Rajapaksa entrapped - Military Prepares To Liquidate LTTE

Sam Rajappa
The Statesman, 1 December

The Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, finds himself entrapped. As he completed two years in office on 19 November, the first and foremost of his achievements was the heightened alienation of Tamil citizens from the Sri Lankan state. His hawkish brothers and the increasingly confident defence forces on one side and the Sinhala chauvinist, Janatha Vimukthi Perumana, with whose support he won the presidential race and the JHU of the Buddhist monks on the other are egging him on to go for the decapitation of the LTTE supreme, Velupillai Pirapaharan.

The assassination of Suppiah Paramu Tamilchelvan, leader of the political wing of the LTTE and its chief peace negotiator, has given a new-found confidence to the Sri Lankan armed forces that it could execute Pirapaharan also in a similar air raid using general purpose bomb called Mark 84 supplied by the USA. The pressure bomb, filled with high explosives capable of penetrating 11 ft. of concrete, caused lethal fragmentation to a radius of 400 metres and killed Tamilchelvan who was sleeping in the lower compartment of a two-layered well camouflaged and fortified concrete bunker at Thiruvaiyaaru, about three km from Kilinochchi town. Seven of his companions sleeping in the upper layer of the bunker were also killed. Kilinochchi is where the LTTE has its political headquarters, Peace Secretariat and Strategic Communications unit.

The message

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, brother of the President who is the Defence Secretary, gloating over the decapitation of Tamilchelven facilitated by precise intelligence and aerial surveillance, said: “This is to convey a message that we know where the LTTE leaders are. We know the location of all the leaders. When the time comes, we’ll take them one by one.”

Expressing grief over the death of Tamilchelvean who had began his career as one of the bodyguards of Pirapaharan, the LTTE supremo said in a statement: “Sinhala nation did not open its heart and send a peace message. On the contrary, it is sending war-vultures that are dropping giant bombs. It has cruelly killed our peace dove.” Third in the LTTE hierarchy after Pirapaharan and Poddu Amman, its intelligence wing chief, Tamilchelvan, who joined the organisation in Chennai in 1984 at the age of 17 in the wake of the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka sponsored by the United National Party government of JR Jayawardene, passed out of the fourth batch of young recruits trained by India. He was the only LTTE leader not involved in any major act of terrorism either on Indian territory or in Sri Lanka though he did take part in the fight against the IPKF.

India’s silence at his killing and criticism of the Tamil Nadu chief minister and leader of the DMK, M Karunanidhi, for composing an elegy to mourn his loss, have created an impression in Colombo that New Delhi is not averse to the elimination of the LTTE.

In his vision for Sri Lanka outlined in Mahinda Chintana, Rajapaksa envisions changing the country into a modern state while “fostering the national heritage and culture with peaceful cooperation among the Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and others, instilling economic growth and prosperity and maintaining friendly relationship with all nations.” His actions during the two years of his presidency reveal that he has not been able to even make a beginning in fulfilling his vision. The initiative during the last two years have passed on to the powerful Defence Secretary and the armed forces. But he has succeeded in making himself the undisputed leader and saviour of the Sinhala community. While the alienation of Tamils from the ruling Sinhalas goes back to the 1950s, the alienation of the Muslim community from the ruling class can be attributed as one of Rajapaksa’s achievements. By pulling the wool over the eyes of President Bush and singing paeans of praise of the “global war on terrorism”, he managed to suppress the ethnic struggle of the Tamils for their legitimate place in Sri Lanka’s political firmament. But for the liberal supply of arms and ammunition by the USA, Sri Lanka would not be able to escalate its war effort.

The armed forces have found a champion in Rajapaksa who will hear no evil, see no evil or speak ill of them no matter what atrocities they commit.

When the armed forces on 23 October stripped the bodies of LTTE commandos, including women, killed in the devastating attack on the Anuradhapura air base, and paraded their mutilated naked corpses placed on trailers normally used to collect garbage for the Sinhala residents to see, in clear violation of Geneva convention, the first reaction of the government was to deny it. Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara’s response, as quoted by Reuter, was: “We are professional soldiers. We do not want to do things like that.” Then who did it?
Rajapaksa’s decision to allow the armed forces to carry out systematic military operations without revoking the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement entered into with the LTTE by the previous UNP government of Ranil Wickremasinghe has made the roles of Norway who facilitated the peace process and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission irrelevant. Though Rajapaksa claims to be a friend of Tamils and gives instances of his close family members marrying into Tamil families in Sri Lanka, in the short span of two years of his stewardship, the Sinhala-Tamil relationship has touched the nadir.

Right from the time he issued his election manifesto, it was clear that his overwhelming ambition was to consolidate the Sinhala vote bank and emerge as the sole leader and protector of the major community. In this, he has succeeded admirably. A Sinhala chauvinist party like the JVP which won 37 seats in the 2004 parliamentary election, and the JHU of the Buddhist monks have been rendered almost irrelevant. Even the main opposition party, the UNP, seems to have lost its appeal as the party’s MPs have been defecting to Rajapaksa’s SLFP in droves.

Worst record

In the process of consolidating his hold over the majority community, Rajapaksa has given a free rein to the armed forces which has brutalised civil society. Sri Lanka today holds the worst record in human rights violation which the armed forces consider a necessary evil in the so-called global war on terrorism. Newspapers and media persons not toeing the government line are dealt with summarily by unidentified goons travelling in vans with no number plates. Air Marshal Roshan Goonatilleka, Commander of the SLAF, had said in an interview that it was not difficult to get at Pirapaharan as he was confined to a very limited area of land in Wanni. Asserting the days of the LTTE leader was numbered, he said: “I do not think it is difficult for us to get at him. Somehow we will find him soon.” Commending the fullest support of the President to the military operations, he said; “It is very easy to work with him because we are free to make our own decisions without any problem.”

Even if the armed forces succeed in wiping out the LTTE, the ethnic problem will remain unresolved unless a political formula could be found to satisfy the aspirations of the Tamil people of the Northern and the Eastern Provinces. The LTTE thrives on Tamil discontent. A genuine power-sharing based on a negotiated settlement with the Tamils is the only way out for Sri Lanka. Rajapaksa seems to have missed the boat. If he reactivates the All Party Representative Committee from its deep slumber to produce a peace document satisfying the Tamils, the armed forces will not let him proceed with it. Sri Lanka is in real danger of a military takeover.

(The author, a veteran journalist who retired from The Statesman, is based in Chennai.)