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  • Insecurity and the lessons of history

    May 20
    At the heart of the Sri Lankan conflict is racism. And the insecurity, envy and hatred that always accompanies racism.
     
    A common explanatory adage for the bitter conflict today is that the Sinhala people suffer from ‘insecurity’; that they see themselves as a unique island people under perpetual threat.
     
    Apparently there are ‘only’ 17 million Sinhalese in the world, in fear of being swamped by the billion Indians across the Palk Straits, especially the 60 million Tamils – because there are ‘already’ 3 million Tamils on the island.
     
    ‘Surrounded’ by these ‘others’ in the region, the Sinhalese are reportedly a ‘majority with a minority complex’.
     
    International analysts and diplomats routinely accept this ‘insecurity.’ For example a report by the conflict think tank, International Crisis Group, worries that “the international community has struggled to come to terms with Sinhala nationalism, frequently misunderstanding its nature and legitimacy.”
     
    “Interventions, even including the Norwegian-sponsored 2002 ceasefire, which most Sinhalese ultimately judged as too favourable to the LTTE, have tended to stimulate xenophobic elements in the Sinhala community and help the extreme nationalist parties gain ground,” the ICG patiently spells out.
     
    A BBC survey of the mood on the street in Colombo quotes a middle class Sinhala professional explaining the historic insecurity of the Sinhalese, how they are a minority compared to neighbouring India and how this has fuelled the race ‘tension’ with the Tamils.
     
    Bear in mind that not once has India, the Indian Tamils or, for that matter, the Sri Lankan Tamils, laid claim to the Sinhala territories.
     
    The irrationality of this ‘minority while a majority’ complex struck me when a Dutch colleague expansively informed me, in a recent discussion about identity: “you know, there are almost 17 million of us Dutch.”
     
    Arguably, the ‘just’ 16.57 million Dutch in Holland are very much ‘surrounded’ by over 700 million “others” in Europe, including 82 million Germans who not so long ago invaded and occupied their homeland.
     
    But there is no minority complex, despite a resurgent Germany driving European fortunes. Indeed, Holland is an enthusiastic participant in the European project.
     
    Moreover, The Netherlands is the 25th most densely populated country in the world whereas Sri Lanka is 39th.
     
    Nonetheless, the Dutch do not think of themselves as a ‘small’ nation under threat of being swamped. But apparently, the Sinhalese are a to be seen as a fearful ‘small’ nation under siege.
     
    This alone is not enough for conflict, of course. Having found themselves an enemy without, the Sinhalese have also found an enemy within: the island’s Tamils.
     
    Of course, every nation has its bit of racism. In Europe, for example, far right groups in many states love to hate immigrants (usually, but not exclusively, the dark-skinned kind): “they are taking away our jobs”, “they don’t want to fit in”, “our identity will be lost” and so on. 17% of the French voted for the National Front in 2002.
     
    It shouldn’t be forgotten that the Sinhala people also had their form of ‘immigration angst’: immediately after independence, they enthusiastically supported the stripping of citizenship from a million ‘Indian’ Tamils who had been brought to the island by the British generations earlier to work on the plantations.
     
    What was served by this act of pure racism? What were these people who had been born on the island and knew no other home expected to do? The answer is the war cry of far rightists everywhere: “go back to your country!”
     
    But the deep-seated racism in Sri Lanka is different. For the Tamils of the Northeast are not recent or arriving immigrants and this is not the usual angst of ‘integration’.
     
    Rather, the Tamil people have lived on the island in their own contiguous, distinct, geographical territory for millennia. They lay claim only to the territory they have historically lived in. In fact, the 3 million Tamils constituted a nation with distinct self-governance until invaded and occupied by Colonial powers – who amalgamated them with the Sinhala nation and territory for pure administrative convenience.
     
    However, having accorded themselves an insecurity complex, the Sinhalese are now apparently entitled to dictate the fortunes of the Tamils. Hence their ‘legitimate fears and grievances’ in the conflict.
     
    The destruction of a people begins with the shattering of its identity. But to create the necessary conditions for the destruction of a minority, there needs to be not only an ‘insecurity complex’, but shared focus on the ‘enemy within’ – demonization necessarily precedes annihilation.
     
    The Tamils may have never claimed any Sinhala territory. Yet within years of independence in 1948 (at which point, both 3m Tamils and 17m Sinhalese inherited a reasonably healthy state), Sinhala ‘insecurity’ came to the fore as reality for them to contend with.
     
    Knowing that the island was home to two distinct, though not antagonistic, cultures, what could possibly be the Sinhala population’s rationale in opting for the ‘Sinhala Only’ Language Act in 1956?
     
    Except to deny that ‘other’, enemy, nation its identity and, ergo, its legitimate existence?
     
    What is the mind set of the civil service official, the teacher, the academic or other worker who casts his or her vote on the promise of such a chauvinistic act - knowing full well that it will require their Tamil colleagues to either learn Sinhalese and pass a fluency test or lose their jobs?
     
    And, 25 years later, what could possibly be the logic of Sinhala ministers and police torching the Jaffna library and its 97,000 (yes, ninety seven thousand) rare historical books and archival manuscripts in 1981?
     
    Why did this act of cultural vandalism provoke, not shock and dismay amongst the Sinhala nation, but quiet satisfaction?
     
    Sixty years after independence, the Tamils are still, apparently, a source of Sinhala ‘insecurity’. That is why all manner of violence can be unleashed against them – all in the name of the making the Sinhalese ‘secure’.
     
    Tamils are bombed, starved en masse, abducted, ‘disappeared’, driven from their towns and villages into refugee camps. The Toronto Star last week quoted a Western diplomat as saying: “nowhere in Sri Lanka are the Tamils safe. What's happening here is de facto ethnic cleansing.”
     
    And yet all this is apparently explainable through the logic of Sinhala ‘insecurity’.
     
    Amid racially-driven antagonism, minorities sometimes seek to camouflage themselves: integrating, lowering their profile and so on. But, ultimately, none of this will offer no protection against a chauvinistic adversary.
     
    And ‘democracy’ is no hindrance to racism. Indeed, democracy only serves to allow racism – on the basis of democratic will itself – to gain momentum.
     
    If this sounds familiar it should be; the story of such racism mobilising by winning elections and leading to genocide is not new. This is the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel by the then long-persecuted Jewish people.
     
    The Nazis came to power though the elections of July 1932, as Germany’s single largest party, with 37.5% of the popular vote. They took over 13 million votes compared to their nearest rivals, the Social Democrats with 8 million votes.
     
    Moreover, the Nazis had increased their base from the previous elections in 1928 by appealing, not to the ignorant, but to middle class voters.
     
    The marginalisation and persecution of the Jews in Germany also started with legislation; in 1933 the Nazis passed a law purging the civil service of officials of Jewish descent. Admission to the legal profession was restricted, media was purged of Jews, as were artistic professions. The military was sine quo non.
     
    The parallels these dynamics have to Sri Lanka’s post-independence history are unmistakable.
     
    The conditions often cited for the rise of Nazism were the economic depression of the inter-war years and the grievances of the German people against the ‘peace’ that the Allies imposed following Germany’s defeat in the WW1.
     
    Herein was the ‘enemy without’. And the Jews were the ‘enemy within’
     
    In ‘Mein Kampf’ Hitler opines: “the strength of a nation lies first of all, not in its arms but its will, and before conquering the external enemy the enemy at home would have to be eliminated.”
     
    The Jews, according to Hitler, held unfair economic advantage; they were the cause of Germany’s ills.
     
    This, by the way, is the exact claim the Sinhalese made whilst justifying ‘Sinhala Only’; that Tamils had been ‘privileged’ by the British over the Sinhalese. There is no explanation for why, however.
     
    As early as 1925 Hitler had stressed to the Nazi party the need to focus on a single combined enemy: ‘Marxism and the Jew.’
     
    Today, replace “Marxism” with “Terrorism”. With this all purpose label, the demonization of the Tamils is complete.
     
    There is an interesting difference between Nazi Germany and Sri Lanka: unlike the Tamil people, the Jewish people did not live in contiguous territory where they were a majority. Indeed, the Jews were deeply integrated into the host German population for centuries. And many believed, quite erroneously, as we now know, that such integration would protect them.
     
    It is also known now that even as the Nazi intent unfolded, even as the racist legislation was passed and thereafter followed by mob violence, arbitrary arrests and detention, following Krisatallnacht, (when over 1000 Synagogues were burned as were Jewish shops and businesses, hundreds killed and 30,000 men imprisoned in concentration camps), just over 50% of the Jewish population of the Reich (Germany, Austria, the German Czech areas) emigrated.
     
    What is interesting is that he other half of the Jews stayed. As Lucille Eichengreen, a survivor interviewed by Laurance Rees for his book ‘Auschwitz’ says: “when we asked at home, the answer was “It’s a passing phase, it will normalise”.”
     
    And this too is part of the human psyche. The clinging to the familiar, the semblance of safety, even when cold logic says it is not be there. In short, a refusal to acknowledge what is unfolding.
     
    In the initial stages of the Holocaust, the Nazis were content to ‘cleanse’ Germany via the forced emigration of Jews. They even profited from it by taking money from those who left.
     
    Sounds familiar? In Sri Lanka, almost a quarter of the Tamils have been forced abroad. But over 400,000 live in Colombo, though many are awaiting visas or otherwise hoping to go abroad: Colombo’s high rental prices are sustained by these people ‘in transit’.
     
    In contrast to Kristallnacht, the July 1983 pogrom saw, not hundreds, but three thousand Tamils butchered.
     
    And in the pre-statehood history of the Jewish people is the answer to those who argue that there are Tamils who choose to remain in Colombo ‘amongst the Sinhalese’– despite the checkpoints, the midnight round ups and the occasional deportations to the Northeast.
     
    Indeed, as the Nazis marched through Europe, there were Jewish people in many of the occupied countries who stayed instead of fleeing, hoping that somehow they would be able to live through the ‘abnormality’.
     
    And the Jewish people were not the only ones who refused to see what was inescapable before them.
     
    Laurence Rees interviewed Germans on their attitudes towards the deportations of the Jews amongst them. Uwe Storjohann from Hamburg told him: “maybe around 20% [of Germans] welcomed this with huge joy (“They are only parasites”). But the vast majority bypassed what was happening with silence.”
     
    Moreover, Uwe recalled “the thought occurred: What will happen to these people. I knew of course that it couldn’t be anything positive. They would be sent off into a terrible world”.
     
    According to Rees: “Uwe Storjohann’s admission that he knew the Jews were being sent into a terrible world is probably close to the state of mind of most Germans at the time.”
     
    These two dynamics – the ‘insecure’ majority and the minority ‘enemy within’ – are visibly at play in Sri Lanka. For a quarter of a century, the Sinhala majority have supported the brutality of their governments – after all, it is about their ‘security’, isn’t it?
     
    Rees also interviewed middle level German officials who ran the concentration camps. Interestingly, he found few who relied on the excuse that they were following orders. On the contrary, the explanation often given to him by interviewees was that they believed they were doing the right thing. They believed the Jewish people were the enemy within. No different from the external enemy being fought in the war.
     
    They now accepted they may have been wrong in that belief, but the facts as they them knew at the time led them to that firm belief and, hence, to their murderous actions.
     
    Rees believes so many former Nazis (as an interesting aside, when does a Nazi become a ‘former’ Nazi?) found this self-justification because the Nazi regime built on strongly held prior prejudices against Jews.
     
    Just as in Sri Lanka, there is a solid foundation of existing anti-Tamil prejudices that have been drawn up by Sinhala nationalism – from the ‘privileged’ Tamil to the ‘threatening outsiders’ to ‘terrorist supporters’ and so on.
     
    Of course, it is easy – and convenient - to dismiss Hitler and the Nazis as an aberration, an extreme example, and therefore not a valid comparator.
     
    But historians such as Alan Bullock (author of ‘Hitler: A Study in Tyranny’) and Rees converge in the belief that the terrible outcome, the Holocaust, cannot be attributed only to the Nazi regime but also to the prevalent culture, both in Germany and, moreover, in wider Europe: a racist logic of animosity towards the Jewish people.
     
    As Alan Bullock notes, “Hitler indeed was a European no less a German phenomenon. The conditions and state of mind, which he exploited, the malaise of which he was the symptom were not confined to one country.”
     
    Rees concurs: “Indeed the view that the crime of extermination of the Jews was somehow imposed by a few mad people upon an unwilling Europe is the most dangerous of all.”
     
    Racism is a well known phenomenon now and the path that a racist ideology must trace when it comes to power via democratic government is predictable.
     
    Hitler was able to openly articulate his racial ideology due to the prevailing bigotry in Europe. However, amid the global expectations of the 21st century, Sinhala racism has to be more inhibited in its rhetoric.
     
    As A. Shastri notes, since the end of the Cold War, Sri Lanka’s main Sinhala political parties, increasingly sensitive to international opinion, were becoming ‘careful how they expressed themselves on the ethnic issue.’
     
    The racist process that culminated in the horror of the concentration camps took years to advance. And it evolved organically not through explicit directives from above, but from circulating sentiments amongst the German majority.
     
    “This notion that the Nazis proceeded incrementally against the Jews goes against the understandable desire to point to a single moment when one crucial decision was made for the final solution .. the Nazi regime was one that practised what one historian famously called ‘cumulative radicalisation’,” says Rees.
     
    Likewise, the racist radicalisation of Sri Lanka is also cumulative. It began with chauvinistic legislation and constitutions from 1956, accompanied by a series of increasingly violent pogroms, and culminated in a full frontal attack by the state against the Tamil people.
     
    Racism is the underlying logics of mass displacement, cleansing of historically habited Tamil land, bombing of schools and non-Buddhist places of worship, use of starvation and medical blockade.
     
    Racism fosters the culture of impunity in which disappearances, summary killings, torture and rape take place in Sri Lanka.
     
    The cumulative radicalisation against the Tamils, moreover, is achieved via the democratic process and sustained by it: the self-styled ‘insecurity’ of the Sinhalese is another word for racism.
     
    And as long as the Sinhalese are confident they are winning the war against the Tamils, this chauvinism will grow.
     
    As was the case amongst the German citizens of the Reich. As Rees puts it, “the central truth still holds that the majority of the German population, almost certainly right up until the moment where Germany started to lose the war, felt so personally secure and happy that they would have voted to keep Hitler in power if there had been free and fair elections.”
     
    Recently, The Economist magazine pointed out, that if the war is not being won, the Sinhalese may be restrained by consideration of their own comfortable standard of living: “with much else to complain about, including soaring corruption and inflation at 25%, even the Sinhalese will not back this painful war indefinitely.”
     
    It is in this context of economic comfort fostering tolerance of racism that the EU’s decusion to again extend its massive trade concessions and provide more aid to Sri Lanka must be considered.
     
    What is interesting is how many of the EU countries, whilst protecting of their own Tamil citizens at home are more than ready to sacrifice the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
     
    But Rees’ study of the attitudes amongst Germany’s European neighbours is instructive. When the Nazis invaded France and ordered the French authorities to hand over their Jews for deportation, the French complied. But they selected first, “foreign” Jews as opposed to “our” Jews. Similarly in the Channel Islands, “foreign” Jews were detained and handed over by the local authorities for deportation to Auschwitz.
  • Reserved hero: Brigadier Balraj

    In over two decades of service with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Brig. Balraj, who passed away Tuesday after a heart attack, had been a courageous and skilled fighter and commander whose last years were spent institutionalizing the training of a new generation of LTTE field officers. 

    Although he joined the LTTE later than many of the other top commanders, Brig. Balraj had risen rapidly through the ranks on the strength of his shrewdness on the battlefield and courage under fire, fighters who served with him said this week.

    Brig. Balraj had been ailing for some time and had been hospitalised for two weeks three months ago. He had undergone a heart-related operation in 2003, during the Norwegian peace process. The operation was conducted in a Singapore hospital and he had spent several months recuperating in Vanni thereafter.

    Throughout his career, Brig. Balraj, one the LTTE commanders most feared by the Sri Lankan military, had always preferred to lead his troops from the front.

    LTTE fighters who served with him say he preferred to direct his battles from amidst the exploding shells and flying bullets of the frontline – a few hundred metres from the enemy positions - rather than the confines of a command-centre.

    He had been seriously wounded many times in his two decades of service, the healing often compounded by his diabetes.

    Brig. Balraj had twice commanded the LTTE’s crack Charles Anthony Regiment. He was its first commander for two years from when the unit, designed for conventional warfighting, was established in 1991 and had led it again for another two years from 1995.

    Brig. Balraj came to particular public prominence for his command of a daring operation in 2000 in which he led 1,200 LTTE fighters into the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) -held Jaffna peninsula to capture and hold a section of the key A9 highway linking the SLA base complex at Elephant Pass with the Jaffna rearbase areas.

    The large LTTE strike force slipped into the heavily fortified peninsula by sea and trekked inland from Thalaiyadi to the Puthukkaattu Junction on the A9. With complex defences manned by thousands of Sri Lankan troops, such a move had hitherto been considered an impossibility.

    It was also considered impossible for a lightly armed strike force, surrounded by thousands of Sri Lankan troops supported by artillery, tanks and airpower, to seriously disrupt the key highway for very long.

    However, holding what became called the ‘Vaththirayan Box’, a perimeter of a few kilometres deep inside the Jaffna High Security Zones, with no hope of resupply unless the Elephant Pass base fell to the LTTE, Brig. Balraj and his troops battled the Sri Lankan forces for 34 days with only the weapons they had carried with them.

    When the LTTE assault on the Elephant Pass base complex began, the SLA garrison there was unable to receive supplies from Jaffna due to Balraj’s ‘cut out’.

    The SLA therefore launched repeated onslaughts against Brig. Balraj’s position to clear the A9 and save the Elephant Pass base. As the situation became critical, top Sri Lankan commanders converged in Jaffna to mobilise the relief effort, but to no avail: the ‘Vaththirayan box’ held until the Elephant Pass garrison collapsed before a major LTTE offensive. At least 4 Sri Lankan commanders were put in charge, one by one, against the Tiger forces led by Balraj.

    Brig. Balraj’s raid gave lie to the assumption that no rear defence in depth of a state's conventional army could only be seriously threatened by an armed force supported by strategic air power.

    Balraj (Balasegaram Kandiah) was born on 27 November, 1965. He hails from Kokkuththoduvaay in Mullaiththeevu district.

    He joined the LTTE in 1983 as a part time member and became a full time member in 1984.

    Fellow fighters remark that he had been wounded in combat even before he received his military training: he was in the 9th batch of the LTTE training program in Tamil Nadu.

    In 1985 he departed for India from Vanni for military training. His batch, travelling under the supervision of a senior LTTE cadre, Kandeepan, was confronted by the SLA. Kandeepan and some of the other recruits were killed in the ensuing clash. Balraj was wounded.

    When Balraj came back to Vanni from training in 1986, he served with Major Pasilan.

    Colonel Theepan, the present Northern Forces Commander of the LTTE, recalled that in one heavy battle at Munthirikaikkulam, Balraj took part in an LTTE ambush in which fourteen SLA soldiers were killed and several weapons were seized.

    Balraj later took part in several ambushes on SLA forces in Vanni during that year, demonstrating considerable courage and battlefield acumen, Col. Theepan said in his tribute on Thursday.

    However, Balraj's defining moment as a field commander came later during the India - LTTE war. He fought side by side with Major Pasilan and Major Maran in Jaffna when the conflict erupted between the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in 1987. Armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and a Rocket-Propelled-Grenade launcher, Balraj fought Indian forces at Koapaay, destroying battle tanks.

    Later, as the LTTE shifted its base to Vanni moved and switched from urban- to jungle- warfare, Balraj was moved into the deep jungles of Ma'nalaa'ru, which is near his native place of Kokkuththoduvaay.

    Balraj was wounded three times during direct confrontations with the Indian Army.

    The Indian military launched its Operation Checkmate in several phases, once deploying the elite Gurkha regiment.

    In one critical battlefront, Balraj launched a surprise frontal assault on the Gurkhas located in open terrain. The ferocity of the LTTE attack forced the elite soldiers to scatter into booby-trapped jungles where they suffered heavy casualties. This battlefront defined Balraj as a fearless commander.

    When the conflict between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE resumed after the withdrawal of the IPKF, in what became known as Eelam War II, Balraj led key fronts in several battles and sweeping operations against the SLA.

    In 1990 he was involved in the LTTE’s assault on SLA-held Maangku'lam – in the centre of the now LTTE-held Vanni region.

    Balraj also participated in the LTTE’s first assault on the Elephant Pass base in 1991. Although the LTTE operation failed to capture base, it defined the movement’s forces evolution into a conventional war-fighting force.

    Balraj commanded one of the four fronts in that battle, the only front in which the LTTE forces succeeded in capturing their assigned objective, in this case the barracks part of the base.

    Subsequently, the SLA expanded the EP base into a complex which was the largest SLA installation in the island. Ten years later, it was Balraj’s raid which ensured its fall to the LTTE.

    In 1993, the SLA launched a major offensive, Yarl Devi, against LTTE, under the command of Col. Sarath Fonseka, now a Lt. Gen. and overall commander of the SLA.

    LTTE forces, under the command of Balraj, with Theepan as deputy commander, led a counter-offensive against the advancing SLA forces.

    Taking up entrenched positions in unfavourable, open terrain at Puloappa'lai, the LTTE forces launched a surprise attack on the SLA, inflicting heavy casualties and destroying tanks and armoured vehicles.

    The SLA offensive was routed in six days. Col. Fonseka was amongst the wounded. Balraj was also badly wounded in his leg.

    Adele Balasingham, wife of the LTTE’s late theoretician, Anton Balasingham, recalls Balraj’s injuries in her book, ‘Will to Freedom’, based on her several years of experiences living with the LTTE.

    "A measure of Balraj’s courage revealed itself to us when shrapnel smashed his right leg in the Yarl Devi battle of 1993. A decision not to amputate the limb was made and Balraj suffered excruciating pain of limb repair. Compounding his healing problems was unstable diabetes. After many months in bed and a great deal of pain, Balraj eventually walked again on his leg, but the injury left him with a permanent limp and a recurrent wound infection."

    "Nevertheless, he viewed his injury a insignificant compared with the suffering and sacrifices of his cadres and continued to function as a field commander in the warzone."

    During Eelam War III, which followed the short-lived peace talks with the government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, Balraj commanded important defensive battles against the massed formations of the SLA deployed to capture the Jaffna peninsula.

    He led LTTE forces deployed as part of Operation ‘Tiger Leap’, a counter offensive with operations in sea and land and using surface-to-air attack.

    After the mass civilian exodus from Jaffna compelled by the massive bombardment and ‘broad front’ assault by two divisions of SLA troops, the LTTE again shifted its rear base to Vanni.

    Balraj subsequently led, as Coordinating Commander, the LTTE’s Operation Unceasing Waves I, the assault on the SLA base at Mullaiththeevu in July 1996. The Tigers seized artillery in Mullaiththeevu for the first time.

    Later, in 1997 and 1998, he led several counter-attacks against the SLA’s Operation Jaya Sikirui, then the largest over offensive launched by the Sri Lankan forces.

    In 1998 Balraj led a lighting assault into the then SLA-controlled town of Ki'linochchi, whose residents had fled when the SLA captured it in 1996, soon after the Mullaiththeevu battle. Balraj’s assault was part of Operation Unceasing Waves II, in which Ki'linochchi was again brought under LTTE control.

    Operation Unceasing Waves III, the third in the series, was the massive LTTE counter-offensive in late 1999 and early 2000, which first recaptured in six days the vast territory the SLA had struggled for eighteen months to occupy and then overran the Elephant Pass base complex.

    In 2001, Balraj played a key role in crushing the SLA’s massive Operation ‘Agni Khiela’, in which thousands of soldiers were deployed from the Muhaimalai frontline to capture Elephant Pass from the Tigers.

    The abortive offensive was the last major engagement of Eelam War III as nine months later, the Norwegian-facilitated peace process began in earnest with a mutual ceasefire, later formalized into the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) in February 2002.

    During the lengthy peace process, the LTTE embarked, as part of its state-building project, to institutionalize the training of field commanders at different levels of responsibility.

    Recognizing the unfolding generational shift in one of the world’s longest running liberation struggles, the LTTE sought to impart command knowledge and skills to talented and battle experienced soldiers.

    Balraj, with more than 20-years of combat experience and skilled in various war-fighting strategies, had the assignment of developing the training programs.

    In her book, ‘Will to Freedom’ Adele Balasingham notes her observations about several of the top LTTE figures, including Balraj.

    “Incredible as it may seem, this fighting hero is a reserved man,” she writes.

    “Balraj is known, loved and respected not only for his legendary military successes and undisputed and abounding courage, but also for his utter commitment and devotion to the cadres under his command. Sensitive and respectful of the sacrifice and tribulations they have endured, Balraj opts to spend as much time as possible in the camps with them.”

    In 2003 Balraj suffered a heart attack underwent surgery in Singapore.

    In 2004, Balraj was amongst the senior LTTE officers sent to the east. However, Balraj did not participate in the offensive operations and his exact role in the east remains a secret.

    He was still there in December 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, killing thirty thousand people across the island’s northern, eastern and southern coasts.

    Balraj, based in Vakarai, narrowly escaped the crashing waves and soon after, returned to Vanni, with a number of LTTE fighters. In Vanni he resumed direction of training programs for LTTE officers.

    After the SLA launched major operations in the Eastern province in mid-2006, other top LTTE officers, including Col. Sornam, Col. Banu and Col. Jeyam, who had also been sent to the east, also returned in phases with their fighters.

    Whilst the Sri Lankan government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa said the LTTE had been routed in the east, observers now say the LTTE had opted not to fight in strategically unfavourable terrain and had instead gradually relocated its main forces to the Vanni to confront the SLA’s massed formations there.

    Reports say that even as he was forced to rest in hospital by bouts of illness in the past year, Brig. Balraj had continued to engage himself in the military campaign, often visiting the Mannaar and Ma'nalaa'ru fronts where LTTE fighters are presently putting up stiff resistance against the SLA.

    Speaking in May 2006, soon after the Sri Lankan government had launched its opening offensive against the LTTE in Champoor, in the Eastern Province, Brig (then Colonel) Balraj observed: "The Fourth Eelam War will be the final war, and a terrible war that will bring the long awaited liberation to our people and our homeland. We are certainly positioned to be victorious. The people are with us and our leader will lead us to victory."

  • Blunted Tool
    That Sri Lanka this week failed to garner enough votes at the United Nations to get on to the Human Rights Council will bring cheer to many, including a coalition of international human rights groups and the three Nobel laureates who had publicly called for Colombo’s bid to be rejected. However, this moment is neither some sort of watershed in the Sinhala state’s fortunes nor of any consequence to the ongoing suffering of the Tamil people. In short, whether Sri Lanka is on the council or not, is largely an irrelevancy.
     
    To begin with, it beggars belief that Sri Lanka could even be a credible candidate, given the brazen confidence with which the Sinhala military and its paramilitary allies murder, ‘disappear’, torture and, as news reports are beginning to acknowledge, rape - assuming, of course, that the HRC is taken seriously as site of human rights protection in the first place. Remember that Sri Lanka has actually been on the council for the past two years. Whilst the concept of ‘human rights’ has for almost two decades been promoted by powerful Western states and their associated institutions and organization as supposedly a key principle of modern governance, in practice it has proven remarkably brittle. Not because human rights are still violated, but because both Western states and their developing world favourites have been able to do so without real consequence.
     
    Thus, rather than some sort of ‘universal’ principle, the concept of ‘human rights’ has, in actuality, served mainly as a tool for the West-led international community to (re)order the world to their preference. This is not to say that human rights, in themselves, are not of moral value. As a people who have endured sixty years of oppression, including thirty years of militarized violence by the Sinhala state, the Tamils have long documented and protested their suffering in the language of human rights. Our problem, rather, is the manifest hypocrisy of the West which has, whilst lecturing us solemnly on the overarching morality of human rights, steadfastly backed the state that brutalizes us.
     
    This hypocrisy has become glaring in the past three years, as the Sinhala-supremacist regime of President Mahinda Rajapakse has enjoyed every practical assistance it requires from the West. This assistance has admittedly been rendered amid much admonishment. But harsh words won’t hurt a state like Sri Lanka. No matter how brazen Sri Lanka’s abuses against the Tamils are, concrete steps against the Sinhala state will not be forthcoming: the recent assurance by the EU – which in particular makes much about ‘human rights’ - to extend its trade concessions for three more years is a case in point.
     
    Moreover, what is interesting about this week’s tussle over Sri Lanka the UN is the polarization between various state groupings. For example, whilst Sri Lanka was passionately opposed by Western human rights groups and some states, the Sinhala regime was actively supported by China, India and, according to some reports, Japan. Clearly, this is not to say these states either have no respect for ‘human rights’ nor that they believe Sri Lanka was actually qualified to be on the council. Rather, what we are seeing is interest-driven international politics at play. Indeed, amid such polarization amongst powerful states – not in the overarching sense of the West and the Soviet Union, but on selected issues – the term ‘international community’ is increasingly losing its coherence.
     
    We argued recently that, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of new poles (with their own interests and values) has raised serious challenges to the US-led West's interests, as well as the ideological values it has promoted in the service of those interests. We also argued the Sinhala state is making a deliberate shift to the East and away from the West and that the logic behind this realignment is that Sinhala majoritarianism will inevitably always remain in tension with West’s vision of global liberalism.
     
    Sri Lanka has long been on the frontline of the West’s efforts to expand this liberal order. The Norwegian-led peace process was the most ambitious effort yet to do this. The West mistakenly believed the UNP-led government of Ranil Wickremsinghe was a partner in the project. In reality, whilst the UNP regime was prepared to go along with the Western project (of which Japan, one of the Co-Chairs alongside the US, EU and Norway, was a reticent member), and shared the project’s free-market logic the UNP had no more commitment to liberal political values than the SLFP. Rather, both Sinhala parties are committed to Sinhala majoritarianism and communalism. This has been demonstrated by the lurch towards the Sinhala right the UNP has attempted in the past three years (the Sinhala voters, however, trust the SLFP more than the UNP to safeguard their privileged position).
     
    These dynamics are also at play in the Eastern Province, where, following the laughably unabashed rigging of the Provincial Council elections on May 10, Sivanesathurai Chandrakan, alias Pillayan, the leader of the Army-backed paramilitary group, the TMVP, has been appointed Chief Minister. It was clear that the Western states were clearly hoping for the UNP would win the elections, prompting the Sinhala ultra-nationalist Champika Ranawake, Sri Lanka's Environment minister, to mockingly declare the UPFA’s election victory as a defeat for the 'West-backed Eelamists.'
     
    The point here is that repeated insistence by powerful states, especially the United States, that Sri Lanka is not a strategic concern in no way diminishes their active involvement in the micro-dynamics of the island’s politics and conflict. From the very outset, in the early eighties, of the armed resistance phase of the Tamil liberation struggle, countries such as the United States and India, for example, have sought to pursue their interests through such localized involvement.
     
    What this means for the Tamils is that their grievances only matter when taking these up serves the geopolitical and geoeconomic interests of powerful states. The long-running efforts by the wider Tamil liberation movement to ‘internationalise’ the Tamil cause has therefore not been merely to seek sympathy abroad, but to make it clear that it is not the Tamil demand for independence that makes Sri Lanka a zone of instability and disruption in the international order, but, rather it is the ferocity of the Sinhala state’s efforts to maintain its chauvinistic domination of our people.
     
    The main point for Tamils to bear in mind is this: the world’s powerful states have no more commitment to sovereignty than to human rights. Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity is no more important to them than Tamils’ freedom. It’s just more useful at this point. And as the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston put, ‘we have no permanent friends and we have no permanent enemies. We have permanent interests’. It is no different for any other state in today’s world.
     
    It is in this context the LTTE leader, Vellupillai Pirapaharan, observed in 1993: “Every country in this world advances its own interests. It is economic and trade interests that determine the order of the present world, not the moral law of justice nor the rights of people. International relations and diplomacy between countries are determined by such interests. Therefore we cannot expect an immediate recognition of the moral legitimacy of our cause by the international community. ... In reality, the success of our struggle depends on us, not on the world. Our success depends on our own efforts, on our own strength, on our own determination..."
  • 1 Million in Northeast face starvation as UN cuts food rations
    Even as the global food shortage worsened and price of essentials hit record levels, the UN food agency, World Food Programme (WFP) announced it is cutting down on its rations to one million Sri Lankans it is feeding in the war-torn North and East of Sri Lanka.

    “Scarcity of food items and the subsequent escalation in the cost of essential items may result in more than one million in the country facing starvation," Mohamed Saleheen, the WFP Country Director in Colombo told the media on Friday, April 25.

    As a result of the situation, the WFP in Sri Lanka is facing major crisis, he said, and urged donor countries to respond immediately to overcome the crisis.

    “More than a million civilians affected by civil war depend on the relief supplies provided by WFP. Most of these are internally displaced and recently resettled people currently residing in Kilinochchi, Mullaiththeevu, Jaffna, Mannaar, and Batticaloa.” said Mr. Saleheen

    “Each month 9200 tons of food is required to meet the needs of the people in the North including Kilinochchi, Mullaiththeevu, Jaffna and Mannaar. However, we are able to ship only 6000 tons. If this crisis continues our activities will become complicated, and over million people dependent on WPF-funded programme will be directly affected. The civilians already suffering by the effects of civil war will be seriously hurt if unable to receive food supplies. The effect of malnutrition will not be felt immediately but will be visible only after a year or two.”

    Saleheen said the cost of food supplies has increased by more than fifty percent and the allocation of US$64 million for 2008 is no longer sufficient for WFP operations and urged donors to provide immediate assistance to affected people.

    “We appeal to the donor countries and the international community to realize the seriousness of the situation and immediately come to the aid of the affected people.”


    Commenting on the UN rations cut, the Nation Building Ministry’s Project Director, R.H.W.A. Kumarasiri, said that though they have had discussions regarding the problem, there was still no final decision on reducing the rations.

    However, Saleheen contradicting Kumarasiri said from May 1 WFP would be forced by circumstances to suspend their food-for-work programme to about 175,000 people in the war-affected regions and reduce rations of others from 1,900 kilo calories to 1,665 kilo calories per day per person.

    While suspending the food-for work-programme, he said they would continue to assist the priority targets such as the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), the returnees, the economically displaced, pregnant women, nursing mothers, children under five and school feeding, which he termed as “absolutely imperative”.

    The WFP basket of rations comprises rice, wheat flour, cooking oil, dhal and sugar. The Sunday Times learns that the quantum of rice supplied -- 200 grammes per day per head -- will remain untouched, but cuts will be in wheat flour and sugar.

    Kumarasiri said there was no problem in WFP procuring items like rice from the local market. The problem was in imported food items like wheat flour which were affected by rising world prices.

    But, according to the WFP, already two local suppliers who had contracted to supply rice this year had defaulted as they are unable to supply at the prices contracted six months earlier. Mr. Salaheen said though they had budgeted US$64 million this year to feed the affected people, so far they had only been able to raise less than half, leaving a gap of US$ 35 million to be filled.

    Saleheen warned that failure to meet the reality now would have its impact on ordinary people in several months down the line as their health might get affected. He was specifically concerned about children and pregnant women. Last year the WFP provided dry rations to affected Lankans on a budget of US$ 50 million, with more than half of it coming from the United States.
  • A new era of ‘South-South’ alliances?
    The successful visit to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India by Iranian President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad points to a greater, more assertive role by Iran in regional and global arenas. The growing ties between Iran and South Asia also indicate a general trend where more developing countries share their wealth and resources for development, instead of depending on Western aid. Such South-South cooperation is vital in the age of globalisation.

    One cannot underestimate Iran's increasingly visible profile on the global stage vis-a-vis the energy issue. Iran has the second largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and it is a key supplier of oil and natural gas to the rest of the world. It is in this context that we should appraise Iran's spearheading of the US$ 7.5 billion Iran-India-Pakistan natural gas pipeline and two energy projects in Sri Lanka costing around US$ 1.5 billion.

    The former will be very significant for both India and Pakistan, two of the fastest developing nations in South Asia. Next to China, India has the second biggest energy consumption in Asia. Its energy needs will rise exponentially over the coming years.

    Moreover, the envisaged pipeline has also become a symbol of closer rapport between India and Pakistan. Indeed, there were many positive comments about President Ahmadinejad's behind-the-scenes diplomatic skills which literally cleared the way for the massive pipeline.

    As for Sri Lanka, it already imports 70 per cent of the crude oil requirement from Iran. Iran's help for the Sapugaskanda refinery expansion will help Sri Lanka to refine more crude oil, saving foreign exchange currently spent on importing finished products such as petrol and diesel. The Uma Oya project will be a vital lifeline for the people in Uva-Wellassa and the South, irrigating thousands of acres and as a bonus, adding 100 MW to the national grid.

    Although the power generation capacity is low when compared with the proposed coal power plants, it will nevertheless help address the present power needs up to a certain extent. Another significant aspect is that these projects are being implemented with local expertise, which will also lead to a substantial foreign exchange saving. It is well known that many donors specify that their construction firms be awarded the tender(s) as a prerequisite for granting aid.

    Many Western countries and donor agencies also attach various conditions to their aid packages, such as human rights. However, the key donor countries in the South including China and Iran have perceived the need to keep these issues quite separate from the development agenda.

    They are of the view that such issues should not be tied with development as that could ultimately negate the very purpose for which aid is provided. Increased trade and development cooperation among the developing countries is one way of reducing or nullifying the Western influence on the world development agenda.

    Although some Western countries publicly cautioned the South Asian countries not to host the Iranian leader, the fact that all three countries accorded him the highest possible welcome indicates their desire to work with Southern partners to achieve peace and prosperity.

    Indeed, Southern hemisphere countries have been assuming a bigger profile in world fora and through their own groupings such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77.

    Heads of State and Government from South Asian countries will be meeting in July in Sri Lanka for the annual SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Summit, which should be seen as yet another opportunity to cement their bonds of friendship.

    While the SAARC Charter generally does not sanction the discussion of bilateral issues, the SAARC leaders would do well to ponder on development issues affecting their region including the prevailing food and energy crises.

    One prime example is India's willingness to provide rice to Sri Lanka in spite of an export ban on non-Basmati rice. The whole of Asia is being affected by the rice crisis and Asian countries must necessarily cooperate to overcome it. They should take the lead in developing higher-yielding rice varieties and helping each other to modernise paddy cultivation.
    Similarly, India will help Sri Lanka to build a power plant in Sampur and lay a transmission line between the two countries.

    This will make it possible for both countries to supply electricity to each other in times of need. These are fine instances of South-South cooperation which is emerging as the best solution for the woes confronting the Third World.

  • A Time of Change
    The pointedly symbolic visit to Sri Lanka, in between those to Pakistan and India, by the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has inevitably sparked considerable analysis as to the implications for politics, broadly defined, in the island, the region and indeed, internationally. In the recent past Iran, long in the background of Sri Lanka's dynamics, has come into the limelight as forcibly as has China. Conversely, under President Mahinda Rajapakse, the Sinhala state is making a deliberate shift to the East and away from the West. Such realignments are, of course, never absolute. Contemporary international relations are characterized by schizophrenia whereby the modern state engages in both competition and cooperation with both ally and enemy. Nonetheless, there are specific logics inherent to the Sri Lankan state's ongoing transition. In short, the long-term interests of the Sinhala-nationalist project at the heart of the post-independence Sri Lankan state are incompatible with Western ambitions of global liberalism and are better served in the company of states committed to non-interference in each others' 'internal affairs'.
     
    The Tamil struggle against state oppression became an armed conflict during the Cold War and was promptly caught up in it. Sri Lanka's swing to the West under President Junius Jayawardene earned the Tamil militants both Western condemnation as 'terrorists' and India's active support against the Sinhala state. The armed struggle continued after the Cold War ended and global liberalism - i.e. the spread of liberal democracy and market economics - became a project pursued with evangelical zeal by powerful Western states. In this context, the Tamil armed struggle was never going to be anything but 'terrorism', no matter what horrors the Sri Lankan state visited on the Tamil people. Indeed, the latter was excused precisely because it was inflicted in the cause of 'fighting terrorism'.
     
    The point here is that whether international actors supported or opposed the Tamil liberation struggle had less to do with what Tamils did or said than with whether their struggle and its outcome served the relevant external actor's interests or not. This is still the case. For many years, the Tamils were solemnly lectured on liberal values by leading Western actors - even as they unabashedly backed the Sinhala state's oppression. This hypocrisy has been naked in the past decade the West repeatedly went to war all over the world in the pursuit of its own geopolitical and geoeconomic interests. The legitimating rhetoric was those of human rights, freedom, even peace. But the interests being pursued were all too often clearly visible through the veil of liberalism.
     
    Under President Rajapakse, the Sinhala state's ethnomajoritarian ethos has became overt and overarching. Which is why the state can abuse human rights, crush media freedoms and roll back the liberal order's hard fought gains in the island and yet retain the enthusiastic support of the majority of Sinhalese. At the same time, the emergence of new poles (with their own interests and values) has raised serious challenges to the West's interests as well as the ideological values it has promoted in the service of those interests. With Western states ideologically and institutionally committed to engineering a specific configuration of liberal democracy (consider what happens when non-Westerners use democratic means to endorse leaders and actors the West doesn't like) and free market economics, the Sinhala state knows it can never be at peace within a liberal order.
     
    Irrespective of whether the state defeats the Tamil Tigers or not, Sinhala majoritarianism (and its attendant consequences of ethnic and religious marginalisation of Tamils and, of late, Muslims) will inevitably remain in tension with the liberal order. Sinhala hegemony needs external partners unconcerned by these consequences. The logics of aid conditionalities (political or economic), notions such as 'responsibility to protect', 'power-sharing', solutions 'acceptable to all communities' etc. will simply not do. Which is why we argue that Sri Lanka's turn to China, Iran and other like-minded states - in the sense of non-interference in 'internal affairs' - is decisive. There will be relations with the West but, as many of them are already lamenting, the global liberalists will have less and less leverage.
     
    None of this is new to the West, its challengers, the Sinhala state or the Tamil liberation project's leadership. Realpolitik has always been the order of things. It's just more overt now. This is not to predict that things are going to be either better or worse for the Tamil liberation struggle, but to argue that both new opportunities and new challenges will come our way.
  • Father Karunaratnam: martyred serving the Tamil people
    In our April 9th issue, in an article entitled “Iconic of the times” one of Tamil Guardian’s columnists discussed the rationale behind the Sinhala-Buddhist Sri Lankan state’s attacks on the Northeastern Church, among which was last month’s shelling of the historic Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Madhu.
     
    The columnist argued that more important than the theological differences between the Sinhala interpretation of Buddhism and Catholicism is the inevitable conflict between an oppressive state and the social justice doctrine of the modern Catholic Church.
     
    The point was exemplified within days by the assassination by Sri Lankan commandos of one of the best-loved and most prominent priests and human rights activists in the Vanni, Father Karunaratnam.
     
    His vehicle was blasted by a command-detonated landmine even as it was being towed by a recovery truck, having broken down as Father Karunaratnam returned from Sunday Mass.
     
    He was the founder and Head of the NESOHR (North East Secretariat of Human Rights), the only local Human Rights monitoring organisation in the LTTE controlled North. NESOHR has been a vocal chronicler of government aerial attacks, killings and abductions in the North East.
     
    More telling than the murder itself is the almost non-existent international response: o Other than former peace broker Norway, not a single foreign government commented on, let alone condemned, the assassination.
     
    The current tension between the Tamil Catholic Church and the Sinhala Buddhist state begins with persistent attempts, over a one-year period, by the Bishop of the Diocese of Mannar, Dr. Joseph Rajapu to have the area around the venerated Madhu Church declared a peace zone.
     
    The Madhu Church, Sri Lanka’s oldest and most prominent Catholic shrine, was at the time also one of the largest refugee sanctuaries in the Tamil north.
     
    It was also the objective of a major Sri Lankan military offensive in Mannar which began in July last year and has been inching forward amid ferocious resistance from the Tamil Tigers..
     
    According to Bishop Joseph, the LTTE had agreed for the shrine to be designated a peace zone, if the Colombo government would give a similar guarantee. However Colombo rejected the Bishop’s plea.
     
    In early 2008, the Sri Lankan military intensified its efforts to capture the Madhu Church. Its artillery barrages expanded and intensified; shells began exploding around the site.
     
    On April 2, over five thousand Tamils in government-controlled Mannar city marched in protest demanding that the Church of Madhu be declared a peace zone.
     
    As military analysts in the Sinhala South have pointed out, there is no military value in occupying the Madhu Church and there are alternative routes into the LTTE-held North.
     
    But ahead of the Eastern elections, scheduled for May 10, there was a clear propaganda benefit in capturing the symbolic Church – especially against the backdrop of the Army’s failure since July to progress in its multiple-front onslaught against the LTTE-held Vanni.
     
    Apart from the rebuilt towns of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu deep within LTTE defences, there are almost no landmark places that could be “taken” by an army to serve as for a propaganda coup - other than the Church of Our Lady of Madhu.
     
    On April 3, a day after the last of the refugees fled from the relentless shelling, the Bishop of Mannaar, ordered the serving priests and nuns to also flee and to take with them the 400-year old Icon of our Lady of Madhu. They reached Theevanpiddi, deeper in LTTE-held Tamil territory, April 4.
     
    600 school children from the nearby Roman catholic school of Adampan and Vaddakandan Tamil mixed school also fled to Theevanpiddi in the same time.
     
    According to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation, over 12,000 internally displaced persons from the Madhu area have been relocated.
     
    For almost two months, the Army, though a short distance from the Madhu site, had been unable to close the gap due to LTTE resistance.
     
    Once the evacuations had been completed, the LTTE’s defensive units also pulled back.
     
    But to the fury of the Mahinda Rajapakse government, the occupation of an empty church was rendered meaningless by the departure of the revered Icon of Our Lady.
     
    On Sunday April 6 photographic evidence emerged of extensive damage to the Madhu complex by Army shelling, justifying the Bishop’s decision to evacuate, and illustrating the desperate efforts of the Army to capture the area.
     
    The same day, Father Karunaratnam gave a television interview on the question of the Madhu Church, saying “The Bishop of Mannaar Diocese has clearly said that this was a peace zone. Let the GoSL not cause confusion. It is a known fact that this peace zone is situated within the LTTE territory. Ranil Wickramsinghe's government may have signed the Cease Fire Agreement in 2002, … the then President Chandrika had accepted it, as did the International Community. The [Rajapkse] Government should have respected it.”
     
    Incidentally, the Bishop of Jaffna’s office also issued a formal plea that the Madhu Church be accepted as peace zone. It was clear that the Northeastern Church were sending a clear message of unity behind the Bishop of Mannar.
     
    However, within two weeks, on Sunday April 20, Sri Lanka Army commandos infiltrated LTTE-held Vanni and assassinated Father Karunaratnam, near Kilinnochi. A chilling message was being sent to Father Karunaratnam’s peers and the rest of the Tamil community.
     
    The targeted killing caused widespread grief amongst Tamils. Remembrance ceremonies and masses were held for Father Karunaratnam in the island and the Diaspora. Thousands paid homage to his remains in Kilinnochi, despite the constant threat of aerial bombing.
     
    On April 22, over a thousand people gathered in the Cathedral of Army occupied Jaffna city for a special Mass in tribute to the slain priest.
     
    Jaffna Bishop House Principal Priest, Rev. Justin Gnanapragasam who conducted the Holy Mass, said in his speech that People in the Jaffna peninsula, had for the first time since August 11 2006, when fighting resumed on the peninsula, assembled in large numbers at one place to participate in an event.
     
    On April 25 the government announced its “victorious” troops had “occupied” the Madhu Church. However the announcement was submerged by the fallout of the massive debacle the Army suffered in a major offensive in southern Jaffna on April 23.
     
    The government also declared the Church a “Security Zone” and demanded the Icon of Our Lady of Madhu be brought back. The demand was ignored by the Northeastern Church.
    On April 26 three Christian priests, including two from Tamil Nadu, were arrested and held for interrogation in Colombo.
     
    On April 27, Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka issued a public demand that the Icon should be brought back.
     
    A series of correspondence between the Army and the Bishop followed, along with media statements by both sides, whereby the government insisted the Madhu priests and the Icon return to its control and the Northeast Church refused.
     
    Meanwhile, the military said it “categorically and reservedly ridicules LTTE's blatant attempts to discredit and blame [the Army for] the murder of Father Karunaratnam”
     
    At the same time, state controlled media, began to emphasise that Father Karunaratnam, one of the Tamil country’s best known serving priests, was a staunch advocate of independence for Tamil Eelam as the only proper solution to the conflict.
     
    Father Karunaratnam expected to be assassinated by the government. He had told his sister in Canada in their last conversation that, following the assassination of Tamil National Alliance MP Sivanesan, also by a SLA command-detonated mine, he expected to be the next victim. 
     
    Father Karunaratnam had accepted the risk of martyrdom as so many have done before him in the Church
     
    In his last television interview before his death, he had focused on the Vatican’s policy.
     
    "As a seat of religion, Vatican seems to observe silence, in order not to politicize it further, earnestly hoping that the GoSL will change its position. As Catholics we believe in that."
     
    "During Communist revolutions, the communist armies destroyed Catholic churches in Russia, China and Poland. Vatican remained silent, in a spiritual way,” he said. “The Vatican is the apex body of Catholic religion, but it is also a Government. As a government they would have conveyed the necessary message to the GoSL, even if they had not publicized it."
     
    In 2004, the Pontifical Council of Peace and Justice completed the“ Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church”. Father Karunaratnam would have considered himself guided by it.
     
    The Social Doctrine states that a nation has a “fundamental right to existence”, to “its own language and culture, through which a people expresses and promotes ... its fundamental spiritual ‘sovereignty”', to “shape its life according to its own traditions, excluding, of course, every abuse of basic human rights and in particular the oppression of minorities”,
     
    Para 157 states that international law “rests upon the principle of equal respect for States, for each people's right to self-determination and for their free cooperation in view of the higher common good of humanity. Peace is founded not only on respect for human rights but also on respect for the rights of peoples, in particular the right to independence.”
     
    Para 504 states: “The right to use force for purposes of legitimate defence is associated with the duty to protect and help innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggression.”
  • The Tamil liberation struggle & the new Cold War
    Geography plays an important role (though often a silent one) in the affairs of states and nations without states. Where a state has a large internal market, the size of that internal market is itself a strategic asset. Where a state does not have a large internal market, it seems that it is often a question of location, location, location. The smaller the country, relatively more important becomes the location - and sometimes, the location itself becomes a strategic asset.
     
    The Indian Ocean is not the largest ocean in the world. It is the 3rd largest. But it has something like 47 countries around it as well as several islands.
     
    You can see them on the map. Coco island is not far from Myanmar where of course now the Chinese have a base. Then we have Andaman Islands, Maldives, Madagascar and of course in Gawdor in Pakistan and Kawar in India. And if you go down south you may even get to Diego Garcia with its US naval and air base. India itself projects something like 1200 miles into the Indian Ocean. And many Indians take the view that after all, the Indian Ocean is the Indian Ocean.
     
    The strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region has been recognized for many years. US Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan said more than a century ago, "Whoever controls the Indian Ocean dominates Asia. This ocean is the key to the seven seas in the twenty-first century, the destiny of the world will be decided in these waters." Again, the British Empire owed much to British dominance of the Indian Ocean – a dominance which Hitler sought to undermine with his U-boats during Second World War.
     
    The Indian Ocean contains an estimated 40% of the world’s oil production. And today fresh exploration continues in the Mannar seas off Sri Lanka, the Cauvery Basin off Tamil Nadu and in the seas off Myanmar. But the significance of the Indian Ocean arises not simply from the resources it has. The Indian Ocean is a critical waterway. It includes half of the world’s containerized cargo, one thirds of its bulk cargo and two thirds of its oil shipments. Its waters carry heavy traffic of petroleum products. And unlike the Atlantic Ocean, much of this traffic is to countries outside the Indian Ocean.
     
    The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean give a graphic picture of its strategic significance.
     
    China, which has been a net oil importer since 1993 is the world’s no 2 oil consumer after the United States. It achieved that status in 2004. Before that the 2nd largest oil consumer was Japan. China has accounted for as much as 40% of the world’s crude oil demand growth during the period 2000 to 2004.
     
    Access to energy resources is a very critical factor for continued Chinese economic growth. And, not surprisingly China has stepped up efforts to secure sea lanes and transport routes that are vital for its oil supplies. The geo political strategy adopted by China has been dubbed 'the string of pearls' strategy.
     
    Barry Desker, Director IDSS, wrote in 2005: "The emergence of new powers like China and India is expected to transform the regional strategic landscape in a fashion that could be as dramatic as the rise of Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the 20th century"
     
    Donald L. Berlin, Head of Security Studies, Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies, Honolulu, writes: “the Indian ocean region has become the strategic heartland of the 21st century, dislodging Europe and North East Asia which adorned this position in the 20th century.. the developments in the Indian Ocean region are contributing to the advent of a less Western centric and a more multi-polar world."
     
    Hopefully, sufficient has been said to show that the strategic significance of the Indian Ocean region existed before the conflict in the island of Sri Lanka, that it continues to exist and that it will continue to exist even after the Tamil – Sinhala conflict in the island is resolved.
     
    Here, one matter of significance is that the dynamics of the region calls for a balance of power approach rather than a straight alliance.
     
    Adam Wolfe, Yevgeny Bendersky and Dr. Federico Bordonaro write in ‘India's Project Seabird and Indian Ocean's Balance of Power’, in July 2005: “…the dynamics of the region calls for a balance of power approach rather than a straight alliance…. The rise of India as a major power, coupled with the better-known - and frequently analyzed - Chinese rise, is changing the structure of the world system. Not only is U.S. ‘unipolar’ hegemony in the Indian Ocean facing a challenge, but the strategic triad U.S.-Western Europe-Japan, which has ruled the international political economy for the past few decades, is now also under question…We can expect the South Asian region to be one of the system's key areas to be watched in the next decade.”
     
    The balance of power in the Indian Ocean region is not a simple black and white matter. The frame is multilateral and the interactions are nuanced – and calibrated. There is a word that was coined some years ago in a different context - in the study of multinational corporations and so on. The word was co-petition. You compete in some areas but you also co-operate in other areas. When you cooperate in some areas and compete in other areas - that's co-petition. For instance India and US do have a strategic partnership in some areas. But, New Delhi is not simply a partner of China or the United States. It seeks to march to the beat of its own drummer.
     
    The question is: in what areas are the US, New Delhi and China competing with each other, and in what areas are they cooperating with each other? The US may welcome a ‘balance of power’ in Asia as a way of securing its own pre-eminence in a unipolar world (or in the terms of Condoleezza Rice, a unipolar world with a multipolar perspective). But will New Delhi and China be content with such an approach or will they be challenged by it? Is Sri Lanka an area of competition or cooperation? And, importantly, if it is an area of cooperation what is the extent of the cooperation?
     
    This may be the appropriate stage to turn to an examination of the strategic significance of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean Region.
     
    In 1947/48 Ceylon entered into a defense agreement with the United Kingdom for the use by the United Kingdom of the naval base in Trincomalee. The Defence Agreement was a condition precedent to the United Kingdom granting independence in February 1948.
     
    However, the strategic significance of Sri Lanka arises not only from Trincomalee. Its not as simple as that – we need to include Hambantota, the Voice of America installations and so on. Ramesh Somasundaram of Deakin University in his 2005 publication ‘Strategic Significance of Sri Lanka’ gives three reasons for the ‘interest of the international community’ in Sri Lanka :
     
    “(1) Sri Lanka is strategically situated, (2) It is ideally situated to be a major communication center, and (3) It has Trincomalee, described by the British Admiral Horatio Nelson as “the finest harbour in the world. Sri Lanka occupies a strategic point in the Indian Ocean, whose vast expanse covering 2,850,000 sq miles, touches the shores of the Indian subcontinent in the North; Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia in the East; Antartica in the South; and East Africa in the West.”
     
    In 1985 I was in Bhutan as a member of the Tamil delegation to the Thimpu Talks. The Research Analysis Wing of India spent some considerable time informing us of the threats that US submarines posed in the Indian Ocean and the difficulties they had and why it was important that some agreement must be achieved with Sri Lanka.
     
    The Thimpu Talks themselves failed but two years later in 1987, the Indo Sri Lanka Accord did secure for India its strategic interests. The exchange of letters between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lanka President J.R.Jayawardene on 29 July 1987 preceding the Signing of Agreement provided inter alia that ‘Sri Lanka's agreement with foreign broadcasting organisations will be reviewed to ensure that any facilities set up by them in Sri Lanka are used solely as public broadcasting facilities and not for any military or intelligence purposes’ and that ‘Trincomalee or any other ports in Sri Lanka will not be made available for military use by any country in a manner prejudicial to India's interests.’
     
    The intervention by the United States and by India in the conflict in the island has a long history.
     
    India armed and trained Tamil militants in their struggle for Tamil Eelam. In 1998, Jyotindra Nath Dixit who served as Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka 1985 /89, Foreign Secretary in 1991/94 and National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of India 2004/05 declared disarmingly
     
    "...Tamil militancy received (India's) support ...as a response to (Sri Lanka's).. concrete and expanded military and intelligence cooperation with the United States, Israel and Pakistan. ...The assessment was that these presences would pose a strategic threat to India and they would encourage fissiparous movements in the southern states of India. .. a process which could have found encouragement from Pakistan and the US, given India's experience regarding their policies in relation to Kashmir and the Punjab.... Inter-state relations are not governed by the logic of morality. They were and they remain an amoral phenomenon....."
     
    When these matters are mentioned, it is sometimes said that all this may have been relevant during the time of the cold war but that the world has moved on sine then. It is true that the world has moved on – but today we are in the midst of a new cold war. The United States may be the sole super power, but it lives in an ‘asymmetric’ multi lateral world where strong regional powers (including the EU, Russia, China and India) have increasing global impact. We are living in a world where the ‘asymmetry’ is progressively diminishing. This is the new cold war. It is a cold war because open warfare is to nobody’s benefit.
     
    Today, for Sri Lanka, China is a ‘benign friend’. Sudha Ramachandran warned in the Asia Times on 13 March 2007 that "China is all set to drop anchor at India's southern doorstep. An agreement has been finalized between Sri Lanka and China under which the latter will participate in the development of a port project at Hambantota on the island's south coast. ...the significance of Hambantota to China lies in its proximity to India's south coast and on the fact that it provides Beijing with presence midway in the Indian Ocean.”
     
    In March 2007, B. Muralidhar Reddy commented on the ten year Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) signed by the United States and Sri Lanka on 5 March 2007:
     
    “The ten year Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) signed by the United States and Sri Lanka on March 5, which provides for among other things logistics supplies and re-fuelling facilities, has major ramifications for the region, particularly India. For all the sophistry and spin by the Americans, the ACSA is a military deal and, on the face of it, is loaded in Washington's favour.”
     
    These then are some aspects of the international dimension of the conflict in the island of Sri Lanka. It will be fair to say that there are two conflicts in the island. One is the conflict arising from the people of Tamil Eelam struggling to free themselves from oppressive rule by an ethno-Sinhala nation masquerading as a ‘civic’ Sri Lankan nation. The other is the conflict between international actors jostling for power and influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
     
    And the record shows that these international actors are concerned to influence the resolution of the conflict in such a way that each of their own (conflicting) interests in the Indian Ocean region are advanced – or at least not undermined. But at the same time each of these international actors often engage in public diplomacy which denies the existence of their own strategic interests.
     
    The reluctance on the part of the international community to openly state their interests may be understandable. And we may also need to recognize that human rights and humanitarian law are often simply the instruments through which states intervene in the affairs of other states. We had for instance Helsinki Watch which played an important role in the old cold war. Now of course Helsinki Watch has matured into Human Rights Watch.
     
    Said that, denial by international actors, of their own (conflicting) strategic interests in Sri Lanka draws a veil over the real issues that any meaningful conflict resolution process in the island will need to address.
     
    To the extent to which we can bring these strategic interests out of the closet, we may be able to take forward the resolution of the conflict in the island in a constructive way.
     
    This will also help the Tamil people as well as the Sinhala people to understand the harsh reality of the real politick which confronts them both. And that takes me back to why I started my address with a couple of words in Sinhalese and Tamil. It was because at the end of the day, however difficult it may appear to some, it is the Tamil people and the Sinhalese people who will need to have the conversation with each other about how two independent and free peoples may associate with one another.
     
    I will end here - with something which the Leader of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Pirapaharan, said in 1993:
     
    “Every country in this world advances its own interests. It is economic and trade interests that determine the order of the present world, not the moral law of justice nor the rights of people. International relations and diplomacy between countries are determined by such interests. Therefore we cannot expect an immediate recognition of the moral legitimacy of our cause by the international community. ... In reality, the success of our struggle depends on us, not on the world. Our success depends on our own efforts, on our own strength, on our own determination..." 
     
    (Edited)
     
    Mr. Nadesan Satyendra was a negotiator for the Tamil delegation at the Thimpu talks in 1985. A Barrister by profession, he has written and spoken extensively on Sri Lanka’s conflict for 25 years. He serves as Advisor to the Centre for Just Peace and Democracy. The full text of this article is available in a CJPD publication ‘International Dimensions of the Conflict in Sri Lanka’ (2008).
     
     
  • US talks to Nepal Maoists
    The United States in a significant change in its policy towards organizations included in the State Departments Foreign Terrorists Organization (FTO) list, made its first official diplomatic contact with the leader of Nepal's former rebel Maoists, BBC report in Kathmandu said.

    US ambassador to Nepal Nancy Powell met Maoist leader Prachanda on Thursday, a statement from the US embassy in Kathmandu said, according to the report.

    The US embassy statement said that Ms Powell and Prachanda, whose real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal, discussed the outcome of last month's elections to a constituent assembly.

    The statement said Ms Powell would visit Washington soon for consultations on US-Nepal relations.

    The statement said Ms Powell encouraged the Maoist leader to ensure that the former rebels showed their commitment to the political process through their words and actions, the report said.

    The change in policy comes after former US President Jimmy Carter, speaking just after the 10 April elections, told the BBC he found America's failure to deal with the Maoists "embarrassing."

    The ultra-Marxists captured the reins of Nepal in a democratic process in the elections held on April 10, for the first time in the history of South Asia.
  • M&S boss assures support for Sri Lanka despite abuses
    In a visit to Sri Lanka, Marks & Spencer’s boss has hailed the country’s “ethical standards” and assured that he will he do ‘everything possible to support Sri Lanka’s application for the GSP+ concessions’.

    Chief Executive Officer, Sir Stuart Rose told Sri Lankan ministers Professor G. L. Peiris and Dr. Sarath Amunugama: "I deeply appreciate Sri Lanka’s ethical standards and her splendid performance in the apparel sector"

    Ignoring Sri Lanka’s human rights record and the European Union’s (EU) recent announcement linking Sri Lanka’s compliance to human rights and labor rights conventions, Rose extended his full support for Sri Lanka’s application for GSP+ concessions.

    "I understand how important the GSP+ scheme is for Sri Lanka. I will do everything possible to support your application for these concessions", said Rose.

    After visiting MAS Intimates Thurulie, Marks and Spencer’s’ new and Sri Lanka’s first eco-friendly manufacturing plant at MAS Fabric Park, Thulhiriya Rose said: "This is one the best factories that I ever visited"

    "There are others who merely talk, but Sri Lanka is a doer, that’s what makes the difference".

    The innovative green plant will manufacture lingerie for M&S, UK’s largest clothing retailer, which operates stores in more than 30 countries.

    Describing the factory as a trend-setter, Rose noted: ‘Sri Lanka set standards which others will and should follow".

    The launch of the eco-friendly plant is in keeping with Marks and Spencer new drive, called "Plan A", towards ethical trading and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

    The five-year scheme will see M&S become carbon neutral, stop sending waste to landfill and extend its sustainable sourcing by 2012.

    Whilst applauding Marks and Spencer’s eco-friendly approach to business, political observers questioned Rose’s wisdom on supporting Sri Lanka, a country accused of grave human rights abuses by international rights groups.

    According to Sri Lankan daily, The Island, delighted by the unexpected boost to Sri Lanka’s GSP+ cause, Ministers Peiris and Amunugama who visited the factory with Rose congratulated him for the inspiring speech.

    Speaking at the event, Amunugama emphasized the importance Sri Lanka attaches to the GSP+ saying this scheme sustains the country’s 7% growth.

    "The GSP+ is not a give away, but a hard earned reward for managing our apparel industry exceedingly well", The Island quoted noted.

    "We rightly deserve these concessions".


  • Sri Lanka joins the ‘Iranian Club’
    The strong relationship between Iran and Sri Lanka was on show last week with the high profile visit of Iranian President to Sri Lanka and the red carpet welcome that was extended to him by the Sri Lankan state.

    Iranian President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Colombo on a Monday, April 28 on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka as part of his South Asian tour. President Mahinda Rajapakse personally received the Iranian President at the Bandaranike International Airport and the streets of Colombo were decorated with Sri Lankan and Iranian flags. Posters with slogans reading "Traditional Asian Solidarity" "The Path to Progress" were also on display along the streets of Colombo.

    Cheque book diplomacy

    Addressing a joint news conference with President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Secretariat, Ahmadinejad said: “Sri Lanka and Iran have agreed to cooperate in all spheres for the mutual benefit of each other,”

    Iranian President added that Iran was happy to assist a ‘long standing friend such as Sri Lanka’ and carry out ‘mutual consultation and cooperation’ and said that comprehensive cooperation between the two countries would provide security for both in their endeavour to ‘seek justice and fair play in the world.’

    With the international community working towards isolating Iran over its nuclear program and raising concerns against the human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, both countries looking for new allies.

    The Rajapakse administration in recent times has turned to the east towards countries like China, India and Iran, which unlike United States, Europe and Japan do not raise human rights issues as a condition for such assistance.
    Iran assistance in the energy sector is crucial to the Sri Lankan government at a time when it its finding it difficult to pay for its increasingly costly oil imports. The Goverenment of Ahmadinejad readily agreed to provide oil at concessional rates and invest heavily in improving Sri Lanka’s capacity to refine oil.

    Iran agreed to invest US $ 1.5 billion in energy-related projects in Sri Lanka. One of these projects is for the production of hydel power and the other to double the capacity of an existing oil refinery in Sri Lanka. Work on the construction of the hydel project started during Ahmadinejad's visit.

    Iranian engineers have already been preparing the project report for doubling the capacity of the refinery and for modifying it to enable it to refine in future Iranian crude to be supplied at concessional rates. The existing capacity is 50,000 barrels a day.

    In addition Iran is also providing low-interest loan to Sri Lanka to enable it to purchase defence-related equipment from China and Pakistan and providing Sri Lankan Army and Military Intelligence officers.

    According to analysts, the interest shown by Iran in Sri Lanka since last year is attributed to its desire to counter the Israeli influence in Sri Lanka and to use Sri Lanka as a base for monitoring the movements of US naval ships between the Pacific and the Gulf. Since Rajapakse came to power, the visit of US naval vessels and officers to Sri Lanka has increased. Even before he came to power, Israel had emerged as an important supplier of military equipment, particularly for the Sri Lankan Air Force.

    Analyst also pointed the fact that even at the risk of misunderstanding with Israel, Rajapakse chose to approach Iran and accepted its ready offer of assistance underlined the serious economic situation in which Sri Lanka found itself.


    Sri Lanka supports Nuclear Iran

    In a joint statement issued at the conclusion of Iranian President’s visit Sri Lanka said it supported the peaceful use of nuclear energy by Iran within the framework of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

    "The two sides confirmed the full and non-discriminatory implementation of Article IV of the NPT on peaceful nuclear co-operation." The statement read.

    It further said the two sides reiterated the importance of global nuclear disarmament, particularly the need for the nuclear powers to destroy their nuclear weapons, based on the decisions of the relevant international meetings.

    The communiqué also expressed the recognition of the inalienable rights and the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, stressed the need for security and peace in Lebanon and emphasised the need for the preservation of the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq.

    The press release further said that Iran and Sri Lanka supported, as a matter of priority, the endeavours of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to restore peace and stability.


    No Preachers

    Explaining the importance of cultivating a close friendship with Iran, an aide close to Rajapakse said: “Iran is the sole supplier of crude oil for the only refinery in Sri Lanka in Sapugaskanda. The oil made available to Sri Lanka is given on easy payment basis and is a boon in a situation where we are compelled to spend exorbitant amounts fighting the Tamil Tigers”

    Meanwhile, government officials are busy reiterating why Sri Lanka prefers the company of its ‘non-preaching’ Asian cohabitants rather than the West whose critical focus on the country has only got sharper as Sri Lanka’s war spirals and its human rights record further deteriorates.

    “In Asia, there is no superiority complex. Asian leaders are not obsessed with preaching like the West is,” a senior government official said as economists point out that it is no secret that Sri Lanka has taken its war drained financial woes to Asia in a background where the emphatically anti- war West has threatened to cut aid and remove concessions.

    As military analysts point out, while Sri Lanka’s primary reason for bonding with Iran is oil, where countries such as China and Pakistan are concerned it is the military factor that motivates the relationship. With western countries as well as neighbouring India refusing to sell arms to Sri Lanka to fight the Tamil Tigers, Rajapakse has only countries such as China and Pakistan to turn to. In the past one and a half years Rajapakse has visited China twice and also India and Pakistan as well as Iran.

  • An introduction to GSP
    The Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) is a formal system of exemption from the general rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) aimed at encouraging developing countries to export by allowing their products preferential access to the markets of developed countries.

    GSP, specifically, provides exemption from the Most Favored Nation (MFN) principle that requires WTO member countries to treat the imports of all other WTO member countries no worse than they treat the imports of their "most favored" trading partner. In essence, MFN requires WTO member countries to treat imports coming from all other WTO member countries equally by imposing equal tariffs on them.

    GSP was adopted in the United Nations in 1968. According to resolution 21 (II) passed at the United Nations Conference on Trade And Development (UNCTAD) in New Delhi in 1968, the objectives of the generalized, non-reciprocal, non-discriminatory system of preferences in favour of the developing countries, including special measures in favour of the least advanced among the developing countries, are:

    (a) to increase their export earnings;

    (b) to promote their industrialization; and

    (c) to accelerate their rates of economic growth.

    Under GSP schemes of preference-giving counties, selected products originating in developing countries are granted reduced or zero tariff rates over the MFN rates.

    There are currently 13 national GSP schemes in operation. The following countries grant GSP preferences: Australia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Russian Federation, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States of America.

    The EU's GSP is managed by the European Commission. In managing the GSP, the Commission is assisted by the Committee on Generalised Preferences, composed of representatives of Member States and chaired by the Commission. This Committee has to be consulted before certain measures are taken. More important measures need to be supported by a qualified majority of Member States.

    The EU’s GSP programme classifies benefiting developing countries as standard beneficiary country, least developed country and GSP+ country, with countries classified as GSP+ country receiving most preferential rates including duty-free access for 7200 products.

    To benefit as a GSP+ country, the applying countries need to demonstrate that their economies are poorly diversified, and therefore dependent and vulnerable. Poor diversification and dependence is defined as meaning that the five largest sections of its GSP-covered imports to the EU must represent more than 75% of its total GSP-covered imports. GSP-covered imports from that country must also represent less than 1% of total EU imports under GSP.

    In addition to the above, must also ratify and effectively implement the 16 core conventions on human and labour rights and 7 (out of 11) of the conventions related to good governance and the protection of the environment.

    Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Honduras, Sri Lanka, Republic of Moldova, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, El Salvador and Venezuela benefit from the EU’s existing GSP+ scheme which runs from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2008.

    Countries wishing to receive GSP+ status from 2009 onwards must apply by October 2008. For future eligibility, applying countries will need to have ratified 27 international conventions on human rights, labour standards, environmental protection, and governance principles by 31 December 2008.

    Core human and labour rights UN/ILO Conventions that must be ratified and effectively implemented for GSP Plus to apply are:

    • International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
    • International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights
    • International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
    • Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
    • Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
    • Convention on the Rights of the Child
    • Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
    • Minimum Age for Admission to Employment (N° 138)
    • Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (N° 182)
    • Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (N° 105)
    • Forced Compulsory Labour Convention (N° 29)
    • Equal Remuneration of Men and Women Workers for Work of Equal Value Convention (N° 100)
    • Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation Convention (N° 111)
    • Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (N° 87)
    • Application of the Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively Convention (N°98)
    • International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
    • Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer
    • Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal
    • Stockholm Convention on persistent Organic Pollutants; Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
    • Convention on Biological Diversity
    • Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety; Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961)
    • UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971); UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988)
    • Mexico UN Convention Against Corruption.
  • Sri Lanka Army chief meets Pakistan military
    Sri Lankan Army Chief Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka, who is on a week long visit to Pakistan, will hold talks with his counterpart there on various issues including purchase of arms for his forces, embroiled in an intense battle with Tamil Tigers.

    Lt Gen Fonseka, who left for Pakistan on Sunday on an official tour, is slated to discuss several issues including defence purchases, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported.

    During his stay, the visiting Lt. Gen. Fonseka is scheduled to meet President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan Army.

    On Monday he met with Pakistan’s Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Tariq Majid and Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani

    Gen. Fonseka was accompanied by a Sri Lankan delegation comprising Major General L.A.D. Amarathunga, Director General General Staff of Army, Group Captain Ajantha Silva, Defence Advisor to the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in Pakistan and Lieutenant Colonel. R. Wijesundara, Military Assistant to Lt. Gen. Fonseka.

    General Majid told the Gen. Fonseka that Pakistan and Sri Lanka historically enjoyed excellent relations based on mutual trust, confidence and commonality of interest in maintaining regional peace, security and stability.

    He also reiterated Pakistan’s support towards the capacity building of Sri Lankan army by offering cooperation in military training and in various other fields of common interests, the Sri Lanka Army website said..

    "Reports claimed that the main purpose of the Army Chief's visit to Pakistan was to discuss the purchasing of certain required weapons and ammunition though there was no official confirmation over such claims," the newspaper said.

    A defence official said Lt Gen Fonseka is touring Pakistan on an invitation from his counterpart Kayani. "It is similar to the visit undertaken by the Army Chief to India," the official said.

    Sri Lanka has been increasing looking at China and Pakistan for weapons supplies.
  • India to give $100 million soft loan to Sri Lankan defence
    ECONOMIC Times, one of India's leading business dailies, on Sunday revealed that in spite of possible "political and diplomatic ramifications", the Indian Government was "finalizing a soft loan package of $100 million for Sri Lankan defence department to buy arms and ammunition." The newspaper went one step ahead and dubbed this move "the India fund for fighting Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka."

    Citing reliable sources, the news report added that India was giving the loan at a "highly concessional interest rate of just 2%" though Sri Lanka did not come under the category of Least Developed Country which would enable it to secure such a discounted interest.

    India was also planning to give another term loan of $100 million to Sri Lanka for railway projects. The combined soft loan amount of $200 million ($100 for defence, $100 for development) was very high compared to India's total "bilateral disbursement of $500 million soft loans" for the entire fiscal year 2008, the Economic Times news report said. Moreover, the daily also added that India's move was seen as "yet another attempt to eliminate the Tamil Tigers in an indirect manner."
  • India issues warning against Karuna Group
    In a shocking revelation Indian intelligence authorities have warned the Tamilnadu police the Karuna Group in Sri Lanka might infiltrate the state and abduct political leaders in order to put the blame on the LTTE, Indian media said yesterday.

    All police stations in Tamilnadu have been alerted following this warning and security has been tightened in areas where political leaders, especially the anti-LTTE leaders live, the report added.

    It also accused the Sri Lankan security forces for masterminding this plan.

    Intelligence authorities have directed the state police to step up sea patrolling by the coast guard while setting up road blocks in order to conduct vehicle checks. They have also been ordered to keep an eye on Sri Lankan refugees in camps and their movements.
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