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  • Terror label prolongs Sri Lanka war

    Oct 03

    Sri Lankan soldiers in the heavily militarised Jaffna peninsula. 40,000 mainly Sinhala troops dominate the region and its 400,000 overwhelmingly Tamil residents. Photo Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP/Getty Images
    The streets of Jaffna were lined with Sri Lankan government soldiers. Posted every 50 metres, leaning up against pockmarked walls, or standing in the thin shadow of a tree in the blazing sun. They rode slowly by on bicycles, in the back of tractor trailers, and cruised past in truck convoys.

    Within months of this early summer scene, the uneasy calm would erupt into open battle with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the Tamil Tigers, or LTTE).
     
    There were checkpoints all the way from Jaffna town southeast to the peninsula’s narrow Elephant Pass. Since 1998, the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has had control of the Jaffna Peninsula, which curves toward India from the northern tip of this teardrop-shaped island.
     
    In a fierce but failed 2001 attempt to retake the area—the traditional heartland of Tamil culture—the LTTE wrestled away the strategic pass. The group also controls a swath of land directly below the peninsula, stretching across the north and down the east coast of Sri Lanka, effectively cutting off land access to Jaffna from government-controlled areas to the south.
     
    Once through the buffer zone—maintained by the International Committee of the Red Cross just above the pass—and into LTTE territory, the government soldiers disappeared.
     
    But there were LTTE “immigration officers” who checked my passport and read the letter of invitation from the Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO), which provides humanitarian services in LTTE areas. And there was a young woman in a smart blue-and-white uniform who searched my bag thoroughly—a customs officer for a country that does not exist.
     
    We passed a Tamil Eelam district court, a school, and a police station before arriving in Kilinochchi, the administrative capital of the LTTE’s unofficial northern state within a state.
     
    Although the Tigers call themselves freedom fighters, the rest of the world is increasingly labelling them terrorists. In a recent diplomatic blow, the European Union (EU) banned the organization, freezing its financial assets and barring it from fundraising. Canada, which has the largest expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil population in the world, added the group to its terrorism list in April. A brief news flash in Canada, the listing caused considerable consternation and rejoicing in Sri Lanka.
     
    Countries such as India, Britain, and the U.S. banned the Tamil Tigers to prevent them from collecting money for military purposes among the Tamil diaspora.
     
    Banning the LTTE was widely rejected among Tamil-Canadians and opposed by some security experts. Others welcomed the move as a sign that the new Conservative-led government was finally taking a hard line in the war on terrorism.
     
    The LTTE says the terrorist label will undermine the peace process and block much-needed contributions to the TRO. The group retaliated by demanding the removal of 37 international ceasefire monitors from three EU countries, stationed there since the February 2002 signing of a “permanent” ceasefire agreement.
     
     
    On a quiet night on the front porch of his Kilinochchi home, spokesman Thaya Master explained the LTTE’s position.
     
    “The ceasefire agreement was signed between two equal parts: the LTTE and the government,” he said. “Now they put a ban on the LTTE. It’s a one-sided story. It’s not balanced, so how can we proceed with the peace process?”
     
    What about LTTE tactics that led to the terrorist designation, like the use of suicide bombers?
     
    “We have a suicide group, that’s true,” Master said, but he insisted the practice is justified as part of a military strategy.
     
    It’s a fine distinction, which becomes even more blurred when the LTTE assassinates a head of state like former Indian prime minister Rajiv Ghandi.
     
    A history of bad judgments fuels argument against the LTTE’s claims that it is a legitimate government: in 1990 the group, mostly Hindu, chased the minority Muslim population out of the Jaffna Peninsula; it also recruits child soldiers and kills civilians.
     
    Jon Tinker, executive director of the Vancouver-based research group Panos Canada—which describes itself as an NGO devoted to working on issues of human security, pluralism, and peace-building—said he deplores some LTTE tactics but he still disagrees with Canada’s decision to add the group to its terrorism list.
     
    “I don’t think there’s any question that the LTTE has carried out forms of political violence that many people think of as outrageous, but the same can be said of the Sri Lanka Army,” Tinker said during an interview at his UBC office.
     
    The overarching question, according to Tinker—who is writing a book on terrorism and diasporas—is how one defines a terrorist.
     
    “The rhetoric of the war on terror makes it easy to make glib judgments that one form of political violence is justified and another is not justified,” he said. “One of the biggest weaknesses of most definitions of terrorism is they exclude actions by the state.”
     
    Such narrow definitions are out of touch with real-life experiences in a conflict zone, he argued.
     
    “Whether it’s a tank rolling through Jaffna firing tank shells, or a bomb being detonated, the result is the same: people are blown to pieces,” said Tinker, who questioned the utility of “stigmatizing” one party with the terrorism label during critical peace negotiations.
     
    Martin Collacott, Canada’s high commissioner to Sri Lanka from 1982 to 1986, argues the opposite.
     
    “By not getting tough on them, particularly by letting them continue to raise funds in Canada, you take the responsibility for enabling the civil war to continue, because we were probably their biggest source of external funds,” said Collacott, now a fellow at the right-wing Fraser Institute in Vancouver, on the line from Ottawa. “As some people have put it, we have blood on our hands.”
     
    The recent meltdown of the ceasefire agreement has been accompanied by finger-pointing on both sides.
     
    There had been violations almost daily for months, but on June 15 tensions were ratcheted up when 64 people were killed in a bus explosion in central Sri Lanka. Most passengers were Sinhalese Buddhists, who make up the majority of the country’s population.
     
     The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Sri Lankan forces have fought for years to control the Jaffna Peninsula, which is the centre of Tamil culture.
    The government blamed the rebels, and fighter jets strafed LTTE positions. By June 19, the LTTE and the SLA were exchanging heavy-weapons fire on the Jaffna Peninsula, which eventually opened up into another front in what some are calling a war.
     
    The LTTE denied responsibility for the bus attack, blaming the government or forces backed by the government. Like so many events in Sri Lanka’s more than two-decades-long conflict, the details of the incident are sketchy and the facts murky. But the war is real enough, as is the poverty and displacement it creates.
     
     
    In the village of Visvamadu, a funeral for an LTTE cadre killed in a firefight the day before blocked the road. A marching band of teenage girls led the procession, white dress uniforms shining in the midday sun.
     
    At the graveyard, a thousand identical concrete graves splayed out around a monument, and an LTTE flag—a snarling tiger—flew at half-mast. The LTTE is big on monuments.
     
    On our way to the coast, women sat in the schoolyard of each community, receiving arms training from female LTTE cadres. Large wooden clubs substituted for guns. The village men trained in the morning, I was told.
     
    In Mullaittivu, houses were going up amongst rubble left by the 2004 tsunami, each one stamped with the TRO logo next to the door. Contributions from overseas Tamils as well as funding from foreign governments are paying to rebuild this quiet fishing community on the northeast coast. But 17 months after the tsunami, many people were still living in temporary camps, and construction was coming to a standstill as the government blockaded building supplies for fear, it said, that the LTTE might build new fortifications.
     
    Soosaipillai Arasarednam worried that the tarp and thatch roof over his temporary home wouldn’t make it through another monsoon season.
     
    Tigers’ spokesman Master claimed that preventing groups connected to the LTTE from raising money will undermine attempts to help victims of the tsunami and the conflict.
     
    “It will affect the humanitarian work,” he said. “People will be reluctant to give money because of the ban.”
     
    Lawrence Christie, the TRO’s planning director, was more optimistic about the issue. “I think the Canadian government will behave in a humanitarian manner, because it’s a humanitarian issue,” he said.
     
    Inland, on the outskirts of Kilinochchi, children left homeless by the tsunami, war, and poverty live and study at a TRO-run home.
     
    One corner of the young children’s quarters was reserved for those who arrived malnourished. They lay in bed listlessly as the healthy children pranced around, finally sending us off with a rendition of “Itsy-bitsy Spider,” first in English, then in Tamil.
     
    Christie said that financial contributions from Canadian Tamils support children between ages six and 12 in the TRO home. The diaspora is the TRO’s most important source of money, according to Christie, and prospects would be grim if these funds dried up.
     
    “If the Canadian government wants to starve the people and let them die…” he trailed off.
     
    In fact, the government of Canada has a long history of delivering aid to LTTE areas. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) contributes to TRO-run programs, including demining the fields around Kilinochchi and manufacturing prosthetic legs for mine victims.
     
    This work will continue despite the listing, according to CIDA.
     
    “CIDA and its partners in Sri Lanka do not provide resources directly to the LTTE,” said spokeswoman Bronwen Cruden in a phone interview from Ottawa. “We carry out [activities] with the necessary diligence to continue to ensure that no CIDA funds are diverted to the LTTE.”
     
    The Fraser Institute’s Collacott finds little reassurance in such reasoning.
     
    “If an aid-delivery organization is identified closely with the Tamil Tigers, that would give me problems,” he said. “We’re in effect strengthening the Tigers’ hold and the ability to establish itself through that means.”
     
    For Panos Canada’s Tinker, the same argument could be made for cutting off aid to projects run by the government of Sri Lanka.
     
    “That cannot fail to be strengthening the ability of the Sri Lankan government to pursue this conflict,” he pointed out.
     
     
    Whether listing the LTTE as a terrorist group will actually have any effect on its ability to fundraise in Canada is an open question. Although Canadians now face a possible 10 years in prison for knowingly contributing money to the LTTE through front groups, the government has yet to list any such groups.
     
    Collacott said the government should take the next step and name them. He deplored the soft approach the Liberals took with the LTTE, accusing them of refusing to crack down because of substantial LTTE support in the Tamil-Canadian community.
     
    “The Liberals were getting so much electoral support from Tamil Tiger supporters that they were not ever going to designate them as a terrorist group,” he said. “For anyone criticizing the Liberal government, they were a punching bag on this issue, because it was so obvious they should designate them a terrorist group and they just refused to.”
     
    There are approximately 300,000 Tamils in Canada. About two thirds live in the Greater Toronto Area, where they form an important voting block in 10 ridings.
     
    Collacott’s argument was brought forward in Parliament in 2000 by Conservative MP Monte Solberg (now Citizenship and Immigration Minister), who slammed then–finance minister Paul Martin for attending a fundraising dinner for the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils, which supposedly had ties to the LTTE.
     
    “To condemn these people, to call them terrorists, is anti-Canadian,” Martin responded in the House. “There is Irish blood coursing through my veins, but that doesn’t mean I am a member of the IRA.”
     
    The Liberals defended their policy by claiming that listing the LTTE as terrorists would undermine peace negotiations. (The already troubled negotiations would take a nose dive after Canada and the EU listed the group.)
     
    When the Tories banned the Tigers, the National Post applauded the government. “Now, the Tories have placed national security above partisan interests,” the newspaper said in an April 8 editorial. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called the move “long overdue”.
     
    But even if the government were to revert to Liberal hands, the LTTE’s standing in Canada might not improve. Liberal leadership front-runner Michael Ignatieff supports the ban, especially in light of a Human Rights Watch report this past spring detailing alleged LTTE extortion of Tamil-Canadians.
     
    “It doesn’t matter much to me what’s going on in Sri Lanka. What matters to me is that Canadian citizens should never be intimidated or threatened by a political movement, period,” Ignatieff told the Straight in May when in Vancouver for a Liberal leadership forum. “Let me also make it clear that I am aware that the Sri Lankan government authorities are also guilty of human-rights abuses,” he added.
     
    Tinker pointed out that the LTTE has never engaged in acts that could be considered terrorism outside of Sri Lanka or India, which had militarily intervened on the Sri Lankan government’s side at the time. And the charges of extorting Canadians are best left to the courts, he argued.
     
    “If the picture that Human Rights Watch is painting is true, then the police forces have been somewhat underzealous in protecting the interests of Tamil-Canadians,” he said.
     
    The Conservatives’ decision to categorize domestic police concerns as international terrorism points to a larger political current, Tinker suggested: “It’s one of a number of worrying signs that this administration is more willing than the last one to give an unthinking endorsement to the U.S. government’s concept of the war on terrorism.”
     
    Master claimed that the charges of intimidation were drummed up by anti-LTTE elements in Canada. “We are not a terrorist group,” he insisted. “We have been fighting for the Tamil peoples’ rights for the past 20 years.”
     
     
    Collacott was in Sri Lanka two decades ago when the civil war began with the LTTE’s killing of 13 high-ranking Sinhalese police officers. In retaliation, some Sinhalese in Colombo began killing Tamils and looting their homes and businesses. The atrocities drove many Tamils into the arms of the LTTE, which had previously been one of a number of somewhat obscure armed groups.
     
    The riots also drove Tamils to other countries, including Canada, which opened up a special immigration program, Collacott recalled. “I was also, interestingly, a hero of the Tamils because I was the first head of mission to go up to Jaffna after the riots broke out,” he remembered.
     
    Collacott met with the LTTE in his hotel room, but even then he had no illusions about the nature of the organization, he said. “It had already established itself as a terrorist organization in terms of assassinating moderate Tamils,” he claimed. “It certainly assassinated a lot of my moderate Tamil friends after that.”
     
    Government forces used equally horrifying tactics, including death squads, as war raged on. And other factions committed further atrocities. More than 64,000 people died before a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement in 2002.
     
    But the agreement signed by the government and the LTTE “has broken down in all but name”, according to a June 5 report by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
     
    “There is a serious danger that they are drifting back to an overt war, which is likely to be even bloodier than the last one,” the Centre warned.
     
    The picture would darken even further. On August 14, government jets bombed a Tamil orphanage in the northeast, saying it was a training ground for child soldiers—a claim denied by the UN. When 17 humanitarian workers were massacred on August 7 in the northeastern town of Mutter, the UN and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission pointed the finger at government troops. The government denies the allegation.
     
    In early June, Mahendren Rajthungam, the advertising manager of Uthayan, a Tamil-language newspaper in Jaffna, told me that conditions on the peninsula were almost as bad as before the ceasefire.
     
    “It’s all gone in a circle,” he said, pointing to rising food and fuel costs, a stagnating economy, frustration about living under military occupation, and increasing violence. Just a month earlier, gunmen had burst into the newspaper’s offices and opened fire, killing two employees and seriously wounding the editor.
     
    The government blamed “armed terrorists”, while groups like Reporters Without Borders pointed to the pro-government Eelam People’s Democratic Party, noting that the newspaper had carried a cartoon of the party’s leader the previous day.
     
    Rajthungam declined to speculate on the reasons for the attack or who was responsible.
     
    “Jaffna is a land of controversy,” he said simply.
  • UN refugee chief calls for aiding internally displaced people
    Facing what he called a “moment of truth,” the head of the United Nations refugee agency has called for fully expanding its mission from assisting those displaced from their countries to also helping the tens of millions uprooted within their own homelands.
     
    And he appealed for concerted international action to preserve the institution of asylum.
     
    UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) António Guterres was addressing the opening session October 2 of the week-long annual meeting of the agency’s governing Executive Committee in Geneva.
     
    In addition to its original mandate of protecting the world’s refugees, UNHCR had now become a fully-engaged partner in a new joint approach to help the estimated 24 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) worldwide, Mr. Guterres told delegates from 70 member nations.
     
    The new approach had already been instrumental in the return of more than 300,000 IDPs in Uganda, “transforming a dramatic humanitarian situation into a potentially remarkable success story,” he said. UNHCR was also reassessing its IDP work in Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Caucasus and Côte d'Ivoire.
     
    “We are now part of the collective response by the UN system and the broader humanitarian community, and in that context have assumed leading responsibility for... protection, emergency shelter and camp coordination and management,” he said.
     
    “Lessons learned from ... four pilot countries – Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Somalia – will guide us in the future.”
     
    Guterres stressed the urgent need to preserve asylum and oppose all forms of refoulement – or forcibly returning refugees. International refugee law must be respected and “cannot be superseded by national legislation, extradition treaties, or redefined by bilateral arrangements,” he declared.
     
    “Both by choice and out of necessity, we face three major challenges simultaneously,” he said.
     
    “The first is a reassessment of our mission. We must remain faithful to our mandate while meeting the demands of a changing world, shifts as consequential as the international community redressing one of its greatest failures, the neglect of internally displaced persons.
     
    “The second is the pressing need for a deep structural and management reform, which is absolutely indispensable if we are to build a stronger, more effective organization able to generate and direct more resources to the people we care for. The third challenge is a renewal of our top management, affecting, over one-and-a-half years, 10 members of the Senior Management Committee,” he added.
     
    Despite some progress, an estimated 2 million IDPs in Sudan's Darfur region remain in desperate need of protection and assistance. “Faced with a situation like Darfur, the role of organizations such as ours is severely constrained,” Mr. Guterres said.
     
    He underscored the pressing need for deep structural and management reform within UNHCR itself, a process he said was “absolutely indispensable if we are to build a stronger, more effective organisation” able to focus maximum resources on the people it cares for.
     
    This includes efforts to lower fixed costs, such as those involved with staff and administration, to ensure that maximum resources go to beneficiaries. Possible measures include moving field support staff closer to the point of delivery and relocating some Geneva-based activities.
     
    UNHCR’s budget of about $1 billion a year is unable to provide enough help to refugees wanting to repatriate or to provide basic medical treatments.
     
    “We cannot accept that money that should be spent on the people we care for is spent unnecessarily on the organisation,” the High Commissioner said.
  • First women Christian priests in Sri Lanka
    The Anglican Church in Sri Lanka took a historical step last week when it ordained three women as priests – the first women priests in the country.
     
    The three women priests ordained by the Anglican Church are the Rev. Malini Devananda – whose husband is also an Anglican priest – the Rev.Chandrika Mayurawathi and the Rev. Glory Jeyaraj.
     
    The ordination ceremony (above) was conducted by Colombo’s Bishop the Right Rev. Duleep de Chickera at the Cathedral of Christ the Living Saviour in Colombo.
     
    Meanwhile, the United States on Friday classified six Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, as religious freedom violators - aside from China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam already blacklisted as worst offenders in the region.
     
    In Sri Lanka, the US report highlighted “violent resistance” by some Buddhists to Christian church activity of particularly evangelical groups. There also were sporadic attacks on Christian churches by Buddhist extremists, it said.
     
    The report illustrates “the importance and the salience of religion in all the big issues in Asia -- extremism, terrorism, democratic transition and integration of countries such as China and Vietnam into the international system,” said Scott Flipse, a senior policy analyst with the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a Congress-mandated panel.
     
    “Policy makers and diplomats ignore religion at their peril. More and more the salience of religion is becoming an international relations strategic factor,” he said.
  • Uthayan ‘worst hit’ of Sri Lanka’s media - RSF
    The leading Jaffna daily, the Uthayan, is the “worst hit media” in Sri Lanka’s conflict, Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) said Tuesday, voicing outrage about new armed attacks on the paper, in which gunmen burst into its offices in the Army-controlled town and threatened the journalists present twice in the space of three days.
     
    “Uthayan is currently the worst-hit news media in the conflict between the government and the Tamil Tiger separatists, the LTTE," the press freedom organisation said.
     
    "There are frequent armed raids on its offices and three employees have been killed in less than four months. It is not enough to post police outside the newspaper. The authorities must also arrest those carrying out the attacks and must ensure that the protection afforded the newspaper is sufficiently dissuasive to put an end to this intimidation."
     
    Following the recent killing of two Uthayan staffers by armed men who burst into their offices in Jaffna recently, the Sri Lankan police have provided police protection to the Uthayan news paper office.
     
    On September 10 two gunmen who entered Uthayan's headquarters in Jaffna on were arrested by the two policemen guarding the building before they could attack the staff, but were released a few hours later.
     
    Uthayan staffers blamed Sri Lankan military intelligence (MI) and allied paramilitaries for this and earlier attacks.
     
    The fact that the two MI operatives were able to easily gain access to the newspaper office without any problem while the police were on guard duty, has raised anxiety within the journalist community in Jaffna.
     
    Three days earlier, on 7 September, two gunmen entered Uthayan and threatened its editorial committee with "severe reprisals" if it refused to publish a statement urging Jaffna's students to call off their strike, RSF said.
     
    The editor felt he had no choice but to publish the statement the next day.
     
    Uthayan managing editor E. Saravanapavan, who has often asked the Sri Lankan authorities for help in vain, said many of his employees were refusing to leave the building for fear of being gunned down on the street.
     
    Five gunmen burst into Uthayan on 2 May and opened fire on equipment and personnel. Four employees sustained gunshot injuries and two of them, Suresh Kumar and Ranjith Kumar, died.
     
    Sathasivam Baskaran, 44, one of the newspaper's drivers, was killed at the wheel of a delivery truck on 15 August.
     
    An arson attack on the newspaper's printing press on 23 August caused damaged put at 22,000 euros.
     
  • Armed gang robs ten houses in Vavuniya
    A twenty-member armed gang had forcibly entered ten houses in Kurumankadu area and robbed more than 300 sovereigns worth gold jewellery, several hundred thousand rupees cash and cellular phones during early hours on Saturday, according to complaints to Vavuniya Police by victims.
     
    Armed persons who covered their faces with black clothes had arrived Friday after midnight around 12.30 a.m. at Kurumankadu located in the heart of Vavuniya town in a white coloured van and in a three-wheeler broke each house by using axes and other weapons and also at gun-point, residents of the area said.
     
    The gang first broke open the house of a Grama Niladhari Officer Mr.Muthurajah and robbed jewellery, cash and other valuable articles. Assailants had threatened the inmates who resisted opening doors of their houses.
     
    Members of the armed gang except one spoke in fluent Tamil and only one in Sinhala language, residents said.
     
    Mr. Manickavasagar Ilancheliyan, Vavuniya District Judge and Mr. Jeremiah Visuvanathan, Vavuniya High Court Judge visited the site and conducted inquiries.
     
    Vavuniya District Judge ordered the Vavuniya Police to expedite the investigation into the robbery.
  • Violence continues in Northeast
     
    September 17
     
    Four people, including a toddler, were killed and one seriously injured when unidentified armed men opened fire at them Sunday afternoon in a house located along Ambal Road in Anpuvallipuram, a suburb located about three km off south west of Army-controlled Trincomalee town. Gunmen came in a van, entered the house and started firing at the inmates who were watching television. Jeyaratnam Pratheepan, 23, and two year old Usharanee child were killed on the spot. Two others succumbed to their wounds later. Usharanee’s mother is in intensive care.
     
    A soldier of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), a Sinhala home guard and two civilians were injured in a claymore mine explosion that took place Sunday around 7.30 a.m. at Thampalakamam, a village located along Trincomalee Kandy highway about 24 km off southwest of east port town. Police said that the claymore mine was kept on roadside targeting security personnel who had been engaged in road patrol.
     
    SLA soldiers shot dead a father of four, Saturday evening at Nasivanthivu, Valaichenai, 30 km northwest of Batticaloa town. The body of Murukesu Sivarasa, 30, was taken to Valaichenai hospital. Police claimed that the victim had launched an ambush on SLA patrol with a T-56 automatic rifle and a hand grenade.
     
    An employee of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) was killed and two others injured when gunmen fired at their vehicle at Alukkai in Allaveddi, 11 km north of Jaffna town, around 8 p.m. Saturday. The vehicle was hit about 200 metres from an SLA check post at Alukkai. The attack occured during the SLA-imposed curfew. CEB staff have special curfew passes issued by SLA. Linganathan, 54, a father of three from Erlalai and was killed. The driver of the vehicle, Lawrence, 50, of Mallakam and Kengatharan, 45, were injured.
     
    September 15
     
    See separate story on the killings in Jaffna during the 24 hours before 6 p.m. Friday.
     
    Gunmen shot a driver in front of his house in Morakkoddanchenai, Eravur on Friday evening. Thavarajah Thavesarajah, 25, a father of two, succumbed to his wounds in Batticaloa hospital Friday midnight. He was a driver with an American Mission training facility located in Urany near Batticaloa town. The victim was talking to his wife outside his house in Thevapuram village in Morakkoddanchenai, 21 km northwest of Batticaloa, when the gunmen fired at him with a T-56 automatic rifle, villagers said.
     
    Unidentified gunmen Friday morning shot dead a member of the Karuna paramilitary group at Chenkalady near Kommathurai SLA camp in Eravur police division in Batticaloa district. Samithambi Thirumal, 28, succumbed to injuries at the Batticaloa Teaching Hospital. Chenkalady is about 14 km north of Batticaloa town.
     
    There were several other killings reported Friday in Jaffna, Trincomalee, and Vavuniya, but details were not available.
     
    September 14
     
    A church located in Santhipuram 100 Housing Project in Mannar was burnt down by unknown arsonists Thursday night around 11.30 p.m. A complaint has been lodged with Mannar Police. Residents of area took immediate steps to douse the fire but failed in their attempt. Several thousand rupees worth goods and properties of the church had been destroyed in the incident.
     
    The Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) Thursday evening arrested seventy members of seventeen Tamil families from Trincomalee district when they were waiting for fishing boats along the coast of Talaimannar to flee to South India. The SLN also arrested two boatmen who were to take the refugees. The 24 men, 19 women and 27 children in the arrested group were handed over to Talaimannar Police for inquiry.
     
    Suspected Army-backed paramilitaries shot dead a Tamil man Thursday night. at Karuwakerni in Valaichchenaipolice division in Batticaloa district. Niranjan Vasantharajah, 28, a father of two children, was called out from his house located along Anna Road by five persons suspected to be members of Karuna paramilitary group. They shot him when he came to the main gate of the compound. He had been working in the Valaichchenai office of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) for about 10 years on contract basis. Karuwakerni is 30 km off north of Batticaloa town.
     
    Three young men from Kondavil East, Jaffna have been missing since Thursday morning, relatives of the missing men told the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission (HRC) office in Jaffna. Kondavil is located about 8 km north of Jaffna town. Thangarupan Jeeva, 23, and Thevarajah Nitharsan, 17, masons by profession were on their way to work, after curfew was relaxed, when they were abducted. Separately, a 17-year old boy was abducted when he went out Thursday morning to buy provisions. All three were abducted from Sebastian Church road, according to complaints made with the HRC.
     
    A young man was shot dead by unidentified gunmen near Malu junction in Nelliyadi in Vadamaradchi, around 8:30 a.m., Thursday. Satchithanantham Sasitharan, 25, of Alvai South, was working in a fuel station.
     
    Two bodies in highly decomposed stage were found under a bridge in Velanai, islet off Jaffna town, police in Kayts said. They are believed to be of young men who were reported “missing” to the Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Jaffna last week. The bodies have not yet been identified.
     
    Two members of a paramilitary Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP) were shot and wounded at Kurumankadu area in Vavuniya by suspected LTTE cadres. The injured EPDP cadres, Francis Jeganathan and Velumyulm Sritharan, were first admitted to the Vavuniya general hospital and later transferred to Anuradhapura hospital. The shooting occurred to the rear of the EPDP office in Kurumankadu, Vavuniya.
     
    Three more youths were abducted and killed by unidentified persons in Army-controlled Vavuniya, Thursday morning. The bodies of two youths who were abducted Wednesday evening were found with their hands tied and blindfolded at Thavasikulam. A third youth was found with gun shot injuries at the same spot. He succumbed to his injuries while being taken to Vavuniya hospital, police said.
     
    September 13
     
    A Tamil youth was found shot dead at Kurumankadu, a suburb of Vavuniya, Wednesday evening, police said. He is yet to be identified.
     
    Two other youths were shot dead at Semankulam, Vavuniya, by unidentified persons. One of them is also yet to be identified.
     
    SLA soldiers on a foot patrol shot a youth who allegedly attempted to run away having thrown a hand grenade on them in Vinayagapuram in the Valaichchenai Police area in Batticaloa district, around 1.30 p.m. Vinayagamoorthy Kunarathnamoorthy, 21, of Kalmadu Road, Vinayagapuram, swallowed cyanide and died to avoid being arrested by soldiers, the Army claimed. His body was handed over to the Valaichchenai District Hospital for post- mortem.
     
    Ilankovan Kandeepan, 26, owner of a welding shop along the Uduppiddy- Vathiri Road, was shot dead around 12 noon Wednesday while he was on his way to his home at Kombu. According to eyewitnesses, Kandeepan was chased by 4 armed men ridding in two motorbikes, along Uduppiddy – Vathiri road. He was later shot dead as he attempted to run in to a house to escape from the attackers.
     
    An SLA soldier was seriously injured when a water tanker he was driving was hit by a claymore mine blast at Rasenthirakulam in Vavuniya, Wednesday afternoon. The incident occured along Nellukulam - Cheddikulam Road, police said. The injured soldier was admitted to military hospital and later tranfered to Anuradhapura hospital.
     
    The body of a young man in his early 20’s was found with stab injuries in Samankulam in Vavuniya, Wednesday morning. The victim's head had been burnt beyond recognition, police said. The body was handed over to the General Hospital.
     
    17 civilians, including one woman, were wounded, four seriously, when an attacker lobbed a grenade into a chicken meat shop in Vavuniya town Wednesday around 10:50 a.m., Vavuniya Police said. Paramilitary cadres working with Sri Lanka military have been targeting traders and shop owners who refuse to pay ransom of cash.
     
    A young man and his 2-year old child were shot dead by gunmen in white van while they were standing outside their house in Aathikkovilady in Valvettithurai, in the Vadamaradchi sector of the Jaffna peninsula. The killings occurred at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Sivapirakasam Thayaparan,28, died on the spot. His 2-year old daughter, Thayaparan Thayajothi sucummed to her injuries while being taken to Jaffna Teaching Hospital.
     
    A women who was abducted from her home in Aanaikottai by unidentified gunmen in white van on Sunday was released, Tuesday, her parents informed the Human Rights Commission (HRC) office in Jaffna. The woman was released from a SLA camp in Anaikottai area. However, her parents have refused to reveal further details to media. The HRC has been informed about the release and the complaint has been withdrawn, an official said.
     
    Meanwhile, at least three more persons have been reported abducted in the northern Jaffna peninsula, but details were not made available to media.
     
     
    September 12
     
    A young man was shot dead by unidentified persons in Manipuram in Vavuniya, Tuesday evening. The police said the victim, Sasikaran, 22, was a LTTE member.
     
    Two policemen attached to the Kaluwanchchikkudy Police Station were shot dead by unidentified gunmen while they were traveling with two other colleagues in a passenger bus to Batticaloa. The attack occurred at around 10.30 a.m. at Cheddipalayam. Constables W M. Vijayarathna, 35 and M. Ramanathan, 38 were rushed to the Batticaloa Teaching Hospital but succumbed to their injuries. Police alleged that LTTE cadres had waylaid the bus and fired at the Policemen who were on a private visit to Batticaloa. Cheddipalayam is 17 km off south of Batticaloa town.
     
    Three policemen and three civilians were injured when a claymore mine exploded along the Central Road in Trincomalee town on Tuesday around 11.30 a.m. The mine had been detonated targeting a police jeep. Tension prevailed in the area and all business establishments were closed. Sri Lankan troops and police rushed to the site and stopped all traffic and civilian movement along the road. A cordon and search operation was carried out.
     
    Unidentified gunmen killed a 35 year-old farmer, father of two, Monday night around 8.30 p.m. in his residence located along Moonkilady Road in Vantharumoolai village in Eravur police division in Batticaloa district. Nagappan Sathyan was working as a tractor-driver. Unidentified men had forcibly entered the victim's house and fired at him when he did not open the front doors when called out. His body was handed over to his relatives after post-mortem at Eravur hospital. Vantharumoolai is 15 km off north of Batticaloa town.
     
     
    September 11
     
    The bullet-ridden body of young man with his face mutilated beyond recognition was found at Theater Lane in Inuvil in Jaffna, Monday morning. The youth is believed to have been abducted from his home by unidentified men in an unmarked white van Sunday evening, neighbours said. The 30 year old victim had been severely beaten before he was shot dead. The body was taken to the Jaffna Teaching hospital morgue.
     
    Separately, Mylvaganam Sasitharan, 24, of Thunnalai South was shot dead by two unidentified men on a motorcycle at Mareesan junction on Jaffna-Point Pedro Road near Nelliday in Vadamaradchy, around 9:30 a.m. Monday.
     
    In another incident at the same location, Kiddinar Uthayakumar, 24, was shot and seriously injured, also by two unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle.
     
    Two men, Vinayagamoorthy Anantharajah, 32, and Sampasivam Vimalasangari, 24, have been reported missing in Udupiddy, Jaffna since Monday evening.
     
    A member of the Karuna paramilitary group fired at another cadre seriously wounding him after an argument near Alankulam in Vaharai division in Batticaloa district on Sunday night around 9.30 p.m. The injured cadre P.Sinnan, 28, of Mankerni was admitted to Pollonaruwa hospital, Valaichchenai Police said. The Karuna group has an office located close to Mankerni SLA camp.
     
     
    September 10
     
    See separate story on the killings in Jaffna during the 24 hours before 6 p.m. Saturday.
     
    Sivasingam Sasiharan, 24, traveling in a bicycle from home was shot dead by unidentified gunmen near Manthuvil tempel in Thenmarachchi area of Jaffna, at 6.30 p.m., Sunday.
     
    Two fishermen were reported ‘missing’ in the Vadamaradchi, to the Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Jaffna. The fishermen, Anton Selvaratnam, 24, and Sebaratnam Anthony Arulthas, 24, both of Munai Light house area in Point Pedro were last seen while they were being interrogated by Sri Lanka Army soldiers at a check post, according to eyewitnesses.
     
    The body of a young man found in Vakaravaththai area in Valikamam East in Putur North, has been identified as of Ariyaratnam Sylvester , 33, of Aathisoody road, Kantharmadam in Jaffna. A complaint was lodged Sunday morning at Human Rights Commission about his disappearance. His body, found with stab wounds and gun-shot injuries, was later identified at the mortuary of Jaffna Teaching hospital.
     
    The body of Sivalingam Suthaharan,23, who was abducted Saturday from his home in Sankaanai, was found Sunday morning at Vaddukoddai, Jaffna.
     
    Unidentified men shot dead a Tamil civilian Sunday around 2 a.m. along Nanattan-Vankalai road in Mannar when he was going for work. 38 year old Thiruchelvam Sebastian, father of two children, was a resident of Naruvalikulam in the Murunkan Police division.
     
    Three Sri Lanka soldiers were killed and two injured in a claymore attack at Aasikulam in Vavuniya, around 10:45 a.m. Sunday. The attack targeted a SLA patrol along Mylankulam road. The injured soldiers were taken to Vavuniya military hospital and later transferred to Anurdhapura.
     
    September 9
     
    Sri Lankan police lying in ambush shot and killed 2 members of the LTTE at Karuwakkerny Vikneswara Vidyalayam in Valaichenai, about 30 km. north of Batticaloa, around 8 p.m., Saturday. The Police said they have recovered 2 pistols, 2 hand grenades and 2 cyanide capsules. The police handed over the bodies to Valaichenai hospital. The cadres were identified as Sutha and Viji.
     
    Twelve youths were arrested and detained on suspicion by Kandy police during a cordon and search operation Thursday afternoon. The police said 10 of the youths were Tamils and the other two were Sinhalese. The arrested Tamil youths are natives of Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Vavuniya and Madulgalla. Kandy police said that the youths are being questioned and investigations into their activities are continuing. No details were provided.
     
    A Sri Lankan soldier and a video shop owner were killed and a soldier and 3 civilians injured in a claymore mine explosion that targeted a SLA road patrol in Chenkalady, 13 km northwest of Batticaloa Friday around 12:15 p.m. The mine was fixed to a roadside wall, between the Chenkalady branch of the Bank of Ceylon and Sellam Cinemas. The soldiers were from the Kommathurai Army camp. The shop owner, Sivalingam Santhirasegaran, 36, from Rameshpuram, Chenkalady, died at the Batticaloa Teaching hospital.
     
    September 8
     
    Four students and a policeman were injured when a three-wheeler exploded Friday around 6.55 a.m. at Kulumaattu junction in Vavuniya. The explosion took place when policemen were recovering the body of a homeguard from a hijacked three-wheeler. Unknown attackers had abducted two home guards Thursday at Pandarikulam in Vavuniya. One was killed and his body was lying inside the three-wheeler, belonging to a Sinhala resident of Mamaduva, that had been hijacked on Wednesday by some unidentified men. The other, who escaped with injuries, sought refuge in the nearby police check point and tipped the police of the three-wheeler. He was admitted to the Vavuniya hospital. Police rushed to the site and on inspection found a parcel and the dead body. An explosion took place while the policemen were inspecting the vehicle.
     
    Eight civilians including Tamils and Muslims were arrested at Ikkirigollawa village in Anuradhapura district in the North Central Province in a seven hour combined cordon and search operation by the Sri Lanka Army, Police and home guards conducted on Friday morning from 5 a.m. till noon. The first search operation in this Muslim village was held on Monday following a claymore explosion. In that operation four Tamils including a woman were arrested for investigation. All buses and other vehicles going through this village were stopped and passengers checked during the search operation.
     
    September 7
     
    See separate story on the killings in Jaffna on Thursday.
     
    September 6
     
    A Sri Lanka policeman was injured when unidentified men fired at the policeman Wednesday evening around 6.15 p.m. at Uppukulam in Mannar town. The injured constable was identified as Upali Bandara, a member of the Police Intelligence Unit. A Tamil civilian, 29 year old Gabriel Charles of Siruthoppu was injured when additional troops rushed to the site and opened fire. The injured constable was taken to Anuradhapura hospital by ambulance the same day around 7 p.m. The injured Tamil youth was admitted to the Mannar general hospital. Mannar Police took him into custody in connection with the shooting.
     
    Two brothers from Eravur, who left for fishing Wednesday afternoon were found shot dead along the Savukkady coast by Eravur police Thursday and their bodies were recovered Friday morning. The bodies of Parthipan Ananthan, 28 father of two and his brother Parthian Thavaseelan, 16 were found with gunshot injuries.The two brothers had left their residence as usual on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. They were out in the sea in their boat. Unidentified men in another boat had abducted the two brothers, civilians said.
     
    Gunmen riding in a white van without a number plate separately shot dead two civilians in Jaffna Wednesday. A civilian shopping at a grocery in Thirunelvely and a young man who owns a video shop on Adiyapatham lane in the same area were the victims. Two civilians were seriously wounded, one in each incident, and rushed to Jaffna hospital. At 7.30 a.m. gunmen shot dead Satkunarajah Suganthan, 22, of Nallur Kovil Road, Thirunelvely, while he was shopping at Thalankavil Pillayar Kovil Road within the Jaffna Municipal limits. An old woman, who was also buying things at the shop, was injured and admitted to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital in a serious condition for treatment. Around 9 a.m., 300 meters away, another youth, Sivarasa Sivasekaran, 22, a video shop owner was shot by the same persons travelling in the white van while he was opening his shop for the day. Having seen him struggling with injuries, the attackers reversed their vehicle and sprayed him with bullets to finish him off.
     
    A civilian, S. Puvanenthiran, 55, from Meesalai- Urumparai area, who was cycling to the market, was shot by unidentified persons and later admitted to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital for treatment.
     
    September 5
     
    Two Tamils said to be supporters of paramilitary Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP) were shot dead Tuesday night between 8 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. in Valaichchenai area in Batticaloa district. A message saying "death for traitors," was written in posters signed by Ellalan Brigade found near the bodies. One of the dead was Nallathamby Poopalaratnam, 48, was the President of Peithalai fisheries society. It was alleged he had been supplying news and other information to the EPDP run radio programme "Ithayaveenai" from Colombo. Two Tamil persons said to be supporters of para military Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP) were shot dead Tuesday night between 8 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. in Valaichchenai area in Batticaloa district. A message saying "death for traitors," was written in posters signed by Ellalan Brigade found near the bodies, sources said. Kanapathipillai Rangan alias Sathyakumar, a resident of Murugan Kovil Road, Peithalai was also shot dead the same day for allegedly providing information to EPDP.
     
     
  • Four days in Jaffna
    Jaffna remains terrorized amidst growing reports of abductions, rapes and killings. This is why: here are some of the events of September 7, 10, 11, and 15.
     
    September 15
     
    There were eight deaths in the 24hr period from 6 p.m. Thursday to 6 p.m. Friday last week alone.
     
    Two young men riding a motorbike were shot dead by gunmen riding another motorbike in Urumparai, around 3:30 p.m., Friday. The killings took place at 'Moonru Kinathady' in Urumparai in Valikamam East.
     
    A ‘white van’ death squad operated by Sri Lanka Army, abducted a 19-year-old female, beat her to death and hung her body Thursday night in Uduvil, Jaffna. The victim was the fiancee of a 23-year-old male who was abducted, shot dead in eyes Monday.
     
    19-year-old Anishtan Raymond Antida, whose hung body was found Friday night, is engaged to P. Rajkumar 23, a bakery worker, who was also abducted by persons in a white van and shot in his eyes and dumped at Theatre Lane in Innuvil.
     
    Meanwhile, an eyewitness from the bar on Manipay Road in Jaffna said Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were behind the killings at the bar where two youths from Punguduthivu were gunned down in execution style Thursday night.
     
    Another youth was killed in Anaikoddai, shot into his eyes. The other victims to die were a 28-year-old employee at a fuel station Thursday night in Kalviyankadu and a 25-year-old fisherman, Friday morning.
     
    Thayanantahn Kesavan, 20, and Parameswaran Thushyanthan, 18, both from Pungudutivu islet, were gunned down execution style by SLA troops who entered the bar on Manipay Road in Jaffna where they were employed Thursday night.
     
    The soldiers forced their way into the liquor shop where they were sleeping and ordered them to the first floor and shot them. The bodies of the youths are being kept in the Jaffna Teaching Hospital morgue.
     
    Thurairasa Suthahar, 30, of Kokuvil, seriously injured in the shooting incident, is admitted to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital.
     
    The dead body of another youth, Mylvaganam Satkunarathinam, 28, a resident of Kokuvil, abducted and shot into the eyes, was dumped by persons in a white van, at Aarukalmadam in Anaikoddai Friday morning.
     
    Ratnasingam Prasanth, 26, an employee at the fuel station in Kalviankadu junction on the Jaffna Point Pedro road was shot dead Friday morning in execution style.
     
    In Vadamaradchy, Kanmani Jeyatheeswaran, 25, from Punitha Nagar, Katkovalam, a fisherman who displaced from Nagarkovil, was gunned down Friday at 10:30 a.m. while he was cycling towards Point Pedro on Thumpalai Point-Pedro Road.
     
    Another dead body, recently found lying unattended in Valigamam East, was identified as that of Thilakarasa Siluvaithasan, 31, of Kondavil, a father of three.
     
     
    September 11
     
    Eight civilians, including 2 young women, were abducted in Army-controlled Jaffna by unidentified gunmen in white van, in five separate incidents, during the 24 hours ending at 6 p.m. Monday.
     
    The two women were abducted from their home in Anaikottai on Sunday.
     
    At Kokuvil, two youths were dragged out of their homes at gun point, in the presence of their parents.
     
    Two more youths were abducted at gun point in Manipay, while a youth from Kumaraswamy road near Jaffna university and another from Kantharmadam have also been abducted, according to the complaints to the Human Rights Council (HRC).
     
    Meanwhile many others are feared to have been abducted from Vadamaradchy, Kopay, Chulipuram and Alaveddy by the 'white van squads' and only the body of one youth has been recovered in Chulipuram while mystery surrounds the fate of others.
     
     
    September 10
     
    Six people were killed by unidentified gunmen in Jaffna peninsula in separate incidents during the 24 hours ending at 6 p.m., Saturday September 10.
     
    The body of Yogarajah Gajan, 25, was recovered at Chelvanayagapuram in Atchuvely, Saturday morning.
     
    Rajendram Rajamail, 29, of Suthumalai, was shot dead at Pandianthaalvu in Columbuthurai, Saturday morning. Two other passers-by, Sebastian Vincentine, 44, and S. Ratnamoorthy, 40 were injured in the shooting. Both were admitted to Jaffna Teaching Hospital.
     
    Nadarajah Jegatheeswaran, 55, was shot dead near the office of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission at 4th Cross Street in Jaffna, around noon, Saturday.
     
    The body of an unidentified man was found at Vakaravaththai area in Valikamam East in Putur North Saturday morning.
     
    Another unidentified body of a young man with gunshot injuries in Mannankuruchi area, Mirusuvil, in Thenmaradchi sector, around noon Saturday.
     
    Sathasivam Sathiaseelan, 35, who was abducted from his home at Temple road was shot dead at Anaipanthy Junction in the Jaffna Municipality area, around 7:30 p.m. Friday.
     
     
    September 7
     
    Civilians in Jaffna said Sri Lanka Army personnel in plain cloths were behind five separate killings in a single day on Thursday. An 18-year-old student, a woman and a photographer were among the victims. One of the five victims was abducted by gunmen riding in a white van, shot and killed during the curfew hours at midnight.
     
    Balasubramaniyam Thuvaragan, 18, a school student, was shot dead in Alvai East in Vadamarachchy area, in the evening.
     
    The woman, Anjaly Maikkal Jeyachithra, 32, who worked in an Arab country and returned home recently, was shot dead in Thikkam in Vadamarachchy at noon. Her body was found lying by the roadside.
     
    Unidentified gunmen called the victim by name, Suriyakumar Arumairaj, 22, of Karanavai West in Vadamarachchy, a photographer, and shot him in front of his house in the morning.
     
    He was admitted to the Manthihai Rural hospital, and succumbed to his woundds while he was taken to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital for further treatment.
     
    Two unidentified motorbike riders shot Visvalingam Satguneswaran, 32, a jewelry owner, in front of his jewelry shop, along the KKS road in Kokkuvil- Arasadi area in the Jaffna Municipal Limits, around 4:00 p.m. He was admitted to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital and succumbed to the injuries Friday morning.
     
    Another youth, Nagendran Mahendran, 28, who was kidnapped by gunmen riding in white van without number plate and later shot dead near the Pidary Amman Kovil in Anaikkottai- Arukaalmadam area at midnight. His was blindfolded.
     
  • Supplies dwindle as Colombo refuses to open Jaffna road
    For weeks the nothern Jaffna peninsula has been cut off from the rest of the island. Sri Lanka’s government is refusing to open the A9 highway which connects Jaffna to the south by road. Instead, the government is insisting Jaffna should be resupplied by sea.
     
    But the Tamil Tigers suspect the government wants to replenish, under the guise of delivering humanitarian supplies to civilians, ammunition and other military material expended by the 40,000 strong Sri Lankan military garrison there – whilst denying the LTTE controlled areas food and medicine.
     
    A flare-up in fighting between government forces and Tamil Tigers in August cut the peninsula. An SLA offensive was thwarted by an LTTE counter offensive. Hundred died in a week of fighting.
     
    There are concerns that Jaffna's residents -- at least 300,000 people, who're almost all Tamils -- will run out of food and medicine. Ships cannot, in any case, provide the supplies that were delivered by up to 100 lorries a day before the fighting.
     
    The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, the international body set up to monitor the much-abused 2002 ceasefire, has warned of a possible humanitarian crisis.
     
    And while many people in Jaffna want to get out, there are also people desperately trying to get back.
     
    People who were out of town when the war flared up last month and have been unable to return. They're now among the estimated 200,000 people displaced by the renewed fighting in the island's northeast.
     
    Several thousand of them are to be found in the government-controlled town of Vavuniya, 50 miles south of Jaffna. Some are now living in squalid refugee camps outside town.
     
    Last week, the head of the LTTE’s Political Wing, Mr. S. P. Thamilchelvan told the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that the Tigers would cooperate fully in the transportation of humanitarian supplies through demarcated land routes.
     
    However, the Sri Lankan government, engaged in military aggression against the LTTE, was determined not to reopen the supply routes, he said.
     
    The closure of A9 is "not a mere violation of the Ceasefire Agreement, but an offence against humanity, denying basic supplies to hundreds of thousands of people," Mr. Thamilchelvan said.
     
    The International committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) escorted one ship carrying foreign passport holders off the peninsula. That was with the approval of both sides.
     
    Since then, there is suspicion the military is planning to using ICRC flagged vessels to move munitions. The LTTE says land-supply routes enable the verification of humanitarian materials.
     
    The LTTE has given “its pledge to stop all retaliatory fire during the land passage of, humanitarian supply convoys, ambulances, and employees of non-governmental organizations.”
     
    However it refused to guarantee safety for transport by sea as the ceasefire agreement did not have specific articles about demarcation lines in sea and as such it was not possible for the LTTE to provide protection to ICRC sponsored ships using these waters.
     
    ICRC communications coordinator Davide Vignatti said the agency was standing by its policy which needs the agreement of both parties to carry out humanitarian operations in conflict affected areas.
     
    “We are ready to help evacuate civilians from Jaffna at any time, however, we can only do that with the full agreement of both parties. As a neutral organisation we require the agreement of both parties and not just one,” Mr. Davide said in response to government criticism.
     
    Government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella expressed displeasure at the ICRC refusal.
     
    The ICRC’s delegate-general for Asia and the Pacific, Reto Meier, has warned that Jaffna is "choking", having been cut off, with Vanni, from the rest of the country for more than three weeks.
     
    "The flow of goods and people across the lines separating government-controlled from LTTE-held territory has come to a virtual standstill in the north owing to restrictions imposed by both sides," an ICRC statement quoted him as saying.
     
    On Saturday, the Northern Regional Transport Board (NRTB) bus services operating from Kondavil, Point Pedro and Karainagar Bus Depots in the Jaffna peninsula, ground to a halt from Saturday noon as the fuel stock in the depots ran out.
     
    Meanwhile, electricity supply for the peninsula from the Chunakam Electricity Board has been cut down to a mere one hour per day as the fuel stock for the gas-fired generator station also had gone low.
     
    And the fuel stocks that remained unused at the Kankesanthurai Government fuel storage centre has been completely appropriated by the Sri Lanka military in Jaffna penisula for its exclusive use.
     
  • India opposes Northeast de-merger
    Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday told Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse that only negotiations can resolve the island dragging ethnic conflict.
     
    “A political, and not military, solution is what Sri Lanka should aim at - this was India's message,” IANS reported from the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Cuba.
     
    The Indian leadership had also pressed that the island's Tamil-majority Northeastern province should not be de-merged without a referendum and that such a referendum would only be possible when there was a 'conducive atmosphere,' IANS reported.
     
    At their meeting on the sidelines of the NAM summit in Havana Saturday, Manmohan Singh emphasised the need for a negotiated settlement while firmly ruling out war as an option.
     
    The Indian leader also underlined to his Sri Lankan counterpart the necessity to take into consideration the aspirations of the Tamil minority while convincing the Sinhalese majority to go for political concessions.
     
    According to information made available to IANS, Manmohan Singh and Rajapakse had “cordial discussions” during which they touched upon at some length the crisis in Sri Lanka as well as international efforts to resolve it.
     
    “India is very clear that whatever the immediate exigencies, Sri Lanka should aspire in the long run for a negotiated end to the armed conflict that has pitted it against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE),” IANS reported.
     
    The two delegations agreed that the LTTE was a 'dangerous organisation', but New Delhi's belief is that this should not come in the way of talking to the Tigers, the agency said.
     
    The merger of the northeast is an emotive issue with the Tamil people.
     
    Sri Lanka's overwhelmingly Tamil-majority north and multi-racial east were joined by the 1987 India-Sri Lanka peace accord to form a single administrative unit.
     
    Key allies of President Rajapakse, in particular the ultra-nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP) are now insisting that they should be de-merged on grounds that their merger was illegal.
     
    In his remarks, President Rajapakse distanced his government from the opposition to the merger now before the Sri Lankan judiciary.
     
    Rajapakse complained that Norway, the peace facilitator, did not consult his government before announcing in Brussels Sep 12 that Colombo and LTTE would talk in Oslo early next month.
     
    He said that there was a lot of opposition to Norway in Sri Lanka although he remained committed to its role as peace facilitator.
     
    Although the Oslo-sponsored 2002 ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and LTTE is now in tatters, India strongly backs Norway's role as the facilitator, IANS reported.
     
    “New Delhi believes that whatever the shortcoming, Norway, with international backing, alone has the infinite patience and ability to bring the warring sides to the negotiating table,” the agency said, adding that “although India is not a member of the co-chairs, it is fully kept in the picture by the international community seeking to end the Sri Lankan conflict.”
  • ‘The men spoke irregular and unfamiliar Tamil but fluent Sinhala’
    On September 11, 2006 early in the morning about 12:15 am 15 men fully equipped with heavy weapons jumped into the premises of a house. The owners had two fierce dogs and they were barking loudly. In a few minutes the dogs became silent. They may have been hit by heavy weapons or sprayed with some chemical to become unconscious.
     
    There were a number of people at home all of whom were sleeping. Suddenly the inmates were woken by the abnormal barking of the dogs. They thought thieves were entering the house. These days Jaffna peninsula is ravaged by thieves and killing contractors at night who abduct adults and students and then kill them.
     
    The armed men broke open the main door of the house and forcefully entered. They wore black trousers and black shirts. Some of them wore shorts and T-shirts. The inmates shouted at high pitch in one tone "thieves." All of them who were in the rooms came out and stood along the corridor. As the inmates saw the men with heavy weapons they immediately told them to take away all they had and leave them unharmed.
     
    The gunmen had a very powerful torch with them. The family members had only two kerosene lamps. During this time the curfew was in effect. Since August 12, 2006 up to September 2 there was no electricity at night in the peninsular. Thereafter electricity was restored and was available until 11:00pm. The night after 11:00pm is when most of such incidents, as in this case, happen.
     
    The inmates did not suspect that the armed men came to arrest anybody until one 30 year-old man was pulled by his shirt. The family cried that he was an innocent and responsible family man.
     
    The inmates were unable to identify the faces of the armed men due to the powerful torch flashed in their faces. With the help of their torch the armed men thoroughly checked the house while the family members were standing along the corridor.
     
    The men came out of the rooms and threatened them at gunpoint. The gunmen told them that if they shout they would wipe them all out. The armed men began to question the adults. They questioned both the men and the women.
     
    Then again they started to inquire of the man his name, age, occupation, etc. Then they again questioned him. The men spoke irregular and unfamiliar Tamil but fluent Sinhala. All of a sudden they pulled him by the shirt he was wearing.
     
    His mother hugged him strongly. She asked them not to take her son. She was pulling her son back against the men who were dragging him by his shirt. The armed men hit the mother on her head with a weapon. She received a head injury and was bleeding. She fainted immediately. Another family member was also hit on her chest by a gun. In fact several family members suffered injuries in trying to save the young man.
     
    The men hit him on his chest with the gun and he fell down. Then they dragged him by his leg. His shoulders and the back of the head were crashing against the rough ground. They dragged him nearly 50 meters by his leg. The men had parked their vehicles 45 meters away from the main gate along the roadside. They broke the pad lock at the gate and dragged him towards the vehicle.
     
    The family members rushed to the main gate. The armed men threatened the inmates at gun point. The gunmen thrust a gun into the young man's face and continued to threaten them that if they followed them they would kill him. The men had come in a van and on two motor bikes.
     
    The abducted person has not been seen or heard of ever since although the family members have made complaints to the police and all other authorities. Will he become one more statistic to be added to the hundreds of disappearances that have been reported in the recent months from the North and the East and also a few in Colombo? Also will he be an addition to the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared in Sri Lanka in the recent decades?
  • A new period of terror
    In Sri Lanka a white van without a number plate is a symbol of terror and the disappearances that occurred in all parts of the country.
     
    Commissions on Disappearances in the South during the last few years of the 1980s have documented at some length how armed men, travelling in white vans without number plates abducted thousands of people who were never seen again. These reports are available at www.disappearances.org. 
     
    Now such vans have reappeared and do so frequently in the Jaffna peninsular. A report from one family states "the fear of the white van in the day and specially in the night is killing everyone [with fear] in the peninsular."
     
    What the men who come in these vans do is the same as what happened in the South (in the late eighties time of terror).
     
    The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) gives the number of the disappeared from the Jaffna peninsular since December last year as 419.
     
    Not all these disappearances are attributed to "armed men coming in white vans without number plates" - which usually means the military. The LTTE and other militant Tamil groups alleged to be working with the military have also been accused of such abductions which end up as disappearances. International human rights groups have accused the LTTE and other militant groups also on that score.
     
    However, in many cases, the suspicion of the family members is that such occurrences are done either directly by the military or with its approval. Such complicity will not come as a surprise to anyone who is aware of the extent of the disappearances that have taken place in Sri Lanka in recent decades. The reports of the Commissions appointed to investigate these earlier disappearances place the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the state agencies.
     
    In Sri Lanka causing of forced disappearances has been treated by the state as a legitimate means by which to deal with 'terrorism'. The failure to investigate and to take appropriate legal action is also evidence of the state's involvement in such matters.
     
    The fact that the opponents of the government at various times, like the LTTE and the JVP, have taken to violence is used a legitimate reason for the state carrying out forced disappearances and similar modes of the use of extreme violence; that the poison must be killed with poison and that the violence of terrorism must be dealt with by equal or more ferocious violence is an unquestioned part of the state ideology, regardless of which government is in power.
     
    A former Deputy Minister of Defence, Ranjan Wijeratne, was known in the latter part of the 80s as a leader who openly advocated and carried out this policy. The disappearances during that period officially amount to about 30,000 while the other non-state sources have given much larger numbers.
     
    It is today not challenged that except for a handful of cases, the victims of these disappearances were not hard-core insurgents (this of course does not mean that even hard core insurgents can be killed after securing arrest).
     
    The reports of the Commissions of Disappearances mentioned above have demonstrated that most cases of disappearances have happened after arrests which often takes the form of abduction.
     
    For Ranjan Wijeratne and others (political leaders as well as some military and police officers) disappearances were the most practical method of dealing with insurgency.
     
    Disappearances help to do away with the necessity for arrest and detention which can create many legal problems, the keeping of political prisoners, which is again a complicated problem, having trials which requires security arrangements and similar problems which in turn create practical problems for state agents.
     
    Disappearances also help to erase all evidence as secret abductions often end up in the secret disposal of bodies.
     
    If in the use of this easy method some mistakes are made in the arrest of innocent persons, even if they far outnumber any "culprits", that is unavoidable and Ranjan Wijeratne called such acts mere excesses. Talking to parliament he said that these things cannot be done through legal means as that will take too much time.
     
    This same ideological position has never been clearly repudiated by any of the Sri Lankan governments.
     
    Within Sri Lanka at the moment there is no government authority with the capacity to efficiently investigate the disappearances like the one in the case mentioned above.
     
    The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) may record some facts of such disappearances but it does not have the capacity to investigate them in any manner that could be called a credible, criminal investigation.
     
    The assurance of some state authorities to the effect that if soldiers are found to be guilty of such acts they would be punished is a mere rhetorical gesture in the face of heavy criticism from local and international sources. There is no state machinery to give credibility to such assurances.
     
    The Asian Human Rights Commission has been pointing out for several years now the deep impasse in the state's criminal justice system which makes it impossible for any gross abuse of human rights to be credibly investigated or prosecuted.
     
    There have been no attempts to cure this situation. Instead with time this situation has degenerated even further.
     
    Now after the virtual collapse of the cease fire agreement the country is entering into a further period of terror in the name of counterinsurgency.
     
  • Death from white vans: the logic of terror
    People disappear, snatched from the streets at all hours of the day by gunmen in unmarked vans. Bodies sometimes appear, shot execution style or riddled with bullets. Sometimes the missing become the ‘disappeared’ and are never heard from again. The effect on the rest of the community is terror.
     
    And, as Sri Lanka’s military, emboldened by recent successes, prepares to step up its campaign against the Tamil Tigers, the rate of killing is inexorably going up.
     
    In August alone, at least 67 Tamil youths and young adults disappeared in the Jaffna peninsula, according to Thurairaja Surendraraja, the coordinator for Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission (HRC).
     
    These are apart from the dozens whose bodies have been found shot dead, sometimes with marks of torture.
     
    The HRC puts the number of the disappeared alone from the Jaffna peninsular since December last year at over 400. Apart from the missing, scores of bodies have been found; dumped by roadside, on beaches, thrown in wells.
     
    And people are disappearing – and bodies appearing - in other government-controlled parts of the island too. In Trincomalee, in Batticaloa, in Vavuniya and even in the capital, Colombo.
     
    And whilst they have reached new highs for recent times, ‘disappearances’ are not a new phenomenon in Sri Lanka’s conflict.
     
    Earlier this year reporters with The Toronto Star visited Jaffna to investigate the rising numbers of killings and disappearances - which the paper subsequently reported, had “created a culture of fear among Tamil civilians.”
     
    Even by July, more than 100 Tamil civilians had been killed and 255 had been reported missing in Jaffna so far this year, according to Mudiappah Remadious, a lawyer at the human rights commission.
     
    The strong evidence has Remadious convinced that the Sinhalese-dominated security forces are behind at least 40 of the disappearances and most of the killings.
     
    The rest are under investigation.
     
    A Roman Catholic priest who’d also been recording the human rights violations unfolding around him worried that a government plan to terrify Tamil civilians was working, especially in Jaffna.
     
    “It’s schematized killing,” he told the Toronto Star. “To threaten the people. To keep them under pressure. To send the message that the government can save the life and the government can destroy the life.”
     
    The Sri Lankan military, however, told the paper that its soldiers have nothing to do with the disappearances or killings.
     
    “Civilians get caught in the crossfire also, but there are no organized killings,” says Sri Lanka Army spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasinghe. “And about the disappearances, of course the army is not responsible for this.
     
    But when pressed, Samarasinghe admits that there may be “a few bad eggs.”
     
    “When you take 1,000 people in the army, you get one or two corrupted people, right,” he says. “If we find them and they are found guilty they will definitely be court martialled and punished.”
     
    But not everyone is convinced.
     
    “There is very good evidence that the security forces have once again started killing civilians and quite indiscriminately,” a Western diplomat in Colombo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Toronto Star.
     
    The HRC, the priest and several diplomats agree that neither the police nor the judiciary is seriously investigating most of the killings and disappearances, the paper reported. “They worry signs of a government cover-up suggest the orders to carry them out may have come from Colombo.”
     
    “You basically have an apparatus in terms of law enforcement and institutional culture, that created this problem in the past, in the nineties. It was never effectively dismantled,” an international analyst who also spoke on condition of anonymity told The Toronto Star.
     
    “Things are switching back to their old ways and tactics,” the analyst said. “Maybe it’s too far to say it’s a calibrated strategy, but the signals and so forth come from the top.”
     
    The terror experienced by the relatives of the victims and other members of their community is multifaceted.
     
    It comes not only from the casual nature of the abductions and killings.
     
    There is the impossibility of finding out what has become of loved ones. Then there is impossibility of securing action from the police –especially when the security forces are suspected of being responsibility.
     
    In another of several urgent appeals issued by Amnesty International in the wake of disappearances in Sri Lanka, this time in the case of several aid workers with the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation, the typical elements of a military abduction are present.
     
    Amnesty quoted witnesses as saying that “some of those involved in the arrest or abduction were wearing plain clothes and that some had their faces partially covered with black cloth.”
     
    “The [abducting] group arrived in two army vehicles and one white van.”
     
    Yet, when “relatives made inquiries about their [victim’s] arrest and apparent ‘disappearance’ to the [local] army camp … the army denied the arrests.”
     
    Last week the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) observed: “In Sri Lanka a white van without a number plate is a symbol of terror and the disappearances that occurred in all parts of the country.”
     
    “Commissions on Disappearances in the South during the last few years of the 1980s have documented at some length how armed men, travelling in white vans without number plates abducted thousands of people who were never seen again,” the AHRC statement said.
     
    The AHRC was referring to the tens of thousands of Sinhala youths who ‘disappeared’ or were abducted and killed by Sri Lanka’s military and, especially, state-backed paramilitary groups during the crushing of the armed insurrection of the Janatha Vimukthi Perumana (JVP) during the late eighties.
     
    When Sri Lanka’s conflict resumed in 1995, in the wake of early military successes against the LTTE, gunmen in white vans quickly began again claiming victims amongst the Tamils.
     
    Amnesty International’s 1996 report notes: “at least 55 people "disappeared" after being arrested by members of the security forces in the east and in Colombo. The bodies of 31 people abducted in Colombo between late April and late August were later found in lakes and rivers in the vicinity.”
     
    “Among them was Vijendra Naresh Rajadurai who had been forced into a white van at Wellawatte, Colombo, on his way home after work. His body and those of four others were found some 60 kilometres to the northeast of Colombo. The victims had been held prisoner, tortured and then killed by strangulation or drowning.”
     
    “Now such vans have reappeared and do so frequently in the Jaffna peninsula,” the AHRC said last week. “The suspicion of the family members is that such [abductions] are done either directly by the military or with its approval.”
     
    “Such complicity will not come as a surprise to anyone who is aware of the extent of the disappearances that have taken place in Sri Lanka in recent decades,” the AHRC says. “The reports of the Commissions appointed to investigate these earlier disappearances place the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the state agencies.”
     
    And as in the JVP era, the victims of today’s abductions border on the indiscriminate. Those with even the slightest suspicion of supporting the Tamil Tigers is being murdered.
     
    Press reports say even supporters of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), Sri Lanka’s oldest Tamil party and now part of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA) have been abducted and killed in the Army-controlled peninsula.
     
    Sri Lanka’s security establishment has an operating logic, the AHRC points out: For many Sri Lankan “political leaders as well as some military and police officers, disappearances were the most practical method of dealing with insurgency.”
  • No end in sight
    The Co-Chairs communiqué of September 13th from Brussels has suggested that talks resume in early October. It warns that the “failure to cease hostilities, pursue a political solution, respect human rights and protect humanitarian space could lead the international community to diminish its support.”
     
    It is being argued that the International Community is fast losing its patience with the current regime in Colombo – a sense underlined again by the Co-Chairs threat of an iron fist if both the Government and the LTTE fail to reenter a dialogue.
     
    But we have been here before – Tokyo also promised that a failure to resume a dialogue would result in repercussions for Colombo – although as yet little has materialised. If anything the capacity of the Co-Chairs to shape events in Sri Lanka has been overestimated.
     
    This may be one reason why New Delhi has stayed well clear of getting directly involved with Colombo. Where some commentators see the Brussels communiqué as a make or break moment for the Sri Lankan state, I am increasingly convinced that the desire for further involvement by the Co-Chairs is just not there beyond the usual threats of action. Sri Lanka barely figures on the league table of international crises, which at present are dominated by Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine and Darfur in Sudan. These are crises that the International Community can barely handle at present and they are unlikely to add Sri Lanka to the list beyond the current remit of the Co-Chairs.
     
    Furthermore, Sri Lanka is seen as coming within India’s regional sphere. With Pakistan (and China by extension) stepping into the breach supposedly left by India’s failure to provide military hardware to Colombo the impression has recently been created of a weakened LTTE
     
    If however the LTTE were seriously weakened given the suggestions of Sri Lankan aerial superiority and the defection of Karuna, then would not the LTTE be suing for peace with the backing of the Co-Chairs? While the LTTE might have suffered losses in recent months, I am skeptical of the irredeemable weakness attributed to them by some commentators in the Colombo media. With the monsoon season soon arriving it will be the SLA, on the offensive, that risks getting bogged down in a guerrilla war.
     
    It is unlikely that the LTTE will be drawn into a major retaliation against the SLA until the Co-Chairs October deadline has passed. So October’s meeting of the Co-Chairs will be a pivotal moment in Sri Lanka’s post-CFA peace process.
     
    Lets assume that there are no peace talks between the two sides and lets assume that the Co-Chairs begin to disengage from the process. Interestingly even though the Co-Chairs issued a sharply worded rebuke to Colombo in the Brussels communiqué, the donor community is already talking of extending the debt moratorium for Sri Lanka. Human rights violations will therefore have to get a lot worse, on a par with the late 1980s and early 90s before aid conditionality is used as a weapon against Colombo.
     
    But by default a disengagement from the modalities of the process initiated by the Co-Chairs in 2002, will increase New Delhi’s role and to this end they have begun engaging the wider Tamil community in both India and Sri Lanka. New Delhi at present will not accept a separate Tamil dominated state on its southern flank. Indeed what the Sinhala nationalists have never quite grasped is that the possibility of Eelam rests more with New Delhi than with Colombo.
     
    Given India can never disengage, the Co-Chairs will in effect leave it up to New Delhi to formulate a response if Colombo opts for a military solution which seeks to ethnically cleanse the East of Tamils and perhaps the Muslims.
     
    India is an astute observer of Lankan politics - they know fully well how entrenched the logic of Sinhalese nationalism is within the apparatus of the state. They understand that it will take an all mighty effort to reform the Sri Lankan state in a pluralist and inclusivist direction. In short India’s response will be determined by how Colombo acts in response to a disengagement from the peace process by the Co-Chairs.
     
    In the event of full-scale war which now seems the most likely scenario, New Delhi will respond only once the tensions in Tamil Nadu become unmanageable. In this regard Colombo needs to think carefully before it launches an all out assault on the LTTE which, given the terrain and political loyalties of the majority of the Tamils in the Northeast, will become a war against the Tamil people.
     
    If Colombo is astute and does not launch an all out assault on the LTTE, but carries on with its ‘shadow war’ it can probably secure adequate support from the West for a significant period of time. But bear in mind that Tokyo/Beijing are not that concerned with aid conditionalities and will continue to provide aid to Colombo regardless of the war.
     
    The prospects for a just resolution of this conflict within a united but federal Sri Lanka is bleak. Indeed the prospect of any kind of resolution is bleak. It will however be shaped on how New Delhi responds to the competing moves of both Colombo and the LTTE. While the Brussels communiqué appears a wake up call for the forces of Sinhalese extremism, it appears unlikely that the warning will be heeded - or that the Co-Chairs will follow their warning through with conviction.
  • India: stable ceasefire ‘essential pre-requisite’ for peace moves
    India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Monday India's efforts would be to ensure that the current ceasefire holds in Sri Lanka as a pre-requisite for a durable solution to the island's crisis, IANS reported.
     
    Mr. Singh, who is on an official visit to Brazil and Cuba, told correspondents accompanying him that India was in touch with both the Sri Lankan government and Norwegian facilitators.
     
    “And our effort is to ensure that the ceasefire holds and that both parties (the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers) are scrupulously committed to preserving the ceasefire,” Mr Singh said.
     
    “I think that's an essential pre-requisite before we can move forward to a durable solution,” he added.
     
    Mr. Singh’s comments aboard Air India One came a day before the Co-Chairs of Sri Lanka’s donor community – the United States, European Union, Japan and Norway – held an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis in the island.
     
    The Liberation Tigers Tuesday reiterated their position that a stable ceasefire was necessary for talks.
     
    "Within the context of the military offensives by the Sri Lankan armed forces and their continuing forced occupations of the Tamil homeland, we do consider that the CFA (ceasefire agreement) has become meaningless," Thamilselvan told Reuters.
     
    "However, since the facilitators and the international community are eager to strengthen the peace efforts, the LTTE is also continuing to examine options for strengthening the CFA," he added.
     
    “The opportunities for resuming the talks will be much stronger when the Sri Lankan government ceases its military attacks and all the CFA articles are fully respected and implemented."
  • LTTE urges international pressure over truce
    The Liberation Tigers said Wednesday it is the responsibility of the Norwegian facilitators and international community to ensure the Rajapakse regime adheres to the territorial demarcations, terms and conditions of the CFA and thereby creates a conducive atmosphere for talks.
     
    Speaking to Tamilnet Wednesday evening, the head of the LTTE’s Political Wing, Mr. S. P. Thamilchelvan welcomed the Co-Chairs insistence Tuesday that the Sri Lankan government “must ensure its military abides by the Ceasefire Agreement and implements the pledges from the Geneva meeting in February 2006.”
     
    “It is the Sri Lankan government which, launching major aggression against our controlled areas, has carried out breaches of the CFA of the utmost seriousness. It is therefore the primary responsibility of the [Mahinda] Rajapakse regime to create a conducive environment by respecting the lines of territorial demarcation underpinning the CFA so that the peace process can move forward,” Mr. Thamilchelvan said.
     
    Mr. Thamilchelvan said the LTTE’s position had been unambiguously set out when the Tigers met with a Norwegian delegation led by Ambassador Hans Brattskar on September 6 in Kilinochchi.
     
    There was no change in the LTTE policy since then, Mr. Thamilchelvan said, adding that it had been reiterated in his recent interview with Reuters on Tuesday.
     
    Reaffirming the LTTE’s commitment to the peace process, Mr. Thamilchelvan said it was the responsibility of the Norwegian facilitators supported by the international community to ensure Colombo takes concrete steps towards the speedy creation of a conducive environment for talks.
     
    And apart from forcibly occupying LTTE-controlled areas by military aggression, the Sri Lankan armed forces have also sharply escalated abductions, extra-judicial killings and other abuses against the Tamil people, Mr. Thamilchelvan pointed out.
     
    Mr. Thamilchelvan hailed the international community’s recognition of the prevailing ground situation, particularly welcoming its condemnation of the Sri Lanka Air Force airstrike on Mullaitivu in August which killed 55 schoolgirls.
     
    Meanwhile on Friday, the new head of the international ceasefire monitors in Sri Lanka, retired Norwegian Maj. Gen. Lars Johan Sølvberg, met with Mr. Thamilchelvan and Head of Tamil Eelam Police, Mr. P. Nades for an hour to discuss the prevailing security situation.
     
    Mr. Thamilchelvan had said that the Sri Lankan government was on a war path and pointed out there was no clear position from Colombo on respecting the CFA.
     
    "CFA must be respected one hundred percent and the safety and the security of the people must be respected," LTTE's Peace Secretariat quoted Thamilchelvan as saying to the SLMM chief.
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