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Gwynne Dyer: Aftermath for Tamils in Sri Lanka and abroad
By Gwynne Dyer
Publish Date: May 28, 2009
“(The war) is not going to end soon,” said Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, the Sri Lankan army’s spokesman, last month. “It will take some time to completely eradicate terrorism from the country–we think about two years.”
In the euphoria over the recent military victory that ended the conventional war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (”Tamil Tigers”) and wiped out most of their leadership, most people in Sri Lanka have forgotten that prediction, but it remains likely.
In fact, the brigadier may even have been optimistic in saying that two years would “completely eradicate terrorism” in Sri Lanka.
In the last weeks of fighting, foreigners called for a cease-fire to protect the Tamil civilians trapped within the diminishing perimeter held by the Tigers. These voices solemnly warned that a crushing military victory by the government would embitter the Tamils and cause just such a terrorist war afterward.
But that was just foreigners being naive: after 26 years of war, the bitterness among Tamils is already quite enough to fuel a postwar guerilla war.
However, whether that war actually occurs depends on what happens next, not on how Tamils feel about the way the war ended. The ordeal of the 300,00 Tamils who were trapped with the Tigers’ army in its last stand was extreme, but it was not just due to government shellfire.
The survivors of that ordeal, who are now being held in government-run displacement camps, were forced to accompany the Tigers in their retreat to serve as shields.
They were killed by the Tigers if they tried to leave, so they are not in the least romantic about that last stand. Whereas the very large number of Tamils in the diaspora overseas are.
Diaspora Tamils are in shock about recent events, for most of them saw the founder and leader of the Tigers, Velupillai Prabhakan, as an invincible defender of the Tamil cause. They can scarcely believe that he and almost all the other senior leaders of the Tigers are dead.
Moreover, the Tiger support network in countries like Canada and the United Kingdom that provided 80 percent of the organization’s military budget is still intact.
There are plenty of young radicals in those communities who are ready to continue the war in Sri Lanka, if only by guerilla and terrorist attacks for the time being. This is strikingly different from the situation in Sri Lanka itself, where it is clear that most Tamils in the areas formerly under the Tigers’ control are ready to stop fighting.
They have personal experience of the Tigers’s ruthless rule, they have lived through 26 years of constant insecurity and recurrent violence, and they have had enough.
That would normally be the deciding factor in the equation, for if the Tamils at home in Sri Lanka really want to end the war, who could make it continue?
There are, unfortunately, two possible answers to that question. One is the dogmatists in the Tamil diaspora, for whom the goal of a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka is sacred. The other is the victorious and deeply intolerant government of Sri Lanka, which may well throw its victory away.
Many Tamils living abroad just want to integrate into their new countries and leave all that unhappy history behind them, but family ties back home and the pervasive presence of Tiger radicals in the overseas communities make it hard for them to do so.
There is a risk that the Tamil diaspora, like the millions of Irish who emigrated to the United States in the famine of the 1840s, will become the base for a permanent war against the oppressor back home.
That is what the Fenians became in 19th-century America, even launching unsuccessful “invasions” of British North America (i.e. Canada) in pursuit of their goal of liberating Ireland.
If the Sri Lankan government cannot create an acceptable future for its Tamil population at home, the same thing will happen in the Tamil diaspora.
There is no good reason why Sri Lanka’s Tamils should not live peacefully as the country’s largest minority, but history is against it. The ethnic nationalism of the Buddhist, Sinhala-speaking majority has poisoned Sri Lankan politics, beginning with the laws that made Sinhala the sole official language and imposed restrictions on Tamil access to universities and the professions in the 1950s and 1960s.
Those laws were mainly the work of the Bandaranaike political dynasty, which deliberately cultivated a resentful Sinhalese nationalism for electoral reasons. The laws aimed to redress the grievances of the Sinhalese majority, who believed that the Tamil minority had prospered at their expense by collaborating too closely with the British colonial power, but they went too far and they have lasted too long.
What the country needs now is a clean slate where everybody’s language has equal status and every ethnic group has equal opportunities. At the end of these terrible months, and despite all the killings and the “displacement camps” crammed with dazed Tamil civilians, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government has enough political credit in the eyes of the Sinhalese majority to make that revolution happen.
Unfortunately, his government probably lacks the imagination for doing that, in which case the terrorism will probably start up again soon.
Gwynne Dyer’s most recent book, Climate Wars, was published in Canada by Random House.
Asia Times
South Asia
www.atimes.com
Sri Lanka wards off Western bullying
By M K Bhadrakumar
The strange lineup of the member countries of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for or against Sri Lanka at the special session of the body scheduled to take place in Geneva on Tuesday underscores the maritime Great Game unfolding in the Indian Ocean.
Geopolitics is drowning the lamentations over the legitimate aspirations of the Sri Lankan Tamils for equity, justice and fair play and the perennial human-rights questions that arise when the state violates the integrity of the individual. Control of the maritime routes of the Indian Ocean through which 70% of total world traffic of petroleum products passes – and half of the world’s container traffic – takes precedence over the tragic plight of the 300,000
ethnic Tamils of Sri Lanka uprooted from their life. The focus of the world powers is on becoming the “Lord of the Malaccas”.
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// ]]>The special session is being convened in Geneva at the request of 17 of the 47 members of the UNHRC, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Britain. Hovering in the background is the United States. The initiative is primarily of the European Union (EU) and it aims at forcing Sri Lanka to face charges of gross human-rights violations in its war against the Tamil insurgents. An UNHRC recommendation to set up an international commission of inquiry will not mean the end of the world, but it can be a needless headache. An UNHRC special session has been called only on 10 previous occasions.
However, Colombo is not browbeaten. The seasoned poker player has tabled a counter resolution titled “Assistance to Sri Lanka in the promotion and Protection of Human Rights”. Believe it or not, the Sri Lankan resolution commends Colombo for its victory over terrorism and solicits funding from a grateful international community. The 12 co-sponsors of the Sri Lankan resolution include China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia.
Russia, China backing Colombo
The outcome of the UNHRC special session can be foretold. The EU won’t get anywhere. It had better think of approaching the International Criminal Court based in The Hague. But then, Sri Lanka is not a signatory state. The “international community” can get the United Nations Security Council to refer the case to the ICC, in which case the ICC is mandated to summon a non-signatory state. But then China and Russia wield veto power.
As soon as Colombo declared victory in the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu took friendly note of it. “As a friendly neighbor, China has kept a close eye on how the Sri Lankan situation developed. We sincerely hope Sri Lanka will make efforts to accomplish national reconciliation, social stability and economic progress,” Ma said.
Equally, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko “welcomed” Colombo’s success in “restoring control over the entire territory of the country” and liberating the civilians held hostage. Russia “supports the fight of the Sri Lankan government against terrorism and separatism and for state sovereignty and territorial integrity” and stands ready to “strengthen further its cooperation [with Sri Lanka] … both in a bilateral format and in regional and international organizations on counter-terrorism and on other themes of mutual concern”.
China and Russia will ensure that the “international community” cannot torment Colombo. They have invited Sri Lanka to come close to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a “dialogue partner”. In essence, Sri Lanka is transforming as the theater where Russia and China are frontally challenging the US’s incremental global strategy to establish a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) presence in the Indian Ocean region.
The US has succeeded in bringing NATO up to the Persian Gulf region. In October 2007, NATO conducted its first-ever naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. The alliance is swiftly expanding its relationship with Pakistan. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told a US Congressional hearing on Thursday, “Where I see NATO going is increasingly towards a broader and more in-depth relationship with Pakistan, because of the common interests.” But it is Sri Lanka that will be the jewel in NATO’s Indian Ocean crown. Russia and China (and Iran) are determined to frustrate the US geostrategy.
US pressure won’t work
But the US has taken a position of high principles – the human-rights situation in Sri Lanka. It can block Sri Lanka’s application for a US$1.9 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Sri Lankan economy is in dire straits. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on May 15 that this “is not an appropriate time” to talk about the IMF loan. She confirmed that the US had “raised questions about the IMF loan at this time”.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly has linked the release of the IMF loan to Colombo allowing the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international aid agencies, to access the camps where “hundreds of thousands” of internally displaced Tamils uprooted in the fighting are sheltered.
Washington is peeved that Colombo already forgot it was the vehement US support that enabled Colombo to launch the military operations against Sri Lanka in 2006. But the Sri Lankan government would say it reciprocated the US backing by signing in March 2007 an Access and Cross Servicing Agreement with the US that allows American warships and aircraft to use facilities in Sri Lanka.
At any rate, the US feels snubbed that Sri Lanka spurned its offer a few months ago to dispatch a naval force to evacuate or provide humanitarian assistance to the Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone. An “assessment team” of the US Navy visited Sri Lanka with a view to work out the range of options for the operation. But Colombo somehow developed cold feet about the wisdom of inviting US “humanitarian intervention”. Quite possibly, third countries might have alerted Colombo to the risks involved.
Unsurprisingly, Washington is pressuring Colombo. Kelly said on Thursday, “The international community needs to make an assessment of exactly what happened and consult with the Sri Lankan government on the way forward … we need to take things a step at a time. We need to focus on the humanitarian situation, and we need to focus on starting a political reconciliation process. Once we take those steps, we can start looking at the broader issue of economic and trade issues [IMF loan]“.
However, the US pressure tactic may not work. Like in the case of Myanmar or Sudan, if Washington steps up pressure, China may come to Sri Lanka’s help. There is moral muddiness all around. Simply put, a “containment strategy” on the part of the US towards Sri Lanka becomes unworkable. Testy times lie ahead.
On Friday, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa accused unnamed foreign powers of having tried to stop the military operations against the LTTE by “threatening to haul us before war crimes tribunals” and that he was ready “to go to the gallows”.
On Saturday, Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa (who is the president’s brother) told an Indian TV channel, “If one talks of taking our military to a war crimes tribunal, before that you have to take US troops, UK troops, all those troops and all those leaders, into war crimes [tribunals].” He was angrily responding to the EU demand for an independent inquiry into alleged war crimes by Sri Lankan army.
India-China rivalry
The countries that are backing Sri Lanka at the UNHRC special session on Tuesday have a convergence of interest insofar as they oppose the doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” in sovereign states. China and India have been at the receiving end in the past on the human-rights issue and have extended mutual support in warding off UNHRC pressure.
But in the present context, the motives of China and India are complex. The fact is, China has exploited Sri Lanka’s vulnerability to secure the pre-eminent status of a “steadfast ally”. China is building in Hambantota a $1 billion port that it may eventually use as a refueling and docking station for its navy as it patrols the
Indian Ocean and protects China’s sea lanes in the Indian Ocean.
Jane’s Defence Weekly has reported on Chinese supplies of ammunition and ordnance for the Sri Lankan army and navy. The Stockholm International Peace Foundation says China gifted Sri Lanka six F7 jet fighters last year. Chinese aid for Sri Lanka touched $1 billion last year. China is presently Sri Lanka’s number one foreign donor, overtaking Japan. (The US and the UK gave measly amounts of $7.4 million and $1.9 million, respectively.)
India views the Chinese inroads into Sri Lanka with disquiet as part of a broad move into the Indian Ocean. But India faces an acute dilemma. Delhi hopes to influence Colombo to seek an early settlement of the Tamil problem, which has serious implications for India’s politics and national security. But its capacity to cajole the diehard Sinhalese nationalists to compromise and reconcile suffers as long as China backs Colombo to the hilt. Colombo’s defiant statements to the West also hold a subtle message for Delhi.
If Delhi tries to roll back its substantial political, military and economic support to Sri Lanka, China will simply step in. The lure of Sri Lanka for China cannot be overestimated by Delhi. Colombo plays the game beautifully. Before procuring weapons from China, Colombo first presents the wish list in Delhi. If Delhi declines, it promptly approaches Beijing. (This was what happened in the case of Hambantota port, too.)
Therefore, Delhi is unsure about Washington’s pressure tactic. It has known Colombo all through as a tough negotiator – be it on the rights of Indian fishermen or over Kachativu Island or regarding stateless persons of Indian origin. Colombo stonewalled for decades all Indian attempts to mediate a settlement to the Tamil problem.
Great Game in the Indian Ocean
Clearly, it is far too simplistic to portray Sri Lanka as a mere playpen of China-India rivalry. There is a huge geopolitical backdrop. The US’s naval dominance is declining. On the other hand, China’s navy may have more warships than the US’s in the coming decade.
In the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, noted strategic thinker and author Robert Kaplan analyzed the power plays in the Indian Ocean. As Kaplan wrote, the US is “beginning an elegant decline by leveraging the growing sea power of allies such as India and Japan to balance against China”.
To a great extent, the US volte face on Rajapksa’s war (after having been such a strong supporter until quite recently) stems from the strategic setback it suffered insofar as while the American admirals had been scared away by Sri Lanka’s ethnic strife, China simply moved in. The West finds Rajapaksa getting too close to China for its comfort. On China’s part, however, the fueling station in Sri Lanka becomes vital for optimally using the series of port facilities that it has lined up in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar connecting the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.
The naval presence in Sri Lanka becomes invaluable for China if the planned canal across the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand materializes connecting the Indian Ocean with China’s Pacific coast, a project that has the potential to dramatically shift the balance of power in Asia. Therefore, no matter what it takes, Beijing will strive to expand its influence in Sri Lanka and help Colombo ward off US bullying.
But, having said that, the US also has a need for greater cooperation with China. To quote Kaplan, the US “seizes every opportunity to incorporate China’s navy into international alliances; a US-Chinese understanding at sea is crucial for the stabilization of world politics in the 21st century”. This in turn creates a compulsion for the US to both act as a “broker” between India and China and as a moderator of the competition between the two hugely ambitious powers. As Kaplan put it, even as India and China “bump into each other” in the Indian Ocean, “the job of managing their peaceful rise will fall on the US Navy to a significant extent”.
Curiously, during a visit to Delhi on May 14, the US Pacific Command chief Admiral Timothy J Keating dropped a bombshell among the unsuspecting Indians by revealing that he declined an offer recently from a top-ranking Chinese naval official for a US-Chinese understanding to split the seas east of Hawaii and west of Hawaii between the two navies.
Keating went on to say that on his part, he invited China to join the annual US-India naval exercises codenamed “Malabar Exercises” (which strategists in Delhi fancy as their exclusive partnership with the US), but China declined, saying it preferred to be an observer. Kaplan was right in saying, “There will be surely tensions between the three [US, Chinese, Indian] navies, especially as the gaps in their relative strength begins to close.”
What all this adds up to in immediate terms is that Colombo will be plainly dismissive of the UNHRC meet on Tuesday. Indeed, its first instinct is to hoot with derision. The Sinhala establishment is fully aware of Sri Lanka’s immense strategic value in the accelerating power struggle in the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka sits on a central theater of global conflict and competition and will derive leverage to reinforce its sovereignty and independence and its strategic autonomy.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
The Associated Press: Sri Lanka: Displaced Tamils seek missing family
Sri Lanka: Displaced Tamils seek missing family
By RAVI NESSMAN – 2 hours ago
MANIK FARM, Sri Lanka (AP) — Of all the hardships in this sprawling displacement camp, people most bemoan not knowing what happened to relatives who disappeared in the chaos of the decisive battle that ended the prolonged war between the Sri Lankan military and Tamil Tiger rebels.
Scores of ethnic Tamils clustered on both sides of the barbed wire perimeter Tuesday seeking news of their families. Some said they return day after day without success. Many held wedding photographs or portraits of their loved ones, hoping someone would recognize them.
A military-sponsored tour for journalists to a small corner of the camp revealed scenes of heartbreak and misery among the 200,000 displaced crammed into the vast tent city hastily constructed on scrub land.
Tens of thousands more war-displaced people are scattered in smaller camps near Vavuniya, which used to be the army’s northern garrison on the edge of the territory ruled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The United Nations says together the camps house nearly 300,000 internally displaced people in wretched conditions.
One woman said her 2-year-old son was shot in the head while they were fleeing the unrelenting shelling and gunfire from both sides. When she reached Sri Lankan lines, she gave the child to soldiers who promised to take him to the hospital.
She’s heard nothing of him since.
Veluppilla Selvaraj, 39, was given emergency leave from his job as a security guard in Saudi Arabia to try to find his mother and sister. “I was here yesterday and the day before and the day before. I am still searching,” he said.
The Sri Lankan military has refused to release the internal refugees, saying they must be screened to weed out any Tamil rebels who may be hiding among them. Access for international aid agencies has been restricted for the same reason.
Many told reporters about relatives taken away for questioning who so far have not returned.
“They are calling most of the Tamils LTTE,” said a man who identified himself as Seevalingam, a former worker at the hospital at Killinochchi, once the rebel capital. He feared the displaced masses would be held here a long time.
The United Nations has called Manik Farm the world’s largest displacement camp. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after his own visit last week that he was saddened and moved by the experience.
Aid agencies have warned that a lack of sanitation and adequate medicine was allowing disease like hepatitis to spread.
Indeed, many of the inmates interviewed at Manik Farm said their children were suffering from diarrhea and other illnesses that stem from tainted water. One woman held up her baby who she said had diarrhea for three days. When she took him to the camp clinic the doctor said the child was fine and sent her away, she said.
Hundreds of mothers stood quietly in line waiting for soap, baby formula and aspirin. Others washed their toddlers in plastic basins. About two dozen men lined up with pails to draw water from a community well. They all emerged from between endless rows of white U.N. tents, each housing as many as 15 people.
On Monday, army commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka said concern remained high that the Tamil rebellion might try to re-form, and said he wanted a 50 percent boost in the military’s numbers even though the military victory over the LTTE was complete.
“There may be people abroad trying to promote a new leader and stage a comeback,” Fonseka told the state-run Independent Television Network. “Our strength is 200,000 and it will become 300,000 soon. It will not be easy for them to build up a terror group as they did before.”
The army had just 10,000 men when the civil war began in 1983, he said.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
What Next for Sri Lanka’s 2.5 Million Tamils? – TIME
Tuesday, May. 26, 2009
By AMANTHA PERERA / COLOMBO
The Sri Lankan national flag is everywhere in Colombo these days. In the last months of the Sri Lankan government’s 26-year war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the national flag — a sword-bearing lion on a deep red field — was flown at rallies each time the Sri Lankan army gained ground against the LTTE. With the army now victorious and the LTTE’s leadership — including the notorious Velupillai Prabhakaran — wiped out, every vehicle on the road, including the bicycles, seems to be flying a flag, sometimes two or three.
But not everyone is feeling the nationalist euphoria. The island’s 2.5 million ethnic Tamils, who have long felt discriminated against by the nation’s Sinhalese majority — are no closer to a political agreement with the Sri Lankan government than when the war began in the 1980s. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is at the peak of his popularity, but to be remembered as the man who truly brought peace to Sri Lanka, he will have to reach a political consensus — quickly — with a shattered, fractured Tamil minority while responding to increasing international pressure over the tactics used to win a war that, according to the United Nations, saw a large number of civilian deaths in its final weeks. (Read “49 Killed In Sri Lanka Hospital Attack.”)
Rajapaksa struck a reconciliatory note when he addressed the nation on May 19, a few hours before state TV channels beamed images of Prabhakaran’s body. Rajapaksa opened his speech with a few sentences in Tamil and told parliament that he would take care of the Tamils and not let military victory lead to discrimination. “He made all the right remarks,” says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Colombo-based think tank. “A lot now will depend on what kind of power-sharing proposals are put on the table.”
The baseline for any discussion of power-sharing is the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s constitution. It was ratified in 1987 after the intervention of India, Sri Lanka’s powerful neighbor. The amendment set up regional provincial councils that were supposed to give more power to the Tamil majority north and east. Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama admits that the 22-year-old law has failed to live up to its promise. “It remains unimplemented in its totality,” Bogollagama says, so the government is ready to go beyond it. “The President has already said that we are willing to go 13 plus 1.”
What Rajapaksa is offering today is an absolute minimum, according to some Tamil politicians who have long clamored for more than just regional councils. They want autonomy over land, natural resources and police powers — demands that go far beyond the concessions of the 13th Amendment. “It was something that came into being 20 years back. Times have changed; situations have changed. We have to take all that into account,” says veteran Tamil politician V. Anandasangaree, the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF).
Without the LTTE, there is a vacuum on the Tamil side of the negotiating table. Throughout the war, Tigers insisted that they were the only legitimate voice of Sri Lankan Tamils and ruthlessly eliminated their political opponents. The government has refused to negotiate with what’s left of the Tigers and will instead try to use the All Party Representative Committee to reach a consensus with the civilian Tamil parties that remain. Most of those are willing to unite and negotiate with the government, but it will not be easy. With 22 out of 225 seats, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has the largest Tamil representation in parliament, but it has been closely aligned with the Tigers, undermining its credibility. “There was no difference between the TNA and the Tigers,” says Vinayagamorthi Muralitharan, alias “Karuna,” the former Tiger military commander who broke ranks with Prabhakaran in 2004 and is now a minister in Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party. “What the Tigers said, the TNA did.” Some consider Karuna’s defection the beginning of the Tigers’ losing battle. (See pictures inside Sri Lanka’s rebel-held territory.)
TNA leaders are already positioning themselves as hard-liners whose goals are in step with the Tigers’ long fight for an independent Tamil homeland.”We do not know what the other Tamil parties are up to, or what they are looking for,” says Suresh Premachandran, a senior member of Parliament with the TNA. “However, if they too are looking for a solution that gives greater autonomy to the northeast, then we have no problem in holding discussions with the Tamil parties. There must be a radical change in the constitution. Both the north and east should be merged and should be given a greater autonomy with more powers.”
Forming a large, semi-autonomous region by merging the newly conquered north with the eastern provinces — parts of which include Sri Lanka’s Tamil majority areas and have been, at times, under Tiger control — is unlikely given the growing instability in the east. The eastern provinces have been under the government’s control since 2007. Elections were held there in 2008 and the provinces have been held up as a model for what Rajapaksa’s government hopes to do for the former Tiger-controlled areas in the north. But peace in the east has proved to be extremely fragile. The political leadership has already split into two feuding factions, and human rights groups are worried that violence involving former Tigers, military and paramilitary forces can erupt without any notice.
There is also mounting international pressure on the government to deliver on its promises of power-sharing and to restore the civil liberties that have been suspended during the war. “Bold actions are needed now to share power and to assure all of Sri Lanka’s communities a future of hope, respect and dignity,” outgoing U.S. Ambassador Robert Blake said in his remarks on May 20 before leaving Sri Lanka to become Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia. “Through such actions, a truly united Sri Lanka can emerge — a Sri Lanka that is rooted in democracy and tolerance, where human rights are respected, where media can operate freely and independently.” Human rights advocates say that the arrests — one day after the army declared victory over the LTTE — of three Tamil doctors who gave information to the media about civilian casualties is a reminder that Sri Lanka is still far from that ideal. (Read “Behind Colombo’s P.R. Battle Against The Tamil Tigers.”)
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon landed in Sri Lanka late in the evening of May 22 and said at the end of his 24-hour visit that the first step toward rebuilding the devastated north is restoring displaced people to their homes. More than 260,000 Tamil civilians from the north are being held in camps run by the government authorities, and unless they can return, elections there will be meaningless. Rajapaksa had pledged to Ban that 80% of those displaced by the fighting in Sri Lanka’s north would be resettled within this year. “The challenges facing the government are huge,” Ban warned. “If issues of reconciliation and social inclusion are not dealt with, history could repeat itself.”
The 800,000-strong Tamil diaspora, meanwhile, is pushing to hold the Sri Lankan government accountable for what happened during the war. Canada and the U.K., home to the two largest communities of expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils, backed a proposal brought before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to discuss possible violations of international humanitarian law by both sides. Sri Lanka was widely criticized because of the large number of civilian casualties — at least 8,000 this year, according to the UN — and for the severe restrictions being placed on civilians in the government-run camps. Sri Lanka mustered the support of 12 allies, including India and China, against the proposal. “There is no question of violations or war crimes,” Bogollagama says, indicating that Sri Lanka will continue its aggressive resistance to any accusations of human rights violations.
Few expect the LTTE to ever return as a fighting force. Still, it has not completely disappeared. Some remnants — maybe a few dozen — are hiding in the eastern jungles and could regroup in some form among Tamil diaspora communities in Canada, the U.K., Australia or the U.S. The leadership of the organization has fallen on Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the former Tiger chief arms procurer, who is believed to be in Malaysia. Pathmananthan acknowledged for the first time on May 24 that Prabhakaran was dead, but insisted that the deceased leader’s dream of eelam, a separate Tamil homeland, lives on. “His final request was for the struggle to continue until we achieved the freedom for his people.”
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South Asia
May 27, 2009Moderate Tamils chart new course
By Ameen IzzadeenCOLOMBO – Now that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is dead, the question is which way the Tamil cause will go. The man who resorted to armed insurgency to achieve his goal of setting up a separate state for Sri Lanka’s
12% Tamils is history, but the factors that created him are very much alive.Prabhakaran did not spring up in a vacuum. He was a product of an oppressive system which existed beneath the veneer of democracy. As days passed after Independence in 1948, the Tamils’ perception that they were being marginalized drove them to desperate tactics.
Leaders like S J V Chelvanayakam resorted to Satyagraha, or non-violent fasting, but the state apparatus unleashed force on them. One such fast was over a demand that the government declare the precincts of the Thirukoneshwaram temple, a Hindu
shrine, which, according to Tamil records, predated the arrival of Sri Lanka’s first “Aryan” king, Vijaya, from north India, as a sacred area.
The declaration never came. Instead, the fasting protesters were beaten up by the military. The high-handed action of the police in disrupting the 1974 International Tamil Research Conference in Jaffna, the cultural capital of Sri Lanka’s Tamils, made the Tamil youths lose faith in democratic means to win their rights. Nine Tamils were killed and the Tamils saw the police action as humiliation in front of their guests from all over the Tamil-speaking world. State-sponsored colonization projects – some overt and some covert – were soon carried out in Tamil areas.
The Sinhalese were settled in Tamil-dominated areas in what Tamil rights activists called demographic engineering aimed at weakening the Tamil’s political power. In 1956, Sinhala was made the official language of the country, much to the dislike of the Tamils. More blows came in the form of education reforms in the 1970s. The reforms slashed the intake of Tamil students to universities, which were state-run. These moves by successive governments alienated the Tamil community and drove them to demand federal state; when this did not come, they called for a separate state. Fiery speeches by Tamil leaders galvanized the youth into action. An ideology that was a mixture of Marxism and Tamil nationalism fueled the Tamil militancy.
The Jaffna youth had a history of political activism. Not many Sri Lankans know today that the youth of Jaffna played a key role in Sri Lanka’s independence struggle. The Jaffna Youth Congress (JYC), which drew inspiration from the Indian independence movement, advocated secularism, a non-sectarian nationalism, the eradication of caste and independence from Britain.
Some Sinhala leaders had great admiration for the JYC. One of them was S W R D Bandaranaike, an Oxford-educated Sinhala leader, who in a pre-independence address to a JYC session called for a federal constitution for Sri Lanka. But Bandaranaike, when he became the prime minister in 1956, made Sinhala the official language to the exclusion of Tamil. His election pledge in 1956 was to make Sinhala the official language within 24 hours.
The Tamils saw this as the tyranny of the Sinhala nationalism and attempted to counter it with Tamil nationalism, which took a violent form when the state used strong-arm tactics in the mistaken belief that the Tamils could be browbeaten into submission. There were little or no genuine attempts at reconciliation.
It was the myopic policies of the successive Sri Lankan governments that created Prabhakaran, who believed in violence and refused to accept any solution short of a separate state. Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice Sarath N Silva in a recent newspaper article to mark Vesak, the birthday of the Lord Buddha, admitted that government policies over the past 50 years had contributed to communal suspicions which erupted in outbreaks of violence:
The use of force to negate the demands for a federal and later separate state led to the emergence of the fearsome Tiger terrorists who had no appreciation of the true nature of the causes of the conflict. Tamil political leaders who made unreasonable demands as a solution to the conflict themselves became victims of the fearsome Tigers. The use of military force to put down the violent activities of the terrorists do not form the part of the Buddhist perspectives of conflict management.
He noted, however, that many of the original grievances of the Tamils had been successfully addressed by the governments. For instance, the language issue and the question of decentralization of power, he said, had been redressed adequately by amendments to the constitution.
V Anandasangaree, leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), a party which in 1976 adopted a resolution for a separate state, agreed. In an interview with Asia Times Online, Anandasangaree, a former parliamentarian for Kilinochchi, not so long ago the capital of the de facto state the LTTE had set up in the Wanni region, said that new problems had cropped up over the years.
Solving these war-induced problems, such as resettlement of the displaced people, reconstructing the infrastructure of the highly neglected Tamil and a reconciliation process to heal the wounds should be the priority, he said.
He noted that the same Sinhala nationalist voices which gave rise to violent Tamil nationalism were once again active. “If they are true patriots, the greatest contribution they could make to Sri Lanka is to keep their mouths shut,” said Anandasangaree, the 76-year-old former teacher and lawyer who was the only TULF leader who refused to endorse the LTTE as the sole representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
He was obviously referring to calls by some Sinhala nationalists to set up Sinhala colonies in Tamil areas as a means to defeat Tamil separatism. Some even want the roads in Tamil areas named after military officers who died in the war.
Anandasangaree said the only way forward was the introduction of a power-devolution system based on the Indian model. “The Indian model is a big success. It has silenced the voices that raised the cry of a separate state in Tamil Nadu state in the 1960s. It will work here, too,” he said, adding that he strongly believed that President Mahinda Rajapaksa would come up with a solution acceptable to the Tamils.
“When the president said in his victory speech in parliament on Tuesday that there are no minorities in Sri Lanka today, he was speaking from his heart. I am confident, he will offer a solution that meets the Tamil aspiration,” he said.
Anandasangaree said he did not believe that the Tamil struggle would return to violence. He said he believed that this was the time for the moderate Tamil voices to speak.
Over the past two decades, the LTTE hijacked the Tamil cause. It not only did not allow moderate Tamil leaders who believed in democratic approach to speak up, but it also intimidated and killed them.
The moderate Tamil voice is now coming to the fore. The Tamil National Alliance, the party which was forced to act as the mouthpiece of the LTTE in parliament, is now free to chart its own course. Tamil leaders who fled the country to escape from the LTTE are willing to return.
The Tamil political landscape is being relaid. Will Rajapaksa listen to moderate Tamil voices or will he make the same mistakes some of his predecessors made in alienating the Tamil people?
Anandasangaree says the president is so popular now that he could sell any devolution proposal to the Sinhala masses.
Ameen Izzadeen is a Colombo-based journalist.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Doug Saunders
Colombo — From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail, Monday, May. 25, 2009 09:33PM EDT
As the President’s motorcade passed slowly through Colombo Monday, 20-year-old university student Chaturi Waidyasekera pressed her head to the ground, then rose and chanted, “Praise our king”
Dozens of others did the same, beneath billboards that pictured Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the white robes of a Buddhist deity. Ms. Waidyasekera explained, calmly, that she believes the elected leader of Sri Lanka should remain in office for life because last week he ended a 26-year civil war with the violent defeat of the Tamil Tigers.
“For once in our history we have a leader who has made our island into one kingdom,” she said. “Why do we need elections any more? He is the king we need.” She was actually one of the more moderate voices along the route: For others, the President was nothing less than a living god.
After the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated last week, it seemed like this was simply a victory celebration, a mass depressurizing of a people made tense by years of war. Members of Sri Lanka’s majority, Sinhalese-speaking Buddhists, took to the streets in a celebration that lasted days.
But in the days since, it has evolved into something larger. Over the weekend, huge statues of the President began appearing along the pitted two-lane highways that cross the island. In the cities, large billboards and posters are placed on every block, showing the President in white robes, or in fatigues, hugging his brother, Gotabaya, the Defence Secretary. (His other brother, Chamal, is Ports and Aviation Minister.) At first, they carried slogans like “Mission Accomplished.” But now new ones have begun to appear, reading “King Mahinda Rajapaksa: Our saviour.” It is impossible to avoid them: They are on every street corner, every public building, every shop front.
On state television, an advertisement seems to run several times every hour in which a woman sings, over utopian scenes of loyal workers, that the President has saved the nation and deserves to be crowned king.
“The messaging has been singularly Buddhist in its nature and expression,” says Sanjana Hattotuwa, a democracy activist with the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo.
“The defeat of the LTTE is being portrayed as the establishment of one country along the lines of the Sinhala kingdoms of old times, with the deification of the President as a religious king, and the victory of the army as an event foretold in the Mahawansa, the Sinhala Buddhist historical chronicle.”
All of this is deeply alarming for the Tamil-speaking, mainly Hindu minority, who represent 13 per cent of the population, or about two million people, and whose language, religion and mythologies have been notably absent from Mr. Rajapaksa’s grandiose moment.
While he did deliver a few phrases of well-practised Tamil in a speech to parliament – probably the first time any Sri Lankan leader has done so since independence from British rule in 1948 – he has subsequently delivered addresses in which he has said the country will be rebuilt in “Buddhist values,” and declared that there will be “no more minorities,” a phrase meant to promote universal values, his supporters say, but which Tamils see as another declaration of Buddhist superiority.
Never before has a leader of this traditionally mild-mannered democracy adopted such a regal stature, and never before have the people seemed so willing to deify a leader. This is a country, after all, whose founders, memorialized in statues in Colombo’s Independence Square, are lawyers in business suits.
Larger-than-life figures have figured in this island’s politics, but the stakes have always been partisan and the dramas have usually been of the operatic, and sometimes soap-operatic, variety, such as the long-running feud between president Chandrika Kumaratunga and prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, which paralyzed the legislature until Mr. Rajapaksa won the presidency in 2006.
Since his election, Mr. Rajapaksa has seen the opposition parties wither and fragment, leaving him with a hold on power that could last for years, even decades. At the same time, he has aligned Sri Lanka away from the United States, Britain and Europe – which initially supported his unyielding approach to defeating the Tigers but then backed away – and toward China, Russia, Japan and Iran, which have supported and armed his struggle.
In the years before his election, you had to travel to the island’s LTTE-controlled north to see a full-scale cult of personality, with images of the leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, on every wall and a population revering him as a godlike figure. Today, that has become the style of politics in the south. Along with it has come a quick and sometimes total condemnation of anyone who dares question the execution of the war.
“It seems to be true what they say, that you have to become something in order to defeat it,” Mr. Hattotuwa says. “This deification is of an unprecedented degree, it is absolute. The commander-in-chief has unprecedented social and political support across the country. This is beyond politics, it is religion and mythology.”
GEOPOLITICS DROWNS SRI LANKA’S TAMILS: The great game
Deccan Herald
By M K Bhadrakumar
Monday, May 25, 2009, 12:00 [IST]Sri Lanka snubbed Washington by rejecting the US offer to dispatch a naval force to provide humanitarian assistance.
The strange line-up of the member countries of the United Human Rights Council (HRC) for or against Sri Lanka at the special session of the body scheduled to take place in Geneva on Tuesday underscores the maritime Great Game unfolding in the Indian Ocean.
The special session is being convened at the request of 17 of the 47 members of the HRC, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain. Hovering in the background is the United States. It aims at forcing Sri Lanka to face charges of gross human rights violations in its war against the Tamil insurgents. An HRC recommendation to set up an international commission of inquiry would put Colombo in the docks. An HRC special session has been called only on 10 previous occasions.
But Colombo is not browbeaten. The seasoned poker player has tabled a counter resolution titled “Assistance to Sri Lanka in the promotion and Protection of Human Rights” commending Colombo for its victory over terrorism and soliciting funds for reconstruction. The 12 co-sponsors of the resolution include China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia. India finds itself in the strange company but is justified in estimating that the HRC move against Sri Lanka is a non-starter. China and Russia will anyhow ensure that the ‘international community’ doesn’t torment Colombo. They have invited Sri Lanka to come close to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. In essence, Sri Lanka is the theatre where Russia and China are frontally challenging the US’s incremental global strategy to establish NATO presence in the Indian Ocean region. The US has succeeded in bringing the NATO upto the Persian Gulf region. The NATO is swiftly expanding its relationship with Pakistan. But it is Sri Lanka that will be the jewel in the NATO’s Indian Ocean crown. Russia and China (and Iran) are determined to frustrate the US geo-strategy. The hard reality, therefore, is that geopolitics is sidetracking Sri Lanka’s Tamil problem. Sri Lanka snubbed Washington by rejecting the US offer to dispatch a naval force to evacuate or provide humanitarian assistance to the Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone. China, Russia and Iran encouraged Colombo to reject the US ‘humanitarian intervention’ in yet another strategically vital region.
There is moral muddiness all around. Simply put, a ‘containment strategy’ on the part of the US towards Sri Lanka becomes unworkable. By helping Sri Lanka to withstand the US pressure, China has secured the status of a ‘steadfast ally.’ Apart from arms supplies totalling $100 million, China has overtaken Japan as Sri Lanka’s number one foreign donor. China gave $ 1 billion assistance last year as compared to $ 7.4 million and 1.25 million pounds by the US and UK respectively.
India views with unease the Chinese inroads into Sri Lanka as part of a broad move into the Indian Ocean. But India faces acute dilemma. Its capacity to cajole the diehard Sinhalese nationalists to compromise with the Tamils for an enduring settlement suffers so long as China extends such no-holds-barred political backing to the Colombo establishment.
But Delhi cannot roll back its substantial political, military and economic support to Sri Lanka, either. The interlocking interests of the two neighbouring countries are self-evident. The lure of Sri Lanka cannot be overestimated. The US would like us to believe that India-China rivalry is the sum total of the geopolitics of Sri Lanka. But this is a dissimulation of the actual great game.
It is very obvious that there is a huge geopolitical backdrop of power plays in the Indian Ocean. The US’s naval dominance is declining and it is “leveraging the growing sea power of allies such as India and Japan to balance against China,” to quote Robert Kaplan, well-known strategic thinker and author.
China’s ascendance feared
Arguably, the US volte face on Colombo’s war (after having been its staunch supporter until recently) stems from the strategic setback it suffered through miscalculation insofar as while American admirals were scared away by Sri Lanka’s civil war, China simply moved in. The West fears China’s ascendance. On China’s part, however, the fuelling station in Hambantota becomes vital for optimally using the series of port facilities it has lined up in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar connecting the southern Chinese province of Yunnan to the world market.
The naval presence in Sri Lanka becomes invaluable for China if the planned canal across the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand materialises connecting Indian Ocean with China’s Pacific coast, a project that could dramatically shift the balance of power in Asia in China’s favour. Therefore, no matter what it takes, the West and China (with Russian backing) will compete for gaining the upper hand in Sri Lanka.
Having said that, the US also has a need for greater cooperation with China. This in turn creates a compulsion for the US to act as a ‘broker’ between India and China. During his visit to Delhi on May 14, the US Pacific Command chief Admiral Timothy J Keating revealed that he declined an offer recently from a top-ranking Chinese naval official regarding a US-Chinese understanding to split the seas East of Hawaii and West of Hawaii between the two navies, while on his part he said he invited China to join the annual US-India naval exercises codenamed ‘Malabar Exercises,’ but China declined and preferred to remain as an observer.
(The writer is a former diplomat)
President said Tamil Tigers were defeated without inflicting civilian casualties
- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 May 2009 22.59 BST
Lying howling on a torn mattress, in a cot by a window overlooking the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, the wounded toddler was a pitiful sight.
A female relative fretted, trying to calm the girl down as the medics worked around her. The 18-month-old had been shot in the stomach in the final stages of the fighting in the north-east of the country and there was an ugly line of stitches across her abdomen where doctors had operated to remove the bullet. Her right leg was missing a chunk of flesh and had been gashed.
The little girl is one of thousands of casualties hidden away from public view in hospitals across Sri Lanka, guarded by soldiers and police who roam the wards. As soon as they are fit enough to be moved, the injured are returned to the grim internment camps that are home to approximately 300,000 people.
Health workers and human rights activists say that the country’s medical services cannot handle the huge numbers of children and adults needing treatment for terrible injuries sustained during the final weeks of the fighting.
But the government appears determined to keep the true scale of the disaster out of the public eye, barring access to the hospitals and arresting three doctors who worked inside the war zone, accusing them of fabricating casualty figures.
According to unofficial UN figures obtained by the Guardian, more than 8,000 civilians were killed in the last four months of the war and more than 17,000 were wounded. The figures do not include those killed and injured in the final three days of the fighting. The Sri Lankan health ministry says it does not have up-to-date numbers.
UN sources say that initial analysis suggests an abnormally high number of child casualties, up to 45% of the overall total; a figure closer to 33% would have been expected. That would mean 3,600 children killed and 7,650 wounded, although some of those are believed to have later died from the injuries because of a lack of facilities to treat them.
After the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, claimed last week that victory was achieved without spilling a drop of civilian blood, the Guardian managed to gain access to the Lady Ridgeway hospital for children in Colombo on Saturday and spoke to staff to try to assess the true picture.
The ward on the sixth floor, where some of the most seriously injured children are being treated, was a depressing sight. Small children with amputated limbs, gunshot wounds and burns lay in cots around the ward.
The matron said they had received many such cases, brought down from the war zone for treatment in the specialist children’s hospital, but she could not say how many. “This girl was shot in the stomach,” she said, gesturing to the child screaming in the cot by the window. “The stitches are from where the doctors removed the bullet.”
Other children sat on chairs at the side of the ward, a girl with her arm in plaster, a boy with what appeared to be burns. Others lay in cots with gauze and bandages on their wounds. The wards were clean and tidy and the staff attentive, fussing over their patients, the nurses wearing immaculate uniforms. They appeared surprised to receive a visitor as the ministry of defence had repeatedly refused requests for permission to enter the hospital.
The matron said the children would be treated and then sent back with their parents to the camps around Vavuniya in northern Sri Lanka once they were well enough to be moved. It was not possible to establish how each child had received its injuries and from which side in the conflict.
Staff would not allow the patients or their relatives to be interviewed without the permission of the hospital director, who refused and ordered the Guardian to leave.
But according to others who have been into other hospitals around the country, the situation is the same everywhere.
Wards are packed with the casualties of the war, with doctors struggling to cope with the sheer volume of casualties.
“Children have suffered horrendously and disproportionately,” said James Elder, Unicef’s spokesman in Colombo. “The medical system is stretched to breaking point dealing with children who have been injured.”
He urged the government to allow injured children and their parents to leave the camps so that they could recuperate in a more appropriate environment.
Bhavani Fonseka, from the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, said that the government appeared determined to prove that fewer people had been killed and injured than was reported while the fighting was going on.
“There is a policy of don’t talk, keep it under wraps,” she said. “But the truth is that there are so many injured that they have had to ship them to hospitals around the country. It is huge numbers if you look at the kids spread around the hospitals.”
Fonseka, who had visited two hospitals, said she had seen children with both legs or both arms amputated. “We are going to have a generation of amputees,” she said.
She added that the situation was made worse for some of the traumatised children because they were being guarded by members of the same armed forces who were responsible, in some cases, for their injuries.
The UN is understood to be concerned about the lack of medical facilities inside the camps and at the government’s reluctance to make proper use of outside help.
During a visit to the internment camps on Saturday, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, met one young girl with wounds to both her legs. She told him that she had been hit by shrapnel but that there were no medical facilities in the camp where she could undergo surgery and no pain relief available.
Meanwhile Rajapaksa rejected an appeal by Ban to lift restrictions on aid delivery to the overcrowded camps.
The president said that security had to be assured “in view of the likely presence of LTTE [Tamil Tiger] infiltrators” among the refugees.
“As conditions improved, especially with regard to security, there would be no objections to such assistance, from organisations that were genuinely interested in the wellbeing” of the displaced Tamils, he said.
In a separate development a statement from the LTTE confirmed for the first time that their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had been killed. The body of Prabhakaran was produced by the Sri Lankan army last week. Pictures showed him lying with eyes open and a cloth covering an apparent deadly head wound.
Yesterday the BBC said that it had received a statement signed by the LTTE’s head of international relations, Selvarasa Pathmanathan. The statement said their “incomparable leader” had “attained martyrdom”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
No gloating in Sri Lanka
History teaches it’s imperative that the government should be magnanimous in victory
PARIS — The standard wisdom has it that conventional armies can’t win guerilla wars. The decisive defeat last week of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers shows there are important exceptions to this general rule. Chechnya, Angola and Ukraine in the 1950s were other examples of isolated guerilla movements that eventually were crushed by greatly superior forces with no concern for civilian casualties.
I’ve followed Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils since it began 26 years ago.
As with those endless disputes between Israelis and Arabs, Indians and Pakistanis, Turks and Armenians, I have great sympathy for both sides and watch these conflicts with deep sorrow.
Oppression of the island’s 3.8 million Hindu Tamils by extremists from the 17 million strong Sinhalese Buddhist majority sparked civil war in the early 1980s. Britain lit the fuse for this conflict by putting minority Tamils in many plum positions, part of its divide and rule policy.
Sri Lanka’s Tamils are part of the ancient Dravidian race that once dominated India before being driven south by lighter-skinned Indo-European invaders. They are part of a rich, 2,000-year-old culture; Tamil is one of India’s classical languages.
Sixty-six million Tamils live in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and six million across southern India. Tamils are found from Southeast Asia to the Caribbean. Canada has become a safe haven for many Tamils.
A portly Tamil militant with no military experience, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, founded and led a guerilla force, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in a struggle for an independent homeland in eastern Sri Lanka. He soon became a renowned military leader, cult leader and even an unlikely sex symbol for Tamils everywhere.
CROSSFIRE
Tamil moderates seeking peace were caught in a crossfire between government forces and the ferocious Tigers. Prabhakaran ruthlessly wiped out all rivals and Tamils seeking compromise. The Tigers, drawn from poor peasants and tea pickers, became one of the world’s most formidable fighting forces, repeatedly defeating the heavily armed Sri Lankan army and even the mighty Indian army when it tried to intervene in the war.
As a former soldier and war correspondent, I marveled at the courage, determination and tactical proficiency of the Tigers, who even had their own tiny navy.
Their suicidal courage, use of suicide bombers and attacks on civilian targets led them to be branded terrorists by many nations, including the U.S. and Canada. India’s late prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was killed in 1991 by a female Tamil Tiger suicide bomber.
Tamils are not “terrorists.” Nor are their opponents, the Sinhalese. Charges by Tamils that Sri Lanka’s government is practising genocide are wildly overstated. This has been an ugly civil war with constant atrocities committed by both sides. Aside from small arms, the Tamil’s primary weapons were often bombs on their bodies. This was a poor man’s struggle against massive firepower and modern weapons.
The Tigers were hemmed in relentlessly by superior forces. Government forces finally cornered the Tigers on the northeast coast and ground them down with heavy artillery, tanks and air strikes. The Tigers fought to the bitter end until leader Prabhakaran was killed.
The Tigers finally were defeated because they ran out of space to manoeuvre. Money, men and arms for the Tigers from the outside world had to run a Sri Lankan and Indian naval blockade. The world turned against Sri Lanka’s Tamils. Up to 100,000 people died in the war.
POWER SHARING
History teaches it’s imperative that Sri Lanka’s government in Colombo avoid triumphalism or revenge and be magnanimous in victory. Tamils should be afforded a high level of autonomy — as in India — and power sharing in Colombo. There should be no prosecutions of Tiger leaders.
Unless Colombo is generous in victory, it risks rekindling a low-level insurrection. If Sri Lanka’s Tamils are subjected to a Carthaginian Peace, there is a risk that India’s millions of sympathetic Tamils could become the source of new woes on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka.
ERIC.MARGOLIS@SUNMEDIA.CA
“die jüdische”
Sri Lankan envoy lashes out at Western “colonizers” over U.N. emergency session, but rights groups call proposed resolution “toothless”
Geneva, May 24, 2009- Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch today
expressed “serious disappointment” today over a “toothless” resolution on Sri Lanka being circulated by Switzerland and other Western states in advance of Tuesday’s U.N. Human Rights Council emergency session.
“The text is too little and, tragically for Sri Lanka’s innocent victims, far too late” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
“Despite the call by U.N. rights officials for an international inquiry into possible war crimes, the proposal instead asks Sri Lanka to investigate itself — it’s a joke. The text deliberately omits any condemnation of the government for its actions, and actually praises its ‘cooperation’. Finally, it’s not even drafted as a resolution, but as a lower-ranking ‘decision’.”
“The Swiss and E.U. sponsors are making a grave error by choosing ‘consensus’ over victims,” said Neuer. “When diplomats declare their willingness to water down a text to achieve consensus at the U.N. Human Rights Council, they effectively grant a veto to China, Saudi Arabia, and other serial abusers of human rights. Consensus at the council is purchased by moral indifference, and always means coming down on the side of the perpetrators — and never on the side of the victims.”
“If the E.U. in 2006 had gone ahead with their resolution at the council for Sri Lankan civilian victims, instead of pulling it under pressure, the world spotlight might have led to thousands of lives being saved today. It’s time for democracies to introduce serious resolutions, and even if they’re voted down, international attention will have been drawn.”
* * * * *
Following is a summary by UN Watch of a meeting held on Friday on the Swiss-EU draft resolution.
On Friday at the U.N. Human Rights Council informal consultations were held for the resolution on Sri Lanka being circulated by Switzerland and other Western states in advance of Tuesday’s emergency session. The meeting was chaired by Muriel Berset of Switzerland, sponsor of the text, along with representatives of the European Union (the Czech Republic), Chile and Mexico.
The group took pains to emphasize their “cooperative” and “consensus” approach, underscoring the special deference shown to Sri Lanka in contrast to the approach taken toward the other countries that the council has censured since 2006 – Israel, in 26 resolutions; Myanmar in 4; and North Korea, twice.
Whlie the purpose of the meeting was for the international community to work on a resolution to hold Sri Lanka accountable for its actions, Switzerland and its co-sponsors, evidently fearful of upsetting the alliance of repressive regimes that dominates the council, went so far as to grant the ambassador of Sri Lanka the right to participate in the meeting – and even to join the podium and speak first following their brief introduction.
This he did with much drama. Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka walked in late, delivered a 30-minute harangue against Western “colonizers”, and then walked out.
It being so rare for most of the UN’s 192 members to ever be censured, the Sri Lankan ambassador felt the need to show that his country enjoyed broad diplomatic support. He began by insisting that he considered the Western-led consultation on the draft resolution as one organized by “friends”, even if they some may be “misguided”. The “only enemy of Sri Lanka was the one within its borders”, now defeated.
Sri Lanka “put an end to that problem” after several attempts at negotiation failed and that all civilians caught in the conflict were hostages to the Tamil Tigers. The ambassador argued that it made no sense to hold a special session now that the 30-year war is over and “no one is dying”, and considering that the regular human rights council session is only a week away.
He complained that Tiger sympathizers are planning a demonstration on Monday, saying they should not be allowed to “hold the Human Rights Council hostage”.
Ambassador Jayatilleka used his remarks to rally the council’s majority of African and Asian states to his cause, attacking the sponsors of the special session as Western “colonizers” who refused to consult with the Asian bloc. How, he asked, could “distant” states know better than Sri Lanka’s neighboring states, who agreed with its positions?
He complained that states “in the region” were “bypassed”, “their advice and views completely ignored”, and not even sought. He decried the Swiss text, complaining that “those who are former colonizers somehow know more about how to handle Sri Lanka than our immediate neighborhood”. Sri Lanka can only take on the Swiss proposal if it is “de- mined and removed of booby traps”, something, he said, his country knew how to do very well militarily.
Adopting a pugilistic tone, the Sri Lankan envoy said he welcomed a diplomatic battle at the session, unafraid of a contested vote. He suggested that the Western-sponsored resolution was meant to force Sri Lanka to respond with a no-action motion – a procedure favored in the past by China, Zimbabwe and other repressive regimes in order to kill a censure resolution – so that Sri Lanka would be “trashed for the international media”. Nevertheless, he welcomed any such contest.
Ms. Berset of Switzerland thanked the Sri Lankan ambassador, who already got up and walked out, for his remarks and his “eloquence”, and said that her country sought “total openness, transparency, and inclusiveness”.
Next were a long list of speakers who opposed holding a special session, and who voiced their support for Sri Lanka’s outrageous competing resolution that is designed to praise itself and preempt any scrutiny: Egypt, Cuba, the Philippines, India, China, Malaysia, Syria, Thailand, Indonesia, and Lebanon.
Egypt took the floor first and spoke with a sense of anger. The only reason they attended this consultation was because they respect the positions of some of the session’s sponsors – those that had supported a special session to condemn Israel for its actions in Gaza. (He did not mention anything about Egypt’s public opposition to Hamas during that war.) There were “double standards” at the council, for addressing Sri Lanka this time instead of Palestine, Afghanistan, or Iraq.
Cuba agreed and protested that many countries were not consulted prior to the announcement of a special session. The only way to work in a cooperative manner was on the basis of Sri Lanka’s own text.
China echoed Cuba and said Sri Lanka should be commended for its “transparency” and “inclusiveness”.
Syria said that “the country concerned [Sri Lanka] has better knowledge of what needs to be done”.
Thailand said that it was against the convening of country-specific special sessions or resolutions in principle.
These interventions were followed by slightly more moderate approach shown by South Africa, Japan, and Senegal who stressed the need for “constructive engagement” and “cooperation” with Sri Lanka to bring about “consensus”. Japan also called for international assistance to Sri Lanka, noting its own provision of aid.
In response to the argument that there needs to be cooperation with Sri Lanka, Chile said that this approach was tried, but failed. It noted that Sri Lanka’s Ambassador even left the room now after giving his speech.
Chile also spoke about the rejection of the UN Human Rights Council president’s attempt to call for the softer measure of a “panel discussion” on Sri Lanka. This failure meant the only way to deal with the situation was to call for a full special session.
Chile also criticized Sri Lanka’s comment that it is inappropriate to call for the session now that the war is finished, given that it had argued against convening a session while the war was raging, saying that it could go in favor of the Tigers. It said the purpose of the session is not about the past, but about improving the situation for the future.
NGOs were also allowed to speak. A representative of the International Commission of Jurists said that Sri lanka�s position was “not only unfortunate”, but also “inhuman”, and he decried Sri Lanka’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force”. He said that the Swiss-EU proposal was beneath the level of acceptability, but better than the Sri Lankan text, which he called a “joke”. He complained that neither text addresses the violation of international humanitarian law or “the gross and systemic violations of human rights”.
The Czech Republic said that the principle of universality of human rights means that every country in the world has a right to be concerned about human rights situations of any other country. It said many people in Sri Lanka continue to live in an urgent situation, including the many internally displaced persons.
The meeting revealed the disturbing dynamics that govern the council. The European and Latin American states clearly thought themselves courageous in daring to criticize a country that belongs to the bloc of Non-Aligned states, and a country that is not Israel, Myanmar, or North Korea. On the other hand, their apologetic tone, followed by the vehement push-back by Egypt and numerous other states, highlighted the extent to which Western democracies are intimidated from applying minimum scrutiny to the world’s worst abusers. Will U.S. membership, beginning late June, bring democracies some needed backbone?
UN Watch is a Geneva-based human rights organization founded in 1993 to monitor UN compliance with the principles of its Charter. It is accredited as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Special Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and as an Associate NGO to the UN Department of Public Information (DPI).
“die jüdische” 24.05.2009 11:15
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sri-lanka-lessons23-2009may23,0,4110448.story
From the Los Angeles Times
The tactics the government used to defeat the Tamil Tiger rebels could help other nations grappling with insurgencies.
By Mark Magnier
May 23, 2009
Reporting from New Delhi — Sri Lanka’s victory this week after a 25-year battle against the Tamil Tiger rebels represents a rare success story for governments fighting insurgencies.
Even as leaders in Colombo, the capital, declared a national holiday and citizens danced in the streets, military planners and analysts around the world began scrutinizing the war for lessons on how to fight Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups.
For more than two decades in the conflict in Sri Lanka, neither side was strong enough to overcome the other. That changed three years ago, when the army adopted more mobile tactics, overhauled its intelligence system, promoted young commanders and steadily hemmed in one of the world’s most ruthless and innovative rebel movements.
At its peak, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as the rebels are formally known, controlled one-third of the country, had their own army, a sizable navy and nascent air force, and served as a role model for insurgencies worldwide with their pioneering use of explosives vests and female suicide bombers. This week, the army displayed in triumph what it said was the portly, bullet-riddled body of Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in his signature fatigues.
What may be the most important factor in ending the stalemate was the political will to do whatever it took. In a supreme irony, President Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected in November 2005 by a 1.9-percentage-point margin after Prabhakaran urged Tamils to boycott the election. Rajapaksa made military victory over the Tigers a cornerstone of his administration and signaled to the military that it could get whatever resources it wanted simply by asking.
“They did everything a general dreams of,” said retired Indian Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, a commander of the Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s. “Unfettered resources and no political interference.”
The military budget grew by 40% a year, and the army exploded by 70% to 180,000 troops, adding 3,000 a month compared with 3,000 a year previously, drawing largely from rural Singhalese attracted by relatively high wages in a struggling economy.
With more soldiers, the army was able to hit the Tigers on several fronts simultaneously, breaking with years of hit-or-miss operations.
“Before, the army would take territory, then move on, allowing the LTTE to come back,” said military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara. “That changed and we hit them on all four fronts so they could no longer muster all their resources into one place.”
Some of the lessons are transferable, experts said.
“Sri Lanka provides a case study,” said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.
Other lessons are either unique to Sri Lanka or would be politically unpalatable in other societies, including the high civilian and military death tolls and alleged human rights violations. The United Nations and many human rights groups repeatedly called for a cease-fire so civilians caught in the crossfire could flee the conflict area — calls the government largely dismissed.
“They were not worried about collateral damage,” said Ajey Lele, an Indian military analyst and ex-wing commander. “So in many regards it’s a very difficult model to adopt.”
By some estimates, nearly 100,000 people died in the war, which began in 1983, including more than 7,000 civilians since January.
Because Rajapaksa’s base was the nation’s Sinhalese majority, there was relatively little domestic pushback over the deaths and displacement of ethnic Tamil civilians. The government restricted the access of international media and independent humanitarian groups, making it difficult to report what was going on.
The lesson of nonstop, no-holds-barred combat — the army even powered on during monsoons — was complemented by better use of small, flexible “deep penetration” special forces units, many trained by their U.S. and Indian counterparts. Dressed like the rebels, they went behind enemy lines, assassinating Tigers, crippling infrastructure in rebel-held areas and reporting target locations to the army and air force.
Cutting supply lines, creating faster and more mobile special forces units, going after financing and hitting jungle hide-outs are additional strategies applicable to other insurgency battles, experts said.
At the same time, the Tigers’ scope made them a bigger target. For years, they parked freighters at sea and ferried arms, oil, food and other supplies into ports they controlled.
In recent years, the government destroyed seven of these mother ships, reportedly with the help of satellite intelligence from India and the United States, and made better use of small, maneuverable, heavily armed “Arrow” vessels.
“It adopted many new tactics and techniques,” said retired Indian Col. Ravindra Tripathi, a military analyst. “And it imbued fighting spirit in its troops.”
The broader political climate also was changing, some critics said. Any lingering sympathy for so-called freedom fighters eroded after the Sept. 11 attacks. Though some militant groups, such as the Irish Republican Army, eventually opted for political settlement, Prabhakaran rejected the idea of compromise.
In this new climate, Sri Lanka also gained access to U.S. satellite intelligence and training and benefited from designation of the LTTE as a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and India. Smuggling and arms deals, as well as financing from the Tamil diaspora, became more difficult as the international community stepped up its scrutiny of money trails.
“A military precept the world over is that you can’t win militarily against an insurgency, which is essentially a political struggle,” said Maj. Gen. Mehta. “They turned that on its head.”
Pavitra Ramaswamy in The Times’ New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.
Thu, May 21, 2009, 08:23 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
May 21, Colombo: More Sri Lankan Tamil youths gathered at selected police stations in Eastern Province to join the police as the government has called for interviews.
According to sources in the Eastern Province, more than 5,000 Tamil youths came for the interviews at selected places to join the police department following the conclusion of the three decades long war.
The interviews for the recruitments were held this morning at Batticaloa, Valachchenai, Kaththankudi, Erawur and Kalawanchikudi.
Sri Lanka government is planning to recruit 2,000 new police officers to the department, especially for the services in the Northern region of the country.
The Government hopes to recruit the youths who could speak Sinhala as well as Tamil for the convenience of the people.
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Sri Lankan army deaths revealed
Sri Lanka says more than 6,200 security personnel were killed and almost 30,000 wounded in the final three years of the war with the Tamil Tigers.
Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa revealed the figures on state TV – the first such official statement.
It is thought at least 80,000 people have been killed in the 26-year war.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to arrive in Sri Lanka on Friday to discuss the plight of about 275,000 internally displaced people.
Sri Lanka officially announced an end to the war this week, after its troops took the last segment of land held by the rebels, and said it had killed the top Tamil Tiger leadership, including its chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran.
‘Reconciliation’
Mr Rajapaksa, brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, told the state-run Independent Television Network the final phase of the operation against the rebels had begun in August 2006.
INTERNALLY DISPLACED
“Since then the security forces, including the army, navy, the air force, police and the civil defence force, have lost 6,261 personnel killed and 29,551 wounded,” Mr Rajapaksa said.
“We made huge sacrifices for this victory.”
There are no official figures for the number of Tamil Tiger rebels killed in the civil war, although estimates vary from between 15,000 and more than 22,000.
The UN says 7,000 civilians have died since January alone, although the government disputes this figure.
The focus will now shift to the resettlement of the internally displaced.
On Thursday, two visiting Indian envoys met the president and said they had been told Sri Lanka would resettle most of the displaced Tamils within six months.
The issue will be top of Mr Ban’s agenda when he arrives.
Aid groups complain their access to the displaced camps has been greatly restricted.
Mr Ban will visit the Manik Farm area in Vavuniya, where most of the displaced are held.
He has sent his own envoy, Vijay Nambiar, ahead of him and on Friday Mr Nambiar said there had to be a political reconciliation.
“The process of national reconciliation, we feel, must be all inclusive so that it can fully address the legitimate aspirations of the Tamils as well as other minorities,” he said.
“It is important that victory becomes a victory for all Sri Lankans.”
Mr Nambiar said he had flown over the conflict zone to assess it.
“We were not able to see any civilians. What was truly striking was the almost total absence of human habitation… it was almost eerie.”
He would also not rule out possible investigation of war crimes.
“Where there are grave and systematic violations of international humanitarian law, these are things which should be looked at by the international community, by the United Nations,” Mr Nambiar said.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/8062922.stm
Published: 2009/05/22 08:25:45 GMT
© BBC MMIX
Sri Lankan war zone still cut off
Posted
Updated
The areas of Sri Lanka worst affected by the recent conflict remain sealed off from overseas aid, despite the end of the war between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan army.
The United Nations wants the Government to allow aid groups into war-ravaged areas in the north of the country to help the estimated quarter of a million people who have been displaced.
Most have lost their homes, possessions and livelihoods, and the UN says some displaced civilians have not received any aid for more than a week.
UN spokesman Gordon Weiss is calling on the Sri Lankan Government to grant urgent access to aid groups.
“I think it’s very important. Donors don’t hand over blank cheques in these circumstances,” he said.
“A neutral eye is important. The UN has a role to play here, as do the International Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies.”
It is still not known exactly how many people have been killed or injured in the conflict, or just how large the emergency is.
The Sri Lankan Government says it does not want advice from the international community, but rather materials to help in the rebuilding effort.
Mr Weiss says it is unclear how long civilians will be held in Government-run camps.
“The Government began by saying that it was their intention that people would be there for between two and three years,” he said.
“They shifted that position. They now say that their intention is to return 80 per cent of the people in those camps to their homes by the end of the year. We’ll wait and see what happens.”
Celebrations
In the capital Colombo the victory celebrations continued for a second day as people carrying flags marched along the streets.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse is calling on Sri Lankans to unite, but after a quarter of a century of war, the divisions remain.
Mr Rajapakse is promising to protect the Tamil minority and find a solution which is acceptable to all groups.
In the Tamil neighbourhood known as ‘little Jaffna’ in the capital Colombo, some Tamils are nervous because they do not know what the defeat of the Tamil Tigers will mean for them.
Some are calling for greater power for Tamil political leaders.
“Actually, they want some powers in Jaffna for them to manage their own affairs without interference,” one resident said.
In a nearby street, Government supporters burnt an effigy of slain Tamil Tigers leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.
State television broadcast video of Prabhakaran’s body, despite Tamil Tiger claims he is still alive and well.
The President has declared a national holiday but there is some caution. Extra security is in place amid fears of a possible terrorist attack by Tamil Tiger supporters.
The Government is also trying to recruit more than 40,000 extra soldiers and police to patrol the territory regained from the rebels.
From Monsters and Critics.com
South Asia Features
Sri Lankan civil war ends but propaganda war goes on (News Feature)
By Can Merey
May 20, 2009, 8:33 GMT
New Delhi – Sri Lanka’s army massacred innocent civilians in the last days of the island nation’s civil war, Tamil rebels say, while Colombo claims its soldiers rescued all civilians from the clutches of the terrorist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) without shedding a single drop of the non-combatants’ blood.
With the fighting officially over, the propaganda war goes on. The contradictions are typical for a conflict where the truth has been among the main casualties.
While the LTTE maintained Tuesday that its ‘beloved leader’ Velupillai Prabhakaran was alive and safe, the army released images of his corpse, which the LTTE has not attempted to counter so far.
Yet information provided by Colombo has not always proved reliable and sometimes the government even unmasked its own claims and assurances.
The Sri Lankan government announced last month it was stopping the use of heavy artillery against the LTTE. This appeared to contradict a previous denial of using the big guns, which put at risk the large number of civilians trapped in the conflict zone.
Also inaccurate were statements by President Mahinda Rajapakse who said a maximum of 70,000 civilians remained in the rebel-held combat zone. Higher estimates where dismissed as propaganda by the much unloved international aid organizations.
The helpers had been welcome in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami but were then branded by the government supporters of the LTTE in an unprecedented smear campaign.
Now the president has proudly announced that the government has rescued more than 210,000 civilians, who had been abused by the rebels as human shields. This number is close to the aid organizations’ original estimates.
Claims by either the government or the rebels became increasingly difficult to verify, as the army denied independent journalists access to the conflict zones.
Even journalists attempting to get close to the refugee camps, or welfare camps, as the government termed them, were turned back at the checkpoints, and brusquely told by the army that they decided who was reporting what and when.
Foreign correspondents in Sri Lanka were labelled ‘foot soldiers of the LTTE’ in propaganda pieces released by the Defence Ministry. Western journalists, they claimed, were promoting the war to ‘extend their stopover in paradise.’
Journalists based outside the country were repeatedly denied visas without being given any explanations.
Owing to the lack of research options, foreign media were often forced to rely on statements released by the conflict parties on the internet, the medium where the propaganda struggle increasingly moved to over the years.
The Defence Ministry’s website – defence.lk – was pitted against tamilnet.com.
Tamilnet still advertises its ‘accurate and trustworthy reporting,’ which is as far-fetched as the assurance that the site was providing neutral and balanced reports.
For a long time the tamilnet reporters worked from the same building in the rebel capital Kilinochchi as the LTTE, who used the internet service as a willing mouthpiece.
Criticism against the Tamil Tigers could not, and still cannot be found anywhere on tamilnet.
Equally, there is little doubt about the propaganda function of the ministry’s website. In addition to information about the frontline, reports on LTTE casualties and praise for the government, the site is full of scornful commentaries.
The postings are not only aimed against foreign aid organizations and journalists. Everything that seems Western is a target.
On Tuesday attacks were launched against the foreign ministers of the United States, France, Britain and other ‘politicians who could easily be bought over for money.’
Sri Lanka, so the thrust of the argument goes, has shown the West, who struggles in Afghanistan, how to deal with terrorists.
A commentary on the ministry’s website lists the country’s new friends, who Sri Lanka ‘can never forget.’ Among them are Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and Libya – those countries who remained silent when thousands of civilians died in the crossfire in the latest round of fighting.
© Copyright 2007 by monstersandcritics.com.
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The end of Sri Lanka’s war
May 21st 2009 | COLOMBO
From The Economist print edition
From The Economist print edition
Mixed feelings as the government celebrates a most bloody victory
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WHEN Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, declared victory over the ruthless Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a speech to parliament on May 19th, he should have addressed a full house. In fact, over 20 opposition chairs in the 225-seat chamber were frostily vacant. Keeping away were members of the Tamil National Alliance, the largest group of parties representing the Tamil minority, elected in the north and east of the island. It was a reminder to a triumphant government of an unhappy truth: the Tigers may be dead, but the bitter ethnic divisions that fuelled the 26-year war live on.
Some hours later only a few bursts of firecrackers were heard in Colombo when state television aired footage of the dead Tiger supremo, Velupillai Prabhakaran. There had already been two days of noisy celebration at the end of one of Asia’s longest wars. Firecrackers were sold out; national flags, with their dominant lion insignia representing the Sinhalese ethnic majority, had doubled in price.
Prabhakaran was shown with a single shot to the forehead, a cloth covering the top of his skull, which appeared to have been blown off. Blood seeped from the yawning wound into the muddy ground he lay in. A soldier turned his head from side to side for the camera. In death as in life (see our obituary), the man many had thought invincible wore an impenetrable stare. LTTE 0:01, read his dog-tag; blood group, B-negative.
The army reportedly located his body beside a lagoon a day after the state media had first announced his death. In the absence of photographic evidence, Sri Lankans had begun to dread that he had escaped. Then, on the afternoon of May 19th, after the president’s speech, the army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, revealed that the corpse had been found.
This soon raised questions about the circumstances of his death. Some speculated he was shot by an infantryman who had stumbled upon him during mop-up operations. Others claimed he was killed after being tricked into turning himself in. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that the LTTE had offered to surrender to the government through them and that this offer had been suitably conveyed.
The government heightened the confusion by insisting that Prabhakaran had died in battle the previous day, a claim belied by the evidently fresh state of his corpse. All other senior Tiger leaders, including Sivershankar Pottu Amman, who led intelligence, and Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan, alias Soosai, who commanded the naval unit, were reported killed, as was Prabhakaran’s oldest son, Charles Anthony, who had run the nascent air wing.
For Rajan Hoole, a prominent Tamil human-rights activist, how the fighters died is less important than the government’s plans, if any, for post-war reconciliation. The war, he argues, has left the minorities feeling less Sri Lankan. So if the government does not act wisely, Tiger leaders might come to be seen as martyrs to the cause of a separate homeland. Sulochana Ramaiah, a Tamil journalist, hopes the end of the war heralds a new era of prosperity. But she worries that Tamils might have to live in fear under a pro-Sinhalese government that is now cockier than ever.
In a more understated speech than had been expected, President Rajapaksa attempted to allay some of these concerns by drawing a clear distinction between the Tigers and the Tamil people. He promised equal rights for all. But any response to the long-standing grievances of the Tamil minority must be home-grown, he stressed. Sri Lanka had no time to try out solutions put forward by other countries—an implicit dig at Indian attempts at intervention.
Much of the world has been sickened by the cost in human life paid for the government’s victory. Thousands of civilians have been killed or severely wounded in furious crossfire. The government blames the Tigers for civilian casualties. There is indeed evidence that they shot civilians when they tried to escape. But it seems likely, as UN officials and others have suggested, that many, or most, perished in heavy artillery- and mortar-fire from the army. Feverish last-minute attempts by Western nations to bring about a humanitarian pause were rejected by Mr Rajapaksa. He said it would serve no purpose when the rebels were clearly holding civilians as human shields.
European Union foreign ministries have already urged an independent inquiry into alleged war-crimes by both the LTTE and the government. At a meeting in Brussels, they said they were appalled by the high number of civilian casualties in the fighting. Separately, David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, noted on May 19th that, though exact numbers may never be known, thousands of civilians have died. More than 250,000 have been displaced by the fighting and interned by the government in camps, to which the access of the international humanitarian agencies is still restricted.
The ICRC has been excluded from the area of north-eastern Sri Lanka hardest hit by fighting in recent weeks. So it has been unable to obtain first-hand information about the needs of civilians and wounded people, including those needing urgent medical care. Many of those crammed into internment camps require humanitarian assistance that the government is not financially equipped to provide. The territorial conflict may be over but a humanitarian disaster is still unfolding.
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Leaders Pressed On Treatment of Tamil Civilians
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 22, 2009
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 22, 2009
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 21 — Every 15 minutes, Sri Lankan state television halts its normal programming to broadcast patriotic images of women in lush tea fields at sunrise, workers building power lines and troops standing guard, all accompanied by a soaring anthem in which a young beauty calls for the country’s president to be crowned king.
On the streets of the capital, billboards proclaim, “King Mahinda Rajapaksa: He saved us,” beneath a photograph of the president hugging his brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s defense minister, and apparently glorying in the military victory that this week ended more than a quarter-century of war with the Tamil Tiger separatists.
“Everyone’s heartbeat is just like my song and the billboards,” said Saheli Rochana Gamage, 21, whose rendition of the anthem has made her a celebrity in this small Indian Ocean island nation. “He should be our president forever. We are happy with a king who can protect our country. Elections don’t matter.”
At a time when insurgencies elsewhere seem to be expanding, notably in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Rajapaksa brothers were able to do what five Sri Lankan presidents, eight governments and more than 10 cease-fires could not: win a war against a movement that the FBI has called “the most ruthless and efficient terror organization in the world.”
Despite the elation, however, the human cost of their accomplishment is also becoming clear: Power has been consolidated around a ruling family, a humanitarian crisis looms, and civil rights and media freedoms have been rolled back.
Perhaps the most pressing problem is the situation of more than 280,000 people, mostly Tamils, who have been driven from their homes in recent months, many of them traumatized women and children who were used as human shields or forced to huddle in trenches or the jungle during fighting. They are now living in crowded, highly controlled government-run camps, fenced in by barbed wire. Sri Lanka stands at a crossroads, many here say.
“Sri Lanka has won the war. But now they have to win the peace, which is a very difficult challenge,” said Erik Solheim, Norway’s minister for international development, who worked for 10 years with the warring parties and brokered a failed 2002 cease-fire. The government must make all communities feel they are Sri Lankans, he said.
“They also have to share local power in the north where many of the Tamils live,” Solheim added. “The president will have to rise to the occasion. It’s an enormous chance for him to do well or fail.”
Human rights groups are especially concerned about a number of children allegedly abducted from the camps by pro-government Tamil paramilitary groups and questioned about links to the Tamil Tiger rebels, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. The fate of many young Tamil Tiger fighters who surrendered to the armed forces is also unknown. The camps are closed to journalists and even Tamil political leaders.
Lakshman Hulugalle, director general of the Defense Ministry’s media center, declined to comment on the treatment of those accused of “terrorism” and defended sealing the camps to journalists.
“It’s a private matter for Sri Lanka,” Hulugalle said. “The problem here is terrorists fight like civilians. They dress like civilians. Just because they drop the gun doesn’t mean they aren’t terrorists.”
Before a spike in suicide bombings following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Tigers reportedly carried out two-thirds of all such attacks in the world. India on Thursday marked the anniversary of the 1991 killing of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by a suspected Tiger female suicide bomber, apparently in revenge for his having sent a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.
Solheim said closing the camps to aid workers and journalists “for any reason is completely unacceptable and dangerous for those inside.”
“The international community must, and I mean must, get into these camps,” he said. “They have to say to Sri Lanka: ‘It takes two to tango. If you want reconstruction and aid money, you will open the camps.”
Diplomatic Pressure
The United States and Britain, two key members of the International Monetary Fund, have said they will link the release of a $1.9 billion bailout loan to improvements in Sri Lanka’s treatment of war-displaced civilians.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telephoned President Rajapaksa to urge political reconciliation and speedy resettlement of displaced Tamil civilians.
Few question the need for security, but civil society leaders worry that the country’s mood of blind patriotism will encourage the government to ignore international standards for the treatment of war criminals and Tamils they suspect are rebel sympathizers. At the heart of the insurgency are the long-standing grievances of the country’s largely Hindu and Christian Tamils, who make up as much as 15 percent of the nation’s population of 21 million. Some Tamils say they have suffered economic marginalization and racial discrimination at the hands of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
One key issue will be the timeline for resettlement of the displaced Tamils. If they stay in the camps too long, advocates say, they could be sidelined as the north is rebuilt and could also have difficulty reclaiming their farms.
After a meeting with an Indian delegation Wednesday, Sri Lankan officials vowed to return most of the displaced civilians to their homes this year.
Rajapaksa also called on Sri Lankans on Thursday to make peace. “The celebration of this victory, as deep as it is felt, should be expressed with magnanimity and friendship towards all,” the president said in a statement.
Suresh Premachandran, a Tamil leader and a member of Parliament, cautioned that the military victory cannot be considered complete unless Tamils feel they are equal citizens. Sri Lankan police and civil servants often don’t speak Tamil, and there is tension over both language and lack of Tamil representation in government jobs.
“We are the people who are elected democratically,” said Premachandran, a former rebel. “Even when we start to speak in Parliament, immediately all the people in the ruling party start to shout, ‘You LTTE bugger!’ and things like that,” a reference to the rebels’ formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
“The Sri Lankan government does not want to share the power with the Tamil people,” he added. “That is the whole reason why this thing started.”
Rebuilding a Nation
Sri Lanka’s government has won over public opinion by painting the conflict as a war against terrorism. Several ministers have already advised the president to hold early elections, and others have urged amending the constitution to allow Rajapaksa to run for a third a term.
Nearly 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict and thousands displaced in this once prosperous teardrop-shaped island. Under emergency regulations introduced in August 2006, the security forces have sweeping powers of search, arrest, detention and seizure of property. They are also permitted to hold people in unacknowledged detention for as long as 12 months, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The president has his work cut out,” said Lal Wickrematunge, editor of the independent Sunday Leader newspaper. “Of course, he’s very, very popular right now. He’s at the zenith of his popularity. He should use that to unite all communities and not even talk of ethnicity, but of rebuilding Sri Lanka.”
Wickrematunge’s brother, Lasantha, the newspaper’s former editor and an outspoken critic of the government, was killed earlier this year and predicted his own death in an editorial headlined “And Then They Came for Me,” which he directed to be printed in the event of his assassination. Many here claim government security forces had a hand in his death, an allegation the government denies.
“The Tamil Tigers are vanquished,” Lal Wickrematunge said. “But there is still fear. I hope the wind of freedom will blow across our country.”
At market fruit stands and at prayer stations near white-washed statues of Buddha, Sri Lankans here expressed optimism. Many said the mood is reminiscent of the sense of unity that followed the 2004 tsunami, which left 30,000 Sri Lankans dead. Sri Lankans of all backgrounds sent rice, blankets and clothing to the victims. They are doing the same now for those in the camps.
In her family’s living room, Gamage, the singer, who is Sinhalese, said she had thought a lot about the president’s victory speech to the nation, especially his admonition: “The war against the LTTE is not a war against Tamil people.”
“I liked that way of thinking,” she said.
The Sri Lankan government has produced a stream of war propaganda, including coffee-table books on Tamil Tiger killings and films showing soldiers saving civilians.
But Gamage said her song expresses pride, not propaganda. After hearing Rajapaksa’s speech, she said, she translated the lyrics into Tamil. “Everyone should love our king,” she said. “We trust him.”
Friday, 22 May 2009 – 1:22 AM SL Time
The next time you buy some lingerie, a T-shirt or a pair of rubber gloves, you may want to reflect on this: they were probably made in Sri Lanka. And, like it or not, your purchase plays a role in the debate over how to respond to the Sri Lankan Government`s successful but brutal military campaign against the Tamil Tiger rebels, which reached its bloody climax this week.
Since 2005 Sri Lanka has been allowed to sell garments to the European Union without import tax as part of a scheme designed to help it to recover from the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. That means its clothes are 10 per cent cheaper than those from China and other competitors helping the island to earn at least $2.9 billion ( 1.9 billion) from the EU annually. Britain accounts for much of that.
Britain has also helped to rebuild Sri Lanka`s tourist industry: Britons accounted for 18.5 per cent of the foreigners who visited the former colony`s famous beaches, wildlife parks, tea plantations and Buddhist temples last year. Only India sends more tourists. Many Britons also own property there, especially around the southern city of Galle, not far from where Arthur C.Clarke, the British science fiction writer who settled in Sri Lanka, used to love to scuba dive.
So the question facing British shoppers and holidaymakers is this: should they continue to support Sri Lanka`s garment and tourist industries? Sadly, the answer must be no.
Britain should welcome the defeat of the Tigers, a ruthless terrorist organisation that forcibly recruited children, pioneered the use of the suicide bomb and killed thousands of innocent people. But Britain must also condemn the Sri Lankan Government`s conduct of the war and take punitive action against it both to discourage other states from using similar methods, and to encourage proper reconciliation between the Tamil and Sinhalese communities. With the UN paralysed, economic sanctions is the only practical option left.
Many will ask why they should care: there are bigger conflicts in the world, and Sri Lanka`s is mercifully confined to its own shores, with no risk that British troops might be deployed.
The response to that is simple: what about next time? Sri Lanka`s war has been discrete only because it is an island many other conflicts have spilt across borders, forcing military intervention to prevent a humanitarian disaster or a greater conflagration. Consider the break-up of Yugoslavia or Sierra Leone.
Britain may have, in the eyes of the world, ceded much of the moral high ground over human rights when it shed civilian blood during the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But that does not mean that it should abandon its role in defending international law that protects civilians in conflicts and holds governments accountable for their actions during war.
Yes, international humanitarian law is based largely on Western values, and enforced imperfectly, but the world would be a much more violent, unjust place without it. Put simply, every war might look like Sri Lanka`s.
In an ideal world the UN, not the EU, would take the lead. But the UN, even in the face of a clear humanitarian disaster and blatant war crimes by both sides, has been compromised. By cosying up to China, Russia and other countries facing their own separatist problems, Sri Lanka managed to keep its own war off the formal agenda of the UN Security Council until the last minute. Without the UN Security Council`s backing, an independent war crimes investigation will struggle to get off the ground.
Thus it is once again up to the democratic world to take action even if that means muddling the issues of trade and human rights.
A key point to bear in mind is that human rights are an explicit part of GSP Plus, the EU`s scheme that gives preferential trading rights to 16 developing nations, from Guatemala to Mongolia. These nations must comply with 27 international conventions covering environmental, labour and human rights standards. Many have gone to great lengths to adhere to them.
That may sound like excessive EU bureaucracy, but the system is designed to ensure the products we import meet EU standards no child labour, for example. It is also designed to give developing countries an incentive to improve their own standards to the benefit of their own people.
That is where Sri Lanka has let itself down. Last year the EU expressed grave concerns about human rights abuses committed during the conflict and said that it might not renew the GSP Plus deal after it expired in December.
Sri Lanka`s response was to dismiss the EU out of hand, accusing it of violating Sri Lankan sovereignty. The EU then announced that it was launching an investigation into possible rights abuses, pending the results of which GSP Plus remains in place. Sri Lanka has so far refused to co-operate, banking on EU inaction.
Since then, the situation has deteriorated dramatically. Sri Lankan armed forces are now suspected of repeatedly shelling civilian targets including hospitals, and of shooting dead at least two Tiger leaders as they were surrendering. They have also herded more than 200,000 Tamils into internment camps, splitting up families. These squalid places have insufficient water or medical supplies, and aid workers have been blocked from helping in these camps. Even the Red Cross has been forced to suspend its operations in the barbed-wire facilities, which the Sri Lankan Government calls welfare villages but Tamil activists liken to concentration camps.
Renewing GSP Plus in these circumstances would make a mockery of human rights and set an awful precedent for other nations. Withdrawing it could cost Sri Lanka 2 per cent of its GDP and thousands of jobs, which will hit many innocent civilians. But the fault, if this happens, will lie with its Government for failing to address the EU`s concerns.
As to whether Britons should visit Sri Lanka as tourists, well that`s a matter of personal choice just as it is whether to visit Burma. But until the international community pulls together and formulates its own robust response, there is no clearer way for individuals to register their disapproval for the actions of Sri Lanka`s Government than simply to stay away.
Sharing a smoke with new found friends by the Li River, Guilin, China
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