SRI LANKA: Red Cross Wins Respect of Military and Rebels

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Feb 24 1998 (IPS) - When civilians go missing in the raging battles in Sri Lanka’s north, their anxious relatives besiege the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for news of their loved ones.

Since 1989, the ICRC has been negotiating the release on humanitarian grounds of civilian prisoners from both rebels and Sri Lankan military, taking charge of those killed in action and handing over bodies to the next of kin to ensure a respectful burial.

ICRC vehicles painted white with a red cross on the roof to safeguard from air attack regularly criss-cross the conflict zones, ferrying emergency medical aid and the seriously wounded, often all the way to well equipped hospitals in Colombo.

“We follow civilians (living in war-torn areas) wherever they go,” explains Max Hadorn, head of ICRC’s Sri Lanka operations, pointing out that as neutral intermediaries his staff have intervened in the protection of detainees, to re-establish family ties and disseminate rules of behaviour in combat.

Tamil separatist guerrillas fighting to set up an independent state called ‘Eelam’ for their minority community in the north started the vicious war in 1983. Up to 75,000 people, civilians and combatants, are believed to have died so far.

Invited to the island nation by the government, the ICRC also has close contacts with the rebels, which has often been misconstrued. For years the local media accused the ICRC of being pro-rebel because of its strict confidentiality rules.

Hadorn says the organisation is more “accessible” to the press now. “We have realised that public information is essential in whatever you may do, otherwise it (your silence) could create the wrong signals. Perhaps it could help prevent controversies,” Hadorn said.

The ICRC continues to be neutral and independent, and “does not give out more information on confidential matters,” he said. “What we are doing is making sure our mandate, our role in Sri Lanka is explained to the press rather than saying ‘No we have no comment’ all the time.”

In July last year, when the Tamil Tigers stormed a Korean ship, killing one officer, and took the 38-member crew prisoners for carrying Sri Lankan government cargo, the ICRC intervened to secure their release — a matter that was reported by the Sri Lankan media. Later the ship was also handed over.

Less publicised are the regular visits that ICRC staff make to prisoners of war on both sides, ensuring they are in contact with their families, and writing letters to their relatives to say they are alive.

“The dialogue we have with authorities from both sides, particularly in caring for prisoners, is of a confidential nature for obvious reasons. This is the type of information that we cannot make public. We have to make sure that basic rules are respected by both sides,” Hadorn said.

The organisation’s main activities apart from protection of civilians, is relief work in the war zones, assisting the internally displaced and providing them with emergency shelter material, cooking pots, blankets and clothing.

There has been bitter fighting in the Vanni region in northern Sri Lanka in the past seven months with government forces trying to regain control of parts of a key highway that runs from the south to the northern-most town of Jaffna.

The southern sector and Jaffna are both controlled by the army but some stretches of the road in between are no-man’s land and government forces are struggling to occupy it permanently.

Thousands of combatants from both sides have been killed or injured in some of the worst battles seen in the 15-year-old conflict. Hadorn said the ICRC’s office at Mallavi, in the northern area, has many civilians who have moved from areas in the war-affected Vanni region.

ICRC was forced to retreat to Mallavi from Kilinochchi, which office it had to abandon because of pitched battles between government troops and the rebels. The Sri Lankan military is in control of Kilinocchi now.

“When government forces started advancing towards Killinochchi and conditions were not conducive to stay, we moved further south to Mallavi which is reasonably far away from the main war front and there is high density of population, a lot of displaced people and many other relief agencies,” the ICRC official said.

Mallavi, until recently a little known town, has now become a

large transit base for displaced people and the ICRC’s main centre of operations in the north. The ICRC has 12 offices in the war-affected areas.

When Jaffna was still the headquarters of the rebels from where they ran a parallel government, the ICRC got both sides to establish a security zone around the city’s biggest hospital which provided critical life support service for civilians.

Hadorn said the ICRC used to also escort government food boats from the capital to Jaffna, before Sri Lanka’s second largest city was retaken by the military in 1995. Now the ICRC maintains a boat link between Trincomalee on the east coast and Jaffna.

Says ICRC chief Hadorn: “What is of vital importance is the dialogue we have with the authorities and the rebels.”