Why Tamils fear their lives in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

Topic started by lankapeace (@ 137.minneapolis-06rh16rt.mn.dial-access.att.net) on Sat May 3 01:14:16 .
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http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_244985,00050002.htm

Fear of army withdrawal leads to flight of capital from Jaffna
P K Balachanddran
Colombo, May 2

Afraid that the Sri Lankan army will one day withdraw from the Jaffna peninsula and the LTTE will take over, many Jaffna businessmen are moving their capital to Colombo in South Sri Lanka, says the latest report of the University Teachers for Human Rights-Jaffna (UTHR-J).

"The people are by no means enthusiastic about moving the army out. In the event of moving the army out, a number of traders are planning to wind up their operations in Jaffna and several of them have moved substantial capital to Colombo," the report says.

The report accuses the Scandinavian ceasefire monitors, the international (Western) backers of the peace process, and the Sri Lankan government, of wantonly allowing the LTTE to threaten, kidnap, extort and kill at will, only to keep it at the negotiating table.

The report recalls that at the last round of peace talks in Hakone, in Japan, in the third week of March, both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government shot down a proposal to entrust the monitoring of Human Rights to a neutral international body. Instead, they entrusted the task to the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission, knowing fully well that the SLHRC did not have the ability to do the job in the conflict ridden environment in the Tamil North East. Also, it had not demonstrated independence in its work thus far, the report added.

A former head of Amnesty International, Ian Martin, was at the talks venue in Hakone, specially invited to help set up a system to monitor human rights violations. But he was ignored.

The fear of Jaffna businessmen of an army withdrawal and a take over by the LTTE is well-founded because the LTTE has been pressing the government to move the army out from Jaffna town and other populated areas in the peninsula. In fact, it withdrew from the peace talks on April 21, saying that the army must first be moved out of the populated areas and must shrink the High Security Zones (HSZ) in the Jaffna peninsula.

Tamil Guardian, an acknowledged mouthpiece of the LTTE, has stated in an editorial in the latest issue, that the LTTE is unlikely to return to the negotiating table without significant concessions in this matter. This puts the government in a fix. And sure enough, the appeasers in the government have begun to exert pressure on Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Meanwhile, the LTTE is getting tougher. Reacting to Wickremesinghe's contention on April 30, that the army was moving out of Subhash and Gnanam Hotels in Jaffna town, the LTTE's Political Wing leader S.P. Tamilchelvan has pointed out that the place that the army will be moving into is still in the middle of a very thickly populated area. The new location is next to the Telecom Office, near the main Jaffna post office, the Multipurpose Cooperative Society, Veerasinghanm Hall, the fish market and the stadium, all places where people converge.

The government's move was against the "letter and spirit" of the Ceasefire Agreement which sought to minimise military presence in populated areas, Tamilchelvan pointed out.

But very significantly, and despite all the sound, fury and posturing on the issue, the LTTE has not been able to organise a mass movement in its support. Jaffna watchers say that the LTTE obviously lacks genuine public support on this issue." The people may not like the army, but certainly they don't want the LTTE back," says D.Siddharthan, the leader of the Peoples' Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE). He also said that may Tamil expatriates were visiting Jaffna, not to buy or rebuild property, but to sell them, while the guns were silent!

The UTHR-J reports gives a list of political opponents, civilians and Sri Lankan armymen killed by the LTTE since the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement in February 2002.Atleast 15 army informants have been killed, some in the heart of Colombo. In Batticalao, the LTTE has been telling the people that despite its assurance at Hakone that it will not recruit children for its combat units, the old order to every Tamil family to give one child to the movement, still stood.

The UTHR-J points out that the Sri Lankan government, the SLMM and the international donors have callously brushed this grave human rights question under the carpet. Pleading for a long term view of the human rights issue, the report recalls what happened in Sierra Leone. There too, the foreign peace brokers had cynically installed a criminal rebel gang in power only for the sake of a settlement. But eventually, Britain had to deploy troops to clear the mess, created by this criminal outfit.

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