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  • UNHCR slams forcible resettlement of Tamil refugees

    Mar 28
    The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has pulled out of all refugee resettlement operations in Sri Lanka’s East after accusing the Government of forcibly resettling displaced Tamils in areas considered to be unsafe.
    Tamil refugees are being forced onto busses taking them back into embattled areas.
    Photo TamilNet
     
    The move comes amid accusation that the Sri Lankan security forces are using Tamil civilians as human shields for artillery attacks and ground offensives against the Liberation Tigers.
     
    Echoing protests by UNHCR, Human Rights Watch (HRW) also raised concerns last week over the reports of people being forcibly returned to their villages.
     
    The Sri Lankan government has formally rejected the accusations and insists that all resettlement will be voluntary and the participation of UNHCR.
     
    But Sri Lanka’s minister for Resettlement and Relief Services, Rishad Badurdeen admitted the government had forcibly moved displaced people.
     
    He was quoted by local media as saying that around 10 per cent of the people were reportedly moved to a resettlement camp against their will.
     
    The Sri Lankan military also confirmed forcible resettlement had taken place. Military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe admitted to reporters that last week a group of people were transferred to UNHCR transit camp in Killivedi against their will.
     
    And UNHCR Spokesperson Ron Redmond in Geneva referring to the Government assurances said ground reports suggest otherwise.
     
    “Reports indicate that this [voluntary resettlement] has not been the case and we also are disturbed by statements attributed to local authorities that all assistance may be stopped if internally displaced people remain in Batticaloa and that the Government would not be able to guarantee their safety,” he said.
     
    Meanwhile refugees living in camps in government-held Batticaloa told Reuters that Sri Lankan officials had threatened to halt food and water handouts if they did not agree to return to their homes in the embattled areas.
     
    “According to one of the reports, women and children at one site were forced to board buses despite pleas that they couldn’t leave while their husbands were still at work and children at school,” Mr. Redomond said.
     
    The UNHCR distanced itself from the Government’s actions by ceasing to participate in refugee resettlement operations in the East.
     
    Amin Awad, head of UN refugee agency UNHCR in Sri Lanka announcing their decision to pull out of resettlement work in the East said "we are saying that we are not involved with this situation, we don't want to give the IDPs the impression that we are assisting or facilitating or promoting return,"
     
    "The conditions in Vakarai are not right for resettlement and there is work to be done on services and minimum conditions for return,"
     
    "We feel that the minimum conditions of security, demining, removal of UXOs (unexploded ordnance), need to be put in place and also food stocks and quantities of
    relief items should be in place and some services like basic health."
     
    The UN agency estimates that the government has returned approximately 10,000 people against their will to Vaharai north of Batticaloa town and Sampur south of Trincomalee where landmines have not been cleared and infrastructure has been destroyed due to fighting.
     
    Government defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwelle responding to allegations of forcible resettlement said “it is their right to be resettled in their original places. The government is fulfilling that right. If someone interprets it as forceful resettlement, well then that’s disappointing.”
     
    “This whole journey is not a bed of roses. It’s a tough journey to deal with 100 – 150,000 people,” he argued.
     
    “In the process you might have a few cases where some people don’t want to be resettled.”
  • LTTE aircraft no threat to India

    Tamil Eelam Air Force pilots after their first claimed mission. Photo LTTE
     
    Following the LTTE’s air raid on Sri Lanka’s main airbase Monday, the Sri Lankan government claimed the Tiger plans posed a threat to the region, implicitely calling on India to help it defeat the movement.
     
    But India reacted with caution and reserve, saying India was concerned about the general escalation of violence and saying the airstrike was only one incident in this regard.
     
    "We are very concerned at the escalation of violence in Sri Lanka in the last few weeks. The incident is one part of the violent incidents that we have seen,” Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon said.
     
    “The humanitarian consequences really worry us, when you see thousands of internally displaced people," rediff.com quoted Menon as saying.
     
    He underplayed the air strike by the LTTE, and said, "To pick on an individual incident of violence will not help solve the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is the conflict that has escalated the violence in last few weeks."
     
    Menon avoided responding to a query on whether LTTE's air power as such posed a threat to India.
     
    Instead he insisted that a solution to the protracted conflict is the real issue.
     
    "We will join the voice within Sri Lanka and abroad who would hope that violence comes to an end soon and that they can find a solution to this conflict, a solution that enables all the communities in Sri Lanka to live together in peace," Menon added.
     
    Meanwhile, Indian security officials told Indian media that they don't see the LTTE attacking Indian interests anywhere, including in Tamil Nadu, which is separated from Sri Lanka by a strip of sea.
     
    A joint statement by thirteen political parties supportive of the hardline position of the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse condemned the attack.
     
    “The air power of a frenzied and desperate organization as the LTTE is a grave threat aimed not only to Sri Lanka but also to the entire South Asian region,” the statement said.
     
    “We call upon the international community to make a proper assessment of this very real danger and draw its serious attention to all actions taken both locally and abroad by these separatist terrorist forces in Sri Lanka,” it said.
     
    “The LTTE is the only terrorist group in the world to have air capability,” Sri Lankan minister for trade, commerce and highways, Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, told reporters.
     
    Although stating they don’t see a risk to Indian interests, some officials in Delhi described the LTTE’s acquisition of air power as a concern.
     
    "It is a very, very serious development," one Indian security official said on the condition of anonymity told the Times of India.
     
    He added that if a LTTE aircraft could take off from Tigers-controlled Mullaitivu district, fly all the way to Colombo, bomb and return to base, then Tamil Nadu too could be easily accessed.
     
    Another official told the Times: "it is a great demonstration of their tactical ability. They have shown what they are capable of."
     
    Another official added: "It shows the LTTE can widen the conflict. We don't know what else is in the offing."
     
    Two years ago India public aired its concern about the existence of military aircraft with LTTE.
     
    In response, SP Thamilchelvan, the LTTE political wing, said: "all our organisation's structures and efforts are aimed at protecting our people. This is not in any way a threat to any other country in general, particularly India. India or the Indian people need not fear this. The surprise and concern voiced by India surprises us."
  • Sri Lanka plans protracted war
    Amid insisting to the international community it is commited to peace, Sri Lanka’s hardline government is preparing for a protracted war to destroy the Tamil Tigers, reports said this week.
     
    This week news wires quoting a senior official in Sri Lankan defence establishment as saying that the military campaign against the LTTE could last at least another three years.
     
    "Within the next two to three years, we should be able to eliminate them. You fight to win, there is nothing called impossible -- its difficult, but not impossible” the official told several international reporters.
    Declaring that the five year old ceasefire agreement between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE as all but dead, the official claimed that the government has both regional and international backing for its military campaign against the LTTE.
    His comments echoed President Mahinda Rajapakse’s assertion earlier this month that the government “was not concerned” about the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement which ended several years of bitter fighting.
    The defence official said the government would continue with its military campaign whilst seeking a political solution to the conflict in accordance with President Rajapakse’s vow to seek an "honourable peace".
    “The security forces are on a strong footing to win the military campaign, but a political solution must be pursued in parallel,” the official said.
    He was responding mounting international pressure on Colombo to propose a solution to the ethnic question.
    Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama during his visit to Washington in March 2006 suggested that political proposals towards resolving the conflict could be ready in a few weeks.
    During a visit to India in November last year President Rajapakse too made a similar promise to deliver a political plan within two months.
    However political analysts in Colombo say the hardline government, elected on a platform of a unitary state, is no where close developing a credible solution that would be satisfy legitimate Tamil aspirations.
    Many Tamils feel the Rajapakse government is merely paying lipservice to international pressure, whilst focusing on militarily destroying the LTTE – whose armed struggle is spurring pressure for powersharing with the Tamils.
    Sri Lanka’s ongoing military campaign began with an assault described as a limited defensive operation to eliminate the risk to Trincomalee harbour posed by LTTE artillery guns in Sampoor.
     
    This stand, adopted to ward off international pressure, underpinned President Rajapakse assertion that there is no war in Sri Lanka.
     
    “There is no civil war in Sri Lanka. What we have is an internal conflict and the current military actions are a defensive operation against the terrorist offensive actions launched by the LTTE,” he told Indian reporters.
     
    As in earlier bouts, the Sri Lankan military has targeted Tamil civilians as means of undermining support for the LTTE.
     
    In the operation to capture Vaharai, the Sri Lankan army blocked food and medicine to the area and used indiscriminate shelling and aerial bombardment of villages, creating a humanitarian crisis.
     
    The LTTE pulled out of Vaharai earlier this month, but the population of almost 80,000 residents and formerly displaced Tamils who moved into the area are still languishing in refugee camps.
     
    Boosted by the territorial gains and emboldened by tacit international support for Sri Lanka’s war efforts, an increasingly confident Army chief, General Sarath Fonseka has vowed to ‘liberate the east from LTTE and then focus on the North.’
    During a visit to the Temple of Tooth , the main Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, to seek the blessings of the Buddhist clergy for his campaign, Gen. Fonseka declared: "after eradicating the Tigers from the East, full strength would be used to rescue the North." he added.
    There is widespread acceptance in Colombo that the international community has given a ‘green light’ to the Sri Lankan state to weaken the LTTE before negotiating a political solution with it.
     
    However Sri Lanka’s objective is to use international assistance and support to wipe out the LTTE and preclude the need to accommodate Tamil demands for autonomy.
     
    Tamil analysts point to the similarities between the current government’s twin prong approach towards destroying the LTTE and former President Chandrika Kumaratunge’s protracted ‘war for peace’ as she termed it.
     
    From 1995 to 2002, President Kumaratunge also waged a brutal war in the Tamil areas whilst simultaneously promising to deliver a political solution.
     
    Whilst the fighting raged for seven years with disastrous effects on the Sri Lankan economy, no credible political solution was put forward in all that time.
     
     
  • Sri Lanka’s war has entered a new phase
    The Tamil Eelam Air Force of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which has been in existence for at least nine years without the Sri Lankan intelligence having the least idea about its location and capability, went into action for the first time since its creation in the early hours of March 26. It was a conventional air attack and not a suicide mission.
     
    Two aircraft of the TAF flew over the Sri Lankan Air Force base at Katunayake near Colombo and dropped four bombs. At least three SLAF personnel were killed and about 20 injured. Two helicopters, reportedly given by Pakistan, were badly damaged. There was also some damage to the Israeli aircraft of the Sri Lankan Air Force.
     
    The LTTE has claimed that both its planes returned safely to base and has released a photograph of Prabakaran with the officers of the TAF. It is reported that the approach of an unidentified aircraft towards the base was detected by the Sri Lankan Air Force radar, but the anti-aircraft units at the base failed to go into action. The SLAF pilots' capability for night operations is poor and the Air Tigers took advantage of this to fly over the base unintercepted and bomb it.
     
    The Sri Lankan authorities immediately closed the nearby civilian airport and diverted all incoming flights to Indian airports.
     
    The LTTE has projected its air strike as in retaliation for the repeated bombing of civilian areas by the Sri Lankan Air Force, which has killed a large number of innocent Tamil civilians. Many of these air strikes of the SLAF were carried out by mercenary Ukrainian pilots.
     
    It was not only a reprisal air strike, but also a pre-emptive air strike to prevent an offensive operation, which the Sri Lankan Armed Forces are planning to launch in the Northern Province in order to liberate the areas under the control of the LTTE there. A fresh team of Pakistani counter-insurgency experts and air force officers has recently arrived in Colombo to assist the Sri Lankan Armed Forces in their planned operations in the Northern Province.
     
    Apprehending this offensive, the LTTE has stepped up its arms procurement efforts. As reported earlier, it has already managed to replenish its stocks of explosives. It had undertaken a detailed study of the Hizbollah operations against Israel in July last year in order to draw lessons from it. It was also trying to procure from the Hizbollah the surface-to-surface rockets, which it had used effectively against Israeli targets.
     
    It is not yet known whether it has succeeded in procuring them. If it has, it may bring them into action against military and economic targets in Colombo.
     
    The war against the LTTE started by President Mahinda Rajapakse after assuming office in November, 2005, with the help of Pakistan, has now entered a new phase.
     
    B. Raman is Director of the Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He has served as head of counter-terrorism for India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing.
     
     
  • Tiger planes are ‘significant threat’
    A newly unveiled Tamil Tiger "air force" of between two and five light planes is no match on paper for Sri Lanka's dozen fighter jets, but they pose a proven threat the military would be ill-advised to underestimate, experts say.

    Tamil Eelam Air Force pilots return from their first official mission. Phote LTTE
     
    The Tigers smuggled small, propeller-driven planes into the island in pieces aboard merchant ships they owned after a 2002 ceasefire and reassembled them, analysts said. The truce has now broken down into renewed civil war.
     
    Monday's pre-dawn air strike on the island's biggest air force base, close to Colombo's international airport - the first such LTTE attack - may sound like something out of a Biggles schoolboy novel, but it should be cause for worry.
     
    "This air attack appears to have taken the air force by complete surprise, and this is confirmed by the delayed response, by which time the attackers have been able to return to base," said Iqbal Athas of Jane's Defence Weekly.
     
    "It is a significant threat for a number of reasons. What they did, although they may have failed to achieve their target, is to demonstrate that they have such a capability," Athas said.
     
    "The larger offshore patrol vessels of the navy can become vulnerable, troop transport ships can become vulnerable and so can armed groups leading an offensive on the ground."
     
    The attack has also exposed the vulnerability of Sri Lanka's radar air defences. Experts say Sri Lanka has no access to costly 24-hour real-time satellite footage of its skies.
     
    At least one of the Tiger aircraft is believed to be a Czech-made Z-143 two-seater training light aircraft.
     
    "They have been caught with their pants down. It's like something out of Biggles," said one foreign security expert on condition of anonymity, referring to novels about a fictional British World War One fighter pilot.
     
    The military was still trying to work out how the Tigers had been able to fly one or more small planes to the capital, drop bombs and make it safely home.
     
    "That is what the Air Force is still trying to find out, where they have come from," said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. "You can come along the beach side or over water without being detected."
     
    Samarasinghe laughed at the Tigers' claim of a new Tamil Eelam Air Force, named after the independent state they are trying to carve out in the island's north and east.
     
    "There won't be any Tamil Eelam. Small aircraft coming and dropping one or two bombs, it's not an air force."
     
    Observers see Monday's air raid as tit-for-tat for repeated Air Force strikes on territory the LTTE controls as the military pushes on with a declared plan to wipe out the Tigers militarily within 2-3 years.
     
    "It is not only pre-emptive, it is a measure to protect Tamil civilians from the genocidal aerial bombardments by Sri Lankan armed forces," Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said after the sortie.
     
    "More attacks of the same nature will follow."
  • Minorities most under threat in Sri Lanka
    Sri Lanka is near the top of a global ranking of countries where the situation for minorities has significantly deteriorated in the last year, says a new global survey.
     
    Minority Rights Group International (MRG) said Sri Lanka and Pakistan had shown the biggest rise in this year's ranking of "peoples under threat", a major highlight of the international rights group's annual 'State of the World's Minorities' report.
     
    The report was released at the UN in New York last Tuesday.
     
    Sri Lanka jumped 47 places since the previous year and is now in the top-20 list of countries where minority communities are most under threat in 2007.
     
    The breakdown of the ceasefire between Colombo and the Liberation Tigers and intense fighting between government forces and the LTTE have left close to a 100,000 people displaced. Most are from ethnic minority communities, the report said.
     
    Tamils and Muslims are not only caught up in fighting between the government and the LTTE but are specifically targeted for rights abuses, including abductions and disappearances because of their minority status.
     
    "The human rights situation in Sri Lanka is deteriorating by the day. Reports of killings, disappearances and abductions are increasing and these reports are predominantly coming from minority communities," said MRG director Mark Lattimer.
     
    "The worrying factor in Sri Lanka is that multiple perpetrators are operating in a climate of fear and insecurity and little is being done by the government to address the situation," Lattimer added.
     
    The main 2007 list of peoples under threat is led by Somalia, Iraq and Sudan.
     
    The top 20 list includes six Asian and 10 African states.
  • Sri Lanka rejects foreign rights monitoring
    Sri Lanka last week rejected any foreign scrutiny of its human rights record amid growing international criticism of extra-judicial killings, abductions and the recruitment of child soldiers.
     
    Government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said Colombo would not allow any unsolicited monitoring of rights in the embattled island, but would invite “eminent persons from time to time” to assess the situation.
     
     “Many eminent persons have visited Sri Lanka at the invitation of the government... that is because we have nothing to hide,” Rambukwella told reporters here. "But, that is by invitation."
     
    “We will protect our sovereignty and will not allow any foreigner to force on us a set-up to monitor (rights).”
     
    He said if an independent international organisation or group arrives in the country without government's invitation to look into the human rights issues, that would be considered a hindrance to the activities of a sovereign state.
     
    Human rights groups have charged that at least 750 people had disappeared since the escalation of fighting between government forces and Liberation Tigers in December 2005.
     
    The bodies of people who had been shot dead “execution-style” blindfolded with their hands tied behind their back have turned up in swamps and by the roadside across the country.
     
    The government has denied involvement in the killings, which have sparked growing international criticism that the authorities were not doing enough to bring the offenders to justice, reported AFP.
     
    The newly appointed Sri Lankan ambassador to Geneva also voiced strong opposition to what was said by some member states and non-governmental organizations when speaking about Sri Lanka.
     
    Speaking at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) last Thursday Ambassador Dayan Jayatillake took exception to the tone and attitude of at least two NGOs and Sweden’s representative.
     
    In a strongly worded speech Ambassador Jayatillake said Sri Lanka was committed to remaining constructively engaged with UN mechanisms and the international community as a whole.
     
    He emphasised that as a sovereign democracy it would not be “prodded, pushed or intimidated” into accepting any measures or institutions against its wishes.
     
    “If certain steps were to be taken, they would have to be taken in concert with the Sri Lankan Government,” Ambassador Jayatillake said.
     
    “The Sri Lankan Government was constructively engaged with the international community in helping to improve the situation there.”
     
    In a joint statement issued at the session earlier in the day Human Rights Watch, the Colombian Commission of Jurists and the International Commission of Jurists said allegations of disappearances in Colombo and in the North and East of Sri Lanka continued to be received and urged Sri Lanka to invite the Working Group to visit the country.
     
    The Sri Lanka government has appointed a presidential commission of inquiry to investigate some selected serious human rights violations in the recent past.
     
    Rambukwella said that a special unit has been deployed to ensure the safety of those who give witness before the commission and that it would function with total transparency.
     
    He said since Sri Lanka has ratified to the conventions of the United Nations it has an obligation to fulfil the human rights requirements in the country and will continue to do so.
     
    An International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) was also appointed by the President to enhance transparency of investigations and to ensure they conform to international norms and standards.
     
    The international rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also urged the deployment of an international panel to provide independent monitoring of the island's rights record.
     
    “To be effective, the mission would be mandated to investigate serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law …; report publicly on its findings; and play a mediating role to help reduce local tensions. A monitoring mission will make it harder for those who commit serious human rights abuses to deny responsibility,” argued HRW’s Senior Legal Advisor James Ross in an opinion in the Daily Mirror.
     
    “The Sri Lankan government would also be sending a very strong signal to the international community that it was genuinely concerned with the state of human rights in the country and - more importantly - was willing to take a bold step to do something about it,” he argues.
     
    “Instead of dismissing out of hand the idea of a UN human rights monitoring mission, the Rajapakse government should take the initiative and begin discussions with concerned states to make this proposal a reality,” Ross wrote.
     
    However, Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona went as far as to deny any accusations of human rights violations in the military campaign against the LTTE, insisting that Sri Lanka was “one country that has taken great care to avoid any civilian casualties”.
     
    A UN official last year accused Sri Lankan government forces of colluding with a the paramilitary Karuna Group to recruit child soldiers in the island's east, a charge vehemently denied by the authorities.
     
    Sri Lanka introduced draconian prevention of terrorism laws in December, giving sweeping powers to the police and security forces to arrest and detain suspects for long periods without trial.
     
    Amnesty International and other rights groups have noted that the deteriorating rights record was linked to the escalating conflict between troops and the LTTE.
     
    Meanwhile the US congress and the opposition in a joint statement have requested American President George W. Bush to send a committee to Sri Lanka to look into the human rights violations.
  • Violence round up – week ending 18 March

    18 March

    ● Thirty-eight civilians, including twenty women, of all three communities, were arrested in a cordon and search operation by Sri Lanka government troops in Mt. Lavinia police division in Colombo. The police said they were taken into custody as some failed to prove their identity and others could not justify their presence in the location. Cordon and search operations were also conducted in Moratuwa, Soysapura, further south of Mt. Lavinia.

    ● Gunmen shot dead Vaiyramuthu Jeyachandran, 36, resident of LB3 Sivapuram, Kiliveddy, at Kiliveddy in Muthur, Trincomalee.

    ● A trader and a student accompanying him disappeared in Pungankulam, Ariyalai, inside the Jaffna Municipal area, after being interrogated by SLA soldiers. The disappeared were identified as trader, Vigneswaran Subaskaran, 39, from Nunavil along A9 highway in Chavakachcheri, and Thavarajah Nitharsan, 18, a school student who was helping Subaskaran in his errands. Both had gone to Jaffna town to attend to business matters, later visited Subaskaran's mother's house in Ariyalai, and were returning home to Nunavil along A9, when they were stopped by the SLA soldiers near Pungankulam and interrogated for several hours. Traders in Ariyalai and other witnesses said that an armoured Buffel vehicle entered the area and took the two civilians. Subaskaran had earlier been arrested by the SLA in December 2006, while he was staying with his mother, on false charges of possessing a hand grenade and released after being tortured.

    ● Kopalapillai Rameshthasan, 30, a family man, was abducted in Aanaikottai area in Jaffna, when he went to visit his family members in Velanai.

    ● A SLA soldier was killed at Sembimalai in Kuchchaveli police division Trincomalee when an unidentified group of persons fired at a SLA foot patrol. The military claimed LTTE cadres had fired at the government troops.
    17 March
    ● Amid an escalating number of killings in Jaffna peninsula, C. Meihandathevan, 28, a farmer, was shot at his home in Mirusuvil North, Thenmaradchy. This is the fourth shooting incident involving farm workers who are being increasingly targeted in Mirusuvil area.
    16 March
    ● Reports from Jaffna said the SLA shot dead a youth who attempted to enter their Intelligence Unit main camp at Koolavady, Annaikottai, Valigamam, after lobbing a hand grenade, which did not explode. The SLA said the youth’s jacket was packed with explosives.
    ● The SLA arrested three Tamil youths travelling in a private bus from Vavuniya to Mannar. The SLMM was informed of the arrest. Three Tamil youths stopped and boarded the bus at Murunkan. SLA soldiers stopped the bus at Koolankulam and arrested the three youths and took them away.
    ● Hundreds of SLA troopers who advanced into LTTE territory in Palamoddai, northwest of Vavuniya, were forced to hurriedly withdraw from the area, leaving behind military hardware. The Tigers put up stiff resistance against the SLA troopers, the LTTE's Military Spokesman, Irasiah Ilanthirayan, siad. Four SLA troopers were killed and 20 wounded in the operation, the LTTE claimed. However, the SLA said it suffered casualties when LTTE attacked their positions. A similar SLA move was thwarted the previous evening at Mullikkulam along Vavuniya Mannar border, west of Palamoddai.
    ● At least 19 SLA soldiers were injured, 4 of them seriously, when SLA troopers and the LTTE exchanged heavy artillery and rocket fire along the Thenmaradchi FDLs in the Jaffna peninsula. It is not known if LTTE suffered any casualties.
    15 March
    ● The SLA launched heavy artillery and mortar fire towards the Mannar - Vavuniya border villages of Mullikulam, Keerisuddan and Periya Pandivirichchan, causing hundreds of civilian families to flee the villages. Artillery and mortar fire from Iranai Iluppaikulam targeted villages surrounding Mullikulam, inside LTTE controlled territory in Madu. Heavy artillery fire was also reported towards the areas surrounding the access point in Puliyankulam from Poovarasankulam SLA camp.
    ● The SLAF carried out three aerial attacks on Mullaithivu district.
    ● SLA soldiers and police arrested thirteen Tamils from North and Eastern provinces in a pre-dawn search in Hathuduwa, Mt.Lavinia, a suburb of Colombo.
    ● Sivagnanam Rathikaran, 27, of Kasthuriyar Road, disappeared after he went to Jaffna city in the morning to attend personal errands.
    ● Thiraviyam Sasikumar, 37, a young family man of Point Pedro, left home for shopping in Point Pedro town and did not return.
    14 March
    ● The SLA refused permission to hundreds of Christian devotees to continue their annual foot pilgrimage to Calvary, in Komarasankulam, Vavuniya, citing security reasons. Devotees were forced to return to Mannar after they were stopped at Murunkan on their way to Vavuniya. The SLA also turned down appeals by Mannar Bishop Rt. Rev. Rayappu Joseph, church officials said.
    ● Three youths, from Kodikamam, Columbuthurai and Manipay, were accompanied by Jaffna SLHRC officials to safer areas, after they called for help fearing danger to their lives. The youths went underground fearing death at the hands of the SLA, after their names were called out during cordon and search operations in their respective areas earlier.
    ● The body of Mohamed Ali Nanthakumar, 26, with gun shot wounds, was recovered within the SLA HSZ at Konan Thottam Veethy near KKS road-Hospital road junction in the heart of Jaffna town. He had been missing since Tuesday evening when he went to escort his brother's daughter from school. Residents speculate Nanthakumar, of A.V. Road, Colombuthurai, was abducted and killed elsewhere before being brought in a vehicle and dumped at Konan Thottam Veethy. There is constant movement of SLA troops during curfew hours in the area where the body was recovered and could not have been dumped there without the SLA’s knowledge, residents added.
    ● Police recovered mutilated male body packed in a green plastic bag, normally used by the SLA, caught in the fishing net along the coast at Punguduthivu, an islet of Jaffna,. The body, with head, hands and legs severed, bore deep cut wounds in the stomach and appeared to belong to a male under 30. The bag containing the corpse was filled with stones and tied with barbed wire to stay in deep ocean bottom, but had been washed ashore due to rough seas.
    ● Thiraviyam Susikumar, 32, of Muthumariaman Kovilady in Alvai, Jaffna, was arrested by Navalady junction SLA camp troopers, according to his wife, who reported to the SLHRC that she witnessed SLA troopers taking her husband's motorbike into the camp.
    ● Anantharasa Anton Mariagnanarasa, 35, a fisherman and father of four, from Kudathanai in Vadamaradchy east, Jaffna, was stopped at the SLA sentry post near Valipuram Temple while returning home from Point Pedro, and taken away in a Buffel Armoured Personnel Carrier. His wife reported to the SLHRC that relatives had seen her husband being taken away by SLA soldiers.
    ● STF troopers shot dead a youth at VC junction in Kannaki village, Thirukovil, Amparai.
    13 March
    ● Mortar shells launched by the LTTE hit the SLA Omanthai brigade base, seriously injuring a trooper. The SLA launched random shelling on Omathai following the attack.
    ● A fisherman, Charles Peiris, 34, and 2-year old son Joyson were injured when the SLN fired at a group of people in Pesalai, Mannar. SLN crafts patrolling the Pesalai Sea noted persons loading goods in boats along the coast. The soldiers started firing at them, and a father and a son who were inside their house near by were injured.
    ● A Muslim textile dealer disappeared in Mallakam area, according to a complaint lodged by his wife at the Jaffna branch of the SLHRC. Abdul Galam Subaideen, 26, a young family man, married to a Tamil woman, set out from home on business and did not return.
    12 March
    ● Thirteen Tamil civilians, including three women, were arrested in a cordon and search operation by the SLA and Police at Kohuwela, Colombo. All are natives of the North East and were temporarily staying with friends and family or in lodges when they were arrested. Some of the arrested have failed to prove their identity, the police said.
    ● A postman and another civilian were killed in a claymore attack by a SLA DPU at fourth mile post along Madhu-Parapukadanthan road in LTTE held territory in Mannar. The postman, Fernando Arulananthan Croos, 48, was earlier a resident of Adamban and had sought refuge in Madhu refugee camp with his family following heavy artillery fire by the government forces towards his village. He was cycling towards Vattakandal Sub-Post Office to report for work when he hit the claymore.
    ● The body of a SLA DPU soldier, killed by the LTTE Saturday at Periyathambanai, in LTTE held territory in Mannar, was handed over to army officers. The soldier was identified as Corporal Senaratne of Kadugannawa, Kandy.
    ● Gunmen shot dead a textile vendor along Hospital road, Jaffna in front of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital. The men shot Lawrence Mariyaselvam, 32, a young family man from Navaly North, Manipay, in broad day light and escaped from the site by bicycle.
    ● A body of youth strangled to death, was found in a toilet pit in an abandoned house in Chunnakam South, Valikamam, Jaffna. Neighbours alerted officials after detecting a bad stench, and the body was found after a search. The body is believed to belong to one of the youths abducted recently in the peninsula by SLA soldiers and SLA-backed paramilitaries.
  • Kfirs target school, injure three
    Teachers and students took shelter in a bunker as their school was bombed.
    Photo TamilNet
    Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Kfir bombers bombed a school in Chundikulam, Vadamaradchi East in Jaffna, on March 19, wounding a female teacher and two schoolboys.
    Three bombs were dropped 25 meters from a class room of Chundikulam Vidyalayam. Two other schools, Aliyavalai Church Ceylon Tamil Mixed School and Uduthurai Mahavidyalayam, were also functioning at the site as they had been displaced from their original locations.
    A bomb that hit a tree exploded in the air, wounding Kanapathipillai Nirojan, 11, attending 7th grade at Chundikulam Vidyalayam, Luxmikanthan Jegatheepan, 16, attending 9th grade. The teacher was identified as K. Sathiyavathy, 26.
    Around 175 schoolchildren, 8 teachers and the principal of the school narrowly escaped injury or death.
    Kfir bombers dropped bombs on the school at 9:45 and later at 11:45, when the children were attending their classes
    A TamilNet correspondent who visited the site of the attack witnessed a second air strike at 11:45 a.m.
    There are no military installations in the area populated by IDPs. IDPs and the villagers fled towards shrub jungles following the attack.
     
  • Abducted TRO officers final rites held
    Photos were garlanded and floral tributes were paid as part of the final rites of seven TRO officials missing for more than a year and now presumed dead.
    Photo TamilNet
    The final rites for seven humanitarian workers abducted in January 2006 were held on 17 March, after three days of mourning.
    Seven officials of the Tamils Rehabilitations Organisation (TRO), presumed to have been abducted by the paramilitary Karuna Group working in conjunction with the Sri Lanka Army, went missing on January 29 and 30 last year.
    “The 7 aid workers remain “disappeared” over a year after their abduction and, as a result of news reports and information conveyed to our organization, it is with great sorrow and condolences to the families that TRO now believes that our co-workers were executed soon after being abducted by the GoSL-affiliated “Karuna Group” paramilitaries,” the TRO said in a press release.
    “Recent news reports state that they were tortured before being murdered and their bodies disposed of,” the press release noted.
    “TRO requests that the Police follow up on news reports and investigate the locations where the bodies may be buried,” the press release stated.
    The seven TRO officials who disappeared are Mr Thamiraja Vasantharajan, Mr Shanmuganathan Sujendran, Mr Kailasapillai Ravinthiran, Mr Arulthavarasa Satheeskaran, Ms Thanushkodi Premini, Mr Thangarasa Kathirkamar and Mr Kasinathar Ganeshalingam.
    Framed memorials with photographs were taken to relatives’ homes in Kilinochchi on 14 March for people to pay their respects. The pictures were then taken in procession to the Kilinochchi Cultural Hall, where the final ceremony was held on Saturday.
    Following lighting of the Common flame, relatives garlanded pictures of the seven staffers.
    Press reports, and especially an investigative piece compiled by Tamil columnist D.B.S. Jeyaraj, based on interviews with former members of the Karuna Group, formally known as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Puligal (TMVP), said that the missing aid workers were executed by paramilitaries of the Karuna Group which took them captive.
    The TVMP is an anti-LTTE paramilitary group set up by a renegade LTTE commander, Karuna, who defected to the Sri Lankan military after his six-week rebellion was crushed in an LTTE offensive in early 2004.
    “The facts that I am privy to indicate that all seven abducted have been killed,” Mr Jeyaraj reported.
    “The solitary woman among them [Ms Thanushkodi Premini] was painfully gang raped before being killed,” he said.
    TRO President Mr. Sivanadiyar, speaking at the ceremony stated, “With respect to information on our abducted staff, though we received much information on their status from the beginning, we took much effort and time to ensure and confirm the truth of all the information.”
    “In the year since the abductions we have observed a day of fasting and conducted media events in Colombo to publicize and appeal to the Sri Lankan and international community for the release of the abductees. Based on the news that has been published in the Sri Lankan newspapers and based on the research we have performed, we now strongly believe that our staff have lost their lives,” he said.
    “Despite the committed efforts taken by the International Red Cross, Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, various Non-Governmental Orgnizations, UN Human Rights Groups, and the TRO, we were unable to save the lives of the seven dedicated workers,” he added.
    In the eulogy, Mr Sivanadiyar told the audience of the empathy the staffers had for the people who were suffering amidst violence and economic hardship, and the dedication with which the staffers served the people.
    Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians Pathmini Sithamparanathan, and K Gajendran, LTTE's senior member Balakumaran, Head of Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESOHR) Rev.Fr. Kanagaratnam, and other officials of the TRO spoke at the event.
     
  • Refugee situation ‘critical and urgent’ - UN
    The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), struggling to cope with hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Batticaloa, has warned of acute shortage of basic supplies including food and urged for immediate assistance from the international community.
     
    According to the WFP, over 200,000 Tamils driven out by Sri Lankan military offensives in the eastern district will run out of food by end of April, if urgent funds are not received from donor countries.
     
    "If donor governments do not come in with fresh funds, supplies will run out by end April," WFP spokesperson in Colombo Selvi Sacithandam said.
     
    (file photo) Large numbers of Tamil refugees are crammed into overcrowded camps in Sri  Lanka military controlled areas.  Photo: Gamini Obeysekara/AFP/Getty Images
     
    WFP Regional Director for Asia Tony Banbury described conditions in the area as “critical and urgent.”
     
    “Unless we receive new funding very soon, we will run out of food supplies by the end of April. After all the suffering endured by the victims of the fighting in Sri Lanka, they should not be hurt further by a lack of international support and concern,” he said.
     
    Referring to the latest influx of refugees as a major humanitarian challenge, the WFP official added “we will do everything we can to ensure that all these victims of the conflict – many of them women and children – get the assistance they so desperately need.”
     
    Since the latest exodus began on March 8, the WFP has issued repeated warnings of impending food shortage and appealed for assistance to provide for the IDPs in Batticaloa.
     
    According to the agency it could only take care of 60% of the supplies and that the remainder was to be provided by the Sri Lankan Government and other assistance of local NGOs and INGOs.
     
    Basil Sylvester, District Officer in Batticaloa for the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies said "The UN can only take care of 60% of the food supplies, and they say that they are running out funds, there are a lot of people here and we need to act fast,"
     
    Food however is not the only concern, according UN agencies, who say that security, sanitation and over crowding are all major concerns.
     
    The Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) has warned that "WFP is facing a break in pipeline towards end of April and is calling for urgent contributions from donors with requirements only for conflict IDPs and vulnerable groups affected by the hostilities at US$ 1 million a week for 400,000 people nation-wide.”
     
    According to WFP lack of international support has forced it to put on hold its Mother and Child Nutrition and school feeding programme in order to re-direct its limited resources towards the newly displaced and suspend most food-for-work rehabilitation projects for the tsunami affected.
    Meanwhile the Common Humanitarian Action Plan for Sri Lanka has only received 33 percent of its required funding for food assistance.
     
    The WFP told a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland said it was too early to predict whether international donor funds would come through.
     
  • Sole representatives: why claim and why oppose?
    One of the most contested aspects of the LTTE’s politics is its claim to the sole (or more recently, authentic) representatives of the Tamil people in dealings with the Sinhala-
    Dominated Sri Lankan state.
     
    The LTTE’s claim is rejected by its detractors using a number of arguments, one of the more fashionable of which is that Tamils themselves have multiple identities (such as those of class, caste, gender, region and religion) and that no single organization, particularly the violent LTTE, can really claim to represent all Tamil political aspirations.
     
    Those of a more academic bent talk of the ‘impossibility of Tamil nationalism,’ given the allegedly multiple social, political and economic differences within the ‘imagined’ Tamil nation.
     
    Another response is simply to point to Tamil opponents of the LTTE, as if the mere existence of Karuna or V. Anandasangaree is proof enough that the LTTE cannot claim to represent the totality of political opinion within the Tamil people.
     
    The extent to which these figures actually have any solid political base or viable political program (i.e. independent of Sri Lankan government sponsorship) is less important in this regard than their espousal of an anti-LTTE position.
     
    Furthermore, the LTTE and the Tamils that endorse its claim are expected to simply keel over and give up the struggle in the face of this superior, novel and incontrovertible logic.
     
    The latters’ response, naturally, is that those challenging the LTTE’s sole representative claim or promoting anti-LTTE actors are primarily seeking to undermine and weaken the Tamils’ struggle for self-determination.
     
    Interestingly, their argument has a historical precedent, dating to at least the high noon of the British Empire – in South Asia itself.
     
    In the years following the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885, senior British officials were eager to pour scorn on its claim to represent Indian public opinion (i.e. the British were not wanted).
     
    For example, the then Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, dismissed Congress as ‘a microscopic minority.’
     
    And well before the current post modern vogue, a thoroughly modern British colonial official, Sir John Stratchey, was emphatic about the impossibility of the Indian nation.
     
    “There is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India.. no Indian nation, no ‘people of India’ of which we hear so much,” he confidently told a gathering of Cambridge Undergraduates.
     
    “That men of the Punjab, Bengal, the North–West Provinces and Madras should ever feel that they belong to one great Indian nation is impossible.”
     
    At different stages in the struggle between Congress and the colonial state, British authorities challenged the Congress’ authority to represent the Indian nation by pointing to divisions of religion, caste and class.
     
    The Congress, it was alleged, could not be the ‘sole representative’ as it did not represent religious minorities, Dalits and the rural population.
     
    Instead Congress was deemed to be a concern of upper caste, urban educated Hindus.
     
    Indeed, the Colonial state went further, taking upon itself the mantle of guardian and protector of other groups against the minority interests being selfishly pursued by the Congress party. 
     
    With hindsight it is clear that in challenging the Congress’ claim to represent the Indian nation, the Colonial state was actually obfuscating its own exploitative and oppressive nature.
     
    By pointing to the alleged divisions within the Indian nation, the Colonial state drew attention away from anti-colonials’ argument that India’s wealth was being drained, at the expense of her people, to support the British economy.
     
    Furthermore, the anti-colonials pointed out, excise and import duties favored British imports over the development of local industry thereby preventing the Indian economy from moving out of its dependence on the export of raw commodities.
     
    The oppressive nature of the colonial state became starkly clear at moments of popular confrontation, as occurred during the episodes of nationwide anti colonial protest mobilized by Congress.
     
    Particularly well known incidents include the massacre at the Jallainwallah Bagh when the army, under the command of Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, opened fire on a crowd of unarmed peasants that had gathered for a fair.
     
    The state that claimed to represent the sturdy, loyal peasant against the seditious, upper caste urbanite opened fire on a crowd of unarmed men, women and children. According to the official report 379 civilians were killed but Indians put the dead at closer to 1,000 with more than 2, 000 wounded.
     
    Interestingly, in response to the British sneers, Congress did not deny the existence of multiple poles of difference within the Indian nation.
     
    Instead it claimed to represent the interests of all Indians as colonial subjects in the struggle against British imperialism.
     
    The thrust of Congress’s argument was that colonial rule was oppressive and detrimental to the interests of all Indians, irrespective of their other identities.
     
    Meanwhile Congress leaders, particularly Gandhi, campaigned against the iniquities of caste while as early as 1920 the Congress party, recognizing the existence of multiple linguistic identities, reorganized its party structures along linguistic lines.
     
    Although not even the most ardent Indiaphiles would argue that post – Independence India has been an unqualified success there have been striking achievements. India has remained a reasonably stable democratic and federal state that recognizes multiple linguistic and caste identities alongside the Indian identity.
     
    The existence of multiple poles of difference within groups demanding the right to political independence is a recurrent phenomenon of both successful and unsuccessful nationalist movements.
     
    Opposing states have also always sought to divide nationalist movements by playing upon these differences.
     
    Nelson Mandela describes in his autobiography how the white Nationalists state attempted to undermine the African National Congress (ANC)’s bargaining position by creating divisions within the black and colored population.
     
    “The Nationalists’ long-term strategy to overcome our strength was to build an anti – ANC alliance with the Inkatha Freedom Party and to lure the Coloured Afrikaans – speaking voters of the Cape into a new National Party,” he says.
     
    “From the moment of my release, they began wooing both [Inkatha leader] Buthelezi and the Coloured voters of the Cape.”
     
    Once again the state’s strategy is one of obfuscation. By pointing to the differences within the black and coloured peoples, the Apartheid regime sought to distract attention from the exclusions and hierarchies they all suffered under white minority rule.
     
    Dharmeratnam Sivaram, the Tamil writer and journalist assassinated in April 2005, identified the creation of divisions amongst those struggling for freedom as a classic tactic of counter–insurgency.
     
    Mark Whitaker reports in his recent study of Sivaram’s life, work and politics – ‘Learning Politics from Sivaram,’ – a conversation in which Sivaram discussed the use of divide and rule tactics in breaking the will of a resisting population.
     
    According to Sivaram, “promotion of numerous political and interest groups from within the target population backed, covertly or overtly, by either vigilante groups or by the state, to dilute and obfuscate the basic issue in question that in the first place gave rise to the insurgency.”
     
    The claim that Tamils are a nation with a right to political independence does not deny the existence of gender, class, regional and religious differences amongst them.
     
    Rather what it asserts is that the social and economic well being of all Tamils would be served by a set of autonomous political institutions that would not be hostage to the whims of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.
     
    It should not be forgotten that the Tamil demand for independence came as a consequence of thirty years of discrimination and oppression at the hands of a state that privileged the economic, social and political claims of the Sinhala Buddhist majority at the expense of the Tamil - speaking minority.
     
    This discrimination and violent oppression affected all Tamils equally, regardless of their gender, religion, region, class or caste. The racist mobs that hunted out Tamils during the pogroms of the 70’s and 80’s were not good post - modernists, stopping to consider their victims’ multiple sub-identities.
     
    Similarly the violence being unleashed now against the Tamils by the Sri Lankan state does not discriminate. Are not those supposed to be Karuna’s supporters languishing in Batticaloa’s refugee camps along with the rest of the district’s Tamils?
     
    The failure to share international development aid equitably has affected Tamil communities from all the northeastern districts: Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Mannar, Vavuniya Trincomalee and Batticaloa.
     
    The government’s Kfir bombers do not discriminate between Hindus and Christians, men and women or fishermen and farmers. All Jaffna Tamils, irrespective of caste, class and religious bent are feeling the crippling effects of the government’s refusal to open the A9 highway.
     
    The politics of divide and rule have found form in principled arguments such as the need to make peace negotiations ‘more inclusive’ or the need for ‘other Tamil voices’ to be heard.
     
    It is interesting that Karuna, one of the so called ‘alternative voices’, has nothing to say while 200,000 Tamils driven from their homes by the Sinhala military now languish in refugee camps.
     
    Anandasangaree, meanwhile, rails against the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, saying the truce had prevented the ‘liberation’ of the Tamils of the Vanni.
     
    Indeed, it is no accident that such actors are feted by the Sinhala nationalist forces.
     
    By prioritizing the differences within Tamils, these arguments attempt to shift attention away from the burning question of the political status of the Tamil people: are they to be an autonomous nation in a multinational state or subordinate minorities in a Sinhala Buddhist one?
     
    Interestingly, whilst there are repeated calls for a Sinhala consensus (equates to non-ruling parties uniting behind the Sri Lankan state in its dealings with the LTTE), there is no similar call for Tamil unity.
     
    This is even whilst the state is urged to negotiate a lasting political solution with the Tigers!
     
    Just as in the case of Congress and the Indians, in demanding to be recognized as sole representatives of the Tamil people, the LTTE does not claim to represent every single Tamil interest and sub-identity.
     
    Rather, the LTTE claims to represent the overarching political interests that Tamils, as a collective, have in common as a consequence of the oppression and discrimination they share.
     
    The LTTE argues that it is the only significant, organized political force that is acting and speaking on behalf interests that all Tamils share as a consequence of their collective marginalisation within the Sinhala Buddhist state.
     
    Thus, especially in the current climate, where Tamils are facing levels of brutality last endured during President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s ‘war for peace’, arguments and strategies that prioritise the differences within amongst Tamils over their collective suffering can be plausibly dismissed as nothing more than new attempts to break their will to resist Sinhala domination.
  • Early Warning
    The Liberation Tigers’ airstrike this week on Sri Lanka’s main airbase at Katunayake has understandably triggered shockwaves both in the island and further afield. Whilst the Sri Lankan government insists its aircraft are unscathed, amid a blackout imposed by Colombo, there are persistent reports that a significant part of the Air Force’s strike capability has been knocked out – something some Indian analysts are also insisting. Irrespective of the reality, what is clear is that the LTTE has developed an indigenous air capability. It is the first armed non-state actor to do so, and it has managed it without the support of any state. Moreover the LTTE has achieved this against considerable odds and in spite of determined and extensive efforts by the Sri Lankan government and its allies to constrict the LTTE’s supply lines (hence the begrudging admiration expressed by many commentators, including some of its critics).
     
    Thus it is the institutional growth reflected in this single LTTE airstrike that is of significance. For almost a year, Sri Lanka’s hardline government has single-mindedly pursued a military solution to the Tamil question. In that time, large tracts of territory were captured from the LTTE in the sprawling and thinly defended east. President Mahinda Rajapakse and his cotorie of Sinhala nationalists have trumpeted this as evidence of the inevitability of a victory over the Tigers. Promising a final victory over the Tigers, Colombo has pursued a ruthless and blatantly racist strategy. At least two hundred thousand Tamils have been driven from their homes. They have been starved and bombarded for months. International aid agencies were officially prevented from providing humanitarian relief. And for the past few months the onslaught has been conducted in full sight of the international community.
     
    Interestingly, following the LTTE airstrike Sri Lanka has been vehemently making two contradictory arguments. On the one hand, Colombo’s military spokesmen have been derisively dismissing the TAF as a negligible threat. Yet at the same time, Sri Lanka’s government is shrilly declaring the LTTE planes a threat to “the entire region” and India in particular. Indeed, after a similar bout of agitation by Sri Lanka’s government, international concerns about the LTTE’s air assets were raised with the movement almost two years ago. The LTTE’s response, later repeated to media by the S. P. Thamilchelvan, head of the LTTE political wing was that all the organisation's structures and efforts are aimed at protecting the Tamil people and "was in no way a threat to any other country in general, particularly India.” Sri Lanka has long sought to implicate other countries directly in its war against the LTTE. Its efforts to get India to enter into a defence pact is but the latest of such efforts. Whilst aggressively rejecting – under the rubric of sovereignty –  international allies’ offers of help to peacefully resolve the conflict, Colombo repeatedly demands they get involved in its ‘internal’ affair under the logic of ‘fighting terrorism.’
     
    Sri Lanka’s promise of a quick victory over the LTTE – or, for the more skeptical, the promise of a serious weakening of the Tigers – has provided the justification for the humanitarian suffering unleashed on our people. Indeed various rationales have been floated for why Sri Lanka should not be restrained. The most cowardly of these is that Colombo simply won’t listen. The same international community that determinedly calls for sanctions against other (much larger and most robust) states which refuse to accept international norms hides behind notions of sovereignty when it comes to Sri Lanka.
     
    Amidst the deliberate infliction of widespread suffering on the Tamil people, the international community – including the mighty Co-Chairs – merely mouth feeble platitudes for Sri Lanka to pursue a political solution. As well as the war, that is. The peculiar logic is that once the LTTE is under severe military pressure, the Tamils could be persuaded to accept a much lower level of powersharing (it is no accident that these day no one talks of federalism). The more astute international actors are aware of the flaws in this logic: i.e. without the LTTE it’s irrelevant what the Tamils are prepared to accept. Yet international interests are served by an end to the conflict, even in the absence of a just solution for the Tamils i.e. the destruction of the LTTE would suffice.
     
    In short, amidst the rampant violence of the Sri Lankan state, the LTTE has become the convenient whipping boy for a variety of international actors including, shamefully, those who for many years lectured the Tamils on human rights and international humanitarian law. Many of these actors, it shouldn’t be forgotten, weighed enthusiastically into the Norwegian peace process, stymieing the LTTE’s efforts to secure international legitimacy and eventually contributing to the dissipation of the momentum of the peace process itself. Now with human rights violations by the state having become so widespread and blatant as to be impossible to ignore, all they can offer is feeble criticism. The Tamils, however, have to fend for themselves.
     
    It remains very much to be seen if President Rajapakse can deliver the inexorable reduction of the LTTE that he has promised. But what can be guaranteed is that amidst his efforts Sri Lanka will descend into a maelstrom of violence. With its raid on Katunayake the LTTE has demonstrated more than merely its ability to carry out airstrikes in any part of the country. More importantly, it has demonstrated its ability to overcome the considerable international difficulties that have been placed in its path. The continued expansion and refinement of the LTTE's institutional structures, of which its air wing is one, in spite of heightened efforts precisely to prevent this, suggest that faith in Sri Lankan promises of a neat military solution is foolish. But if the international community is not prepared to act against the state, it has no other options.
  • Karuna doing Colombo’s ‘dirty work’ - HRW
    Despite promises to investigate abductions of children by the pro-government Karuna group, Sri Lankan authorities have taken no effective action and abductions continue, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.
     
    “The Karuna group’s use of child soldiers with state complicity is more blatant today than ever before, ” Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW said in a statement. HRW also accused the LTTE of recruiting child soldiers.
     
    “The Karuna group is doing the government’s dirty work,” Adams said. “It’s time for authorities in Colombo to stop this group from using children in its forces.”
     
    HRW says in February its staff in the eastern Batticaloa district, “witnessed children clearly under the age of 17, some armed with assault rifles, performing guard duty at various offices of the Karuna group’s political party, the Thamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP).”
     
    “Sri Lankan soldiers and police routinely walked and drove by the children without taking any visible action,” the group said.
     
    HRW staff saw a child with an assault rifle guarding the TMVP office in Kiran, home town of the group’s leader, V. Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna.
     
    Other children, some of them armed, were seen in and around TMVP offices in the district, including in Valaichchenai and Morakkottanchenai, where the office is across the road from a Sri Lankan army base, HRW said.
     
    “When government troops at a military base look across the street at children standing guard at a Karuna office and do nothing, it’s hard to believe the government is taking any meaningful steps to end this abuse,” said Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director.
     
    “The Karuna group’s use of child soldiers with state complicity is more blatant today than ever before. ”
     
    When relatives of the some children complained at one Karuna camp, cadres there told them not to report the case – or to say the LTTE took their sons, HRW said.
     
    When parents complained, “the military pressured them to say that their children were taken by ‘an unidentified group.’” HRW said.
     
    “There is strong evidence that government forces are now openly cooperating with the Karuna group despite its illegal activities,” HRW said.
     
    “Armed Karuna members regularly walk or ride throughout Batticaloa district in plain view of government forces,” HRW said.
     
    “In February, HRW saw a Karuna commander named Jeyam riding atop a Sri Lankan armored personnel vehicle outside Valaichchenai. In Batticaloa town, residents have seen Karuna cadre patrolling jointly with the police.”
     
    “The Karuna group maintains at least five camps in the jungle about 10 kilometers northwest of Welikanda town in the Polonnaruwa district, about 50 kilometers northwest of Batticaloa town. Welikanda is where the Sri Lankan Army’s 23rd division has its base. The area is firmly under government control, as is the main A11 road from the eastern districts to the Welikanda area. The Karuna camp at Mutugalla village is near a Sri Lankan army post.”
     
    HRW protested that though President Mahinda Rajapakse and other officials have repeatedly said that the government would investigate the allegations of state complicity in Karuna abductions and hold accountable any member of the security forces found to have violated the law, “to date, however, the government has taken no effective steps.”
     
    “The government says it needs evidence to start an investigation, but it already has ample information,” Adams said. “In addition to UN documentation and testimonies in our report, many families have made formal complaints to the police.”
     
    In January HRW provided the government with a 100-page report on Karuna abductions.
     
    With case studies, maps and photographs, the report shows how Karuna cadres operate with impunity in government-controlled areas, abducting boys and young men, training them in camps, and deploying them for combat.
     
    According to UNICEF, there were 45 reported cases of Karuna child abductions in three months – 10 in December, 24 in January, and 11 in February. Among these were three children abducted by Karuna cadre from camps for internally displaced persons in Batticaloa district.
     
    “The actual number is likely to be higher because many parents are afraid to report cases, and these numbers do not reflect the forced recruitment by the Karuna group of young men over 17,” HRW said.
     
    The LTTE has continued to abduct and forcibly recruit children and young adults, including women and girls, HRW said, saying UNICEF documented 19 cases of LTTE child recruitment in January and nine in February. The LTTE has also abducted at least four people from camps for the internally displaced, HRW said.
     
    HRW said it has repeatedly documented and condemned the use of child soldiers by the LT TE, and it has called on the United Nations to impose targeted sanctions on the LTTE because of its long history of recruiting children in violation of international law.
     
    “The LTTE is a notorious repeat offender of child recruitment,” Adams said. “It’s a shame that government forces complicit with the Karuna group are now involved in the same ugly practice.”
     
     
  • Violence round up – week ending 25 March
    25 March
    ● Armed men with hand guns chased Soosaithaas Thanaraaj, 19, as he was selling grapes on the pavement of Hospital Road and shot him dead while he was running for his life calling for help. Thanaraaj used to buy grapes from his native village of Ilavaalai and sell them on the pavements of Jaffna city.
    ● The owner of an ice-cream bar and his assistant were shot and killed behind the bus stand on Jaffna Power House Road. They were identified as Arulraaj Jeyantharoopan, 26, from Kokkuvil Kanthi Veethi and Yoakalingkam Chaarangkan, 23, Theatre Road, Inuvil.
    ● Two SLAF personnel, a group captain and a sergeant, were killed when their vehicle ran off the road and hit a bridge at Weerawila in Hambantota district. Six more SLAF personnel were injured in the accident.
    ● Two armed men on motorbikes shot dead the Batticaloa district Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) organiser at Erivil in Kalavanchikudy, Batticaloa. M. Sabaratnam, 65, a father of four, was shot dead as he was having breakfast at a food stall near his house.
    ● A plantation Tamil student at Nawalapitiya Balika Vidiyalayam has been reported missing since February 27, according to a complaint lodged with the Nawalapitya Police. D. Sellathurai said in his complaint that his son S. Krishnaraj, 16, left home to sit for his test and had not returned home. He was wearing green shirt and black trousers when last seen.
    24 March
    ● Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) directors, returning after monitoring the relief assistance to the displaced civilians, following the SLA operation on the Mannar Vavuniya border, were attacked by a SLA DPU claymore. Humanitarian worker Mr. Muthuraja Aruleswaran, 30, was killed and 3 TRO directors, including the Assistant Executive Director of the TRO, Vadivel Ravichandran, 38, were wounded in the attack at Periyamadu in Mannar. Mr. Aruleswaran, from Mudkompan in Pooneryn, is the father of a 1-year-old child, TRO officials said. The Emergency Assistance worker was driving the TRO vehicle when the attack took place. International Planning Director of the TRO, Seenithamby Parameswaran, 41, and the Director of Akkarayan Development Organisation, Selvarajah Nixon, 37, from Silavattai, were also wounded in the claymore attack.
    ● Attackers lobbed a powerful hand bomb into a SLA check post near the SLA 51-2 Brigade Command in Jaffna city, killing a SLA soldier and wounding four. A civilian was wounded when SLA soldiers opened fire after the attack and was identified as Balasubramaniam Gajarooban, 21, of Thirunelvaeli. The attackers had escaped after throwing the bomb, which is believed to be a powerful hand grenade. Military officials in Colombo claimed that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, on a SLA road block.
    ● Mannar police recovered a grenade at a site opposite the telecommunication office along Mannar railway station road. The grenade was diffused by the SLA bomb disposal squad. Government troops rushed to the site on receipt of information from the Mannar Police and blocked all traffic and civilian movement along the road.
    23 March
    ● LTTE officials in Kilinochchi charged that more than 300 SLA troopers had breached 2 km into LTTE territory and taken more than 120 villagers of Periyathampanai, on the Vavuniya Mannar border, as “human shields”. More than 300 SLA troopers were engaged in the ground offensive, which followed heavy artillery shelling by the SLA and a DPU claymore attack wounding 2 civilians in Parappukkandanthan. The troopers were forced to pull back from Thampanai and Sinna Pandivirichchan after 15 hours of heavy fighting. LTTE officials said they defeated the two pronged offensive, without harming the civilians who were in the hands of the SLA. Around 60 SLA soldiers were killed, the Tigers claimed. Official figures from Colombo said 14 soldiers were killed and 42 wounded. The LTTE said they lost 6 fighters.
    ● The SLA launched heavy artillery and Multi Barrel Rocket Launcher fire on Periya Pandivirichchan. Joseph Manuelpillai, 51, a watcher attached to the Madu Multi Purpose Co-Operative Society (MPCS) secretariat was killed in the artillery fire. Heavy artillery and MBRL rocket fire was stepped up on the settlement near Madu church from the SLA camp in Piramanalankulam Junction on Mannar - Vavuniya Road and Madu Road Junction on Mannar Madawachchi Road.
    ● An attempt by SLA to invade into LTTE territory, from their camps in Unnichai and Vavunathivu, was successfully thwarted said S. Seeralan, LTTE Batticaloa District Deputy head of the Political wing. An Unmanned aircraft had circled over the area, after which four SLAF kfir fighter jets bombed Vavunathivu area in an effort to lend support to the SLA troops. In addition, the SLA, from its camps in areas under its control in Batticaloa, launched heavy artillery and Multi Barrel Rocket Launcher fire on LTTE held areas, Seeralan said. A Buffel Armoured Personnel Carrier was damaged, and SLA troopers who tried to advance had withdrawn when LTTE launched retaliatory attacks on Vavunathivu SLA camp, he added.
    ● Armed men on motorbikes waylaid Nirmalanathan Mayooran, 19, an employee of Periannai Church in Jaffna and abducted him at gunpoint as he was coming out of his house at Bankshall street in Jaffna town.
    ● A group of masked men forcibly entered a house in Faizal Nagar in Kinniya and shot at the inmates, injuring a husband and wife Arumugam, 40, and his wife Vijerani, 37, were admitted to hospital. Trincomalee office of the SLMM was informed of the incident.
    ● The wife of a Tamil resident of Negombo complained to Negombo Police that her husband, Selliah Tharmarajah, 46, who was employed at a foreign employment agency, had not returned home after he left by bus with his national identity card to report for work in Colombo office. Mr. Selliah Tharmarajah, 46, a native of Kopay in Jaffna district has been missing since January 11, according to the complaint lodged by his wife Vishayanthi Kalpana, 40. The family has been residing at Wellawatte in Colombo and later in Negombo for several years.
    ● A SLA soldier went missing in Kinniya, Trincomalee. R. P. S. R. Wickramasinghe, 24, of Nawalapitya, disappeared while travelling with a group of soldiers from Palathoppur military detachment in Muttur to Upparu in Kinniya. A complaint was lodged by the SLA with Muttur Police that the soldier is presumed drowned while crossing Mahaweli Ganga to reach Upparu with fellow soldiers.
    22 March
    ● A female employee of a pharmacy in front of Jaffna Teaching Hospital within a SLA HSZ was shot dead by two gunmen on a motorcycle and who pretended to buy medicine. Uthayajothika Kapilan, 27, from Kaithady was working at the Westco pharmacy, when she was killed. Local traders, who witnessed the escaping gunmen, said the gunmen rode with ease towards Vembadi Junction where there is a heavy presence of SLA troopers, and blamed the Sri Lanka intelligence operatives for the killing.
    ● SLA troopers abducted a labourer from his house at Mandan, Karaveddy in Vadamaradchy, Jaffna, knifed and strangled him, and dumped the body in Valaiveli area thinking he was dead. People who went in search of him the next morning found him severely injured fighting for life and brought him home. Thangathurai Thayaparan, 28, a father of one, testifying before Point Pedro Magistrate, said that he was abducted at gunpoint by SLA troopers and that he can identify his abductors. Thayaparan's younger brother, an auto driver aged 23, had received death threats from the SLA and Thayaparan's relatives speculate that Thayaparan was mistakenly abducted for his brother.
    ● Tharmaratnam Uthayasangar, 19, a student from Kudaniyan, Varani was found shot dead in Thenamradchy, Jaffna. Armed men shot him dead at his house.
    ● Sivapathasundaram Vijithas, 27, a father of one from Kokuvil, had married at Pommaiveli. His body was found dumped near his wife's house. Arasalingam Robinson, 18, was stabbed to death and burned with kerosene and was found in Annankai area in Kondavil. Both men were working as motor mechanics in a repair garage at Five Junction in Jaffna town from where both were abducted by armed men.
    ● SLA troopers in Buffel Armoured Personnel Carrier and motorbikes, accompanied by armed men in a white van, forcibly abducted a youth and a 16 year old student at gunpoint from the youth's house at Vayatkarai Lane in Vannarpannai, Jaffna. Masilamany Ajanthan, 24, is married and the abducted student, Vigneswaran Krishanthan, 16, is a student at Jaffna Illayathamby Vidyalayam. The latter, a relative and neighbour of Ajanthan, had gone to Ajanthan's house to get help with his lessons.
    ● Meikandathevar, 47, from Mirusuvil north, admitted to Jaffna Teaching hospital with serious gunshot wounds, succumbed to his injuries.
    21 March
    ● The LTTE launched heavy artillery shelling on SLA camps in Morakkoddanchenai and Mavadivembu, and on check posts along Trincomalee Batticaloa A-15 road inflicting damage to the SLA positions north of Batticaloa. LTTE fighters raided at least one SLA camp at Mavadivembu. The SLA claimed to have located 8 bodies of LTTE fighters after the raid which lasted for more than 2 hours. At least 4 SLA troopers were killed and 8 SLA troopers were seriously wounded in LTTE shelling. Two civilians, Kathamuthu Marimuthu, 54, Soudararajah Saraswathy, 42, were killed in retaliatory fire by the SLA. A SLA mini camp in Mavadivembu was almost destroyed in the raid and the Morakkoddanchenai SLA base sustained significant damage due to heavy artillery firing. SLA troopers fired mortars and artillery shells into SLA controlled areas infiltrated by the LTTE fighters in small groups. 28 civilians, sustained wounds in shelling, were admitted at Batticaloa hospital.
    ● Armed men on a motorbike shot dead a 27 year old Tamil man in the heart of Trincomalee town. He is a resident of Killikunchchumalai area in Kanniya village. The men had stopped a three-wheeler driven by the victim along Main Street in Trincomalee town and shot him dead.
    ● Sri Lanka Armed Forces along the coastal belt of Vadamaradchy, Jaffna, reinstated the ban on fishing on Vadamaradchy north and east seas until further notice. The SLA stopped fishermen going fishing and said the ban will remain until they receive orders from high command to lift the ban.
    ● Unknown persons set fire to the SLA mini camp at Chullipuram, Valigamam, Jaffna, when the troopers were out on patrol. Additional troops were deployed at the site while the camp continued to burn. SLA troopers cordoned off and searched areas in Chullipuram and directed residents to gather at a public place for interrogation. The SLA troopers also forced passers by to rebuild the camp. In an earlier incident, the same SLA mini camp was burnt by armed men and in the cordon off and search by the SLA troopers following the burning many innocent civilians were beaten and subjected to harassment.
    ● SLA troopers arrested a youth during a cordon off and search at s school area in Sakkottai, Vadamaradchy north, Jafffna, but denied arresting the youth when contacted for information. The search was triggered after noise of gunshots being fired in the area. SLA troopers rounded up all the fishermen in the vicinity and had them gathered on the main street where they were subjected to many hours of interrogation.
    ● Kopay police recovered the body of a family man, with severe injuries to his body inflicted by sharp blows from a blunt instrument. The body of Chelliah Jegatheeswaran, 42, from Kattaipirai in Irupalai, was found along New Chemmany Road in Kalviyankadu, within Jaffna Muncipal council limits. His wife identified the body and said he had been missing since going out on Tuesday evening.
    ● Armed men on a motorcycle shot dead Gnanapragasam Joseph, 46, a trader, and Velautham Deeswaran, 35, his associate, spraying bullets at them near the trader's house at Pothisumaku road in Vavuniya and escaped. The killers had called Joseph out of his house by name and when he came out with Deeswaran, who had been talking to him, fired rapidly at close range, killing both on the spot. Joseph’s relatives told officials Joseph had paid a ransom of 300,000 rupees to an undisclosed person, and again had paid 75,000 rupees on a further demand. The victims had no connection either to Tamil groups or military or police. Two months earlier Joseph's shop had been searched twice by police on tips-off that there was a bomb in the shop.
    ● Sri Lanka armed forces took into custody 72 civilians, most of them Tamils, in a cordon and search operation in Uddapu, a Tamil village in Chilaw district. The police said most of them were taken into custody when they failed to produce their National Identity Card and some failed to justify their presence in the location. Police took them to Munthal police station and subjected them to severe interrogation. Later the police released 67 of them and five have been further detained.
    ● Residents and traders in Puttalam observed a general shut down condemning the killing and abducting of civilians for ransom. Shops were closed, public transport came to a standstill and normal life in the town was disrupted. A demonstration was also held in the town with the participation of large number of people. Several speakers at the demonstration said the police have not been taking prompt action to stop abductions and killings of civilians in Puttalam. Puttalam Jemiyath Ulama Council and Al-Sura Council organized the general shut down and demonstration.
    20 March
    ● Five people – a Hindu priest, two teen aged sisters, and two IDP youths from LTTE held areas in Batticaloa district – have been taken away by paramilitary Karuna Group personnel and soldiers of the SLA Intelligence wing within the last 10 days, according to complaints lodged with Batticaloa SLHRC by their relatives. Alaguthurai Yogarajah, 23, of Kardiyanaru, Raveenthiran Gopinath, 21, of Ampilanthurai, Mylapodi Mehanathan, 45, a Hindu priest, Navaratnam Anjaladevi, 18, and Navaratnam Jeyalalitha, 16, two sisters from Unnichchai, were taken away forcefully from the temporary camps, schools and other public buildings, relatives said.
    ● Armed men abducted Mahalingam Baskaran, 34, a father of two, at gunpoint from his house in Tholpuram, Chullipuram, Jafffna.
    ● An SLA street patrol unit opened indiscriminate firing on youths who stood talking along Udupitty-Valvettithurai road at Valvetty area in Valvettithurai, Jaffna. The youths fled leaving their motorbikes and bicycles behind and the troopers took all the vehicles into cusyody.
    ● A fifty-seven year old resident of Sirupitty, Valligamam, Jaffna, sought protection from SLA troopers and their collaborating paramilitary members at Jaffna police station through the Jaffna office of the SLHRC. The man said that two youths had been killed at Nilavarai in his area and that he too feared being abducted SLA troopers.
    ● A private house functioning as an extension of Jaffna prison – where persons under protective custody are lodged – has become overcrowded and unhygienic conditions prevail for want of adequate space and basic facilities, according to prison officials. More than 200 inmates, including nearly 60 placed under protective custody, live in this house capable of accommodating less than a hundred persons. Chickenpox has spread nearly to all, as those infected cannot be segregated from the rest for lack of space.
    ● Armed men shot dead a carpenter in his house at Murganoor in Vavuniya. The victim was identified as Ragu, 47. His daughter and son were abducted two years ago. The son had managed to escape from the abductors but the fate of the daughter remains unknown.
    19 March
    ● Gunmen shot dead M. Ramesh, 26, the president of the Panankadu Auto Drivers' Union, while he was driving his auto in Akkaraipattu, Amparai.
    ● Villagers of Mulli at Varani discovered two corpses in partly burnt state dumped in shrub land along Kodikamam-Point Pedro road between Thenmaradchy and Vadamaradchi. The victims appeared to have been killed elsewhere, brought to Varani and burnt. Villagers fear there may be other corpses near the where the two bodies were found. A search by the police the next night ended in failure. Military boot tracks were found on the marshy ground and residents allege that the burnt corpses were removed during the night by the troopers who the villagers accuse of dumping the bodies there.
    ● Unidentified persons lobbed a grenade on a sentry manned by home guards at Mudcove, Trincomalee. No one was injured in the attack, but home guards and army troops rushed to the scene opened fire in retaliation. Later government security forces and police conducted a cordon and search operation in the area and took about 19 civilians into custody.
    ● Veersingham Nishanthan, 29, and Arasan Sahayanathan, 39, two fishermen who went night fishing in Muhathuvaram sea in Batticaloa did not return home.
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