SRI LANKA: Blame for Kadirgamar Murder Falls Partly on Norway

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 15 2005 (IPS) - If the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militants are indeed linked to the assassination of Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar then Norway, which brokered a peace deal in that country, may have to accept part of the blame.

Just what the Norwegians are up against was revealed in some of the scathing editorials and commentaries that have appeared in the South Asian and South-east Asian press since the Friday night murder.

Monday’s edition of ‘The Hindu,’ a leading national daily in India said: ”Norway, as the peace broker, has much to answer for. From the beginning, it argued for a softly-softly approach to the LTTE, claiming the Tiger was changing its stripes. The assassination of Mr. Kadirgamar is a tragic reminder that this is far from true.”

In Thailand, the English language ‘Bangkok Post’ said in an editorial on Monday that the bloody record of the Tamil Tigers’ made them the obvious suspects. Despite the Tigers having talked peace with the Sri Lankan government, ”behind the scenes, the Tamil Tigers have found it difficult or impossible to shed their violent, terrorist strategy,” it said.

Such finger pointing towards the Tigers, as the rebels are known, is not without reason. They have committed over 3,000 ceasefire violations since the February 2002 truce between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE. Colombo, by contrast, is guilty of 133 violations.

Tiger violations, according to the international ceasefire monitoring mission, include child conscription, abduction of children, abduction of adults, intimidation, extortion, harassment and hostile acts against civilian populations in Sri Lanka’s north and east, the area the LTTE wants to carve out for its separate state of Tamil Eelam.

Child conscription has been the worst violation, at 1624 cases, followed by abduction of adults, at 493 cases, states the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).

In addition, the LTTE is accused of committing 13 assassinations and 54 ”provocative acts,” adds the ceasefire monitors.

That the LTTE has used the ceasefire to go after its political critics was most brazenly displayed in July last year, when the rebels resorted to using one of their famed weapons – a suicide bomber û to go after a Tamil minister in the Sri Lankan government. However Douglas Devanada, survived.

Kadirgamar, also a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority community from whom the LTTE draws its support, was a harsh and strong critic of the rebels. That he was a marked man was well-known in the political and security circles of that South Asian island-nation

And Kadirgamar’s murder, which has all the paw marks of a Tamil Tiger hit, only lays bare a glaring weakness of the Norwegian peace deal – that it may have stopped the war which killed over 64,000 people but failed to push the LTTE down the road of democracy and human rights.

It is no secret that the majority of those victimised by the LTTE, including the child conscripts and abducted adults, are Tamil civilians from Sri Lanka’s north and east.

This failure by the Norwegians was brought home to Erik Solheim, Oslo’s peace envoy, when he visited New Delhi in May. Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told Solheim that what the peace process had spawned in the rebel-held areas was an ”LTTE dictatorship.”

Sri Lanka’s political landscape since the February 2002 ceasefire is a study in contrast, with the space for democracy and human rights more palpable in the areas dominated by the country’s Sinhalese majority and woefully absent in the LTTE held areas.

India’s Saran, in fact, was not the only one to remind the Norwegians that the Tamil Tigers had under the guise of peace killed Tamil political rivals and prevented other Tamil political parties from freely advocating their cause.

Kadirgamar, himself, had himself pushed for more democracy in Tamil held areas the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum (SLDF) pointed out in a commentary published Monday on its website. He had apparently told the Norwegians that ”the movement for democracy in certain districts of the North and East (of Sri Lanka) must begin to roll,” the website said.

”If the Government of Norway is unable to plead this cause (democracy) with the conviction and determination that it deserves it should stand aside and yield to other parties who could carry the flag of democracy into areas where darkness presently prevails,” Kadirgamar had said, states SLDF.

But that failed to address the bigger picture that has dogged the Sri Lankan peace process over the past three-and-a-half-years – the LTTE’s lack of respect for a democratic and human rights culture. It has resulted in a climate of fear and misery for Tamil civilians, including children, the very people the Tamil Tigers claim to be fighting for.

No wonder groups like the SLDF have a reason to worry at such continuing appeasement of the Norwegian peace brokers towards the armed rebels at the expense of unarmed Tamil civilians. ”The ceasefire as it stands is steadily becoming meaningless due to systematic violations by the LTTE and the future of the Tamil people is at stake,” it stated.