EU member states should be working more actively to ensure that [international] development projects in Sri Lanka, especially in the north and east, do not help institutionalise an unjust peace or fuel new grievances and violent conflict, particularly with regard to the use and ownership of land.

With regard to the resettlement of the nearly 300,000 people displaced from their homes by the last two years of fighting, the large majority have left the military-run camps in which they were locked for months. This is good. Nonetheless, according to the most recent government figures, available from the UN, more than 20,000 people remain in the camps and another 70,000 live with host families and are not back on their own land.

Huge problems

Those who have returned home face huge problems, including a lack of housing and other infrastructure, few economic opportunities, and difficulties farming their land and fishing off the coasts.

There is little evidence that the Sri Lankan government is approaching their problems with the requisite openness, urgency and resources.

This can be seen in the damaging restrictions placed on the activities of local and international humanitarian NGOs. Agencies are currently permitted to do little more than deliver tangible material goods, for which the government oftens take credit.

None of the crucial post-war work of rebuilding community organisations, dealing with the psychosocial damage from the war, tracing missing persons, or attending to women’s specific needs – is officially permitted. In this context, it is important that ECHO (the European Commission’s humanitarian aid department) continues to operate in the north and east, though the work they can do there is extremely limited.

What humanitarian and development activities are allowed are closely monitored by the tens of thousands of troops deployed throughout the northern province, and all important decisions are made by the military and predominantly Sinhalese officials in Colombo, chiefly by the Presidential Task Force headed by the President’s brother Basil Rajapaksa.

Conflict over land

In this context, the growing numbers of Sinhalese moving to the north, in a process that is anything but transparent, has fed fears by Tamils that the government plans to change the ethnic make-up of the Tamil-majority north.

The government’s repeated promises that all of the 70,000 or more Muslims forcibly evicted from the north by the LTTE in 1990 will be allowed to return home is good news.

However, the fact that there is very little involvement by Muslim and Tamils community groups and independent politicians in the process of resettlement is sowing the seeds of renewed ethnic conflict, especially in the face of competing land claims.

This is made worse by the government’s failure to establish a transparent and equitable process for negotiating land disputes in the north, of which there are already many.

EU responsibility

Even after the conflict over GSP+ privileges, the EU still contributes a significant amount of development assistance to Sri Lanka, both directly and via its member states’ contributions to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Unfortunately, under current conditions in the north and east, where local communities and their Tamil and Muslim political representatives have little involvement in the physical and economic reconstruction taking place, it is extremely hard for international development assistance to be “conflict sensitive” without much more active monitoring and political engagement.

EU member states and institutions should be using their political and financial influence to press the World Bank and the ADB to tie the delivery of their aid to more inclusive, participatory and democratic forms of planning and implementation, especially in the north and east.

Dr. Alan Keenan is the International Crisis Group's Sri Lanka Project Director and Senior Analyst. The above is extracted from his submission to the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament, Meeting of 6 December 2010 (Full text available here)

Foreign direct investment in Sri Lanka dropped in 2010, despite the end of the war in May 2009, Reuters reported last month.

Highlights:

Despite approval of 268 projects worth $2.5 billion, only about a third were started, the Board of Investment's (BOI) said.

FDI to September was $310m, compared to $350m in the same period in 2009.

Despite severe fighting, 2008 was a record year with $889m. 2009’s total was $602m.

The top five investing countries in 2010 were India, Malaysia, Britain, China and Mauritius.

Sri Lanka is seeking $1bn FDI in 2011, $1.5bn in 2012 and $2bn in 2013.

Disappearances and extrajudicial killings of Tamils are once again on the rise in Sri Lanka. In Jaffna a simmering terror campaign by government-backed paramilitaries has escalated with several people going missing and the bodies of others, bearing horrific wounds, being dumped in public spaces.

The victims include business people and prominent members of the community. And it is no coincidence this is happening amidst international efforts, led now by India, to restore normalcy in the Tamil areas and kickstart the economy there.

Firstly, despite the rhetoric, Sri Lanka has no interest in allowing Tamil entrepreneurship and business to flourish. Instead, the state is seeking to establish a hierarchical economy in which state-backed Sinhala interests dominate the northeastern economy, with the population there serving as little more than a desperate pool of labour for the former’s profits.

The only exceptions are the commercial interests of the Tamil paramilitaries such as the EPDP and TMVP through which Colombo continues to keep Tamil areas unstable and insecure.

Secondly, Sri Lanka is opposed to societal revival in the Tamil areas. With economic progress and the restoration of normalcy will undoubtedly come renewed Tamil demands for political rights, including greater freedom from Colombo's rule and stronger links with the globalised economy and world community.

Which is why eighteen months after Colombo declared victory and the end of the armed conflict, Jaffna, Vanni, Trincomalee and Batticaloa remain places of militarized terror and economic decline. The 'High Security Zones' – once justified as necessary to prevent LTTE assaults on military bases – are largely still in place, or expanding, preventing the resettling of hundreds of thousands of Tamils. Last month the government ordered the ICRC and UN agencies out of the Tamil areas.

It is worth recalling that Jaffna has been under government control since 1995, Batticaloa since 2007 and Trincomalee always. And that Sri Lanka has for over fifteen years received billions of dollars in international aid for both rehabilitation and peacebuilding development.

As a recently Wikileaked US cable showed, sections of the international community are well aware of the commercial interests of the government-backed paramilitaries. Apart from illicit enterprises – stripping of sand for construction, for example, paramilitaries ran forced prostitution and child trafficking rings, kidnapping for ransom, extortion and appropriation of relief aid. Both paramilitary leaders and senior state officials have long enriched themselves through these activities.

Through the war - and the Norwegian-led peace process - international actors tacitly accepted the government’s use of paramilitaries, as well as their sordid sources of finance, as an integral part of its counter-insurgency against the LTTE.

Today these murderous actors are being deployed by the Sri Lankan state, alongside the military’s own harassment of Tamil business and civil society activity to actively deny the conditions – physical security and societal stability - necessary for a fully fledged post-conflict revival.

 

When people are abducted and never seen again – ‘disappeared’ – or their bodies are later found dumped, and when they are gunned down in public or in front of their families, these acts are often described as ‘senseless’. Senseless because nothing these people might have done - or are suspected to have done - is seen to justify such horrific ends.

But there is a purpose to disappearances and extra-judicial killings: terror. These acts are not just about the individual, but the rest of society. They constitute a specific form of violence aiming to define the relationship between the state and the community concerned, between fear and submission.

How genocide?

Disappearances are not mere ‘senseless’ manifestations of ‘lawlessness’, but a deliberate and planned effort by a state to achieve its objectives. As Amnesty International said this week, "entire communities can fracture under pressure as people fear being associated with those targeted."

Historically, disappearances and extra-judicial killings fit within a strategy to destroy the political will of a target population or a way to destroy in whole or in part a target population.

If the target group shares a political belief (for example some Latin American states’ assaults on leftist movements during the Cold War), then it is politicide. If this target population is chosen on the basis of ethnicity – as with the Armenians, Kurds or the Tamils – then disappearances and extra judicial killings become part of a strategy of genocide.

As Raphael Lemkin, the academic who coined the term put it,

“Genocide is intended rather to signify 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.”

“The objectives of such a plan would include the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups”

Sri Lanka's case

In Sri Lanka, disappearances and extra-judicial killings have long been part of the state’s assault on the Tamils. Indeed, given the scale of such targeted violence, it is integral to the degradation of Tamil political and physical life, to genocide.

According to a 1999 UN Study Sri Lanka then already had the world's second highest rate of disappearances - the overwhelming majority of victims since 1990 being Tamils. In the decade since thousands more, again mainly Tamils, have vanished since being taken into government custody.

By 2003 Amnesty International had received 20 000 complaints of disappearances since the armed conflict began in 1983 - of which 9000 were still open. Last year Amnesty said:

"Enforced disappearances continued to be part of a pattern of abuse apparently linked to the government’s counter-insurgency strategy. ... Many enforced disappearances took place inside high-security zones and during curfew hours."

Even after the end of the armed conflict, thousands of Tamil men, women and youth are being held by the state accused of working for the LTTE. None have been charged. The ICRC and international human rights groups have been denied access to them, amid persistent reports of torture, summary executions and rape.

Sri Lanka said last year 11,000 people were being held. Amid international protests, a tiny handful have been released in a few much publicised ceremonies. The state also now claims only 5,000 are held.

Continuous

Disappearances and killings even continued, after a short lull, during the internationally-brokered ceasefire and peace process period (2002 to 2006).

Amongst the high-profile cases, Sri Lanka’s best known defense analyst, Sivaram Dharmaratnam was taken off a Colombo street in May 2005. His body was found the next day, he had beaten and shot in the head. Tamil MPs Joseph Pararajasingham (Dec 2005) and Nadarajah Raviraj (Nov. 2006) were gunned down in public – just two amongst several Tamil parliamentarians. All were advocates of Tamil self-determination.

Some Sinhala critics of the government have also been killed or disappeared. Lasantha Wickrematunge editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper was murdered in January 2008 - a case that gets much more attention internationally than fellow newsman Sivaram’s.

However, notably, the vast majority of media workers killed or disappeared are Tamil: of 35 cases between 2004 and 2009, 29 were Tamil, 3 Sinhala and 2 Muslim. The office of Tamil newspapers in government-controlled Jaffna,  including Uthayan, were repeatedly stormed and threatened by gunmen.

Purposeful

Why are reporters and media targeted? It is not only a question of their criticisms or exposes of government policy. It is also about spreading terror across the media and imposing collective self-censorship, about ensuring non-coverage of the broader assault on, and destruction, of their community. As Rodney Pinder, head of International News Safety Institute says, “Murder is cheap censorship …Terror increases self censorship.”

Another group of Tamils who have been targeted are humanitarians. Several aid workers with the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) were abducted and disappeared in January 2006.

In August that year seventeen staff – all but one Tamil - of the French aid agency Action Contre la Faim (ACF) were lined up and shot dead by Sri Lankan troops (the second worst attack worldwide on aid workers, after the bombing of the UN in Baghdad).

Why are aid workers targeted? It is about spreading terror among humanitarians and curtailing the capacity for extending assistance to a population suffering deprivations amid military offensives.

As a recent study points out, terrorising aid workers into leaving amid a humanitarian crisis is effectively a "death sentence" for refugees and internally displaced.

As the ICRC protested in 2006, even before the ACF killings, the attacks were "severely hampering the efforts of humanitarian actors in Sri Lanka to provide assistance to the most vulnerable segments of the population."

Seeking submission

Amongst the other Tamils who either disappeared in government custody or murdered by the armed forces and their paramilitary allies, are civil society leaders, student leaders, academics, parliamentarians, business owners, relatives of LTTE cadres.

The logic of such state violence was best put by Sivaram himeself. These brutal acts, he said, are about “forcing the target population to lose its collective will.”

“Arrest, detention and torture, all indiscriminate, and interrogation destroy the basis of civil society. All this denies one’s sense of rights; you want people to lose track of the idea that they have rights of any kind. You reduce them to the point where staying alive becomes their top priority.”

Based on a presentation to the 6th International Conference Against Disappearances (Dec 2010), hosted by ICAD (International Committee Against Disappearances).

 

Of the 135 individuals recently accepted into the Sri Lanka Administrative Service (SLAS), described as the apex of the government’s bureaucracy, all but one (a Muslim) were Sinhalese. Unsurprisingy - there weren’t any Tamils amongst the 257 people short listed.

See the full report by LakbimaNews here.

Secretary of the Ministry of Public Administration and Home Affairs, P.B. Abeykoon, says the intake of Tamils in the civil service was dwindling even in the early 80s, when he joined the civil service. There were only four to five Tamil recruits even then, he recalls.

The government's explanation is that no Tamil met its selection standards.

Meanwhile, a Guide prepared by the United States State Department for US firms that wish to invest in Sri Lanka says amongst the problems they'll face is the bureaucracy, described as "cumbersome", "overstaffed" and "large, inefficient and dated."

Also see our earlier related post: ‘Ethnocracy?’

Sri Lanka’s rhetoric on the urgent need for development in the Northeast belies its systematic efforts to disrupt the Tamil people’s recovery and subvert international assistance towards further consolidation of Sinhala dominance over them. The state’s cynical calls for the international community and the Diaspora to contribute to development of the Northeast must be viewed against its actual practices and past record.

Despite making much of the desperate humanitarian needs of the people in the Northeast, the state is actively throttling any international efforts to assist. Visa restrictions and severe operational limits, including access, are imposed on international NGOs seeking to work in the Northeast. The ICRC and key UN agencies have been ordered to drastically reduce their presence in the Tamil areas.

Controlled halt

Even India’s ambitious proposed 50,000 housing scheme for displaced Tamils has run into ministerial interference and bureaucratic resistance. The Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapakse has ordered that “no new buildings should be constructed under donor-funded loan and/or grant project” in the Tamil areas. The powers of local authorities such as Jaffna Municipal Council and Eastern Provincial Council (which in any case are staffed by pliant government loyalits) have had their powers brought under the remit of the Urban Development Authority which, as of May 2010, comes under Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry, no less.

Overall, development in the Northeast has been brought under strict state control, and thus to a halt - except for specific projects to advance and cement Sinhala dominance over the Tamil areas. Military fortresses are being expanded and Sinhala settlers brought in with state funding, direction and protection. Emblematically, the state is building new Buddhist temples whilst Tamil places of worship remain in ruins.

At the same time the hundreds of thousands of Tamils whose lands were forcibly appropriated by the state under the catch-all explanation of ‘the war’ languish in poorly served camps or build shacks in places they have been dumped – ‘resettled’. The ‘lucky’ few rely on relatives’ goodwill and charity.

North and South. Cartoon Sunday Times (SL)

Historical practice

Moreover, these discriminatory practices are not new. Long before the armed conflict began, the state was concentrated its developmental efforts on the Sinhala South. Colombo was not always the most developed part of the country- as visiting Indian Foreign Minister S M Krishna pointed out last month, Jaffna was historically a centre of regional trade. It took state policy after independence to disrupt and change this.

Using the armed conflict as pretext, the state imposed strategic restrictions which stifled key Tamil industries – particularly farming and fishing. It appropriated international aid - from 1977 until recently, Sri Lanka was the largest per capita recipient of international aid in the world - to deliberately economically advance the south at the expense of the Northeast.

Jaffna still lies in ruins – even though Sri Lanka elaborately celebrated its capture fifteen years ago – while industry has been actively developed in the south. Despite the state's 2007 theatrics of ‘Eastern Revival’ the Tamil areas there remain as destitute and militarised as at any time in the war.

Deadly indifference

The state’s actions after the December 2004 tsunami exemplify its institutionalised racism. For days after the disaster, no government aid was sent to the Northeast, and little thereafter – as aid workers, international media and donors’ own accounts attest. Italian officials escorted their aid in desperation. International aid groups and the Diaspora sent collections of food and medicine to their people – but the shipments were either blocked or looted in Colombo’s port. (see for example, reports in Feb, May, and August 2005). The Tamil areas recovered to some extent only when international actors began working directly with Tamil actors on the ground, including the LTTE, and when Diaspora funding and volunteers flowed their homeland (see p6,12 and 20 here).

The world gave generously to Colombo - which spent it largely on the South, and for purposes unrelated to the tsunami (see studies from 2007 and 2009). Three years after the tsunami, whilst house rebuilding was advanced in the south, it had not even started in government-controlled parts of the Northeast.

Ingrained

The international community is today urging a ‘political settlement’ and ‘devolution’ to allow non-Sinhala regions the political and economic wherewithal to recover and rejoin the modern world – an ambition for which both international and Diaspora assistance will not be lacking. It is no surprise the state is deliberately ignored these calls and chanting a hollow mantra of ‘development’ instead. Infused with a Sinhala supremacist logic, it is fanatically opposed to both power-sharing and Tamil economic recovery.

Sri Lanka cannot be seen as a developing state seeking to do advance the wellbeing of its collective population. Rather, it is an ethnocracy seeking to cement in political, economic and territorial terms, a hierarchy of Sinhala over the non-Sinhala. The point will become abundantly clear in the immediate future. The question then will be, how a just peace can be brought about, and Tamil progress made no longer hostage to state racism.

"There is a definite trend to reduce aid agencies to [mere] service providers where the government says where, what, when and how. Therefore, it might be more difficult for NGOs to operate in the future according to humanitarian principles or their mandate"

"The main question is whether the government will take care of the Tamil population, as much as it does with Sinhalese population in the south."

- comments by aid workers. See AlertNet’s report on Sri Lanka’s restrictions on international aid agencies helping Tamils.

The World Bank will phase out grants and interest-free loans to Sri Lanka over the next three years, and will instead provide loans at near commercial interest rates for Colombo’s development projects.

Dr. Okonjo Iweala, the Managing Director of the World Bank made the announcement during a visit to Colombo this month, the LBO reported. 

Soft loans are interest free or low-interest loans, sometimes with extended grace periods in which only interest or service charges are due.

The World Bank arm that provides countries with these, as well as non-repayable grants, is the International Development Association (IDA).

The World Bank's other lending arm is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which raises most of its funds on the world's financial markets, and lends to countries at a small margin.

“Sri Lanka will continue to have access for three years,” Dr. Okonjo-Iweala told reporters, referring to the $175-200million Sri Lanka presently receives from the IDA.

Sri Lanka had sought $500 million of development assistance from the World Bank to fund its post war infrastructure programs.

While the Bank has agreed to increase its funding to Sri Lanka, the extra assistance will be met through loans from the IBRD instead.

“Now we are opening up access to more commercial, harder term IBRD funds of about, 230 to 265 million a year,” Dr. Okonjo Iweala said.

“The government has been seeking half a billion dollars a year (from World Bank). We will be approaching 405 to 465 a year (with IBRD),” she added.

According to figures released by Sri Lanka’s Central Bank earlier this month, the total assistance Sri Lanka received in the form of non repayable grants fell by almost 50% from Rs. 20.5 billion between January and September 2009 to Rs. 10.6 billion in the same period for 2010.

Sri Lanka proposed programme of infrastructure development has been funded instead by loans at commercial or near commercial rates from other sovereign lenders, primarily China, India and Japan.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Policy Studies, a Colombo based think tank warned recently against the dangers of rely excessively on foreign borrowing to finance infrastructure development.

In its Annual ‘State of the Economy Report’ for 2010, the IPS warned that excessive foreign borrowing would add to the debt burden and fuel the growth of imports, as infrastructure projects drew expensive imports of building materials and equipment.

The categories of war crimes for which Sri Lanka’s top civilian and military leadership are responsible expanded this week to include rape, forced prostitution and trafficking into sexual slavery, based on a Wikileaked US embassy cable of May 18, 2007.

(See the full text of the cable here, and a summary of the sex-related crimes it outlines here.)

Tamil paramilitaries ran prostitution rings for Sri Lankan troops in government-controlled parts of the Northeast, and child sex trafficking rings using their networks in India and Malaysia, and they did so with the knowledge and support of the Sri Lankan government, the US cable revealed.

Article 7, para (g), of the Rome Statute lists “rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" as crimes against humanity "when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population."

The US cable leak comes on the tenth anniversary of the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which specifically addresses the impact of conflict, particularly sexual violence, on women and girls.

The below report looks at the international legal context of the sexual crimes described in the US cable, Colombo's response, and some of the past documentation of rape by the Sri Lanka's armed forces.

Government responsibility

Crucially, the US embassy not only found a “pattern of GSL complicity with paramilitary groups on multiple levels” but that the organised crime continued, amongst other rights abuses, despite the US “repeatedly” raising these issues with Sri Lanka’s top leadership, including President Mahinda Rajapaksa and senior ministers.

Indeed Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa explicitly ordered military commanders who wanted to clamp down to “not to interfere with the paramilitaries,” the then US Ambassador, Robert Blake, wrote to Washington.

“It appears that this [government] involvement goes beyond merely turning a blind eye to these [paramilitary] organizations' less savory activities. At worst, these accounts suggest that top leaders of its security establishment may be providing direction to these paramilitaries,” he said.

As such, the US Embassy cable's account makes clear the gender-based violence constitutes widespread or systematic practices that are “either part of government policy or .. condoned by a government” as described by the Rome Statute.

The two main government-backed paramilitary groups concerned are the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP) led by Douglas Devanda and the Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) led by Karuna.

The EPDP and TMVP also registered as political parties in Sri Lanka, and both Devananda and Karuna have held ministerial posts in President Rajapaksa’s governments.

Rape and crimes against humanity

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor and the ad-hoc tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda have all recognised rape in similar circumstances as war crimes and acts of genocide.

The first ICTY conviction of rape and enslavement as a crime against humanity occurred in the Kunarac, Kovac and Vukovic case for the rape of Bosniak women by Serb soldiers.

More recently, with respect to Darfur, the New York times noted: “the centerpiece of [ICC Prosecutor Luis] Moreno-Ocampo's application is the charge of rape as genocide 'causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group' and 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.’”

Interestingly, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was this week criticised for failing to take seriously sexual violence against women in the ICC’s prosecutions, despite the Rome Statute's emphasis on these.

The societal impact of rape is recognised not only to be linked to prevailing cultural norms and sensitivities, but also as a key driver of organised sexual violence against a community.

For example, the ICTY has recognised the social stigma of rape in the Bosnian Muslim society as a reason for why it was used as a weapon of war.

In June 2008, the UN Security Council went a step beyond resolution 1325 and adopted resolution 1820, focusing on sexual violence in armed conflict and recognising for the first time that sexual violence is a tactic used in war and a force impacting international peace and security – and thus within the Security Council’s purview.

“Sexual violence in conflict has become the weapon of choice. The reason is as simple as it is wicked – because it is cheap, silent and effective,” the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallström, said last month.

She was speaking at a conference on “Women and War” organised by the United States Institute of Peace, the World Bank, several universities and the US State Department to mark the anniversary of Resolution 1325.

The US embassy cable sets out how rape, and extra-judicial killings, served to terrify and coerce the Tamil population in Sri Lanka Army(SLA)-controlled areas.

“The young women's parents are unable to complain to authorities for fear of retribution and because doing so would ruin the girls' reputation, making it impossible for them ever to marry. Families have begun arranging marriages for their daughters at a very young age in the hopes that the [paramilitaries] and [SLA] soldiers will be less likely to take them.”

US on Sri Lanka rape

The US cable is thus an important part of the context for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2009 statement at the UN (also see video here):

"Now, reading the headlines, one might think that the use of rape as a tactic of war only happens occasionally, or in a few places, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Sudan. That would be bad enough, but the reality is much worse. We’ve seen rape used as a tactic of war before in Bosnia, Burma, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere.

"In too many countries and in too many cases, the perpetrators of this violence are not punished, and so this impunity encourages further attacks.

"[T]he physical and emotional damage to individual women and their families from these attacks cannot be quantified, nor can the toll on their societies."

Interestingly, however, following Sri Lanka’s vehement response, the Ambassador at large for global women's issues at the State Department, Melanne Verveer, seemed to backtrack.

“In the most recent phase of the [Sri Lankan] conflict, from 2006 to 2009 ... we have not received reports that rape and sexual abuse were used as tools of war, as they clearly have in other conflict area around the world," she said in a letter released to media.

However, Ambassador Blake’s cable of May 18, 2007 makes clear this was simply not true.

Sri Lanka’s response

With its top leadership well aware of the sexual war crimes and its complicity in them, the government’s response to the allegations has been predictable: categorical denial and vehement protest.

In response to the recently Wikileaked US cables, External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris complained of "mendacious stories" in them about claims of killings, and children being sold into slavery and girls forced into prostitution.

President Rajapaksa meanwhile accused 'terrorist' elements abroad of defaming Sri Lanka, saying: “Their latest weapon is to defame our country and throw allegations at our war heroes, accusing them of war crimes.”

Long history at home ...

Sri Lanka’s Sinhala-dominated military has a long and well documented history of rape.

In 2001, the year before the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire came into effect, Amnesty International said it “has noted a marked rise in allegations of rape by [Sri Lankan] police, army and navy personnel,” adding:

“Among the victims of rape by the security forces are many internally displaced women, women who admit being or having been members of the LTTE and female relatives of members or suspected male members of the LTTE.

“Reports of rape in custody concern children as young as 14.”

(See Amnesty's 2002 report here).

In its 1999 annual report, Amnesty International said rape of female detainees was amongst a range of methods of torture, which is "widespread".

In a statement to the UN in 1998, the World Organisation against Torture observed:

“Sri Lankan soldiers have raped both women and young girls on a massive scale, and often with impunity, since reporting often leads to reprisals against the victims and their families.”

… and abroad

Sri Lanka’s military has also been accused of rape and sexual crimes during its peacekeeping operations abroad.

In 2008, the UN was going to charge 114 Sri Lankan soldiers on peace-keeping missions in Haiti with sexual exploitation and abuse against children.

After an investigation, the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) concluded that:

“acts of sexual exploitation and abuse (against children) were frequent and occurred usually at night, and at virtually every location where the [Sri Lankan] contingent were deployed.”

The accused Sri Lankan troops were repatriated on 'disciplinary grounds' after the Colombo government promised to investigate and punish perpetrators of rape.

As always, nothing was done.

Image courtesy Canadian Tamil Youth Alliance

No sooner had Sri Lanka’s supposed change of heart on allowing the UN panel of experts on war crimes convened by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon been announced, the Colombo regime made clear the circumscribed space it will accord the panel and, more importantly, the dangerous reciprocity it is demanding.

After months of defiance in the face of growing international calls for investigations, and mounting evidence of war crimes, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government this weekend (conditionally) agreed to allow the UN expert panel to visit. The ever acquiescent Mr. Ban not only grasped the regime’s new offer, but reportedly commended President Rajapaska’s “flexibility on this issue.”

To what end?

The UN experts, Ban said, would “visit Sri Lanka and meet with” the Sri Lanka’s own ‘Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission’ (LLRC) – staffed by government loyalists and already dismissed as neither genuine nor credible by international human rights groups. (Sri Lanka, however, has a different idea - the External Affairs ministry says the UN experts are to present before the LLRC, something UN sources deny).

While Sri Lanka has been under growing international pressure, its adjunct logic for agreeing to Mr. Ban’s deal soon became clear. Media minister Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters: "We resisted the panel saying we can't allow a UN investigation unilaterally. But in this case, the president has invited them not to undertake any investigation but to share the evidence."

Who benefits?

There can be no doubt who stands to benefit from any such an arrangement. While the LLRC arguably has nothing useful to offer a proper investigation, Sri Lanka’s murderous regime is, for obvious reasons, keen to study the evidence, including witness details, in the UN’s possession. In short, in exchange for meeting the LLRC, the UN panel is being asked to hand over information gathered about atrocities to the very people who committed, sanctioned and ordered these.

International human rights groups have been quite specific why they reject the LLRC: “[it] fails to meet basic standards and is fatally flawed in structure and practice.” Elaborating, representatives of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and International Crisis Group stated:

“In its … hearings to date, the [LLRC]’s members, many of them retired senior government employees, have made no attempt to question the government's version of events and have instead offered current officials a platform for continued misrepresentations of the facts.

“These failings are reinforced by the absence of any provisions for the protection of witnesses to alleged crimes - a particularly crippling factor given that government officials have labeled as ‘traitors’ Sri Lankans who have made claims or provided evidence of [war crimes] by government forces.

“Appearing before Sri Lanka's LLRC under current circumstances could put witnesses at risk and lend legitimacy to a process that is neither a credible investigation nor an adequate or genuine process to address the decades of violence.”

Meanwhile, apart from its long history of human rights abuses and war crimes, Sri Lanka has a concomitant record of destroying evidence (such as remains from discovered mass graves) and killing disappearing and intimidating both witnesses and those who have highlighted atrocities – reporters, parliamentarians, rights activists and others.

What price?

Sri Lanka’s supposed big gesture does not enable in any way the UN panel to investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but is, instead, an attempt by the regime to obtain the information it needs to disrupt and preempt independent war crimes investigations. Thus, whilst it remains unclear – and highly questionable - what exactly Mr. Ban hopes will gain from access to the LLRC’s material, the most pressing question is – what, and who, will be sacrificed to get it?

Sri Lanka’s new preparedness to allow a three-member expert panel on war crimes appointed by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to visit the country is clearly linked to international economic pressure and the diplomatic embarrassments recently suffered by President Mahinda Rajapakse’s regime, proving that - as we argued last week - only direct pressure can bring about Colombo's compliance with international norms, and that ‘quiet diplomacy’ is utterly ineffective.

Barely had Mr. Ban announced his appointment of the panel in June, Colombo reacted with characteristic vehemence. Declaring “Sri Lanka regards the appointment of the Sri Lanka Panel of Experts as an unwarranted and unnecessary interference with a sovereign nation,” the government vowed it would not issue visas to the three experts or otherwise cooperate.

The government also railed against the ‘colonialism’ of international human rights groups and encouraged noisy protests – including a hunger strike by a minister – outside the UN’s offices in Colombo. The government also launched its own ‘Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission’ – rightly slammed by international rights groups as “cynical attempt by Sri Lanka to avoid a serious inquiry that would bring genuine accountability.”

However, this weekend Colombo began to bow: “If a formal request is made by the UN Panel to visit Sri Lanka, the government will consider it,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Bandula Jayasekara said. Mr. Ban meanwhile said “after long consultations between myself and President Rajapaksa I am pleased that the Panel of Experts is now able to visit Sri Lanka and meet with the [LLRC].”

It is clear the climb-down is consequent to both the economic pressures - such as the withdrawal of the EU's trade subsidies - as well as the stinging humiliations suffered by President Rajapaksa during his recent visit to London. For all the self-satisfied hectoring about ‘sovereignty’, it was only a matter of time before reality began to bite the heavily indebted state.

As veteran Tamil journalist J. S. Tissainayagam, who was released from Sri Lankan government custody and allowed to leave the country earlier this year - also after international pressure- said recently, “the more shaming that is done, the more pressure that is put is put publicly, the more the government is willing to act.” Conversely, ‘quiet diplomacy’, as he also said, does not make Colombo more receptive to international demands.

It very much remains to be seen if Colombo will follow through and allow the UN panel to visit and properly conduct its inquiries. As Mr. Ban himself noted, “I sincerely hope that the Panel of Experts will be able to have good cooperation [from Sri Lanka], to have an accountability process and make progress as soon as possible.” Moreover, it is not clear what is served by the UN panel meeting Sri Lanka’s sham commission.

Nonetheless, the community of international and Tamil actors who have been actively seeking an international investigation into Sri Lanka’s war crimes can take satisfaction that their efforts are paying off. There is no doubt justice will be a long time coming for the genocidal slaughter of Tamils in 2009 – and the many war crimes and crimes against humanity inflicted before, and since, then. (It is worth remembering that whilst Serb forces massacred 8,000 Bosniak civilians in 1995, this was only recognised by international community as an act of genocide in 2004.) But with Sri Lanka beginning to buckle under international pressure, the campaign for accountability should be stepped up.

Concomitantly, the war crimes-related evidence against President Rajapakse and Sri Lanka’s other top civilian and military leadership is mounting. Quite apart from details being gathered from victims and collated by international actors, both governmental and non-governmental, and the data accumulated by the UN even as the mass killings were conducted in the closing months of Sri Lanka’s war, the Wikileaked US cables recently made public also offer new leads and avenues of inquiry.

By going ahead with his planned visit to Sri Lanka next week, Defence Secretary Liam Fox is irresponsibly undermining Britain's calls for an independent inquiry into war crimes in Sri Lanka and international protection of human rights. It matters little that Britain is not paying his way.

The clamour for an independent international inquiry into war crimes in Sri Lanka grows by the day: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Crisis Group, a large group of US senators, the US ambassador to Sri Lanka (courtesy of Wikileaks), Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others international figures - the list is endless.

Britain, though not the most forthcoming or vocal of critics, has nonetheless consistently maintained that a proper investigation and subsequent accountability for atrocities must form the cornerstone of any future making of peace in Sri Lanka. Moreover, several British MPs, from both sides of the House, have repeatedly expressed their concerns over Sri Lanka’s human rights abuses, and just last month the Prime Minister, David Cameron, clearly stated: "We do need to see an independent investigation of what happened. Everyone has read the papers and seen the T.V. footage, but we need an independent investigation."

Indeed this subtle, but now firm, stance was clearly manifest during Sri Lankan President's recent UK visit. No overt criticism, but an unmistakable cold shoulder nevertheless. Dr. Fox, however, is indifferent to all this. No sooner had Britain shut the front door on an alleged war criminal, and rightly so, the defence secretary was sneaking out the back to meet him. Dr. Fox’s rendezvous with the Sri Lankan President at the latter’s luxury hotel, and his planned visit to Sri Lanka next week - ostensibly a ‘personal’ one to deliver a speech – also underline an irresponsible disregard for Britain’s new emphasis in its foreign policy of human rights.

Reports that British foreign secretary William Hague is displeased by Dr. Fox’s planned visit are to be welcomed, but that the senior minister will go ahead regardless brings into serious question Britain's credibility on the world stage when it comes to protecting human rights and ensuring accountability for war crimes.

Moreover, an elected British representative today bears responsibilities beyond Westminster. There can be no place for 'personal' or individual interest when a UK defence secretary meets a head of state, especially one alleged by credible international voices to have command responsibility for war crimes.

Dr. Fox’s trip may not draw much attention at home, but in Sri Lanka the newspapers – and the increasingly shunned regime - have been excitedly anticipating the British official since it was announced. And lest it be forgotten, this is precisely because he is Britain’s defence secretary, not some sun-seeking tourist.