Sri Lankan Government Killed Surrendering Tamil Tigers, says General

Sacked commander running for president says three rebel leaders were machine-gunned on minister's orders

Three Tamil Tiger rebel leaders who tried to surrender during the bloody climax of Sri Lanka's civil war in May were shot and killed on the orders of the country's defence minister and a senior adviser to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the army commander at the time has claimed.
General Sarath Fonseka, who helped direct the final offensive against the Tigers but later broke with the government and is running for president in next month's elections, said he had been personally unaware of the Tamils' attempts to give themselves up, which included frantic last-minute appeals for help to a Norwegian minister, diplomats, journalists and UN and Red Cross officials.

"Later I learned that Basil [Rajapaska, a senior presidential adviser] had conveyed this information to the defence secretary, Gothabaya Rajapaksa, who in turn spoke with Brigadier Shavendra Silva, commander of the army's 58th division, giving orders not to accommodate any [Tiger] leaders attempting surrender and that they must all be killed," Fonseka told the pro-opposition Sunday Leader newspaper in Colombo.

Fonseka said Balasingham Nadesan, head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's political wing, Seevaratnam Puleedevan, head of the group's peace secretariat, and a Tiger leader known as Ramesh had been assured through intermediaries by Basil Rajapaksa and Gothabaya Rajapaksa, brothers of the president, that they would be given safe conduct.

According to subsequent accounts, the men were advised: "Get a piece of white cloth, put up your hands and walk towards the other side in a non-threatening manner."

"It [the surrender method] was their idea," Fonseka told the newspaper, referring to Basil and Gothabaya Rajapaksa.

When the three men approached government lines some time after midnight on 17 May they walked into a trap, Fonseka suggested. Troops opened fire with machine guns, killing all three and a number of family members.

A Tamil eyewitness account said Nadesan's wife, a Sinhalese, called in Sinhali to the soldiers: "He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him." She also died in the hail of bullets.

Faced by government denials and threats of legal action today, Fonseka appeared to backtrack, claiming the newspaper reported his remarks out of context. "They (army soldiers) never committed any criminal act. There was no attempt at surrender on May 17, 18 and 19," he said. He would take full responsibility for any human rights violations during the final stages of the war. Despite disavowing his earlier remarks, Fonseka's claims about the circumstances surrounding the three men's deaths resemble contemporaneous reports in regional and western media, including the Guardian, that were denied by the Sri Lankan government.

Fonseka's whereabouts during the incident was also a matter of confusion. He told a press conference in Colombo on Sunday that he was in China. It was unclear how this statement could be reconciled with his appearance on Sri Lankan state television on 18 May to proclaim victory over the Tigers and confirm that their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had been killed. "We can announce very responsibly that we have liberated the whole country from terrorism," Fonseka told Rupavahini television.

Fonseka's role in the war made him a hero for many Sinhalese, a factor that may have hastened his rupture with President Rajapaksa. He was removed as army commander two weeks after the war concluded. His claims about what happened last May, and subsequent backtracking, will be viewed in the context of his presidential campaign.

Sri Lanka denies responsibility for the three men's deaths. Officials have suggested the Tamil leaders were killed by their own side, after they decided to surrender.

Responding to Fonseka, Mahinda Samarasinghe, the human rights minister, said: "The government totally denies this allegation … We reject this malicious allegation against our heroic soldiers." Offering yet another version of events, he said the rebels were carrying white flags in an attempt to fool the army and were not trying to surrender.

Basil Rajapaksa told the Sunday Leader he had not been contacted by a Norwegian intermediary over the surrender offer. Gothabaya Rajapaksa and Brigadier Silva have not commented in public on Fonseka's claims.

Sri Lanka's conduct of the final phases of the war, in which up to 20,000 people may have died, its subsequent internment of an estimated 270,000 Tamil civilians, and violence against government critics, including last January's assassination of the Sunday Leader's former editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge, have provoked widespread condemnation by human rights groups, NGOs and some western governments. But calls by Amnesty International and others for an independent investigation by the UN or another independent body have so far been blocked.

Fonseka's allegations echo a report published in June by a Sri Lankan human rights group, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), that cited army sources in stating that a "politically ordered massacre of people who wanted to surrender or surrendered" had taken place. The group also reported widespread killings by rebels of Tamil civilians who were fleeing the war zone.

The report said: "The army had for the most part conducted itself in a disciplined manner in trying to protect civilians. But once the command gives a signal for barbarity to be let loose, the men touch the most depraved depths of humanity."

Tamer of the Tigers

Widely seen as the architect of Sri Lanka's military success against the Tamil Tigers, General Sarath Fonseka is credited with eliminating the separatist group's leadership and ending a war that began in 1983 and killed more than 70,000 people.

Born in 1950, the general started his career in the Sri Lankan army in 1970. His training took him all over South Asia as well as to the US and the UK.

He rose through the ranks and became known as a tough commander not afraid to join in with action against the Tigers. He was wounded in 1993 and almost killed by a suicide bomber in 2006.

His role in Operation Riviresa in 1995 – when the army captured the town of Jaffna from the rebels – was one of the high points of his career.

One of his biggest setbacks occurred in 2000 when the Tigers managed to gain control of the strategically important Elephant Pass, one of the few routes leading to the Jaffna peninsula. His troops recaptured it in January this year.

Last July Fonseka was appointed as Sri Lanka's first chief of defence staff. He resigned last month, feeling that he had not receive the recognition he deserved for the war victory.

Fonseka is to run as the People's Liberation Front presidential candidate in the general election, scheduled for 26 January. He has pledged to abolish the powerful executive presidency and return power to parliament in six months, and to take measures to curb corruption and restore democracy.

Fifteen opposition parties – all with little hope of defeating the incumbent, Mahinda Rajapaksa, on their own – have previously said they would support Fonseka in the election.

Heroes’ Day 2009: The year for keeping the flame for Tamil Eelam

Unlike the previous years, this year’s annual Heroes’ Day celebrated, as usual, at the critical time when the LTTE is not holding an identified territory as they previously did as a de facto state. This year the concept is kept alive through celebrations that are kept by the Tamil Diaspora. The Tamils, world over, join hands this year with the slogan that they will meet in independent Tamil Eelam next year. The million dollar question is whether the independent Tamil Eelam State will be gained through violent means, or peaceful means, and how the so-called defeated LTTE will change their strategies to gain independence and self-determination for the Tamil people.

When the LTTE was facing defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan armed forces last year, the LTTE leader, Velupillai Pirapaharan, delivered his Heroes’ Day speech on November 27, on the final day of the week-long celebrations to commemorate the martyred heroes. Incidentally, this was just the day after Pirapaharan’s birthday. Rather than declaring war, he refrained from throwing strong words at the Sri Lankan armed forces and the government. Pirapaharan focussed mostly on calling on the international community and India to lift their ban on the LTTE and to help create an atmosphere of mutual friendship, since the LTTE did not pose a threat to any other country in the world
Last year Pirapaharan spoke more about peace, outlining the need for a peaceful settlement to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. He outlined circumstances leading to Tamil youths taking up arms against the Sri Lankan government, subsequent to the Sri Lankan State, failing to address the grievances of Tamils through peaceful means from the time the country gained independence from Britain, in 1948.

Global intelligence agencies and anti-LTTE elements were calculating that the LTTE leader would declare war and fight back against the Sri Lankan armed forces, but the LTTE leader made a decisive decision. He realized the need of the hour was to change his strategy towards winning the rights of Tamils through peaceful means, in stark contrast to his previous statements in which he showed more interest in dealing with the Sri Lankan State through military means. This statement shows that the LTTE leader was handling the issue seriously, through political and strategic thinking.

Last year I raised the question as to whether Sri Lanka would fall into the trap of the LTTE military. Will it suffer both political and diplomatic blows in the international arena? An answer to these questions came with a sad end. The LTTE withdrew tactically to fight another day, and if they had failed to achieve freedom through peaceful means, it was well understood that the LTTE would not have needed years to fight. They already had the good reputation of the international community of being good co-operators with the new world order. The Sri Lankan State is now facing political and economical chaos, awaiting diplomatic blowback from the international community. The military murdered more than 20,000 civilians, abused human rights of normal civilians, and incarcerated nearly 250,000 Tamils within razor wired camps, in Vavuniya and elsewhere, in the traditional Tamil homeland. Even the Sri Lankan Consul General in Toronto, Bandula Jayasekera, when giving a short interview to Steve Paikin, of TVO, on November 24, at 11 p.m., said that there are no minority issues in Sri Lanka.

To the question of treating the Tamils in the internment camps in Vavuniya, Jayasekera, once the editor of the Sri Lankan government-controlled the Daily Newspaper, said that the LTTE propagandists are making the issue a huge one. The many Tamils were already released and the remaining Tamils will be released soon. He further said there is no violence or other such events taking place against Tamils. He also made a contradictory statement to the question of why the Sri Lankan government expelled the former Ontario premier and the current Liberal Party foreign critic, Bob Rae, when he arrived at the airport in Colombo, Sri Lankan immigration officials deported him without letting him go inside Sri Lanka. Jayasekera said Bob Rae knew the reason why he was expelled and Sri Lanka would not tolerate anyone who supports LTTE.

To the question of what would be the political solution to the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, he said Sri Lanka would not have to study the Canadian or Indian model to solve the Sri Lankan conflict. But, Sri Lanka will have its own model to solve the problem. He said democratic politicians such as Anandasangaree of TULF, Siddharthan of PLOTE and Devandana of EPDP support the government. However, he said politicians like Mano Ganesan, many NGOs like Amnesty International speak in favour of their paymasters, which is the LTTE. He reiterated that the Sri Lankan government had given access to more than 50 organizations, including the UN agencies.

Political commentators say that the statements of Jayasekera are incorrect. Even now, the Sri Lankan government does not allow any agencies, except the ones hand-picked by the government with the condition that they would only visit the areas designated by the government.

It is obvious that the global community have clearly understood the aspirations and the demands of the Tamils. They strongly condemned the Sri Lankan State for the systematic programme of unleashing genocide on Tamils with the Sri Lankan State at the top of their list for genocide. Despite their empty rhetoric in international forums, it is unlikely that the Sri Lankan State would be able to recover from such a slur that has come to stay.

India cannot abandon Eelam Tamils

As what Pirapaharan reiterated in his speech last year, great changes are taking place in India. India cannot remain a silent spectator until the Eelam Tamils gain their share of justice, which was what the LTTE was fighting for. For over three decades, over 30,000 LTTE fighters, and more than 120,000 Tamil civilians, have paid a supreme sacrifice in the name of freedom.

The LTTE and the Eelam Tamils are expecting the Tamils of India to support the freedom movement for Tamil Eelam. India should remember that the independent Eelam will be a lot friendlier than the Sri Lankan State, unlike what anti-LTTE and anti-Eelam elements might accuse them of. They claim that separate Tamil Eelam would encourage the southern Indian States to fight for separate States to secede from Indian federation. There is no truth in this because the people of all the States in India enjoy political equality and democracy, unlike the Tamils of Sri Lanka. In fact, politically and economically, it would be an advantage to live in a greater land mass, as in India. The Sri Lankan Tamils were driven to seek separation to break the shackles of oppression by the Sri Lankan State.

The Sri Lankan government declared publicly that the LTTE leader was killed in the final phase of the war, which ended in May 2009. Indian senior officials, too, acknowledged that they would investigate the matter, and submit the dead certificate of the LTTE leader, but the issue does not seem have taken any effect so far.

Tamils, world over, are hoping that India immediately gets the certificate, closing the Rajiv assassination case, allowing India to lift the ban on LTTE. Tamils in India, especially the Tamil Nadu government, must put pressure upon New Delhi to lift the ban on LTTE.

No time to discuss conspiracy theory

This is not the year to discuss what exactly happened to the LTTE leader. The Tamils should, however, understand that the LTTE leader was a classic tactician with over three decades of military, political, and diplomatic experience and manoeuvres. There is no doubt that his vision would enable to create independent Tamil Eelam. So, the Tamils have no need to enter into disputes and discussions on whether or not the LTTE leader is dead or alive. The principles that the LTTE fought for remain alive amongst the Tamil Diasporas. The question is what strategies should be adopted to achieve these? There is a cauldron of thinking amongst before a final shape is given to the form of the struggle.

The immediate issue is not of entering into arguments, but rather directing the energies towards getting the release of tens of thousands of people who are incarcerated in the camps, as well as to get the release of those kept as prisoners without any form of trial or inquiries and those held in secret locations by the Sri Lankan armed forces, with the allegation that they are members of the LTTE. These members are severely tortured and their whereabouts are still unknown.

Our energies and our oath are on this Heroes’ Week. We have the challenge and duties ahead of us to face as our brethren are facing enormous hardships as never before. We need to help them resettle in their villages. Also, we have the duty to put pressure upon the international community to bring the perpetrators of the genocidal war to book for crimes and crimes against humanity.

We can’t simply ignore the claims by the enemies of Tamil Eelam. We need to let them bark, because barking dogs never bite. The reality is that Tamil Eelam will come into being sooner than late. Facing defeat is nothing new for liberation movements such as the defeat of LTTE, by the Sri Lankan armed forces, which was nothing but a tactical approach to keep the enemy at bay. The friends of Tamil Eelam around the world will have no choice, but to declare Tamil Eelam an independent state in the near future.

This is not the week for weeping for the martyrdom fighters, and people who died for the cause of Tamil Eelam. This is the week for taking forward what they left behind when they were dying. It is the responsibility of global Tamils, whether they are Indian, Burmese, Malaysian, Singaporean, Fiji, Australian, South African, Canadian, American, British, Swiss, German, French, Norwegian, Swedish or Danish Tamils, to take the oath to fulfill the last undying wishes of the martyred freedom fighters and the people. Let us keep the flame, for the martyred freedom fighters, and for the people this year in our homes, while conducting peaceful assemblies around the world. Take this phrase, ‘Vanakkam, let’s meet in Tamil Eelam next year, as our vow on this year Heroes’ Week, as the dawn of Sun in the east is clearly seen.’

Most Refugees Still in Transit Camps

Most Sri Lankan refugees resettled from large military-run camps since the end of a 25-year civil war in May are still in transit facilities while de-mining work is finished, the government said on Friday.

Human Rights and Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said 70 percent of the more than 280,000 refugees who fled the end of the war against the Tamil Tigers had been relocated from the main camps.

"The bulk of them are still in temporary facilities. It's a transit camp until the de-mining is completed. There is quite a number in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu," he said, referring to two former rebel-held districts in northern Sri Lanka.

On Tuesday, the government gave all those resident in the main camps permission to leave temporarily to find work or seek out relatives, answering months of international criticism over freedom of movement restrictions.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees on Friday said at least 7,000 people had left the camps on the first day, and that more were leaving to find family members and visit centres where those with suspected Tamil Tiger rebel links are being held.

"We are encouraged by the Sri Lankan government's long-awaited decision this week to allow increased freedom of movement for some 135,000 internally displaced people," UNHCR said in a statement.

The government had earlier resisted pressure to let people out, saying they first had to be screened to ensure they did not have links to the Tamil Tigers and their home areas cleared of landmines. UNHCR urged swift progress in demining.

The refugees' situation has grown into a big political issue since the end of the war, especially now that former army commander General Sarath Fonseka will challenge incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa at an election due on Jan. 26.

Although Fonseka was frequently criticised by opposition parties as he led the army to victory, they have since courted him as a common candidate for a patchwork coalition designed solely to defeat Rajapaksa.

In May, Sri Lanka crushed the Tigers and ended their quarter-century war to create a separate nation for the Tamil ethnic minority on the island of 21 million people, three-quarters of whom are from the Sinhalese ethnic group.

As the military advanced relentlessly in the final year of the war, the Tigers had with them nearly 300,000 Tamils who the United Nations and others said were being kept as human shields. Most were brought by force, although some backed the Tigers.

Children among 11,000 Tamil ‘Fighters’ Held in Rehabilitation

Trincomalee -- Sri Lanka is holding more than 11,000 Tamil prisoners without charge in closely guarded “rehabilitation centres”, despite the Government’s claim that it released all Tamil civilians from detention centres this week.

The Times can reveal that the group of prisoners, whose exact number has been unknown since the Sri Lankan Government blocked access to them from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in July, is allegedly a “combatant category” that includes former Tamil Tiger (LTTE) fighters.
However, the definition of “Tamil Tiger” is unclear. Apart from the hardcore Tiger cadres, many of those in the camps are thought to be youths forcibly conscripted by the Tigers during the final stages of their collapse, as well as their family members and civil administrators.
According to media reports, the parents of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tiger leader killed this year, are being held in the notorious “4th Floor” detention complex in Colombo. They are in their seventies and had long been alienated from their son by his terrorist activities.
About 300,000 Tamil civilians were caught up in fighting earlier this year as the Sri Lankan military made its final push against the Tigers which used civilians as human shields. About 280,000 civilians were captured by the army and kept in detention centres. The last 130,000 prisoners were set free this week. But there is now concern over the fate of the 11,000 still being held.
Detention without trial is familiar to many Sri Lankan prisoners, who can be incarcerated for the most trivial of reasons under the Government’s wideranging emergency powers and Prevention of Terrorism Act.
“Until July the ICRC had access to the 12 ‘rehabilitation’ camps in the Vavuniya area,” a former ICRC staff member said this week. “There are fewer of these camps now as some have amalgamated. Under-age LTTE fighters, as well as most of those who surrendered, are sent to these camps while senior LTTE cadres are held in CID custody then sent directly to Boosa Prison near Galle. The ICRC registered all of these prisoners, after which they informed their families of their whereabouts. But since the ICRC access was stopped it has left a big gap which still hasn’t been replaced.” Recent reports suggest that the country’s authorities have authorised a new round of arrests over the past few weeks among civilians on the point of release.
Father V. Yogeswaran, director of the Centre for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, in Trincomalee, said: “I’ve got between 30 and 40 cases in which families have been released here from the detention centres, only to have their menfolk taken away at the final moment to a so-called rehabilitation centre.
“As for ‘secret’ detention camps? I wouldn’t openly say that they exist for sure, but I tend to think they do. Some men have been taken away and never accounted for.” Some of the Government’s suspicions concerning the presence of Tiger fighters inside the civilian camps are legitimate. The Times encountered two teenage Tigers, released from civilian camps in October, who had disguised their identity. Having abandoned their uniforms and weapons during the final fighting in May, snapped the cyanide capsules from their necks and threw them to the ground, they had then joined the desperate crowds of civilians running through the gunfire.
“I grabbed the hands of the nearest family I saw,” one, calling himself Sayoo, said. “When we finally came to the first group of soldiers they assumed I was part of that family.”
Throughout four interrogation sessions both men claimed to be students. Eventually they were left alone among the detained civilians, one in a Zone 6 camp, the other in Zone 2.
“From time to time in Zone 6 I would see one of my LTTE comrades who had also got away,” Sayoo said. “We would never speak to one another, just give one another a look and then walk on. There were other people, civilians, who knew who we were, but no one said anything.”
Not all of them were so lucky. One who came back from a Zone 2 camp described Tiger recruiting officials, who had forcibly enlisted young cadres, being beaten up by outraged mothers whose missing sons they had pushed into service.