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POLITICS: Sri Lanka in Tug-of-War with UN, Relief Agencies

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2007 (IPS) - Sri Lanka, which has consistently received high marks from the United Nations for its superlative social indicators on literacy, child mortality and health care, has received failing grades for its growing human rights abuses and failure to protect civilians in the country&#39s battle zones.

After a rash of killings of aid workers, including 17 from the Paris-based humanitarian organisation Action Contre Le Faim (ACF) and two Red Cross workers, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has demanded "a thorough investigation" into the killings.

But more than 10 months after the murders, the Sri Lankan government has failed to track down the killers, believed to be either members of the armed forces or paramilitary groups.

"The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the security of civilians and aid workers in Sri Lanka and reminds all parties in the country that aid workers have a right to protection at all times," a U.N. spokesman said.

Asked for his response, Sri Lanka&#39s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam told IPS: "The government of Sri Lanka is equally concerned about the killing of aid workers."

In the case of the 17 ACF aid workers killed in the eastern province of Sri Lanka, he said the government has even sought the assistance of forensic experts from Australia.

"The investigations are ongoing, and they are being supervised by an International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP)," he added.

Kariyawasam said that apprehensions with regard to the process of investigation voiced by some observers are now being clarified.

With regard to the recent incident in Colombo, where two Red Cross workers were killed, he said, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has "immediately ordered an investigation even before the secretary-general called for an inquiry."

He said the Sri Lanka government shares the concern of the international community on the need to protect all aid workers, both foreign and local.

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes told the Security Council – which held an open debate Friday on the "Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict" – that civilians are too often deliberately targeted to create a climate of fear and to destabilise populations.

He said countries as far apart as Sri Lanka and Colombia were experiencing assassinations, disappearances and other violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law.

"In Sri Lanka, over 600,000 inhabitants of the Jaffna peninsula have faced shortages of basic necessities since August of last year when the government and the (rebel group) LTTE restricted access to the peninsula by road and by sea respectively," Holmes continued.

He also said that the 17 aid workers in Sri Lanka were killed "in a single horrifying act."

Implying that Sri Lanka was virtually culpable of war crimes, he added: "Killing humanitarian staff and arbitrarily denying access violates international humanitarian law."

In an interview with an international news agency last week, Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa, a brother of the country&#39s president, said that Sri Lanka was being "bullied" by Western nations over human rights.

"We have to defend ourselves. I am talking about terrorists. Anything is fair," he added.

With the current breakdown in peace talks, the government has resumed its battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), designated by the United States and Britain as "a terrorist organisation". The LTTE is fighting for a separate nation state in the northern and eastern provinces of the country.

Both the president and the defence secretary have said that Sri Lanka will not be held hostage by international aid donors and that the country can do without international assistance. "We don&#39t depend on them," the defence secretary was quoted as saying.

He also accused U.N. agencies in Colombo of being sympathetic to the LTTE and said that they had been "infiltrated" by the rebel group.

The accusation brought a strong rejoinder from the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Frederick Lyons who expressed "deep concern" over the "groundless accusations" made against his staff.

Such charges, Lyons said, could seriously compromise their ability to carry out their work and endanger their safety and security in an environment in which a number of humanitarian workers have lost their lives over the past year.

His staff, he said, is "honour-bound to work with complete neutrality and to receive no instruction from any third party.

Asked for a response from the secretary-general, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told IPS: "The United Nations fully supports the work of the resident coordinator in Sri Lanka."

The United Nations has also accused the Sri Lankan government of starving its humanitarian agencies of much-needed fuel to operate vehicles and also generators which power freezers storing life-saving vaccines and other medicines.

The continued power shortages, caused by lack of fuel, will soon affect the preservation of vaccines and essential medicines, the United Nations warned in a letter to Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa.

In the letter, Lyons says that since March "none of the U.N. offices in the Vanni (in the eastern province) have received their fuel allocation, despite the written approval received from the Commissioner General for Essential Services (CGES) for the months of April, May and now June."

This "unfortunate situation" has compelled all U.N. agencies to "reduce their operations dramatically, and cut the usage of generators and vehicles."

The letter, dated Jun. 15, also points out that the office of the World Food Programme in Kilinochi "has now just enough fuel for four to five days under minimum operations procedures and has now started shutting down its generators at night."

The letter also warns that U.N. offices will soon be deprived of basic power supply and communications. "This in turn will seriously affect staff security."

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka&#39s faltering human rights record has also come under severe criticism from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, the U.N. Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders Hina Jilani, and several human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch.

Last week, the U.N. Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), consisting of 24 U.N. agencies and non-governmental organisations, condemned the forcible removal of ethnic Tamil residents from the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo.

"The Sri Lankan constitution guarantees the freedom of movement and the right of every citizen to choose his or her place of residence in Sri Lanka," the IASC said. "There is an urgent need to ensure respect for basic liberties and security as well as freedom of movement in the country."

The IASC welcomed an interim order by the country&#39s Supreme Court to stop the evictions described by some human rights organisations as tantamount to "ethnic cleansing" which is considered a war crime.

Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, however, has expressed regret over the incident and assured there would be no such evictions in the future. *****