(January 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The newly-formed Sri Lankan Tamils Protection Movement comprising various political parties today announced a Statewide hartal on 4 February and take out black flag processions on 7 February demanding a ceasefire in Lanka.

Addressing a meeting in Chennai today, convenor of the movement Pazha Nedumaran sought the support of everyone to put an end to the atrocities against Tamils in the island nation.

‘After fighting for the cause for many years, we have now come together under a single movement. This has given hope to Tamils living all over the world and has made Lanka President Rajpaksa jittery,’ he said.

Others who took part in the meeting include MDMK general secretary Vaiko, CPI senior leader R Nallakannu, State secretary D Pandian, PMK founder S Ramadoss, BJP national secretary S Thir-unavukkarasar, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi leader Thol Thirumavalavan and Nationalist Congress leader Tindivanam Rama-murthy.

Five parties, belonging to different alliances, launched the Sri Lankan Tamils Protection Movement a couple of days ago.

The movement, which would have Tamil National Movement chief P Nedumaran as the convenor, would include the MDMK and CPI (allies of the AIADMK), the PMK (alliance partner of the Congress) and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (ally of the DMK).

Speaking to reporters, the leaders said the sole aim of the movement was to ensure protection of Sri Lankan Tamils from the genocide.

Ramadoss, Vaiko, Pandian and Thirumavalavan later held discussions amidst concern over civilian casualties in Sri Lanka. The leaders, known to have strong LTTE leanings, discussed the visit of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to the neighbouring nation.
-Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Tamil Nadu government today ordered indefinite closure of colleges and hostels in the state in the wake of students' unrest on Sri Lankan-Tamils issue, a Times of India report said. Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K S Sripathy said in a release that all the colleges, both private and government, had been ordered to close due to the unrest. He had also ordered the closure of student's hostels in the state.

The government's action came two days before students all enforce a strike from Monday demanding ceasefire in Sri Lanka. Students of some of the colleges were already gone on strike demanding cessation of hostilites between Sri Lankan troops and LTTE. -Sri Lanka Guardian

If we join hands and stand united we can move mountains. If we unite, we can make the sun rise from the West……

By G.T.

(January 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Blood shed, pain, loss and anguish define today. This is what our world is made of at present. What is the spark which started this raging fire? The division among families, religions and nations. ‘Division,” a word made up of only eight letters is the cause of the unspeakable suffering that the people undergo every single second of their life. Sri Lanka is a country which holds the stench of conflict and war. Once a land which spoke of nature’s glory, today a land of blood and tears. Once known as the ‘pearl of the Indian Ocean’ today acknowledged as a ‘teardrop in the Indian Ocean’.

We who live in this country have to accept that Sri Lanka has become a place of destruction. Innocent people lose their lives, their homes, their loved ones, their riches and their land. For over half a century those in the North and East faced death, displacement and trauma. Recently those all over Sri Lanka have begun experiencing the bitterness of war. Would we have to go through this agony if we forget our differences and unite as one? Definitely not. ‘Unity” offers the splendour of freedom and the assurance of peace. Essays and poems take form, speeches ring out, songs and drama speak loud and clear emphasizing the immediate need for peace and unity. It is quite easy to create such masterpieces but quite hard to bring them into practice. If Sri Lanka’s citizens unite as children of one womb it is clear that the war would bury itself and the tree of peace would flourish with flowers of joy. Division is the soul reason for this conflict. Division should be demolished. People fail to understand that the blood in every body is the same. If only they realize that unmovable truth and unite as one would surely be living in paradise.

As citizens of Sri Lanka, we are dominated by the issues rising before our very eyes. All around, we see corruption and conflict that we fail to realize that almost every country in the world experiences a similar situation. The world itself is one home and the people are of one family, built within her womb mother earth wails over her divided children. “Conflict’ has gone beyond reasoning. The governments dominate the civilians and so this sort of idea in planted into every child’s thinking. But that is not so as civilians, as citizens of the world, as children of one mother, simply as human beings we have the power and responsibility; to create a world of harmony.

If we join hands and stand united we can move mountains. If we unite, we can make the sun rise from the West. If we unite we cannot be moved by any force. For that these ‘if’s’ must disappear. It must be realized by every single human that ‘unity’ is what we need; we have needed it for so long that we forgot about such a thing. We are of different races, religions, nations and languages but the truth is that we are all human remains. The truth that we were created by one God remains. This need to be the theme of every event, the chorus of every song, the title of every book, the message of every speech and each time a human heart beats; this should be the reason and purpose for that. If this can happen a change unimaginable will take place.

The conflict and division has to come to an end. Throughout history lives have been lost in vain. God can only take our lives away from us. Only God has the right to do that. Men cannot take their bothers’ lives. As humans we have a goal and obligation set before us and that is to achieve unity. Division has to be shattered into fragments. United we shall stand. Not a single force shall move us. Divided we fall. We are falling. Every second brings us closer to the final fall and if we fall that will be the full stop of every hope and dream that kept a single candle burning. That cannot happen. It should not happen. Unite as one and bring heaven on earth and peace among men.

Courtesy: Bishop’s College Magazine-Sri Lanka Guardian

By Nicola Nasser*

(January 31, Gaza Strip, Sri Lanka Guardian) Stubbornly insisting on getting the carriage before the horse as the approach to a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire in Gaza Strip, U.S. and European diplomacy in particular is building on an Israeli misleading premise that the 22 – day military operation, dubbed “Cast Lead,” against the Palestinian Gaza Strip was a reaction and not a premeditated long planned scheme that found in the change of guards in Washington D.C. an excellent timing. It was “not simply a reaction,” but “a calculation," Daniel Klaidman wrote in Newsweek on January 10.

U.S. and European diplomats are reiterating the Israeli propaganda justification: “What would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act.” U.S. President Barak Obama was the last western leader to uphold this Israeli claim. “But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country,” former Palestinian - Israeli member of Knesset Azmi Bishara said. Moreover what country would tolerate an eight –year siege and not consider it an act of war without any national reaction? Why should western diplomacy judge Palestinians in Gaza as universally abnormal.

Western diplomacy is building on the Palestinian reaction in self – defense as the igniting cause of violence and on the Israeli aggressive action as the resulting effect. It is a non starter. It could win EU high representative Javier Solana, the international middle East quartet of peace mediators’ envoy Tony Blair, who are regular visitors to the region, and U.S. newly appointed Middle East envoy George Mitchell some audience among their Arab and Palestinian peace partners who might still hope that the United States and the European Union may yet be able to deliver on their two – state promise, but this audience was not and is still not the key player in Gaza. Israeli and Hamas’ non – abiding reaction to the UN Security Council resolution 1860 proved British Foreign Secretary David Miliband right when he said immediately thereafter that “peace is made on the ground while resolutions are written in the United Nations.”

Hamas has survived the Israeli “Operation Cast Lead,” which failed to remove it as a key player, to remain the only player on the ground in Gaza and not only as a key player there as well as a major much stronger player among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Diaspora. To build their diplomacy for a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire on the recognition only of the Israeli player while bypassing or sidelining the other protagonist is a dead end approach that could only encourage more Israeli aggressive actions and would for sure invoke more Palestinian violent reaction.

Unfortunately this has been the focus of UN resolution 1860, the so – called Egyptian initiative, the recent European summit meetings with Arab and Israeli leaders, the Israeli – U.S. memorandum of understanding of January 19, George Mitchell’s Middle East eight – day tour, a focus that President Obama had subscribed to two days after his inauguration. It might not be too long before western diplomacy regrets this approach. Hamas should be “engaged … as there could be no solution to the issue” by keeping it out in the cold, Nathan J Brown, an expert from Carnegie Endowment, was quoted as saying by Indian “The Hindu” on January 25, a view shared also by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

In historical perspective, nothing proves the Israeli action and the Palestinian reaction more than the very existence of Hamas. While founding the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was the reaction of the Palestinian refugees in exile to the Israeli action of forcing them out of their homeland in 1948, the founding of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza was the Palestinian reaction to the Israeli military expansion in 1967, which led to the occupation of the rest of historic Palestine.

More recently, the Palestinian reaction managed to develop some locally – made primitive rockets in self – defense, and to smuggle in some “Grad” systems, which Israel used in addition to the tunnels under the Gaza – Egypt borders as justification for military action, while imposing a media blackout to hide the horrible humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza as the result of its eight – year old blockade of the territory, which left the besieged Palestinians with one of two choices: Either to starve slowly to death or die instantly en masse in “Operation Cast Lead.” Israel imposed siege, in itself an act of war, as a collective punishment against Gaza civilians. U.S. and European strong advocates of Humanitarian Intervention, led by French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who call now for such interventions in Darfur, Myanmar and Zimbabwe and who did intervene militarily for humanitarian reasons in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, have kept mum on Gaza.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt hit directly at the root cause of the Gaza conflict. “They will dig tunnels out of desperation and there will be no way of stopping all these tunnels if you don’t open up the border,” he said. Bildt was joined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who urged ending “Gaza's economic isolation by reopening the crossings that link it to the outside world." European leaders seem to have finally awakened to the real equation of cause and effect in the conflict. However they are calling for opening Gaza border crossings as a sideshow, as the effect and not as the root cause of Palestinian reaction, as a prerequisite for a “durable and sustainable” ceasefire and not as an obligation that Israel must abide by in its capacity as the occupying power under international law, as merely a humanitarian outlet for the besieged civilian population and not as a national right of the Palestinians in Gaza Strip in the context of the Israeli unilateral military redeployment from the coastal strip in 2005.

•Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit of the Israeli –occupied Palestinian Territories. He can be reached at nicolanasser@yahoo.com.-Sri Lanka Guardian

By: Mahen

(January 31, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is reliably learnt by the writer that the Rajapakse triggered 48 hour truce is yet another military strategy adopted by the Rajapakse regime. The Ceyloneese President Rajapakse declared a 48 hour truce in the pretence of facilitating civillian movements.

Since the 29th evening many Special Forces and Commando units who were kept in reserve during the last few weeks were seen taking up positions in the front line. This goes on to show the notorious attitude of the GOSL where they continue to exploit the humanitarian aspect of the LTTE. It is further revealed that the idea of a ceasefire was manufactured by the wily anti Thamil duo of Shiv Shankar Mennon and Palitha Kohona with the objective of appeasing the international community. Mennon has further gone on to arrange the Delhi based NDTV to carry out propaganda against the LTTE to brainwash the intelligent Thamil people in Thamil Nadu.

In the battlefront, the Singaleese Army continued their struggle at Chalai. As predicted weeks ago by the writer. LTTE is putting up stiff resistance there and SLA's 55th Division troops are trying to advance through very heavy casualties. Backed up by the tallest earth bund, the SLLI troops of the SLA have seen falling by the dozens in the event of their advances.-Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is pleased to note the Statement made by the UN Secretary General on 30 January 2009, which welcomes President Mahinda Rajapakse’s announcement of safe passage to a secure environment for civilians who are kept as a human shield by the LTTE in the North.


The UNSG has issued a strong message to the LTTE to allow the civilians in the conflict zone to move to areas cleared by the Government, keeping in mind the need to ensure the security and welfare of the innocent civilians. Such calls by the international community are timely, and will hopefully persuade the LTTE to respond to the humanitarian objective of releasing the majority Tamil civilians trapped in the uncleared areas.

The Government has taken several measures to ensure the safety and security of the civilians in the recent operations aimed at clearing the remaining few areas of the Mullaitivu district of LTTE activity. In view of the fact that the LTTE is holding the civilians by force as human shields, and not allowing them to enter into the cleared areas, the Government had demarcated a “safe area”, and informed civilians to move into the safe area. However, the LTTE had violated the objective of the safe area by moving mortar and heavy weapons into, this area and firing from within the safe area over civilians, thus causing civilian casualties, and endangering their security.

It is against this background that the President of Sri Lanka has announced the safe passage for all civilians.

The government wishes to reiterate its position that the military activities are aimed solely at eradicating terrorism. The Government of Sri Lanka has adhered to , and will continue to adhere to a “zero civilian casualty” policy in its effort to eradicate terrorism. - Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 31, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) APRSL was launched on Sunday 25 January 2009 at a gathering of progressive minded diaspora Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese, deeply concerned of the ravages of war and the need to bring all the communities in Sri Lanka together for nation building and restoration of peace, democracy and rule of law so that the country as a whole can advance socially, politically and economically to achieve its rightful place in the world.

APRSL is a democratic, independent and non-partisan organisation, aiming to play a campaigning, supporting and advisory role in the resolution of ethnic conflict and the restoration of peace and democracy, which will empower all communities to take an active part in the national reconstruction process.

All like-minded Sri-Lankans are welcome to join and /or support in this worthy challenge.

At the founder members meeting on 25 January 2009, APRSL's Constitution and the following Mission Statement were adopted and an Executive Committee of 15 members, office bearers and sub-committees were also elected.

Full text of the Mission Statement of APRSL

Standards of governance have continued to decline since Sri Lanka gained independence six decades back. A vision for a multi- lingual, multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-community nation was lacking among the political parties contending for power in the newly emergent nation.

The fact that there is more in common among the peoples of Sri Lanka was glossed over, while the differences were exaggerated in order to garner votes from a fragmented electorate. The pursuit of power without scruples has fractured the nation at various levels, with the communal divide-Sinhala vs. Tamil, leading to a brutal and barbaric civil war and a demand for a separate state for the Tamils.

The failure to embrace accommodative politics, respect constitutional norms and adhere to basic moral principles has thwarted Sri Lanka from achieving her potential, while causing immense suffering to sections of her people and have failed to achieve 'Unity in Diversity' amongst the communities.

Corruption and violence of all sorts have become endemic and are thriving national industries. All the above factors have contributed to make a mockery of rule of law and brought about a decline in 'Good Governance'.

The current situation in Sri Lanka dictates the need for a visionary approach, to arrest further decline in all aspects of national life, bring about a national reconciliation and set in motion a vibrant accommodative democratic process for national revival through political empowerment encompassing all her peoples.

Socio-political structures have to be remade where necessary, strengthened where required and the people empowered to the greatest extent possible. The strangle hold of the politicians at all levels of national life has to be broken as a national priority. Sri Lanka has to become a pragmatic, forward looking nation, unencumbered by both her recent and ancient past.

Tragic events of the past three decades have given rise to a vibrant, prosperous, and skilled Tamil Diaspora, which has strong emotional and family ties to Sri Lanka. This Diaspora continues to have strong interest in the affairs in Sri Lanka and is not only a major asset for the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, but potentially for the whole country. This asset has to be cultivated and mobilized for the betterment of both the Tamils and the country at large.

This Diaspora has to also participate in the process of conflict resolution in Sri Lanka.

It is the objective of this grouping to:

1. To bear upon the Government of Sri Lanka and other participants in the political process to resolve the Sinhala-Tamil- Muslim aspirations through an accommodative process in a transparent manner.

To achieve this the following activities will be undertaken:

Campaigning internationally on Social, political, human rights and humanitarian issues of concern to all Sri Lankans.

Establish socio-media structures to deal with issues affecting vulnerable Sri Lankans both within and outside the country.

Educate, motivate and harness youth in the Diaspora to become involved in the conflict resolution process both inside and outside Sri Lanka.
To lend a hand to resolve the conflict in Sri Lanka.

2. To harness the resources of Sri Lankan Diaspora to develop and strengthen the socio- economic structures within Sri Lanka and within the Diaspora itself.

3. To bring about the awareness that we are all Sri Lankans, irrespective of where we may be living around the globe. - Sri Lanka Guardian

"Prabhakaran’s rejection of the electoral and peaceful means to gaining freedom and his resorting to terrorism only, call into question the legitimacy of its quest for independence."
_________

By Philip Fernando in Los Angeles for Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 31, Los Angeles, Sri Lanka Guardian) LTTE believed that when state and ethnic group boundaries do not coincide, politics must remain ugly. That policy was prescriptive and agenda-driven and not based on winning rights or ventilating grievances. They demonized democratically elected governments for decades with a just one slogan “ethnic domination by southern chauvinists.” LTTE ignored the fact that Fifty five percent of the minorities live amidst the majority community-in Colombo, Kandy, Galle Matara etc. Yet they actively pursued separation of peoples through expulsions, the redrawing of ethnic boundaries and the outright destruction of life and property to claim territories of their own. It had no chance of success.


Having lost most of their territorial domain, the LTTE still relied on partition as the only remedy. The DMK recently faulted the LTTE for not responding to the Sri Lanka government's request to protect civilians, thereby proving that he is not the liberator he claims to be. He is sacrificing the lives of those whom he was trying to liberate by making a human shield out of them. LTTE is hiding behind hapless men, women and children. Even the well-known LTTE backers in Chennai cannot dislodge LTTE from their exploitation of innocent people.

LTTE’s basic assumption that ethnicity must breed conflict is an example of a classical error sometimes called "the base-rate fallacy. It is particularly seductive when events are much more visible than nonevents. How diversity thrived within eighty five percent of the country was ignored and they pursued violence in homogenizing the LTTE led terrorists enclave in the North. By being oblivious to the conflicts that did not happen, Prabhakaran deliberately denied the dynamics of those that did.

Time is ripe to understand how ethnic diversity is so blatantly obvious in Sri Lanka. There has not been a single instance of chaotic ethnic violence in Sri Lanka for decades even when numerous suicide bombers decimated families including infants, the Buddhist clergy and ministers of repute. The propensity to understand and make sense of when ethnic differences generate conflict -- and knowing how best to attempt to prevent or respond to them when they do has been a trade mark of Sri Lanka for several decades now: a manifestation of a deeper understanding of how ethnicity works.

People tend to prefer members of their own group and, in some cases, have active antipathy toward out-group members, making conflict the inevitable result. That is the exception and not the rule. LTTE used the negative aspects of ethnicity towards achieving their own sinister ends. It was used as an appealing narrative. It resonated when violence was pursued for an ulterior end. But it was doomed from the start.

It is obvious that the notion that ethnic diversity generates antipathies so deep that they cannot be realistically resolved, so separation becomes the obvious end, perhaps, the only feasible antidote has been proved to be wrong. In reality, political coalitions are formed along ethnic lines not because people care more for their own but simply because it is easier to collaborate with their ethnic peers to achieve collective ends.

Such reciprocity is most likely to develop in environments that are devoid of the institutions and practices. Time has come to foster institutions that would protect ethnic groups from being taken advantage of by ruthless seekers of power. In such cases, reciprocity is a protection against being cheated by a ruthless terrorist. People have rejected the so called tribal antipathies brought to the surface by the LTTE. The time to install initiatives that break down barriers to cooperation has arrived. The best response may be greater investment in formal institutions so that individuals are assured that discrimination will be punished and that cooperation across ethnic lines will be reciprocated.

Tragically, the Tamil Diaspora was forced to sacrifice millions of well earned money ($ 300 million or so every year) for a cause they had no faith in. It can be said with a great deal of certainty that the generosity of the Diaspora for building bridges towards peace will emerge soon even without any attempt at extortion. Remarkably, given the opportunity to donate to a worthy cause they would be generous. There are no inherent impediments to foster unity that the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims would fail to capitalize. There are more bulldozers, tractors, trailers amidst all the paraphernalia of development in the Eastern Province today than anywhere else in Sri Lanka. LTTE’s hold there vanished only a year ago.

It is opportune to invest in creating impartial and credible state institutions that facilitate cooperation across ethnic lines. With such institutions in place, citizens would no longer need to rely disproportionately on ethnic networks in the marketplace and in politics. In this respect, modernization may be the antidote to ethnic nationalism because we always rejected the destabilizing idea that every separately defined cultural unit should have its own state.

The LTTE may still cling to the notion that disruption and political introversion would automatically bring ethnic liberation. History has proved otherwise. Prabhakaran helped the doctrine of ethnic self-determination reached its reductio ad absurdum at this point. The hopelessly impractical Eelam struggle remains beyond reach and illusive. In the world today, there are 6,800 different dialects or languages that might gain political recognition as independent linguistic groups. Does anyone seriously suggest that the 200 or so existing states should each, on average, be cut into 34 pieces?

Sri Lanka has been more responsive to their ethnic minority communities than ever before. Compared to the imperial agglomerations of yesteryear, we are behaving receptively well to the aspirations of all citizens. We also have more resources at our disposal than before and have annual budgets equivalent to nearly 50 percent of their GDPs, much of which is spent on social services that benefit everyone. They can -- and do -- accommodate the economic needs of all communities quite well. They have responded to the basic requirements of language, freedoms of worship, assembly and right to education with greater fervor. If Bretons, Punjabis, Quebecois, and Scots live quite well inside the bonds of multinational sovereignty and in some cases better than residents of other provinces with no claims of being a distinct nation, so can the Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers.

Prabhakaran’s rejection of the electoral and peaceful means to gaining freedom and his resorting to terrorism only, call into question the legitimacy of its quest for independence. His systematic destruction of dissent in the North doomed him for good. He had scant respect for Kadiragamas, Alfred Duraiappahs and Thiruchelvams, just to name a few of his victims who were far superior in intellect to him.

Let me end on a positive note. India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand contain different ethnic groups that have largely profited from the intense economic resurgence of their states. Northern and southern Vietnam is culturally different, but both have benefited from the country's economic growth. We are certain that Sri Lanka would respond to economic needs of all groups, and whatever its concerns, no single group need not seek separation to alleviate their needs. There is a sure fire alternative to partition: buckle down to work. - Sri Lanka Guardian

By Ranjit Surendran and Roshanti Arasakularatne in Kilinochchi

(January 31, Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The fact of the matter is that the LTTE are holding about 400,000 Wanni Tamils hostage as human shield in sheer desperation when, if they had any consideration for the civilian population, they would have by now surrendered to the Sri Lankan Forces. The game is up and there is not going to be any miracle to aid this brutal, bestial force. In 1995 with heavy monsoon rains at its most vicious beating, people from Jaffna were force-marched by the Tigers to Vadamarachchi and beyond and many perished along the route.


It was an unbelievable spectacle of utter brutality and only Adolf Hitler bettered it by railroading the Jews to their infamous camps. Pol Pot of Cambodia too did what Prabhakaran did to the Tamils.

The people from this district were literally marched at gun point because their cadres needed to escape from the peninsula into Wanni. In the process, the LTTE cadres also ransacked the emptied houses and some people who stayed back hiding were shot to death. The cadres even removed doors and asbestos roofing and just about every furniture they could transport to Wanni.

The pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora has been blind and indifferent to all these atrocities. They also depended for their information on the traitorous group of Tamil National Alliance Members of Parliament, a cowardly lot who in the history of the Tamils will certainly be branded as opportunist traitors. May be it is time for them to flee Sri Lanka and seek refuge elsewhere in case people turn their anger against them.

Today’s (January 30, 2009) Tamilnet’s leading feature titled “SLA separates relatives of seriously wounded to Vavuniya internment camp” is a mischievous contortion of what really is happening under the worrying circumstances existing in Wanni. The whole world knows that the government has given a 48-hour respite for the thousands held in hostage to be released. An LTTE spokesperson has said that the people do not want to go away from their custody. Our impression is totally the very opposite and they fear the LTTE guns and grenades.

Are their people who can really believe this statement as true unless they are moonstruck with madness? Typically a Tamil National Alliance MP Shivasakthi Anandan with comments and statements is behaving like how a TNA MP has been behaving all these years. They dance to the organ grinder, Prabhakaran himself. The pro-LTTE Diaspora does the same.

There are news about pro-LTTE and anti-Sri Lankan Government demonstrations in Toronto and London but is there anybody with guts to ask the Tamils held in hostage by the LTTE be released? The answer is a loud and emphatic “NO” – they will not do so. They would rather have these innocent thousands slaughtered so that they can make much out of it to their sadistic satisfaction. LTTE alive is what they want whatever the cost of lives be of their kith and kin.

Several international organizations are demanding that the Tamils held hostage are released and so are some countries that have shown their concerns in respect of the ethnic problems in Sri Lanka, but not the Pro-Tamil Diaspora in Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

Terrorism as a means of political action will not hold water anymore anywhere in the world. Even in Sri Lanka, the government is well advised to ensure that there is no more any semblance or racial or Buddhist fundamental terrorism that largely contributed to the rise of Tiger terrorism. Looking at events in the world over the last one hundred years, all those leaders who took to terrorism failed and have done immense harm to humanity.

Prabhakaran himself prescribed cyanide pills to his followers and even had his agents steal into the prison where some LTTE leaders were held by the Indian Peace-Keeping Forces with the order that they take the cyanide way out. Has this man not the guts to do that himself now that the whole horrendous farce has virtually come to an end? Hundreds of Tamil youth perished the cyanide way during the last three decades.

People who stand out as great leaders are those who opted for passive and non-violent leadership and the most remarkable ones are Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, all of whom achieved not only what looked impossible but in their leadership enshrined the humanity of the human beings.

Adolf Hitler and his company like Pol Pot and Prabhakaran opted for the evil and as is always true, evil begets evil. It is a fact the Sri Lankan Government has been most unfair to the minority Tamils and have still not awoken to the fundamental reality that every citizen of Sri Lanka has the right to be equally treated and no community is lesser in status than the other. Furthermore the minorities are not living in Sri Lanka by the grace of the majority.

The country has come to a situation when a terrible chapter of brutal terrorism is going to end. This must be greeted with the hope that very soon every citizen of Sri Lanka will live as equal citizens to one another and where the freedoms fundamental to the wellbeing of a nation will be zealously guarded and held sacrosanct.

Here below is the Tamilnet feature dated January 30, 2009:

SLA separates relatives of seriously wounded to Vavuniya internment camp

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 January 2009, 19:56 GMT]: Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vavuniya, inhumanely separated 122 immediate family members accompanying the seriously wounded 226 civilians transported by the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), and sent them to an internment camp in Nelukku'lam, Vavuniyaa, medical sources in Vavuniyaa told TamilNet. Mothers of number of injured children, between ages 8 and 10 years, were also not allowed to remain with their children, and were transferred to the internment camp. When the Vanni district Tamil National Alliance MP Shivashakthi Anandan visited the hospital to see the newly arrived injured patients, he witnessed the pathetic plight of the children who were injured and admitted on Thursday, mentally traumatized staying alone in the hospital without their mothers. Patients requiring additional help struggled to manage alone in the Vavuniyaa hospital.

Shivashakthi Anandan brought the matter to the attention of high ranking government authorities and urged them to at least allow the mothers to be with their children. The request was turned down by the military officials, according to the MP. The patients discharged from the hospital are also being dispatched to the Nelukku'lam internment centre, according to civil society sources.

Civilians arriving in Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) controlled areas are not being allowed to move freely or to stay with their relatives in Vavuniyaa, in gross violation of fundamental rights, NGO sources in Vavuniyaa said. The victims are held in an open prison without any communication with outside world, NGO sources added. The victims are also misused by the 'embedded media persons' of the Sri Lanka Army to disseminate false propaganda recordings to Sinhala television stations, civil society sources said. - Sri Lanka Guardian

By: Rajan Hoole

(January 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The capture of Kilinochchi in late December and the Mullaitivu ‘command hub’ in late January by government forces marks another milestone in the unending saga of Tamil refugees. From mid-2007, the bulk of the LTTE was confined to the Vanni, fighting in the last block of land under its control. By now, this war running 30 years, during which the social fabric of the engaged societies has been shredded, has been shown to be futile. The war had nothing to do with honour or the good of the people.


The Colombo government has been conducting the campaign under a blanket of severe censorship, enforced less by regulation than by physical attacks on journalists, in an attempt to hide the figures of troops dead and maimed. But had the government just put forward a political settlement and assured security for Tamils – both those living under its control and those escaping from the LTTE – the rebels’ defeat could have been secured politically, rather than through an excess of blood and repression. In the absence of a political vision to win over the minorities and unite the country, the ‘war on terror’ has become a licence for state terror against them, and for long-term impunity in general. Already, since early 2006, over 1500 Tamil civilians have been killed by hit squads operating under state intelligence services. Several of these victims had children in the LTTE or gave the rebels food in order to help a young person risking his or her life.

From the time the LTTE forced a large section of civilians living in Jaffna into the Vanni in 1995, it placed severe restrictions on their leaving the area, introducing an elaborate pass system and forcing military training on both schoolchildren and adults. From 2006, it ruled that every family must send at least one fighter to the LTTE forces, a diktat it began to enforce by raiding homes and abducting minors as they reached their 17th birthday. If the victim had already been sent into hiding, they took a proxy. As things became desperate in 2008, the required number of inductees per family was increased depending on its size – two from a family with four children, while one with an only child was officially exempt. Mostly young, unwilling, barely trained conscripts were being sent into the battlefield. Yet no political means of rescuing these conscripts was ever contemplated by Colombo officialdom.

Even as it pulled back, the LTTE’s main hope was to inflict maximum casualties and wear down the government’s ability to protract the war. Casualties in recent months have indeed been high. Many of the soldiers being killed are poor, unemployed victims of a mismanaged economy and a massively self-perpetuating defence budget; they had not been told that, after training, they would be sent into a veritable mincing machine. Perhaps inevitably, desertion levels grew significantly. Meanwhile, the LTTE is holding civilians under worsening conditions, their movement restricted and subjected to regular bombing and shelling. Rather than move to government-controlled areas, most of them earlier preferred to either flee to India or remain in the LTTE areas. Of course, the situation in India is little better. Over the years, many refugees have engaged in perilous sea crossings, only to return out of desperation, get beaten again, lose their family members and property, and dissolutely re-make the journey to India. After several such experiences, these individuals inevitably become desperately poor and bereft of will.

In northern Sri Lanka, by the end of January, up to 35 civilians were dying in government bombing and shelling every day. Mullaitivu District Government Agent Emelda Sukumar, out of sheer desperation perhaps, told Reuters, “When people occupy particular places, the LTTE sends shells from that area, and then the army also targets the same area.” That dual callousness too is a long-running, unspeakable aspect of the Tamil saga.

The beginning

The refugee issue has its origins back when the government of the day planned the anti-Tamil pogrom in Colombo in July 1983, in which some 2000 Tamils were killed by state-sponsored mobs. The saga of the Tamil refugees began soon after, in November 1984, when the government threw out the Tamils living in Manal Aru, in the southeast of the Northern Province. This was an ideological project, launched with the expertise of Israeli intelligence, in order to suppress Tamil nationalist aspirations. Minister Lalith Athulathmudali (who was later to earn a dubious reputation as National Security Minister) spoke of the government’s intention of settling 200,000 Sinhalese, mainly ex-convicts and fisherfolk, among Tamils in the northeast. This undertaking introduced a new viciousness to the brewing conflict, with its intention of building Sinhalese settlements by evicting Tamils from the northeast, thus denying the Tamils physical and cultural spaces in areas where they had for several centuries been the majority. Among the Tamils, these actions created panic. Amidst the militant reaction spawned in response to the July 1983 violence, many Tamils felt that only a military response could safeguard their habitat from aggression.

Events moved quickly from then on. The LTTE massacred about 73 Sinhalese civilians in South Mullaitivu, most of them convicts settled in Manal Aru. The government responded by massacring scores of Tamils in the surrounding area. During February 1985, Tamil peasant families who entered the area to harvest their fields were fired upon by Air Force helicopters, killing over a hundred, including women and children. Since then, Manal Aru has remained part of the militarised High Security Zone in which Sinhalese settlements were established, leading to the permanent displacement of at least 2500 Tamil families. In May 1985, following a series of killings by government forces, LTTE cadres entered the heavily militarised sacred city of Anuradhapura, and massacred 120 Sinhalese pilgrims. The government responded with a series of massacres of Tamils, killing 2200 in 1985 alone. These attacks led to two main developments: first, the rise of the Tigers; and second, the burgeoning phenomenon of Tamil refugees.

The LTTE’s ruthless military image appealed to a section of Tamil nationalist sentiment, which saw in it the answer to Sinhalese nationalist violence. Other Tamil militants with Marxist ideas – who wanted to work with like-minded Sinhalese and create a socialist Lanka free of ethno-chauvinism – were weakened by the extreme violence of the times. The LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, consolidated his totalitarian control of the organisation, targeting effective leaders in rival groups and, during late 1986, militarily decimating his rivals to become the ‘sole representative’ of the Tamil people. Thereafter, there were few dissident voices among the Tamils, mainly out of fear. Some students who instinctively reacted against totalitarianism did at first resist the LTTE, but were soon silenced.

Indian hand

The displacement of Tamils from large parts of the east continued through deliberate military action. In the north, too, military reprisals, especially in the coastal areas, led to about 200,000 refugees fleeing to Tamil Nadu by 1987. The eviction of civilians also saw an increasing military presence, the creation of refugee camps and the further displacement of civilians. This may not have led to permanent damage had there been a negotiated settlement enabling refugees to return to their homes. But here, too, the LTTE had become a prisoner of the very violence that led to its sensational rise.

The reality was that once the LTTE had violently eliminated other militant groups, it had also phenomenally weakened the Tamil armed struggle. It was pitted against a state with large population reserves and relatively huge resources. Although the LTTE tried to make up numbers by recruiting children and women, and developing a unit of suicide cadres with which to leverage its human resources, it was not in a position to halt any determined military advance. This meant that Tamil communities were unendingly bombed from the air, shelled, massacred and displaced, with no end to the ordeal in sight.

A chance for peace came when India intervened in 1987, enforcing a ceasefire through the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) and pushing through a political settlement under the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987. Although the LTTE agreed to this deal, the result exposed the futility of its brand of politics and its grandiose claims. To the Tamil people, India became the benefactor, while the rebels came to represent a cruel embarrassment. The LTTE resorted to war in an attempt to show India in a bad light, proceeding even to fire at the Indian Army from civilian concentrations and refugee camps.

As the Indian Army advanced into Jaffna in October 1987, two instances in particular stand out. One was when the LTTE fired with small arms at the tanks leading the Indian column from the top floor of Kokuvil Hindu College, which at the time was a refugee camp. One of these tanks subsequently swung its turret and fired into a ground-floor classroom, killing over 30 refugees. The other notable memory from that time was when the rebels directed small-arms fire at the advancing Indian Army column from a Jaffna Hospital balcony; although the LTTE cadres managed to escape, 70 patients and staff were killed when Indian soldiers moved into the hospital. Such strategies became a regular feature of the LTTE’s attempt to score political capital in addition to adding to its ranks recruits from disgruntled civilians.

The Indian Army had made excursions into Prabhakaran’s jungle hideouts, but had refrained from going in for the kill. It made more sense to Indian policymakers to negotiate a deal with a weakened LTTE, arriving at some type of political arrangement. Even though in its military actions the Indian Army was guilty of a number of rights violations and reprisal violence, mandarins in New Delhi never lost sight of the political component to the fighting. The North-East Provincial Council was set up, and the Indian Army wanted to ensure that normal economic activities were able to continue. Even as hostilities went forward, there was no debilitating red tape nor indefinite delays obstructing the free movement of people or goods. Any displacement that took place during the IPKF period was only temporary – a sharp contrast to what happened under the Sri Lankan military, especially from 2006.

To some extent, India’s role secured the political rights, economic vitality and habitat of the people of the northeast. This, of course, would have spelled the LTTE’s doom, at least if the Indian Army had managed to bring adequate discipline into its responses to provocations. It was for this reason that the LTTE cut the opportunistic deal with the government of Ranasinghe Premadasa: to get the Indian Army out. The LTTE, which required a total vacuum in the northeast, wanted President Premadasa to dissolve the North-East Provincial Council, to which he gladly agreed. The last Indian Army troops left in March 1990; within 70 days, the LTTE had returned to war. Indeed, this was not even a declared pullout from the peace deal with Colombo, but rather a calculated provocation, with the LTTE simply surrounding police stations in the east. Still labouring under the belief that this ‘quarrel’ could be peacefully resolved, the government instructed the policemen to surrender. The rebels subsequently took hundreds of disarmed Sinhalese and Muslim policemen into the jungle, massacred them and pulled out, leaving the Tamil civilians at the mercy of incensed troops and rampaging government-supported Muslim hoodlums.

The result of this evolution was a swelling of the LTTE’s ranks accompanied by the estrangement between the Tamil and Muslim communities in the east. The LTTE followed up with unprovoked massacres in two prominent Muslim villages near Batticaloa that had attempted to keep out of the violence. In turn, this resulted in a whole new and massive refugee problem, ending the relative respite the people had experienced under the Indian Army. The LTTE had no intention of holding the east or protecting its civilians.

Keeping the Vanni

Once again, refugees from North Trincomalee, who had been resettled when the Indian Army had been present, fled by boat to Mullaitivu in the north or directly to Nagapattinam in India. Then, the LTTE, for the first time raising its own conventional army for offensive operations, attempted to drive the Sri Lanka Army out of the north. This was a desperate gamble. That it succeeded to the extent that it did is surprising, given that the LTTE would ultimately be no match for Colombo. After holding it became untenable, the army eventually withdrew from Jaffna Fort. By the end of 1990, the army was forced to vacate virtually the whole of the Vanni, including Kilinochchi and Mankulam. These were to be the scenes for the battles that took place in 2007 through 2009.

The LTTE’s efforts to drive the army out of Elephant Pass in July 1991 failed. The dead included over 500 young children, often 14 and above, thrown into the fray in desperation, at a time when the offensive began to falter. Its attempt to drive the army out of Pooneryn, in 1993, likewise succeeded only partially, leaving nearly 400 dead. All of this meant a huge cost being placed on the civilian population through bombing, shelling and displacement. As society and economic life disintegrated, young recruits, particularly children, were killed in large numbers. Another segment, which used the war prolonged by the incompatibility of LTTE politics and peace, to obtain refugee status in the West, underwent a change of psychology to materially support the LTTE’s brand of extremism to the detriment and agony of those in their former homeland.

This period also saw the deliberate displacement of Muslims from the north. Being a totalitarian movement with an ideology – and one that gave its leader quasi-divine status, enjoying the right to the indiscriminate use of humans around him – the LTTE could not get the Muslims, even formally, under its ideological umbrella. This community constituted an indispensable part of the northern society and economy, but maintained a social cohesion and aloofness from the LTTE. Several articulate Christian clergy, on the other hand, long being made comfortable with Tamil nationalism, made opportunistic compromises with the Tigers, which for its part also found their connections with the West useful. In October 1990, the LTTE drove out 80,000 Muslims from the north with just two hours’ notice, carrying only the clothes on their back. To this day, most of these forsaken people remain in refugee camps around Puttalam (see Himal January 2008, “The right of return to Jaffna”).

In 1991, the army in Jaffna was confined to a small area around Palaly, which was militarily untenable. General Denzil Kobbekaduwa set in motion a plan to retake Jaffna and, as a first step, he extended the area of control around Palaly. This caused a fresh round of displacement from some of the best agricultural land in Jaffna, which has since remained part of the High Security Zone. By 1994, the war had entered a stalemate. The following year, however, the LTTE began another round of war, after aborting seven months of peace talks with the new government of Chandrika Kumaratunga. The rebels also had a new military strategy in place, after having stocked up on anti-aircraft weaponry. The government forces in the Jaffna Peninsula suddenly found themselves under siege, after two military transport planes were brought down and with the Sea Tigers threatening the supply by sea.

Colombo was thus forced either to take the whole of Jaffna or lose the north altogether. Once again, the LTTE had underestimated the government’s military capacity. The government’s first attempt in July 1995 was aborted after heavy displacement and about 300 civilians killed by missiles. Faced with losing Jaffna, exactly five years after it had forced out the Muslim population, on 30 October 1995, the LTTE forced most of Jaffna’s civilian population to move into the Vanni. Recruiting from the displaced population once again, it was able to maintain the Vanni as its main base – at least until government forces began retaking this territory in recent months.

Ideology and extremism

Before coming to the most recent developments, we should pause to explore the links between ideology, displacement, and political and military strategy. First is the Sinhalese nationalist extremist viewpoint that the island belongs to the Sinhalese, and is sacred to Buddhism. Any assertion of the northeast as the homeland of the Tamils had to be confronted by ‘Sinhalising’ the region – ie, by planting Sinhalese settlements. As it happened, this was accomplished by violent means and displacement. A direct result of this strategy was to facilitate the LTTE’s brand of extremism in order to take control of the Tamil liberation struggle.

Second, there is the Tamil nationalist extremism. Although having violently marginalised the opposition among the Tamils, the LTTE was no match for the resources of the Sri Lankan state. The rebel force raised the stakes by making Prabhakaran into a demigod, and using its monopoly over propaganda to recruit children and women. Yet its inability to deliver despite several rounds of ‘final war’ left it politically vulnerable, and unable to survive in a quasi-democratic environment. It had to continue ratcheting up the rhetoric, emphasising that a separate state was the only viable settlement. This meant that negotiations were purely tactical and insincere, leading to the organisation launching an indefinite series of ‘final wars’ whose only results were displacement, refugees, loss of habitable territory and loss of population, the latter to both death and emigration. The diaspora that resulted from this loss of population also served as the potent mafia arm of the LTTE, able to maintain a phenomenal supply of weapons, thus bringing greater misery to those at home.

An important factor has been the persistent absence of mature political leadership in the Sinhalese south. The LTTE’s malicious provocations of the Sinhalese are undoubtedly calculated to weaken the enlightened sections among them. Even though the war continued, Colombo governments until the Rajapakse presidency did not formally tamper with the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces under the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord. While formally committed to a political settlement, all governments from 1990 kept the North-East Provincial Council dissolved, which was a disturbing sign that powerful sections in the south continued to harbour the Sinhalisation agenda.

With Chandrika Kumaratunga becoming president in 1994, many among the Sinhalese intelligentsia took the view that a federal settlement was the only way forward, with or without the LTTE’s cooperation. The key aim here was winning over the Tamils and defusing the appeal of its extremism. The long-delayed attempt in 2000 to get a settlement through Parliament ultimately failed, however, due to the opportunism of a section of the Colombo elite supporting the United National Party (UNP) opposition and, of course, the Sinhalese extremist parties. The LTTE also assassinated and intimidated Tamil parliamentarians who supported the settlement.

In 2002, the new UNP government signed a ceasefire agreement with Norwegian facilitation, the main inspiration of which was the appeasement of the LTTE. This was supported overwhelmingly by local and foreign peace activists. Predictably, the LTTE used the ceasefire period to build up its military capacity for another round of war. By 2005, the Sinhalese extremists mobilised against the tattered peace agreement, and the peace community was thoroughly discredited. By enforcing a Tamil boycott of the 2005 presidential election, the LTTE played a crucial role in electing, by a whisker, Mahinda Rajapakse, who was backed by Sinhalese extremist groupings. Once more, the LTTE banked on provoking a war in which the president, backed by extremists, would be seen in a bad light. This, the thinking went, would give the rebels a political edge if they could score a few sensational military gains.

Scorched earth

Again, the LTTE miscalculated against a potentially much stronger enemy. Further to the LTTE’s misfortune, the West largely blamed it for the failure of the Norwegian-brokered peace process, and several countries, including the EU, banned the LTTE in early 2006. The LTTE’s attempt to smuggle in anti-aircraft missiles was intercepted by a US government sting operation. These two events were ultimately crucial in determining the LTTE’s military fate. There was now little chance of the LTTE holding onto the areas it controlled in the east, especially after its eastern chief Colonel ‘Karuna’ split off from Prabhakaran with many cadres to eventually form a paramilitary outfit under the government’s direction. Nonetheless, Prabhakaran’s best chance lay in overrunning the Jaffna Peninsula, where 44,000 troops were stationed, and forcing a government with an extremist image into negotiations. This is exactly what he tried, and failed, to do in August 2006. There went the LTTE’s last chance.

By this time, the Sinhalese extremists backing President Rajapakse could smell the blood in the water. Just as the LTTE believed that its strategy of negotiations and war would finally push things in its favour, the Sinhalese extremists figured that, given the LTTE’s military limitations (particularly following the Karuna split), opposing any political settlement and pushing for a military solution would ultimately work in their favour. The LTTE’s provocations and abuse of negotiations helped their cause. Their agenda was Sinhalese hegemony over the minorities, which included their displacement and Sinhalese settlement.

In 2006, President Rajapakse found it expedient to claim that he stood for a political settlement, and thereupon set up the All Party Representatives Committee (APRC) to work out one. Although India had been disengaged since the withdrawal of the IPKF in 1990, New Delhi insisted on a political settlement. But in 2006, Colombo began to dismantle the consensus reached under the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord, and moved the Supreme Court to annul the northeast merger, which in principle recognised a Tamil-majority region. Indian policy lacked the focus and vision to counter the government’s wiles in these actions and appears to have been caught napping. Two years later, in January 2008, after deliberate delay, President Rajapakse was to go back on his solemn pledges and instead impose his own draft proposals on the APRC chairman. These proposals were a feeble reflection of what was envisaged under the Indo-Lanka Accord, with no pretence at addressing the political aspirations of the minorities. New Delhi announced that the sham proposals were a “welcome first step”, suggesting that it was giving the Colombo government free run in combating the LTTE, without doing anything meaningful to secure the rights and security of the Tamils.

From 2006, the government began to do what would have been unthinkable after 1987. Intense shelling and deliberate displacement of Tamil populations became integral to its military strategy. Starting in August 2006, it drove the Tamils out of Mutur East and Vaharai through intense bombing and shelling, during which 300 civilians were killed. It then declared Sampoor, a culturally important Tamil area, as the location for a thermal power station to be constructed by India. Even while survivors were in refugee camps, the government began to destroy houses and build roads – direct echoes of the mid-1980s plans to establish Sinhalese settlements, which had been shelved after the Indo-Lanka Accord.

During previous rounds of war, precedents had been set in which the army took areas without displacing the civilians, such as by asking civilians by radio to move temporarily into schools and places of worship until the troops arrived. But a distinctly new strategy was clearly at play when the army cleared Mutur, Mutur East and Vaharai, where the military forced civilians to run for their lives under fire. In the Muslim-majority town of Mutur, 50 civilians were killed when indiscriminately fired government shells struck mosques, churches and schools, where civilians had taken shelter after the LTTE occupied the town. Thereafter, Tamil civilians, including elderly and children, fled south on foot. Wherever they stopped they were bombed and shelled. In Kathiraveli, with no LTTE provocation, the army shelled a school with refugees, killing over 40. Once the civilians reached Vaharai, the LTTE prevented them from moving further south. In December 2006, the army rained shells into Vaharai, and by the middle of that month about 10,000 civilians had placed themselves in and around Vaharai Hospital, as their last hope, until a shell struck the Hospital.

Civilians began fleeing, in defiance of the LTTE. At this stage, the LTTE fired at army lines from among the civilians, goading the army into firing back and preventing the civilians from fleeing. A number of witnesses assert that people died due to firing by both sides, and that the LTTE fired at people whose desperation had finally exceeded their fear of the Tigers. Quite a few drowned trying to ford the Vaharai lagoon, or when overloaded boats capsized during attempts to flee by sea. This scorched-earth policy towards Tamil civilians was later to be repeated in the Vanni.

Government control

It was pointed out earlier that Tamil civilians in the east were deliberately displaced and then confined to refugee camps far from their homes. Their resettlement was very slow. In Sampoor and the surrounding environs, the land was converted into the High Security Zone from which civilians are still barred. When troops were withdrawn from their area in 1996, these civilians had no choice but to live under LTTE control. Inevitably, they have children and relatives who had served in the LTTE, mainly under duress. Once displaced and confined to refugee camps, their movements were not restricted; however, several of them were followed by government death squads and either shot on the streets or abducted from their camps. These people are often very poor, and only the few who had relatives elsewhere willing to accommodate them were able to move out and find relative security.

In the Vanni, those who fled the LTTE were confined to detention centres, officially misnamed as ‘welfare centres’. One aspect confirming the prison status of these camps is the fact that families are not allowed to seek shelter with host families, hitherto a common arrangement for the displaced in Sri Lanka. People who had made arrangements to go abroad before they were displaced – such as young women whose fiancés were waiting for them – were also not allowed to leave. (After some delay, however, university students have been allowed out.) Such a situation is completely unprecedented. People of all ages are treated as detainees, yet of course there are no criminal charges. The people of the Vanni are now divided into three main groups: those who have escaped to India; those confined to camps south of Vanni by the government and kept in isolation; and the estimated 250,000 within the shrinking LTTE-controlled area, living without proper care and shelter, and regularly subjected to army bombing and shelling. Recently some have also begun escaping north to the Jaffna Peninsula – an open-air prison.

In Jaffna, the attitude of the government is reflected in the enormous restrictions on movement, such as the arbitrary closure of roads for several hours to allow an army convoy to pass. Long bureaucratic delays, of weeks or months, are required to gain permission to leave the peninsula and fly to Colombo. This has brought the economy to a standstill. By imposing a debilitating security regime on the Tamils, the government is virtually forcing the Tamils to go elsewhere.

In the final analysis, there were ways in which the Colombo government could have won over the Tamil population. All it would have had to do was to acknowledge that irrespective of the LTTE, this long-suffering community has political rights, and the authorities should have used the international machinery to safeguard human rights and maintain humanitarian norms. That would have resulted in minimum loss of life and damage to the economy as a whole. Guided instead by Sinhalese extremists, the Rajapakse regime took the course of inflicting maximum destruction on the northeast, breaking the spirit of the people and using media repression to hide the costs from the Sinhalese masses.

Over the past three decades, the handling of the situation in the east and north has thoroughly alienated the people of these areas. If Sri Lanka is to be put back on its track, there needs to be a political solution that offers genuine devolution. The militarisation of the administration and the arbitrary interference with the people’s right to movement must end. So must the pall of xenophobia under which international engagement has been crippled. The people of Sri Lanka need genuine democracy – not the sham democracy that has been put in place in the east, to be managed by killers of the security forces and their armed Tamil proxies masquerading as political parties.

-The article an originally published by the Himal. - Sri Lanka Guardian

By: Swati Das from Chennai

(January 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Not only has the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu gone soft on the Sri Lanka issue, it has trained its gun at the LTTE.

Flaying the banned militant group on Friday for not responding to Sri Lankan Government’s 48-hour ceasefire in order to evacuate Tamil civilians, trapped in the war ravaged Vanni region, Leader of the House and State Finance Minister K Anbazhagan, replying to queries in the Assembly, wondered: “If Sri Lankan Government has said that it would save the Tamils, after intervention by India, why has the LTTE not responded to call by Sri Lanka by allowing free passage for the people to the safe zone?”

Though the island Government has declared a 48-hour ceasefire on Thursday night to provide safe passage to civilians, the same has not been reciprocated yet by the LTTE and its chief V Prabhakaran, he said replying to a query by Congress whip Peter Alphonse.

Anbazhagan pointed out that even the UN agencies have welcomed the temporary ceasefire and now it is LTTE which has to respond by releasing the civilians. He said that people had taken shelter in the LTTE zone thinking they were safe. But now they are trapped, unfortunately. However, recent visit of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has paved the way for the safety of civilians

“This is the first step by the Centre to save Tamils in the island nation. We should try to take more such steps in bringing a sustained peace atmosphere for Tamils living there,” Anbazhagan said.

When demanded by PMK leader GK Mani that the war should be stopped completely, Anbazhagan replied: “The Sri Lankan Government is not willing to disclose to us that there is a war in their country. If we ask them in this regard, they will say they are only fighting terrorist group LTTE to stop terrorism.”

Commenting on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s statement that he would consider the agreement between India and Sri Lanka, an initiative of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Anbazhagan said that people living there should utilise this opportunity and approach the Government for a permanent solution.

Meanwhile, the Congress has stepped up its demand for the arrest, extradition to India and prosecution of Prabhakaran who is an accused in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

Congress legislator D Yashoda, a witness to the assassination in Sriperumbudur on May 21, 1991, lamented that Prabhakaran was yet to be arrested. Though S Nalini and her husband, Sriharan alias Murugan, have been convicted, Prabhakaran is still at large. “We will not relent till he is arrested and prosecuted,” she said.

At this juncture, CPI(M) floor leader K Balabharathi wanted to know if it was demand or policy of the Congress, another Congress member countered that there was “no doubt” of it being the Congress policy.

“Prabhakaran himself confessed to the killing of Rajiv Gandhi and described it as a ‘tragic incident’ during a Press conference. Our policy is to extradite and prosecute him in India,” Sudarshanam said, as his colleagues in the House applauded him.

Following the self immolation by PMK youth K Muthukumar, there has been widespread protest against killing of Tamil civilians in the island country. About 38 persons, mostly students, have been arrested here by the police. Security for the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner's office has been stepped up.

Muthukumar has been proclaimed as a martyr by LTTE supporters in India and Sri Lanka.- Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 31, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) As a mark of extreme protest against Sri Lanka’s alleged genocide of Tamils and the incapacity of the Cntral and Sate governments to ensure a ceasefire in the Island Nation, a 26-year old youth immolated himself and died in the hospital.

He had chosen ‘Shastri Bhavan’, which houses a number of Central government offices, as the venue for his protest and it is very unfortunate and sad that the onlookers from that perennially crowded place did not bother to save him from the flames.

It seems he was not in good terms with his father, and was staying with his sister and working for a Tamil women magazine owing allegiance to the PMK.

The letter, which he had left, has been addressed to the Sri Lankan Tamils and the LTTE and is full of emotional appeal to support the cause of Tamil Eelam. He has even blamed UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon in his letter apart from demanding the arrest of Douglas Devananda.

This culture of ‘self-immolation’ (or is it just suicide?) has been the hallmark of Dravidian movement, which has always brainwashed the gullible masses with demagogic and chauvinistic speeches.

The Dravidian leaders have been pastmasters in the art of kindling the emotions of youth and igniting the fire inside them through their fiery speeches.

As most of these leaders are professional writers, scriptwriters, speakers and actors, they use their profession to instigate the youth thereby achieving their self-interests.

These leaders always talk of sacrificing their lives for the sake of ‘Tamil’, ‘Tamil people’ and ‘Tamilnadu’, but never translate the words into action. But, it has always been the cadres who actually lose their lives taking the leaders’ talks in true spirit as orders.

The Dravidian History has seen scores of self-immolations during the anti-Hindi agitations. Many cadre have also attempted self-immolation during the arrests of their leaders or during the electoral defeats of their parties.

But, none of the leaders have had the sane mind to condemn and discourage such extreme steps taken by the cadre. On the contrary they have eulogised such deaths as sacrifices and martyrdom thereby motivating the cadres to indulge more in such idiotic acts.

Even in the present case, the reaction from some of the leaders goes to prove how ‘irresponsible’ and self-centered they are. MDMK leader Vaiko has hailed the dead youth as a ‘hero’, and averred that the incident would result in an ‘uprising’ of the youth.

He has also drawn a parallel to the suicides of LTTE cadres by consuming cyanide capsules. Similarly VCK leader Thirumavalavan opined that the State would witness many such incidents in future if the Centre doesn’t act against Sri Lanka.

These statements are nothing but ‘indirect instigation’ of the youth.Since last week these leaders have been prodding the student community to boycott classes and conduct protest demonstrations. They have been attending those demonstrations and giving enticing speeches pulling the youth towards their cause and later pushing them to take extreme actions.

A considerable section of the film industry and a major section of the legal fraternity are all party to such machinations. As expected the Tamilnadu Advocates’ Association and the Madras High Court Advocates’ Association have announced ‘indefinite boycott’ of all the courts, showing scant regard to the misery of their clients and litigants.

There is also a section of ‘chauvinistic’ writers who repeatedly pen about the ‘painful’ stories of Sri Lankan Tamils (read LTTE). A visit to the ‘Tamil Blogs’ will give an idea on the state of mind of the youth in Tamilnadu at present, with regard to the Sri Lankan issue.

It is also alleged that most of these self-immolations are stage-managed by the second rung leaders of the Dravidian parties and the sad fact is that the victims and their families agree to play their roles for the sake of money and ‘martyr’ card!

The family of the victims (not all) would get a one-time compensation and some landmark in the city or town, like park or bridge, would be named after the victim.

In yesterday’s case also, the letter written by the victim gives a feeling as though the event is pre-planned and hence it requires thorough investigation. The onus lies on the parents to keep their wards away from third-rate politics and the government has the responsibility to ensure such incidents do not recur.

-Editorial, the News Today, an evening paper published from Chennai - Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) "The Media has reported that an underwater craft has been discovered by the Army from Udayarkattukulam. The LTTE workshops for the building and repair of the sea-going vessels were destroyed by the tsunami. Subsequently, they obtained modern machinery and rebuilt these workshop in 2005 and 2006," Mr. Laxman Kiriella said in a statement released to the Media on today (Jan. 30)

According to he statement, "According to reliable information available earlier, these underwater crafts were among the new equipment purchased by the LTTE at that time. It is surprising that the Intelligence was totally unaware of the new workshops and equipment. It is obvious that for political reasons the LTTE build up from 2005 was hidden from the public." - Sri Lanka Guardian

(January 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Speaking to the Media at the UNP media unit today (30 Jan), UNP M.P. and Secretary for human rights expressed extreme sorrow over the dire plight of the near four lakhs civilians in the Wanni . Although the Govt. is trying hard to conceal the true miserable conditions , the factual situation is seeping through the local and International media, he stated. The wrong picture painted by the Govt. is further corroborated by the fact that it is not allowing even the people’s representatives , the Parliamentary members of the Opposition to visit these areas .

On several occasions Dr. Jayawardena’s request to visit the Wanni was disallowed by the Govt. citing security considerations . As a member of Parliament, he along with some others sought to visit the area to get a first hand view of the civilians’ plight and help them in relief programs, Dr. Jayawardena pointed out. Even his request to visit Mannar and other areas where refugees have spilt over , the Govt. disallowed. This only bears testimony to Govt.’s cruel attitude to the displaced countless civilians.

The Govt. should not think only of its ulterior political motives ; at least in this period of time when the civilians are denied their basic facilities ,when they have no shelter , no food , no medicine, no proper sanitation facilities and not even safety, the Govt. must help. On top of this, Hospitals in Mulaitivu and Vavuniya are non existent, and the District secretariats are closed meaning that there is no civil administration ; it is only from Vavuniya Hospital medical facilities are provided to the sick, injured and maimed . There are also over 3000 pregnant women and thousands of infants who are all trapped in the crossfire between the warring factions. Can the Govt..also act like terrorists not caring for these innocent civilians ?he asked.

Unlike this Govt. which only thinks of its selfish political agenda and politicization of the war , the UNP has always ,in every program and every activity stood by the people of all races and treated them as citizens of one country , he emphasized. - Sri Lanka Guardian

- Sri Lanka can win the war and lose the peace by one of two errors. The first would be to permit the separatist project to continue to function, for separatist political agencies to function unchecked...........
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By: Dayan Jayatilleka

(January 30, Geneva, Sri Lanka Guardian) This is a time to take stock. Due to all the wrong turns that Sri Lanka has taken, and the right ones it did not, at and since our Independence six decades ago, the country has now spent a quarter century commemorating that event in conditions of a separatist civil war. This period of Sri Lanka’s history may now be about to end. The main achievement of 2008 was the shift in the balance of forces between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the maintenance of a posture of strategic offensive by the Sri Lankan armed forces. Veteran New York Times editorialist-turned-scholar Barbara Crossette, writing on 6 January 2009 in the progressive US weekly The Nation, described the LTTE as “pioneers of the suicide bomber and the cyanide capsule, and the most totalitarian and lethal guerrilla organization in contemporary Asia.”

Indeed, we are winning a ground war against a ferocious insurgent foe that fields large human formations and is armed with heavy artillery, fast boats and light aircraft. And we are doing so with minimum collateral damage, despite the use of human shields by the enemy. As of mid-January, the Lankan military has succeeded in squeezing the LTTE into a single contiguous district. Furthermore, the LTTE has been unable to make any territorial gain during the past two years, nor has it been able to regain any territory it has lost. Meanwhile, the Tigers have lost thousands of valuable fighting cadres. The corresponding losses of the Sri Lankan forces are to be considered affordable, given the discrepancy in size of the two armed forces as well as the larger discrepancy in the population base of recruitment. One should note that voluntary recruitment to the Sri Lankan armed forces kept rising throughout the past year, while forced conscription in the LTTE-controlled areas brought ill-motivated fighters into the rebel ranks.
The chief challenge of 2009 is to conclude the war victoriously, and to do so in a manner that precludes, to the extent possible, a prolonged guerrilla war. A critical aspect of this is the destruction of the LTTE’s fighting forces in the battles to liberate Mullaitivu. It is a myth of the misinformed that a powerful irregular force, especially one based on some collective identity or social constituency, can never be fully defeated, and that even if conventionally defeated they revert to or are reborn as guerrilla movements that are impossible to eradicate. Take three well-known examples: Chechnya, Angola’s UNITA and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. All three were defeated and decapitated, never to be reborn as guerrillas.

Those in the Tamil diaspora who daydream of the inevitability of a long, drawn-out guerrilla war, such as that waged by the Vietnamese or the Taliban, simply do not know either their history or their geography. The Vietnamese waged a people’s war of national liberation against a conscript army from tens of thousands of miles away, possessing no understanding of the Asian continent, let alone the local terrain. The guerrilla resistance deployed broad ‘united front’ tactics, mobilised the peasantry, was supported by a safe rear area (North Vietnam), had supplies coming in from socialist Russia and China, and was assisted by solidarity movements all over the world, including in the USA itself. If there is any Indo-Chinese parallel for the LTTE it is not Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese, but rather Pol Pot: the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist John F Burns once described Velupillai Prabhakaran as “the Pol Pot of South Asia”. The Vietnamese won; Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge eventually lost.

The Taliban operate in the massive mountainous terrain that stretches from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Mullaitivu, on the other hand, is one district out of 24, on a small island with no land borders, surrounded only by sea. The Tigers have been consciously corralled, funnelled into Mullaitivu by the multi-front strategy of the Sri Lankan armed forces, which have been waging an impressive combination of large- and small-unit ‘deep penetration’ tactics in that battle space. Thus, Prabhakaran’s durable base area, from which he staged his comebacks against the Indian Peace-Keeping Force and the Sri Lankan Army (with the overrunning of the Mullaitivu camp in mid-1996), has become a killing zone for the Tigers.

Sovereign democracy

Having won the quasi-conventional war, the Sri Lankan armed forces will have to eradicate the infrastructure of a residual or resurgent terror campaign. A genuine measure of autonomy and self-government, and joint operations with elected local allies, has always been the secret of effective counter-insurgency. In Sri Lanka, this will require the legitimate, large-scale engagement of Tamil allies and auxiliaries, and such legitimacy can result only from the constitutionally ordained devolution of power to the Eastern Provincial Council and its Northern counterpart.

Two non-military yet strategic tasks thus face Sri Lanka in 2009. First, the political prevention of the sustenance or resurfacing of ethnic separatism and support for the Tigers through so-called peaceful political means. This requires stringent anti-separatist legislation along the lines of those that exist in India, Turkey and Spain. Second, a variety of elections – parliamentary, provincial and local authority – need to be held in the liberated areas. The aim here is to throw up a moderate democratic Tamil representation with which the Sri Lankan government can negotiate a final settlement of ethnic grievances, the outlines of which are already being chalked out by the All Party Representative Committee, the APRC.

The real challenge of 2009, then, is politico-military. First, the liberation of Mullaitivu needs to be accomplished in such a decisive and comprehensive manner as to pre-empt, to the maximum degree possible, the survival of the LTTE as a guerrilla/terror force. Second, simultaneously there has to be a redrawing of the Sri Lankan social contract in a manner so enlightened and reformist that the Tamil people feel included as fully fledged citizens, enjoying equal rights and genuine provincial autonomy. 2009 must be the year of the full and final liberation and reunification of Sri Lankan territory; and upon that reunified territory, the beginning of the construction of a truly Sri Lankan identity, an authentically Sri Lankan nation.

Victory is on the horizon, but there are pitfalls. There will be pressures to delay, dilute or divert the final offensive and its objectives. There will be calls for ceasefires, negotiations and non-military, political solutions. Some of these will emanate from those external forces who do not wish to see strong states in the Third World, especially those led by nationalist leaders. In most parts of the world, these external forces and their successors have, over decades and even centuries, encouraged divisions and patronised this or that particularistic group, in order to prevent the consolidation of strong nation states. This is, has been and will continue to be the strategy of global hegemony, at times operating through regional subsystems. There is almost no violent conflict today – from Palestine to Zimbabwe, from Afghanistan to Kashmir – whose origins cannot be traced to colonial policy, the divisive stratagems of de-colonisation and the successor Cold War policy of imperial hegemony, or a combination thereof.

The neocolonial forces do not wish to see the defeat of Tamil separatism in either its armed or unarmed form. They wish Tamil separatist extremism to survive even in residual form, so it can be reactivated and used as an instrument at any given time. Our fight against separatist terror is part of the larger struggle for the defence of our own path, our independence, political sovereignty and right of self-determination. The struggle against fragmentation through separatism is part of the struggle for the consolidation of what Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have conceptualised for their country as ‘sovereign democracy’. It is a struggle against the installation of an anti-national puppet administration, which would cede the sovereignty of the state to outside players and even partition the state for private profit.

Prabhakaran has been placed on the strategic defensive just as certain global political changes are taking place, which he has been eagerly awaiting. Anita Pratap, the Indian journalist closest to the rebel leader, pointed out in a speech several months ago that Prabhakaran was awaiting two international developments to take place in 2009: first, a new administration in the USA; and second, elections (hopefully, in his view, leading to a new administration) in India. It is most likely that Prabhakaran has miscalculated and grossly overestimated the impact of both of these political developments. However, it is a challenge before the Sri Lankan state to eliminate his military capacity before these political changes can begin to work in his favour.

Sri Lanka can win the war and lose the peace by one of two errors. The first would be to permit the separatist project to continue to function, for separatist political agencies to function unchecked. We could thus peacefully jeopardise that which the armed forces have won on the battlefield. This could generate a seriously destabilising nationalist-populist backlash. The equal and opposite error would be a lack of generosity, flexibility, enlightenment and wisdom, due to which we fail to expeditiously remove the discrimination, frustration and alienation felt by the Tamil minority. That would cause the reactivation, one way or another, of the Tamil separatist struggle. Either outcome would betray the gains of military victory, and would continue to torment the people of Sri Lanka. - Sri Lanka Guardian

"It is not necessary for a Sherlock Holmes from Scotland Yard to determine who are responsible for the killings and the assaults on the media personnel."
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(January 30, Jaffna, Sri Lanka Guardian) The bombings on Gaza by the Israeli state with the blessings of the Bush administration were unilaterally ended not because of the UN Secretary General talking in platitudes but because of the extensive coverage by the international media evoking international outrage partly because of the geopolitical importance of the Muslim states in the Middle East, the strong presence of humanitarian agencies also constantly reporting and the nearing of the assumption of office by Barack Obama as President of the United States.

If king Dutu Gemunu the valiant Sinhalese king who vanquished the Tamils 2300 years ago did not have the media bothering him why should President Rajapakse who portrays himself as his modern version in crippling Tamil freedom by military means be restrained by the independent media? If the media, considered a nuisance in the fascist Sri Lankan State, are to survive they should do so on the terms of the genocidal state with the annihilation of the Tamils as its primary sacred undertaking with every other consideration relegated as secondary.

The systematic bombings of hospitals, makeshift hospitals, civilian concentrations of the helpless IDPs amounting to nearly 350,000 starving Tamil people in the Vanni killing them by the hundreds and injuring maiming and traumatizing thousands of persons per day denying any kind of help or aid with people dying on the roadside with the Sri Lankan military deliberately aiming at the helpless congregations of civilians and medical personnel definitely fall within the ambit of the definition of genocide as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:(a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” applicable in the instant case of the atrocities.

Constrained also by the lack of doctors at the scene, in a frantic appeal for medical supplies from blood bags to Panadeine the Mullaitivu Regional director of health services, Dr Varatharajah had said he was making “an urgent appeal to the Government of Sri Lanka, ICRC, the UN, and the international community for medical supplies and medical teams to be sent to the District to assist our staff. We currently only have 9 MMBS”. It is very unlikely that there will be any response from the Sri Lankan government which have denied that such a report was ever sent. We now hold fears for Dr Varatharajah’s life for he could suffer the same fate as Lasantha Wickrematunga the journalist who was killed.

We are informed that the tamil people caught up in the Vanni prefer to die honourably rather than go towards the government forces and face the consequences of death, rape and torture in the hands of the racist and the most indiscipliend army in the world, as has already happened to some who were forced to abandon the rest of the IDPs. According to the latest reports, some women of those who “defected” have been gang raped by the military and some have been killed by the army and buried in shallow graves.

Only in the reckoning of another politically bankrupt and servile Tamil scoundrel like Anandasangaree, Rajapakse’s foghorn and his petition writer looking for a position as a puppet, with no mandate whatsoever from the Tamil people but claiming to be their leader and waiting to be appointed to a leading political position in the north on the ashes of the freedom of the Tamil people, that the rate of the Tamils being killed, maimed and traumatised does not constitute a genocide. More people in his considered opinion have to be killed to qualify for genocide.

The impediments to the acts of terror by the state, with impunity on the Tamil people have been the presence of the international humanitarian organisations (INGOS) at the risk of the lives of their own personnel and the independent media if there are any left. The INGOs have been ordered out or have been intimidated into quiescence. They could only ambivalently say with utmost caution that the IDPs are trapped between the Government forces and the LTTE.

The terrorist state to protect itself from adverse international publicity being given to its geoncide not because they care two hoots for world opinion but because they have to maintain the flow of financial and military aid, provide the semblance of respectability and democracy for what they are worth to donors like Japan for them to save face, while maintaining themselves in power in a chauvinistic constituency. The only impediment left in a disgraceful democratic state is the residue of independent media, which is fast disappearing with the latest assault on Tennakoon the editor or Sirasa and the hounding out of other journalists from Sri Lanka.

We will be failing in our journalistic duty if we pass on without reference to the Japanese Sashaki Asasaki, an international disgrace and an insult to His Imperial Majesty and His people who in his numerous visits to Sri Lanka has proved to be a excellent guest of the Sri Lankan State apparently enjoying all the possible comforts provided and blinded by its hospitality or has an innate myopic inability to see beyond what he is shown and told.

It is not necessary for a Sherlock Holmes from Scotland Yard to determine who are responsible for the killings and the assaults on the media personnel. The answers lie in the questions themselves as who have been constantly warning and intimidating the media; who have been attributing far fetched motives to the assassination and attacks and who have been quick to accuse parties with no valid evidence. We can give the assurance that nothing will come out of the promises of investigations said to being carried out.

For information on the racially motivated genocide of the Tamil people going on with increasing severity the international media and the world community will have no other avenue but to depend on the distortions, deceptions, pre-emption and the denials of the Sri Lankan government and those dished out by sections of the Sri Lankan media servile to them.

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These are the strictly personal views of the writer

The writer i s a editor of the Eelamnation - Sri Lanka Guardian

By Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

(January 30, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights appreciates the concern expressed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding the plight of civilians trapped in the conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka. It is also grateful that she has noted in her recent statement ‘reports of forced recruitment, including of children, as well as the use of civilians as human shields by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)’.

She has however, in declaring that ‘People trying to flee the conflict areas are reported to have either been prevented from doing so, or to have been arbitrarily detained in special centres’, fallen into the same trap as previous UN officials who strove to find a balance between terrorists and a democratically elected government. Whilst this unbalanced approach might have been appropriate when the elected government was also seeking to negotiate in good faith with the terrorists, it is unseemly after the terrorists withdrew from negotiations and launched attacks which had to be countered.

It should also be noted that UN officials in Sri Lanka have been clear about the fact that it was the LTTE that prevented people trying to flee the areas from doing so, and have finally made categorical statements to that effect, even though they have granted that it was easier to criticize government because there was no danger of them being killed. The plight of two expatriate UN workers, who bravely stayed in LTTE controlled territory because of fears for the safety of local UN staff and their families, and were then not permitted to leave on Tuesday after safe conduct had been negotiated, provides some excuse for UN diffidence. Now that they have finally come to safety however, it is unfortunate that the High Commissioner cannot name names.

Again, the claim of people being ‘arbitrarily detained in special centres’ is strange, particularly on the day when the government held a workshop with UN and NGO staff to work out modalities of assistance to these centres. Whilst security considerations are paramount, the government has ensured not only food and health facilities, but also education and vocational training and employment for many of those who succeeded in fleeing the LTTE and reaching government controlled territory.

It is also sad that the High Commissioner claims that the safe zones proclaimed by the government ‘have subsequently been subjected to bombardment’. The word bombardment, though perhaps technically not inaccurate for artillery shells, suggests attacks from the air, which has not thus far been suggested by anyone. Certainly, the LTTE did place heavy artillery within the safe zone, as testified to by the Bishop of Jaffna who, in requesting the government to extend the safe zone, said that he was ‘urgently requesting the Tamil Tigers not to station themselves among the people in the safety zone and fire their artillery-shells and rockets at the army. This will only increase more and more the death of civilians thus endangering the safety of the people’.

The High Commissioner is also doubtless not aware that the UNDP Resident Coordinator, who had earlier that day brought the firing to the attention of the Minister for Disaster Management and Human Rights, and issued a statement suggesting government might have been responsible, later declared that ‘we believe that firing this morning most likely was from an LTTE position.’

In short, it is regrettable that the High Commissioner seems to be diffident about criticizing terrorism, because a statement that seems to place government and the LTTE on the same level loses the moral authority it should have with regard to criticisms as to actual violations of human rights. In this regard the High Commissioner does express some understanding of the Sri Lankan situation when she talks about the corruption wrought ‘by more than two decades of bloody internal conflict’ and the need ‘to tackle the core problems that have fuelled this conflict for a quarter of a century, in order to bring peace and prosperity and restore fundamental rights and freedoms for all Sri Lankans in all parts of the country’. We are grateful for this understanding, which is a sea change from the many politically motivated pronouncements that have heaped all blame for the current sad situation on just the current government.

The High Commissioner is aware that, unlike previous governments, the present government is seeking active assistance from her Office for training and other measures to improve human rights in Sri Lanka. Whereas we are proud of the record of our armed forces in upholding national and international law more successfully than other forces engaged in the struggle against terrorism, we know that there are other aspects that need to be addressed, and we are striving to do so despite the difficulties caused by terrorism.

It is unfortunate therefore that the High Commissioner does not recognize the effectiveness of Sri Lanka’s struggle against terrorism, and intervenes in a manner that suggests she is still not aware of the enormity of Tiger actions. Nevertheless, we look forward to her cooperation, and the cooperation of other UN agencies, in helping to make the lives of all our citizens better in a fully democratic and pluralist Sri Lanka. - Sri Lanka Guardian