Sri Lanka has received six tenders from three foreign companies for oil exploration in its northwestern offshore Mannar basin, the country’s petroleum resource minister said on Thursday.

The blocks being put up for bids are estimated to contain 1 billion barrels of oil and would significantly alter the country’s energy sector and economy.

According to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the country imports about 15 million barrels of crude each year, and also buys about 15 million barrels of oil products from abroad annually.

"We have got six tenders. They are from Cairn India (CAIL.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), ONGC Videsh (ONGC.BO: Quote, Profile, Research) from India and Nico Resources from Cyprus," Minister A.H.M. Fowzie told Reuters.

"All three companies have bid for the first block, while Cairn India and Nico Resources have bid for the second block. The third block has received only one bid from Nico Resources."

The first block is the smallest out of the three with 3338.1 square kilometres, while the third block is the largest with an area of 4126.5 square kilometres.

Sri Lanka has eight exploration blocks in the Mannar basin, three of which are to be given for exploration once the government decides on a successful bidder.

Two have been assigned to China and India on nomination basis and the government plans to delay bidding on the last three blocks to get higher revenue, Reuters reported.

Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), which was offered the block nominated to India said in September it was not interested in the assigned block, citing low prospectivity and the fact that Sri Lanka was asking for a big signature bonus.

The Sri Lankan government later said it would negotiate with ONGC for a new oil block. The outcome of the negotiation has not yet been revealed.

The bidding process was closed last Thursday and the government expects to select the best three bidders by April 2008 and to start the oil exploration process by August.

Last year the United States awarded a grant of US$474,000 to Sri Lanka’s ministry of Finance and Planning to develop the country’s oil and gas sector.

The non-oil producing country expects its first commercial crude oil production by 2010.

Prior to the bidding, the Sri Lankan government had said oil exploration licences would be awarded to firms that can provide most advanced technological and economic benefit to Sri Lanka.

A 35 percent tax from net profit, 10 percent royalty fee of annual production revenue, and allowing the planned National Oil Exploration Company to invest 10 percent in exploration activities were the conditions put forwarded by the government.

Signature bonds, production bonds, and profit sharing ratio are to be considered in selecting the best three bidders.

Roadshows to attract investors were held in London, Houston and Kuala Lumpur in September last year.

The government says seismic data shows more than a billion barrels of oil lie under the sea off Sri Lanka's northwest coast, though no reserves have yet been proven.

If proven, the reserves would be a major boost for the war-torn country, which produces no oil and imported $2.2 billion worth in the first 11 months of 2007.

In addition to developing the oil and gas sector in Sri Lanka India and China are also assisting development of other energy sectors by building coal-fired power plants.

The Chinese government is helping Sri Lanka build its first coal-fired power plant at Norocholai, north of capital Colombo, as the island seeks cheaper electricity.

India's largest power company, in December 2006 signed an agreement to build a 500 megawatt coal-fired power plant in the northeast of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka marked sixty years of independence from Britain this week. As such, February 4th was truly representative of this ethnocracy's sordid state of affairs. The highlight of the 'multi-ethnic' country's anniversary ceremonies was a parade by the all-Sinhala military which President Mahinda Rajapakse and his commanders reviewed amidst tight security. Elsewhere, the island was wracked by armed conflict, extra-judicial violence and humanitarian suffering. Quite appropriately, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) wasn't even invited to the state celebrations. The main opposition Sinhala parties refused to attend, though this has more to do with their envy of President Rajapakse's near messianic standing amongst the majority community than the protests of poor governance they cited. The main Muslim party, the SLMC, also stayed away: their community is now bearing the crushing deprivations of majoritarianism.

Sri Lanka's quagmire has been aptly described as 'a crisis of the state.' But what is not easily accepted by the international community, in its impatience to bring peace to the island, is that this crisis is the cause and not the consequence of three decades of conflict. Today's abysmal state of affairs is merely an intensification of chauvinist dynamics that, having developed beneath the surface before the colonial handover, erupted into the open soon after the British left. This is not to blame 'ancient hatreds' but to argue that Britain's concentration of power in Sinhala hands enabled a chauvinist project to masquerade as nation-building.

In discussing this, we quote here, with utmost respect, from the work of numerous scholars, whose disparate writings over the years on Sri Lanka's crisis, have largely been ignored in the ahistoric, formulaic and ultimately futile international efforts to re-impose, as 'peace', Sinhala domination of the island and the Tamils.

To begin with, the state is a colonial construct: whilst there is scholarly disagreement as to pre-colonial history, the imposition of a single administrative structure for the entire island was incontestably a British colonial decision, one which came after centuries of incremental (Portuguese, Dutch and British) conquests of its parts. Nonetheless, at independence in 1948, Sri Lanka, with high human development indicators and well-developed infrastructure, was expected - by the colonial power - to become a model democracy. Sri Lanka instead descended into ethnic strife, crisis and vicious conflict.
As such, today's abysmal state of affairs is merely an intensification of chauvinist dynamics that, having developed beneath the surface during colonial handover, erupted into the open soon after the British left. Which is why in 1956, Sinhala leaders were readily able to seek election by appealing to Sinhala chauvinist sentiment. What is important about the introduction of 'Sinhala Only' in 1956 is not its discriminatory effect, but how it was emblematic of the mindset of the Sinhala majority, exemplified by the popular support it enjoyed.

It is noteworthy that it was democratic logic of the 'will of the majority' that legitimised this and subsequent acts of discrimination. The justification was, as the chauvinists still insist, the Tamils were 'privileged' by the colonial power - though it is not clear why the British should have loved us more than the Sinhalese. Meanwhile it is quietly forgotten that the missionary schools (which turned out the English-speaking natives for the colonial administration) were readily accepted in the Tamil areas and resisted in the Sinhala south.

It is in the first three decades of Sinhala majoritarian rule, rather than in the past thirty years of armed conflict, that the present-day impediments to building a 'liberal peace' in Sri Lanka became entrenched. Even by the mid seventies, before the armed conflict had begun, Sri Lanka 'had regressed to an illiberal, ethnocentric regime bent on Sinhala superordination and Tamil subjugation.' A policy of recruiting only Sinhalese into the military was introduced in 1962, the beginning of today's ethnically pure army. And it was state-sponsored Sinhala colonisation that led Tamils to fear 'they may become a minority in their own provinces.' That the demographic dilution of Tamil-majority areas 'would render any devolution of powers as a solution to the ethnic conflict less effective' was not lost on the Tamils, even as they agitated, peacefully, for an end to the discrimination. This is why the slogan of 'traditional homelands,' is first and foremost a political claim meant to ensure the security of the Tamils and is integrally linked to our demands for autonomy and independence.

The passing of the republican constitution in 1972- apart from changing the name from 'Ceylon' to the Sinhala-preferred 'Sri Lanka' - removed the safeguards of the previous British- supplied constitution, gave a pre-eminent position to Buddhism, in addition to the Sinhala language, and most importantly, concentrated power further in the Sinhala-dominated legislature. As such, amidst contemporary international insistence that Tamil demands must be pursued through democratic mechanisms, it should be remembered that it was the failure of democratic processes, for reasons that have become more entrenched today, that both the demand for independence and later armed conflict emerged.
Thus, while antagonistic ethnic mobilization was not an inevitable outcome after 1948, 'what ultimately transpired went beyond what any self-respecting minority would tolerate.' Moreover, the period since independence has been 'punctuated by bouts of annihilatory violence directed against the Tamils in 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983' in which thousands of Tamils, including women and children were massacred, Tamil property was destroyed, and hundreds of thousands made refugees.' These periodic explosions of violence against Tamils represent efforts to put them back in their places on grounds they have become too assertive and need to be taught a lesson, as President J. R. Jayawardene bluntly stated in 1983.

It is the insistent ignoring of this post-colonial history that has resulted in the abject failure of international efforts to encourage, foster and ultimately impose a 'solution' on Sri Lanka. 'Decades of potent socialization through familial, religious, educational, and media practices have resulted in a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist hegemony that spans the political, socio-economic and cultural landscape of Sri Lanka.'
However, the international community continues to insist on abstract and manifestly untenable characterizations of the now intractable conflict. Rather than recognize the resilience of entrenched racism within the centralized and fortified Sri Lanka state, sporadic and laughable efforts to knit 'ethnic harmony' amongst people in parts of the island are combined with much pontification on the appropriateness or not of various constitutional models and, more importantly, 'what the extremist Tamil Tigers will settle for.'
As for the Tamils, our ambitions, like tho-se of any decent people are to live free and peacefully with our neighbours. We seek not to restore some ancient glory or fulfil some manifest destiny. We seek not the subjugation of another people or assertion of any racial supremacy. Our demand for the independent state of Eelam is not a quest for 'ethnic purity' but for the irrevocable and irreducible est-ablishment of our security and dignity. After 60 years of unending oppression and violent repression, we are convinced more than ever of this truth. And, whatever suffering the Sinhala state and its international allies inflict on us, we are not going to give up now.

This is the moderate position on Eelam: Eelam is your right. It is not a gift, not an act of charity but something that is already yours. As with all things, you can claim it or lose it. Others can try to take it away from you but that would constitute an assault, a theft.

When the founding fathers of America made the case for their nation, they did not rely on a cultural identity that had evolved over thousands of years. They did not rely on a common language, let alone a few thousand years of a shared literary heritage. They did not even rely on the concept of a traditional homeland. For, they had none of these on their side.

They relied instead on something more intrinsic and universal. They relied on the rights of man.
And so to quote from Thomas Paine, who articulated the concept most clearly in his seminal book of the same name:
"The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist …"
It follows that, by these principles, the nation of Eelam, can have and does need only one form of legitimacy: a compact entered by the people who choose to belong to that nation.
Of course, those of us, who have a few thousand years of historical cohesion as a "civilisation", a common culture and heritage, and more recently a shared history of oppression and injustice, to bind us together, may not feel the need to explicitly enter into a "compact" with each other; we may take it for granted that it exists and that it has done so implicitly for millennia.

Nevertheless it important to remember that this "compact" or agreement is all that is required. Think of it as similar to saying "I do" in a wedding ceremony, except there is no officiating priest, only ourselves.
Eelam exists because we do.

Furthermore, according to the principles of Paine, where a government arises which contradicts the compact, it is illegitimate. So if the Tamils of Sri Lanka have an agreement with each other to form a government, then any claim by the Sinhalese that they are the "appropriate" government for us is illegitimate.

Eelam exists because we can.
It follows that one nation cannot be "given" to another. So for example the British colonial administrators could not have "given" the Tamil nation to the nation of Sri Lanka. It was not theirs to give. Neither can the International community, today, give us Eelam. It is not theirs to give. Neither is it theirs to deny.
Thomas Paine went on to elaborate on why he believes this right to form a government exists. He argues that in their natural state, humans are social creatures; that it is in their best interests to congregate in societies.

One reason for this is the diversification of talent: it is in man's best interest to specialise in his area of talent and to rely on the different talents and abilities of others. So a social structure where each person contributes something useful to society: a doctor, a priest, a teacher and so forth arises naturally. It is in man's best interests to trade with each other and to regulate trade in some manner.
In fact that governments are hardly required except to fulfil certain duties that might in exceptional cases be otherwise neglected.

And so he says: "The more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself."
And from here, we can see that those geopolitical actors who do not benefit from the existence of Eelam, but whose own forms of government, and in the case of the United States, whose very existence is based on the principles enunciated by Paine, have only one line of attack:
They can say that the Tamils, do not really want Eelam. We can call this the "Only we know what you want" argument.

They can say that the Tamil "civilisation", to use Thomas Paine's formulation, is not ready to govern itself, that we lack 'capacity'. We call this the "you are too primitive" argument.
But because the second argument cannot stand on its own, the first is the foundation to their attack.
For the international bureaucrats, the foreign secretaries, ambassadors, ministers - the Robert Blakes, Kim Howells etc - of this world know, that the basis of their own legitimacy, the legitimacy of their states and governments arise from Paine's principles.

Hence they also know they have no right to deny the people of Eelam their right should they wish to claim it.
However, in pursuit of their own selfish interests, they tell us that we don't really want Eelam. They tell us that the "moderate" Tamil has entered into a "compact" (to quote Paine) to be governed by the brutal Rajapakse government, the Wickremasinghe government or in the past the Jeyawardene government, the numerous Bandaranaikes (SW, Sirimavo, Chandrika) and so on.

They then point out all the disadvantages of Eelam. Junior minister Kim Howell told the British Parliament last month that partition would be bloody, for example.

Some roll out a number of other issues: the borders are too long, the future will be unstable (as if it could be any more unstable than it currently is); there will be anarchy because "you" do not know how to run a government (as if it is easy to form a government worse than the current, un-chosen Sinhala chauvinist one); it will not be economically viable (as if the current semi starvation in Jaffna or chronic displacement in the East is a state of economic well being).

There are other ways in which they tell us that the "compact" for Eelam is a bad idea. They say that the pro-Eelam position is "extremist".

Extremist? Holocaust denial is extremist. The denial of some Israelis of the Palestinians` right to exist in their own homelands might be extremist. A belief that we should all live under a new global "caliphate" or Islamic government with Islamic law, the Al Qaeda position, might be extremist. The belief that one may arbitrarily invade another people's land and take control of their resources, otherwise known as the "Bush Doctrine", might be taken as extremist.

In short, what is extremist is to take away from others what belongs to them.
But asserting the rights of man? The same rights asserted by the founding father of the United States of America? Claiming a right which according to all the current norms belongs to us already? This is extremist?

Well even for a propaganda war aimed at a "primitive" people incapable of forming a government, this is a little disingenuous.

And further, in line with the "too primitive" argument, they tell us that the Tamils do not have a feasible government in waiting. They say that the LTTE is "authoritarian", that it will be too unacceptable to the international community.

But, the point is that the Tamils have a right to choose their own government and they will exercise that right once Eelam is declared, perhaps even making mistakes along the way. But that too is the prerogative of the people of Eelam.

Meanwhile, the 'extremists' can be subject to ruthless violence. The international community is silent as the Sinhalese silence those who speak for Eelam: journalists, members of parliament, rights activists, aid workers. They may support the stationing of an occupying Sinhala army in Jaffna so the people there can understand what good governance is.

Yet for all their dissembling, the "international community" know they have no right to deny the people of Eelam their right should the people of Eelam stand up to claim it.

For Eelam is not a gift. It is not something one begs for or pleads for, or lobbies for. It is an agreement between a people. A right cannot be granted or revoked, but it can be exercised. Eelam is a decisive act.
Consequently, the United Nations cannot "give" us Eelam. They can merely decide, after the event whether they will "recognise" it: by this is meant whether they will allow it to vote in their resolutions, or sit on their committees such as the Human Rights Committee on which Sri Lanka, laughably, has a membership.
So there is only one answer from the moderate Tamil to the international community, which cuts through the fog of deception:

"We understand that Eelam is our right and the right of our children. We decide to claim it, on behalf of ourselves, and our generations to come. We and only we decide its existence. We will not be deceived by 'compromises' or cowed into not claiming that which is ours. We, the people, are Eelam. Accept it."

Sri Lankan leaders are gung-ho about capturing by the year-end the country's northern regions the Tamil Tigers now control.

But ground realities do not match the optimism, say military observers who are predicting a military stalemate rather than an outright victory for either party.

Army chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka has declared he would not hand over the 'terrorist problem' to his successor when he retires at the end of this year. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, President Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother, has vowed to kill Tamil Tigers chief Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The president claims that the armed forces have notched up 'unprecedented victories' in the past two years, that the bastions of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been falling rapidly, and that only 'one and a half districts' remain with the rebels.

Indeed, the capture of the eastern province from the LTTE and the destruction of a number of LTTE ships were spectacular achievements. These have helped keep public morale high in the largely Sinhalese-speaking southern Sri Lanka, the key political constituency of President Rajapaksa.

However, since mid-2007, the Sri Lankan ground forces have not been able to show any notable successes, giving rise to fears among military observers that there could be a prolonged stalemate, leading to public disillusionment.

The operations in Mannar in the northwest began Sep 23 last year. The aim was to capture Viduthaltivu, 16 km to the north.

But after four months of fighting, only eight kilometres have been taken, a military expert who did not want to be identified told IANS. “And this is just the periphery of the periphery.”

The armed forces are actually bogged down in the north over a wide swath of territory, ranging from Mannar in the northwest to Weli Oya and Nagarkovil in the northeast.

The government forces are making determined efforts to break through the first and second lines of defence of the LTTE. The best troops and equipment are being deployed.

But the Tigers are offering 'very' stiff resistance, reliable sources said.

An estimated 50,000 troops are stationed in the Jaffna peninsula in the northern tip.

But, strangely, these are not being deployed to break through Thenmarachchi, in the Jaffna region, capture the Elephant Pass, a narrow isthmus that links Jaffna to the Sri Lankan mainland, and threaten the LTTE holed up in the Vanni, as the northern region minus Jaffna is known.

To relieve the pressure on itself in the north and divert the energies of the government forces, the LTTE is counter-attacking at Weli Oya in the northeast. It has also shelled Palaly, the only air base in the Jaffna peninsula, forcing the government to cancel Jaffna-Colombo flights.

More importantly, the Tigers have been staging small-scale terrorist attacks all over southern Sri Lanka, including Colombo.

Claymore mine attacks and suicide bombing missions have been conducted over a very wide area, from Kebetigollewa and Weli Oya at the northern end, to Buttala and Yala in the deep south; and from Colombo in the west to Kanjikudichcharu in the eastern district of Amparai.

And although the LTTE is said to have been driven out of the east, it took over the Special Task Force camp in Bakmityawa in Amparai district Monday, albeit briefly.

While the ambitious plan to capture the entire northern province by year-end is keeping thousands of government troops tied up along a wide northern front, the need for fresh troops in the beleaguered south is increasing.

“Apart from an estimated 50,000 in Jaffna, the newly captured 2,000 sq km in the east would need another 100,000 troops. Yala would need about 4,000. All this constitutes half the land area of Sri Lanka,” said retired Air Chief Marshal Harry Goonetileke.

“The total needs could be 250,000 troops, without taking into account the all-important Colombo region that will need another 100,000.”

This raises costs.

“In 2007, the defence budget was SLRs. 139 billion ($1.3 billion). But the actual expenditure was 20 percent more. The spending this year is expected to be SLRs. 166 billion ($1.5 billion),” Goonetileke said.

Added Muttukrishna Sarvananthan of the Point Pedro Institute of Development: “And this is happening in the context of aid cuts by several Western countries.”

But President Rajapaksa insists that the West and India are backing him and that there has been no aid cut.

“Genocide is a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”

So said Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish academic, who first coined the term ‘genocide’ in the context of the Holocaust.

The ‘paradise’ island nation of Sri Lanka, is currently South Asia’s wealthiest country on a per capita income basis. Its economy has grown by over 6% in each of the last three years; foreign investment and tourism have boomed despite the civil war.

An international truce monitor examines the bodies of two youth abducted in the Sri Lanka Army-controlled area. Photo TamilNet

And yet over the last year hundreds of thousands of people, mainly Tamils, not only faced starvation but have suffered shellings and bombings, abductions and killings, torture and rape.

Jaffna is emblematic of the deprivations faced by the Tamils of Sri Lanka. The foundations life in this northern peninsula have been systematically destroyed to genocidal proportions. For the simple reason that the Tamils an ethnic minority in the Sinhala state of Sri Lanka.

Jaffna has a written history that is over 2000 years old; once a strategic port on the ancient silk route, it has been for millennia the cultural and political capital of the Tamil people of the island.

Jaffna’s present woes stem from its pre-eminent historic position as the Tamil cultural capital. And its history of political independence.

In 1983, when the country wide, anti Tamil pogroms erupted in Sri Lanka, Tamils in the south sought safe haven in Jaffna. Later that decade it became the political centre of the movement for Tamil independence.

Jaffna, the cultural and, then, the political capital of the Tamils, was also the home and core support base of the largest Tamil political parties since independence, all of whom as their names so clearly suggest, aspired to autonomy for the Tamil homelands in Sri Lanka: the Federal party which later merged into the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF).

In the late eighties, when the government of Sri Lanka entered into an accord with neighbouring India to contain the rebellious Tamils, the Indians recognised the importance of Jaffna. It was flooded with troops by the Indian peace keeping force (IPKF) in what later deteriorated into a well-chronicled brutal and hostile military occupation.

But the Indians were forced to withdraw within two years and Jaffna fell to the control of the the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).

In the early nineties Jaffna had hope: it saw five years of uninterrupted governance by the LTTE, who though not elected, were undeniably a home grown leadership, a political and cultural product of the city itself. Few dispute that Jaffna was well-governed. The Times of London, for example, berated the LTTE for their “fanatical” commitment to the separatist cause but also described them as “fanatically” committed to law and order, squeaky clean, efficient and innovative. The fabric of life had a foundation of stability on which reconstruction could begin.

But genocide returned to Jaffna in the guise of a “war for peace”.

When the next president of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Kumaratunge, the daughter of two former nationalist prime ministers, was elected on a platform of a “ final war for peace” against the Tamil fighters, the western political establishment was keen to give her a chance.

Leading western newspapers, including the editorial of the Times of London reported the all out onslaught of the invasion of the Jaffna peninsula as a “war of liberation”. A broad front military invasion is the most destructive of civilian lives and property, as artillery and aerial bombardment supports an all out battle to capture the target town.

It is difficult to find a parallel for these tactics by a government against its “own population” in any other part of the world – for ironically the peninsula of Jaffna still was formally part of Sri Lanka and the people of Jaffna still entitled to the protection of “their” government.

There were previous incidents that met the legal definitions but one may argue that these were not sufficiently concerted.

The 1981 burning of the Jaffna Library and its entire collection, including historic handwritten manuscripts, was also an act of genocidal intent: a deliberate act by the state, no less, that aimed to destroy the history and cultural identity of a city which prided itself on both its millennia old history and its possession of the second largest library in all of Asia.

The decades long economic embargo of essential items to Jaffna throughout the 90s come close to aving as its objective “inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a people”, part of the UN definition. For minimally if the embargo did not prevent births (also part of the UN definition), it also ensured that the children of Jaffna were chronically malnourished and physically undeveloped.

But these stretched foundations of life crumbled in 1995 with the “war for peace”. For almost all of the 500,000 inhabitants of Jaffna evacuated before the oncoming government soldiers reached them, one of the least documented, but largest movement of civilians peoples since the world war. The “exodus” of Jaffna is chronicled in the book of the same name, by the then chairman of Sri Lanka’s state television network, Vasantha Raja, who resigned and emigrated in protest.

According to the Swiss academic Julia Fribourg, the term ‘genocide’ includes the deliberate displacement of national groups from their homelands with an aim of destroying their cultural and habitational grounds.

But if the Sri Lankan state in 1995 achieved the single largest displacement of an ethnic population in the post war world, it went to great trouble to maintain its bona fides internationally and so to avoid the label of genocide.

The government, once its army had occupied the ghost city, invited its citizens back with the promise of protection. For an empty city was worthless in symbolic terms.

Suffering in the harsh openness of the Vanni region, half of the former population accepted the governments offer of return over the next few years. The rest followed the LTTE deeper into the Vanni and established from the jungle new habitats. Others made their way to Colombo and emigrated.

Those who returned accepted military rule as the price of returning home. They would have been aware of the government’s military presence, of emergency law and judged it bearable. Thus the current conditions of Jaffna cannot be blamed on the un-governability or political extremism of its population.

And yet the current conditions in Jaffna are undeniably genocidal. For no reasonable person could claim that they provide the “essential foundations of life”.

A Tamil woman cursing the passing Sri  Lankan forces.

Today Jaffna is merely an open prison, possibly the world’s largest. Never reconstructed from the destruction of the 1995 war, let alone the recent tsunami, it is a derelict and bombed out police city.

The ratio of soldiers of the army of occupation to civilians is higher that in a prison facility: every family is held hostage by one soldier. Then there is the navy, the militarised police and paramilitaries allied to the government.

Any form of social activity with possible political implications – including for example, meeting with visiting community leaders or multi faith religious delegations from Colombo – is photographed and recorded, the participants can expect visits from the state security forces.

Extensive records have been made over the last twelve years of participation in community or political activities. And almost all those who have shown some initiative – participants in local festivals, heroes day celebrations, journalists, student leaders, cooperative store workers who handout food rations, actors or actresses, aid workers, in fact any one who has participated in group activities for the benefit of the community – is a target for extra judicial arrest and disappearances.

To use a public phone one must provide not only ones own identification and address but also the details of the person one is calling, all of which will be recorded by the police state. Mobile phones do not work.

It is impossible to cross roads for up to three hours if an army convoy, filled with heavily armed Sinhala soldiers, is to pass. Ambulances are no exception.

Civilians are arbitrarily assaulted at army checkpoints. They can be arbitrarily subjected to intimate searches. People disappear routinely within a short time frame of having been through an army checkpoint.

Colombia, the kidnap capital of the world averages 700 kidnappings a year. Jaffna with its population of less than 450,000, with its extensive government military presence averages 6 a day. For in Jaffna it is the state which is accused for abducting, torturing and forever disappearing its citizens.

Earning a living has become impossible. Despite the shortage of food due to the embargo, fishermen are forbidden from fishing. When they are given permission of a few hours a day, they may not use their boats but must use their nets from the shore.

In Jaffna, where there is no media left, the entire family of six of a roadside boutique owner was shot for not providing free services to the Sinhala army.

It is increasingly harder to escape from Jaffna. Last year the borders to the Vanni were closed. Sea travel has been suspended.

But Jaffna has been under the control of the government of Sri Lanka for the last twelve years.

If there was ever an opportunity to undo “the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of a national group” then it would have unquestionably the period of the ceasefire: 22nd February 2002 to the 16th of January 2008.

It was a condition of the Cceasefire Agreement that Jaffna and other military occupied Tamil areas be demilitarised: that the soldiers be restricted to barracks, that civilians be able to return to a “normal” life.

It is ironic that the LTTE had to negotiate this “demilitarisation” on behalf of the people of Jaffna. For the conditions imposed on the people of Jaffna, so clearly calculated to “create bodily and emotional harm on an entire population”, are a violation of UN law on genocide.

But the trigger-happy Sinhala soldiers are everywhere: at temple festivals, exam centres, even at centres for psychological counselling for women traumatised by war.

Such is the symbolic significance of Jaffna to the Tamils, that the Sri Lankan state in 1995, believed whoever controlled Jaffna could claim sovereignty over the Tamil people. The international community agreed and largely endorsed the 1995 “Liberation” of Jaffna.

Jaffna, under the control of the Sri Lankan military throughout the entire period of the ceasefire and for many years prior, must be considered a showcase of the Sri Lankan government’s vision for the Tamil people once they are “liberated” from the LTTE. For Jaffna has been liberated for over twelve years.

More accurately, Jaffna must be considered the show-case of both the vision and implementation skills of the co-chairs of the peace process – the US, the UK, Japan, the European Union – who are also military and economic allies of the repulsive Sri Lankan State.

Many Tamil Diaspora members have family roots in Jaffna and consequently legitimate interests in the fate of this historic city and its province. The question for us when we engage with the international political and human rights machinery – be it the local member of parliament, the foreign office or the Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International – must be: what is your record of implementation in “liberated” Jaffna? Any promises being made for the “liberated” East must be measured against the actual progress achieved in long “liberated” Jaffna.

While it ought to be the responsibility of all the governments who engage in military and economic aid to the Sri Lankan state to ensure that their military and economic ally is not committing genocide, the co-chairs though long on words have achieved zero in implementation.

By their repeated refusal to impose sanctions on the Sri Lankan state, by their insistence in “constructive engagement” with the already prosperous south while aiding the military machine that daily throttles Jaffna, the United States, the European Union – especially, Britain - are indirect participants in the Sri Lankan state’s genocide.

It is important that questions be asked now about the record of the international political establishment that has unashamedly aided and abetted the inflicting of such suffering on the people of Jaffna and the rest of the Northeast

At the very least we need to disillusion both ourselves, and all people of goodwill everywhere, about the combined will and the ability of the international community to “prevent the destruction of the foundations of life” of the Tamil people in the ‘paradise’ island.