Olafsdottir said.

She stressed that the new SLMM head Ulf Henriksson and another of his aides were present at the meeting with the Defence Secretary.

“Mr. Henriksson can testify that Mr. Haukland never uttered these words in such a detrimental context”, Ms. Olafsdottir said of the ‘freedom fighters’ allegation.

Amid the indefinite postponement of the Geneva talks, violence in the Northeast continued to escalate this week. Over 50 people, including Sri Lankan military personnel, LTTE cadres, aid workers and civilians have been killed and dozens wounded in numerous incidents over the past two weeks.

Anti-Tamil rioting in Trincomalee last week following the race riots that saw at least 22 dead and over 60 injured (see page 3).

At least 5 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded in Vavuniya Monday when an improvised explosive device was detonated, military officials said. A civilian was also wounded.

The attack took place around 8:30 a.m. about a mile outside the northern town. The explosives were concealed in a rickshaw and exploded as military vehicles carrying commandos passed.

The soldiers at the site opened fire for more than 10 minutes and the road remained blocked for all traffic, TamilNet reported, adding that Sri Lankan forces allegedly arrested a security guard at Vavuniya hospital, Mr. Thayaroopan, for taking photographs.

This followed an earlier attack on Saturday, when a claymore anti-personnel mine exploded near the same town killing 5 soldiers and wounding 12 more. The claymore was fixed to a two-wheel tractor parked on the roadside, at Mundrumuirippu in Vavuniya.

On Tuesday, eleven Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) troopers were killed in a claymore attack that targeted their convoy in Thampalakamam near 9th Mile Post on Trincomalee - Habarana Road. Eight SLN personnel were seriously wounded in the attack and 2 British nationals were wounded when their vehicle was hit by the Navy bus after the explosion.

Five SLA soldiers travelling in a truck and two Tamil humanitarian workers belonging to Human Development Centre (HUDEC), who were riding in a vehicle that was overtaking the truck, were killed when a claymore mine fixed to a lamp post exploded last Monday afternoon on A9 Road at Mirusuvil, 9 km northeast of Chavakachcheri. Two SLA soldiers and two HUDEC staffers were also injured in the Claymore explosion.

The HUDEC staff killed in the explosion were identified as Mr. Pathmanathan Shanmugaratnam, 55, and Mr. Selvendra Pradeepkumar, 29. HUDEC is the social arm of the Catholic Church of Jaffna, which networks at Parish level across the Jaffna Peninsula and the Vanni working with the disadvantaged for the alleviation of poverty, ignorance and social oppression.

Local media in Jaffna received faxed messages Sunday from “Upsurging Peoples’ Force,” claiming responsibility for the claymore attack. The clandestine force operating in Sri Lanka Army controlled areas, also claimed responsibility for a claymore attack Sunday morning in Mattuvil where one SLA trooper was killed and another injured.

The following day, unidentified gunmen shot and wounded Mr. J. W. Dhanasri, a timekeeper employed at Vavuniya private bus services union. The incident took place in the heart of the town where security was beefed up following the claymore attack Saturday. Mr. Dhanasiri, a Sinhalese who was fluent in Tamil, had close links with Sri Lanka’s Military Intelligence in the town, ex-militant sources in Vavuniya told TamilNet.

Meanwhile, in an attack Sunday morning in Mattuvil, Thenmaradchi in Jaffna, 2 SLA soldiers were wounded, with later succumbing to his injuries. The attackers also fired gunshots after the explosion of a small type anti-personnel claymore mine.

In a separate claymore mine attack on a Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Jeep in Kappalthurai, located about 10 km from Trincomalee Saturday night, 3 airmen were killed.

A trader from Vadamaradchy, Point Pedro was shot dead Saturday by unknown gunmen who arrived in two motorbikes and fired at the local business establishment he owned. Thevarajah Mariyathas, 26, was killed and his father was seriously injured in the shooting. Relatives accuse SLA soldiers stationed in Munai of being responsible for the killing.

Also in Jaffna, a SLA soldier was injured Saturday in a grenade attack on a road post near Chavakachcheri Hindu College on the A-9 highway in the Thenmaradchi sector of the Jaffna peninsula. SLA troops opened fire following the grenade attack and assaulted civilian pedestrians, press reports said.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka armed forces and police stepped up security measures in Jaffna, with personnel stationed in key junctions of Jaffna town and Chavakachcheri conducting thorough searches of bicycles and motorbikes, frequently delaying the passengers several hours.

An LTTE cadre and a civilian were killed when the motorcycle in which they were riding was hit by a claymore blast in Thatchanamaruthamadu in LTTE controlled area near Mannar, Saturday. In a similar attack two days earlier, two civilians were killed in LTTE held Mullikulam, northwest of Vavuniya.

On Friday, people riding a motorcycle lobbed a grenade at an SLA sentry post on the KKS road in Jaffna town. No causalities were reported and though troops cordoned off the area and searched it, no arrests were made.

Earlier that day a Muslim trader had been shot dead by unidentified gunmen at Muneeswaram road in the centre of Jaffna town. Four civilians were killed in separate incidents in Thenmaradchi sector of the Jaffna peninsula, Thursday.

A reputed jewellery shop owner from Chavakachcheri, a mini-tractor owner from Sarasalai and a tailor shop owner from Usan, Mirusuvil, were shot and killed in three shooting incidents by suspected paramilitary cadres working with SLA intelligence. A retired Police officer, Thambiah Ratnasabapathy, 64, from Meesalai, was also shot dead Thursday by unknown gunmen riding a motorbike.

Two civilians were killed in a claymore mine blast in LTTE held village of Mullikulam, northwest of Vavuniya, Thursday. LTTE officials blamed Sri Lanka Army’s Deep Penetration Unit for the attack.

In a similar attack in January this year, LTTE’s Vavuniya West area political head, Major Jeyanthan and a civilian were killed. The LTTE blamed SLA’s deep penetration unit operating from the Iranai Illuppaikulam SLA base for that attack.

Meanwhile, 2 LTTE cadres were killed Thursday when paramilitary cadres launched an ambush with the support of the SLA soldiers inside the LTTE controlled Vakaneri, 40 km north of Batticaloa, LTTE officials in Batticaloa said. One of the cadres killed in the ambush was identified as Ithayaventhan.

LTTE officials said the paramilitary cadres were assisted by SLA soldiers who fired mortar shells when the Tigers launched a counter-attack on the retreating group of paramilitary men.

SLA sources, denying their involvement, claimed that two Tiger cadres were killed, and four LTTE cadres were wounded in the attack. The SLA source further claimed that the “Karuna Group” recovered a T-56 rifle.

On the same day, an auxiliary cadre of the Liberation Tigers was killed and another auxiliary cadre wounded in a claymore attack allegedly carried out by a SLA deep penetration group. The attack took place Thursday inside the LTTE controlled Semamadu village in Nedunkerni, Vavuniya North.

Unidentified gunmen shot and seriously wounded a senior SLA Military Intelligence officer, Kumara, 38, and his Muslim associate Gajan Ali in Mancholai, 5 kilometres from Miravodai SLA camp around last Wednesday. The officer was an experienced paramilitary handler, according to Muslim villagers.

A twenty six year old youth who worked as a minibus driver was found shot dead at his mother’s house in Kayts last Wednesday. Thambu Gopalasingham was alone in his house when the incident happened. Mr Gopalasingham’s mother, who was away visiting one of her relatives, found the body of her son, with hands tied behind his back, with injuries from severe beating and with gun shot wounds at her home in Paruthiyaddaippu in Kayts, when she returned home.

Two paramilitary cadres belonging to Karuna Group were shot by unknown gunmen while they were travelling through Karuvaakerni towards Valaichenai Sunday.

Meanwhile, SLN troopers cordoned and searched areas of Karainagar, Karungali and Madathadi area in Valigamam last Sunday between 12 noon and 2 p.m., but no one was arrested during the search. Residents were not allowed to enter or exit the cordoned area during the two hours of search. SLN sources told TamilNet the search was initiated on receiving information that armed persons were seen in the area.

A SLA soldier and a civilian were wounded in a claymore explosion targeted at an SLA truck in Neerveli in Jaffna Saturday last week. TamilNet reported an SLA soldier was killed in a direct clash that erupted at Selvanagar in Thoppur in Muttur Division of the Trincomalee district.

Earlier on that Saturday, a civilian was injured and several houses were damaged when SLA soldiers fired artillery shells from Kaddaiparichan army camp towards Ganeshapuram in Muttur east. The SLA soldiers had fired shells towards LTTE’s Forward Defence Line (FDL) in Ganeshapuram, entrance to the LTTE held Muttur east villages, but the shells had fallen about 25 meters away from the LTTE sentry.

Sinhalese mobs, assisted by Sri Lankan security forces attacked Tamils and Muslims and torched their properties in Trincomalee last week after the death of a soldier in a bomb attack, in a localised carbon copy of the island wide anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983

More than 19 people were killed and over 45 were wounded in communal rioting last Wednesday (April 5)that also saw the closing of over 22 Tamil and Muslim shops in the eastern port town.

This was followed by fresh violence on Friday, in which another 3 civilians were killed, including an Indian astrologer and a 60 year old woman who was knifed to death.

The violence on Wednesday was only stopped after the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who urged the Sri Lankan head of state to ensure the security and safety of Trincomalee Tamil civilians, according to press reports.

On Friday, however, Somasuntharam Maheswary, 60, was attending religious duties at Nadesar Temple when a group of thugs had dragged her from the temple premises and cut her. Her body was later found on the road and handed over to the mortuary of the Trincomalee general hospital.

Indian citizen Venkadasamy Venkatraman (30) of Ramamoorthy Nagar, Bangalore in South India was also killed that day. He was an astrologer by profession. The third person killed on Friday was Thannimalai Namasivayalingam, 28, who had been a junior employee of the Trincomalee district secretariat.

The attackers last Wednesday were Sinhalese thugs armed with incendiary devices and assisted by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) troopers, charged Trincomalee district parliamentarian, Mr. K. Thurairatnasingam.

“Like the July 1983 genocidal pogrom against the Tamils, the current violence against the Tamil speaking people has been unleashed in Trincomalee with the connivance of the Sri Lanka Navy,” the parliamentary group of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) said in a press release.

“The SL Navy had brought Sinhalese mobs by the truck loads to the heart of the Trincomalee Town, who in turn began murdering, and causing grievous hurt to Tamil speaking people, whilst setting on fire and destroying Tamil commercial centres. That the SL navy orchestrated these incidents is clear,” the press release said.

Meanwhile, transport services to and from Trincomalee had still not returned to normalcy on the weekend, with shops and the public market closed and roads in the town deserted. State and private sector bus services had been stopped since last Wednesday evening and bus stands were deserted.

“Our houses were burnt, properties were destroyed and we were attacked by thugs with knives and clubs while the State armed forces and police looked on. No one came to our rescue. We fled from our houses and sought refuge elsewhere to save our lives,” several Tamil families sheltered in Varothiayanagar Bharathi Vidiyalam following fresh violence erupted Friday afternoon told Mr. Thurairatnasingam when he visited them Saturday morning.

The attacks come in the wake of the assassination of Mr. Vanniasingham Vigneswaran, President of the Trincomalee District Tamil Peoples’ Forum (TDTPF), a leading Tamil civil society activist who was about to be nominated as the national list parliamentarian to fill the position of murdered Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, Joseph Pararajasingham.

Mr. Vigneswaran was shot dead the previous Friday by a gunman from an Army-backed paramilitary group as he was about to enter his workplace at the main branch of the Bank of Ceylon located between the office of the Senior Superintendent of Police and Trincomalee Harbour Police.

Mr. Pararajasingham was also shot dead by Army-backed paramilitaries in a Batticaloa Church last Christmas Eve.

“Sri Lanka Government should urgently take steps to ensure safety of our business in Trincomalee. Thugs target our businesses whenever there is any explosion in the bazaar, and Government troops and Police rarely take any action to contain resulting violence and looting. This has been the case from 1977. Many of our shops have now been destroyed while the Police and troops looked on, this Wednesday,” said several members of the Chamber of Commerce and Industries of Trincomalee District (CCITD) in the presence of a Sri Lanka Minister and Security Forces commanders during a conference held Saturday evening.

Mr. Rohitha Bogollagama, Minister of Foreign Investment and Promotion, Rear Admiral Mohan Wijewickrema, North East Provincial Governor, Lt. General Sarath Fonseka, Commander of the SLA, police and army officials participated in the conference.

The Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) in Trincomalee district Sunday commenced distributing dry ration relief to about 250 Tamil families who sought refuge in schools and public buildings in the suburbs of the port town, having fled the Friday violence.

Meanwhile hundreds of resettled Tamil families in the villages Kanniya, Managaiootu and Killikunchcumalai were trapped in their houses without transport to buy provisions following the violence. TRO has made necessary arrangement to transport dry ration and other foodstuff to these villages, Mr. C. Kumarakurubaran, Deputy Director of the TRO in Trincomalee said.

“If the genocide attacks by State armed forces with the connivance of Sinhalese hoodlums continue in the Trincomalee district we would be forced to take steps to safeguard the lives and properties of innocent Tamil people in the district and that would lead to undesirable serious consequence on the current peace process,” warned Mr. S. Elilan, LTTE district political head in a statement on the fresh violence against Tamil people in the suburbs of Trincomalee town since Friday afternoon.

“We took up arms at a time when the State armed forces unleashed violence and genocide attacks on Tamil people in the northeast. The government troops with connivance of Sinhalese thugs have again started unleashing violence against Tamils during the peacetime,” said Mr. Elilan.

“Curfew has been imposed in Trincomalee town and its suburbs after houses and properties of Tamil people have been burnt down and destroyed by thugs with the assistance of government troops. During the curfew time we receive reports that thugs with the assistance of the government troops are entering the houses of Tamils and attack them. This cannot be condoned by us any more,” said Mr. Elilan.