Dramatic crisis worsening day by day

Sri Lanka faces a "dramatic and deteriorating" humanitarian crisis caused by the worst violence since the inception of a 2002 cease-fire agreement, the head of a Nordic monitoring mission said last week in interviews with Associated Press and Reuters.

Although the most severe clashes have subsided since August, aerial bombings, artillery and mortar shelling, sea battles and individual shootings continue to kill combatants and civilians every day.

"We see a period of the most serious violations of the CFA (cease-fire agreement) since it was created in 2002, with offensive military operations and territory shifting hands," Lars Solvberg, the new head of the Nordic-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, told The Associated Press in an interview.

Solvberg, who took over as the head of the mission on Sept. 1, said the organization created as a peace monitor is effectively "here now to see how massively the parties are violating this agreement."

Amid daily clashes, "the most important issue right now is that we have this void - that the humanitarian situation is dramatic and is deteriorating day by day," he told AP.

The monsoon season is rapidly approaching and the displaced urgently need shelter, he said, referring to tens of thousands of people who fled the strategic eastern harbor area of Trincomalee.

In the northern Jaffna peninsula, where killings and abductions are reported daily, the situation is heading toward "the state of collapse," Solvberg told AP.

"The situation in Jaffna is very alarming. It's a ship that is barely floating," Solvberg told Reuters also.

"Most of the mechanisms of the society are about to collapse."

Solvberg backed an appeal last week by UN human rights chief Louise Arbour for international action against what she called "grave breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law" in Sri Lanka.

He told AP it "would be a good idea" to have UN investigators in Sri Lanka to evaluate "the human rights situation, because it is so huge."

The mission has no prosecutorial powers, but has offices throughout the country documenting as many incidents as possible.

Among the most flagrant atrocities are the execution-style killings of 17 Sri Lankan aid workers for Action Against Hunger last month in the eastern town of Mutur and the slaying of 10 Muslim laborers near the southeastern town Pottuvil on Sept. 17.

 
Tamil refugees in Vaharai await relief supplies blocked by the Sri Lanka government.
- Photo TamilNet

With so many crimes being committed, Solvberg believes outside intervention is needed to ensure they don't go unpunished.

“The government side is not doing a wholehearted approach to investigate these brutal incidents, which elsewhere in the world would be a major, major case for the authorities," Solvberg told Reuters.

"The nature of the violence by all parties in this conflict is shocking. I'm disappointed to see no real sign of will to limit this violence," Solvberg told Reuters

"That's a totally unacceptable situation if one should commit oneself to the CFA."