Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka gave a long triumphant speech at the 64^th UN General Assembly in New York, to a hall that was more than half empty, reported Inner City Press.

 

According to the non-profit public interest organisation, the Prime Minister “droned on” as the Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministers “sat with their head in their hands”.

 

In his speech, Wickramanayaka repeated promises that the government were doing all they could to help resettle the civilians in camps. He however warned that "the stability and security that we have restored at great human cost cannot and must not be compromised, particularly when a large number of self-confessed ex-LTTE cadres continue to mix with the IDPs (internally displaced persons)," hinting that the resettlement may be delayed even longer.

 

The Prime minister also made it clear that Colombo would not allow the UN to “interfere in internal affairs”. Relations between the UN and the Sri Lankan government have been strained, since the climax of the war in May, amid allegations of human rights abuses.

 

As the Prime Minister spoke, Tamil Americans rallied in front of the UN to protest over the organisation’s inaction.

 

Before the Prime Minister addressed the UN General Assembly, he spoke at the Asia Society at Park Avenue, Manhattan, where he started his speech by saying "our country is nourished by Buddhism". It has been reported that the only questions   Wickramanayaka answered were “pre screened softball questions”, according to Inner City Press.

 

The organisation also claimed that “several facts were plainly misrepresented.”

 

“The Asia Society's questioner -- who multiple times and accurately said, "I am by no means an expert on Sri Lanka" -- asked if the International Committee of the Red Cross has access to all the IDPs. Yes, Wickramanayake replied. But the ICRC has complained of no access to at least 10,000 people.”

 

“Then Wickramanayake said that two ICRC staffers were found to have "direct" ties to the LTTE and were arrested. Presumably he was referring to the two UN system staff, a question that Inner City Press wrote on a note card that was never read out by the moderator. Nor was a question about the GSP Plus tax benefit in Europe, which Sri Lanka stands to lose for human rights violations.”

 

The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon met with the Prime Minister after his speech, to discuss the situation in these camps, and in particular to urge rapid resettlement as the monsoon season approaches.

 

“Failure to rapidly resettle nearly 300,000 Sri Lankans displaced by the government's final onslaught against Tamil separatists and further suffering under harsh conditions in the camps could result in growing bitterness,” said the UN Secretary General.

Sri Lanka’s purported investigation into the footage of soldiers shooting unarmed, naked men is neither impartial nor reliable, a UN representative has said.

 

The footage, showing the purported execution of naked, blindfolded civilians by troops in Sri Lankan Army uniform, was first shown on Channel 4 news in Britain after being smuggled out of Sri Lanka by a group called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.

 

The Sri Lankan government denied the authenticity of the video and conducted four ‘independent investigations’, which it says prove the video is fake.

 

But Professor Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, rebuffed the investigation, saying they were not ‘impartial’. He has called for fresh new independent and impartial investigations.

 

“Two of these individuals are full-time Government employees, one has previously acted on behalf of the Government, and the basis on which the fourth was identified and selected as an expert remains unclear,” Alston said.

 

He concludes that “on the basis of the information made available by the Government, that the investigations undertaken cannot be characterized as "impartial".”

 

The official statement from Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council is as follows:

 

“The legal obligation incumbent upon a Government in a situation such as this is to undertake a ‘thorough, prompt and impartial investigation’,” he said.

 

Nothing that he could “attest to the fact that the investigation has been "prompt" since it was completed within two weeks of the information becoming available,” he nevertheless challenged whether it was thorough or impartial.

 

“I am not, however, in a position to conclude that it was "thorough." I have not seen the original version of three of the four expert investigations. The fourth of the investigations seems to have originated as an Opinion piece in The Island newspaper, and was subsequently elaborated upon. It is not clear whether or not this was at the Government's request. The statement provided by the Minister summarizes "observations" made by the remaining three experts in presentations made at a meeting convened by the Government for this purpose. I would welcome the publication of the full text of the analyses undertaken and reports presented by each of the four experts,” he said.

 

“The third and most important question is whether the "four separate investigations" meet the criteria of impartiality. I would note that two of the experts are members of the Sri Lankan Army, the body whose actions have been called into question. A third report is by Dr. Chathura De Silva, BSc Eng Hons (Moratuwa), MEng (NTU), PhD (NUS), Senior Lecturer, Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, who has advised the Government in relation to a number of other similar issues in the past. And the fourth is by Siri Hewawitharana, a broadcast media specialist based in Australia, who is said to be the former head of Cisco's global broadcast and digital video practice. No other information has been provided by the government on Mr Hewawitharana, but it would appear that he is a member of a network of Sri Lankan Professionals. I would welcome more information on how he was identified and selected by the government as an independent expert,” he said.

 

“Based on the limited information available to me, it is impossible to conclude that these four individuals, given their relationship to the Government, meet the criteria for impartiality in this context. When the actions of a Government are called into question in a matter of this gravity, what is required is to undertake an investigation by demonstrated experts who can be shown to be fully independent of the Government concerned. Two of these individuals are full-time Government employees, one has previously acted on behalf of the Government, and the basis on which the fourth was identified and selected as an expert remains unclear. I must conclude therefore, on the basis of the information made available by the Government, that the investigations undertaken cannot be characterized as "impartial",” he said.

 

“The final question that remains is whether the information provided by the Government raises significant doubts as to the authenticity of the video. On this question, my conclusion is that the views expressed do indeed raise several issues which warrant further investigation before it could reasonably be concluded that the video is authentic. The only way to do this is for an independent and impartial investigation to take place. This is all that I have called for. Such an investigation might well conclude that the position adopted by the Government is fully warranted. I would welcome that outcome very warmly, and I hope that the Government would do likewise,” Alston concluded.

 

As the need for democratic political organisation unfolds afresh, Tamils have to take up the thread directly from the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution.

 

The Thimphu principles and all the other formulas put forward subsequently under the duress of powers, and failed as negotiation models, do not get precedence over the VR as bases for political organization.

 

Mullivaaykkaal was not the real defeat. The defeat comes only when Tamils are made to politically denounce their heart-felt aspirations.

 

The diaspora needs to peruse and correct course of any proposal that stops just at self-determination. In UN charter and in international law it is just an empty phrase that doesn’t protect nations or ethnicities.

 

 

The Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976, calling for independent, sovereign, Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka was a proclamation of all democratic Tamil political parties, including Ceylon Workers Congress, the then united political party of the Upcountry Tamils. The Eelam Tamil voters of the North and East overwhelmingly endorsed it in the 1977 elections. Thus it was a definite democratic mandate of Tamils and so far they didn’t get another chance to democratically tell what is in their heart.

 

The Thimphu principles of 1985 were a diluted version of Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, after truncating independence and sovereignty and stopping just at Tamil nation, homeland and self-determination.

 

The Thimphu principles, diluted to facilitate negotiation with Colombo, were jointly put forward by all the Tamil militant organizations of that time and the TULF. There was no mandate of the people. The most important fact to be noted is that the Indian Establishment that was always keen in nullifying Tamil independence in the island was behind making Tamil militancy then under its influence agreeable to the principles as a minimum platform for negotiation.

 

The Indo-Sri Lanka agreement of 1987 imposed on Tamils touched only the point of homeland, that too temporarily, and it was recently breached by Colombo. There was no credible mandate as the LTTE boycotted and the elections took place under the coercing presence of the Indian military. However, the provincial government elected under it finally felt it necessary to declare independent and sovereign Eelam, before winding up and while the Indian military was present.

 

The Oslo communiqué of 2002 was a further dilution of Vaddukkoaddai in another way, by its adoption of an invented phrase ‘internal self-determination’. Norway and some other powers that later became the Co-Chairs were behind making the LTTE agreeable to experiment negotiation with this dilution. Again there was no mandate of people. LTTE's chief negotiator Anton Balasingham, writing in 2004, questioned the concept of Oslo Declaration and implied the expiry of LTTE's concession on internal self-determination.

 

The ISGA of 2003, which has reference to Vaddukkoaddai but not to Thimphu, was only an interim proposal during the Co-Chair sponsored peace. It was apparently a move of the LTTE to supersede Oslo Communiqué. The mandate it received from Tamils has to be considered limited as the elections took place with the 6th Amendment to the constitution in effect. Its only electoral validity today is that it binds the TNA.

 

Even after considerably diluting the freely mandated aspirations of Vaddukkoaddai Resolution to suit their geopolitical agenda, India and the Co-Chairs miserably failed in making the Sri Lankan state agreeable for experimenting political solutions.

 

Had they succeeded, there would have been a different course of events and they would have had a standing in telling the Tamil mind to consider experimenting within a united Sri Lanka. But they chose the path of brutally abetting or allowing a crushing military defeat and open as well as barbed-wire incarceration of the whole nation of Tamils in the island.

 

Eelam Tamils are now left with the option of politically organising themselves afresh.

 

In the emerging scenario of democratic organisation of Eelam Tamil politics there need to be no place for Thimphu, Oslo or any other – non mandated, experimental, and failed negotiation formulas extended by militancy under duress of powers.

 

If there is democracy then nothing should prevent the democratic stream to get back to what was last mandated by people and what has become the heart-felt need of Eelam Tamils more than ever now, and to begin the political process and negotiation from that point.

 

However, the very forces that have inflicted military defeat on Tamils are now all out to defeat them politically by capturing, hijacking or deviating the democratic politics of Tamils.

 

India and the West compete in subtle ways in this exercise, adopting crude as well as highly sophisticated methods. Preparations, institutional arrangements and recruitments have been done long back by them to face a 'post-defeat' scenario as it was their foregone conclusion to inflict military defeat on Tamil nationalism.

 

The powers have carefully studied the non nation-centred ‘virtue’ of sections of Tamil elite or rather weakness of the Eelam Tamil nationalism, cultivated since colonial times to always orientate their politics in terms of the interests of others - British colonial interests, Colombo-centric interests, Indian interests, Western interests and there was a time when some were orientating it to the interests of Russia and China.

 

The elite politics of Eelam Tamils - except for the rare occasion of Vaddukkoaddai Resolution, and that too is said to be a result of youth pressure - was always hiding its mind fearing for others and was thinking in terms of others.

 

Influenced and discouraged by calculated power machinations, campaigns and Karunanidhis, the murmur heard in some elite circles now is that if a powerful armed struggle has failed, what could be achieved through democratic politics and claiming for what the heart aspires is only bravado.

 

They fail to see that it is more legitimate and more workable in democratic organisation to come out boldly with what you feel righteously deserving, register the claim and then to fight for it or negotiate until acceptable results are achieved.

 

This is possible only when we have the guts to independently evolve our politics firmly by ourselves first and then only to relate it to others. Of course this is not possible when we start looking at ourselves through the eyes of others. This mindset is the biggest impediment to our political organisation.

 

Mu’l’livaaykkaal was not the real defeat. Colombo and the powers know it. Their victory comes only when Tamils are made to politically denounce their heart-felt aspirations. It is in order to achieve this victory much easier, they advice or find agents to advise Tamils to drop their national aspiration, even though democratically registering a national aspiration could in no way be considered an obstacle for negotiation.

 

Powers have created a desperate situation for Eelam Tamils hoping their will power would wither even politically. But one should not fail to see that if not for Tamils, for the sake of their own interests, the powers have to find out solutions very soon in the island. Tamils have to be ready with their own politics to face the situation.

 

In the past, the failure of democratic Tamil politicians in adhering to people’s emotional needs with firmness and their inability to resist undue power interests, paved way for the rise and acceptance of militancy.

 

Tamils should take care that their political organisation now needs to be truly representative of their aspirations and needs to be firm in negotiation if they want to uphold democracy and avoid another rise of militancy. No need to say the powers should respect this reality, as they too share the fear.

 

It is now an acid test for the emerging democratic politics of Eelam Tamil nationalism.

 

The move in the diaspora for transnational government of Tamil Eelam is not only for negotiating the liberation and emancipation of Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka but it is also an alternative government of the diaspora, standing for the global unity, cultural identity, development and global status of the diaspora. The move for this government needs not to bother about anyone in proclaiming the independence and sovereignty of Eelam Tamils in the island and requesting a mandate from the people in the diaspora.

 

Self-determination, as it is understood in contemporary times is a vague term when applied to people or ethnicities. According to UN charter 1(2), self-determination is interpreted as existing only in state-to-state relationship. Legally, it protects only states.

 

“Self-determination does not entail the right to be independent, or even to vote for independence” (Geoffrey Robertson, Penguin 2008, p165).

 

“International law provides no right of secession in the name of self-determination” (Rosalyn Higgins, Peoples and Minorities in International Law, 1995, p33).

 

“At best, the people’s right to self-determination connotes the right of all citizens to participate in the political process, but this gives power to majorities and not to minorities (Robertson, ibid).

 

The diaspora needs to seriously peruse and correct the course of any proposal that stops just at self-determination.

 

The Tamil National Alliance in the island, operating under constraints of Colombo and India, should not on its own, denounce the independence and sovereignty of Eelam Tamils and should not agree for experimenting anything other than a confederation with the right to secede, is an opinion strongly felt in the diaspora.

 

Emerging Tamil politics needs to act with far sight. The present scenario of geopolitics is not going to remain the same. The national aspiration for independence and sovereignty, which is a hard reality for Eelam Tamils today, may also get re-defined. In any future possibility of shared sovereignty, either regionally or globally, the Eelam Tamils should be able to find their niche smoothly without again facing the tragedy they have undergone for ages.

 

It is with sadness most of the Eelam Tamils look at a few Marxists among them, especially of the former ‘Peking Wing’, who denounce separate nationalism for Eelam Tamils. The Marxist Communist Party of India also has adopted a similar line.

 

It is hard to understand that if national liberation of Eelam Tamils oppressed on ethnic grounds and ‘Eelam’ as a political unit is not acceptable to them, in what way the united Sri Lankan nationalism and Sri Lanka as a political unit upheld by them is ideologically justifiable. While viewing Tamil national struggle as serving imperialism, they practically serve the very imperialism by weakening the struggle.

 

Ironically, many Sinhala Marxists see justice and recognise the Tamil national struggle in the island.

 

The Marxists contributed immensely to the social progress of Eelam Tamils in the past. They have a duty in structuring and strengthening the Tamil nation further, through achieving social equality. The democratisation of politics is an atmosphere conducive for them, but they should not deprive Tamils getting their contribution by keeping Tamil national liberation as an untouchable topic, by not participating in it and by not recognising that their goals can be better achieved by accepting Tamil nationalism as a unit to apply their progressive ideas and shaping it at home and in transnational governance. 

With the political scene in Tamil Nadu hotting up again over the plight of displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka, the main opposition party, AIADMK, led by Jayalalitha Jayaran threatening to launch a mass agitation over the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, DMK and Congress MPs from Tamil Nadu rushed to Delhi to meet the Prime Minister and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi seeking New Delhi’s immediate intervention on the issue.

 

The group of cabinet ministers and MPs from Tamil Nadu urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi to send a team to Sri Lanka where they said the military was 'mistreating' Tamils displaced by the war and interned in camps, IANS news agency reported.

 

"We met the prime minister and the Congress president and appraised them about the plight of Tamil civilians living in refugee camps," said DMK leader and former cabinet minister T.R. Baalu.

 

"We said that the displaced Tamil civilians were being mistreated by the Sri Lankan military officials. We told them that steps should be initiated to rehabilitate the displaced Tamils," Baalu told IANS.

 

India, the delegation, which met Manmohan Singh on Tuesday September 22 demanded New Delhi to send a team of Tamil Nadu MPs to Sri Lanka to study the situation there.

 

The MPs who called on Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi also included Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Communication Minister A. Raja, Textiles Minister Dayanidhi Maran, Shipping Minister G.K. Vasan as well as Kanimozhi, a Rajya Sabha MP and daughter of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.

 

Among the others were ministers of state S.S. Palanimanickam, S. Gandhiselvan and S. Jagathrakshakan (all DMK) as well as Congress leader K.V. Thangabalu.

 

The detention in barbed wire camps in Sri Lanka's north of some 300,000 Tamil civilians since they fled Tamil Tigers territory before the military crushed the Tamil Tigers has caused widespread concern.

 

Few Days earlier, On Friday, September 18, Dayanidhi Maran separately called on the prime minister as an emissary of Karunanidhi to "highlight the plight of the displaced Tamils" in the Sri Lankan camps.

 

Karunanidhi wanted Manmohan Singh to "exert diplomatic pressure at appropriate levels" on Colombo to end what he said was "untold suffering" of the displaced Tamils.

 

Baalu alleged that the Sri Lankan government was not allowing the Tamil refugees to return to their native places, which were under the control of the LTTE before it was defeated.

 

"We told the prime minister that Tamils are stranded in the refugee camps. Around 2,000 Tamil civilians who were allowed to move to their native places have not reached there," Baalu said.

 

"We want to know what happened to them."

 

The delegation also urged the prime minister to take immediate steps to stop attacks by the Sri Lanka Navy against Indian fishermen in the sea, Baalu said.

A whole world is duped in what Colombo is machinating in the name of resettlement of IDPs, Tamil circles in Jaffna commented, citing Sri Lanka Navy’s new internment camps around its installations in the island sector of Jaffna.

 

Colombo’s aim is threefold: a human shield of civilians for its occupying forces, prevention of rightful owners reoccupying houses and lands around its military installations and eventually confiscating those lands in strategic areas for its expansion and other demographic conspiracies in the very heart of Tamil homeland, pointed out Tamil circles adding that a paranoid Sri Lankan state can never deliver justice to Tamils.

 

The core truth is that the barbed-wire camps came up because the world powers wanted it. But some powers by not directly taking responsibility and some others like India by sitting on international action continue injustice, Jaffna circles said.

 

The SLN ‘resettled’ nearly 2000 civilians brought from the internment camps of Vavuniya in new internment camps created by using abandoned houses around its naval installations in Kaarainakar and in Kayts, at the end of September.

 

For nearly two decades now, Colombo’s armed forces are occupying vast tracts of potential civilian land along the northern coast of the peninsula in the name of High Security Zone.

 

A so-called ‘development model’ for Jaffna that is now being circulated shows that this tract is not going to be returned to people, but is going to be used for resource exploitation and a new city for the occupiers, with harbour, airport and military installations, as a joint venture of Colombo and New Delhi.

 

Reviving the cement factory in Kaankeasanthurai is the biggest environmental crime that is going to affect hundreds of thousands of civilians, discouraging them from inhabiting the northern part of the peninsula, academic circles in Jaffna said.

 

Meanwhile, the SLA installed landmine blast that seriously injured three recently resettled civilians in the Ariyaalai tract is alleged to be another trick of Colombo to discourage the call for expediting resettlement.

 

Unless the international community takes direct responsibility and removes Colombo’s occupying armed forces, peace and ‘reconciliation’ is a mirage in the island, opined a veteran Tamil politician in Jaffna. 

In a significant decision, the Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi, on Saturday, September 26, said he would take steps to ensure that the Centre granted citizenship to the more than 100,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees living in the state if they desired so.

 

He made the announcement at a function bringing down the curtains on the year-long centenary celebrations of C N Annadurai in Kancheepuram, the DMK founder’s birthplace. Earlier, the DMK passed a resolution requesting the party chief to take steps to ensure that the Tamil refugees in the state were given the option of citizenship under the Indian Citizenship Act.

 

As many as 73,572 refugees have been staying in 115 camps across Tamil Nadu and more than 30,000 reside outside the camps in different parts of the state. Following the end of the Eelam war and defeat of the LTTE, there has been much apprehension among the refugees that they would be sent back home against their wish. The announcement comes as a relief, representatives of Tamil groups said.

 Six civilians, including 2 women and 3 children, were wounded as the Sri Lankan Army opened fire on them at the Cheddikulam internment camp.

One 8-year-old child was severely wounded and had to be urgently transferred to Anuradhapura hospital from Vavuniyaa hospital after the incident.

 The incident occurred after several days of heightened unrest and increasing tensions, which saw civilians held at the clamp clash with Sri Lankan Army soldiers.

 The group of 6 were said to have gone to collect firewood as they were shot at by the SLA.

 With the World Food Programme no longer providing cooked meals, as of September 17^th, and a lack of basic cooking facilities, collecting firewood is one of the few remaining ways in which civilians can cook food.

 This is the first undisputed example of soldiers opening fire on civilians held in these camps.

 The Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence claimed that the group were trying to escape from the camps, where they are being held against their own will.

 However, this breaks a pledge by Brig. S Perera, the senior military official in charge of the camps in Vavuniya.

 He earlier insisted to reporters that anyone trying to flee would be “tackled to the ground”, instead of being fired upon.

 The Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence stated that the civilians were an “unlawful gathering”.

 Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara also later claimed that soldiers were pelted with stones.

 In an interview with Reuters, he stated “a man tried to lob a grenade. Our people (soldiers) fired towards that area for self defence and to prevent escape".

 Each civilian has been tediously “screened” by the Sri Lankan Army, before being forced into the barbed wire enclosed camps.

 Nineteen civilians at the camp were arrested following the shooting. No soldiers were hurt in the incident.

 This follows reports of an earlier clash between civilians and Sri Lankan Army soldiers that occurred after the arrest and assault of 31-year-old youth Paranchami Chandramohan.

 The young man was arrested by force and moved to an unknown area of the Poonthotham Teachers Training College in Vavuniya, which is currently being used as an “unofficial detention centre” according to Amnesty International.

 He was not seen for over two days, despite constant requests from the civilian inmates of the camp, which prompted them to throw stones and attempt to breach the fences of the camp.

 He was then released to Vavuniya hospital for treatment.

 Amnesty International confirmed that they were aware of the existence of “at least 10 such facilities in school buildings and hostels originally designated as displacement camps in the north” and that “there have also been frequent reports of other unofficial places of detention elsewhere in the country.”

 The international aid organisation also reported how several paramilitary groups, namely the EPDP, PLOTE, TELO and both TMVP factions are also active in Vavuniya and “have been implicated in human rights violations”.

 Many international organisations, such as the New York based Human Rights Watch, have criticised the camps as a form of “illegal detention” and described them as “open prisons”.

 There have also been warnings that the rapidly approaching October monsoon rains could create a massive crisis in the low lying and congested camps.

 “The civilians locked up in these detention camps have a right to liberty now, not when the Government gets around to it,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.

 “Sadly, the Sri Lankan Government has a track record of lying, deceiving and breaking promises to civilians displaced by the conflict,” he said.

“The UN, donors and bilateral partners should demand immediate, concrete progress and not let themselves be fooled again by empty Government promises.”

 Colombo claims to have released nearly 10,000 civilians, but it has emerged that many have simply been moved to smaller transit camps, in other districts.

Approximately 280,000 civilians remain trapped in the camps. 

What Ranil, Mangala and Mano Ganesan said on 3 September at a Platform for Freedom Press Conference on the IDP issue was fairly widely covered in the print and electronic media, but three other contributors, Siritunga Jayasuriya, Nimalka Fernando and Herman Kumara failed to attract coverage. They were more sharp and interesting, but not being parliamentarians, I guess, less news worthy. I will focus on them to redress this imbalance. But first a Mangala snippet which was both catchy and accurate; he defined the Vanni interns as FDPs (Forcibly Detained Persons) insisting that calling them internally displaced persons (IDPs) was simply not true.

 

First, let me have my say. It is my view that it is the FDP issue that will have more severe repercussions on the relationship between the Tamils and the government and on Sinhala-Tamil relations than the hotly canvassed political package uproar. Astute folks are pretty well reconciled that nothing will happen in the foreseeable future about devolution, thirteen plus, minus or zilch, and home-grown solutions. It’s going to be the same old unitary state and constitution, with or without some superficial tinkering, until and unless something dramatic happens, such as the change to a left government; and that’s not on the cards.

 

But between two and three hundred thousand people of one community, held in indefinite and illegal detention by the hegemonic state of another community, well that’s tertiary stage cancer and its repercussions are going to be far, far more serious than people seem to realise. I give it three more months and if the FDPs are not all released from forcible detention, then the gulf will again widen to distrust similar to the post 1972-Constitution, post Vattukkotai Resolution, or intensifying LTTE periods. The gulf will become unbridgeable again. In a word, it’s the FDPs stupid, not the package that will hinge, or if you prefer unhinge, Tamil consciousness.

 

Siritunga’s take on it: For those who need some background, Siritunga is the leader of the United Socialist Party (USP), a non government left party and as presidential candidate in 2005 he polled 36,000 votes, certainly much more than I expected. I have been closely associated with him politically from 1970 when he was a key leader in the Vama or left tendency in the LSSP which matured into the NSSP in 1977. He parted company with us on the Indo-Lanka Accord and 13th Amendment which he opposed while we (the majority in the NSSP) gave these measures our conditional support. Nevertheless, he and I have remained personal friends. The USP has fraternal ties with international Marxist currents in many countries but I am not aware what its active membership within the country is.

 

As a Sinhalese Marxist he expressed shock at the inadequate response in the South to the fact that such a large number of Tamils could be held in illegal detention for over 100 days. “Imagine the uproar in the country if two to three lakhs of ordinary Sinhalese people had been held behind barbed wire like this”. How much longer is this going to continue he inquired? And this inquiry continued to the heart of the matter. “These people have lived under LTTE Administration for nearly two decades. Of course a large number of them or a family member would have worked in that Administration, many would have associated with the LTTE, and to be perfectly frank, most would have supported or been sympathetic to the LTTE point of view”. This goes to the heart of the government’s conundrum; if the government intends to hold everybody who is or was sympathetic to the LTTE indefinitely, then it will have to hold some hundreds of thousands of people forever. The real problem is not a few thousand ex-cadres, the problem is hundreds of thousands who, come on be sensible about it, must have been pro-LTTE.

 

I think it is inevitable that he comes to the same conclusion as I have done in my third paragraph, but from an inside the camps perspective. I asserted that the FDP issue is destined to be the crucible in which the fires of broad ethno-political conflict will light up again. Siritunga says “If you hold people like this you are operating a farm for breeding the next generation of LTTEers, by whatever name they sprout. Is the government trying to breed another one lakh of terrorists?”

 

Insensitivity and secrecy: Nimalka introduced a women’s and welfare perspective as one would expect from a person of her background. Initially though she made a comment that was news to me. Most of the food, dry rations and other essential needs of the FDPs are provided by UN agencies and NGOs she said.

 

It is not GoSL but these organisations that foot the bill; the work in the camp is done by NGO volunteers and GoSL’s expenses, other than paying for the military, are small. Nimalka’s main grouse however was framed in these questions. “Do mothers have the right to take a fevered child to hospital? Can a woman who is bleeding seek emergency medical help?” The questions are rhetorical, the answers obvious.

 

Why must the military be in control of the camps, why not civilian agencies? Herman Kumara of the Fishermen’s Welfare Association was quite pointed in his repetition of the question on many people’s mind. Why can’t visitors enter the camps? Why are journalists barred? Why are international agencies kept out? Why is it taking the courts so long to make a straightforward order to allow members of parliament to visit the camps? As Mangala added “I can walk into any prison at will and meet any criminal, but I am not allowed to meet these people held in detention for no reason.” The reasons offered for this paranoid secrecy varied from the need to hide human rights violations to calculations relating to the upcoming elections. I think it will be some time before the real reason comes seeping out. 

After successfully defeating the LTTE, the Sri Lankan army is ready to play a significant role in the development of the country, Sri Lankan Army Chief of Staff Major General Mendaka Samarasinghe has said.

“Apart from its primary role it (the Sri Lankan army) will also play a big role in the development drive of the country in the future,” Samarasinghe said, on Friday September 18, in an address to the media at the Army Headquarters on the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Sri Lankan Army.

He said the strength of the Sri Lankan Army had grown more than ten fold since its inception in 1949 to date, as it got ready to celebrate its diamond jubilee as a victorious Army.

The top army official said the Army’s strength has reached around 2,00,000 as of today due to the rigorous recruitment drive carried out during the past two to three years to fulfil the battle requirement to defeat LTTE “terrorism“.

He said the Army will organise the diamond jubilee celebrations in October not only to showcase its achievement but also to encourage the youth to join the Army as a career and as a noble profession in the future.

The young mother was standing by the side of the road, clutching her baby. The baby was dead.

 

Damilvany Gnanakumar watched as she tried to make a decision. Around them, thousands of people were picking their way between bodies strewn across the road, desperate to escape the fighting all around them.

 

"The mother couldn't bring the dead body and she doesn't want to leave it as well. She was standing … holding the baby. She didn't know what to do … At the end, because of the shell bombing and people rushing – there were thousands and thousands of people, they were rushing in and pushing everyone – she just had to leave the baby at the side of the road, she had to leave the body there and come, she had no choice. And I was thinking in my mind 'What have the people done wrong? Why are they going through this, why is the international government not speaking up for them? I'm still asking."

 

Four months later and Gnanakumar is sitting on a cream leather sofa in the living room of the family home in Chingford, Essex, reliving the final days of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war.

 

For most of those four months, the 25-year-old British graduate was imprisoned behind razor wire inside the country's grim internment camps, home to nearly 300,000 people. She was released last week, partly as a result of pressure from this newspaper, and flew back into London on Sunday, September 12.

 

The last time she publicly spoke about the conflict was from the hospital where she was working inside the ever-shrinking war zone in Sri Lanka's north-east. Then, the national army had surrounded the small sliver of land where the remnants of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas held out and where hundreds of thousands of civilians had taken refuge. She had been in despair: a shell had just struck the hospital and dozens were dead. "At the moment, it is like hell," she said then.

 

Gnanakumar was one of a small group of medics treating the wounded and providing a running commentary to the outside world from behind the lines. For months she had managed to stay alive while around her thousands died. At night, she lived in bunkers dug in the sand. During the day, she helped in the makeshift hospitals, dodging the shells and the bullets, tending the wounded and the dying, as the doctors tried to operate with butchers' knives and watered-down anaesthetic.

 

Now her damning account provides a powerful rebuke to the claims of the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, that the defeat of the Tamil Tigers was achieved without the spilling of a drop of civilian blood.

 

Born in Jaffna in the Tamil-dominated north of Sri Lanka in 1984, Gnanakumar and her family moved to Britain in 1994. Until 28 February last year, she had not been back. She had just completed a biomedical degree at Greenwich University, but her short-lived marriage was on the rocks and she decided it was time to make a clean break. She left the house, telling no one where she was going.

 

Arriving in the capital, Colombo, she headed for Vanni, the Tamil heartland, to stay with a relative she calls her brother (her real brother is back in the UK, along with her two sisters). There seemed little sign of danger, but by June 2008 fighting was getting worse: the Tamil Tigers, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), still thought they would be able to negotiate a ceasefire, as they had done in the past, but the government had other ideas. They were determined to destroy the LTTE once and for all. Gnanakumar decided to stay on to try to help those who were trapped by the advance.

 

Even before the arrival of the government's ground forces, there had been regular air raids by air force Kfir jets. But in early January artillery barrages began, forcing the population to move.

 

That was when the reality of the war hit Gnanakumar for the first time.

 

"It was raining and … you could see everywhere on the road the blood is running with the water and the bodies were left there because there was no-one to identify who was dead and who is alive, the bodies were just laid down on the floor and that's the first time I saw dead bodies and wounded people crying out, shouting."

 

Wherever they stopped, they built a bunker, digging down until they could stand up in the hole, cutting down palm branches and laying them across the top for a roof and packing sandbags on the top and around the sides.

 

As the frontline advanced, trapping as many as 300,000 people inside a shrinking enclave of LTTE-held land, Gnanakumar went to the makeshift government hospital, which had moved into a former primary school, and volunteered to help, dressing wounds and administering first aid.

 

Her laboratory training had not prepared her for anything like this, but she learned as she went along. As the fighting intensified, they were treating as many as 500 people every day in two rooms. "They had a shortage of medicine but they had to somehow save the people. The last two weeks or so there was a shortage of everything."

 

With replacement blood running out, she had to filter what she could from the patients through a cloth before feeding it back into their veins. When the anaesthetics ran short, they diluted them with distilled water. "I watched when there was a six-year-old boy," she said. "They had to take off the leg and also the arm, but they didn't have proper equipment, they just had a knife that the butchers use to cut the meat, and we have to use that to take off his leg and arm. He cried and cried."

 

As the army closed in, it got worse.

 

"People were running and running to get them safe away from the shell bombing, but they couldn't and it came to a point where we thought we are all going to die, there is no way we can be safe anymore here, but we just have to take it. I mean, you can't get out of the shell-bombing. I didn't think that I would be alive and I would be here now. I said OK, I'm going to die, that is the end of it.

 

"One day I was inside the [operating] theatre and the next room was bombed. We had a lot of the treated people left in the room for the doctors to go and monitor and they all died in that shell bomb. And they [the Sri Lankan forces] again bombed the hospital and one of the doctors died in that."

 

Inside the hospital, there was no respite. Gnanakumar cannot forget the day a mother was brought in, injured, clutching her baby.

 

"She had the baby on her lap, the baby is dead and the mother didn't know and the doctor said: 'Don't tell her, because if we tell her now she will start crying out and shouting and … we have to save the mother first.' So we said: 'OK, give the baby to us, we'll look after her you go and get the treatment from the doctor,' and only after she got the treatment we told the truth, that your baby is dead. I can easily say it, but at that moment I was in so much pain, the innocent baby, the mother didn't know the baby was dead, she thought 'my baby is sleeping'.

 

"There were so many incidents. Another time the mother was dead and the baby was still suckling."

 

The fighting was getting closer. They ate what they could find and slept, those who could, in the occasional lulls.

 

"You have to be ready to run, you can't relax and go to sleep, any minute you just have to be ready," she said.

 

Gnanakumar could not take any more. On 13 May the hospital had been hit, killing about 50 people. "The bunker right next to ours had a shell on top of it and there were six people in the same family died and three were wounded.

 

"I saw them … suddenly I start hearing people are crying out and I thought, it has to be somewhere really close … I came out of my tent and I saw blood everywhere and the people – I couldn't even imagine that place, there was blood and then the bodies were into pieces everywhere and my brother said: 'Just pack up and let's get away from this place.'"

 

In the last five days, she says, she believes about 20,000 people died. It is a very high estimate, though the UN has acknowledged the true death toll may never be known. Tamil groups such as the Global Tamil Forum say her account corroborates their own figures drawn from interviews with survivors.

 

Over the course of the three-decade war, it is estimated that up to 100,000 people died. But independent confirmation of the death toll in the final days has been impossible. The Sri Lankan government has barred independent journalists from the war zone to this day, and has expelled UN officials and aid workers.

 

Meanwhile, the survivors of the final assault have been spirited away inside sprawling camps in a militarised zone.

 

It was to those camps, at Menik Farm, that Gnanakumar was taken. Following that last bombing, she joined thousands fleeing towards the government lines. "We start moving and after walking about one hour or so we saw the Sri Lankan army. They were saying: 'Come, you are safe now, food will be provided for you.' There were bodies everywhere, like into pieces. We had to just walk." That was when she saw the mother agonising over what to do with her dead baby. No one had time to bury the bodies, she says. Some pushed them into bunkers and covered them with a little sand. That was the best they could do.

 

That night, they slept in a school, then they were taken by bus to the town of Vavuniya. She called her mother: "I said, Mum, just get me out of here, I just want to get out of this place. And the phone got cut off."

 

The Sri Lankan government has built a series of camps to house the estimated 300,000 people who poured out of the war zone. It claims that it needs to hold the civilians until it can weed out the former Tamil Tiger fighters; its critics, including many UN organisations and independent aid groups, question why, even if that is true, it needs to imprison children and the elderly behind barbed wire, and why it has not more quickly identified the rebels. Despite pledges to start sending the internees back to their homes "at the earliest possible opportunity", the UN says only 2,000 have so far been released.

 

There was no food the first day Gnanakumar arrived, and she had lost contact with the people she had been with. She slept in a tent with strangers.

 

Even after the privations of the war zone, conditions in the camp still came as a shock.

 

"Wherever you go there are big queues, whatever you want you have to queue. The toilets are terrible, I can't describe how disgusting. Flies everywhere, mosquitoes, unhygienic … People had all sorts of illnesses.

 

"People have lost their family members, they are separated from their families … and they are going through depression."

 

Accounts circulated of rapes and murders, of people disappearing. Some people committed suicide: a teacher was found hanging from a tree.

 

Military intelligence officers were roaming the camps, looking for former Tamil Tigers, she said. "It is an open prison, you are free to walk but you are inside a prison, you are not allowed to step out. You can't. There were guards everywhere and checkpoints."

 

A couple of days after she arrived, the British high commission made contact through the UNHCR. An appeal from her parents in the Guardian brought fresh hope and a flurry of activity: she was moved from the overcrowded zone two to zone one, the part of the camp the authorities show to visitors.

 

"I was there when the UN secretary Ban Ki-moon came in … He stayed there for about 10 minutes and just went. Why didn't he go into the camp and talk to the people and spend some time asking them what their problems were? I thought he has a responsibility and people were expecting something from him. They expected much from him and he just spent 10 minutes and that's it."

 

The officials told Gnanakumar she would be staying for a couple of days and would then be released. "And then the 48 hours turned into three days and then it turned into weeks and months and I thought OK, now I understand it is not going to happen." She was interrogated five times – what was she doing there? Why had she been in the hospitals?

 

The call to say she was going home came last week. She was taken to Colombo to meet the president's brother, Basil Rajapaksa.

 

"He said OK, you went through so much in the country and now you are released you can go and join your family and be happy. He wasn't sorry about it." She was then handed over to British officials.

 

She speaks in a matter-of-fact way, rarely betraying emotion. Her hair has been tied back tightly – she had beautiful hair before she left, she says, but lost most of it in the camps. She is not sure what she will do now, maybe something in the field of medicine.

 

"I'm happy and proud of myself that I was able to help the people. I still think it is unreal that I am in the UK … I never thought I would be alive and coming back, even in the camp.

 

"After looking at the people dying and dead bodies everywhere, it is like nothing threatens me any more, it is like I have had the hard time in my life and I think I am prepared to take up whatever happens in life now.

 

"I'm not that old Vany that sits down and cries for little things. I'm stronger now after going through and seeing all that problem. My mind is clear now."

 

The Sri Lankan high commission in London denied Gnanakumar's allegations and called the claim of more than 20,000 civilian deaths "unsubstantiated and fabricated". A spokesman said that at no time did it target "government hospitals or any other civilian infrastructure where the civilians were accommodated".

 

The spokesman said: "The government of Sri Lanka has all reasons to believe that Ms Gnanakumar has gone to Sri Lanka and worked in the conflict area according to the LTTE's agenda, while overstaying her visa."

 

He said the government was "continuously assisting the internally displaced Sri Lankans".

Sri Lanka has made it clear that it would not allow the United Nations to meddle in its post-conflict affairs.

 

Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka said that the international organisation should not interfere in the internal affairs of a state.

 

He said multilateralism was not about the UN agenda responding only to the demands of a minority of powerful States, but also defending the interest of the powerless majority.

 

 “It is also imperative that the prohibition reflected in the Article 2 (7) of the Charter that the UN should not interfere in the internal affairs of States be respected. The Charter must be our guiding norm since it is the Charter that keeps us together. Non interference in the internal affairs of states must be respected at all times,” Wickramanayaka said.

 

The relation between the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime and the UN has been strained since the war with LTTE ended in May.

 

The government recently expelled an official of UNESCO, stating that he had been making statements biased towards the LTTE.

 

Lanka had also objected to the use of the phrase “bloodbath’’ by an UN spokesperson while describing civilian casualties during the last phase of the war.

What is striking about Sri Lanka today is not the Sinhala-dominated state's long-standing, brutal and multi-faceted persecution of the Tamil people, but the paralysis of the international community as this now unfolds in plain sight. This week UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was quoted as telling Sri Lanka that Colombo's 'failure' to rapidly resettle the nearly 300,000 Tamils incarcerated in militarized camps result in growing 'bitterness'. The Sinhala state, he incredulously suggested, should "win the trust and confidence" of the Tamils. However, it is the international community's bewildered inaction - or, in some cases, continued support for Sinhala oppression - that is foremost in Tamil minds.

 

To begin with, the deprivations being endured today by the Tamils are not new. Whilst the sheer scale of the recent incarceration - almost 300,000 people - and the attendant suffering is striking, even by 2002, when the Norwegian-led peace initiative began, over 800,000 Tamils had been already displaced by Sri Lankan offensives. And even by then Sri Lanka's relationship with the Tamils was characterized by mass graves, 'disappearances', torture and rape. The Sinhala military's cold-blooded mass slaughter of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians between January and May 2009 had its genesis in the frequent mass-killings it has carried out throughout the three decades of war.

 

With the conventional defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil people have turned decisively to the international community to ensure their security and wellbeing in the face of state-led Sinhala repression. Their expectations are based on the norms of global liberal governance that have emerged since 1990, norms that prioritize human rights over state sovereignty and redefine the latter as a responsibility, not a right.

 

In that way, the present Tamil 'turn' to non-violent agitation is not new: well before the Tamil liberation struggle took up arms, the entire range of peaceable efforts had been exhausted without any result: mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, backing parties articulating Tamil grievances, etc. It was amid the utter failure of such efforts - a failure encapsulated in the Sinhala imposition of the 1972 constitution - that the militants emerged.

 

And here is the rub: it was only after the Black July pogrom that armed militancy truly became the vanguard of Tamil resistance. Even though the LTTE had been formed in 1976, it was only in 1983 that a fully fledged Tamil insurgency erupted. The tipping point was undoubtedly the popular sense of despair that gripped the Tamils - and the recognition that no alternative remained. The brief optimism heralded by India’s intervention collapsed as Tamil bodies began to pile up again, this time before Indian guns.

 

Today's global terrain is very different to that of the eighties. Powerful states and an associated international network of NGOs, social movements and multi-lateral institutions have shaped an ever-advancing 'zone of peace' based on liberal democracy and free markets. But this emergent global order has also raised high expectations amongst oppressed people's the world over; expectations not of the repressive states, but of those custodians of international liberal values.

 

The unequivocal statements by some Western states - for example, on accountability for war crimes, provision of security and a just political solution - (belatedly taken up by Mr. Ban Ki-Moon and others) have served to reinforce expectations amongst the Tamil people. Consequently, there has been an explosion in engagement between Tamil Diaspora groups and the international community.

 

It is clear that the latter is no monolith. Tamil groups and international actors appalled and shocked by the brazen cruelty of the Sinhala-dominated state are seeking international action to uphold the norms and laws that have come to define a global liberal order. At the same time, some states and international voices are advocating continued support for the Sinhala state. Their arguments are based on liberal enlightenment emerging eventually at some point to displace the Sinhala racism that swept President Mahinda Rajapakse to power.

 

The point here is that Tamil rage has been checked by very real expectations that international commitment to human rights, the 'responsibility to protect' and ending state repression everywhere will translate into concrete action. Since the defeat of the LTTE, numerous international actors have been warning that Sri Lanka 'risks losing the peace' or that Colombo's failure to address Tamil grievances will result in the reemergence of militancy ('terrorism'). However, the tipping point will come - again - when Tamil hopelessness replaces expectations.

The International Monetary Fund said it raised Sri Lanka’s growth target and is “cautiously positive” on prospects as it reviews the island’s economy for the release of a second payment in its $2.6 billion aid package.

 

But while investors are interested, they have not yet committed, the figures show.

 

The Washington-based lender expects growth of 3.5 percent in 2009, up from a July estimate of 3 percent, as the $41 billion economy is showing signs of “bottoming out,” Brian Aitken, the IMF’s Mission Chief for Sri Lanka, said in the capital Colombo on September 22.

 

“We will assess developments in the next two weeks also and if all goes well will take a decision on seeking approval for the release of the second tranche,” Bloomberg report Aitken as saying.

 

The IMF provided Sri Lanka with $322 million when approving the 20-month package. Aitken said the second payment would likely be worth about $320 million.

 

In return for the IMF loan, Sri Lanka agreed to reduce its budget deficit to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2011, from 7 percent this year, and maintain flexibility in the exchange rate in order to build foreign reserves to cover 3 1/2 months of imports and bolster the economy.

 

Aitken said Sri Lanka’s deficit target for this year was “ambitious” and would require constraints on expenditure while raising revenue with growth.

 

However, while investor interest in Sri Lanka has grown since May, actual investment has not.

 

Last year, Sri Lanka got $889 million in foreign direct investment, according to official figures. So far this year, the country has only gotten $400 million - well off pace of the government target of $2 billion by the end of 2010.

 

The pillars of Sri Lanka's $40 billion economy - garments, remittances from the Middle East, and tourism - have all been hit by the global downturn. Real estate has also faltered.

 

Sri Lanka's Minister of Investment Promotion, Navin Dissanayake, says Hyatt halted construction on a luxury hotel project in Colombo late last year. The hotel chain declined to comment.

 

"Economic investments that we thought would come are not, for the moment, coming because of the global financial crisis," Dissanayake told The Associated Press during a recent trip to Mumbai to rally investor interest.

 

The government is increasingly looking to Asia to underwrite an economic recovery.

 

"We feel as a small developing country that our investment will be more heavily coming from China and India. Their companies are aggressive and bullish on outbound investment. And we have good political relations," Dissanayake said.

 

He said he's gotten a "very positive" reception in Asia, but so far just one big project has kicked off since May: a $75 million luxury beach resort near the northwestern town of Kalpitiya, to be managed by Thailand's Six Senses hotel group.

 

Mohan Weragoda, chief executive of Inventures Pvt Ltd., an investment advisory firm based in Colombo, said he's working on foreign investment deals worth $250 million with several Asian companies he declined to name because negotiations are ongoing.

 

Last year his firm brought $40 million in foreign investment into Sri Lanka, he said.

 

"The country needs large projects and they wouldn't have come when the war was going on," he said.

 

Milan Zatakia, chief executive of Millennium AeroDynamics Pvt. Ltd., an airport design, operations and logistics firm based in Mumbai, said he hopes to help upgrade and expand Sri Lanka's airports, some of which are in former conflict areas.

 

Zatakia said he's been approached by a half dozen hedge funds, which he declined to name citing confidentiality agreements, who are interested in funding his expansion into Sri Lanka.

 

"There's a crying need for infrastructure in our part of the world and there's money available for it," he said.

Yet even in victory the Sri Lankan government seems unable to define peace or outline a political solution to the long-standing cultural and political grievances of the Tamil minority, which makes up 12 percent of the 21.3-million population. A process of national reconciliation anchored in federalism and multiculturalism can succeed only if human-rights abuses by all parties are independently investigated. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has acknowledged that civilian casualties were "unacceptably high," especially as the war built to a bloody crescendo.

 

The continuing air of martial triumph in Sri Lanka, though, is making it difficult to heal the wounds of war through three essential "Rs": relief, recovery and reconciliation. In fact, the military victory bears a distinct family imprint: President Mahinda Rajapaksa was guided by two of his brothers, Gotabaya, the defense secretary who authored the war plan, and Basil, the presidential special adviser who formulated the political strategy. Yet another brother, Chamal, is the ports minister who awarded China a contract to build the billion-dollar Hambantotta port, on Sri Lanka's southeast.

 

In return, Beijing provided Colombo not only the weapon systems that decisively tilted the military balance in its favor, but also the diplomatic cover to prosecute the war in defiance of international calls to cease offensive operations to help stanch rising civilian casualties. Through such support, China has succeeded in extending its strategic reach to a critically located country in India's backyard that sits astride vital sea-lanes of communication in the Indian Ocean region.

 

Sinhalese nationalists now portray Rajapaksa as a modern-day Dutugemunu, a Sinhalese ruler who, according to legend, vanquished an invading Tamil army led by Kind Elara more than 2,000 years ago. But four months after the Tamil Tigers were crushed, it is clear the demands of peace extend far beyond the battlefield. What is needed is a fundamental shift in thegovernment's policies to help create greater interethnic equality, regional autonomy and a reversal of the state-driven militarization of society.

 

But Rajapaksa, despite promising to address the root causes of conflict, has declared: "Federalism is out of the question." How elusive the peace dividend remains can be seen from Colombo's decision to press ahead with a further expansion of the military. Not content with increasing the military's size five-fold since the late 1980s to more than 200,000 troops today, Colombo is raising the strength further to 300,000, in the name of "eternal vigilance." Soon after the May victory, the government, for example, announced a drive to recruit 50,000 new troops to help manage the northern areas captured from the rebels.

 

The Sri Lankan military already has more troops than that of Britain or Israel. The planned further expansion would make the military in tiny Sri Lanka larger than the militaries of major powers like France, Japan and Germany. By citing a continuing danger of guerrilla remnants reviving the insurgency, Rajapaksa, in fact, seems determined to keep a hyper-militarized Sri Lanka on something of a war footing. Yet another issue of concern is the manner the nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians still held by the government in camps where, in the recent words of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, the "internally displaced persons are effectively detained under conditions of internment."

 

Such detention risks causing more resentment among the Tamils and sowing the seeds of future unrest. The internment was intended to help weed out rebels, many of whom already have been identified and transferred to military sites. Those in the evacuee camps are the victims and survivors of the deadly war. To confine them in the camps against their will is to further victimize and traumatize them.

 

Sri Lanka's interests would be better served through greater transparency. It should grant the U.N., International Red Cross and nongovernmental organizations at home and abroad full and unhindered access to care for and protect the civilians in these camps, allowing those who wish to leave the camps to do so and live with relatives and friends. Otherwise, it seriously risks breeding further resentment.

 

Then there is the issue of thousands of missing people, mostly Tamils. Given that many families are still searching for missing members, the government ought to publish a list of all those it is holding — in evacuee camps, prisons, military sites and other security centers. Even suspected rebels in state custody ought to be identified and not denied access to legal representation.

 

Authorities should disclose the names of those they know to be dead — civilians and insurgents — and the possible circumstances of their death. Also, the way to fill the power vacuum in the Tamil-dominated north is not by dispatching additional army troops in tens of thousands, but by setting up a credible local administration to keep the peace and initiate rehabilitation and reconstruction after more than 25 years of war.

 

Any government move to return to the old policy of settling Sinhalese in Tamil areas is certain to stir up fresh problems. More fundamentally, such have been the costs of victory that Sri Lankan civil society stands badly weakened and civil liberties curtailed. The wartime suppression of a free press and curtailment of fundamental rights continues in peacetime, undermining democratic freedoms and creating a fear psychosis.

 

Public meetings cannot be held without government permission. Sweeping emergency regulations also remain in place, arming the security forces with expansive powers of search, arrest, detention and seizure of property. Individuals can still be held in unacknowledged detention for up to 12 months. For the process of reconciliation to begin in earnest, it is essential the government shed its war-gained powers and accept, as Pillay says, "an independent and credible international investigation . . . to ascertain the occurrence, nature and scale of violations of international human-rights and international humanitarian law" by all parties during the conflict.

 

Pillay has gone on to say: "A new future for the country, the prospect of meaningful reconciliation and lasting peace, where respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms can become a reality for all, hinges upon such an in-depth and comprehensive approach."

 

Unfortunately, Colombo still seeks to hold back the truth. Those who speak up are labeled "traitors" (if they are Sinhalese) or accused of being on the payroll of the Tamil diaspora. Last year, a Sri Lankan minister accused the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, of being on the rebels' payroll after Holmes called Sri Lanka one of the world's most dangerous places for aid workers.

 

The media remains muzzled, and a host of journalists have been murdered or imprisoned. Lawyers who dare to take up sensitive cases face threats. Recently, a well-known astrologer who predicted the president's ouster from power was arrested. And this month, the U.N. Children's Fund communications chief was ordered to leave Sri Lanka after he discussed the plight of children caught up in the government's military campaign.

 

Rather than begin a political dialogue on regional autonomy and a more level-playing field for the Tamils in education and government jobs, the government has seen its space get constricted by the post-victory upsurge of Sinhalese chauvinism opposed to the devolution of powers to the minorities.

 

The hardline constituency argues that the Tamils shouldn't get in defeat what they couldn't secure through three decades of unrest and violence. Indeed, such chauvinism seeks to tar federalism as a potential forerunner to secession, although the Tamil insurgency sprang from the state's rejection of decentralization and power-sharing. The looming parliamentary and presidential elections also make devolution difficult, even though the opposition is splintered and Rajapaksa seems set to win a second term.

 

Reversing the militarization of society, ending the control of information as an instrument of state policy and promoting political and ethnic reconciliation are crucial to postconflict peace-building and to furthering the interests of all Sri Lankans — Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. So also is the need to discard the almost mono-ethnic character of the security forces. Colombo has to stop dragging its feet on implementing the constitution's 13th amendment, which requires the ceding of some powers to the provincial or local level.

 

Sadly, there is little international pressure on Colombo, despite the leverage offered by the Sri Lankan economy's need for external credit. The U.S. can veto any decision of the International Monetary Fund, but it chose to abstain from the recent IMF vote to give Colombo a $2.8 billion loan. In the face of China's stonewalling at the U.N., Ban has been unable to appoint a special envoy on Sri Lanka. A U.N. special envoy can shine an international spotlight to help build pressure on a recalcitrant government. But on Sri Lanka, the best the U.N. has been able to do is to send a political official to Colombo this month for talks.

 

It is thus important for the democratic players, including the United States, the European Union, Japan and Norway — co-chairs of the so-called Friends of Sri Lanka — and India, to coordinate their policies on Sri Lanka. If Rajapaksa continues to shun true reconciliation, these countries should ratchet up pressure on Colombo by lending support to calls for an international investigation into the thousands of civilian deaths in the final weeks of the war.

 

The International Criminal Court has opened an initial inquiry into Sri Lankan rights-abuse cases that could turn into a full-blown investigation. Sri Lanka, however, is not an ICC signatory and thus would have to consent — or be referred by the U.N. Security Council — for the ICC to have jurisdiction over it. As world history attests, peace sought through the suppression and humiliation of an ethnic community proves to be elusive.

 

If Rajapaksa wants to earn a place in history as another Dutugemunu, he has to emulate that ancient king's post-victory action and make honorable peace with the Tamils before there is a recrudescence of violence. It will be a double tragedy for Sri Lanka if making peace proves more difficult than making war.

 

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the independent, privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is on the international advisory council of the Campaign for Peace and Justice in Sri Lanka.