Humanitarian operations and civilian safety

*****------

Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, MP was interviewed by Stephen Sackur for “BBC HARDtalk” on March 02, 2009

******------

Following are excerpts of the interview:

SS: Given your government’s intention to destroy the Tamil Tigers, is it safe to assume that the offensive continues unabated?

MS: Well, I must tell you very categorically that this humanitarian operation that we have launched is to liberate the civilians from the clutches of extreme terrorism. The fight is to eradicate terrorism and to liberate the civilians and give them a future within a democratic framework.

SS: Yes, but I did ask you a specific question. Does the offensive continue unabated? I ask it because the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs just said to the UN Security Council: “I urge the Government of Sri Lanka to hold back from any final military battle in order to allow the civilian population to get out safely, one way or another”.

MS: Well, our priority is also to get the civilians out but the LTTE, as you know, is holding them forcibly and it is now up to the international community to come out very strong and use whatever pressure that they have to get the LTTE to release these civilians.

As I mentioned earlier, our fight is against terrorism and as long as terrorism is there, we will continue to eradicate terrorism, but the objective of course is finally to liberate the civilian population from terrorism and address their genuine grievances.

SS: So the offensive goes on and you talk about the international community. Well of course they have weighed into the arena because they have asked both sides to respect a ceasefire. Are you prepared to do that?

MS: Well, for example, the EU in its statement which was released last week - the EU Council of Ministers - not only called for a ceasefire but they also asked the LTTE to lay down their weapons. If the LTTE lays down their weapons tomorrow, there will not be any reason for us to fight.

There will be an automatic ceasefire. As long as the LTTE is using weapons, as long as the LTTE is not allowing the civilians to leave, their freedom of movement being restricted, the civilians being shot and killed in cold blood and massive human rights violations being committed against the civilian population, our job is to ensure that this kind of terrorism is wiped out once and for all.

SS: And is it justifiable, do you think, to continue to use heavy weapons in those areas where you know many tens of thousands of civilians are trying to seek shelter?

MS: Well I am with you on that. There is absolutely no justification to use heavy weapons and, in fact, about ten days ago, the armed forces took a conscious decision not to use any heavy weapons. We have not been using heavy weapons; we are fighting man to man, door to door and street to street.

This is the way that we are going to ensure that terrorism is wiped out because, as you know, the LTTE is now restricted in fact to a very small area of about 48 sq. km. and we cannot use heavy weapons.

SS: Just a couple of days ago, in the International Herald Tribune, there was a graphic account including direct quotes from a doctor working in a makeshift hospital in the so-called safe zone or no-fire zone, describing how ten people at least have lost their lives in an artillery attack and he said that it had appeared to come from the area where the Government forces are deployed.

MS: Well we categorically deny this. In fact, this particular doctor has gone on record as saying that he never spoke to anyone, that he is not in a position to speak to anyone, we know that there have been previous attempts to use this doctor’s name. In fact, this is the Regional Director of Health Services in charge of Mullaitivu and he has been used on several other occasions and he has himself spoke to the Secretary, Health and very clearly stated that he has never spoke to any media.

This is, once again, part of the propaganda that the LTTE is using to distort what is really happening and I can say, very categorically, that we are not using heavy weapons.

SS: Well, are you trying to suggest to me that, in the course of the last six weeks or so of very bitter fighting, that your forces have not been responsible for civilian casualties on sometimes a very serious scale?

MS: We have never targeted civilians and we will never target civilians, because, as I mentioned earlier, our fight is to liberate the civilians from terrorism. We also know that the LTTE, previous to the no-fire zone which is now established in the coastal area, had their guns positioned in the previous no-fire zone and they were firing at the armed forces.

The armed forces knew the coordinates of this heavy weaponry and they even knew what type of weaponry the LTTE were using and there was precise targeted firing on the part of the armed forces.

We consciously avoided civilian areas because as I said earlier, what is the objective as far as the Government is concerned in targeting civilians, who are our own people? These are Sri Lankans whom we are trying to liberate from the clutches of terrorism.

SS: I was looking at the words of the International Committee of the Red Cross’ South Asia Chief, Jaques de Meyer, who says, “much of the fighting has been intrinsically incompatible with respect to the basic rules of war”. Now you are the Minister for Human Rights in your Government. Are you trying to tell me that your Government doesn’t acknowledge that it has made any mistakes or in any way has failed to respect human rights in this conflict?

MS: Well I can categorically tell you that we have consciously never done that, because we know that some of these hospitals and other areas where civilians are there, the coordinates have been made available to us and there is no necessity for us whatsoever in targeting those areas. We have avoided those areas and I must tell you.....

SS: The New York Times has seen a memo in which a UN official in Sri Lanka sent a message to New York saying, “our team on the ground was certain that a particular artillery shell that caused a great deal of damage, killing nine civilians, came from the Sri Lankan military’ apparently in response to an LTTE, that is a Tamil Tiger shell.”

MS: In fact I have seen that memo. We discussed this memo with the UN Resident Coordinator. He agreed that this memo, in the first place, was a confidential memo, and secondly he admitted finally after the discussion.

SS: Just because it is confidential doesn’t mean the information contained in it isn’t very important.

MS: That is exactly what I am leading up to. He admitted that this memo was not correct. In fact the memo was never used.

After that, I have in my phone right now a message that the UN Resident Coordinator in Colombo sent me, saying that the firing in fact, in their opinion, came from LTTE positions.

This is the contradiction I presented to him and he agreed that this memo will not be used and it has not been used. So there is this kind of thing also that is picked up by journalists and it is put in newspapers and I can tell you very frankly that neither the ICRC nor the UN at any point has said that the Government has fired into civilian positions.

Of course they have said that civilians have died, but to that we have asked them the question: How do you identify a civilian from a terrorist?