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Refugees from the West Papua who are currently living in Papua New Guinea have expressed that they wish to settle in Vanuatu, instead of PNG.

As reported by PNG’s The National, the refugees who were evicted from Eight-Mile, National Capital District, last year, said ‘they wanted to leave for a third country despite the reluctance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to resettle them’.

‘Leader of the West Papuan displaced refugees Freddy Waromi said there were 148 people from 25 families living under makeshift tents and tarpaulins, with only one water tap and a dug pit toilet’ and that the “Vanuatu council of chiefs has indicated to adopt us as Melanesian brothers and sisters, but the only problem is that Vanuatu is not a signatory to the UN refugee charter”.

West Papua is under Indonesian rule and many had fled over the border to PNG during the times of unrest.

‘According to Mr Waromi, the UNHCR granted them refugee status in 1980 and the PNG Government had also earlier granted them permissive residential status, but now both parties wanted to repatriate the refugees back to West Papua’.

According to the report, ‘ABC news reported that the UNHCR would not resettle the West Papuan refugees living in PNG in Vanuatu’ and UNHCR regional representative in Canberra, Richard Towle, ’said the West Papuans had been campaigning to the UNHCR to be resettled in Vanuatu but their plea had been rejected’.

He stated that from their point of view, “resettlement is really a last resort for the most deserving on the basis of protection needs” and that they did not think “that this group falls within that category” and that ‘the PNG Government would rather see the refugees return home across the border to the Indonesian-governed Papua’.

But Mr. Waromi stated that “UNHCR wanted us to go back to West Papua but the sad fact is that we will be dead when we go back. UNHCR arranged for some of our Melanesian brothers to go back to East Awin in 2001 and none of those who got repatriated are alive today; they are all dead.”

PNG hill tribes negotiate peace deal

In Papua New Guinea, at least 30 warring hill tribes from the Southern Highlands have agreed to lay down their arms and cease generations of fighting in what’s being described as the regions first peace agreement. The so-called Tari District peace deal has taken 5 years to negotiate through a series of peace building activities organised by a team of local and international volunteers lead by a former Philippines born nun now living in Australia.

Sri Lankan refugees duped by HK traffickers

Hong Kong-based agents are charging US$11,800 to smuggle Sri Lankan refugees to Papua New Guinea, the Post-Courier reported.

The newspaper, quoting unnamed PNG intelligence service officers, says the human smuggling operators are charging $31,600 for refugees who want to go on to Australia. These smuggling groups are reportedly using agents in PNG.

“But it still looks like they came into PNG to have easy access somehow to Australia because they would not have had an easy way out if they had gone straight to Australia from wherever they came from.

“But in any case, coming to PNG, especially from a dangerous grouping, is a threat to the national security of this country in itself,” the intelligence officers said.

Immigration Police have identified routes used by human traffickers and smugglers to move their cargo in and out of Kenya.

The most active route was discovered in northern Kenya in Moyale.

Immigration Police say that from Moyale, human cargo is ferried to Garissa, Isiolo then Nanyuki and Voi from where it is taken to Tanzania through Taveta border town.

Another route starts from Moyale to Isiolo and Nanyuki and to Nairobi’s Eastleigh.

Some of the human cargo, comprising girls and boys hidden in trucks carrying beans, is sold into slavery in this sprawling suburb, while the rest is taken to Mombasa destined for South Africa or to Busia for transportation to Burundi or South Africa.

South Africa is the launch-pad to Europe and Canada.

Panya routes

While there are three border points between Mombasa and Lunga Lunga, on the border with Tanzania, there are 820 ‘panya routes’ used by traffickers to transport their human cargo to Tanzania, according to an immigration officer in Lunga Lunga.

The route from Moyale is ideal because the vast expanse of land in Kenya’s north is poorly secured.

“There are only 20 immigration officers in northern Kenya, an area bigger than many European states,” said an immigration officer.

“But there are 4,500 policemen, mostly locals eager to see their people secure jobs in foreign lands and a good number of them collude with cartels.”

Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis come through Mombasa disguised as ship crews because sailors are not required to have passports.

Ship docks

Once the ship docks, they are moved to Nairobi to await Kenya passports, genuine or otherwise, to move to Europe and North Africa.

The traffickers are reported to poison those who fail to secure jobs in Kenya or passage out of the country to avoid confrontation with victims’ relatives back in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who would have paid dearly for the service.

“These things happen,” says Immigration spokesperson John Njehu.

International press reports indicate that key suspected traffickers, Nagaratnam Thavayogarajah, popularly known as Thavam, and Satkunarasan Satkunasingam (aka Rajan), used Nairobi as a base to ferry hundreds of Sri Lankans to the West.

Their offices were situated in a travel agency and a popular Nairobi restaurant where they charged $12,000 in the late 1990s for passage from Sri Lanka through Kenya and Malawi.

Most baffling

According to police and immigration officials at Busia, the most baffling route is from Somalia to Kenya through Uganda.

Hundreds of Somalis charter planes to Entebbe International Airport from where they get to the Busia border where their passports are stamped.

Instead of crossing into Kenya immediately, they return to Uganda to await nightfall when they cross over into Kenya using ‘panya’ routes.

“We don’t understand why they should go through Uganda immigration and then use ‘panya’ routes to get into Kenya,” says a Busia police spokesman. “We have arrested a number.”

Terror suspect

As these investigations were carried out in Busia, a Canadian of Somali descent was arrested for having inexplicably travelled through Uganda. “He is a terror suspect. We are interrogating him,” police said.

Three in every four foreigners arrested in Busia between May and August entered Kenya through ‘panya’ routes despite their travel documents being stamped in Uganda.

Authorities are convinced that the cartels use Uganda because it does not have sophisticated equipment to detect fake travel documents.

Somalis don’t require visas to travel to Uganda, which is not the case with Kenya. However, Ethiopians don’t require visas to get into Kenya, yet they are required in neighbouring Tanzania.

And to get around this, they come to Kenya and take up new citizenship to allow them passage through Tanzania to South Africa or elsewhere.

About 800 Ethiopians who passed through Kenya are languishing in Tanzania jails. The Indian Ocean has been a free-for-all gateway to and out of Kenya.

Recently, Kenyan authorities rescued a group of Somalis attempting to cross into Kenya by sea from drowning.

“They almost drowned,” said an officer at Lunga Lunga border post.

GENEVA - Climate change could erode the human rights of people living in small island states, coastal areas and parts of the world subjected to drought and floods, the U.N. Human Rights Council said on Friday.

In its first consideration of the issue, the 47-member forum endorsed a resolution stressing that global warming threatens the livelihoods and welfare of many of the world’s most vulnerable people.

The proposal from the Maldives, Comoros, Tuvalu, Micronesia and other countries called for “a detailed analytical study of the relationship between climate change and human rights”, to be conducted by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, headed by Louise Arbour.

“Until now, the global discourse on climate change has tended to focus on the physical or natural impacts of climate change,” the Maldives’ ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, told the session.

“The immediate and far-reaching impact of the phenomenon on human beings around the world has been largely neglected,” he said. “It is time to redress this imbalance by highlighting the human face of climate change.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made the fight against climate change one of his top priorities, and encouraged all U.N. agencies to incorporate it into their work.

Experts say global warming could cause rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods which would restrict access to housing, food and clean water for millions of people.

The Human Rights Council, which wraps up its latest four-week session in Geneva on Friday, also agreed to appoint an independent expert to assess countries’ human rights obligations linked to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Under the resolution introduced by Germany and Spain, that expert will clarify what can be done to stop discrimination in their provision.

“This issue is very important for quite a large number of people,” Doru Romulus Costea, Romania’s ambassador who serves as council president, told a news briefing.

Russia voiced concern that the council’s foray into water and sanitation issues may unduly stretch its agenda and complicate its work, and Canadian diplomat Sarah Geh stressed that setting up the post did not create a human right to water.

U.N. member countries have set a goal of halving the proportion of people who lack access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation services — such as toilets — by 2015.

BANGKOK - The gem merchants of Bangkok display their glistening wares proudly; diamonds from Africa, sapphires from Sri Lanka and rubies, of course, from Myanmar.

The red stones from the country formerly known as Burma are prized for their purity and hue. But they have a sinister flaw.

The country’s military rulers rely on sales of precious stones such as sapphires, pearls and jade to fund their regime. Rubies are probably the biggest earner; more than 90 percent of the world’s rubies come from Myanmar.

International outrage over the generals’ brutal crackdown on pro-democracy rallies encouraged the European Union this week to consider a trade ban on Myanmar’s gemstones, a leading export earner in the impoverished country.

There is also pressure in Washington to close a loophole on existing U.S. sanctions which allows in most of its precious stones.

But in neighbouring Thailand, where the majority of Myanmar’s gems are bought and sold, the stone merchants have yet to be put off business with the junta.

“People are unhappy about what’s going on but they are not angry enough to stop buying rubies,” said Pornchai Chuenchomlada, president of the Thai Gem and Jewellery Traders Association.

“If they killed a lot of people like they did in 1988 we might consider banning their products,” said Pornchai, adding that he personally bought little from Myanmar on moral grounds.

Official media say 10 people were killed when soldiers fired on protesters, including Buddhist monks, in downtown Yangon last week, but the real toll is thought to be much higher.

The junta killed an estimated 3,000 people during the last major uprising in 1988.

VALLEY OF RUBIES

Myanmar’s generals are estimated to have earned around $750 million since they began holding official gem and jade sales in 1964. A far bigger number of precious stones are smuggled over the border into Thailand and China.

The official expositions, held twice a year in the tropical heat of Yangon, are increasingly popular. More Chinese bidders are attending, attracted by slabs of jade.

The state holds a majority stake in all mining operations in Myanmar, including the “Valley of Rubies”, the mountainous Mogok area, 200 km north of Mandalay, famed for its rare pigeon’s blood rubies and blue sapphires worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece.

Conditions in the mines, off-limits to outsiders, are reported to be horrendous.

Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma said her organisation had reports of mining operators hooking employees on drugs to improve productivity. Needles are shared, raising the risk of HIV infection, she said.

“Heroin is given to people at the end of the working day as a reward,” said Stothard. “Young people go off to the mines with big hopes and dreams and they come back to die.”

“These rubies are red with the blood of young people.”

REVULSION

Couples buying engagement rings often now ask where the diamonds come from since last year’s Hollywood film “Blood Diamond” raised awareness about gems which finance conflicts.

But even during the late 1990s, when war was still raging in Sierra Leone, where the film was based, only between 4 percent and 15 percent of the world’s diamonds were estimated to have come from conflict zones.

Brian Leber, a third generation jeweller from the U.S. state of Illinois, decided years ago to stop buying Myanmar gems.

“I think it’s more important to sleep at night,” said the 41-year-old who founded The Jewellers’ Burma Relief Project, an organisation that supports humanitarian projects in the country.

Although the United States imposed a ban on imports of Myanmar gems in 2003, a customs loophole allows in stones cut or polished elsewhere. As Myanmar exports virtually all its gems uncut, this interpretation rendered the ban useless.

Leber is hopeful last week’s brutal crackdown will convince U.S. lawmakers to close this loophole. He would like to see consumers shun all gems from Myanmar, whatever their cachet, until the generals are gone.

“For the time being, Burmese gems should not be something to be proud of. They should be an object of revulsion.”

In Bangkok, some dealers have stopped handling stones from Myanmar and they are angry that colleagues haven’t followed suit.

“This is a Buddhist country. I was expecting the price of rubies to drop dramatically after they shot at the monks, but I’m beginning to think these people are hypocrites,” said one Bangkok-based jeweller, who declined to be named.

“It’s the only country where you can get really top quality rubies, but I stopped dealing in them. I don’t want to be part of a nation’s misery.”

“If someone asks for a ruby now I show them a nice pink sapphire.”

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — This dessert may be a little too rich for you, but you’re probably not rich enough for it. A Sri Lankan resort is charging $14,500 for what it calls the world’s most expensive dessert, a fruit infused confection complete with a chocolate sculpture and a gigantic gemstone.

“The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence” was created to give visitors at The Fortress resort in the coastal city of Galle a one-of-a-kind experience, said the hotel’s public relations manager, Shalini Perera.

The dessert is a gold leaf Italian cassata flavored with Irish cream, served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a champagne sabayon enlighten. The dessert is decorated with a chocolate carving of a fisherman clinging to a stilt, an age old local fishing practice, and an 80 carat aquamarine stone.

The dessert has to be specially ordered, Perera said. Though the hotel has gotten calls about it from as far away as Japan, she said, no one has yet forked over the money to try it.

ADAM’S BRIDGE, India — In the emerald waters separating India and Sri Lanka lies a long chain of sand-capped rocky formations. Devout Hindus believe the god Ram built the shoals before a battle with a demon king. Fishermen along India’s coast believe the shoals saved them from a tsunami three years ago. And environmentalists treasure them for their patch reefs, sea fans, sponges and pearl oysters.

Now, however, the shoals — which form what is known as Adam’s Bridge — are being threatened by the construction of a massive sea canal.

The Indian government began dredging the shallow ocean bed two years ago and is now poised to break apart Adam’s Bridge, whose demolition is necessary to allow ships to traverse a direct route between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. But the project has become entangled in a complex web of resistance from environmentalists, fishermen, political parties and Hindu activists.

Opposition to huge industrial projects is common in India, but the controversy over Adam’s Bridge, or Ram Sethu, marks one of the first times religion has become an obstacle to major development. Thousands of Hindu protesters have rallied in the streets since last week, blocking traffic and chanting, “We will save Ram Sethu, we will save Hindu heritage!”

“Millions of Hindus believe that Ram built that bridge across the sea. Our scriptures and epics mention it,” said Surendra Jain, a leader of the World Hindu Council, a hard-line Hindu group. “We will not let them destroy our religious heritage.”

An ambitious project with an estimated cost of more than $500 million, the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal was originally envisioned in 1860, and at least 14 proposals have been abandoned over the years because India lacked the financial resources to build it.

Ships coming from the Arabian Sea currently go around Sri Lanka to reach India’s east coast and Bangladesh. With the proposed channel, 13 yards deep and 328 yards wide, ships are expected to be able to pass straight through India’s territorial waters. That would mean more revenue for India’s ports.

“The ships will save about 30 hours in navigation time,” said Rakesh Srivastava, a senior official at the Shipping Ministry in New Delhi. “More than 3,000 ships will use this channel every year. This is a very prestigious project for India and would lead to the economic transformation of the ports and the coastal people.”

While many critics have petitioned the Supreme Court in a bid to have the project scrapped, the Hindu activists support the sea canal as long as it can be built in a way that would avoid damage to Adam’s Bridge. Some activists have proposed dredging to the west of the bridge to make way for a canal.

Government officials have said that approach would be misguided. And they contend the bridge isn’t important in Hinduism.

“People have mixed religion with reality,” Srivastava said. The shoals were formed from calcium deposits and natural sedimentation over millions of years.”

In court, the government contended that the Hindu god Ram was a mythical character, an argument that only further enraged Hindus opposed to the current project. The Hindu nationalist political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, called the statement a blasphemous insult, and the government hurriedly withdrew it.

Hindu opposition to the project is only the most recent hindrance to the canal’s completion. Naval experts have questioned assertions that the canal would save ships 30 hours in travel time, as well as the economic viability of the project. Fishermen’s unions have staged sit-ins, blocked rail traffic and petitioned the court.

Umayavel Tharakudiyan, a 55-year-old fisherman in the village of Ramakrishnapuram on the coast of Tamil Nadu state, said the dredging of sand has already reduced the number of fish he and others catch. He explained his fears by drawing a map of his village and the canal route in the sand.

“We will lose our freedom. For different kinds of fish, we go out at various times of the day. Once the ships start sailing, we will be assigned special times of the day for fishing. They will deny us entry with our boats and nets in some areas,” he said as he sat on the sandy ground outside his thatched-roof home.

His wife, Tamilarasi, said Adam’s Bridge has shielded the area during cyclones and other natural disasters. “The bridge protected us from the tsunami,” she said. “Once that goes, our villages may disappear in the next cyclone.”

Although the government has received formal environmental clearance for the canal, there are lingering concerns about the impact it would have on a marine biosphere reserve 12 miles west of the area to be dredged. A row of 21 islands rich in coral reefs, sea turtles, dolphins and sea cows, the reserve is one of the most biologically diverse areas in South Asia.

A recent government report said the canal could “drastically alter the dynamics of the ecosystems” in the biosphere.

“Sea animals communicate through waves, and the dredging work disturbs them. In the last six months, sea cows are losing their way and are seen closer to the shore,” said Rakesh Kumar Jagenia, the wildlife warden at the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve. “It will get worse once the ships start sailing, with the high noise levels and thermal pollution.”

Environmental activists and fishermen complain that despite their long struggle, it is the religious claim to Adam’s Bridge that has provoked the most public interest and drawn a reaction from the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, ecologists and fishermen’s groups are reluctant to build alliances with the Hindu nationalist organizations.

“People are debating nonissues,” said T.S.S. Mani, an activist fisherman opposed to the canal. “This is a battle for environment, people’s lives and livelihoods, but unfortunately it has acquired a religious branding.”

While Islamabad remains Beijing’s traditional business partner when it comes to weapons and military equipment, it’s Dhaka that’s emerging as the prime buyer of weapons made in China.

This has been revealed for the first time in 10 years when last week, China submitted a report on its exports and imports of major conventional arms for year 2006 to the United Nations.

And outside South Asia, Africa is China’s new destination for weapons supplies.

This has implications for India. Given that the military holds the levers of power in both Pakistan and now Bangladesh, too, China’s weapons trade brings a new dimension to India’s engagement with its two neighbours.

India’s only defence export between 2000 and 2005 has been the sale of six L-70 anti-aircraft guns to Sri Lanka two years ago. New Delhi never openly admitted to this — wary of domestic political repercussions — but has indicated it in its annual submission to the UN Register of Conventional Arms.

The seven categories on which this reporting is done are battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships (including submarines) as well as missiles and missile-launchers.

According to its declaration to the UN, China has sold 65 large-calibre artillery systems, 16 combat aircraft and 114 missile and related equipment to Bangladesh last year.

A scrutiny of Bangladesh’s report to the UN also confirms the growing profile of China as its major arms supplier over the last three years.

The 65 artillery systems shown as exports to Bangladesh in China’s report are further sub divided in Dhaka’s import list: 18 122-mm Howitzers and 16 rocket launchers. In 2005, 20 122-mm guns were imported from China.

Besides this, some 200 small arms like pistols and sub-machine guns have been imported along with regular 82-mm mortars.

Interestingly, the other keen supplier to Bangladesh is Pakistan which sold 169 anti-tank Bakhtar Shikan missiles to Bangladesh in 2004.

China’s 1996 record shows that its principal buyers were Pakistan and Iran, which purchased five warships, five combat aircraft and over 100 missiles and missile launchers. A decade later, the profile has changed with Pakistan (10 battle tanks) still on the list as a traditional importer of Chinese equipment. Bangladesh tops the list and the rest of the concentration is in Africa.

China has sold four armoured combat vehicles to Congo, six to Gabon and two to Tanzania. Six combat aircraft each have been exported to Namibia and Zimbabwe. Outside Africa, the one-time large export is to Jordan of 150 large calibre artillery systems.

A decade ago, China stopped providing this information to the UN because US had mentioned Taiwan in a footnote while explaining some of its exports.

An angry China had then remarked that the UN register is a “register of legitimate transfers” and that Taiwan being a “province of China”, any arms transfer between US and Taiwan is “illegitimate”.

With US deciding, of late, to no longer make such a mention in its reports, Beijing last week took a decision to file the arms transfer report as well as tell UN about its military spending.

“In light of the fact that a certain country has stopped providing data on its illegal arms sales to the Taiwan province of China to the UN Register of Conventional Arms, China decides to resume providing annually the data of its imports and exports of conventional arms in the seven categories to the Register from this year,” the Chinese representative in Geneva told relevant UN bodies.

As for its own purchases, China indicates importing two warships from Russia and a little over 1500 missile and missile launching equipment from Russia and Ukraine. There are no other imports in any of the other categories.

“Enforced disappearances are not a thing of the past. They continue all over the world – in Algeria, Colombia, Nepal, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, the former Yugoslavia – to name but a few countries. The USA, sometimes acting with the complicity of other governments, has carried out enforced disappearances of terror suspects. Those who commit these crimes have done so with almost complete impunity.

”In Sri Lanka, the Vice-Chancellor of Eastern University, Sivasubramanium Raveendranath, was reportedly abducted while at a conference in the capital, Colombo, on 15 December 2006. He was in an area of the capital tightly controlled by the army; it is likely that his captors were military agents. He has not been heard from since.

”There are currently 5,749 outstanding cases of enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka being reviewed by the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Since 2006, hundreds of people have reportedly been abducted and forcibly disappeared by the security forces or armed groups in areas in the north and east of Sri Lanka, as well as in Colombo. Often taken in “for questioning” and held incommunicado, no records of their detention are available. Many cases implicate members of the security forces, others implicate armed groups including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Karuna group.”

The denims look tattered and frayed, but shoppers in Europe and the United States are prepared to pay good money for “distressed” jeans and Sri Lanka is cashing in. In the industrial town of Avissawella east of the capital Colombo, it takes workers around 13 minutes to cut and sew basic five-pocket denims. They then spend another four days torturing the pants by dying, bleaching, and sandpapering them to get a “distressed” look. “Each garment is dyed or dipped around 16 and sometimes as many as 30 times to achieve the proper torn, tattered look,” explains Indrajith Kumarasiri, chief executive of Sri Lanka’s Brandix Denim. “We earn more money by making denims look dirty and torn, the classic clean look doesn’t bring us much,” Kumarasiri said during a visit to the 10-million dollar plant, which can make over three million pairs of jeans a year. Basic denim jeans cost around six dollars to make, but the shabbier “premium” ones cost twice as much. “In many ways, premium denims are replacing the little black dress as the wear-anywhere fashion staple,” he said. Overseas buyers such as Levis, Gap and Pierre Cardin are now regular buyers of premium jeans from Sri Lanka where they can be made for as little as 12 dollars a pair, and often sell for over 100 dollars. Buyers have been gradually shifting production out of Europe to low-cost countries such as Sri Lanka, explains Ajith Dias, chairman of the Sri Lanka Joint Apparel Association Forum. “Retaining the business and growing the order book is tough with India and China competing with us on price and quicker lead times,” Dias said. Sri Lanka’s three-billion dollar garment industry accounts for more than half its annual seven billion dollars of export earnings, and it provides jobs for nearly one million people. Nearly all the garments are shipped to the United States and the European Union. But Dias said casual wear, including jeans, are they key to Sri Lanka’s success in the price-sensitive global apparel market, and now account for 16 percent of total garment export earnings. “We have invested millions to install high-tech plants, develop a sound raw material base and design garments, to ensure we remain competitive, by doing everything from fabric to retail hangers,” Dias said. Brandix, Sri Lanka’s biggest exporter with annual sales in excess of 320 million dollars, and MAS Holdings, are also expanding overseas. In an attempt to get an advantage over the competition, Sri Lanka is trying to position itself as an ethical manufacturer in the hope of getting greater access to the US and European markets at lower duty rates. “We have high labour standards. We don’t employ child labour, we provide rural employment and we empower women. There are no anti-dumping cases against us on trading practices,” said Suresh Mirchandani, chief executive of Favourite Garments. While eco-friendly and ethically-made clothes are becoming increasingly fashionable, their manufacture provides challenges for Sri Lanka. Big-name brands are now adding organic-cotton clothes to their collection. “The joke is that one day we’ll have a shirt we can eat,” said Prasanna Hettiarachchi, general manager of MAS Holdings. He said Levis recently launched eco-jeans using organic cotton, natural dyes, a coconut shell button on the waist band and a price tag made of recycled paper printed with environmentally friendly soy ink. The price tag is a cool 250 dollars. “We are also working on an eco garment,” said Brandix Denim’s Kumarasiri. And when asked what made a perfect pair of jeans, he had a quick answer. “Same as always. It comes down to how your behind looks when you wear them,” grins Kumarasiri. “No matter how good the wash, the detail or the label, if it doesn’t look good on your behind, it won’t sell.”

Media rights groups attacked Sri Lanka’s government for blocking domestic access to a website favouring the Tamil Tiger rebels and for saying it would like hackers to disable the site.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Colombo should immediately unblock the Tamilnet.com website.

“Sri Lanka’s Internet service providers have been blocking access to the website on the government’s orders since June 15,” RSF said. “The government must put a stop to this censorship and restore access to the site at once.”

A local rights group, the Free Media Movement (FMM), also criticised government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella over comments in which he said he would “love” to hire hackers to pull down Tamilnet.

The FMM said Rambukwella’s statement was “tantamount to government sanctioned cyber-terrorism against websites that do not toe its line.”

“The FMM seeks urgent clarification from the government as to whether Minister Rambukwella’s comments are indicative of official government policy to shutdown, disrupt or censor content and websites on the Internet.”

But Sri Lanka’s Media Minister Anura Yapa insisted his ministry had nothing to do with preventing users of Sri Lanka Telecom, the country’s main Internet service provider, accessing Tamilnet.

“It is unreasonable to level charges against the government,” Yapa told reporters here. “We have nothing to do with this.”

Military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said the security forces had not ordered the blocking of Tamilnet either.

“Security forces have not asked the Tamilnet to be blocked,” Samarasinghe said.

Despite the denials, Sri Lanka Telecom’s Internet service help desk told callers that the “government has asked to block Tamilnet.”

“You can access any other site, but you can’t access Tamilnet,” callers are being told.

The government owns just under 50 percent of Sri Lanka Telecom, which is run by NTT of Japan.

A Colombo-based editor of Tamilnet, Dharmaratnam Sivaram, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in April 2005. The killing remains unresolved.

Some Internet service providers, who have their main offices abroad, still allow access to the website.

Tamilnet is an influential source of Tamil views on the island’s separatist conflict, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives in a 35-year campaign by rebels for a separate homeland for minority Tamils.

COLOMBO, 31 May 2007 - Last year at this time 16-year-old Jeevun Kumaraswamy, who lives on the isolated Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka, was on top of the world. His school, Jaffna Central College, was competing against traditional rivals St. John’s College in the centenary game of their annual cricket match. Jaffna was decked-out in flags. The kids were dancing in the streets.
This year there’s anything but dancing for Jeevun and his friends: Since all-out conflict began between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the climate has been tense - tense enough that even the big school cricket match had to be cancelled.
The closure of the A-9 highway in August 2006 has also meant most essential supplies, including food, could no longer be delivered from the south in the volumes necessary. Families like Jeevan’s have been feeling the economic and nutritional pinch as only scant supplies can be imported by ship and air.
Fear of abductions
But for Jeevun and his school mates and their families there is a bigger concern. With abductions in the area on the rise, Jeevun’s father, Sinnathambhi Kumaraswamy, told IRIN “I am scared to live here because I have three young boys to look after. I don’t know when they will go missing.” He said: “I have seen many young boys abducted and now I am seeing their parents suffer.”
The worried father says he won’t even allow his sons to leave the house for fear they could be abducted. Eighty people, all males, were abducted in Jaffna between January and April 2007, according to the Human Rights Commission, a semi-autonomous government body.
Young Jeevun says he is particularly fearful because he witnessed the abduction of a close friend just five months ago.
“I will never forget my friend’s last scream,” says Jeevun. “Passers-by just stared at the commotion while he was forced into a white van by four unidentified men. I certainly don’t want myself or my brothers to suffer like that.”
“I love playing cricket with my friends and I had really been looking forward to this year’s big cricket match, but now it seems everything has just died,” Jeevun says. “My brother and I can’t even step out of the house to be with our friends.”
Various groups have been accused of carrying out child abductions in Sri Lanka - including the LTTE and the pro-government Karuna group, which is a breakaway faction of the LTTE. There have even been allegations - denied by the government and the military - of army or government involvement.
Seeking help
Some Jaffna residents who have had family members abducted seek the help of the local branch of the Human Rights Commission. It records their cases and conducts its own investigations. Families of victims have also lodged complaints with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which is monitoring the situation and is in touch with all parties to resolve complaints.
ICRC Spokesperson, Davide Vignati, told IRIN: “The ICRC, currently, on a weekly basis, is collecting information on missing persons and abductions. The cases have only been increasing in the peninsula.”
Jaffna university
Even academic work at Jaffna university has been affected by fear of abductions and other intimidation. According to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which monitors the truce between the government and the LTTE, “the problems at Jaffna University campus have continued.
Students and staff have been receiving death threats aimed at people with LTTE (Tamil Tiger) affiliations which has caused considerable fear and led to the closure of the campus,” the SLMM said in a situation report dated 14-20 May 2007.
The threats and abductions are occurring in a city that over the past year has faced increasing isolation and economic challenges due to the conflict and the A9 road closure. Just two years ago, even though there were breakdowns in talks between the government and the Tamil Tigers, Jaffna was making the most of the tentative ceasefire.
Jaffna residents who had fled the violence more than a decade earlier, like some from the local Muslim population, were returning to their former homes and businesses. Goods were freely available and guest houses were opening up to the increasing number of visitors. Even private airlines and mobile service providers were lining up to get a piece of the action.
A9 road closure
All that has now changed and today, principally because of the A9 closure, Jaffna is now a city marked by shortages of basic commodities and medicine and, most critically, food.
The World Food Programme (WFP), which is currently conducting its food assistance programme in Jaffna, has been able to ship only 20 per cent of its total food allocation for internally displaced peoples (IDPs) and vulnerable people to the peninsula due to the A9 road closure.
“Through the food assistance programme, WFP is required to send 1,000 metric tonnes of food to Jaffna every month. But due to the closure of the A9 road and the lack of space on government vessels, WFP has been able to ship only 200 metric tones of food per month since August,” WFP Country Director Jeff Taft-Dick told IRIN.
Lack of ships
“Our biggest concern is the low number of ships available to transport food,” Taft-Dick says. “With the monsoon expected, we will face more difficulties.”
WFP says it is in consultation with the commissioner general of the Essential Services Commission to increase the number of supply ships as soon as possible. The government did increase the number of ships last year when supplies thinned out in the peninsula.
“Food prices were quite high several months ago,” says Taft-Dick, “but they have come down now. It is a little better now because some private traders are also bringing in food from India,” he said.
“Very soon our children will be starving”
However, some residents feel that economic conditions in Jaffna are so dire that the cost of commodities, including food, are priced beyond their reach.
“Prices keep increasing weekly.” Rosy Theyagarajah told IRIN. “A fixed rate on commodities is not maintained and shops sell goods at whatever price they want,” she complains. “Very soon our children will be starving as we no longer have money to buy food.”
Rosy Theyagarajah has been living in Jaffna for the past 32 years and says the current situation is the worst she has experienced. She says some children are now suffering malnutrition. “Even during the 20-year war between the government and the LTTE, we had food to fill our stomachs,” she says. “But today we have nothing. My husband is out of work and my children only get one meal a day,” she adds.

Sri Lanka is a country at war. As a direct consequence of the increase in hostilities between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam (LTTE), fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression and media freedom, have severely deteriorated over the past year. Despite international condemnation and repeated local protests, the GoSL and LTTE are unable, or unwilling, to put an end to a culture of impunity that has cost some journalists and human rights activists their lives and places other at severe risk. The violence directed against pro-democracy voices in civil society has resulted in a fear psychosis amongst the media community in particular. Hate speech and open threats to even senior journalists are now, perversely, routine by members of the government and highly placed public servants. Abductions, murders and severe erosion of safety for working journalists stunts the growth of investigative reportage and results in a de facto censorship of issues related to justice, the Rule of Law, human rights and democracy.
The situation is already impossible, and unbelievably, getting worse. The Free Media Movement (FMM) considers World Press Freedom Day in 2007 to be a day to mourn, not celebrate, media freedom in Sri Lanka. Facts, which speak for themselves, on the deterioration of media freedom and fundamental rights in Sri Lanka in general, deny us even a cautious optimism on securing and strengthening media freedom in the near future. Calls to clarify the government’s position on hate speech and intimidatory tactics adopted and promoted by members of parliament and senior officials have fallen on deaf ears. Investigations into the deaths of journalists are stalled, unable to continue sans the political will to bring perpetrators of heinous crimes to justice. Journalists have been forced to flee Sri Lanka. Those who remain are in fear of their lives, in a context in which the Rule of Law withers in suspended animation. The threat to media freedom is real and palpable for those working in Sri Lanka and, especially, journalists who advocate the inviolability of human rights and basic norms of democracy even at a time of war. Unfortunately, the timbre of living constantly in fear and repression, and the significant erosion of media freedom and fundamental rights, isn’t always easily communicated to the international community, or can be.
This is our foremost challenge. On the one hand, free media is a vital bulwark against a total erasure of fundamental rights. Media, acting in the interests of the public, have a responsibility to report critically on all actors involved in the on-going conflict, including the Government and the LTTE. To harm the media, to threaten the media or otherwise seek to control free media is inimical to the fundamental tenets of democracy. Regrettably, this is precisely what journalists in Sri Lanka face today. Accordingly, this brief statement by the FMM seeks to a) flag key issues facing the media today and b) propose recommendations to address the significant deterioration of media freedom.
The failure to stop the erosion of media freedom in Sri Lanka is quite simply that the manner in which the State seeks to combat terrorism will itself give birth to a new tyranny and despotism in Sri Lanka. The possibility of deeper cycles of violent conflict that will be the inevitable result thereof is a frightening yet compelling appeal to all democratic stakeholders, local and international, to urge those responsible for the continuation of the on-going violence to desist.
Fundamentally, it is Sri Lanka’s future as a vibrant and viable democracy that is at stake.

Britain licensed £7 million worth of weapons and military equipment for export to Sri Lanka this year alone, it was revealed during a debate in Parliament Wednesday. The sum matches the amount of British aid provided in the wake of December 2004 tsunami. On Thursday the UK government said it was holding back half its £3 million annual aid allocation for this year citing British concerns over human rights in Sri Lanka.

Colombo, Sri Lanka - A total of 15 people were killed over the last two days due to heavy rains in the island nation of Sri Lanka. Inconsistent rains lashed the capital Colombo and two provinces causing flooding and landslides in some areas.

Ten people were killed on Friday and five others on Thursday, the officials confirmed. Of the 15 people killed, four are from the capital Colombo and 11 from Southern Province and other parts of Western Province.

According to reports, nonstop torrential rains on Friday morning lashed Western and Southern Sri Lanka, and at least 6,400 people are believed to have been left homeless so far. Officials can offer little relief, and experts say the rains will continue.

Drowning and electrocuting due to power lines being brought down by heavy rains and gutsy winds caused most of the deaths, the officials note.

Meanwhile, the government took special measures to help the displaced through district-government agents and the village officials locally known as Grama Sevaka Niladharis.

Colombo: Sri Lanka was on high alert yesterday over the threat of another Tamil Tiger air attack, the morning after a suspicious aircraft forced the closure of the island’s only international airport.

“We are on alert. In fact, every day we are on alert now and we have beefed up our measures,” air force spokesman Ajantha Silva said.

Overnight on Thursday, the sky over the Katunayake international airport near Colombo - where government warplanes are also stationed, sharing a runway with civilian passenger jets - was lit up with anti-aircraft gunfire.

Authorities also switched off electricity to the capital so that potential targets would not be illuminated.

“Sri Lanka’s air force engaged its air defence weapons at a suspicious aircraft observed in the Katunayake sky,” the defence ministry said during the night. It said the “suspicious air move” was also detected by radar, but there was no rebel attack using the aircraft.

Mini-state

However, military bases south of the frontline dividing rebel-held territory from the rest of the island opened fire on Thursday night to prevent any air attack, military sources said.

The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have been fighting the government for 35 years and run a mini-state in the north of the island, bombed the Katunayake air base a month ago in their first ever air strike.

The separatist rebels also carried out a second air raid on the Palaly military complex in the island’s north on Tuesday.

A total of nine security personnel were killed and 30 wounded in the two air attacks by the Tigers, who are believed to have a small fleet of Czech-made Zlin Z-143 single-engined light aircraft.

The planes are believed to have been smuggled in pieces into the north of the island by boat, and can be flown from tiny makeshift airstrips in the jungle. The defence ministry has said that the Tigers possessed at least five light planes.

The LTTE attacks have also caused havoc for international passenger flights.

Overnight, two incoming Sri Lankan Airlines flights were diverted to the nearby south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, before continuing their journey yesterday morning, airport officials said.

Flights delayed

A Singapore Airlines aircraft, which was at the airport at the time the runway was shut down, was also delayed.

The attack alert came the day after Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific resumed flights to Colombo, which had been suspended after last month’s attack.

Immediately after last month’s attack, Emirates airline also stopped night flights to Colombo.

To make matters worse for Sri Lankan authorities, a helicopter gunship scrambled to detect the suspect plane ran into technical difficulties and crash-landed just outside Anuradhapura air base in the government-held north, military sources said. No one was seriously injured.

Sri Lanka’s civil conflict flared up in 1983 when Tamil separatists began fighting the government to create an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils who have suffered decades of discrimination by Sinhalese-dominated governments.

A Norway-brokered ceasefire signed in 2002 prevented large-scale fighting, but a resurgence of violence since 2005 has taken the death toll past 69,000.

Colombo — Sri Lankan navy sailors and separatist Tamil Tiger rebels battled in the country’s east yesterday, leaving three sailors dead, the military said.

Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said the rebels also suffered casualties. He gave no further details about the fighting.

The attack took place in the coastal village of Uppuveli in Trincomalee district, the site of a major Sri Lankan navy base and natural harbour.

On Thursday, soldiers attacked a car carrying Tamil Tiger rebels in the northwest, killing two insurgents, the military said.

The assault happened near the army’s defence line in Mannar district, said Lt Col Upali Rajapakse, a senior defence ministry official.

Rajapakse said he believed a local rebel leader was killed in the attack, but did not give his name. There was no immediate comment from Tigers.

As the world prepares for yet another ‘scary’ report by the United Nations panel on global warming and climate change, a Sri Lankan specialist in the group says Tamil rebels and government troops are actually fighting over land due to be submerged as sea-levels rise.

”A major part of Jaffna and other northern areas (of Sri Lanka) will be submerged when the sea-level rises. So people are fighting and dying over areas that may soon not be there,” Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, vice-chairman of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said in an interview.

Jaffna, seat of a revolt for an independent homeland for minority Tamils, lies on the northern tip of the island. Northern and eastern coastal areas, both claimed by the rebels as traditional Tamil homelands, are vulnerable to submersion as they are flatter than other coastal areas.

The vulnerability of the north and east was highlighted during the Dec. 26, 2004 Asian tsunami when these areas bore the brunt of the damage caused by the killer waves that hit the island, following an undersea earthquake off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island.

Munasinghe, known internationally for his work on energy and sustainable development, says climate change in Sri Lanka will have dire consequences on water, agriculture, health and the coast. “Already there are early signs of the impact which would assume serious proportions by 2025,” he said. “But unfortunately if the developed world doesn’t do anything to mitigate the impact, there’s little Sri Lanka can do.”

IPCC is releasing the third volume of its 4th assessment report in Bangkok on May 4. Since the first one came out in 2001, IPCC reports have been closely scrutinised by policymakers across the world, but action has been painfully slow in tackling the problem of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and carbon dioxide emissions that are said to cause global warming.

The biggest culprits are the United States and Europe through their fossil fuel industry and its powerful lobbies.

Providing a peek review of the forthcoming report Munasinghe, a former World Bank who has advised several Sri Lankan governments on energy issues, said among the key messages would be the need to take immediate action to mitigate or reduce GHGs.

The report will also focus on the methods and technologies to make this early start and provide clear signals to industry to develop the technologies to make such a change. “Industrialised countries should lead the way as they are the biggest polluters,” he said, adding that the Europeans clearly recognised these concerns earlier this year. “Thus there is now some action in the developed countries,” he said.

The IPCC vice-chairman is frustrated at the general apathy of countries in dealing with global warming despite the fact that some of the best experts in the world prepare the reports on global warming. The latest one has contributions from 3,000 scientists.

“No one takes it seriously because it is something that does not happen today or tomorrow. The biggest culprits are the rich countries…so it’s difficult to take action,” he said, adding that one of the weaknesses in the campaign is the inability of scientists to translate their jargon into language that is understood by everyone, including politicians.

The world response to global warming has been very slow. When IPCC’s first report, released in 1990, provided scientific evidence to show the existence of GHGs that can alter the climate, the public was sceptical. The second report dealt with the impact of GHGs, the impact on humans and need for mitigation.

The third report in 2001 focussed on vulnerability and adapting to situations. It said even if there were zero emissions, what is already in the atmosphere would cause global warming and impact mostly on tropical countries, and thereby the poor. Experts say even in rich countries it is the poor that are affected by global warming — as the impact of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. has shown.

More than 80 percent of the emissions that cause climate change come from rich countries with lifestyles and development that cause the problems. The per capita emissions of countries like India or China, despite being large, are a mere 1/30th or 1/40th of what is emitted by the U.S. or Europe.

Munasinghe says his argument, made during a presentation at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, that there is a strong need for integrating climate change and longer term issues into sustainable development strategies has become a reality today. “Sustainable development is the way out… starting with the industrial nations,” he said.

In the Sri Lankan scenario, population shifts where the country would have a bigger aging population in 20 years will exacerbate the problem since health is one area where the impact would be high.

“Remember malnutrition and disease affects mostly children and older people. An aging population means there would be fewer people to carry the burden as well and all these would be vulnerable. Productivity will get affected because there are fewer young people,” he said.

Sri Lanka expects that over the next two decades the sea-level will rise by half a metre with dry areas becoming drier and wet areas becoming wetter, leading to floods in some areas and drought in others.

Earlier this month, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of IPCC, said at a press conference in New Delhi that up to 60 million coastal people in the low-lying areas of South Asia could be displaced by global warming by the end of the 21st century.

Especially vulnerable, said Pachauri, are the coastal metropolises of Mumbai and Kolkata which are already showing signs of strain on their drainage systems and infrastructure.

India could be most seriously affected by scantier rainfall and by glacier melt in the Himalayas which supply the river systems on which agriculture depends, Pachauri said, adding that glacier melt could also seriously affect China.

According to Pachauri the impact of global warming on India, where almost 700 million people are dependent on agriculture, would be really serious and trigger mass migration of rural communities to urban areas in search of alternate livelihoods.

The most frightening prospect for Sri Lanka is also in agriculture. ‘’We have done some studies with the meteorological department which show higher temperatures and less water,” said Munasinghe. ”This will result in paddy farming output falling by 20-30 percent in the next 20 to 30 years. The output will begin to drop gradually over the next few years.”

The other issue is that of equity, says Munasinghe, in the wet zone where the hill country is filled with tea bushes — the tea crop will increase making those workers well off. While paddy is cultivated mostly by farmer-families in which the cost of production is much higher than the selling price, tea workers are assured of their monthly wages even if tea companies find production costs higher than selling prices. Tea is generally a profitable crop.

He says in the hotter areas mosquitoes will be more rampant and even move into the more hilly areas. Thus the incidence of vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue in endemic areas could increase in addition to diseases triggered by poor quality water that accompanies droughts.

COLOMBO — Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels shot dead five people in eastern Sri Lanka on Saturday, the military said, as the country marked the traditional New Year and the president appealed for national unity.

Gunmen from the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fired at a residential neighbourhood in Eravur, in Batticaloa district, killing two people from a breakaway militant faction and three civilians, the defence ministry said.

Among those killed were a three-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl, the military said, adding that police were probing the shootings.

However, Tiger rebels denied killing the five people and blamed the military for the deaths, according to the pro-rebel website Tamilnet.com. The rebels added that those who died were all civilians.

Elsewhere, in the northern district of Vavuniya, residents were preparing to bury seven Sinhalese villagers who were gunned down by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels on Thursday, according to the military. The Tigers have denied responsibility for those deaths as well.

According to defence ministry figures, an average of just under four civilians have been killed each day since April 1, as government troops remain locked in combat with the guerrillas, despite a 2002 Oslo-backed truce.

The latest killings came as both the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil community marked their common New Year.

President Mahinda Rajapakse, in his New Year message, appealed for unity in the ethnically divided nation of 19.5 million people.

“The observance of New Year traditions and rituals leads to the unity of the nation,” he said. “We should all come together to observe the New Year traditions, irrespective of all differences.”

The Tigers on Friday vowed to hit back against an advance by government troops in the east of Sri Lanka, where a breakaway faction known as the “Karuna Group” is collaborating with security forces to attack the Tigers.

The LTTE denied military claims that they were retreating in the face of an onslaught in the Eastern Province, where they were ejected from a coastal stronghold in January, and said they would retaliate “very soon.”

“As far as the LTTE is concerned we have adjusted our tactics according to the needs and we have not withdrawn from the east,” LTTE political wing leader S. P. Thamilselvan said.

“I believe only our actions in the coming period will answer the propaganda (of the government) whether the Sri Lankan military has won a stable victory,” he said in an e-mail interview with AFP.

He said the Tigers had turned the tables on government forces in the past and inflicted heavy losses, adding, “I believe similar instances will be repeated in the east very soon.”

Violence has intensified since fighting erupted last April and Colombo has blocked journalists from travelling to rebel-held areas in the island’s north, where the LTTE has its military and political headquarters.

More than 4,000 people died between December 2005 and the first week of March 2007 across the country, including 675 civilians and 1,040 security personnel, according to defence ministry figures.

The LTTE has waged a 35-year campaign for independence that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

The antagonism between Tamils and Sinhalese is rooted in the country’s history but has been exacerbated into interethnic violence only since 1956. The old file photos of the particularly vicious anti-Tamil riots in 1983, recorded in stark images of gutted buildings and burnt Tamilian bodies, is a poignant reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. The brutality was unbelievable, homes and shops were burnt, cars were doused with gasoline and lit, sometimes with the occupant inside; some people were hacked to death, others burnt alive. Another gruesome eyewitness account of the anti-Tamil pogrom lays bare the brutality of riots: ‘Mobs of Sinhala youth rampaged through the streets, ransacking homes, shops and offices, looting them and setting them ablaze, as they sought out members of the Tamil ethnic minority.’ Some ‘motorists were dragged from their cars to be stoned and beaten with sticks… Others were cut down with knives and axes.’ Conservative estimate place the figure of about 3000 Tamils killed in the riots.

In order to fathom the roots of the conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils, one has to turn the historical clock back to 1948 when Sri Lanka gained independence from the British. The first act of the independent Sri Lankan government was to strip the Tamil plantation workers of the citizenship rights. These workers were descended from people brought to Sri Lanka from India by the British in the 19th century to work on coffee and tea plantations. As a result, at least a million Tamil workers were deprived of Sri Lankan citizenship. This hostile act did not completely disenfranchise the other Tamils living in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka for thousands of years. But soon other laws were pressed into service, which adversely affected the prospects of all Tamils living Sri Lanka. The government made Sinhalese the sole official language rendering people speaking Tamil as second-class citizens. The Tamils were excluded from most government jobs and access to education was denied to them.

At first the Tamils began their peaceful protests against the repression by staging demonstrations, sit-ins and by fighting elections. These demonstrations were met with mob attacks of incited by Buddhist monks and politicians. As no progress could be made to roll back the anti-Tamil policies of the government, the youths increasingly took to violent means to make the government. ‘The LTTE was formed in 1972, and carried out its first major armed action in 1978. After the 1983 pogrom, the LTTE gained increased support from the Tamil community and dramatically stepped up its war against the SLA.’

The failure of moderate Tamil political parties to improve the plight of Tamils living in Sri Lanka saw the growth of LTTE as a fighting force. This fact should be borne in mind to understand that LTTE is a product of Tamil Nationalism. ‘The Tamil Tigers (LTTE),’ observes A. J. Wilson, a noted authority on Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, ‘today appear to hold the key to their people’s future. While they have suffered setbacks, including the loss of the Tamil capital, Jaffna, they remain a potent guerrilla force, able to strike with impunity at both military and civilian targets.’ The Tigers’ grip on the Tamil population seems secure, as does their overseas support and funding from Tamil exiles in Britain, Canada, and Australia.

The inability of the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) to quell Tamil Nationalism led to large-scale repression against civilian Tamil population. This terrible fact could be gleaned from Human Rights reports on SLA atrocities committed on Tamils. A statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reports: ‘in recent decades, Sri Lanka has had one of the worst records in the world concerning forced disappearances. In 1971, around 10,000 persons disappeared in the south of the country. Between 1987 and 1991, over 30,000 disappeared in the south, and since the early 1980s there have been constant disappearances in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The exact number of such disappearances remains unknown.’ The Tamil militants also unleashed its brand of terror by killing service personnel and indulged in disfiguring the bodies and desecrating corpses.

In 2002 the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), as the rebels call themselves, signed a cease-fire designed to lead to a political agreement. While the rebels want a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka’s north and east, the government wants to keep the island whole. A federation seemed a possible compromise. But peace talks sputtered and then collapsed (both sides accused the other of being insincere), and since December 2005, Sri Lanka has again been at undeclared war with itself. The latest round of bloodletting is much like previous ones—bombings (including a Tuesday blast that killed 15, mostly women and children, in a bus), shellings, suicide attacks against political leaders, government air raids on rebel-held areas, abductions and disappearances of anyone believed to be aiding the other side. In the past 16 months, more than 4,000 people have been killed, and 220,000 people forced from their homes; a total of half a million Sri Lankans are now displaced in their own country. Nordic peacekeepers who are supposed to be monitoring peace have “gone from reporting single shots as [cease-fire] violations to reporting whole battles,” according to one international observer who did not want his name used.

Government forces have pushed the Tigers out of much of the east, in part because a breakaway faction of Tamil fighters that fell out with the main rebel group has joined with government troops against their old comrades. The Sri Lankan military is now opening up a new front in the northwest. But there are few signs that the military is on the verge of victory. The L.T.T.E. has used tactical withdrawals to regroup following defeats in the past and is still able to spring surprises. In late February a group of foreign diplomats, including the U.S. and Italian ambassadors, had just helicoptered into Batticaloa, an area the government had assured them was safe, when they came under rebel mortar fire. (Both ambassadors were slightly hurt.) Two weeks ago, in one of its most audacious attacks so far, the Tigers used two small planes (the government says it was just one), which the group had smuggled onto the island piece by piece over the past few years, to bomb an airfield adjacent to the country’s international airport outside Colombo. The attack killed three and wounded 16, but officials say government planes weren’t damaged. The air attack was so unexpected that the improvised bombers were able to make it back to rebel territory unharmed. The Tigers sent journalists photographs of its new “air wing,” including close-ups of an airplane fitted with small bombs and a group shot showing Tiger pilots surrounding a beaming Velupillai Prabhakaran, the group’s charismatic but ruthless leader.

Sri Lanka has been in ceaseless turmoil for more than three decades. During the 1970s and ’80s, Marxist radicals in the south engaged in a fierce campaign against the government and were just as brutally put down. The conflict with the L.T.T.E. was sparked in 1975 when the Tigers assassinated the mayor of Jaffna, Sri Lanka’s northernmost city, and intensified after the killing of 13 soldiers in 1983. Fighting has gone on for so long now that it has brutalized an entire society, creating a culture of violence that haunts the country whether there is fighting or not. In his exquisitely written novel Anil’s Ghost, set in an earlier phase of the conflict, Sri Lankan-born Michael Ondaatje describes the unnatural horrors that grip this tropical South Asian island of 21 million people. In Sri Lanka, Ondaatje writes, “the reason for war was war.”

The protracted armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has drastically escalated since the beginning of 2006. An estimated 4,000 people have since been killed and over 275,000 internally displaced in that period. This is in addition to more than 500,000 uprooted earlier in the conflict and by the tsunami of December 2004.

The areas mostly affected by the renewed war are Batticaloa, Jaffna, Mannar, Trincomalee and Vavunia. Apart from the large number of internally displaced, around 18,000 Tamils have been forced to find refuge in India since January 2006. Both sides to the conflict are accused of deliberately targeting civilians and committing grave human rights violations with impunity. The government and the LTTE have severely restricted access to the conflict areas under their control, thus leaving more than half of the newly displaced people and other affected populations without access to basic needs.

At this present moment the eastern district of Batticaloa is becoming a region of internally displaced persons (IDPs). More than 35% of Batticaloa’s Tamil population of 422, 674 have now been displaced. In the last three months alone there has been a movement of 145,000 IDPs within the district. In addition, approximately 30,000 Tamils from eastern Trincomalee have sought refuge in the district. However there is a deliberate effort by the government to minimize the figures.

The latest reports coming out from Batticaloa are alarming; there have been numerous serious human rights abuses committed against these IDPs: forcible return and resettlement in unsafe areas, using them as human shields, mass arrests under emergency regulations, child recruitment, abductions, involuntary disappearances, sexual abuse, political killings, torture, etc. The Government has curtailed relief organisations’ access to IDP points in order to cover up the human catastrophe that is unfolding in the east. UN relief agencies state that the IDPs do not have shelter, food and water, and are living under catastrophic hygienic conditions and suffering from fever, diarrhea, coughs and various skin rashes. Aid agencies have also warned that they are on the verge of running out of food and the ever-increasing IDP influx in the eastern province has already caused a severe shortage of shelter materials. Further overcrowding, they fear, may cause major outbreaks of epidemics. The situation of the IDPs is further complicated by the active involvement of a third armed actor, the Karuna Faction, which split from the LTTE in March 2004. The Karuna Faction, with the assistance of the government security forces, also carries out abductions, political killings and child recruitment in IDP camps while pretending to do resettlement work.

The Sri Lankan IDP problem is unique because of the nature of multiple displacements. Many of the current Tamil IDP families have been on the run on and off for the last 25 years and the younger generation of this population has experienced for several months a return with a vengeance of intensive air-strikes and indiscriminate shelling of their welfare centres, mass massacres, disappearances and forced recruitment. Some of these youngsters were born in refugee camps and rotated in between camps several times within a year. For this community nothing has been permanent since 1985 other than the hostilities, abuses and atrocities committed by the government, LTTE, Karuna group and other paramilitary groups. In the recent past, the Sri Lankan government has been moving the IDPs by force to the areas that they have newly captured from LTTE. Most of these areas are full of landmines and do not provide the means to re-build livelihoods for returnees as a consequence of the heavy militarization process. It is also alarming that government officers and INGOs have to consult a government backed armed group (Karuna Faction) on resettlement and relief activities thus forcing even experienced UN bodies like UNHCR to withdraw/ reduce their involvement with IDPs.

The human right situation in Sri Lanka is deteriorating day by day. According to the Minority Rights Group International report (released on 20th March 2007) Sri Lanka has jumped 47th places since the previous year and is now in the top 20 list of countries where minority communities are most under threat. Minority Tamils and Muslims are not only caught in the cross fire and made homeless overnight but are specifically targeted for grave human rights abuses including killings, abductions and disappearances. In the last two months (January and February 07) alone, 388 people have disappeared. Citizens in the northernmost part of the country have been completely cut off from rest of the country due to the closure of the A9 road in last September. In Jaffna alone, the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission reports that every three hours one person is abducted and/or killed. Eye witnesses’ accounts from Mannar reveal that LTTE cadres have been forcefully recruiting young women from IDP camps. Some of these IDP women, who have dared to resist, have been beaten up and stripped naked by LTTE women cadres. IDP receiving points are the breeding ground for all forms of violations against minority communities by all parties that are involved in this dirty war and it is crucial that there should be an international mechanism put in place to monitor IDP condition and assure some form of security to this most vulnerable population of the north and east.

The Rajapakse government has been militarily supported by the USA, China, Pakistan and India in its war. While some countries have been becoming more critical of the government’s human rights record, the support for the war against ‘terrorism’ has given the government the confidence to continue with the war. The government has been proactively blocking the entry of any foreign missions, including the proposed visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, which has been postponed twice; and since the EU countries are branded as supporters of the LTTE their visas to undertake even humanitarian activities have been denied or purposely delayed. Recently, security forces have been accused of killing humanitarian workers of Action Faim who were killed in execution style in August 2006, which resulted in the fear that the limited international presence in most of the needy and war torn areas being further reduced. For local human rights advocates most spaces for agitation against the war have been completely blocked and local human right defenders are constantly hunted down. The liberal media has been silenced either by killing vocal anti-war journalists or arresting them on counterfeited terrorism charges.

The current government has introduced various forms of ‘counterterrorism’ measures. These measures have been used against the minority Tamils, specially against the IDPs. There have been mass arrests from IDP camps and at crossing points and the victims have been locked up in undisclosed locations without any charges or access to lawyers. The government says the detainees are militants and have surrendered voluntarily. The main counter terrorism measures have given unlimited authority to the police and the military to arrest and detain suspects. It has also widened the culture of impunity with the government-backed paramilitary groups carrying out human rights abuses including abductions for ransom even in the capital city Colombo.

In Sri Lanka today, raising human rights concerns have become unpleasant and scary in the context of the ongoing war that the government intends to win at any cost. Simply put, the governments of USA, China, Pakistan and India (through its omissions and commissions) are encouraging this war against the Sri Lankan minorities. Concerned civil society groups in these countries must help us stop this madness.