SRI LANKA: Civilians Pin Hopes for Peace on Geneva Talks

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Feb 3 2006 (IPS) - Whether Sri Lanka’s fragile peace continues to hold hinges on the outcome of talks, to be held this month in Geneva, between representatives of the government and Tamil Tiger rebels – the first in almost three years.

Already, the Sri Lankan government has named health minister Nimal Siripala de Silva as the man who will lead a team of politicians, officials and army officers to Geneva for the face-to-face with leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the Tigers are officially known.

The talks, dates for which remain to be announced, are the result of sustained efforts by Norwegian special peace envoy Erik Solheim to preserve the truce which was coming unstuck following a sharp escalation of violence since Dec. 4, that resulted in the deaths of more than 120 people including 80 members of Sri Lankan security forces.

The military accused the Tigers of instigating the violence while the latter lay blame on government forces and charged them with murdering civilians. On Jan. 23, the day Solheim arrived on the island, three soldiers died in a claymore mine attack in the eastern town of Batticaloa.

But Solheim managed to pull this country of 20 million people back from the brink of certain war, to the enormous relief of civilians, both in the troubled north and east, dominated by ethnic Tamils, as well as in the rest of the island.

Tamil-speakers form 18 percent of the population and mostly follow the Hindu and Muslim religions while the Sinhala majority forms 74 percent and is almost completely Buddhist.

”We don’t care where they (talks) are held as long as they get it under way soon,” said a visibly relieved Vinodhakumar Ramalingam from northern Jaffna peninsula, a hotbed of Tiger support. Geneva was picked as neutral grounds for the talks after the European Union refused to host the Tigers.

”We never expected this àmany people have been leaving Jaffna and we were expecting a war,” Thurai Jayaseelan, who lives in Tiger- controlled Wanni, told IPS referring to Solheim’s breakthrough.

Violence and fear of violence have forced some 16,000 civilians in the north and east to leave government-held areas and seek shelter in areas controlled by the Tigers, and a massive humanitarian crisis was looming up. Even the capital Colombo was not immune to fears that hostilities were about to break out.

”There was fear of the war coming back everywhere,” Lakshmaindra Fernando the country manager for an international IT firm said. His company shifted from the heart of Colombo’s commercial district, last month, fearing an imminent attack. ”The whole country wants peace. War in the north does not mean that the rest of the country will not be affected. The people know how they have been affected during the long-running war and they wouldn’t want to undergo the same experience again.”

Ramalingam agreed. The last two months have been the bleakest since the Feb. 2002 truce for many ordinary Sri Lankans. ”We did not have a happy Christmas or New Year, it was all hopeless,” said K Nisanthala from Jaffna.

The anxiety was heightened by the perceived gulf between new Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse -whose allies included hard-line hawkish political parties – and the Tiger leadership.

”We never expected such a twist especially after the elections and the increasing violence afterwards,” Jayaseelan from Tiger-held Wanni told IPS. The relief in his voice was echoed by others all over the country.

”It is good; there was fear that we will once again have soldiers coming back in sealed coffins. Now it is up to them (the government and the Tigers) to push the peace process forward,” Sarath Ramanayake from the central hills said.

However, few expect any real breakthrough at Geneva, given the ferocity of events over the last two months and continuing attempts to create an atmosphere that is not conducive.

On Thursday, Sri Lankan parliament was adjourned until Feb 14 by speaker WJM Lokubandara following a bomb scare. But Tamil members have also been protesting inside parliament against continued abductions and killings of civilians.

The Tigers have said that the discussions in Geneva would focus on the implementation of the 2002 truce and that there was no other fixed agenda. That would mean insistence that the Sri Lankan army stop covert support for Karuna, who leads a splinter faction of the LTTE and operates out of government-held areas in the east of the island.

While the government denies support for Karuna, even the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which consists of members from the five Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, has said that this is hard to believe.

Before the present ceasefire – the longest in Sri Lanka’s history -brought a halt to fighting, the Tigers have been fighting successive Sri Lankan governments to achieve a separate state for the country’s Tamil minority in the north and east.

”They (Tigers) are not willing to give in so much, the southern government will have to make all the compromises. The agreement to have talks in Geneva would only bring in temporary peace,” Raidha Ralleen, a Muslim in Colombo said.

Rajapakse has problems negotiating with the Tigers stemming from the fact that his electoral allies, the People’s Liberation Front and the Jathika Hela Urumaya, a party represented in parliament by Buddhist monks, have been critical of the truce. They have also lambasted the Norwegians and, in the recent past, called for the replacement of Solheim, charging him with favouring the Tigers.

”The President would have to deal with these(Buddhist Sinhala) parties while talking to the Tigers. We really cannot hope for miracles in Geneva,” Fernando said.

”It is always better to have peace, and not to have body bags all over the island. We have had enough of war,” Ramanayake an ethnic Sinhalese told IPS.

Two hundred and fifty kilometers to the north, in Jaffna, the sentiment was the same. ”All we expect from these two parties is to come to a compromise and let us live peacefully without fear of any future war,” Nisanthala, a Tamil said.