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Moves by Sri Lanka Military Worry Human Rights Group
Saturday, 19 May 2007 - 1:38 AM SL Time |  | |
By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 18, 2007; Page A19
A leading human rights activist expressed fears that a northbound mobilization of troops in Sri Lanka indicated the Colombo government was planning to open another front in its push into Tamil Tiger territory, in retaliation for increasingly brazen rebel attacks involving airstrikes against military air bases.
`The government is now thinking of opening a front in the north. We have seen a lot of mobilization to indicate that, and lots of aerial bombing,` Ahilan Kadirgamar, a spokesman for the London-based Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, said in an interview Wednesday in Washington.
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`This is in reaction to the Tigers having brought in about half a dozen aircraft parts and assembled them in the country to attack air bases and oil refineries in the south,` he said, referring to a recent turning point in the 24-year-old conflict.
Kadirgamar`s organization has a network inside Sri Lanka and roving monitors working between London and New Delhi to keep the international human rights community abreast of developments through news releases and visits to Washington, New York and Geneva.
Since the beginning of this year, the escalation of hostilities in Sri Lanka has contributed to increasing violence, which, in addition to the fighting, now includes the planting of mines along civilian bus routes and the abduction of scores of residents on both sides of the front lines.
Kadirgamar said his group has appealed to the international community, particularly the U.N. Human Rights Council, to send human rights monitors, not peacekeepers, to the island to track serious violations.
Two incidents last month targeting passenger buses have heightened anxiety over attacks on civilians. In one attack, seven civilians were killed and 25 wounded in a blast that destroyed a bus traveling between Mannar and Vavunia on April 7. A similar attack aimed at a bus heading from Mannar to Colombo, the capital, on April 23 killed six Tamil civilians and a government soldier in civilian clothing. Six other soldiers were injured, the group said.
Sri Lanka`s Human Rights Commission has recorded more than 100 abductions and disappearances this year. Last year, 1,000 people were reported missing. A March press release from the Democracy Forum said that dozens of civilians had pleaded with officials to keep them in jail for fear of kidnappings or killings. `The LTTE, the Karuna faction and the security forces are all being held responsible for these violations,` the release said. The Karuna is a Tamil faction that split from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and is collaborating with government forces.
The Karuna has been abducting businessmen in Colombo `with the objective of extorting large sums of money,` the release said.
The rebel group wants a separate state with full control over its law enforcement and government entities. But a large majority of the island`s Tamil minority would like to have a solution based on federalism and a decentralization of power, Kadirgamar said. Tamils comprise 13 percent of Sri Lanka`s population, and Sinhalese make up 73 percent.
Last Sunday, unidentified gunmen shot dead a senior Buddhist monk close to a demarcation zone separating government troops from Tamil Tiger territory in the northeast, a day after soldiers killed five rebels in separate incidents, wire agencies reported. Troops have evicted the rebels from areas they controlled under the terms of a shattered 2002 cease-fire, which collapsed gradually in recent months.
Richard A. Boucher, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, who visited Sri Lanka last week, announced that Washington had suspended aid that was about to be disbursed through the Bush administration`s Millennium Challenge Corp. because of worries about the rate of abductions and killings on both sides. Sri Lanka`s human rights record and ballooning defense spending had also prompted Britain to suspend about $3 million in debt relief assistance.
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18 May 2007 18:39:15 GMT Report for Abuse
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The rebel group wants a separate state with full control over its law enforcement and government entities. But a large majority of the island's Tamil minority would like to have a solution based on federalism and a decentralization of power, Kadirgamar said. |
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