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