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  • Jaffna Bishop wants A9 opened, slams government

    Nov 14
    The Bishop of Jaffna has slammed the closure of the A9 highway, saying people in the Jaffna peninsula are living in an ‘open prison.’
     
    Rejecting government’s claims it is sending food to the cut-off region, Bishop Thomas Savundaranayagam said sea supply cannot cope with the demand.
     
    Amid severe shortages, the bishop expressed outrage at the government’s insistence on charging the people to receive the rations rather than distributing them free.
     
    A charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) responded to the Bishop’s protest by sending money to subsidise emergency food for the desperately poor.
     
    In the face of renewed conflict between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Colombo-based Sri Lankan government has effectively placed Jaffna peninsula under quarantine, blocking off communications by land, air and sea.
     
    The blockade – which crucially includes a road-block on the A9 ‘Elephant Pass’ linking Jaffna to the rest of Sri Lanka – has plunged the peninsula into crisis with a dire shortage of food, electricity for only nine hours per day and spiralling unemployment.
     
    President Mahinda Rajapakse’s administration says it has sent ships with emergency rations of rice, sugar and flour.
     
    But in the ACN interview, Bishop Thomas denounced the aid relief as “inadequate.”
     
    "Even though the government claims that the food they are sending to the north is sufficient, the people are facing a shortage of food and essential items," other reports quoted him as saying.
     
    The only solution to this problem is opening the A9 highway, the Bishop said.
     
    "The goods will come to the north without any problems if the road is opened as soon as possible," he said.
     
    In response to his appeal, ACN has agreed an emergency aid package of €20,000 (£13,400). It will enable the Church to buy rations on behalf of people unable to afford it.
     
    In his comments to ACN, the Bishop stressed the regime’s apparent disregard for the people’s suffering.
     
    He said that many essential needs were not being met by the government’s relief effort including supplies of coconut oil for cooking, baby food and petrol.
    “The government has banned access to many things in Jaffna for fear of them getting into the hands of the LTTE. They seem to forget that there are people here in Jaffna – not just Tamil Tigers.”
     
    "The government is only sending rice and flour and claims that there is no shortage. People do not live on rice and flour alone. Prices of other items such as coconut, milk powder and baby food are very high. These items should be sent to us," he said.
     
    The Bishop said the ACN aid would add to the Church’s existing emergency aid relief in which up to 7,000 people were benefiting thanks to a grant from Catholic humanitarian organisation Caritas.
     
    He went on to say that rebuilding work following the tsunami had ground to a halt because as part of its blockade, the government had stopped the transport of building materials into the peninsula.
     
    Separately, the Bishop has also faulted non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the Jaffna peninsula, both foreign and local, for having failed to anticipate and be prepared for grave ground situation now facing Jaffna residents.
     
    Bishop Savundaranayagam also told ACN, that the Catholic community in Jaffna was “deeply depressed and discouraged” by the continuing silence over the fate of 34-year-old priest Fr Jim Brown, whom he now presumed was dead.
     
    The priest disappeared at the end of the summer after his church was targeted by government forces who shelled it, claiming that Tamil Tigers had infiltrated the crowds taking refuge there.
  • Human shields: the new front
    In the wake of the Sri Lankan military’s shelling of a camp for internally displaced civilians in Vakarai last week which killed over 40 people and wounded 100, the possibility that the LTTE was using civilians as human shields was promptly raised.
     
    But international ceasefire monitors and other observers who inspected the scene and interviewed survivors reported that there was no evidence of LTTE activity or firing.
     
    Despite this the accusations continues to be levelled and have been embellished in the Colombo based media with claims LTTE cadres being amongst the dead.
     
    At first the ‘human shields’ allegation seemed simply the Sri Lankan government’s kneejerk attempt to evade the moral stigma that could have followed the targeted killing of scores of civilians.
     
    However, a closer examination of the escalation of conflict in the past six months indicates that the accusation the LTTE is using Tamil civilians as human shields is central to Sri Lanka’s unfolding military strategy.
     
    Since April this year the Sinhala establishment has (again) rolled out a set of policies that are clearly intended to punish and terrorise Tamil civilians in LTTE controlled areas.
     
    Embargoes on food, fuel and medicines have been re – imposed on the Vanni and the LTTE controlled areas of the east, including Vaharai while the military has launched air and artilley-strikes on civilians in LTTE controlled areas (besides hitting LTTE positions, that is).
     
    Sixteen bombs slaughtered 51 teenagers on a first aid course in August. Last week the government bombed the environs of Kilinochchi hospital wiping out a family of five.
     
    Targeting and punishing Tamil civilians, in an effort to create ‘war weariness’ is clearly central to Sri Lanka’s new ‘war for peace.’
     
    Accusing the LTTE of using civilians as human shields serves to excuse as necessary and justified every Sri Lankan military attack that results in Tamil civilian casualties.
     
    The claim is doubly useful as it not only shifts the blame onto the LTTE for civilian deaths caused by targeted Sri Lankan attacks, it also undermines the LTTE’s legitimacy as a liberation movement struggling to establish the rights of an oppressed people.
     
    In the past few months the Sri Lankan government has also been gradually creating the conditions in which such accusations can be levelled without proof or being challenged.
     
    Repeating the policies of the ill-fated first ‘war for peace,’ the Sinhala establishment has been steadily emptying the north – east of any observers who might be able to challenge its interpretation of events. Foreign non - governmental organisations (NGOs) have been leaving the war zones while access for journalists is near impossible.
     
    The presence of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) has to some extent limited the effectiveness of the ‘human shields’ excuse.
     
    However, Sri Lanka has regularly blocked or delayed monitors’ access to the scenes of atrocities. The point was driven home last week when the SLMM chief was himself targeted by Sri Lankan shelling. The message for all foreigners to (literally) take home is: none of you are safe here.
     
    The international community, always keen to demonise the LTTE and pressure it to the negotiating table has also backed the Sri Lankan charge of human shields.
     
    By way of comparison, in the past the issue of ‘child soldiers’ had been key to undermining the LTTE politically and militarily. Not only was the charge used to characterise the LTTE as an irredeemably illiberal bunch of thugs, it was also hoped that it could be used to hamper its growth by demanding greater scrutiny of its recruitment.
     
    However, the LTTE’s proactive and multifaceted engagement with the complexities of child rights has somewhat blunted the international community’s efforts in this regard – while highlighting the plight of Tamil children under the Sri Lankan state’s decades long embargo and discrimination.
     
    Now, the Sri Lankan military’s brazen abduction of Tamil children, to expand the paramilitary Karuna group, has made the issue something of a liability for both the Sinhala establishment and the international community.
     
    Indeed the recent visit of Allan Rock, a representative of the UN Representative for Children and Armed Conflict has has notably not incited the flurry of activity that accompanied the visit in 1998 by the then UN Representative, Olaru Ottonu, when the campaign was primarily against the LTTE.
     
    The issue of ‘human shields’ has become central to a new strategy of weakening the LTTE. By bombarding and terrorising Tamil civilians, it is hoped that popular support for the LTTE will be substantively eroded.
     
    Some international actors are therefore working in tandem with the Sri Lankan establishment to establish the accusation of human shields as a rationale for explaining away targeted attacks against Tamil civilians.
     
    With backing from diplomats in Colombo and their western capitals, sections of the international media have been repeating Sri Lankan accusations of the LTTE using human shields. The SLMM findings that contradict the allegations are largely ignored or sidelined.
     
    And with this doubt in the air, the international community then ‘justifiably’ holds back from condemning Sri Lankan violations of international humanitarian law, using platitudes such as ‘deep regret’, ‘concern’ and lamenting the ‘price paid by civilians.’
     
    A stark contrast indeed from the colourful language used to lambast the LTTE when it appears to have violated those same norms. A contrast that is immediately visible to the Tamils – as it is meant to be. The message is clear: these rights are not for supporters of terrorism.
     
    As with the campaign around child soldiers, international organisations have also been mobilised to focus attention on the human shields accusation against the Tigers. Even before the massacre at Vakarai last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) initiated a campaign on this very theme.
     
    In an interview with the Colombo based Daily Mirror, conducted before the Vakarai shelling, but published afterwards, an HRW official asserted Sri Lankan accusations against the LTTE as fact and pointed out that using human shields was a violation of international humanitarian law.
     
    Like many aspects of the child soldiers campaign, the noise level of these accusations insistently echoed and re-echoed by HRW and the Colombo based media, in spite of any evidence to the contrary, establishes the allegations as incontrovertible ‘truth.’
     
    The LTTE, rather than the armed forces, then becomes the proximate cause of Tamil suffering when shells and bombs explode amongst civilians.
     
    More insidiously, the noise level of the human shields campaign also works to justify Sri Lankan attacks against civilians as a necessary part of prosecuting a just war against the morally bankrupt LTTE.
     
    The human shield campaign has however been blunted by the reporting in the Tamil media and by the ongoing presence of SLMM monitors in the war zone.
     
    However, the space for accurate reporting is being steadily closed. There has been a rapid escalation of attacks against Tamil journalists and newspapers based in the war zones.
     
    The SLMM’s ability to function independently of Sri Lankan and international agendas is also being compromised – note the confidence with which two SLMM chiefs have been shelled by the Army without penalty.
     
    Amid this blackout, Colombo based media as well as international organisations, like the HRW, irredeemably hostile to the LTTE, will ratchet up the noise about human shields whilst simultaneously ignoring attacks against Tamil journalists, disappearances, abductions and intentionally created conditions of starvation and disease.
     
    The HRW has played a similar role in the recent campaign on alleged LTTE extortion amongst the Diaspora. It is no accident that Sri Lankan ministers began quoting extracts from the HRW report even before it was officially published.
     
    That report, it must be recalled, was instrumental in securing the European Union ban on the LTTE. It was also instrumental justifying the subsequent Sri Lankan military actions against Tamil civilians, as it asserted that Tamils are not supportive of the LTTE and any civilian deaths caused by Sri Lankan military action are unintentional.
     
    If the Sri Lankan establishment is successful in silencing the Tamil media, we can fully expect the human shields campaign to reach the noise levels the child soldiers issue reached.
     
    The international community will support Sri Lanka’s strategy in so far as they believe it is effective in limiting the LTTE’s military capacity.
     
    The human shields campaign is the perfect logic through which to prosecute a war that punishes the Tamil populace for supporting the LTTE. As an editorial in The Times of London warned some months ago, the Tamils “will find no peace” until they abandon the LTTE.
     
    But while the human shields campaign is likely to be successful in rationalising Tamil civilian suffering amongst the converted – i.e. in the South and Sri Lanka’s international backers - it will have a different effect on Tamil civilians.
     
    Desperate people will do desperate things. And as recent history attests, the Tamils have proven themselves to be a determined group accustomed to international contempt and hostility.
     
    The internationally backed Sri Lankan strategy of prosecuting a ‘total war’ against Tamil civilians whilst accusing the LTTE of using human shields will only stiffen Tamil resolve against Sinhala aggression and international duplicity.
     
    It will, like other efforts to undermine the Tamil struggle, contribute to its strengthening.
  • Joint Strategy
    Sri Lanka’s Sinhala dominated state is escalating its military campaign to destroy the Tamil struggle. As it does so, its contempt for the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) and international humanitarian law is undisguised. As ever, there are two components to Sri Lanka’s strategy – attacking the Liberation Tigers on the one hand and inducing terror amongst the Tamil populace on the other. These elements have always been part of counter-insurgency in Sri Lanka. And they have always had the approval of the international community.
     
    Despite its rhetoric of multi-ethnic plurality the reality is the state of Ceylon/ Sri Lanka has, since independence, functioned on the logic of us-and-them when it comes to the Sinhalese and the Tamils. And the 2002 peace process has pointedly failed to corrode this racial hierarchy. The state’s response to the devastation wrought by the 2004 tsunami – to ignore the Northeast and prioritise the South – is archetypical. The point was underscored last week by a frustrated Operation USA.
     
    But it is the state’s escalating violence against the Tamil population that is doing most to illuminate contemporary ethnic relations in the island. Sri Lanka’s artillery targeted a refugee camp in Vakarai. At least 40 people were killed and 100 wounded. As ever, mimicking justifications of atrocities in another part of the world, Sri Lanka said it was counter-attacking LTTE gun positions – a claim rejected by international ceasefire monitors and human rights groups who spoke to survivors and residents. But the Army also blocked the ICRC and other aid agencies from the area for several hours. It refused to let the badly wounded civilians out to reach hospital. And for the past six months, the Sri Lankan military has been brazenly blocking food, medicine and other essentials to Vakarai and other Tamil region. The protests of international aid agencies, Tamil parliamentarians and human rights groups have been derisively ignored.
     
    And apart from meting out this collective punishment against Tamils in areas controlled by the Tigers, in its own controlled areas, the state is waging a murderous campaign against anyone even slightly inclined to agitate against it. It is not simply a matter of LTTE cadres or supporters, but anyone dabbling in Tamil political activity. It is inevitable perhaps that parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) are targets for the Army-backed paramilitaries and death squads. The assassination of Nadaraja Raviraj, MP, last Friday is, as his colleagues say, an attempt to silence their vocal criticism of the state. But it is more than that. The killing, and the wider campaign of terror, is intended to send a message to the wider Tamil community that it is the state, not the international community or the LTTE that controls their fate.
     
    The begrudging and feeble criticism of Sri Lankan atrocities by the international community is shameful and revealing. It confirms what the Tamil sceptics have always said about the Norwegian peace process – that it is an exercise in counter-terrorism, rather than conflict resolution, that it is about hamstringing the LTTE and bolstering the state, rather than ensuring a just solution. In the past few years, there has been much public berating and lecturing to the LTTE about human rights, child rights, political assassinations and so on. But now these formerly strident voices have gone silent.
     
    The point is that these international principles are raised only when they serve to undermine the Tamil struggle, but not when Tamils are victims. After all, we remember the approving international silence during the ‘war for peace.’ Those days are back. Dozens of ordinary Tamils are being murdered each week. Tens of thousands are being harried daily by military bombardment. Hundreds of thousands of our people are suffering shortages of food and medicine.
     
    And it is the international community’s tacit collusion in this onslaught that we must come to terms with. The Sri Lankan state is behaving in the same manner it always has. As President Junius Jayawardene blithely observed in July 1983: “The more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here. Really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy.” What the Tamils need to understand is that if such brutality against our people will result in us abandoning our demands for our political rights then the international community will also be happy. Which is why there has been no real pressure on Sri Lanka to desist. Which is why the international response to Sri Lankan violence against us is a mocking call for the state to investigate and punish itself. Which is why, even now, there is no international diplomacy to avert the violence.
  • Genocide, with a little help
    In the past week there has been another series of attacks on Tamil civilians and prominent Tamil leaders.
     
    Last Wednesday an artillery barrage by the Sri Lanka Army targeted at a refugee shelter in Vaharai that housed thousands of displaced Tamils killed over 60 people, most of them women and children, and injured a hundred more. Tens of thousand of Tamils already driven from their homes in Trincomalee are now in a panic.
     
    Two days later, gunmen assassinated Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, Sasikala Raviraj, a vocal supporter of Tamil self-determination, who had recently been vociferous in challenging the Sri Lankan. The state sanctioned this killing. It is part of the wider effort to destroy the Tamil challenge to its rule.
     
    The shelling of civilians at Vaharai was followed soon after by a Sri Lankan military ground attack there. No doubt the offensive will yet again be justified by Colombo as a pre-emptive strike to prevent an offensive by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
     
    Such bouts of violence against the Tamils have been repeated time and again during Sri Lanka’s decades’ long ethnic conflict whenever the state has reverted to its favoured efforts to crush the Tamil struggle for self rule by military means.
     
    The difference on this occasion is the how more obviously assistance is being extended by the international community to Colombo’s onslaught.
     
    The Tamils had hoped that the most recent peace process would be unlike past efforts at negotiating with the Sri Lankan state. The unprecedented intense participation of the International Community, as facilitators, Co-chairs and financiers of the peace process was intended to ensure a fair settlement to the long running and bloody dispute.
     
    Instead this engagement proved to be yet another futile negotiation with an intransigent state secure of international support. Promises to resettle the third of Tamils who are displaced from their homes by military action were never kept.
     
    Even the internationally-brokered agreement to share tsunami aid was obstructed, conveniently blamed on a judicial system whose inherent bias is one of the core sources of the ethnic conflict.
     
    Instead of utilising the political, financial and military tools at their disposal to rectify the Sri Lankan state’s failings, the international community has continued to fully support and engage with it.
     
    This support has continued to be forthcoming in the face of a blatant campaign of terror targeting the foundations of Tamil society, especially those brave enough to voice their support for the Tamil cause of self-determination (an aspiration which has already been deemed illegal within Sri Lanka’s constitution).
     
    Tamil politicians, academics, human rights activists, aid workers, students and members of the judiciary have been systematically ‘disappeared’ or nurdered by the security forces or allied paramilitaries.
     
    Hundreds of individuals are ‘disappearing’ in the custody of Sri Lanka’s armed forces or the paramilitaries. The victims’ ‘crimes’ could be as dangerous as being vocal in their support of the Tamil cause (say by participating in the Pongu Thamil rallies), or even that they are a friend or relative of someone who is supportive.
     
    The onset of starvation amongst hundreds of thousand of people amid the government’s blockade in parts of the Tamil homeland has had little visible impact on foreign policy towards Colombo. Sri Lanka continues to enjoy economic, diplomatic and military ties with the rest of the world.
     
    The continuation of international political support is most clearly evident in the lack of condemnation of Colombo’s atrocities. The armed forces meanwhile continue to receive training from states far and near.
     
    The odd human rights watchdog condemns Sri Lanka’s actions but there is little by way of tangible action as a result.
     
    Sri Lanka has received no ultimatum; no deadline to cease these crimes against humanity.
     
    Last week the UN finally commented on the Sri Lankan state’s now long running policy of abducting Tamil children to fill the ranks of Army-backed paramilitary groups.
     
    This chilling operation has finally received some public rebuke by international actors, but well over a year after the incontrovertible evidence of it taking place was revealed to the world.
     
    And despite these most fundamental abuses against its own citizens, the Sri Lankan state is hailed as a democracy. Just week ago the US again lauded Sri Lanka as an ally.
     
    The Tamil community had long held the view that Sri Lanka would not hesitate to commit genocide in order to crush the Tamil struggle and turn the Sinhala mythology of an island bequeathed into reality.
     
    In fact the Tamils believe that slow genocide has long been the intent of the Sri Lankan state’s many discriminatory policies and violence.
     
    The surprise, however, has been the International Community’s complicity in this ongoing effort.
     
    Unlike Rwanda or East Timor, Sri Lanka’s genocide, whilst slower in killing rates, continues to be reported daily by Tamil and even English-language media.
     
    Almost every detail of the past efforts at subjugation of the Tamil people has been highlighted.
     
    No member of the international community in is able to claim ignorance.
     
    The only question that needs to be addressed is the reason why powerful international actors would arm and finance a chauvinist majoritarian state bent on the violent subjugation of a minority.
     
    From the Tamil perspective, the usual soul searching that may follow in Western capitals in the aftermath of this effort at destroying a people is irrelevant.
     
    The question that needs to be answered now is how the Tamil nation should proceed from this point.
     
    Any political effort to address the Tamil question has been systematically and violently closed off. Even Tamil politicians who are supposedly meant to address the issue within Sri Lanka’s ‘democratic’ framework are being silenced by the state.
     
    In any case, the state has already ruled debate on the core issues unconstitutional.
     
    The International Community, far from being a force for peace, is prepared to be fully complicit in the genocide of the Tamil people.
     
    Those within the Tamil community who have been urging the heeding the calls and sentiments of international community are now being drowned out by the anguished cries of large sections of our community .
     
    That the Tamil people need to take responsibility for defending themselves has become self-evident now.
     
    The international community has already crossed (back) over the line from tacit observer to active accomplice in the onslaught against the Tamils.
     
    The democracies of the Western world have failed to produce audible voices of opposition capable of and willing to challenge current foreign policy towards Sri Lanka.
     
    We cannot rely on the international community to restrain the Sri Lankan state.
     
    Quite the reverse – even the current unabashedly Sinhala-chauvunist government appears to be receiving increasing amounts of military and financial assistance, the more successfully it seems to prosecute a war against the Tigers.
  • ‘Be good’ – Co-Chairs tell GoSL, LTTE
    The Co-Chairs of the Tokyo Donors Conference - Norway, the United States, the European Union, and Japan - met in Washington, D.C. on November 21.
     
    The Co-Chairs view with alarm the rising level of violence in Sri Lanka that has led to significant loss of life and widespread human rights violations. The Co-Chairs condemn the continued and systematic ceasefire violations by Government of Sri Lanka and LTTE. We call on both sides to seize the historic opportunity created by the 2002 Cease-Fire Agreement to resolve the country's conflict peacefully. Only by committing to sustained and substantive negotiations can the downward spiral of hostilities and human rights violations be reversed.
     
    The Co-Chairs particularly condemn the LTTE for initiating hostilities from heavily populated areas and the Government of Sri Lanka for firing into such vulnerable areas and killing and wounding innocent civilians. The Co-Chairs call on both sides to respect international humanitarian law and set aside demilitarized zones to protect internally displaced persons.
     
    The Co-Chairs recall the responsibility of both parties to guarantee the security of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission to fully exercise its mandate. The Co-Chairs were disturbed by the incident on November 8 when the Head of Mission of the SLMM came under fire. The Co-Chairs remind the parties of their responsibility to respect all rulings by the SLMM and to implement the Cease-fire Agreement fully, including re-opening the A-9 highway.
     
    The Co-Chairs recognize that talks took place on October 28-29 in Geneva. However, we urge the Parties to the conflict to commit to a structured and sustained process of further negotiations without preconditions once a proposal is available, as indicated by the Government and welcomed by the LTTE delegation in Geneva.
     
    The agreement between the Sri Lankan Freedom Party and the opposition United National Party should lead to a credible power-sharing proposal that can help form the basis for a viable negotiated settlement between the Parties. At the same time, the specific arrangements for the north and east should not be disturbed as they are fundamental to continuing the dialogue to achieve an agreement. The legitimate interests and aspirations of all communities, including the Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala communities must be accommodated as part of a political settlement.
     
    The Co-Chairs welcome the Government of Sri Lanka's progress in establishing a Commission of Inquiry for Human Rights with international observers. They condemn the growing violations of human rights by all sides and the fear that pervades civil society, politics and the media. The Commission of Inquiry and the Government should work promptly to bring the perpetrators to justice and to address the climate of impunity.
     
    Citizens are caught in this conflict and agencies are unable to reach them. We recognize the efforts by government to provide essential supplies themselves and welcome the establishment of the consultative committee on humanitarian assistance that is addressing several humanitarian access issues for international agencies.
     
    The Co-Chairs urge both parties to depoliticize the issue of humanitarian access and for the immediate, permanent and unconditional opening of the sea and road routes for humanitarian convoys of essential supplies. As a first step towards this, the Co-Chairs welcome the readiness of the Government to send one convoy via the A-9 highway to Jaffna and to allow International Non-Governmental Organizations with a proven track record immediate access to uncleared areas to restart their relief work. The Co-Chairs call on the LTTE to cooperate with such initiatives.
     
    The Co-Chairs, together with other members of the international community, express their strong support for Norway's ongoing efforts to facilitate the peace process and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission's role in monitoring the Cease-Fire Agreement.
  • Co-chairs assure Sri Lanka of support
    The Sri Lankan government’s casual dismissal of international donors’ statement last week condemning rights abuses and ceasefire violations by its armed forces stems from confidence that, despite this criticism, military and financial support from the international community is not going to be disrupted.
     
    After a key meeting last Tuesday (Nov 20), the Co-Chairs of the donor community – the United States, Japan, European Union and peace facilitator Norway – said they were alarmed by the rising violence gripping the island.
     
    The quartet condemned “the continued and systematic ceasefire violations by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE” and “the growing violations of human rights by all sides and the fear that pervades civil society, politics and the media.”
     
    The Co-Chairs wanted the “immediate, permanent and unconditional opening of the sea and road routes for humanitarian convoys of essential supplies.”
     
    They also singled out the A9 highway which is being held closed by Colombo.
     
    But these messages were contradicted by the strong messages of support for Colombo made by individual representatives of the Co-Chairs soon after the meeting in Washington.
     
    US Under Secretary for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns; Norwegian Minister of International Development Erik Solheim, Japanese Special Envoy Yasushi Akashi, and European Commission and European Commission Director General for External Relations Herve Jouanjean addressed the press in Washington Tuesday evening.
     
    "I'd just say on behalf of the United States that we have faith in the government and faith in the President of Sri Lanka. They do want to make peace," said Mr. Burns.
     
    "We also believe that the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, is a terrorist group responsible for massive bloodshed in the country and we hold the Tamil Tigers responsible for much of what has gone wrong in the country.”
     
    “We are not neutral in this respect," he said.
     
    "We support the government. We have a good relationship with the government,” he said.
     
    “We believe the government has a right to try to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. The government has a right to protect the stability and security in the country. We meet often with the government at the highest levels and consider the government to be a friend to our country.”
     
    “We are working with Sri Lanka as a partner in counterterrorism as well as counterproliferation. All that is happening,” he said.
     
    Crucially, the Co-Chairs, who represent the Sri Lanka’s donor community said that there would be no curtailment of international aid.
     
    "We have not discussed the future of our [aid] cooperation during these discussions," the EU’s Mr. Jouanjean said of the Co-Chairs meeting in Washington.
     
    “[But] together with our [Co-Chair] colleagues we [EU] are a major donor of assistance cooperation, assistance to Sri Lanka, acting both in the framework of the Tokyo Declaration as well as in the normal framework of our development policy,
     
    “The amounts of money are quite huge. So I think the four of us are very active there. We have not discussed the future of our cooperation during these discussions,” he said.
     
    Mr. Burns said: “we do have an assistance program for that government, in fact, a very intensive one and we intend to continue that of course.”
     
    And despite peace conditionalities attached to $4.5billion pledged by donors who met in Tokyo in 2003, much of the aid had been disbursed anyway, Mr. Akashi said.
     
    "The great bulk of this has already been delivered by the way of pledge to close linkage between the peace process and the assistance process," he said.
     
    Since early 2004, Sri Lanka has seen escalating violence, initially between Army-backed paramilitaries and the LTTE and this year direct confrontations between the military and the LTTE.
     
    Truce monitors say 3,000 civilians, troops and Tigers have been killed while extra-judicial killings and disappearances are soaring.
     
    Unfazed by the criticism set out in the Co-Chairs’s formal statement last week, Sri Lanka’s government continued air strikes and bombardment against the Liberation Tigers.
     
    Any criticism by the Co-chairs was because the donors had been “mislead” by international truce monitors and a UN envoy, government defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said.
     
    He insisted that national security took precedence over the ceasefire and that the international community recognised this.
     
    "It was rumoured that the co-chairs were going to come down hard on the government," Rambukwella he told AFP. "Nothing of the sort happened."
     
    He also insisted the international community recognised that Sri Lanka had a right to defend itself when attacked by the Tigers.
     
    "As long as the terrorists attack, we will respond," Rambukwella told AFP.
     
    President Mahinda Rajapakse's government has repeatedly rejected allegations by international truce monitors of troop involvement in extrajudicial killings during a surge in violence this year.
     
    U.N. envoy Allan Rock has also accused elements of the military of helping to abduct children to turn them into soldiers for a Tamil paramilitary group allied with it against the Tigers.
     
    "The co-chairs would have been influenced by Allan Rock and the SLMM (Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission) and that is misleading," government defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella told Reuters hours after the donors issued their damning statement.
     
    "Obviously on the basis of national security, we have to react on certain issues. That can be ... systematic erosion or violation of the ceasefire," Rambukwella added.
     
    "But this becomes inevitable unless the LTTE change their stance of terror."
  • (video) Sri Lanka 'uses child fighters' - UN envoy

    Sri Lankan government forces are recruiting child soldiers to fight against the Tamil Tigers, the UN has said. Allan Rock, a senior UN official, says troops are rounding up children to fight with the Karuna Group.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/video/65000/nb/65635_16x9_nb.asx

  • Violent incidents in the NorthEast – week ending November 5
    November 5

    ● An auto-rickshaw driver from Rajakiramam village in Karaveddy West, Vadamaradchy was shot dead by gunmen. This is the third killing involving youths from Rajakiramam travelling-in or owning auto-rickshaws in the last six months.  Ponnuchamy Ramesh, 30, from Mattakuliya in Colombo, married in the Rajakiramam, and has been driving auto-rickshaw for a living. He is the father of two children.

    ● Armed men shot dead a shop assistant on a bicycle at Puthukudirrupu, Valaichenai. Selvam Raju, 29, father of one, employed in a Video shop in Valaichenai town, was shot at close range on his head, chest and stomach while going to his house in Kalikovil street in Puthukudirrupu after closing the shop.

    ● The body of an unidentified male person washed ashore in Talaimannar coast and was buried at government expense. Talaimannar Police removed the body on receipt of information from the public. A post-mortem examination revealed that the person had died due to drowning.

    ● Thavasi Rasenthini, 29, was shot at her home in Sirupiddy, Valikamam East, by unidentified assailants.

    ● Alfred Charles, 16, a student from Chunnakam residing with his uncle in Kayts, was shot dead by SLN soldiers. The SLN alleges that a group of youths tried to flee when asked to stop for violating curfew hours. Witnesses said the students were returning after renting a movie from a video rental store in Kayts town.

    November 4

    ● Nadarasa Sivamoorthy, 26, a former member of the LTTE, was abducted from his home at Iluppaikulam by six unidentified persons on Friday night. His body was found with knife injuries. He left the Liberation Tigers in 2000 and had been living in Vavuniya. He is the father of three month old child.

    ● A former senior member of the paramilitary PLOTE was abducted from his home in Puliyankudal, Kayts, Friday and his body was found with gunshot wounds. Kumaravelu Suthaharan, alias Appan, 33, left PLOTE less than 5 years ago, got married and was living in Puliyankudal in the Jaffna islet when he was killed.
    Suthaharan's body was dumped in shrub jungles surrounding the Kaattu Vairavar Temple in Puliyankudal.

    Suthaharan was widely believed to be behind the abduction and beheading of a Karaveddy youth, Rajaratnam Rajeswaran, 23, at the PLOTE offices in Nelliady, in 1999. The decapitated body was recovered in from a cess pit behind the office of the PLOTE at at Puthuthottam, Nelliyadi, and the head was recovered inside a drain near Kasturiar Road in Jaffna town. Suthaharan appeared in court proceedings in Point Pedro courts in the murder case, and later absconded, went into hiding, and started a family in Puliyankudal.

    ● A SLN soldier was killed and another injured when a road clearing patrol was the target of a claymore attack at Allesgarden, Uppuveli, north of Trincomalee town.

    ● Unidentified persons triggered a claymore device targeting a truck carrying STF troopers and police at Pottuvil, Amparai, killing a police constable and seriously injuring two STF troopers. The dead policeman was identified as T. N. Jayawardne, 35. L. Nanthasri, 33 and U. Ranatunge 38 were the two STF troopers seriously injured in the blast.

    ● A former worker at the Jaffna offices of the paramilitary EPDP was shot dead by gunmen at her residence in Puttur, Valigamam East. Gunmen who went to the house of Ms Nagamani Rajinithevi, 31, in Puttur North, called her to the front door, shot her at point blank range and escaped.

    November 3

    ● Marimuthu Chandrasegaram from Kilinochchi, 36, was shot dead by unidentified men inside his house at Aachikulam in Samalankulam in northern Vavuniya. He fled Kilinochchi due to military operations and was living at Sithamparapuram Welfare Centre. He later resettled at Samalankulam. He lost his a leg in a mine explosion.

    ● Four were killed and six injured in a mortar attack launched by the SLA from its Mankerny camp in Batticaloa on Vaharai, a village in LTTE held territory in Batticaloa. The shells launched continuously by the SLA on and around the temporary shelters of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) exploded, causing the IDPs to flee in fear in all directions. Nallathamby Thiyagarajah and his son Thiyagaraja Rajanikanth, 28 were killed while they were riding on a bicycle when the shell fell near them. Nadaraja Anushanthan and Packiyaraja Thileepan, two IDPs from Manalsenai, Trincomalee, were also killed.

    ● Two SLAF Kfir bombers targeted a Sea Tiger base at Kiranji in Pooneryn, dropping 16 bombs on two different targets. They also attacked Palai later in the morning.

    ● Sivalingam Krishnan, 39 and a father of five, of Periyamurippu village in Mannar, was shot dead by unidentified persons. His body was found near the suspension bridge along Madhu Road to Kunchukulam Road. Relatives of Krishnan, a fisherman, moved the body from the scene to Periyamurippu village. He had earlier been a member of the LTTE and later left the movement and was living in the village with his family, TamilNet reported. A police team that visited the scene recovered 9 mm bullets.

    ● Assailants hurled hand grenades at the cadres of the paramilitary EPDP selling the "Thinamurasu", a weekly paper printed by EPDP, in Valaichchenai, Batticaloa, but no one was injured in the attack. SLA soldier and EPDP members beat youths passing through the junction, and searched nearby houses following the attack. Paramilitaries operating with the SLA in the Valaichchenai Fishing Harbor Army camp used to force people travelling in buses, minibuses, motorbikes and bicycles along the Valaichchenai-Kalkudah Road to buy the paper, TamilNet reported.

    November 2

    ● Five members of a family were killed and another person seriously injured when SLAF Kfir jets dropped 16 bombs within 500 meters east of the newly built Kilinochchi General Hospital at Anandapuram (see separate story).

    ● Yasothiny Narayanamoorthy, 25, from Odai area, Point Pedro was shot dead near Pandaary Amman Temple in Thambachetty, Jaffna. She was riding a bicycle near the Amman Temple when two gunmen followed her in a motorbike, shot her at point blank range and escaped. The "Ellalan Force" claimed responsibility for the killing in a press release issued to the media stating that she was punished because of her involvement in anti- social activities.

    ● Sivasubramaniam Tharmenthira, 25, was arrested at Fifth street on Brown Road in Jaffna town by SLA troopers.

    November 1

    ● SLAF Kfir bombers bombed civilian settlements in LTTE held Kattumurivu, Batticaloa, nine times. Twelve civilian houses are said to be badly damaged.

    ● The SLA launched heavy artillery fire and multi-barrel rockets on Vaharai areas from Valaichenai Paper Factory, Karadikulam, and Kadguwatte SLA camps on Panichankerny, Ooriyankaddu, Salithivu, Kandalady, Vaharai and Thadumunai villages in the LTTE controlled territory. SLA soldiers were brought in 10 buses to Mankerny, said residents from Mankerny. The LTTE retaliated by launching mortar fire on Mankerny and Kadguwatte SLA camps.

    ● SLA troopers on field bikes along with paramilitary cadres in a White van arrested Baskaran Pirathaban, 23, an auto rickshaw owner, at his home at Manipay Road in Inuvil west. Pirathapan's mother, Kamalavathy, 52, was shot and seriously injured by the SLA troopers.

    ● Nadarasa Narmathan, 20, a technical college student was arrested at home in Chunnakam east by SLA troopers on field bikes and paramilitary cadres in a white van, relatives said in the complaint with SLHRC.

    ● Sivananthan Sritharan 30, a carpenter of Kerniyady in Kokuvil was arrested by SLA at his house in Kerniyady area.

    ● Thirugnanasampanthar Ramanan, 23, a recent returnee from Malaysia, disappeared after being last seen undergoing interrogation at the SLA check post at Inuvil when he was on his way to Mallakam. He did not return from the SLA check post and no information is available about his whereabouts, his relatives said.

    ● Unknown persons triggered a claymore bomb killing one civilian woman, Kovinthasamy Jegathambal and injuring two SLA soldiers and a policeman at Thekankaadu in Vavuniya. The attack was targeted towards a SLA road check-post located 1 km from Vavuniya town. The woman died due to heart attack caused by the blast.

    ● A pavement trader near Muneeswaram Road, in front of Jaffna Teaching Hospital, was shot dead by gunmen on a motorbike. Local traders said that the killing was carried out by the Sri Lanka security forces as revenge for the killing of another trader near the same spot Monday. The killers escaped after dousing the body of Thiruchelvam Surendrakumar, 34, from Navanthurai, with gasoline and setting it on fire. SLA soldiers stationed about 100 meters from the scene of the incident failed to approach the crime scene after the killing, local witnesses said.

    ● Two armed men on motorcycle shot dead Thambipillai Atputharanee, 48, a seamstress, in her tailor shop at Manning Place in Wellawatte, Colombo. Atputharanee, originally from Madduvil Jaffna, had been living in Wellawatte for the last 10 years with her 20 year old son.

    ● SLA soldiers stationed along the coastal belt of Gurunagar fired at 21 fishermen, returning in six boats from LTTE- controlled Pooneryn and adjoining areas. No one of was injured in this attack. The fishermen earlier fled to the LTTE controlled area following the break out of fresh violence between LTTE and Sri Lankan Forces on August 11. SLA soldiers arrested all fishermen when they reached the shore at Gurunagar Jetty and later released after interrogation.

    October 31

    ● Fifteen students of Chenkalady Central College are alleged to have been abducted on by armed men in a white van. The parents of one of the missing have lodged complaints with Eravur Police, the ICRC and SLMM. The abducted youths include G.C.E Advanced Level students, Kugathasan Thusyanthakumar, 18, and Bawa Pratheepan, 19, both of Chenkalady main road. According to the parents of Thusyanthakumar, he and some other students were forcibly taken away.

    Many others in the region have complained that a large number of youths are being abducted while they are involved in sports activities after school. Hundreds of abductions have been reported in the recent months in Batticaola, Amparai and Trincomalle district in the Eastern province. Most of the parents or relatives fail to report the abductions due to fear of retribution.

    ● One trooper was killed and two others from the Mandur Kampikattu Bridge STL in Batticaloa were seriously injured by the LTTE when they responded to an attack by the STF. The STF unit had penetrated and waited in ambush 4 km into LTTE held area from their STF camp. The LTTE cordoned off and searched the area and attacked the STF troopers when they tried to escape. A Buffel Armoured Personnel Carrier was badly damaged.

    ● A Sinhala home guard was shot dead by gunmen who attacked a checkpost at Neelapola in Trincomalee. SLA soldiers retaliated but the gunmen escaped.

    ● STF soldiers shot dead two from the political wing of the LTTE when the SLA cordoned off and searched Vinayagapuram in Thirukovil, Amparai. The dead youths were identified as Pavakkannan, 23 and Satha, 25. An LTTE representative said the youths had gone to do political work in the Amparai district. Pothuvil STF said that they recovered one pistol and two hand grenades from the two youths.

    ● Kattankudy police recovered the body of a youth with gunshot wounds near Puthukudiruppu Ayurveda Medical Centre in their division. An SLA and STF road patrol unit found the body with hands and legs bound and eyes tied. The victim was identified as Ponnambalam Krishnanathan, 25, of Puthukudiruppu Multi-purpose Society Road in Puthukudirippu. Krishnanathan had been abducted by armed men a few days previously.

    ● A SLA soldier was killed and three others seriously injured when attackers triggered a claymore mine targeting a foot patrol at Rangathgama junction in Poovarasankulam, Vavuniya.

    ● Joseph Kumar Ramanakumar, 27, a resident of Uppukulam in Mannar, was arrested by the Slave Island Police in Colombo. Ramanakumar had been residing in Wellawatte in Colombo and following a course in English Language.

    ● Attackers lobbed a grenade into a SLA checkpost close to the public playground in Mannar town while the soldiers were checking a lorry. Tension prevailed in the town and the shops were closed for the day as SLA soldiers detained an old passenger of the lorry. The other persons on board the lorry had fled from the site following the grenade explosion.

    ● Two armed men riding bicycles shot dead Ramalingam Thavathurai, 47, from Thumpalai, a trader, at his shop near Lourdes Mary Church on the Point Pedro-Thumpalai road in Point-Pedro, Vadamaradchi. The assailants, pretending to be buyers shot the trader and escaped.

    October 30

    ● The SLN fired at a group of fishermen in Mullikulam-Pookulam sea area in Mannar. Fishermen fled to the shore leaving their boats and nets in the sea. No one was injured in the shooting. Some boats left by fishermen in sea had been taken away by the SLN.

    ● SLA soldiers stationed in camps along Gurunagar, south east of Jaffna town, fired and launched mortar attacks on about 45 Gurunagar fishermen returning to shore in 15 boats from LTTE controlled Pooneryn and Kanjikuda. One boat was destroyed but no one was injured.

    Several fishermen from Gurunagar, Pashiyoor, and Mandaitivu, who were at sea when fighting broke out along Jaffna lagoon on 11 August, had sought refuge in LTTE controlled areas on the southern shores of the lagoon as they were unable to return to the Peninsula. With the closure of A9, and as the failure of Geneva-II talks reduced the prospects of A9 reopening in the near future, the fishermen said they took the risk of crossing Jaffna lagoon by boats. SLA soldiers fired at them after they anchored their boats in Mandaitivu and were walking towards Jaffna town waving white flags, the fishermen told TamilNet. The SLA arrested the fishermen for further investigation.

    ● A civilian was shot dead by gunmen on Muneeswaram Road in the central business area of Jaffna town.

    ● Gopalasundaram Pathmakalaparan, a member of the Verugal Pradesiya Sabha in Eachilampathu division, Trincomalee, was shot dead by armed men as he was cycling near a bakery, about fifty meters from a Sri Lanka police check point.

    ● M. Gunaratne, 41, from Monaragala, a father of two and a policeman attached to Pothuvil police station in Amparai district, shot himself in an apparent suicide at the his room near the police station. The reason for Gunaratne's suicide is not known said the police who are investigating the death.

    ● The bodies of two men, riddled with bullets and hands bound, were found by SLA and STF road patrol troopers in a paddy field along the Pillaiyarady Veethy at Sathurukondan, Batticlaoa. One of the men was identified as belonging to Christhoper Christin, 28, from Church Road in Thannamunai. The body was found 100 m from Sathurukondan SLA camp. The police suspect these two men may have been abducted on Sunday or earlier and shot to death before being dumped in the fields.

    ● Navaratnam Mahinthan 17, a street vendor was shot dead at Muneeswaram road in Jaffna town. He was from Kaithady east.

    ● Ramiah Krishnakumar, 38, an auto owner was shot at Temple Road in Nallur. He was from Kalviyankadu, a suburb of Jaffna town and was traveling in an auto-rickshaw when he was shot and killed.
  • Sri Lanka military intensifies shelling

    Sri Lanka´s military escalated its bombardment of Tamil Tiger controlled areas this week, killing scores of civilians and wounding hundreds. The attacks came amid preparations for new offensives by the military which also tightened its blockade on LTTE controlled areas.

    The head of international truce monitors in Sri Lanka also came under fire when visiting LTTE-controlled areas despite notifying the military before hand.

    At least 65 civilians were killed and up to 300 wounded when Sri Lankan artillery hammered a refugee camp in Vaharai in the eastern province on Wednesday, AFP reported, quoting LTTE and medical sources.

    The death toll was reported to be rising and could top 100, AFP said.

    Amnesty International condemned the attack and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.

    "It is appalling that the military should attack a camp for displaced people -- these are civilians who have already been forced from their homes because of the conflict," Amnesty International's Asia Pacific Director Purna Sen said.

    "We condemn all attacks on civilians and are particularly saddened and shocked to see such a large-scale attack on civilians just days after the government's announcement of its Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses."'

    Sri Lanka's military did not comment on the attack, but suggesting there may have been civilian deaths, blame the LTTE for provoking it.

    "It was what the Tigers wanted -- to cause damages to the innocent Tamil civilians by provoking the army to retaliate for the Tigers' sporadic and indiscriminate shelling," the ministry of defence said in a statement on Wednesday.

    The LTTE said the Sri Lankan military was demonstrating that it could kill Tamil civilians at will irrespective of international opinion.

    "Sri Lankan military's intention was to teach the Tamils the lesson that they, the military, can kill refugees in such numbers, and no one can stop them," the LTTE's Peace Secreterait said.

    Underpinning this view , the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) fired a barrage in the vicinity of the head of the internationally staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Major General Lars Johan Sølvberg, as he was on an official visit to the LTTE-held Pooneryn region.

    SLA fired artillery shells exploded 200 meters behind in Pooneryn jetty area while a team of SLMM and LTTE officials was visiting the site. While they were returning, SLA artillery shells exploded 20 meters away.

    The SLMM visit was to study the feasibility of the Sri Lankan government's suggestion that opening the Pooneryin-Sangupitty Road was an alternative to opening the A9 highway.

    The Sri Lankan military is refusing to open the A9 which was closed amid heavy fighting in Jaffna in August.

    After two months of embargo, 600,000 people in the Jaffna peninsula are desperately short of food and other essential supplies.

    The LTTE says the Sri Lankan government is preparing major invasions of its controlled areas and has warned of an all out war breaking out unless Colombo is restrained.

    Even before this week's bombardments, the SLMM said over a thousand Tamil civilians have been killed since early this year.

    Civilians have died both by bombardment and in a campaign of abductions and extra-judicial killings by government death squads and Army-backed paramiltiaries.

    The Tigers have also been blamed for the killings of civilians linked to the military and anti-LTTE paramilitary groups.

    Wednesday's massacre of displaced civilians suggests the cycle of violence is worsening with the February 2002 truce between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE all but discarded - even though both sides say they are committed to it.

    Sri Lankan artillery and rockets hit a school in Kathiraveli, a coastal hamlet 15 km north of Vaaharai, where five thousand civilians displaced by earlier military offensives were sheltering.

    "It was a big attack and we have 45 dead bodies,'' Seevaratnam Puleedevan, head of the LTTE Peace Secretariat, earlier told The Associated Press by satellite phone.

    Wednesday's artillery attack was the worst in terms of Tamil civilian casualties since the signing of a truce in 2002., surpassing the toll on August 14, when a Sri Lankan air raid killed 54 Tamil teenage schoolgirls and four teaching staff in LTTE-held Mullaitivu.

     

     

  • SLAF bombs Kilinochchi hospital
    Five members of a family were killed when SLAF Kfir jets dropped 16 bombs within 500 meters east of the newly built Kilinochchi General Hospital at Anandapuram on November 2.
     
    A patient at the hospital was also killed and another person was seriously wounded in the attack.
     
    Around 500 patients warded in the hospital, among others mothers with newly born babies in their hands and severely wounded patients from earlier SLAF bombings, were forced to leave the hospital premises.
     
    Explosion shock shattered hospital window-glass and fans fell down while the patients were having lunch in their beds, doctors told TamilNet.
     
    The LTTE accused the government of sending a “message of terror” within days of the end of peace talks in Geneva.
     
    The government of Sri Lanka, which promised to halt the military offensives at the negotiating table, has sent a ‘message of terror’ within 24 hours of LTTE delegation's arrival in Kilinochchi by conducting a ‘gruesome’ aerial attack killing an innocent family and terrorising the patients at the Hospital premises, said LTTE Political Head, Mr. S. P. Tamilselvan.
     
    Hospitals which serve the most humanitarian need and deserve utmost protection from any acts of violence, have now become targets to the government’s campaign of terror, he added.
     
    The bombs hit a house, about 500 meters east of the hospital.
     
    The victims were identified as Murugesu Markandu, 62, his brother Murugesu Shanmugaratnam, 56, and sister Rathinam Sarawathy, 59. Two sons of Mr. Shanmugaratnam, S. Sasi, 20, and S. Krishanth, 18, both studying GCE A/L, were also killed and their house was fully destroyed.
     
    The only family members to survive were the mother, a teacher, and her daughter, both of whom were at school during the attack.
     
    The family of five were buried Friday at Uruthirapuram, in Kilinochchi district. Hundreds of people, including political leaders, religious dignitaries, principals, teachers and students, attended the funeral. Mr. Tamilselvan addressed the mourners at the funeral house.
     
    A heart patient, Mary Theresa Antony, 49, a mother of four, died due to shock related complications caused by the bombings, said Dr. Sathanandan, hospital director. Mrs Antony, of Jeyanthi Nagar in Kilinochchi, had been under treatment at the hospital for three days prior to the attack.
     
    Doctors evacuating the patients from hospital also complained that Colombo had been delaying in extending ICRC protection to the hospital. There was no LTTE military installation near the hospital, the doctors added.
     
    Students at Central College and Technical College located near the hospital were caught in the shock.
     
    Tension prevailed in Kilinochchi town following the aerial attack. One of the 16 bombs did not explode. SLMM officials visited the vacated Hospital following the attack.
     
    "The International Community should have no reservations in condemning this gruesome act," Mr. Tamilselvan said.
     
    The International Community was witness to the government delegation's expressed commitment to ceasing violence and halting all offensives to create and sustain a conducive environment for the peace process, he said.
     
    "This is certainly not the way forward in creating and sustaining the kind of atmosphere for talks," Mr. Tamilselvan said.
     
    The LTTE Political Head further accused the government of not having cooperated with the ICRC in declaring the hospital premises and surrounding areas as a safety zone in accordance with Geneva Conventions.
  • Co-chairs 'regret' Kilinochchi hospital bombing
    The Tokyo Co-Chairs expressed their “deep regret” over the bombing of a house in Kilinochchi that resulted in the death of five civilians and a patient at the nearby Kilinochchi General hospital.

    “The Co-Chairs expect both the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE to refrain from military action,” the Ambassadors of the European Union, Japan, Norway and the US in Colombo said a press release issued November 3.

    “This latest attack comes at a delicate time when both sides should seek to build confidence and compromise to ensure further rounds of talks can soon be agreed, and an escalation of the conflict can be avoided,” the press release said.

    The explosion also damaged the hospital and caused patients to flee.

    Meanwhile, the Tamil National Alliance, the largest Tamil party in the Sri Lankan parliament, condemned the bombing as a “serious violation of International Humanitarian Law” and said the bombing was “conducted with callous disregard for the safety and the security of Tamil civilian life and property.”

    The TNA also expressed disappointment that despite repeated attacks by the government against civilian life and property, "the International Community is unable to bring such attacks of the GOSL to an end."

    “The GOSL has confirmed the fact that air strikes had been ordered on Kilinochchi. Whilst the GOSL has insisted that the said strikes had targeted confirmed LTTE military installations, confirmed reports prove otherwise,” the TNA said.

    “It is clear from the reports that there were no LTTE military installations anywhere close to the targeted areas. Persons from the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission have visited the bombed site and have ruled the GOSL air strikes a Ceasefire Violation,” the TNA added in the press release.

    “The TNA condemns this serious violation of International Humanitarian Law by the GOSL,” the statement said.

    “The Military operations by the GOSL Armed Forces in the North-East, have been conducted with callous disregard for the safety and the security of Tamil civilian life and property.”
  • Implications of joint US - Sri Lanka military exercises

    The report of the impending major US naval exercise with the Sri Lankan Navy planned towards the end of this month is making news in India and else where. It appears that the exercise is so timed (on the eve of the scheduled talks between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Government at Geneva) as a show of strength to let the LTTE know that the US backs the Sri Lankan initiative and also is willing to provide military assistance to Sri Lanka.

    The participation by US Ships of the fifth fleet and over 1000 troops is significant for many reasons. The exercise is planned in the strategic location close to Hambana thota where the Chinese have made heavy investments. While some analysts have opined that this location is so chosen to also convey a message to China, such an analysis may be only partially accurate and is unlikely to change the Chinese strategy in the Indian Ocean. The Chinese have their own agenda and would like to carry on with their own strategy to seek entry and gradual dominance in the strategic areas of Indian ocean by investments and alliances. All most all such investments have been a part of the grand strategy to have outposts in the Indian Ocean and to protect the energy routes (80 percent of the energy flows to China pass through the Indian Ocean). As and when the PLA Navy is ready to venture in to the Indian Ocean, it would have the ‘string of pearls’ strategy in place. India’s reluctance to play any positive role in the region to provide the required environment for the peace process appears to have brought the US forces to the Sri Lankan shores.

    The scope of the present exercises includes amphibious operations and counter insurgency operations. From the Sri Lankan Naval point of view, this exposure and training would prepare them better to face the menacing threat of the LTTE. In the recent engagements, the Sri Lankan Navy has not fared badly at all in countering the asymmetric threat posed by the suicide squads of the black tigers. In the Eastern theatre, despite some losses, the Sri Lankan Navy did ensure that there were no major surprises from the LTTE. The attacks on Trincomalee were also repulsed effectively and the Army was able to march in to Sampur after effective bombing by the Kfir jet of the Sri Lankan Air Force on rebel held areas.. (Please see fall of Sampur http://saag.org/papers20/paper1941.html), Even the attack in the Galle harbour on the Dakshina naval base on 18th October 2006 did not result in major losses, though it effectively brought out the reach and intent of the LTTE in pursuing it attacks in any part of the Island.

    It has also been reported that the US specialists had a role in training both the Military and the paramilitary forces in the methods to protect the strategic harbour of Trincomalee from attacks. There were also some reports that Pakistan also was training the Sri Lankans. Some went to the extent of suggesting that the Pakistani pilots were flying the Kfirs which was unlikely!

    From the point of US, this exercise has a lot to do with its Littoral warfare doctrine. After 9/11 the U.S identified ports, airfields and air space for its armed forces around the world under the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and concluded an agreement with Sri Lanka in 2002 for use of such facilities.

    The ACSA which has its origins in the NATO mutual support Act was the first such agreement between Sri Lanka and a Western power since its independence in 1948. Analysts would recollect the furore in India in the 1980s about the reported permission to have the Voice of America station located on the Island.

    While the stated intention was to target China, North Korea and Myanmar to beam it programmes for these countries, it was speculated that this was just a ruse to set up listening posts in the strategic Island during the cold war. India was successful then in preventing the US entry by using every means that it had in its armoury. Trincomalee a natural deep-water port would continue to be important not just to US but also to any naval power because of its strategic positional advantage. This also explains why India subsequently went in to Trincomalee with the Indian Oil Company setting up its facilities.

    If setting up of such strategic posts and maintaining a visible presence in the Indian Ocean as part of the cold war philosophy was important during the cold war period, it is no different today except the fact that US in the present day scenario would be comfortable in training armed forces of the littorals who as allies would protect the interests of the sole super power in the region. This obviously helps in minimising the military expenditure and allows better control and coordination in littoral warfare.

    Coming to India, it looks as though she is quite happy in letting matters as they are. With the renewed strategic alliance with US, it has hardly made any noise about the exercise of the US forces with the Sri Lankans or their presence. On the contrary, there may be even some relief that US is doing something in its backyard where despite being a legitimate player, India itself is hesitant in engaging itself. At the moment, India apparently bowing to Tamil sentiments has unwisely dissociated itself from the Island and has allowed western players to have their say in the peace process. It has also allowed its archrival Pakistan to be in a position to supply arms and ammunition to Sri Lanka by refusing to supply the hardware that was requested by Sri Lanka.

    In conclusion, it is not that the Americans have returned, they have always been omnipresent. But with all the inaction by India it is only natural that the vacuum created would be filled in by any external power that can cash in on the opportunity to serve its own national interests. From all indications it is clear that Sri Lanka also has joined the list of neighbours that India has not been able to manage despite the natural and obvious advantages enjoyed by it.

    **The author a naval officer is an alumnus of both the Defence Services Staff College and the College of Naval Warfare (CNW). Presently he is with Observer Research Foundation, Chennai

  • Spectre of kidnappings returns to Sri Lanka


    Like a revisiting ghost, a rash of mysterious abductions have come to haunt Sri Lanka once more.

    Men and women are being snatched from their homes, sometimes after dark, sometimes in broad daylight. Ransom is demanded in some cases. In others, political intimidation seems to be the point.

    A few have been freed, but corpses have also turned up.

    With rare exceptions, the crimes remain unsolved. They are among the most terrifying sideshows in Sri Lanka's ever more terrifying ethnic conflict.

    It is difficult to know who is responsible and exactly how many people have been seized. The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has received more than 350 reports so far this year of people who have disappeared.

    The Sri Lankan National Human Rights Commission logged 419 such complaints from last December to September.

    A private advocacy group, Home for Human Rights, has documented 203 cases of missing people in the first nine months of this year, using newspaper clippings and other reports. It lists another 965 victims of extrajudicial killings, some of whom may also have been abducted.

    The victims come from all walks of life. A popular Tamil-language radio reporter says he was packed into a white van one early morning in August just outside his house. A trader at the fish market was also bundled into a white van as he returned home from work in September.

    The latest abductions echo the terror of years ago. In the late 1980s, Sri Lanka suffered tens of thousands of disappearances. Many are still unaccounted for.

    For the most part, the latest victims have been Tamil, the country's main ethnic minority, and many of the abductions have been carried out in government-held territory - sometimes in the heart of this highly fortified capital, at other times, in towns in Sri Lanka's north and east, close to Sri Lankan military installations.

    The white van appears repeatedly in the recollections of the victims. Some have won release only after their families appealed to the highest echelons of the state.

    White vans are an iconic symbol of the late 1980s, when Sri Lanka experienced a wave of abductions as its government fought a violent insurrection of leftist groups in the ethnic Sinhalese-dominated south.

    The kidnappings have brought a new cloud over the administration of President Mahinda Rajapakse of Sri Lanka.

    A senior adviser to the president, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said references to white vans were false, exaggerated and designed to embarrass the government.

    The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, in September said there was an "urgent need" for foreign monitors to investigate rights abuses in this country.

    For nearly a quarter of a century, the Sri Lankan state, dominated by the majority ethnic Sinhalese, has been locked in battle with the ethnic separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the Tamil Tigers.

    Lately, a third party has complicated the conflict: a rival rebel faction, which the Tamil Tigers allege to be operating with government support. The government rejects the charge.

    That breakaway faction, known as the Karuna group, has surfaced repeatedly in the testimony of the kidnapped. So has the political nature of some abductions, even in cases where the kidnappers' identities are hard to pin down.

    Faced with calls for international monitors, the president has offered a counterproposal: a Sri Lankan commission, aided by international observers, to look into human rights cases.

    But questions linger about whether this proposed panel would meet international standards, including whether the government would be obliged to follow the commission's recommendations. The government is currently consulting with Arbour's office on the commission's mandate.

    The Tigers are also implicated in a rash of assassinations over the past year, in particular targeting ethnic Tamils who work with the state.

    (Edited)

    Shimali Senanayake contributed reporting from Colombo.

  • Indian model not intended to satisfy self-rule aspirations

    While the Sri Lanka government negotiators meeting the LTTE representatives in Geneva last weekend heralded the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) as key to formulating “a political and constitutional framework for the resolution of the national question,” an APRC delegation has been touring India to study India's federal set up.

    But Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian and Member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committees for Constitutional affairs, says that the post-partition constitution of India was not required to address any sovereignty issues similar to those that lie at the core of Tamil struggle, and therefore, is ill-suited for Sri Lanka.


    “The current Indian constitutional model can be termed a quasi-federal one. It has federal as well as strong unitary characteristics as exemplified by Article 356, which vests the President with powers to dismiss state legislature and Executive,” Mr. Ponnambalam said.

    “This model came into existence in India after Pakistan, and the Bangladesh of today, separated from India. Therefore, the present Indian constitutional model did not have to address strong secessionist sentiments, and serves mainly to unite non-fissiparous ethnolinguistic regions.”

    “The conflict resolution process in Sri Lanka, on the other hand will have to address the strong secessionist desires of the Tamil People.”

    “In other words, whatever model that is being mooted will have to be attractive enough for the Tamils to consider it as a viable alternative to the creation of a separate state," Mr Ponnambalam said.

    “The Tamils have consistently stated that if a viable alternative to separation is to be considered, such an alternative will have to recognize the Tamils as a distinct Nation of people, recognize the areas of historical habitation of the Tamil speaking people, and the right to self-determination of the Tamil Nation,” he pointed out.

    “In giving expression to these aspirations, one will also have to accept certain ground-realities namely, the existence of a de-facto parallel state.”

    “Therefore, how relevant the current Indian constitutional model is to Sri Lanka, is a question that has to be seriously asked if it is to be considered as a basis for conflict resolution to the Tamil National question in Sri Lanka.”

    “There has been some talk about the SLFP-UNP understanding paving the way for an agreement to look at the Indian constitutional model as the basis for a solution to the Tamil National question.”

    “To say that one should look at the Indian model is one thing, but to say that the Indian model should form the basis for a solution to the Tamil National question is another thing all together,” Mr. Ponnambalam said.

    Moreover, recently there have been media reports indicating that APRC's work focused on the village-level Panchayat as the “ray of hope” to solve Sri Lanka’s “domestic problems.”

    The Leader of the study group and Sri Lanka’s Minister of Science and Technology, Tissa Vitarana, is of the view that the Panchayat concept “could become the central piece of Sri Lanka’s future framework to tackle issues such as the LTTE problem,” Hindustan Times reported.

    Responding to these comments, Mr Ponnambalam, observed that “the Panchayat Raj is a local-council level administrative mechanism adopted as 73rd/74th amendments to the Indian constitution. It was enacted mainly to promote grass-root level democracy, to empower poor women, and to enable feudally-strapped residents of rural India to participate in the world's largest democracy.”

    As such, "it is foolish to think Panchayat scheme will satisfy Tamil people,” he said.

    “Sri Lanka's attempt to introduce this third-tier administrative model into devolution debate appears to be deliberate, and exposes the deep-rooted disdain Sinhala political leaders have towards the basic Tamil demand for self-governance.”

    "It also raises troubling questions on the objectives of APRC's constitutional re-engineering exercise," Mr Ponnambalam said.

  • The paradox of international policy

    Delegations from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) last week engaged in face-to-face negotiations for the first time since talks, also in Geneva, in February this year.

    Expectations for any substantial break through at Geneva II, as the meeting has been termed, were lower than at any past negotiation between the warring parties, particularly given they could not even agree on the agenda.

    The Sri Lankan government insisted that it came to engage in discussions over a permanent solution, as opposed to implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) signed in February 2002.

    The LTTE insist that only when the people of the Northeast enjoy the same normalcy as the rest of the island could they engage in negotiations on a long term solution. The Tigers wished to focus on implementing of the CFA.

    It should be noted that aside from the cessation of hostilities, the CFA agreement extensively covers the need for normalcy in the North-East of Sri Lanka.

    It also spells out the need for the government to disarm paramilitary organisations which were working with the Sri Lankan military. Clause 1.8 had not been implemented by the previous Sri Lankan government led by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, nor by his successor President Mahinda Rajapakse.

    However, it was agreed at the outset of the peace process, that only after a series of confidence building measures and de-escalation of the conflict could any negotiations over a long term solution be discussed.

    The situation has worsened substantially this year. President Rajapakse’s coalition government has all but repudiated the CFA. Despite pledging to disarm the paramilitaries at Geneva I in February, it has done quite the reverse, expanding their numbers and weaponry and escalating the conflict.

    The history of the Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict is strewn with examples of successive administrations breaking agreements with a succession of Tamil political and militant leaderships.

    The only difference in the present peace process is the involvement of foreign powers as intermediaries.

    The LTTE had been most insistent upon foreign involvement as it felt that facilitation by third parties was the most likely route to ensuring that agreements would be implemented, given the international transparency.

    With the economy it tatters after four years of military losses, Colombo, which had zealously defended its sovereignty, finally agreed to participate in a peace process with foreign involvement in 2002.

    At the outset Norway was the sole foreign participant involved solely as a facilitator, but within a year the US, EU and Japan had become self-appointed co-sponsors of the peace process.

    Irrespective of the Norwegian ‘front’, the US has always been viewed as the architect of the overall strategy of resolving the Sri Lankan conflict, with the EU and Japan playing a supporting role.

    India has always been consulted on major policy issues, but has always been on the sidelines as far as the peace process is concerned.

    Matters are further complicated by the fact that only two of the four co-chairs, Japan and Norway, can directly communicate with the LTTE as the other two have proscribed the organisation domestically as terrorists.

    But during the life of the current peace process it became increasingly clear to the Tamils that the involvement of foreign parties did not necessarily mean that agreements with the Sri Lankan state would now be implemented.

    The CFA became the first victim, with the failure by the state to remove its troops from occupied Tamil homes and public buildings. Instead the state unilaterally defined such locations as High Security Zones, resulting in permanent occupancy.

    The promised disarming of state backed paramilitaries also never took place, with now disastrous results.

    Various programmes to share development and humanitarian aid were systematically blocked by state bureaucracy, including the latest such effort, the Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS).

    This year the conflict has erupted – albeit without declaration of war. The first direct assaults on the frontlines of the LTTE were launched by Sri Lanka’s military in July this year under the pretext of liberating a water resource for Sinhalese farmers.

    The offensive, it should be noted, came despite a successful intervention by the Norwegian facilitators to resolve the situation peacefully.

    That clash escalated into a series of direct confrontations between the two parties which has rendered the CFA meaningless. Sri Lankan aerial and artillery bombardment has resulted in civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons.

    But, the international community has casually observed the proceedings with the occasional lament urging a return to the negotiating table.

    With the fighting going its way, the Sri Lankan government defended each new offensive as ‘limited’ or ‘defensive’ strikes intended to curb the LTTE’s offensive capability. A series of military victories resulted in extremely hawkish rhetoric from Colombo. The GOSL asserted that it intended to engage in peace talks only after delivering a substantial blow to the LTTE.

    That the Sri Lankan state is in such a belligerent mood after military successes is unsurprising. The Tamils have always been concerned that the Sri Lankan state never intended to share any substantial power with the Tamils and hence negotiations with the state will always prove to be futile. And with the battlefield victories the allure of crushing Tamil aspirations militarily would prove too tempting for Colombo.

    The foreign powers have meanwhile continued to voice their support for a peace process, but, more surprisingly, have also become more strident in their support for the Sri Lankan state; a paradoxical twist of policy.

    If the Sri Lankan state were becoming more militant and less compromising surely foreign powers might have been expected to become more forceful and to take measures to encourage Rajapakse’s hawkish administration to pursue a peaceful resolution.

    Which is why a series of policy statements issued barely a week before Geneva II by US US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs Richard Boucher were especially startling.

    Whilst continuing to pay lip service to the need for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Mr Boucher, emphatically declared that the US viewed Sri Lanka as an ally, and would continue to assist Sri Lanka militarily, politically and financially in its conflict against the LTTE.

    He asserted Sri Lanka is a democratically elected government and as such it trusted Sri Lanka to deal with human rights in an appropriate fashion, and would offer assistance in areas that need improvement.

    Considering that during the history of the ethnic conflict Sri Lanka has failed to prosecute a single member of its armed forces, despite widespread and systematic abuses, suggests that the US faith in Sri Lanka is not merely mistaken oversight, but a clear assurance that it will turn a blind eye to the abuses.

    The Sri Lankan state has breached virtually every United Nations humanitarian protocol. It has inflicted collective punishments on a destitute people, including embargoes on food and medicine. It has bombarded civilian targets and its troops and paramilitaries have executed thousands of civilian, including hundreds this year also.

    As human rights groups now admit, the state is also complicit in the abduction of children by Army-backed paramilitary organisations for training as child soldiers.

    And the attacks go beyond just the theatre of war in the Northeast. Hundreds of Tamil politicians, members of the judiciary, teachers, journalists and humanitarian workers have been brazenly executed.

    The Sri Lankan state has waged a total and unrestrained war on the Tamil people and this year for the first time in the history of the conflict it has been in full view of the International Community, including the US.

    Thus, the most shocking aspect of the policy of foreign powers in Sri Lanka is their reversion to backing the state more resolutely, the more the state makes gains on the battlefield.

    The most glaring example of this is the shift in international positions on the Norwegian peace process it self.

    Prior to Geneva I, the international community, including the US, backed the need to implement the CFA as a first step.

    However, eight months and several military successes later, the US has echoed demand of the GOSL for talks to begin to focus on a final solution to the ethnic problem, rather than stabilisation of the fraying truce.

    Most disturbing was Mr Boucher’s insistence anew that the US will back Sri Lanka in the conflict against the Tamils, and, implicitly, that this backing is not dependent on Sri Lanka observing any humanitarian norms.

    Such unethical policy is not new to foreign involvement in the Sri Lankan question.

    After all, prior to the Tamil military successes of 2000, all the foreign powers in question, backed the Sri Lankan state militarily, politically and financially, despite horrendous and near-genocidal abuses against the Tamil people on the island.

    All that changed after the LTTE drove the Army from the Vanni, defeated its counterattack and shattered the Sri Lankan economy with the attack on Katunyake airport.

    What is shocking now is how quickly the international community’s reversion to the pre-2000 policies is taking place.

    The obvious implication is that international support for the peace process in 2002 was not some watershed event of recognising the need to address Tamil grievances, but rather a necessary tactical shift driven by the inability of the Sri Lankan state to resolve the conflict militarily.

    With the Sri Lankan military engaged in assaults on LTTE lines even the day before the negotiations were due to begin, it is clear that Geneva II was a charade. The international community has made no effort to get Rajapakse’s government to de-escalate the conflict.

    Perhaps the foreign powers are quietly confident that Sri Lanka’s military, after almost five years of respite, is capable of overwhelming the LTTE. As the question is explored, the Tamil people continue to suffer the Sri Lankan military’s atrocities.

    This newspaper has long asserted that the decision to engage the Tamils in a peace process and to recognise the need to resolve their grievances have been directly linked to escalating Tamil dominance on the battlefield.

    Initiatives of engaging the Tamil people in dialogue have never occurred during our darkest hours. From the 1983 pogrom to the ethnic cleansing in the early nineties, there has rarely been a murmur amongst the leaders of the international community.

    In the late 90’s, whilst the Sri Lankan state attempted to starve the Tamils, the world watched unaffected. Instead international actors were most vociferous in condemning the LTTE and focusing on issues such as child recruitment. The Sri Lankan state is presently involved in the massive abduction of Tamil children to be trained to fight the LTTE, but is yet to receive a single reprimand.

    The sole benefit of increasing international support for Sri Lanka amid the military’s ascendancy on the battlefield has been that the Tamil people will be divested of any illusions. They are, in fact, truly alone in their struggle for self rule.

    The members of the international community, which had projected themselves as honest brokers in resolving this decades long conflict, have demonstrated this year that fair adjudication is not their purpose.

    Instead they have reverted to the policies that the Tamils had been familiar with during the horrific periods of conflict: i.e. wholeheartedly backing the state’s war machine in the pursuit of their own interests.

    Lest we forget, the Tamil struggle has progressed a long way, coming through past periods of isolation and concerted hostility. It is unique for its lack of dependence on any foreign power. It has been the folly of many domestic and foreign governments to underestimate the determination of the Tamil people to win their freedom. It has been our folly, of late, to expect more from the international community.

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