Writing the Tigers’ Obit

Kalinga SENEVIRATNE

By withdrawing from the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire, signed in 2002 with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan Government is only ‘’legalising existing ground reality,’’ a Government spokesman says.

“The LTTE has violated the Ceasefire Agreement so many times and what we have done is basically legalise the existing ground situation,” Lakshman Hullugalle, Director-General of the Media Centre for National Security, told IPS in an interview.

Hullugalle’s assertion was in consonance with a statement made by the Sri Lankan mission to the United Nations in Geneva on Tuesday that the CFA “ended quite some time ago when the LTTE unilaterally returned to full-scale hostilities in December 2005.”

Since the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) was signed, the LTTE (also known as the Tigers) has violated it 3,944 times, according to the records of the all-Scandinavian Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which also holds that the Government has violated it 359 times.

Most of the violations occurred after President Mahinda Rajapaksa won office in November 2005 on a strong pro-Sinhalese, nationalist platform that has favoured a military solution to the long-festering ethnic conflict in the island nation.

The LTTE’s immediate response to Rajapaksa’s election was a series of bomb attacks on Government Forces in the North and the East of the country, killing some 400 personnel within the first two months of the new administration.

The Armed Forces responded four months later by lifting an LTTE blockade of water supplies to mainly Sinhalese and Muslim farmers in the East of the island.

Known as the Mavil Aru battle, Government Forces, through a land and air offensive against the LTTE, recaptured an area controlled by the Tigers and opened the sluice gates in June 2006 to provide water to the farmers. Most people in Sri Lanka consider this battle as marking the end of the CFA.

The eviction of the LTTE from the East of the island, and the more recent targeted killing of two leading LTTE figures, have convinced people that the country is close to being rid of the LTTE. According to the Government, LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was himself injured in an air raid in November.

The peace movement, which consists mainly of foreign funded Non-Government organisations (NGOs), has not been visible on the streets to protest against the withdrawal of the CFA, perhaps sensing that the public mood is overwhelmingly against them.

Government sources, its Sinhala nationalist allies and even many peoples organisations have branded he rights NGOs as traitors and ‘dollar-chasing peace vendors.’

International aid donors have expressed concern at the final demise of the CFA which provided a five-year window of relative peace and prosperity in an ethnic conflict that goes back 25 years and has resulted in the deaths of 70,000 people.

As SLMM members pack their bags to leave, the Air Force, Navy and the Army have mounted a major offensive to retake the LTTE stronghold of Wanni in the North of the country, which was recognised as LTTE territory in the CFA.

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway, that are members of the SLMM, responded to the Government withdrawal from the CFA by warning that any hope of returning to the negotiation table would now be difficult.

With the Armed Forces’ morale high, Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, who survived an LTTE attempt to assassinate him in April 2006, has told journalists that he hopes to finish off the LTTE before he retires at the end of the year.

The LTTE has already been designated a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union and by neighbouring India.

Late Wednesday, the LTTE marked the end of the CFA with a bomb attack on a civilian bus in a rural area of Sri Lanka which killed some 27 people, including a number of schoolchildren.

The Government also accuses the LTTE of being behind the assassination of a minister on January 8, a week after Colombo first announced its intention to withdraw from the CFA.

LTTE’s bombing attacks in Colombo and in the interior of the country are said to be designed to provoke a Sinhalese backlash against the Tamil population and President Rajapaksa has warned people to be vigilant against reacting.

Hullugalle argues that the Armed Forces are capable of defeating the LTTE, but recent court rulings have restricted the Government’s ability to secure Colombo and other areas from terror attacks.

He was referring to rulings by the SC, in response to petitions filed on human rights grounds, that permanent check points, house searches and the rounding up of suspected Tamil youth were unconstitutional.

“I think people in Colombo in particular want that type of security. People have asked for it, but we have to obey court decisions,” Hullugalle said.

“Human rights campaigners, both local and international, are not talking about the human rights of innocent people who need to be protected from the terrorism of the LTTE.”

One organisation that is being singled out for criticism by officials is the National Peace Council (NPC) which is mainly funded by foreign donors.

Writing in the Daily Mirror this week, NPC executive director Jehan Perera described the Government’s decision to abrogate the CFA as ‘precipitous,’ and warned that the ethnic nationalism, needed to prosecute the war against the LTTE to a finish, did not fit well with the political accommodation and trust building necessary to generate an acceptable political solution to the conflict.

The new head of LTTE’s political wing B. Nadesan also reflected similar views in an interview with the Sunday Times, when he argued that the CFA was a foundation for a peace agreement because it was worked out with massive support from the international community.

But Bandula Jayasekara, Managing Editor of the independent news weekly Colombo Post, argues that the CFA had been confined to a piece of paper by the LTTE long before the Government decided to abrogate it.

“The LTTE never respected it (the CFA),” he told IPS. “If they did they wouldn’t have killed all those innocent civilians, many of them Tamils, such as Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in 2006.”

“The CFA did nothing for the people of this country, though it was reported that the agreement saved many lives, “ added Jayasekara.

“The LTTE started to develop its air wing under the CFA and nothing was done either by the United Nations, or the so-called international community mainly the US, Canada, Norway or others to help Sri Lanka.”

One of President Rajapaksa’s nationalist allies, the Marxist People’s Liberation Front leader Somawansa Amerasinghe strongly believes that the LTTE has proved to be a major impediment to peace in the country.

“Once the LTTE is finished, the military should come out of the North and East. Free speech must be restored among Tamils there,” he said in an interview with an Indian news channel this month.

“Once free speech is restored in the North-East, we can discuss constitutional matters with Tamils,” he was quoted as saying.

Inter Press Service