Terror label prolongs Sri Lanka war
By jared ferrie
Although the Tigers call themselves freedom fighters, the rest of the world is increasingly labelling them terrorists. In a recent diplomatic blow, the European Union (EU) banned the organization, freezing its financial assets and barring it from fundraising. Canada, which has the largest expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil population in the world, added the group to its terrorism list in April. A brief news flash in Canada, the listing caused considerable consternation and rejoicing in Sri Lanka.
Countries such as India, Britain, and the U.S. banned the Tamil Tigers to prevent them from collecting money for military purposes among the Tamil diaspora.
Banning the LTTE was widely rejected among Tamil-Canadians and opposed by some security experts . Others welcomed the move as a sign that the new Conservative-led government was finally taking a hard line in the war on terrorism.
The LTTE says the terrorist label will undermine the peace process and block much-needed contributions to the TRO. The group retaliated by demanding the removal of 37 international ceasefire monitors from three EU countries, stationed there since the February 2002 signing of a ?permanent? ceasefire agreement.
On a quiet night on the front porch of his Kilinochchi home, spokesman Thaya Master explained the LTTE?s position.
?The ceasefire agreement was signed between two equal parts: the LTTE and the government,? he said. ?Now they put a ban on the LTTE. It?s a one-sided story. It?s not balanced, so how can we proceed with the peace process??
What about LTTE tactics that led to the terrorist designation, like the use of suicide bombers?
?We have a suicide group, that?s true,? Master said, but he insisted the practice is justified as part of a military strategy.
Jon Tinker, executive director of the Vancouver-based research group Panos Canada-which describes itself as an NGO devoted to working on issues of human security, pluralism, and peace-building-said he deplores some LTTE tactics but he still disagrees with Canada's decision to add the group to its terrorism list.
'I don't think there's any question that the LTTE has carried out forms of political violence that many people think of as outrageous, but the same can be said of the Sri Lanka Army,' Tinker said during an interview at his UBC office .
The overarching question, according to Tinker-who is writing a book on terrorism and diasporas-is how one defines a terrorist.
The rhetoric of the war on terror makes it easy to make glib judgments that one form of political violence is justified and another is not justified, he said. 'One of the biggest weaknesses of most definitions of terrorism is they exclude actions by the state '.
Such narrow definitions are out of touch with real-life experiences in a conflict zone, he argued.
Whether it's a tank rolling through Jaffna firing tank shells, or a bomb being detonated, the result is the same: people are blown to pieces, said Tinker, who questioned the utility of 'stigmatizing' one party with the terrorism label during critical peace negotiations .
Tinker pointed out that the LTTE has never engaged in acts that could be considered terrorism outside of Sri Lanka or India, which had militarily intervened on the Sri Lankan government's side at the time . And the charges of extorting Canadians are best left to the courts, he argued.
'If the picture that Human Rights Watch is painting is true, then the police forces have been somewhat underzealous in protecting the interests of Tamil-Canadians,' he said.
The Conservatives decision to categorize domestic police concerns as international terrorism points to a larger political current, Tinker suggested: 'It's one of a number of worrying signs that this administration is more willing than the last one to give an unthinking endorsement to the U.S. government's concept of the war on terrorism.'
Government forces used horrifying tactics, including death squads, as war raged on. And other factions committed further atrocities. More than 64,000 people died before a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement in 2002 .
But the agreement signed by the government and the LTTE ?has broken down in all but name?, according to a June 5 report by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
?There is a serious danger that they are drifting back to an overt war, which is likely to be even bloodier than the last one,? the Centre warned.
The picture would darken even further. On August 14, government jets bombed a Tamil orphanage in the northeast, saying it was a training ground for child soldiers?a claim denied by the UN. When 17 humanitarian workers were massacred on August 7 in the northeastern town of Mutter, the UN and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission pointed the finger at government troops. The government denies the allegation.
In early June, Mahendren Rajthungam, the advertising manager of Uthayan, a Tamil-language newspaper in Jaffna, told me that conditions on the peninsula were almost as bad as before the ceasefire.
?It?s all gone in a circle, said, pointing to rising food and fuel costs, a stagnating economy, frustration about living under military occupation, and increasing violence. Just a month earlier, gunmen had burst into the newspaper?s offices and opened fire, killing two employees and seriously wounding the editor.
The government blamed ?armed terrorists?, while groups like Reporters Without Borders pointed to the pro-government Eelam People?s Democratic Party, noting that the newspaper had carried a cartoon of the party?s leader the previous day.
Rajthungam declined to speculate on the reasons for the attack or who was responsible.
'Jaffna is a land of controversy,' he said simply
For full report, please go to http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=20815
Edited By - elara - 29 Sep 2006 11:51:55 GMT |
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