By IPS Correspondents
COLOMBO, Aug 29 2007 (IPS)

When Sri Lankan health minister Nimal Siripala de Silva shocked delegates to the 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) by telling them that "when the western world was living in jungles, we were leading a civilised life,’’ it marked the chauvinism of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s nationalist government.

Participants with a charitable disposition felt that de Silva’s outburst, made at the Colombo ICAAP&#39s closing ceremony on Aug 23, may have been provoked by rapporteur general Jeff O&#39 Malley’s remarks on the absence of condoms at the conference venue. "Where were the condoms? Don&#39t congress participants have sex?" Malley asked. His comments were apparently taken amiss by the minister.

However, de Silva’s fulminations were only the latest from a ranking member of Rajapakse’s government that regularly lashes out at foreigners and at supposed foreign interference in the domestic affairs of a country racked by a long-festering, violent ethnic conflict between majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority.

A fortnight ago fellow minister Jeyaraj Fernandupulle called United Nations under-secretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, John Holmes, a ‘’terrorist’’ after the U.N. official was quoted describing Sri Lanka as ‘’one of the most dangerous places for aid workers in the world.’’

Holmes later regretted that his statement had undermined the goodwill created by his Aug. 6-9 visit to Sri Lanka. But Fernandupulle is yet to retract his characterisation of the U.N. envoy and in fact, in an interview with a vernacular newspaper, declared that he stood by what he said.

Holmes was also attacked by Prime Minister Rathnasiri Wickremanayake, during an address to Parliament, as among ‘’those who seek to discredit the government and tarnish its international image.’’ Wickremanayake said Holmes’ statements called into question the U.N.&#39s ability to be impartial, but added that his government would continue working with the U.N. agencies and international aid groups that are involved in providing relief to the victims of the ethnic conflict.

A February 2002 truce brokered by Norway between the government and the LTTE is now limited to paper and violence has intensified since December 2006. The terms of the truce, which halted two decades of bloodshed that caused over 65,000 deaths, were broken as the Sri Lankan army seized control of the eastern region with support from a breakaway faction of the LTTE led by renegade leader N. Muralitharan or ‘Col. Karuna’.

Since November 2005, when Rajapakse was elected President supported by pro-Sinhala political groups, the ceasefire and the Norwegians themselves have come under attack as being overly sympathetic to the Tamil autonomy demand.

Holmes’ call to disarm the Karuna faction may also have angered the government. "It is important that the disarmament of the Karuna faction should happen as soon as possible," Holmes told reporters in Colombo at the end of his visit.

"An environment of impunity and suffocation, where dissent is not encouraged, has been building up here for awhile. This xenophobic trend is such that some high ups in government don’t want any kind of involvement that they feel goes contrary to what they think – not even a statement, we have come to such a state," Sunanda Deshapriya of the Centre for Policy Alternatives and an activist for the Free Media Movement explained to IPS.

Two weeks after the Holmes visit a local deminer attached to the Danish Demining Group (DMG) was shot and killed in northern Jaffna and another seriously injured. Overall at least ten deminers have either been killed or are reported missing in Jaffna since mid-2006.

Officials at DMG said that they did not feel that deminers were being targeted as such, but that there seemed to be a trend of suspicion running against all young men. "Young men are targets in Jaffna, and that is what we are seeing now," Steen Wetlesen, DMG programme manager in Sri Lanka, told IPS.

The government is now under increasing international pressure to investigate excesses by its army over the last 20 months. Concern over serious human rights abuses by the army and the paramilitary that supports it has resulted in Britain suspending in May aid worth several million dollars.

Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, said in a recent report that during the course of an army offensive into Tamil-dominated areas in the north and east over the past 20 months hundreds of people have been abducted or gone missing.

Over 30 local workers of foreign humanitarian agencies have been killed in the country since mid-2006 according to the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). The worst of these incidents was the execution-style murders of 17 local staffers with the French group Action Against Hunger (ACF) in eastern Muttur in August 2006. No one has been arrested or charged with the crime despite several high-level investigations.

The Law and Society Trust (LST), a Colombo-based civic organisation, said last week that 943 persons have either been killed or abducted in the country in the first six months of 2007. LST’s Rukshan Fernando told IPS that it had submitted a detailed document of its findings to the Special Presidential Commission appointed by Rajapakse to investigate rights violations. "This is of vital importance in the absence of an acknowledgement of these killings and disappearances by the government and other statutory bodies with a mandate for human rights protection in the country.’’

Fernando said that the commission itself was not a permanent solution to rights violations and that LST supported the setting up of an international human rights monitoring mechanism with U.N. assistance in the country. But the government has flatly rejected any international involvement in rights monitoring. "It is not something to be brought from outside," minister of disaster management and human rights Mahinda Samarasinhge said recently.

Samarsinghe also said what the government expected of U.N. and other agencies was to assist in enhancing the capacity of local bodies.

But rights groups like LST have repeatedly said such assistance alone would be inadequate in the face of rising violations. ‘’In the absence of adequate and visible steps taken so far by domestic bodies to address the violations, there are clear indications that this trend will continue in the coming months," LST said in a statement.

Northern Jaffna peninsula has been badly affected, according to LST findings, with 23 percent of murders and 49 percent of all disappearances occurring in the district that is dominated by ethnic Tamils and serves as headquarters for the separatist movement headed by the LTTE.

Jaffna has remained cut off from the rest of island with the closure of the A9 highway in August 2006 after fighting erupted between government forces and the LTTE. The closure has resulted in prices rocketing sky high and reports speak of severe shortages of essentials.

"The closing of the A9 road has hampered the delivery of goods to Jaffna, driving up prices of essential goods. The government agent has attempted to alleviate the high prices through various initiatives. The high prices on building supplies and fishing restrictions have caused increased unemployment amongst labourers and fishermen," the Scandinavian-staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission that continues to monitor the truce said last week.

Highly reputed institutions that have called for international intervention include the Brussels-based International Crisis Group whose president, Gareth Evans, while delivering a lecture in Colombo on Jul. 29 said that the state had a primary responsibility to protect its citizens. ‘’Where the state fails in that responsibility, through either incapacity or ill-will, a secondary responsibility to protect falls on the wider international community,’’ Evans said.

International glare on the government is unrelenting. Rajapakse’s scheduled to address to the U.N. in September will be closely watched. And U.N. human rights commissioner Louise Arbour is due to visit the island on Oct. 10.

Arbour has in the past called for a U.N. human rights monitoring mission to be sent to the country and extended U.N. assistance to monitor alleged abuse during her last meeting with Rajapakse in Geneva in May.

But the government is unlikely to waver from its current stance. Rights minister Samarasinghe said the ‘final answer’ to the possibility of international rights monitors has already been given. "We will only reiterate that when she (Arbour) comes," he said.

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