RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Travel Tougher for Tamils After Suicide Attacks

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jan 31 2000 (IPS) - Travel restrictions on Sri Lanka’s Tamil community, the biggest minority group who already also face arrests, house searches, and other forms of discrimination, are being tightened in the north and east of the island from Feb. 15.

“Restrictions, restrictions and more restrictions. When would we be free to travel in this country like any other community?” asks Maheswary Velautham, secretary of the Colombo-based Forum for Human Rights. “Why are we given second-class treatment?”

She was reacting to plans by the government to enforce a special travel permit in the eastern district of Batticaloa and Ampara, in an attempt to stop Tamil rebels who are allegedly infiltrating the capital city, Colombo, on bombing missions.

The separatist rebels who claim they represent the island’s Tamils, have launched a series of attacks in the capital in recent weeks, the most daring being the failed assassination attempt on the well guarded President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Kumaratunga escaped with injuries to her right eye and face as a suspected female rebel set off explosives strapped to her waist just when the president was leaving an election political rally in Colombo, Dec. 18, three days before the presidential poll.

At least 26 people, including the suicide bomber were killed. Eleven others were killed in another suicide attack on an opposition political meeting the same day.

The latest incident was on January 27, when a parcel bomb believed to have been planted by Tamil rebels blew up in a crowded post office in Vavuniya, bordering the war zone, killing eight people.

Security forces claim the suicide bombers are entering the capital from Batticaloa, and announced last week that residents of that district and adjoining Ampara district have to obtain special travel passes to leave the region from mid-February.

Batticaloa’s senior police superintendent Upali Hewage was quoted in the ‘Island’ newspaper explaining that residents travelling out of the region would have to submit a travel application with a recent photograph to a local government official that will be forwarded to the office for clearance.

He said all applications must be made a fortnight before the scheduled date of travel. No one would be permitted to leave the region without prior approval from the government, he said.

Joseph Pararajasingham, a Tamil parliamentarian from Batticaloa, confirmed the new rules and said it would further inconvenience Tamils, particularly those living in areas controlled by the rebels.

“We are worried about these regulations and I have appealed to both President Kumaratunga and Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Prof Gamini Lakshman Peiris to abandon them,” he said.

In a letter to the president, the Batticaloa MP said that what the government was doing, was a de facto separation of the north and the east from the rest of the country.

“It will also lead to a lot of abuse of power because the authority to issue passes will lie in the hands of a few select officials. It is sadly reminiscent of the notorious pass system that prevailed in South Africa,” the letter noted.

Pararajasingham said the travel restrictions would increase the current hardships faced by Tamils. “Though these rules would affect all three communities living in the two districts, the Tamils, as usual, would be worst off.”

Batticaloa’s population comprises 70 percent Tamils with the ercent Muslims, 38 percent Sinhalese and 20 percent Tamils. These were the only two regions in the island’s north and east — also the eastern port city of Trincomalee — that had not put restrictions on the movement of Tamils.

“For many reasons, particularly because it would affect all three communities, Batticaloa and Ampara had been left out of the special travel permit scheme for Tamils,” says rights activist Velautham.

Since 1983, the year in which Sri Lanka saw the worst ever anti-Tamil riots and when the separatist movement flared, the minorityh Tamil community has suffered all sorts of indignities.

“Harassment and the lack of freedom to travel is nothing compared to the other problems that Tamils have to face,” said a lawyer who works with a rights group providing legal aid to Tamils. “Last year we filed 73 cases of illegal detention, arrest and torture of Tamils. We have filed hundreds of similar

cases over the years.”

“It’s all part of the system now and we take it in our stride. The fact that Tamils face discrimination and harassment is only the tip of the iceberg in the overall picture of the plight of Tamils,” he said.

A human rights activist, working at the same office, noted that dozens of Tamils were taken away by the police and government troops who clamped curfew on the city to conduct search operations for rebels, Jan. 7.

“Some of my Tamil friends, who are top accountants and lawyers, were taken away by police even before they could show their police registration certificate. The police entered their boarding house, asked whether there were any Tamils inside and then took them away,” she said, adding that the Sinhalese and Muslims in that house were neither questioned nor checked.

Tamils who are not permanent residents of Colombo have to carry a temporary police registration certificate, filled on arrival in the city. That pass has to be renewed if the holder wants to stay longer than first anticipated.

Last year, a Tamil man filed a petition in the Supreme Court saying the police had violated his fundamental rights when they detained him for not carrying this pass. The court held that it was not compulsory for Tamils to always have the pass with them.

Fr. Bernard, president of the Human Rights consortium of the Catholic Church in the northern city of Jaffna, feels the result of the harassment is that Tamils are being alienated.

“This kind of discrimination leaves a lasting psychological impact and the feeling that the country has been divided into two nations,” he said, adding that security authorities were however trying to minimise the problems faced by the Tamils in Jaffna.

In Jaffna, once the stronghold of the rebels until they were driven out by the army in 1995, all residents over 10 years old must posses a special pass. Any person found without this pass is immediately detained and considered a rebel suspect.

“In addition to this, we have our national identity card which is issued to all citizens of Sri Lanka over 18 years of age. Both these cards are compulsory here,” P. Kanymylnathan, editor of the Tamil-language ‘Udayan’, Jaffna’s only newspaper said over the phone.

Velautham, who is also a lawyer, said she understands that it is difficult for the security forces to differentiate between an innocent Tamil civilian and Tamil rebel.

“That is a problem, so whenever search operations are conducted, scores of Tamils are rounded up and detained for many days until their bona fides are checked,” she said. “”But why should this happen,” she asks. “Freedom of movement is enshrined in our Constitution and every citizen has a right to travel and live in any part of the country.”

Yet no one has yet challenged the new government order on travel restrictions in a court of law. “We all know what would happen to a civilian who does,” says a rights activist. There would be no escaping from the harassment that would follow.

Last week Tamil-language newspapers in the capital reported a case of a Tamil woman and her daughter who had been allegedly raped in a city police station, just after the Jan. 7 search operation. Rights groups can do nothing: the rape victims have not reported the matter.