The bodies of two civilians, Sithampari Kanesharatnam, 39, and Visuwar Krishnar, 58, who lived near Kovilarkandy Amman Temple, were recovered in a bylane near Kaithady bridge close to the A9 main road. Eyewitnesses told authorities they had seen the victims being interrogated by SLA soldiers Monday evening.

Also Tuesday, a Muslim businessman, Ahamedlebby Abthul Bahir, 35, was beaten to death and his friend Nahurthamby Athambaba Lebby, 25, seriously injured by a Tamil mob protesting a shooting incident in Akkaraipattu Monday evening.

Nearly 250 employees including few medical officers Tuesday morning staged a walkout in protest demanding the withdrawal of armed forces personnel from the premises of the Mannar district hospital and a ban on soldiers visiting the wards of the hospital whilst carrying their weapons.

The Human Rights Commission in Jaffna received complaints Monday that ten civilians in Karainagar in Jaffna islets have been arrested by Navy personnel conducting a cordon and search operation. When relatives inquired at the Karainagar SLN camp on the whereabouts of the arrested the Navy denied arresting anyone.

Unidentified attacked lobbed a grenade into a Tamil shop located in the Madathady junction in Trincomalee Tuesday morning. Mr. Thevatharsan, 25, an employee of the shop was critically injured in the attack which took place a few yards away from the Trincomalee Police Headquarters along the Main Street.

The body of Suppiah Murugan was found with gunshot wounds Monday night at Urumpiray Junction along Jaffna Palaly road in front of Urumpirai Hindu College. A cook at a restaurant in Urumpiray, Murugan hailed from Trincomalee. The killing in high security zone where there is 24-hour surveillance by the security forces shocked Urumpirai residents.

Two Tamil civilians, Selvanayagam Mayooran, 35, and Sabaratnam Mathivathanakumar, 32, were wounded when unknown gunmen fired at them at 10.30 p.m. Sunday while they were going to their residences in Pallathoddam in Uppuveli Police division in Trincomalee. The motive is not known.

Two sisters, Bojan Renuka, 30, and Bojan Shanuka, 23, and their mother Bojan Arthanageswary, 51, residents of a house in Mudaliyar Kanagasabai Road in Manipay, close to the Manipay Hindu College, Jaffna district, were shot dead Sunday midnight by gunmen suspected to be SLA intelligence operatives and EPDP paramilitary cadres.

The father, Nagendran Bojan, 55, and brother Bojan Ullasan, 26, sustained gunshot injuries and are receiving treatment at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital.

Bojans is a Maaveerar family and Renuka acted as the main character in a Tamil film “Amma Nalama?” (Mother, are you well?) produced by the Liberation Tigers’ film division Nitharsanam.

Sellathurai Yogarajah, 26, who was on his way to a Hindu temple in Kodikamam, in Thenmaradchi in Jaffna district, was shot and killed allegedly by SLA soldiers in Thenmaradchi Sunday morning.

Tharmarasan Tharmaseelan, 37, who was abducted by unidentified men Saturday night, was found shot dead with his hands tied behind his back near a Navy check post on Suruvil road in Kayts town, north-west of Jaffna, Sunday morning.

Tharmarasan was visiting his friend when four men, allegedly members of the paramilitary group, EPDP and Navy soldiers entered the house and took him away, according to residents.

Mr Raman Ranjan, 36, was shot dead by unknown gunmen who came in a motorbike at Karuwappankerny, 2 km north of Batticaloa town near Naagathampiran temple in Batticaloa at 5.00 p.m. Saturday.

All the members of a Tamil family were wounded in a grenade attack in Trincomalee on Saturday evening. An unidentified attacker lobbed a greande into the front verandah of the house located in Gandhinagar, 3 km southwest of the east port town, when the entire family, a father, mother and their two children, was watching a television programme following Pongal celebrations. SLA sentry points are located near the house, between Anpuvallipuram and Abeyapura.

Following a grenade attack on an SLA unit in Irupalai, residents said they witnessed soldiers arresting a tractor driver and taking him to the Irupalai SLA camp. However, SLA has denied arresting anyone from the area.

Mr Sulaimanlebbai Mohammed Esmail, 33, a labourer at a brick quarry in Nainakaddu Sammanthurai in Kalmunai was shot dead by unknown gunmen using an automatic rifle on Thursday night at 11-00 pm while he was sleeping in a shed near the quarry. The motive for the killing is not clear.

Unknown assailants hurled a grenade at the house of a businessman located at 2nd division Puliyady Road Valaichenai on Friday early morning at 4-30 a.m. but it failed to explode. The motive is not clear.

In Mannar, the petrol station run by Manthai West Multi Purpose Co-operative Society is now surrounded by military camps and sentry points and residents of the west coast town fear going to the station. They have begun making a thirteen kilometre journey to refuel at two other stations.

69 year-old Kanapathy Murugesu, a retired Post Master, was shot dead by Sri Lankan soldier near Odakarai Lane, in Point Pedro in Jaffna district Thursday at 1 p.m. Army officials claimed the gun had gone off accidentally. The victim from Thunnalai North, Karaveddy, was returning home in a bicycle after collecting his monthly pension when he was killed.

Five civilians, including a mother, a 60-year-old devotee and a 71-year-old man were wounded in soldiers’ retaliatory fire after two grenade attacks aimed at troops and policemen manning the checkpoints at two separate junctions in the suburbs of Jaffna town Thursday morning.

SLA soldiers at Lingapuram, Trincomalee Wednesday morning ganged up and beat to death a 40-year-old Tamil farmer, Thanabalasingham, in his paddy fields, villagers protested to truce monitors.

Soldiers opened fire in Kokkuvil, 5km northeast of Jaffna town, killing a civilian traveller on Jaffna KKS Road around 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, residents said. Doctors said the cause of death was gunshot wounds contrary to the claim of the SLA that the victim was killed in grenade explosion.

Two demining workers, Tharmasiri and Kandeepan, employed by the humanitarian Danish De-mining Group, DDG, were abducted by unknown armed men who came in a white Hiace van Wednesday early morning in Point Pedro.

Thambiah Tharmasiri and Narayanamoorthy Kandeepan were abuducted at 5:20 a.m. Wednesday on Odaikarai lane while they were on their way to work in Kuppilan, close to the High Security Zone near the Palaly Military Base.

Four de-mining workers of another De-mining group, HALO Trust, are already reported missing. They are suspected be either abducted by the gunmen, or in the custody of the SLA troopers or the Sri Lankan Police in Jaffna District.

Thambu Nadesu, who runs a business near the Puthur junction on the Jaffna - Point Pedro road was shot dead allegedly by Sri Lankan military intelligence operatives Tuesday around 11.30 p.m. He was asked to come out of his house for investigatations and shot dead, villagers said.

Fifty-years-old Thambu Nadesu, from Saraswathy Lane in Puthur East, was an active organisor of the civilian protest against an attempted rape of a woman in the area allegedly by Sri Lanka Army soldiers on October 28, reports said.

He was also is a close relative of Nirojan Tharmarajah (20) who was shot dead by the SLA in October 2005, when SLA opened fire when people protested against attempted rape of a woman in the area by the SLA soldiers.

Unknown gunmen shot and killed a 31-years-old woman in Thenmaradchi Wednesday noon last week at the grounds of Panrithalaichi Amman Temple. The victim, Pavalarani, had been abducted from her house in Mattuvil East, 6 km north of Chavakacheri, Wednesday morning.

P. Sivasankar, 28, from Meesalai and owner of a clothing store in Chavakacheri town was shot dead at 5.30 p.m. Tuesday last week on Dutch Road by gunmen suspected to be Sri Lankan military intelligence.

Residents said two of Sivasankar’s in-laws who owned the Clothing Store received death threats from SLA intelligence for several months. Both fled fearing for their lives and have now taken refuge in Tamil Nadu.

Navy soldiers arrested eight Tamil youths on Tuesday night last week at 7 p.m at the Manpuri checkpoint located in Puttalam - Kalpity Road. All are residents of Liberation Tigers controlled area of Kaddaiparichchan in Mutur and were travelling in a private minibus which was stopped at the Manpuri checkpoint.

Kondavil schoolgirl’s family warned

The Jaffna school girl abducted by four Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers from Paalpannai (Milk Farm) Road in between Thirunelvely and Kondavil junction was returned to her parents in Kondavil Tuesday night by higher officers of the SLA.

Kondavil residents who witnessed the abduction and other residents allege that the SLA soldiers were intending to subject the school girl to sexual abuse but had to abandon their pursuit on the direction of higher SLA officers who flew into Jaffna from Palaly military camp on being notified of the escalating protests in Kondavil following the abduction on Tuesday afternoon 2 p.m.

The abducted girl is sixteen years old and said to be a GCE (Ordinary Level) student at a popular Kondavil mixed school, residents said.

She was on her way to her aunt's house and was going in a bicycle along Paalpannai road when she was forcefully taken away by SLA soldiers.

Sri Lanka Army (SLA) officers have threatened the family with death if the details of abduction were made public.

The principal of the school where the abducted girl attends warned TamilNet correspondents to be cognizant of the seriousness of the threat to life of the girls family when filing stories with details of abduction.

When the abduction occurred, residents of the area and a youth who saw the girl being dragged away by the SLA, searched the shrub area near by. Sri Lankan troopers who came to the scene around 5 p.m. with an official of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (fired in the air to disperse the crowd.(TamilNet)

These are extracts from US Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead’s address to the American Chamber of Commerce in Sri Lanka:

At the Embassy, we are currently doing our annual goal setting exercise. As has been the case since arriving here, our goals boil down to two simple, yet complementary themes: peace and prosperity.

Today, however, there is an overriding theme that trumps all the others: Peace.
The peace process is paramount.

As we look at peace and prosperity, we are at a point in the cycle when the furtherance of peace is perhaps the single most important thing that can push Sri Lanka along the path to further prosperity.

A failure to capitalize on peace now will have significant negative repercussions in the months and years ahead. It will be especially bad for the economy and the underlying businesses that drive it.

What I was pleased to find at the Co-Chairs meeting in Brussels, was a continued optimism on the part of my fellow co-chair participants that, despite recent damage to the ceasefire and the peace process, a strong hope for progress remains.

We went on to outline those recent events and statements that we saw as useful and those that we saw as detrimental to the process.

In that vein, I have to take a moment here to congratulate the Government on its continued restraint, despite the recent provocative actions by the LTTE.

Similarly, the US calls on the LTTE to stop its violent activities and to return to the negotiating table with the Government of Sri Lanka in order to work towards a stable, permanent peace.

There can be a role for the LTTE in future development of Sri Lanka, but only if it returns to the peace table, renounces terrorism in word and deed and become a responsible participant in Sri Lanka’s future. And this will lead to a better life for the Tamils and all Sri Lankans in the North and East.

The LTTE’s current actions call into question its “leadership” of the Tamil people. What kinds of leaders block their people from realizing their most fundamental democratic aspirations? What kinds of leaders allow their people to continue to suffer from a lack of investment and industry? What kinds of leaders continue to pursue violence when the clear benefits of peace are obvious?

These are not acts of leadership. They directly undermine LTTE claims to legitimacy and they keep the aspirations of the Tamil people bottled up.

The United States remains committed to the peace process in Sri Lanka, and in helping the legitimate governing bodies of Sri Lanka to prepare for their roles in developing and protecting their citizens.

Through our USAID program, we are helping to increase the competitiveness of Sri Lankan industries, we are helping Sri Lanka rebuild after the tsunami, and we are supporting efforts to help people realize the benefits of peace.

Through our military training and assistance programs, including efforts to help with counterterrorism initiatives and block illegal financial transactions, we are helping to shape the ability of the Sri Lankan Government to protect its people and defend its interests.

Let me be clear, our military assistance is not given because we anticipate or hope for a return to hostilities.

We want peace. We support peace. And we will stand with the people of Sri Lanka who desire peace.

If the LTTE chooses to abandon peace, however, we want it to be clear, they will face a stronger, more capable and more determined Sri Lankan military. We want the cost of a return to war to be high.

Sri Lanka is at a tricky point in its history. It’s not clear if it is at a crossroads, or a cliff’s edge.

The US will continue to support a strong, unified Sri Lanka that seeks peace and prosperity and that offers an atmosphere of respect and justice for all citizens regardless of religion and race.

We will urge others in the International Community to do the same.

We have stood with Sri Lanka through the peace process as one of the co-chairs.

We are standing with Sri Lanka through the rebuilding process from the tsunami.

And we want to stand with Sri Lanka as it crosses the threshold from a situation of “no war” to one of peace and moves from a platform of low economic growth to a launching pad of economic dynamism.

In the wake of a claymore attack on January 12 which killed ten troopers in a Sri Lanka Navy convoy proceeding from Vavuniya to Mannar, international ceasefire monitors asked whether indeed there could be said to be a ceasefire amidst the plethora of attacks and murders in the island’s Northeast.

In a statement issued Friday last week the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) lamented over 100 people have been killed last month half of which were civilians.

“Killings and serious attacks continue and the situation is getting worse. It is our assessment that if the Parties don’t react immediately they risk going back to war,” the monitors said.

The SLMM condemned the attack on the Navy bus as “brutal murder” and said it was “yet another serious blow to the Ceasefire Agreement.”

The government blames the Tigers for the attack, a charge the LTTE denies. The Tigers said Tamil residents incensed by continuing military harassment are striking back.

The SLMM said it “believes that if such attacks or retaliation of such attacks continue the Ceasefire Agreement will be over.”

Whilst acknowledging “several reports of civilian harassment by the Security Forces” the monitors also said it was not enough for the Tigers to disclaim responsibility and that the “ LTTE’s indifference to these attacks worrying.”

However the monitors urged the Sri Lankan government to restrain its military.

The SLMM said the Sri Lankan government must take steps to “to face up to its responsibility to disarm … armed groups” – referring to Army-backed paramilitaries - operating in areas controlled by its military.

These “alternative armed elements”, the SLMM said, “have been able to operate freely in the East in Government controlled areas.”

“These forces have destabilised the ceasefire and are one of the major reasons for increased tension between the Parties [to the ceasefire],” the SLMM said.

Extracts from the statement follow:

“Various actors in the international community have blamed the LTTE for attacking Government troops but the LTTE has continuously denied any involvement. The LTTE claims that “the People” are behind the attacks on the military. SLMM finds this explanation unacceptable. It is safe to say that LTTE involvement cannot be ruled out and we find the LTTE’s indifference to these attacks worrying.

“It is however clear that people are suffering and unfortunately there have been several reports of civilian harassment by the Security Forces in relation to increased security measures. The harassment often takes a form of harsh treatment of the Tamil population in relation to the attacks. We would like to urge the Government of Sri Lanka and the Security Forces to prevent such actions from taking place.

“It is important to emphasise that the current situation also stems from the fact that alternative armed elements have been able to operate freely in the East in Government controlled areas. These forces have destabilised the ceasefire and are one of the major reasons for increased tension between the Parties. We therefore urge the Government of Sri Lanka to face up to its responsibility to disarm these other armed groups so that the rule of law can be reinstated in the affected areas.

“Increasing amount of civilians is being caught in the middle leading to major disturbances in the local communities. The conflict between the two sides is hurting civilians and preventing any restoration to normalcy.

“We urge both Parties to consider carefully how they can mend the situation instead of merely blaming each other and pointing fingers. The Parties need to come up with firm confidence building measures with the truthful aim of reaching a peaceful solution. Actions speak louder than words and we feel that we need to see more commitment from the two Parties if war is not to break out in Sri Lanka.”

Blast at truce monitors’ offices

Hours after international monitors urged the Sri Lankan government to disarm Army-backed paramilitaries, a bomb ripped last Friday through one of their offices in the east of the island.

The blast in the town of Batticaloa destroyed a vehicle of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), but no one was hurt. Three more SLMM vehicles were damaged.

It was the first attack on the Scandinavian officers supervising the February 2002 ceasefire agreement.

“It was definitely not intended to kill anyone,” SLMM spokeswoman Helen Olafsdottir told Reuters.

“We cannot rule out that it was someone trying to scare us away. We are not pulling out - it would send a strong message that if anyone threw a firecracker in our direction we would leave.”

The Liberation Tigers condemned the attack, saying said they were “extremely disturbed and concerned” and describing it as an attempt to destroy the cease fire agreement. “We are very relieved that no one was hurt in this attack,”

“We would like to express our strong condemnation of this distressing attack on unarmed peace monitors whose presence has been invaluable for the people of this island,” the LTTE said in a letter.

“Our leadership views this attack as an attempt to wreck the ceasefire agreement. Our leadership also expresses the continued support of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to the SLMM to implement the ceasefire agreement in its fully intended meaning and to rectify the deteriorating ceasefire environment.”

“We wish to bring to your notice that this attack has taken place within a Sri Lanka Army High Security Zone. An SLA base is located near this SLMM office and this SLA base also houses the paramilitary groups,” the LTTE also said.

The deteriorating security situation in the north is affecting the lives of the people in Jaffna with business activities slowing down, travelling between the north and south curtailed and southerners working in the north leaving.

The construction industry in particular which was picking up during the cease-fire period has slowed down. A number of foreign NGOs have also returned to Colombo.

Pilgrimages from the South to places like Nagadeepa have virtually come to a standstill following the string of attacks in the past weeks, which has led to a tense security situation.

As people prepared for last weekend''s Thaipongal celebrations we observed a marked difference in the atmosphere that prevailed during the eve of Deepavali celebrations, before the presidential election in November.

There was a bustle of activity on the streets then. The markets were crowded and buses were packed with passengers even travelling on the hoods. But in contrast, on the eve of Thaipongal many of the shops had closed earlier than usual, the bus stand was virtually deserted shortly after dusk and celebrations appeared to be on a low key compared to previous years.

Among the worst affected by the deteriorating security situation were the traders who enjoyed brisk business last year.

“Before the spate of violence, an average of 200 lorries would come in from the south bringing supplies to Jaffna. They contained mainly building material and food items. But today only an average of 50 lorries come from the south daily,” R. Jeyarasa, President of the Chamber of Commerce (Jaffna branch) told The Sunday Times.

He said there was a time when companies based in the south used to dispatch goods on a bank guarantee to the value of Rs. Five million or even more as they were certain of the returns. But now most companies have cut down on the bank guarantee and were even reluctant to provide credit.

“There was a time when about 20 to 30 lorries of cement used to come daily and the stocks were over in a short period. But today it is difficult distribute these stocks because people are reluctant to go ahead with the construction activities,” he said.

Many projects that employed workers from the south have also been affected as many have gone back to the south fearing the security situation.

Many of them were masons and carpenters. The scarcity of the labour force has resulted in labour charges suddenly skyrocketing in Jaffna. Many companies from the south that sent luxury items and other essentials have reportedly reduced the flow of goods due to a drastic slump in business.

A. Gunaratnam, an agent in Jaffna, for companies including Ceylon Tobacco, Delmege and Milgro said there were times when he got about 12 lorry- loads from Colombo, but now he sometimes even gets less than four lorry-loads.

He also said his sales had been affected as most of the salesmen from the south and those from the upcountry working for him had left their jobs and returned home.

“There is also a drop in the number of people coming to our shops in town. Buses now stop plying from town as early as five in the evening and people are reluctant to venture into town after dusk,” he said.

Many southern businessmen including those who transported items including soft toys, flower plants, flower pots, furniture and ornaments for sale in the north have stopped their sales activities due to the security situation.

The sight of lorry-loads of timber plying from the south to the north being parked at the Omanthai security checkpoint was a common sight not too long ago but today one sees only a few lorries making their way to the north.

Banking activities in Jaffna have also been affected after Banks were forced to closed down for a week following threats.

During the week long closure of the banks, many of the ATM machines ran out of cash, forcing residents to return home with empty pockets and purses.

“Some people have even started withdrawing their savings from the banks in Jaffna as they fear if the situation turns worse they would not be able to pull out their money,” a bank manager of a private bank told The Sunday Times.

Some of those who invested heavily in the hotel industry have also been affected as the number of people patronizing these places have dropped due to movement of civilians being curtailed at night.

Many of these hotels and restaurants were patronized by Sri Lankan expatriates who were home on holiday and local and foreign NGO workers.

In contrast to the crowded restaurants and pubs before the November 17 election, many of them were now empty and closing up shortly after dusk. Crowds that gathered at the cinema halls were no longer seen. Some 10 cinema halls had come up during the past four years and most cinemas were screening as many as five shows a day.

“We are having only one show for a day now and even then only a handful of people turn up,” the manager of a popular cinema said.

Several international actors this week joined a growing chorus of alarm over Sri Lanka’s fast deteriorating ceasefire, urging restraint and calling for renewed peace talks to forstall a return to war.

The February 2002 Norwegian-brokered cease-fire between the Tamil Tigers and the government is under severe strain as a two year old shadow war between Army-backed paramilitaries and the LTTE escalates.

The United Nations’ Secretary General, Kofi Annan, Tuesday warned, like many others, that civilians face enormous suffering if Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war as to erupt again.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York that Mr. Annan was concerned about quickly deteriorating security situation in the tropical island.

Dujarric said the cease-fire was under “severe strain” and that the latest fighting is “once again being felt by the civilian population.”

Annan “strongly urges the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE to shore up the cease-fire, ensure respect for the human rights of all Sri Lankans, and urgently resume their dialogue under the facilitation of the Norwegian government,” Dujarric said Monday.

He was echoing a strongly worded warning from international monitors supervising the truce. Last Friday the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) “killings and serious attacks continue and the situation is getting worse. It is our assessment that if the Parties don’t react immediately they risk going back to war.”

The World Bank added its voice to the mounting concerns with the Country Director warning that assistance provided by the international lending agency could see a dent if there was no immediate improvement.

WB Country Head Peter Harrold told the Daily Mirror the level of World Bank assistance in its country assistance strategy depended heavily on the progress of the peace process.

“Conflict reduces the effectiveness of development assistance; it raises the poverty level of conflict affected people and destroys the assets that development assistance has previously provided,” he said, adding that he hoped the upcoming visit of Norwegian Minister and special envoy Erik Solheim would facilitate the process for government and the LTTE to return to the negotiating table.

The European Union also expressed similar fears with visiting EU Commissioner for External Relations, Mrs Benita Ferrero-Waldner, saying: “it is imperative that the government, other political parties and the Tamil Tigers heed the call of the people and join hands to arrest the spread of violence prevailing in the north and in the east.”

“It would quite simply be a tragedy if the various leaders involved failed to meet this basic demand of the people,”

She strongly criticised both sides for wrangling over the venue for talks to stablise the ceasefire – the LTTE wants a European location, suggesting Norway, but Sri Lanka wants to hold talks in Asia.

“The debate … over the venue for reviewing the implementation of the ceasefire agreement hardly inspires confidence,” Mrs. Ferrero-Waldner said.

“The state of the ceasefire is so perilous that Sri Lanka can ill afford to waste time on talks about the venue for talks! For all who truly seek settlement through negotiation rather than war, surely they have more urgent priorities.”

“To reinvest in peace may seem today a most difficult and tortuous route but it is Sri Lanka’s only road to prosperity and stability in the long term. To turn to violence may appear to be the line of least resistance now but will prevent Sri Lanka from realising its economic potential, will cause massive human suffering again and ultimately will only delay the inevitable return to the negotiating table,” she said.

“The international community can offer help in form of trade and aid but cannot and should not seek to offer political solutions. Sri Lanka’s political future lies solely in the hands of Sri Lanka’s leaders themselves,” she pointed out.

However, Mrs. Ferrero-Waldner’s comments came soon after the US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Mr. Jeffrey Lunstead, bluntly warned the LTTE that his government wanted the “cost of a return to war to be high.”

The US wanted it to be clear, if the Tigers chose to “abandon peace,” they will face a “stronger, more capable and more determined” Sri Lankan military, he said.

Sri Lanka is at a tricky point in its history, the US Ambassador said, adding that it was not clear “if Sri Lanka was at a crossroads, or at a cliff’s edge.”

The United States wants to remain committed to the peace process in Sri Lanka, and in helping the “legitimate governing bodies of Sri Lanka to prepare for their roles in developing and protecting their citizens,” Mr. Lunstead also said.

Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, told Sri Lanka’s visiting foreign minister last week that Washington, which like Britain has proscribed the Tigers as a terrorist organisation, viewed the conflict as another front in the global “war on terror”.

Ms Rice also “expressed concern over the recent upsurge in violence ... and lauded the Sri Lankan government’s restraint in the face of Tamil Tiger provocations”, a spokesman said.

Last week Amnesty International also expressed concern over the spreading violence and rights abuses, and appealed “to all parties to halt the killings, abductions and “disappearances” being reported daily from the north and east of Sri Lanka.”

“The deteriorating security situation will also drastically effect aid and relief operations to those displaced by the tsunami and by years of conflict who see no hope of returning to their homes,” Amnesty said.

We thank Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead for his comments on the 9th January [‘Peace and Prosperity: US Policy Goals in Sri Lanka’] outlining to the Tamil people the enormous amounts of American economic aid that they are supposedly foregoing by their pursuit of freedom.

But he will find, on examination of the facts, that the Tamils of Sri Lanka fully understand the benefits of economic prosperity, having enjoyed such prosperity long before their marginalisation by the post-independence Sri Lanka state and the ensuing the civil war. Indeed it was the Tamils’ supposedly disproportionate educational and commercial success that lead, in the first place, to racially biased legislation such as the university quota system and the Sinhala-only language act and ultimately to the anti-Tamil pogroms which expressed the historical resentment of the majority against a successful minority.

The Tamils as a nation are more than aware of the future economic value of the strategic assets of their homeland, including, by way of example, mineral deposits such as Titanium and maritime assets such as the Trincomalee harbour. We are equally aware that the United States, among others, will have interest in these resources too.

A few observations on economic proficiency, to begin with. The United States, while a major investor abroad, is facing an increasing trade and current account deficit. Simply put, the Ambassador’s great nation consumes more than it produces and increasingly so. The United States also consumes more oil, a crucial economic resource for its current economy, than it produces. It needs to ensure supplies and routes for those supplies from regions including Asia. The present government of the United States has also widened its budget deficit – the government spends more than it earns, and this impacts its ability to provide services such as welfare and disaster management to its own people.

These potential unstable dynamics are not in themselves entirely calamitous though perhaps incomprehensible to the rest of the world. But that is America''s prerogative. Perhaps not entirely incomprehensibly, when the time comes, the Tamils might also wish to freely navigate global economic dynamics for themselves and determine the true cost of capital for the optimal, long term exploitation of their strategic assets.

The Ambassador is known for his scholarship of South Asia. He will of course be aware that the Tamils are among the oldest international maritime trading civilizations in the region, also being geographically strategically placed. It is hence perhaps conceivable that the present Tamil leadership has the ability and the acumen to recognise the need to understand both international commerce and globalisation.

The economic activity that has been achieved and sustained in areas such as Kilinocchi in the past few years needs to be seen in the context of an almost decade long embargo of essential goods to the Tamil areas imposed by the Sri Lankan government. The Ambassador’s government, while preaching free trade, had done little to oppose the embargo, and in fact, sought to further economically isolate the Tamil homeland by imposing restrictions on the means by which the Tamil expatriate community supports the Tamil administration in the North East.

A government is measured not only by its ability to create prosperity for a portion of its citizens but also by its capacity to execute essential functions particularly in times of deep crisis. We are confident that the Tamil administration’s unflinching and comprehensive efforts in the first few days when the Tsunami struck in December 2004 will stand more than ordinarily favorable comparison to the US government’s response to the natural disaster in New Orleans last year.

Furthermore, any post Tsunami progress in the Tamil areas needs to be viewed in the context of the inability or unwillingness of the Ambassador’s government, to influence the Sri Lankan state to implement the PTOMS or a comparable alternative. Even the great generosity of the expatriate Tamil community in the Tsunami period was greatly hampered by animosity towards the TRO, one of the most effective grass roots aid organizations in the North East.

Nevertheless the purpose of this comment is not to discuss the economic future of the Tamil homeland: it is understood that a prosperous economic future can be achieved only once a strong and defensible foundation of Tamils’ civil liberty is won.

Instead let us focus on a fact that the Ambassador missed entirely in his speech to the American Chamber of Commerce: that there are some things that money cannot buy. These are often the most important blessings of life.

We speak in the context of the recent circumstances experienced by the civilians of the North East. Jaffna has been under the occupation of an army that speaks a foreign language since 1995. In the last six weeks we have witnessed increasing violence against civilians by the armed forces, including rape, disappearances. Member of Parliament Joseph Pararajasingham, who the Ambassador has met several times, was shot dead during Christmas Mass military intelligence operatives. The Ambassador is no doubt aware of all of these developments, apart from those he opted to speak about.

Many Tamils have died for the simple reason that they were of a different race from the majority state, and had no access to a genuine ‘government of the people… by the people.. for the people’. No amount of the American government’s money and technology investment will bring their families either justice or solace. Indeed, what would have been priceless would have been something that is entirely without monetary value: the government of America’s unequivocal condemnation of repressive violence by the state against its unarmed citizens.

The Ambassador asks what kind of Tamil leaders will forego the considerable economic handouts he describes in his speech. We may respond to him with the words of one of the greatest leaders the world has known in recent times. “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

The vision that drives the Tamil people and their leaders is echoed in his words: “Our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…… . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from this earth.”.

And we ask, how the Ambassador and his American colleagues could have forgotten the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln?

Sri Lanka is expected to decide on a new privately funded 100,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in weeks, the state oil firm said on Tuesday, as the government increased security over mounting war fears.

A decision on the $795 million refinery, which will operate alongside an existing 50,000-bpd plant, had been expected soon after the Nov. 17 presidential election but was delayed as officials consulted with unions, Reuters quoted the Ceylon Petroleum Corp. as saying.

“A decision has not been made on it yet,” company chairman Jaliya Medagama told Reuters. “It will be a couple of weeks. No one questions the need for a refinery, the question is how it is funded.”

The facility will take between three and five years to build once the government gives the go-ahead.

A lack of refining capacity means Sri Lanka, which produces no crude of its own, has to import some 40 percent of its oil products, adding additional costs the island can ill afford after high global crude prices pushed inflation up last year.

Sri Lanka imports 15 million barrels of crude and refined products a year, or more than 40,000 barrels daily.

Petroleum imports have risen 45 percent to almost 1.4 billion dollars for the 10 months to October due to high oil prices, according to the central bank.

The proposed refinery would be funded by both local and international investment through U.S. firm Global Energy, Medagama said, with the government promising to buy a yet-to-be-specified percentage of its output.

Unions had objected to elements in the funding plan, Medagama said, although he did not give further details. Foreign investors were becoming jumpy over the delayed decision, he added.

“It is natural,” he said. “Any investor would be concerned when there is no decision.”

The government had bolstered security around its existing installations including the Sapugaskanda refinery in recent weeks as tensions with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) mount after a string of attacks on troops in the Tamil-dominated north and east.

The Tigers had attacked oil installations until two decades of conflict was halted by a ceasefire in 2002, he said, including a raid on storage tanks in the capital Colombo. Many now fear a return to war if peace talks remain stalled.

Earlier this month Sri Lanka raised a 100-million-dollar loan from foreign banks to help pay hefty oil import bills, which threaten to blow a hole in the country’s balance of payments, the Central Bank said last Wednesday.

“The loan proceeds will also help to further stabilise domestic interest rates since these funds are raised from the international market,” the central bank said in a statement on the three-year syndicated loan arranged by Citigroup.

It comes after Sri Lanka got its maiden sovereign rating last month, a first step in tapping the international bond market for loans. Two international rating agencies — Fitch Ratings and Standard and Poor’s — assigned speculative ratings to the country.

Fitch gave the nation a BB- rating while Standard and Poor’s awarded an even lower B+ sovereign rating.

Despite the “junk bond” status, President Mahinda Rajapakse said the ratings marked a “respectable beginning (in) the universe of rated sovereigns.”

The island nation is anxious for cash to meet its rising oil import bill and tsunami-related reconstruction costs that have strained finances.

Both rating agencies said the country’s credit worthiness was affected by the absence of a permanent peace accord with the Tamil Tigers, who control much of the island’s north and east.

“We have taken all precautions,” he said. “For strategic reasons I cannot say more other than that security has been tightened.”

Sri Lanka this week implemented new security measures in the capital, Colombo, this week, raising anxieties amongst the Tamil residents, reports said.

Security in Colombo and its suburbs has been strengthened following warning by government intelligence agencies warned of imminent “terrorist” attacks on government strategic installations, reports said.

Additional Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) soldiers have been deployed at the Katunayake international airport while more army sentry points points have been set up in the beach road from Bambalapitya to Wellawatte parallel to Galle Road. Wellawatte is populated mainly by Tamil speakers.

More SLAF personnel have been deployed surrounding the Katunayake International Airport and all vehicles going to the airport are stopped and meticulously checked by security forces. Passengers of these vehicles are asked to produce their national identity cards and other valid documents before entering airport area, reports said.

Heavily-armed troops and police have been visible in the city in recent weeks as tension has risen following increased clashes between Sri Lankan security forces and suspected Tamil Tigers in the island’s northeast.

Deputy inspector-general of police, Pujith Jayasundara, says his department is in the process of creating a specially-trained unit of a few hundred men to deal with an emergency.

But, he rejected press reports claiming that the Tigers are planning a suicide bomb attack in Colombo.

DIG Jayasundera, said there was no specific threat against any economic target and the authorities are maintaining the same level of security they had in place several weeks ago.

However troops and police would continue search operations against ‘criminal elements,’ he said.

The Anglican Bishop of Colombo, Rt. Rev. Duleep Chickera has called on the law enforcement authorities to carry out house-to-house search operations with utmost care and politeness.
On New Year’s eve, heavily armed troops and police cordoned off parts of Colombo populated mainly by Tamils and search homes. Over 900 people were taken in for questioning.

The detainees – those who could not give ‘a valid reason’ for being in Colombo – were photographed, video taped and finger printed. Though most were released, fifty people are still being detained, human rights groups say.

Criticising the operation – codename Operation ‘Strangers Night’ – the Sunday Times’ defence column described the

“Though it was claimed to be a routine exercise, large number of Tamil civilians including women, to say the least, were both badly humiliated and inconvenienced,” the paper said.

“The worst moments came when they were paraded before cameramen in the compounds of city police stations. Some men and women were in their night clothes.”

“Some Tamil groups made representations to the Indian High Commission in Colombo only to be reminded that it was an internal matter.”

The Jaffna daily, Uthayan, protested in an editorial that “[the forces’] methods of, taking Tamils away from their sleep to police stations, conducting investigations that treats the Tamils without dignity like herds, and treating the Tamils as criminals, give a loud and clear message to the Tamils that they are second class citizens.”

Meanwhile, Tamil journalists have protested heightened harassment by the security forces. Reporters working with Sudar Oli, Thinakural, and Veerakesari – Sri Lanka’s leading Tamil daily newspapers – and the local television channel MTV have been attacked in Colombo, press associations protest.

Amid increasing violence by Sri Lankan troops against Tamil civilians, many are fleeing government-controlled areas to areas controlled by the Liberation Tigers and a small number are even fleeing to south India, reversing a trickle of returns from there since the February 2002 truce.

Over the weekend, several hundred families fled from areas controlled by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in the Jaffna peninsula and crossed to LTTE held Vanni region through the Muhamalai, bringing the number of families seeking refugee there to over 4,000.

Many families have shifted from the villages of Ariyalai, Velanai, Punguduthivu, Kayts, Thambatti, Kodikamam, Varani, Karainagar and Velvettithurai. They could be seen on the road with their belongings packed into trucks, minibuses and auto rickshaws, reports said.

The displaced were received at transit centre for displaced people set up by Tamil Rehabilitation Organization on the LTTE side of the checkpoint.

A Jaffna fishing family add their boat to their possessions as the pack up and flee to LTTE held areas to escape Sri Lankan military reprisals. Photo Tamilnet

They were provided with cooked meals before they were sent to other welfare centres. Some families have choosen to live with their families and friends, the TRO said.

In Trincomalee district, more than one thousand families have fled from their homes in the SLA controlled divisions of Muttur and Seruvila in the Trincomalee district due to harassment and intimidation allegedly by the government troops manning sentries located in their villages and have sought refuge in schools and with their relatives in the LTTE held areas.

As of January 11 about 500 families from Mallikaithivu, Kachchanoor and Iruthayapuram had taken refuge in two schools in Thanganagar—an LTTE-controlled area, WSWS reported.

About 750 families or 2,371 people from Menkamam, Kumarapuram and Kilivetti had taken shelter in nearby schools or in the homes of relatives after cordon-and-search operations by government forces.

Here also, the TRO has deployed its volunteers in Eachchilampathu and other areas to supply cooked meals to refugees and sent a stock of mattresses and bed sheets for the displaced.

In Mannar district region in the west of Sri Lanka, about two hundred fisher families, residing in Siruthoppu near Pesalai, have moved to Vankalai about 20 km away from the military-controlled Mannar town following intimidation and threats by security forces. They took their fibreglass fishing boats and nets and other fishing gear in tractors and available means of transport.

Mannar bishop Joseph Rayeppu says a number of families had recently sought shelter in local churches fearing reprisals.

Since recent attacks on Navy buses, masked men have regularly entered their houses in the night threatening inmates with death and other atrocities. Several people were burned alive in a retaliatory attack by Navy sailors on a Tamil settlement.

Indian officials said the refugees arriving in Tamil Nadu are mostly from Mannar. They reportedly find it easy to hire a boat from Thalaimannar and are dropped on an island close to Tamil Nadu. The Tamil Nadu fishermen bring them ashore.

“What these refugees are saying is that the Navy there wants information on the LTTE movements. It suspects that some of the local people were working with the Tamil Tigers in the recent operations,” a senior police officer told The Hindu newspaper.

“Apparently, those living with their families, especially children, want to move out of Defence-controlled areas. Many have moved into LTTE territory while these people have decided to come over to Tamil Nadu,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Jaffna daily, Uthayan, in an editorial this week protested the “collective punishment” being meted out to the Tamils by the Sri Lankan military.

“It is a common practice for oppressive governments to deal with the pressures of a people’s movement by giving collective punishment to the entire people. The freedom struggle in the Tamil homeland which has become the people’s struggle is being handled by the Sinhala military in the same way.”

“The result is the beating and killing of innocent people to punish the grenade attack carried out by someone else. These military actions are not taken in the heat of the moment. These are well planed actions of the military to threaten the people into submission.”

At the start of December 2005 there was an increase in the level of violence in the Jaffna Peninsula, Trincomalee and other regions of the NorthEast of Sri Lanka. The NGO Consortium and local NGOs have stated that, “Many families in the Jaffna peninsula and Trincomalee felt that due to escalating violence that there was a threat to their personal safety from the Sri Lankan Security Forces and paramilitary forces. Many of these families identified the Vanni region as a place where they could temporarily move for safety.”

Over 3,325 families (approximately 14,500 individuals as of 16/01/06) have left their permanent housing, taking only what they could carry on their backs, and have crossed the checkpoints and lagoon into LTTE controlled areas of the Vanni.

In light of this influx of IDPs TRO is making an “URGENT APPEAL” to the Tamil Diaspora and the international community for desperately needed funds to build temporary shelters, provide food and water, non-food relief (NFR) items, medical treatment and transportation to meet the needs of these families.

Due to TRO’s extensive work with the post-tsunami internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the continuing work with conflict affected populations the demand placed on TRO is so great that the funds received to date are inadequate to deal with this crisis. TRO has the staff, structure, and expertise to effectively serve these IDPs if adequate funding is found. It is only through the immediate, generous support of the Tamil Diaspora and TRO’s other international partners that we will be able to deal with the impending humanitarian crisis.

In the present acute circumstances we call upon the well wishers of the Tamil community to urgently contact their local governmental, non governmental agencies, humanitarian agencies and religious institutions in their countries of residence and apprise them of the grave humanitarian crisis that will only get worse as the numbers of IDPs continue to increase. The situation is critical and the people of the NorthEast require the urgent assistance of these agencies and institutions to alleviate the suffering.

A chorus of international voices have in the past few days decried the heightened violence gripping Sri Lanka’s Northeast. Calls for restraint and new talks on stabilising the fraying February 2002 ceasefire have come from key states and the international monitors overseeing the truce, amongst others. Nevertheless, the violence is continuing. There have been numerous attacks on Sri Lankan security forces and the Liberation Tigers. Military reprisals against civilians, tacitly encouraged by the government in Colombo, have also escalated. Dozens of people have disappeared after being taken into military custody. An estimated four thousand families have fled Jaffna for the LTTE-held Vanni. Thousands of people in Trincomalee have also moved – or are being blocked by the military from moving – into LTTE-controlled parts of the district. It is amid this climate of fear and despair that Norwegian Special Envoy Erik Solheim will return to Sri Lanka next week in yet another attempt to broker talks on the ceasefire. It remains to be seen whether Sri Lanka will agree to hold talks in Oslo or continue to prioritise its insistence that LTTE officials be excluded from Europe over stopping the slide to war.

The Tamil community, now under widespread and sustained harassment by the security forces, is as anxious for peace as any of the observers. But by peace we mean a genuine return to normalcy – not just the doldrums that the peace process was drifting in a few short weeks ago. In other words, we want the long overdue implementation of the normalcy clauses of the February 2002 ceasefire: the disarming of the Army-backed paramilitaries, the withdrawal of Sri Lankan security forces from our homes, schools, places of worship and other public places, the lifting of the restrictions on fishing and farming, and so on. This is not some radical new concept – the Tamil community has been asked for this repeatedly for four years now, to no avail.

Amid the international community’s expressions of concern and disapproval, one stands out in the Tamil perspective: that of US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Mr. Jeffrey Lunstead. Speaking to the American Chamber of Commerce in Sri Lanka last week, Mr. Lunstead lambasted the LTTE. Amid what is a spiral of violence and counter violence, he singled out the LTTE for blame. As thousands of Tamils fled military reprisals he congratulated the Colombo government ‘for its restraint.’ Holding the LTTE responsible for the wider failures of the peace process, Mr. Lunstead even blamed it for the lack of ‘investment and industry’ in the Northeast. We wonder whether the US has - even once in the past four years - encouraged the members of Mr. Lunstead’s audience in the American Chamber of Commerce to invest in the Tamil territories.We do know, however, that in all that time, the LTTE has been striving to mobilise the Tamil Diaspora to this end. We do not recall Mr. Lunstead protesting last year when the PTOMS joint mechanism for sharing international aid with the Tamil areas was abrogated by the Colombo government – though we do recall the US refusing to put funds through it when it was finally signed.

The Tigers must, Mr. Lunstead said, repeating a standard US maxim, ‘renounce terrorism in word and deed.’ Then, he suggested, probably less reassuringly than he intended, there ‘might be’ a role for the LTTE - in Sri Lanka’s development. But curiously enough, his government’s attitude towards the Colombo government does not seem contingent on its behaviour. There has been, for example, no mention of human rights of late - even when ‘disappearances’ and assaults of civilians are reported from the North. Or when five students were summarily executed in Trincomalee. Or when almost a thousand Tamils were arrested enmasse in Colombo. Most importantly, amid widely expressed fears of a renewed war, Mr. Lunstead last week assured the Sinhala nationalist government of his government’s military support in the event of war.

The Tamils have repeatedly argued that international support for Sri Lanka’s military emboldens the Sinhala nationalists and buttresses Colombo’s intransigence in the peace process. Little wonder then that the JVP and JHU are this week again urging a military solution to the Tamil question. The United States is one of the four Co-Chairs overseeing the peace process. Mr. Lunstead’s comments have thus not only damaged the Co-Chairs credibility as even-handed advocates of a solution amongst Sri Lanka’s communities, but changed the dynamic between the two protagonists at a crucial and sensitive time. As many amongst us are pointing out, the Tamils are receiving a lesson in realpolitik: interests matter more rather values. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Solheim’s visit will end Sri Lanka’s slide towards the abyss. But in the meantime, the Tamils must brace for difficult times ahead. Ambassador Lunstead has said the US ‘wants the cost of war to be high’ and, as the unreconstructed devastation across our homeland testifies, Sri Lanka will, with US support, ensure that.

She also spoke frankly to Tamil Guardian about the politics of gender empowerment in Tamil society and the role of the diaspora in the Tamil struggle.

Military violence against women

“Women are a voiceless people, so the Army can do anything. Women don’t even like to be alone in their houses, it’s not safe for them. But women are also scared to leave their houses because of the Army. So they are idle, imprisoned in their own homes and even there they are fearful. The Army can come quickly and quietly into their homes, do whatever they want, and get away without ever being punished.”

“Women have been comparatively more affected by living under the Army’s rule, so they are turning to the Tamil Tigers more. Rape and sexual assault is pervasive under military occupation, so women are more compelled to take arms and protect themselves.”

A change in social norm

“Our culture says that women cannot do everything men can, so men must take care of the women. Thus women have to get permission to go to work, to leave the house, to do anything. All sisters are scared of their brothers, afraid of their father and mother, very afraid of all these people who have control over them. As children, they don’t realize this is wrong, they just think it is the way of life. But now that there are women fighters, people are realizing women should be equal.”

“In old Tamil literature, women were very soft and passive. They were shown as helplessly dependent upon others. When people have been brought up in this culture, they don’t think women can use big vehicles and big weapons. In our culture, women aren’t even allowed to enter the sea for fear of ‘tainting’ the water – only men can do the fishing. But now women fight in these seas as Sea Tigers. Women also used to not be allowed to enter paddy fields traditionally, but now there are women everywhere. Women used to not even be taken to cemeteries to mourn the death of loved ones, but now women are in charge of martyr’s homes. Now female cadres even drive huge buses. No one would have imagined it.”

“The movement has shown that women can and should be equal. Before women’s liberation simply talked about these vague qualities but never had any proof that women were equal. The movement proved everything. Women have now become recognized for their talents and capabilities. People’s opinions are changing, and families give higher respect to women. They have realized society must also become equal.”

“Initially male cadres didn’t believe women could fight as well as men can. They challenged women to lift bigger bombs and so forth, and only after seeing the strength of women did male fighters respect them. There are still people saying women are not equal to men, because they grew up believing that all their lives. You can’t suddenly change that, it takes time.”

Cultural resistance

“Civilians don’t accept gender equality very easily. The Tiger leadership says to wear pants and act equally to men, but the culture is very strict. University boys may make comments. They have been brought up to think women are not equal, so people must change mentally. But since women have been fighting alongside men within the Tigers, people are beginning to realize they are equal.”

“Originally, the Tigers did not want to let women join because our cultural norms were so disempowering to women. They were accepted only for first aid work. But these women kept going to the Tiger leadership and demanding they too be allowed to fight. The Tiger leadership realized the passion and capabilities of Tamil women, and so the Birds of Freedom, the female fighters, were born.”

Theatre therapy

“There are such serious stresses upon women: so many have been sexually assaulted or raped. Some children have seen their mothers raped in front of them. Or women’s husbands have been killed by the Army. There are so many problems for women under occupied rule. So our theatre group did workshops where we would have meditations and sing songs. People would get very emotional, describing difficult feelings. This brought in their stresses from the outside, and people showed such strong feelings it would break even windows. We had a theatre temple and would discuss women’s problems and how they could improve their lives. This helped build self-confidence, and make women more active on issues they face.”

“Now looking at Tamil Resurgence Events such as Pongu Tamil, women are more active than men. After women were attempted to be raped in Jaffna, there were more women agitating at the next day’s demonstration, demanding justice. This shows Tamil women have become more empowered.”

Deteriorating security

“The Army and police do nothing to stop this violence or the crime. They don’t care about the well-being of Tamil people, so can be paid bribes to do nothing. There are problems with smaller gangs, stealing from people and houses. The Army supports this because they too profit. Before the Tigers had political officers in Jaffna, and everyone was safer then. The Tigers brought law and order to the area, and people knew there would be actual consequences if they did not obey the laws.”

The compulsion for Tamil self-rule

“We wanted to try as much as we could to resolve these issues peacefully. Our people understand this. But even after the tsunami, we tried for months to create a structure so aid could come to Tamil areas, but this utterly failed. It was needed for immediate rehabilitation, but it took seven months. Even the international community had to put great pressure on the government, otherwise former president Chandrika Kumaratunga would have dragged it out. But even after signing they didn’t implement it. Our people understand this well. This wasn’t political at all, this aid was needed solely for humanitarian work. But the Sinhala people did not want to give any help to the Tamils, and our people understand this.”

“So rehabilitation work is going much slower in Tamil areas than in Sinhala areas. Non-governmental organizations which came first promised to do great work and didn’t; even some other NGOs that wanted to help were limited by the government, who made NGOs register extensively. Some NGOs would only give boats or nets to a family, and this would be useless because fishermen need both boats and nets to work. Only the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization really helped people. NGOs said they must definitely give money to the Northeast, but nothing happened. They easily got money from the international community, but this was a waste. Nothing changed. Tamils are still suffering.”

Militarised peninsula

“Because of the demarcation of areas as High Security Zones, people can’t visit their own homes. It has been more than 20 years that people have had to leave their houses, and are now living in relatives’ homes, in small small huts. In one room the mother, father and children must live, and this has been very difficult for our people. This is where cultural deterioration happened, where the father may drink too much liquor and start quarrelling with the family. So students would not be able to study in peace. If the parents died, these children would not even be able to find their own houses or land. The government gives one or two houses back, but there are so many thousands still waiting. They just return a few homes for propaganda, but don’t really accomplish anything.”

Lagging behind

“There is now more development in Kilinochchi than Jaffna. In Jaffna we need permission from the government to build and conduct projects, but in Kilinochchi there are no such restrictions. There people can build as they want, and there is even a medical college being built. This is great because we have such a shortage of doctors, since ours go abroad to work and so people are desperate for medical help. But now there are Tiger doctors who do mobile work in Jaffna. We’d love to create a medical college like that in Vanni, but the government will not allow us to even open a college. The government truck used to come daily to take the trash in Jaffna, but now the government doesn’t send these trucks. So there is lots of rubbish in the streets. We tell people to keep this in the house, but many people don’t have room in their small small houses and so they have to dump this in the streets.”

“Our model is Kilinochchi, there is no trash there. There are no children who are abandoned with no one to take care of them. The movement teaches people even if they are poor and have nothing to offer in return. There are places for mothers and fathers who are elderly and alone. There will be these welfare supports all throughout Eelam. Our model will be Kilinochchi. But only after we get a country can we achieve these greater things.”

Anger, frustration and war

“People are ready to return to war. They want to fight against the Army and the years of oppression they’ve lived under. People know if the war begins, the Army will come and indiscriminately shoot civilians, so civilians are volunteering for short trainings to learn to defend themselves. At the Jaffna border, the Tigers give training and people go on large buses from Army-occupied areas and tell the Army when they return that they have just been trained. They are not afraid. Tsunami-affected people in Vadamarachy have gone for training, and when they fish and the Army asks them to show their Identification Cards, some refuse in anger, saying they’ve been trained by the Tigers and won’t show their IC. The people are very angry at the Army and their careless treatment of Tamils and their rights. People are ready for the war, with modernized equipment and stronger will. We believe victory will come to us quickly, it will not be a long war. If the situation continues like this, with this covert war on Tamils throughout the Northeast, our fighters may lose their spirits. So we cannot wait for long.”

“Everyone wants to liberate our lands, but many people are working for their families with little time to actively work for this. Other people don’t participate because they know the government will harass those who support the Tamil cause. But everyone comes for Pongu Tamil and demonstrations like this to show they too are enthusiastic for the liberation of Tamils.”

“It will be like our last victory at Elephant Pass, where the Army fled so fast to try to go to the Sinhala areas. They were so pitiable, they had no idea where they were and went it all different directions. Many fled from Vavuniya, so now buses are checked at the Army’s checkpoint to make sure no Army soldiers are deserting.”

Reaching out to the Diaspora

“We need the help of foreign Tamils. There is such a big scarcity of skills, to build homes and so forth, because for 20 years we couldn’t build anything because the cement wasn’t allowed to come to Tamil areas. So the younger generation does not know these technical skills. People from abroad can come and help train people so we can better develop and progress.”

“The desire of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka is very clear, from Pongu Tamil and all the resurgence events throughout the Northeast. But in the media this is lost: Reuters said only 40,000 people participated but in actuality 150,000 people attended. The media does not accurately reflect the aspirations of the Tamil people. So anti-propaganda work must be done. This too is like a war, just not by weapons.”

“Even after the election, when Tamil people decided not to participate, the media tells similar lies. People decided to boycott because they saw nothing could be gained by voting, but the media said it was simply because they were afraid of the Tigers that they didn’t vote. But this was an election for Sinhala people to select their leader; we already have our leader.”

“The diaspora must tell the world the truth of Tamils. They must explain what it is truly like there, and what people truly want. From now we will not be going through the Sri Lankan government to contact the international community. Now we will only take our state, and ask the international community to recognize us. We have everything already established for our state structure, the political, economic, legal, education, human rights organizations. The Tigers have established a strong welfare state. Even in Jaffna, when people have problems they don’t go to the police they’d rather go to the LTTE. So we are asking the international community to recognize us as a state. This is the work of foreign Tamils.”

Just four weeks after winning a bitterly fought election, Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapakse began, on December 27, a four-day visit to India, a crucial ally in his government’s efforts to defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

One of the main objectives of Rajapakse’s state visit, analysts said, was to bring India decisively into the Sri Lankan peace process alongside the others in the powerful quartet – the United States, European Union, Japan and Norway. The visit was also aimed to enhance the newly elected President’s personal standing, given the close links that his predecessor, Chandrika Kumaratunga and archrival in the election, Ranil Wickremesinge, have with Tamil Nadu’s leadership.

With its 65 million Tamils who harbour sympathies for fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka, the public endorsement by the political establishment the India’s southernmost state is vital if the new President is to challenge perceptions of Sinhala chauvinism. As a consequence, a meeting with the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Ms. Jeyalalitha Jeyaram, was also high on Mr. Rajapakse’s agenda.

The visit, however, did not exactly go according to plan. Firstly, India declined Mr. Rajapakse’s offer to become more actively involved in Sri Lanka’s peace process. Secondly, the scheduled meeting with Ms. Jeyalalitha was not only cancelled but quickly became caught up in humiliating controversy.

Initially, Ms. Jeyalalitha was supposed to travel to New Delhi to meet with Mr. Rajapakse. But just two days before his arrival in the Indian capitol, it was announced that she would, in fact, not fly to meet him there. Instead, the President would have to travel to Tamil Nadu if he was to secure a meeting. It was diplomatic blow, a breach of appropriate protocol for a state visit by a national leader.

Nevertheless, according to a report in the Times of India, a ‘neutral’ venue – a five star hotel in Chennai was arranged for the meeting on Friday, December 30th. However, a report in a Tamil Nadu daily newspaper, Thinathanthi, on Thursday quoted India’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Navtej Sarna, as saying that the meeting had been cancelled due to conflicting schedules. The Chief Minister, it appeared, was now not available on the day and the President – who had a “full schedule in Delhi” did not have an alternative date.

Notably, however, the paper went on to highlight plans by rival parties to Ms. Jeyalalitha’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazakham (AIADMK) to stage demonstrations to protest Mr. Rajapakse’s planned visit to Tamil Nadu and raised questions as to whether rising Tamil antagonism to Rajapakse, the Sinhala nationalists’ candidate of choice, was the real cause for the cancellation.

The paper also noted that a ‘Eelam Tamils Protection’ conference had been organized by local supporters of the Sri Lankan Tamils’ cause that Friday. In particular, the conference organizers were keen to express their outrage Tamils were still being targeted by Sri Lankan security forces. The conference had deliberately been scheduled to coincide with Rajapakse’s state visit.

The event, as it transpired, was attended by many heavy weights from Tamil Nadu’s political spectrum, including Dr Ramadoss, founder-leader of Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Mr. V Gopalasamy, General Secretary of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, (MDMK), and Mr. Veeramani, general secretary of the Dravidar Kazhagam, as well as a large number of ordinary people. The event signaled that, despite doubts about its salience to local politics, the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils was still very much a concern to Tamils in Tamil Nadu. In particular, it was still a potential political mobilizer.

The issue here is that the coalition of Tamil Nadu parties of which the PMK and MDMK are important members is itself an important member of the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition that is ruling India.

Mr. Veeramani, addressing the conference, ridiculed Mr. Rajapakse’s visit: “every time the Sri Lankan government experiences difficulty in handling the Tigers, they come running to Delhi for talks and say to the international community that India is on their side. How can we as Tamils stay silent when the Sri Lankan government continue their unjust to Eelam Tamils – our brothers and sisters?”

Dr Ramadoss told the conference that “the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka has been left to continue for so long. We should be supporting the Eelam struggle. There are sixty two million Tamils are in support of Eelam Tamils and we should always openly show our solidarity!”

Later, Mr. V Gopalasamy, a prominent supporter of the LTTE, emphatically declared: “Tamils’ emotions can never die and by labeling us as LTTE supporters, the other side of the struggle has been hidden for so long – that is the truth and justice behind the Eelam struggle”. He further went to list atrocities inflicted by the Sri Lankan government on Tamils there, including the burning of the Jaffna Library and the 1983 pogrom.

Retorting to India’s official statements that Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity must be assured in any solution to that country’s ethnic question, Mr. Gopalasamy sardonically noted: “it is the people of Sri Lanka who should decide whether Sri Lanka should stay as a single territory or not, and countries such as India have no authority to make such calls”. He argued that if this is the case then India should have spoken against the split of East Timor from Indonesia in 1999 too.

Meanwhile, on January 2, it was reported that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led Democratic Progressive Alliance (DPA), which also includes the local Congress party, several Dravidian parties like the PMK and the MDMK and the Left parties will formally kick off its campaign on January 18 for the coming Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.

The Sri Lankan question is, even here, part of the mix to be contended with. Mr. Karunanidhi, DMK president, declared, for example, that “on MDMK and PMK’s demand that the Centre should not sell arms to Sri Lanka, the leaders of these parties have had discussions with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.”

“As far as the DMK was concerned, the party always toed the line of the Centre on foreign policy,” Mr. Karunanidhi said. But the party was firm, he declared, that Sri Lankan Tamils should not be “tortured on any account.”

The PMK, according to other local reports, had strongly opposed any move on India’s part to take over Norway’s role in the Sri Lankan peace process. A resolution to this effect was adopted at the party’s high-level executive committee and general council meetings, which were presided over by PMK founder-leader Dr S Ramadoss.

From the recent Tamil Nadu political developments, it is clear that Ms Jeyalalitha, who has openly attacked the Liberation Tigers on many occasions and has never shown any sympathy towards the sufferings of the Sri Lankan Tamils, was forced to compete for local nationalistic credibility.

It was quite clear a meeting with Rajapakse could have been used against her party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazakham (AIADMK) by her political opponents and that this could seriously damage her chances in the coming election - especially since Rajapakse’s close allies include the Sinhala chauvinist party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

The timing of the meeting was also tricky: it was widely felt that Tamils were being targeted and subjected to violence in the North and East of the country by the Sri Lankan armed forces particularly after Rajapakse took office.

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister therefore prudently cancelled the meeting with the Sri Lnakna President – thereby reaping some kudos for her strong stance to boot.

There are other potential sources of friction between Chennai and Colombo. One is tension over fishing, acutely highlighted on January 8 when Sri Lanka gunboats again fired on Tamil Nadu fishermen near Kachatheevu Island in Palk Straits.

According to a press reports, an infuriated Ms Jayalalitha has written to the Central government, asking Delhi to ‘lodge a strong protest’ with Colombo against the Sri Lanka navy’s “indiscriminate and murderous attack on poor fishermen.”

The complex of relations between Colombo and Delhi and Delhi and Chennai turns on the fact that Tamil Nadu parties are crucial allies for any party that intends to take power in Delhi. The present Congress-led coalition, includes the DMK, MDMK and PMK. Tamil Nadu politics thus has a not insignificant impact on the policies undertaken by the central government.

For instance, the scrapping, in September 2004, of the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act (PoTA), a piece of anti-terrorism legislation enacted by the Parliament of India in 2002, was largely due to the pressures exerted by few of the coalition parties, particularly the MDMK.

Tamil Nadu political analysts suggest Rajapakse’s visit was badly timed and orchestrated. Firstly, the Sri Lankan government failed to sense the mood of the populace in Tamil Nadu prior to his tour. Secondly, instead of raising his profile in the international arena, the tour has instead undermined his standing, particularly given the clumsy diplomacy around it. Thirdly, it has helped to underscore to the same international audience, the potency of Tamil sentiments, particularly in relation to the Sri Lankan Tamils. Fourthly, and perhaps most crucially, it has also demonstrated the extent to which the policy options available to India’s central government are closely tied, via coalition politics, to prevailing sentiments amongst Tamil Nadu’s people.

The lessons are not likely to be lost on observers of and protagonists in Sri Lanka’s conflict. Despite Colombo’s assertion the ethnic question is an internal matter, President Rajapakse’s first state visit abroad has revealed it is anything but that.

Like that of many of his predecessors, the government of Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse has made fresh representations to the international community that his government seeks a negotiated solution to the island’s ethnic conflict whilst, simultaneously, branding its potential partners in peace, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as ‘ruthless terrorists’ whose activities in should be banned in foreign countries. Despite the obvious contradiction in Colombo’s stances toward the LTTE, the publicly adopted positions of foreign actors suggest that they accept Sri Lanka’s case at face value.

The position adopted by Sri Lanka’s foreign minister this week echoes assertions by former holders of his post (during both times of peace and war) to their counterparts in the international community. Although not all leading states involved in Sri Lanka have readily adopted the anti-LTTE measures demanded by Sri Lanka, their policies have clearly been moulded within Colombo’s framework. The argument goes thus: Sri Lanka is a ‘vibrant’ democracy - perhaps with a few flaws, but those can be addressed in a more peaceful context - but the ‘fanatical’ LTTE is a violent group that places its own interests above those of the people it claims to represent and, as a result, has to be deterred, using any tools available, from plunging the island (back) into war.

Limiting the discussion to this simplistic dichotomy seems the only way for various foreign actors to understand the island’s conflict and draw up their policies with regards to Sri Lanka. The international tools deployed include providing substantial aid to the state’s civil and military structures, proscribing the LTTE and blunting the organization’s political project. The objective has been to deter the LTTE (the hardline protoganist), from challenging the state and, simultaneously, to bolster the latter against the former. Tamil criticism of such international attitudes has largely turned on the fact that such policies have failed to successfully encourage the Sri Lankan state to offer a reasonable political solution for the ethnic question and, more regrettably, to roll back the persecution and marginalisation the Tamils suffer under the Sinhala-dominated state.

The bona fides of the new Sri Lankan administration leave a lot to be desired. Having come to power on a Sinhala nationalist wave, the ruling coalition is led by a President whose strong Sinhala Buddhist credentials earned him the support of stridently hard line southern parties. The government’s contradictory signals - calling its future negotiating counterparts ruthless terrorists whilst simultaneously urging peace talks - could be attributed to political naivety or a need to balance different constituencies.

However, Colombo’s unleashing of military violence against Jaffna’s resients is less forgivable and more revealing of the state’s mindset. Within two months of Rajapakse’s election, the Sri Lankan military, lead by hard-line commanders he has newly installed, have revived a regime of extra-judicial killings, rape, and arbitrary arrests. The state of fear that Sri Lanka was notorious for prior to the ceasefire of 2002 has returned in just weeks.

Last week the military placed restrictions on the movement of journalists (and the week before that before that on NGO workers) in and out of the Northeast, an ominous step that revives memories of blackouts by past governments of the wholesale atrocities. Perhaps the most appalling signal of the new government’s mindset came, however, from comments by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweewa to US Secreteray os State Condoleeza Rice. He told her that his government ‘would be unable to prevent’ communal violence against Tamils should the international community fail to intervene to force the LTTE to talks. The thinly veiled threat referred, as Tamils know full well, to the 1983 state-sponsored pogrom against them.

The justification for the increase in state violence and persecution is the need to confront increasing attacks on Sri Lankan military personnel by Tamil armed groups - which Colombo insists are fronts for the LTTE. The international community has duly commended the Sri Lankan state for its restraint in the face of attacks by these groups. Unfortunately, the international community has also refused to criticize Colombo’s escalating repression against the Tamil civilian population, seeming to endorse it. (Notably, when it comes to restraint, there was little encouragement for LTTE when the organization faced similar and in some cases far more serious provocations by the Sri Lankan military, including the sinking of two ships and the assassinations of prominent regional leaders.)

Even the assassination of elected Tamil politicians sympathetic to the LTTE by Army-backed paramilitaries – the most recent murder was of Joseph Pararajasingham shot dead whilst attending Christmas Mass – has not drawn a murmur of international protest. The failure by the international community – especially the European Union, which reacted so vehemently to the killing of Foreign Lakshman Kadirgamar - to condemn the murder of a Tamil MP has seriously undermined the moral basis on which international demands are routinely asserted. The international silence accompanying the Sri Lankan armed forces’ ongoing efforts to put down Tamil discontent with ruthless violence - including disappearances and summary executions - is a disturbing sign of things to come: the silence that accompanied Sri Lanka’s blockade on food and medicine into Tamil areas during the earlier round of conflict is by no means forgotten.

Crucially, for the peace process, and the credibility of its international underwriters, the failure of the Sri Lankan state to adhere to key agreements already reached have also been readily forgiven. Amongst these are the Ceasefire Agreement itself, which stipulates that the state must allow the 800,000 displaced Tamils (nearly a quarter of the Tamil population) to return to their occupied homes. The joint committees set up between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE during the four years with the aim of rehabilitating the Northeast failed due to government lethargy. Yet there was no international criticism. The final cooperative venture between the state and the LTTE was, of course, the failed Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structures (P-TOMS), designed to provide much needed humanitarian assistance to the region worst hit by the natural disaster last year. The declaration by Sri Lanka’s supreme court that the P-TOMS was unconstitutional put paid to that venture. Again, hardly an international protest.

It cannot have escaped the international community that the Sri Lankan state has absolved its responsibilities for those living outside the areas it controls, as evidenced by the sabotaging of the P-TOMS structure and its earlier efforts to appropriate and divert international aid. By contrast, the LTTE has demonstrated via its civil structures, redevelopment work and humanitarian efforts – especially in the face of the tsunami (and repeated floods) - that it has adopted the role of the state large parts of the Northeast.

The conventional state/non-state logic is thus not applicable in Sri Lanka, due to the reversal of role between the two primary domestic actors. Hence, concerns that were traditionally considered when contemplating the spectrum of action against the state has to apply to the non-state actor as well. Sri Lanka has asked the United States to shut down the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) for example. Acceding to the request will immediately impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of Tamils who rely on the organization.

The belligerent state, whose delusional assertion of sovereignty have included unilateral efforts to dislodge Norway, the facilitator in the peace process and whose government is too dependent on extreme right-wing elements to take any constructive steps toward a substantive peace. By contrast, the LTTE has made notable concessions and reached a number of agreements aimed at returning stability and normalcy to the war-torn regions - the latest of which was the ill-fated P-TOMS. The state has chosen to ignore the plight of an entire ethnic community, whilst the non-state actor has built an infrastructure to maintain law and order and provide social services and humanitarian assistance to those living within the areas it controls.

Over the past two decades the international community has no doubt had to re-evaluate its understanding of the ethnic problem on the island, assisted by academic institutions, which have sought to fit the complex conflict to a model which could explain its observable dynamics. Over a decade ago the conventional wisdom and the line promoted by Colombo, were largely that the LTTE was a fanatical, fringe organization that did not enjoy widespread support amongst the Tamil community and the solution to a peaceful Sri Lanka was the military elimination of the entity, and certain reforms of the state that would placate Tamil grievances. More recent policies suggest that though the international community accepts that the Tamil community have genuine grievances (for which some feel federalism is the necessary solution), it still feels that the LTTE - despite its popular support - is a hardline organization whose end objectives are not aligned to a peaceful solution.

But the fundamental aspect of the Tamil community’s relationship with the LTTE that the international community has failed to appreciate is that the movement is still the only entity on the island that is still pursuing Tamil interests, both humanitarian and political. Despite four years of peace, the Sri Lankan state has failed to deliver on a single signed agreement, and a quarter of the Tamil population remain displaced from their homes. Amid the impasse on aid, the Sinhala parts of Sri Lanka grow stronger whilst the Tamil parts remain destitute. A situation in which the Northeast remains trapped in an economic stalemate whilst the South prospers economically suits the hawkish Sinhala. Wittingly or otherwise the international community has played a crucial part in this dynamic over the past four years.

It is in this abject humanitarian environment that Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry is pressuring the members of the European Union to proscribe the LTTE as a terrorist organization. Should the EU buckle under the weight of Sri Lankan diplomatic pressure it would further undermine the bloc’s standing as an impartial actor in the island’s ethnic conflict.

Under these circumstances, an EU proscription – and its associated moral condemnation - will do little to improve the Europe’s strategic leverage on the island’s deteriorating situation. To date the LTTE has been banned in four major countries where there is a substantial Tamil Diaspora. The organization has continued to thrive despite the proscriptions. However, the states that banned the LTTE have been unable to fully engage in the peace process with both key protagonists. Should the EU follow suit it too will be restricted to working the hawkish new administration of President Rajapkase and third party dialogue via the Norwegian facilitators.

Most importantly, it will also reinforce Tamil perceptions that realpolitik and not moral imperatives drive policy decisions in foreign capitals and thus re-emphasize the need for self-help and self-reliance in all matters, including security.