By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Dec 25 2005 (IPS)

The three-year ceasefire between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam totters at the brink of collapse as violence escalates to unprecedented levels in the north of the country.

The three-year ceasefire between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam totters at the brink of collapse as violence escalates to unprecedented levels in the north of the country.

On Friday afternoon, suspected members of the Tamil Tigers, as the LTTE is better known, ambushed two vehicles carrying naval troops in Mannar, about 150 km north of the capital Colombo, killing at least 13 sailors. The casualty figure was likely to rise, said a navy spokesman. Thirty sailors were passing in the two vehicles when the Tigers exploded a claymore mine and then fired rocket-propelled grenades.

It was the biggest attack in this island nation since the February 2002 truce, said the Ministry of Defence. “It was well planned and elaborate,” added spokesperson Brig Prasad Samarasinghe.

The incident was the latest in a wave of escalating assaults on government forces centred in the northern Jaffna Peninsula following LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran’s annual Heroes’ Day speech Nov. 27. Faced with renewed threats, government forces have increased patrols and security in the area, alarmingly heightening the chances of confrontations with civilians who support the Tigers.

In the speech, Prabhakaran warned that if new Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse failed to propose an acceptable solution to the ethnic problem, the Tigers would resume the war.

Rajapakse campaigned for the Nov. 17 election on a platform of safe-guarding the unitary nature of the country while the Tigers have always said they would settle only for devolution of federal powers. Rajapakse’s campaign allies included several hard-line parties from the south that oppose federalism.

Around 70 percent of Sri Lanka’s 19.5 million people are Sinhalese while the Tamils make up about 18 percent of the population. Ironically, Rajapakse’s victory over Wickremasinghe was made easier by a Tiger initiated boycott of the polls in the Tamil-dominated north.

Three days before Friday’s attack, a group of donors monitoring the peace process called for immediate action to reverse the trend of violence. “The Co-chairs note that Sri Lanka is facing a crucial choice between increased violence and reinvigorating the peace process. The prospects for long-term peace lie in the hands of the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTEàa failure to respond to the desire would be a tragic step back-ward,” said Norway, the United States, European Union and Japan in a joint statement.

Hours before the Co-chairs’ statement, a top Tiger vaguely hinted at more future violence. “The ceasefire is angling on a thin thread,” said Ilamparathy, LTTE leader in Jaffna.

The Co-chairs met with the head of the LTTE political division, SP Tamilselvan, Saturday after talking with Rajapakse the day before. According to a Tiger news release, Tamilselvan told the representatives the recent attacks were sparked when soldiers “accelerat(ed) violence against civilians when they peacefully protest against military atrocities”.

The Tigers, he added, remain committed to the peace process. Also on Saturday, the government responded to the sailors’ killings: “It is clear that the claymore mine explosion had been planned in a way to cause maximum casualties among the Security Forces,” it said in a statement.

“The LTTE has from the very inception shown scant regard for the provisions of the Ceasefire Agreement and these continued attacks raise serious doubts on the LTTE’s commitment to a political settlement,” it added.

Recent attacks on security forces have been spearheaded by a shadowy organisation calling itself the Tamil Resurgence Force (TRF). After Friday’s violence, the TRF said its branch in Mannar carried out the assault in solidarity with the TRF in Jaffna and as retaliation against the alleged rape and murder of a Tamil woman by the navy in Jaffna.

The body of the woman was recovered near a naval detachment last week, but the organisation has denied the accusation that its personnel were involved.

The TRF also wrote to the ceasefire monitors, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), asking them to inform government forces to stop all cordon and search operations. The army had resumed the searches in Jaffna following the spate of attacks that began with double claymore mine attacks in the city a week after Prabahakaran’s speech. They killed 14 soldiers.

In the letter the TRF warned it had 250 trained armed men in Jaffna who would attack military detachments if the requests were not heeded.

The Tigers say they have nothing to do with the attacks inside government areas and suggest they were done by civilians reacting to transgressions by government forces.

But a warning they issued signals there is unlikely to be an immediate lessening of tensions. “Please be advised that our members would continue this practice of travelling in the seas with arms for self-defence,” Tiger political head S P Tamilselvan wrote to the SLMM 24 hours before Friday’s attack.

The letter came after three sailors were killed in a confrontation with Sea Tigers in waters off Mannar on Dec. 21.

The TRF has emerged as Tigers have been openly providing military training to civilians inside areas they hold. For their part, the security forces say that recent public protests are being organised by Tiger proxies to instigate a response from their soldiers. On Friday, two civilians were killed in an exchange of gunfire after a grenade was thrown at an army patrol in Chavakachcherie in Jaffna.

The threats of more bloodshed are being taken seriously. All government workers in Jaffna have been asked to stay away from work from Dec. 26 and even NGOs have been asked to scale down their work. Jaffna is bracing for massive protests soon after Christmas.

“If our request for normalcy is not heeded, we regretfully submit that we would be reluctantly compelled to take the law into our hands, a very unpleasant option at that,” warned the Jaffna University Students Union in a letter addressed to Rajapakse last week. The letter too detailed alleged atrocities committed by government forces.

A year ago, the situation was a completely different. When Sri Lanka was hit by the Asian tsunami, the Tigers and government forces worked together to help victims and hopes grew that the unprecedented tragedy would allow the two sides to resume peace talks stalled since April 2003.

But today when Sri Lankans remember their 35,000 fellow citizens killed in the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami, most of them will be apprehensive that still more carnage is a distinct possibility.

Excerpt:

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Dec 24 2005 (IPS)

The three-year ceasefire between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam totters at the brink of collapse as violence escalates to unprecedented levels in the north of the country.

On Friday afternoon, suspected members of the Tamil Tigers, as the LTTE is better known, ambushed two vehicles carrying naval troops in Mannar, about 150 km north of the capital Colombo, killing at least 13 sailors. The casualty figure was likely to rise, said a navy spokesman.

Thirty sailors were passing in the two vehicles when the Tigers exploded a claymore mine and then fired rocket-propelled grenades.

It was the biggest attack in this island nation since the February 2002 truce, said the Ministry of Defence. “It was well planned and elaborate,” added spokesperson Brig Prasad Samarasinghe.

The incident was the latest in a wave of escalating assaults on government forces centred in the northern Jaffna Peninsula following LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran’s annual Heroes’ Day speech Nov. 27. Faced with renewed threats, government forces have increased patrols and security in the area, alarmingly heightening the chances of confrontations with civilians who support the Tigers.

In the speech, Prabhakaran warned that if new Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse failed to propose an acceptable solution to the ethnic problem, the Tigers would resume the war.

The LTTE has been fighting successive Sri Lankan governments since the early 1980s demanding a separate Tamil state in the country’s north. The Norwegian brokered ceasefire, signed Feb. 22, 2002 by Prabhakaran and then-prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, brought to a halt decades of fighting that left 65,000 dead.

Rajapakse campaigned for the Nov. 17 election on a platform of safe-guarding the unitary nature of the country while the Tigers have always said they would settle only for devolution of federal powers. Rajapakse’s campaign allies included several hard-line parties from the south that oppose federalism.

Around 70 percent of Sri Lanka’s 19.5 million people are Sinhalese while the Tamils make up about 18 percent of the population. Ironically, Rajapakse’s victory over Wickremasinghe was made easier by a Tiger initiated boycott of the polls in the Tamil-dominated north.

Three days before Friday’s attack, a group of donors monitoring the peace process called for immediate action to reverse the trend of violence. “The Co-chairs note that Sri Lanka is facing a crucial choice between increased violence and reinvigorating the peace process. The prospects for long-term peace lie in the hands of the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTEàa failure to respond to the desire would be a tragic step back-ward,” said Norway, the United States, European Union and Japan in a joint statement.

Hours before the Co-chairs’ statement, a top Tiger vaguely hinted at more future violence. “The ceasefire is angling on a thin thread,” said Ilamparathy, LTTE leader in Jaffna.

The Co-chairs met with the head of the LTTE political division, SP Tamilselvan, Saturday after talking with Rajapakse the day before. According to a Tiger news release, Tamilselvan told the representatives the recent attacks were sparked when soldiers “accelerat(ed) violence against civilians when they peacefully protest against military atrocities”.

The Tigers, he added, remain committed to the peace process.

Also on Saturday, the government responded to the sailors’ killings: “It is clear that the claymore mine explosion had been planned in a way to cause maximum casualties among the Security Forces,” it said in a statement.

“The LTTE has from the very inception shown scant regard for the provisions of the Ceasefire Agreement and these continued attacks raise serious doubts on the LTTE’s commitment to a political settlement,” it added.

Recent attacks on security forces have been spearheaded by a shadowy organisation calling itself the Tamil Resurgence Force (TRF). After Friday’s violence, the TRF said its branch in Mannar carried out the assault in solidarity with the TRF in Jaffna and as retaliation against the alleged rape and murder of a Tamil woman by the navy in Jaffna.

The body of the woman was recovered near a naval detachment last week, but the organisation has denied the accusation that its personnel were involved.

The TRF also wrote to the ceasefire monitors, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), asking them to inform government forces to stop all cordon and search operations. The army had resumed the searches in Jaffna following the spate of attacks that began with double claymore mine attacks in the city a week after Prabahakaran’s speech. They killed 14 soldiers.

In the letter the TRF warned it had 250 trained armed men in Jaffna who would attack military detachments if the requests were not heeded.

The Tigers say they have nothing to do with the attacks inside government areas and suggest they were done by civilians reacting to transgressions by government forces.

But a warning they issued signals there is unlikely to be an immediate lessening of tensions. “Please be advised that our members would continue this practice of travelling in the seas with arms for self-defence,” Tiger political head S P Tamilselvan wrote to the SLMM 24 hours before Friday’s attack.

The letter came after three sailors were killed in a confrontation with Sea Tigers in waters off Mannar on Dec. 21.

The TRF has emerged as Tigers have been openly providing military training to civilians inside areas they hold. For their part, the security forces say that recent public protests are being organised by Tiger proxies to instigate a response from their soldiers. On Friday, two civilians were killed in an exchange of gunfire after a grenade was thrown at an army patrol in Chavakachcherie in Jaffna.

The threats of more bloodshed are being taken seriously. All government workers in Jaffna have been asked to stay away from work from Dec. 26 and even NGOs have been asked to scale down their work. Jaffna is bracing for massive protests soon after Christmas.

“If our request for normalcy is not heeded, we regretfully submit that we would be reluctantly compelled to take the law into our hands, a very unpleasant option at that,” warned the Jaffna University Students Union in a letter addressed to Rajapakse last week. The letter too detailed alleged atrocities committed by government forces.

A year ago, the situation was a completely different. When Sri Lanka was hit by the Asian tsunami, the Tigers and government forces worked together to help victims and hopes grew that the unprecedented tragedy would allow the two sides to resume peace talks stalled since April 2003.

But today when Sri Lankans remember their 35,000 fellow citizens killed in the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami, most of them will be apprehensive that still more carnage is a distinct possibility.

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