Sri Lanka: Offensive gegen Befreiungstiger. Verstoß gegen Waffenstillstandsabkommen

Colombo. (11.07.2007 jungewelt)

Der Krieg gegen die Befreiungs­tiger von Tamil Eelam (LTTE) hält an. Am Dienstag erklärte ein Sprecher der srilankischen Armee (SLA), daß Regierungstruppen tags zuvor nahe Thoppigala (unser Foto) im tamilischen Nordosten einen »Schlüssel-Standort« der LTTE erobert hätten. Die SLA-Führung rechne damit, bis Ende des Monats die gesamte Region zu kontrollieren. Am Dienstag meldete die Website tamilnet.com, daß eine Spezialeinheit der SLA »fünf Personen, darunter Personal des Tamileelam-Gesundheitsdienstes und Zivilisten«, getötet hätte. Bereits Ende Juni hatte S. P. Tamilchelvan, Leiter des politischen Flügels der »Tiger«, die »internationale Gemeinschaft« dringend aufgefordert, »die srilankische Regierung zur vollen Umsetzung des Waffenstillstand­abkommens« zu zwingen. Er beklagte deren Tatenlosigkeit, insbesondere was »ethnische Säuberungen, die fürchterlichen Menschenrechtsverletzungen und die schwerwiegende humanitäre Notlage« des tamilischen Volkes betrifft. Doch werde kein Volk »auf Dauer die Besatzung seines Landes oder eine Macht hinnehmen, die es verabscheut«.Raoul Wilsterer

Buddhist nationalism behind Sri Lanka's violent surge


By Mian Ridge, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Mon Jun 18, 4:00 AM ET

Colombo, Sri Lanka - As the war that has ravaged Sri Lanka for 25 years once again degenerates into widespread violence, the government is receiving new support from an unusual political group.

They are orange-robed, barefoot Buddhist monks. But instead of extolling peace and harmony, they are employing the uncompromising language of military strength.
"Day by day we are weakening the LTTE militarily," says the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana, a monk in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, as he spoke of the government's campaign to destroy the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known as the Tamil Tigers. "Talk can come later."
Sri Lanka's hard-line monks are at the frontline of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, which views Tamils as outsiders. In January, they joined the government's ruling coalition with their party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya, or National Heritage Party – pushing its narrow one-seat majority up to nine.
Since 1983, the Tigers have been fighting for a crescent-shaped homeland, or "Eelam," in the north and east of Sri Lanka for the Tamil minority, which is Hindu and Christian. Tamils have suffered decades of discrimination by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
Many observers say that a resurgence of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism has played its part in several recent human rights violations.
The monks are arguing vociferously against any self-determination for the Tamils in the north, including even the measure of autonomy that most observers believe is necessary for peace.
Nine seats is not many in a 225-seat parliament, but the monks wield greater power because they share their nationalist ideology with many other members of the government, says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, who runs the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a think tank in Colombo.
Despite enjoying a strong majority on the island nation, the presence of 50 million Tamils across the Palk Strait in southern India can rattle Sinhalese Buddhists. Buddhist nationalists are able to tap into deep fears that any territorial concessions to the Tamils would lead to eventual Indian subjugation.
"I feel so sorry for the Tamils who are suffering," says a Sinhalese taxi driver in Colombo. "But giving them power in the north would not be good. They might try to extend their power."
The monks have used their new clout to urge the president, Mahinda Rajapakse, to honor the vow with which he came to power in late 2005: to destroy the Tigers.
The Tamil desire for a homeland is just an excuse for violence, says Mr. Rathana. "Sri Lanka was totally a Sinhalese kingdom and most people accept that."
Western governments have long been appalled by the tactics of the Tamil Tigers, who terrorize both Sinhalese and Tamils with their bombings and the forcible recruitment of child soldiers.
Now, several governments have expressed horror over independent reports of government collusion in abductions and murders of civilian Tamils, particularly in the north and east.
Earlier this month, the government rounded up more than 350 Tamils in Colombo and transported them by bus to the north and east – a move human rights groups described as a "pogrom." Sri Lanka's Supreme Court intervened to halt the evictions soon after they began.
This was a "minor example," says Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, a group working for reconciliation. Throughout Sri Lanka, Tamils felt insecure and vulnerable, says Mr. Perera, who is Sinhalese.
On the Jaffna Peninsula alone, the only part of the Tamil-majority north controlled by government forces, more than 300 civilians have been murdered in the past 18 months; many of them, it is suspected, by a paramilitary force with close ties to the military intelligence agency.
Both Sinhalese and Tamils trace their presence in Sri Lanka back centuries. Until relatively recently, theirs was a harmonious coexistence.
But in the 19th century, many Buddhist Sinhalese felt that the British, who then ruled Ceylon, gave the Tamils preferential treatment. At independence in 1948, a disproportionate number of civil servants were Tamils.
In 1956, the Sinhalese made swift and brutal amends. Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, an ardent Buddhist nationalist, launched a successful campaign to make Sinhalese the official language.
He was heavily backed by the island's monks in a move that excluded many Tamils from educational opportunities and prestigious jobs. In 1970, university admission rules were changed to favor the Sinhalese.

Dark days in paradise
June 30, 2007 smh.au
Kidnapping and murder are common in Sri Lanka as the teardrop isle slides towards anarchy, writes Dylan Welch.

malajasi Ketheeswaran sits in a small, white air-conditioned office in the port area of Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, cradling her 18-month-old daughter. Her other daughter, 7, sits beside her with four in-laws. Despite the family support, as she describes the abduction of her husband four months ago the seemingly stoic woman suddenly dissolves into tears.
"We married for love, and now only I am here. Every day I long for his return, thinking that he will come," she says. A Sri Lankan Tamil, Ketheeswaran, 30, is unable to contain her emotion when considering life without the family's sole breadwinner. "How long must I be in this situation? For how long can his brothers look after me?"
The nightmare of not knowing the fate of her husband has become a seemingly unresolvable injustice. It is so for the families of thousands of other recent abductees.
On January 10 Ketheeswaran's husband, Sujambu Nadar, 31, and his brother, Sujambu Nadar Kanapathy, 27, were running their private bus service in the suburbs of Colombo. During a stop they were approached by men dressed in civilian clothes who claimed they were from the Sri Lankan police.
They were asked by the men to get into a white van - such vehicles have become one of the most powerful symbols of abductions in Sri Lanka - and were whisked away. Five months later, even though the family reported their disappearance to the police, the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission, the Red Cross and many national politicians, they have heard nothing about the fate of the two men.
They simply vanished amid a pattern of spiralling lawlessness that has been rocking Sri Lanka.
The lexicon of international law refers to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. In a simpler language, abductions and assassinations, kidnappings and murder. One is often followed by the other.
As the 2002 Norwegian-brokered ceasefire in the 25-year war between the Government and rebel group the Tamil Tigers is near collapse, it seems a culture of impunity regarding abduction and murder is again rising.
"This issue, abductions, disappearances, started increasing again from the beginning of last year," says Mano Ganesan, a Tamil member of Parliament, and one of the conveners of the Civil Monitoring Commission, formed early last year to monitor the rise in abductions and murders - he says primarily of Tamils.
Since then the commission has recorded a steady stream of abductions - 103 cases up to the end of April. According to other monitoring groups that number is barely the tip of the iceberg, with thousands of disappearances and murders going unreported in battleground areas such as Batticaloa and Trincomalee in the east, and Jaffna in the north.
One of the oldest human rights organisations in Colombo, Home for Human Rights, which has recorded human rights violations in Sri Lanka since 1977, says even the quantifiable numbers are much higher. In the first four months of this year alone it recorded 270 disappearances and murders. Last year, it says, there were just under 1000.
Even the work of the monitoring organisations is not without risk. In November the co-convener of the commission with Ganesan, fellow Tamil politician Nadaraja Raviraj, was shot dead while driving on a busy road in a safe part of Colombo in the middle of the day. Fearing for his life, Ganesan fled to India, and returned only when the Government provided him with security. The irony of being guarded by officers from the very Government he accuses of murdering Raviraj is not lost on him.
Asked how he feels about his security cocoon - at least six guards, dressed in subdued colours with bulges at the hip, all wearing sunglasses - he smiles. "Even if I distrust them what can I do? I can't tell them to go away."
And while he confesses to carrying a handgun, he's not concerned. "I'm always optimistic," he says, smiling. But the smile quickly disappears. "And it's not going to be easy to assassinate me, or kill me, or take me away. If anybody tries, it will be a tough job for them."
The impunity with which Raviraj's killing was carried out is symptomatic of a dark side of Sri Lanka, where rebel and paramilitary groups kill who they want when they want. Many, such as Ganesan, allege the involvement of the police and military.
After the late 1980s, when the government crushed a Marxist uprising at a cost of at least 30,000 lives, successive governments promised to never return to those dark days. But now an increasingly cowed society is whispering of a return to the culture of impunity.
One senior public servant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said abduction and secret murder have become institutionalised in Sri Lanka. "We have security forces and police who have done this thing before. They are quite used to that technique. They think it's an easy way. They've improved on it now, they have perfected it - they killed by the thousands and got away with it [in the late 1980s]. And they learnt from their mistakes - now you find bodies without heads or hands [to prevent identification]."
While the number of murders is nowhere near those of the late 1980s, he says the situation is beginning to resemble the bad old days. "Democratic institutions are being stifled, human rights are being violated and abandoned, and the value to life is low - anybody can disappear or get killed any time. You may find bodies lying here or there. There'll be only a mention that a body was found, and that is all, the investigation won't go beyond that."
The public servant attributes the current wave of disappearances and murders to an impersonal "they" and says it doesn't matter who is responsible - what matters is that "they" are willing and able to kill. "Everybody is free to dispose of anybody whom they want. And they are sure they are not getting caught."
In some cases, there is an almost absurd collusion from both sides. Take the case of a Tamil Hindu priest in the east. According to a report by the international organisation Human Rights Watch, in early February in the town of Varahai, shortly after Government forces had captured the area, soldiers arrived at the home of the priest, Salliah Parameswar, and demanded he go with them.
"They took him to a victory ceremony … where the priest was instructed to garland President Mahinda Rajapakse as a sign that Tamils in the area welcomed what the Government called their 'liberation'. The event was widely publicised in the media. Five days later, unknown gunmen came to the priest's house, took him from his family, and shot him dead."
One of the worst affected groups are Tamil journalists, who face extreme risks when their reportage is critical of either side. The editor of the Jaffna-based Tamil newspaper Uthayan, Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, recently described to Agence France Presse the kind of threats his staff and he face. "We have lost five staff in the last 18 months," he said. "I have had grenades tossed into my room, but I am ready for anything."
While most accept that some abductions are attributable to the Tigers, Tamil politicians accuse the Government of involvement via the military and paramilitaries.
"The [Tamil Tigers are] basically considered a guerilla, terrorist organisation … and we have a Government here in Colombo, a legitimate, democratically elected Government that represents [Sri Lanka] to the international community, doing the same thing."
For its part the Government says the number of abductions is vastly exaggerated, and accuses its enemies of trying to manufacture a rise in abductions to embarrass it. In an interview on the Arabic broadcaster Al Jazeera recently, President Rajapakse said some of the alleged abductees were simply overseas.
Under pressure from within Sri Lanka and from the diplomatic community, last year the Government set up a commission of inquiry to examine 16 of the more serious allegations of murder and abduction.
The commission has been hampered, however, by the lack of witnesses. Only 12 have come forward, with the fear of being murdered or abducted themselves keeping most away. As the August deadline for its report looms, many question whether it will be able to provide anything close to a comprehensive report on even the few cases it is examining.
And as the numbers of human rights violations in Sri Lanka rise, the international community is finding itself forced to act. Britain halted debt relief to Sri Lanka in May, in anger at the Government's human rights record, and major donor Japan is reviewing its position. Germany stopped its aid in December.
The US is also expressing concerns. During a visit to Sri Lanka in early May the US diplomat Richard Boucher criticised the Government for the prevailing climate of fear. "I feel a lot people are afraid," he said. "We have seen people killed; there are very serious threats, lots of people are very worried about their lives. More needs to be done to create a climate where people feel safe."
Australia has also recently joined in the condemnation. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, criticised both sides in a press release in late May. Australia was, he said, concerned by "the growing environment of impunity surrounding human rights violations in Sri Lanka".
But all of this international politicking means very little to the families; what matters is the return of their relatives. After the interview with the Herald, Ketheeswaran and her family slowly file out of the small, humid office. They gather several small plastic bags holding shopping and clothes, and walk out into the oppressive heat of the Colombo afternoon.
Later, Ganesan suggests there is not much hope for the Ketheeswarans, or for any of the other families of those who have disappeared, though he says he does not tell them this. "All the political kidnappings end up in death, there is no question."

Sri Lanka's Buddhist monks are intent on war
By Mian Ridge in Jaffna, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:56am BST 17/06/2007

Wearing an orange robe and a serene smile, the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana looks the very embodiment of peace, but when the Sri Lankan Buddhist monk talks of the Tamil Tigers, he sounds more like an army general.
"Day by day we are weakening them militarily," he said, cocking his shaven head thoughtfully to one side. "Talk can come later."
Most Buddhist monks are known for their love of peace, harmony and a philosophical acceptance of fate - but as the bloody war that has ravaged Sri Lanka for 25 years enters a new and terrible phase, Mr Rathana and his fellow hard-line monks are urging the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to keep the promise upon which he came to power in late 2005: to crush the Tamil Tigers with military force.
The Tigers are fighting for a separate homeland in the north and east for the Tamils, a mostly Hindu minority which has suffered decades of discrimination from the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. In recent months, the Tigers have stepped up a campaign of terror against both Sinhalese and Tamils, with bombings and the forcible recruitment of child soldiers.
The hard-line monks are at the vanguard of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, which views Tamils as outsiders. In January, they joined the government with their own party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya or National Heritage Party - pushing its narrow, one-seat majority up to nine.
"The nationalists have huge influence on the president," said Jehan Perera, the executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, a group working for reconciliation. This was evident, he said, in the expulsion earlier this month of 350 Tamils from the capital Colombo, a move human rights groups described as a "pogrom".
The monks have used their new power to argue vociferously against any self-determination for the Tamils in the north, opposing even the more limited measure of autonomy that most observers believe is necessary for peace. Instead they are pushing for the bloody military campaign against the Tigers to be stepped up.
The heavy cost of the war is evident throughout this tear-shaped island, where 70,000 have died since 1983. In the past 18 months, 5,000 have been killed - compared with 200 in the previous three years - shattering a 2002 ceasefire brokered by Norway.
Asked for his views on the need for further peace talks, Mr Rathana said: "We need conversation - and we need war." The Tamil desire for a homeland is based on a myth, he added. "Sri Lanka was totally a Sinhalese kingdom, and most people accept that."
To people in northern Sri Lanka, which is heavily Tamil and mostly controlled by the Tigers, such talk is hard to stomach. "There is widespread discrimination against Tamils, who want to live as equal citizens with their rights and cultures recognised," said the white-haired Bishop Thomas Savundaranayagam of Jaffna, an outspoken defender of human rights.
The Jaffna peninsula, a lush, green land swarming with Sinhalese soldiers in green fatigues, is the only part of the north controlled by government forces. As the conflict intensifies, the government is tightening its grip on the region and deepening the resentment of ordinary Tamils.
In August, the only road linking Jaffna to the rest of the country was closed, pushing up the costs of food and medical supplies. Without concrete, little is being built and there is practically no investment.
People in Jaffna are also scared. More than 300 civilians have been murdered in the past 18 months; many, it is suspected, by a paramilitary force with close ties to the military intelligence agency.
Two journalists at the popular Uthayan newspaper were killed when masked gunmen burst into its offices on the night of Press Freedom Day in May last year. Seven more survived by hiding in the lavatory. The walls are still studded with bullet holes.
"There are no human rights in Jaffna," said A K Sivasubramaniam, co-ordinator of Sarvodaya, a human rights and development charity. "People are even scared to talk about how there are no human rights."
Most Tamils, said Bishop Savundaranayagam, loathed the bullying violence of the Tigers and their habit of recruiting child soldiers. "But they are sympathetic about what the Tigers are fighting for," he added.
In some cases, this sympathy is turning into support. "There is only one enemy: the government," said a bookish-looking science student at the University of Jaffna, who found death threats pinned to his locker after he protested against the abduction of three school pupils earlier this year. "If this conflict continues, many of my friends will join the Tigers."
The government has also been accused of committing atrocities in eastern Sri Lanka, where civilians with supposed links to the insurgents have been murdered and abducted, and last month Britain withdrew some debt relief to Sri Lanka, citing the government's poor human rights record. But back in Colombo, Mr Rathana remained implacable.
At the mention of the government's supposed involvement in human rights violations, the monk scoffed. "Human rights? The Tigers only launched the human rights campaign to discredit Sri Lanka."