Sri Lanka’s Withdrawal
from the Ceasefire Agreement and Alleged HR Violations
SRI LANKA UNITED NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OF CANADA
Box 55292, 300 Borough Drive, Toronto, Ontario, M1P 4Z7 Canada
Website: www.sluna.org E-mail: sluna@idirect.com
MEDIA RELEASE March 24, 2008
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
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