Website: www.sluna.org
E-mail: sluna@idirect.com
MEDIA
RELEASE March
24, 2008
Sri Lanka’s Withdrawal from the Ceasefire
Agreement and Alleged HR Violations
We are puzzled by the lack of understanding among key members of the
international community that has a
history of flouting accepted conventions and rules to carry out their
interventionist agendas, about a failed ceasefire agreement from which Sri
Lanka formally withdrew effective January 16, 2008, in order to defend her
territorial integrity and sovereignty in the face of flagrant violations on the
part of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), recognized as a terrorist
organization. The LTTE violated the CFA
from its very inception, and used it to build up their weapons stockpile and
fighting forces to pursue their end goal of dismembering Sri Lanka by force of
arms and establishing a separate mono-ethnic Tamil fascist state comprising
over 1/3rd of the land and 2/3rd of the coastal belt and adjacent
ocean for resident Tamils numbering less than 4 percent of the island’s
population.
The CFA was flawed to begin with, as it provided undue concessions to the
armed LTTE terrorists to have their cadres enter areas controlled by the
government whilst barring all others entry into territory usurped by the
illegal army of the LTTE. The A9 highway
traversing through the illegally usurped territory which was to remain open for
the free flow of traffic was obstructed with a barrier set up by the LTTE for
levying unauthorized taxes or extortion of funds especially from members of the
Tamil community proceeding to visit their family members in the Vanni region
and the Jaffna peninsula, and trucks carrying essential merchandise for the
civilians trapped within. The Norwegian
facilitator obtained the signature of the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on
this flawed document in advance, and thereafter had Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe
who was the Prime Minister in the UNP led government at the time, to sign it,
bypassing the country’s President who was the head of state, and the nation’s
parliament, which was most unconventional and highly irregular on their
part.
The Nordic Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (www.slmm.lk) has ruled that the Tamil Tigers violated the Ceasefire Agreement on 3830 occasions including the murder of dissident Tamils, other Sinhalese and Muslim civilians, members of the security forces and political leaders of the calibre of the Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, using violent means including suicide bombers, smuggling in 11 shiploads of weapons, forcibly conscripting adults and children, torturing, extorting and denying democratic and fundamental rights to the trapped civilians within the illegally usurped territory, as against 351 minor violations on the part of the GOSL mainly relating to harassment at security checkpoints. The Human Rights Watch report of March 2006 spoke of Tamil Tiger extortion of members of the diaspora for launching their final war of liberation which they commenced earlier in December 2005, just one month after the election of Mahinda Rajapakse as the new President of Sri Lanka. The President overlooked the numerous attacks carried out by the LTTE leading to the deaths of nearly 200 security forces personnel and serious injury to almost 400, and sought fresh talks with the Tigers to negotiate a peace deal to which they agreed, but immediately boycotted the sessions in Geneva in April 2006 to resume hostilities. It was only after the LTTE cut off water from the Mavil Aru (Mahavila) reservoir in mid-2006 depriving 30,000 families of their living source, that the government withdrew from a meaningless CFA and took steps to stop the haemorrhaging of the nation.
The
human rights situation degenerated following the split within the ranks of the
LTTE when the Karuna group broke away with 6000 cadres in 2004, causing immense
bitterness giving rise to internecine warfare bringing with it a climate of
fear, abductions, disappearances and murder of mainly Tamil civilians who were
identified as supporters of the splinter groups. Amnesty International’s report dated February
1, 2006 blames mainly the LTTE and the Karuna group for the human rights crisis
in the east, which sometimes spilt over to the capital city of Colombo where
they abducted and gunned down each others supporters. The level of rivalry and bitterness could be
ascertained from the fact that one of Karuna’s brother’s was done to death with
hammer blows to his body. The government
had its hands full battling the marauding LTTE and attempting to keep law and
order in the eastern province with some areas being barred to them under the
CFA, preventing them from pursuing the perpetrators who slid behind the LTTE’s
iron curtain. Given below are quotes from a report released by Sri Lanka’s Peace
Secretariat:
“The
issue of human rights deserves more objective treatment than HRW with its
current agenda seems able to offer. Its categorical assertion of state
responsibility for the abductions in general is not borne out by the evidence
it presents. The press release does in passing refer to paramilitaries, but
makes no mention of the internecine warfare that the LTTE engaged in with
former Tamil militant groups during the principal period under review. This was
the latter part of 2006, when they (these groups) were able to reassert
themselves following the ruthless decimation of them, that the LTTE had engaged
in during its period of domination following the Ceasefire. It is no
coincidence that, in claiming that there were over 1500 disappearances in the
two years that ended in December 2007, HRW records 1300 of them as having
occurred in 2006 or the first four months of 2007. Certainly any abduction must
be registered and investigated, but HRW releases are mainly for the purpose of
finger pointing. It must be pointed out that statistics make it clear that the
situation has improved from those days. But HRW is not really concerned about
facts or human suffering, as compared with its heavily financed agenda of
trying to embarrass the Sri Lankan government. It is not alone in this
practice. Very recently, an arrest by the security forces of a close associate
of the LTTE leadership was presented in the HRW “quoting and quoted from media”
as being an abduction. No apology has yet been issued about this error, just as
HRW avoided any apology for the blatant falsehoods in its last detailed report
on Sri Lanka.”
The
human rights situation has vastly improved since the defeat of the LTTE in the
eastern province, enabling the government to hold elections to local councils
with over a 60 percent voter turn out.
Elections are also scheduled to take place in May 2008 to establish the
Provincial Council for the Eastern Province, which will empower the people in
managing their day to day affairs.
Whilst prosecuting the war against the LTTE in the remaining areas that
they illegally hold in parts of the Vanni aimed at neutralizing the military
capabilities of the Tamil Tigers and eliminating its capacity to engage in
terrorist acts, the government has met with all of the 14 recognized political
parties including Tamil and Muslim groups within the democratic stream on 64
occasions, and come up with a
recommendation to resolve the conflicting issues in a manner acceptable
to all of the different communities by taking steps to fully implement the
provisions of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The final elimination of the LTTE’s terrorist
forces operating in the north, and disarming of its armed cadres will usher in
an era where the writ of the democratically and legally elected government
could be enforced throughout the entirety of Sri Lanka’s sovereign territory,
bringing with it law and order, and a climate amenable to the upholding of
human rights and other fundamental rights guaranteed by the nation’s constitution.
Yours
very truly,
Mahinda
Gunasekera
Honorary
President