Releasing Ranjini: Why ASIO is wrong

Getup’s latest cause is the detention without trial of a Sri Lankan woman and her two small children.  The webpage “No Detention without appeal” says Ranjini and her six and eight year old sons have been detained indefinitely without charges for four days.  

Ranjini survived the Sri Lankan war but her first husband did not and was killed in 2006. She arrived on a boat with her children on Christmas Island in 2010. From there they were moved to Leonora in WA, then Inverbrackie, SA in 2011, and finally to community detention in Brisbane. 

Ranjini met Melbourne man Ganesh while he was in Brisbane on holiday late last year, and she moved to Melbourne with the children in order to wed him this year. The Department of Immigration verified her and the boys as refugees in September last year pending Australian Security Intelligence Organisation security clearance. If they could convince ASIO they could then obtain visas to enable them to stay in Australia.

After months of agonising wait, they fell at the last hurdle. On Thursday, Ranjini was told to pick up her kids from school in Melbourne and meet Department of officials. They had bad news for her. ASIO had done a security assessment on her and came up with a negative assessment. They put Ranjini and the children on a plane to Sydney and sent to Villawood detention centre. They are there indefinitely and have no right of appeal.

Media reports have not reported the surname of Ganesh or Ranjini. The Age said they got married last month with the approval of the Department of Immigration. The boys were enrolled at Mill Park Primary School. Ganesh told The Age he was allowed only five minutes to chat with them before they were taken away. "We were happy and the kids were even happier ... we wanted to start new life with hope. But now we are shocked...We are separated. There has been too much pain before. Are we going to be put through the same pain in Australia as well?"

On Friday Ganesh flew to Sydney and sent a text back to a family friend in Melbourne that the trio were okay but he didn’t understand why they were detained.  Now in Villawood, ABC Lateline says Ranjini and her family face a bleak future. “They and 46 other refugees with negative ASIO assessments are locked up indefinitely with no right of appeal,” Lateline said on Friday. “This morning one of the refugees attempted suicide at a detention facility in Melbourne.”

The program quoted the Refugee Action Coalition who spoke of fellow detainee Kumar who has been in detention for 35 months and was turned down by ASIO a year ago. With no recourse to legal means to end his incarceration and return to Sri Lanka impossible, the 36-year-old  Kumar attempted by hanging at the Melbourne immigration transit accommodation centre. He was dropped down by fellow refugees who found him at around 1.30am this morning.  He was the second inmate in a month to attempt suicide at the same facility. 

Currently there is no right of review or appeal against ASIO findings. The indefinite detention of ASIO negative refugees is the subject of a complaint by Australian refugees to the Geneva UN High Commission for Human Rights. The Australian government has been given until July to respond to a complaint. A Parliamentary Committee has also recommended that there should be an appeal process in a damning report on mandatory detention and Getup called it a basic principle of justice.  

A UNHCR policy document on Australia’s mandatory detention policy and reluctance to release asylum seekers to alternative measures has nothing to do with national security concerns either. On 22 August 2002, the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade asked the ASIO Director-General about the security screening of asylum seekers and learned that out of 5,986 screenings conducted since 2000, not one posed a national security risk. The same Committee also heard no evidence of a statistical linkage between asylum seekers and criminality (other than immigration violations).

But Ranjini, Kumar and the others have few political supporters in an era where a crude call to “stop the boats” is an electable mantra. Governments from Howard onwards have tried to demonise asylum seekers and maintain a wall between refugees and public sympathy. Crucially Getup has photos of Ranjini and the boys with which to humanise this campaign.  The test for Attorney-General Nicola Roxon will be to humanely deal with these cases without creating an electoral wedge for Labor’s already badly beaten back.  I don’t always agree with Getup, but they are right on the money with this. “No matter what,” Getup said. “We mustn't allow anyone - let alone children - to be detained indefinitely without charge, trial or appeal.”

Sri Lanka starts to recover from its major flooding

As Australia commences the clean-up from its devastating floods, world attention is finally moving to other major floods zones across the world. One of the worst hit is in Sri Lanka where flood waters are finally starting to recede in the worst-hit areas in eastern and northern-central parts of the island. Water levels are falling but monsoon conditions will last until mid-February. Low lying areas in the Districts of Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa were flooded due to torrential monsoon rain from Saturday, 8 January with up to 300mm falling daily in some parts for five days of intense rain. More than a million people were temporarily displaced by the rains that killed at least 43 people. (photo:Sri Lankan disaster management centre)

Yesterday the country's disaster management centre reported over a million people were affected. As the flood waters recede people have started to return home and 51,423 displaced people remained in 137 camps. This is adding to an already difficult situation in the north where 20,000 internally displaced persons remain in Government-run camps since the end of the Tamil Tiger conflict in 2009.

UN Assistant Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Catherine Bragg will arrive in Sri Lanka tomorrow on a three day mission to supervise relief operations and to launch an international appeal for funding on 20 January. Bragg said her mission would highlight Sri Lanka’s humanitarian needs and she would advocate on behalf of the most vulnerable. The UN said it supported the Sri Lankan Government as it provided emergency supplies such as safe drinking water, food, sanitation and emergency shelter.

The floods have likely destroyed at least half of the season’s harvest in the eastern province, will also have a severe impact on agricultural livelihoods in a region still suffering the effects of the 2004 tsunami and recovering from the decades-long conflict. Over 200,000 acres of paddy cultivation have been completely destroyed and Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said today food prices would rise after the floods destroyed rice and vegetable crops. "We have a buffer stock of rice that is good for three months,” said Amaraweera. “That means there will be no immediate impact on the price of rice, but vegetables are already going up in price.”

Meanwhile many roads were impassable for the five days of heavy rain. According to a UK Foreign Office travel advisory some access roads to the east of the country are impassable. Areas in the central province such as Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Badulla have experienced earth slips due to the rain. Drinking water is now scarce in the region and there is a large danger of water-borne diseases.

Sri Lankan aid workers say there could be outbreaks of dengue fever and cholera and buried landmines left over from the county’s long civil war may have become dislodged by flood waters. UN humanitarian coordinator in Sri Lanka Neil Buhne told AlertNet basic aid was still required and health risks were high. "A lot of people affected were quite poor to start with and now they don't have much, so there is a serious need to support them when they move back," Buhne said. "We are particularly concerned about food as these communities are pretty vulnerable and their food stocks have been destroyed so their usual source of income won't be a source of income for a while."

In the eastern town of Kattankudy, hundreds of flood victims besieged a government office yesterday complaining about unfair distribution of emergency food aid. The angry crowd attacked three officials in protests. “Officers were called in and we managed to bring the situation under control," said a local police spokesman. "A decision was then taken to distribute aid through cooperative stores rather than government offices."

The capital Colombo has been unaffected but some media including the Christian Science Monitor are hopeful the floods will be an opportunity to aid the reconciliation process with the Tamil north. In his initial tour of flood-hit areas President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited Singhalese farmers but ignored Tamil areas. However with army troops rescuing civilians, distributing food and building temporary shelters, Rajapaksa said the government was sparing no expense. “The relief operations are going ahead and I have told the officials to ensure that there are no delays in distributing aid.”

Refugees as election pawns: Labor's immigration shame

In the minute or so it took to issue an infamous media release, the Rudd Labor Government blew away all the goodwill it generated with its previous attempts to undo the shabby Howard era treatment of refugees. On Friday, Labor went back to the future and tore shreds out of Australia’s already battered international reputation on the humane treatment of refugees.

The release began ominously with the words “effective immediately”. These two words had a double meaning. Firstly it showed Labor were not going to give anyone time to prepare, and secondly it was showing it was going to hide behind an instruction delivered in management-speak. The instruction itself was a knock-out blow “the Australian Government has today introduced a suspension of the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.”

What did the unfortunate people of Sri Lanka and Afghanistan do to deserve this sudden treatment? Apparently, according to the breathtaking insouciance of the Government, there are “evolving circumstances” in these countries that “will mean that it is likely that, in the future, more asylum claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will be refused.” Evolving circumstances is a fancy way of saying things have changed though even these weasel-words of this sentence did not dare claim circumstances have evolved necessarily for the better.

That arduous task was left to the sentences that followed. Looking through Asian politics with glasses so rose-tinted it matches their shameful embarrassment, the Labor Government has somehow concluded that wartorn Afghanistan is now safe for Hazaris and post-war Sri Lanka is safe for Tamils. Afghans will be surprised to hear about the “Taliban’s fall” and “durable security” (admittedly only “in parts of the country”). Meanwhile lucky Tamils have “hopes for further improvement and stabilisation in conditions.” Based on this flimsiest of evidence, the Australian Government has suspended the processing of new asylum claims by Sri Lankans for three months and Afghans for six months.

This is a breathtaking assumption for these “developments” that the facts on the ground simply do not support. In 2009, the worsening humanitarian crises caused by the American occupation and “surge” in Afghanistan and the Sri Lankan army’s brutal crushing of the Tamil independence movement has led to more desperate boatloads of Hazaris and Tamil refugees arriving. They will now be detained for three or six months as political pawns in an Australian game.

The blame for this shameful announcement can be shared equally between three pollyannas - Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor. Nevertheless the release has the fingerprints of their mutual boss all over it. Kevin Rudd is enough of a foreign policy wonk to know this message about “evolving developments” is complete rubbish. But this announcement has nothing to do with the political situation in Afghanistan or Sri Lanka – even a cursory glance at either country would not support this spurious nonsense spouted by his three stooges Evans, Smith and O’Connor.

No, the real reason is that opinion polls are showing 64 percent of Australians are afraid of the refugee boats and want them “stopped”. These numbers are dangerous but not yet near Tampa territory and the last thing Kevin Rudd wants in an election year is an issue Tony Abbott can wedge him on. So his solution is breathtakingly efficient and hypocritical – Park the issue for six months until the election is over.

According to Evans et al’s presser, the Australian Government believes “asylum seekers should only be granted the right to live in Australia if they are genuinely in need of protection.” This has nothing to do with evolving circumstances and everything to do with treating every case on its merits. But the hysterical media reaction to a few dozen boats arriving on our northern shores has dusted off the fears that always seem to lie just under the surface of Australia’s fragile settler mentality. According to the UNHCR’s 2009 report, Australia / New Zealand had 6,500 asylum claims last year out of a worldwide total of 377,200 – barely 1.6 percent of the world’s refugees.

But this data is conveniently glossed over in the vapid heat over the asylum “debate”. Nor is the truth of conditions on the ground in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan of any local interest. Instead the agenda is set by dangerous stupidity from politicians such as Barnaby Joyce and fuelled by talk show hosts and tabloid editorials who speak only in the xenophobic language that panders to the fears of their readers and listeners. As a result, what we share as a people matters less than what we might lose as individuals. This is a human tragedy and not just for the asylum seekers. Kevin Rudd is to blame, but we are all indicted.

Sri Lanka set to give Rajapakse another big victory

Sri Lanka is gearing up for tomorrow's election for a new 225-seat parliament just three months after its presidential election. Opinion polls suggest President Mahinda Rajapakse’s United People's Freedom Alliance will win the elections. They should secure a big majority and retain government following the president’s resounding victory in the 26 January presidential polls. “President Rajapakse’s victory over the LTTE has given him a huge popularity boost,” said Sri Lankan political analyst Rohan Edirsinghe. “The presidential election victory in turn has given his party a boost because most people in Sri Lanka recognise that the presidency is the most powerful office under the Sri Lankan constitution.”

The main opposition the United National Party has accused the ruling party of campaign abuses and said it did not expect a free and fair election. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said Rajapakse's administration had used state-owned cars and offices for campaigning and turned the government-run media into a party mouthpiece. "There was a suppression of private media [and] Journalists were attacked and abducted by those connected to the government," Wickremesinghe said. "Editors were arrested and intimidated."

The Government has also extended the country’s emergency laws by another month just two days before the election. The extension is the second since parliament was dissolved in February. The emergency has been in place since August 2005 when Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in was assassinated. Opposition parties have questioned the need to keep the laws active since the military defeat of the LTTE in May last year. The government claims it needs the law to flush out remaining Tigers cadres.

The government is also jittery about the threat posed by jailed former army chief General Sarath Fonseka. A court martial was set to resume its hearings on Tuesday against the 59-year-old Fonseka who lost out to Rajapakse in the January elections. However the BBC has reported it has been adjourned because of an outstanding case lodged with Sri Lanka's Court of Appeal challenging the legality of the courts martial. Another court martial charging the general of breaking army procurement rules is also due to resume on Tuesday but may also be adjourned on the same grounds. Fonseka has been detained since 8 February but is still running in tomorrow’s election as a candidate from the opposition Democratic National Alliance saying that all charges against him are politically motivated.

Fonseka has his supporters. The country’s influential Buddhist monks have said the government would regret its action after police arrested a dozen of their number who demanded the release of Fonseka. The National Bhikku Front accused Rajapakse of committing an "unforgivable sin" when police beat and arrested 12 monks staging a fast outside Colombo’s main railway station in support of Fonseka. NBF head Dambara Amila said "the government will have to pay for this." The monks said they planned a mass rally to keep up pressure on the government.

But Rajapakse has gained the unexpected support of a doctor who drew world attention to civilian deaths during the war last year and who now is contesting the election for a pro-government party. Veerakathipillai Shanmugarajah, 40, was arrested for falsely spreading rebel propaganda following the army's final victory over the Tamil Tigers. Now he's running for parliament for a Tamil party called Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students that is supporting Rajapakse. Shanmugarah now prefers to talk about the future rather than the war. "I believe President Rajapakse is ideally suited to lead and rebuild our country after the war,” he said. “I will work to support him."

There are also signs Rajapakse wants to create a new political dynasty in Sri Lanka as he grooms his eldest son Namal for high office. Namal is contesting the election in the family's home southern constituency of Hambantota. Namal, who turns 24 on Sunday, promotes himself as an ideological successor to his father, and is hoping his father’s personal popularity will rub off on him and ensure a resounding poll win for his ruling Freedom Alliance party. According to his website Namal said he wanted “to protect for future generations the freedom won” by his father. Rajapakse Senior addressing a rally for Namal on Monday and images of the pair have been prominent in local newspapers and television.

The 64-year-old Rajapakse now has a second six year term to bed in his agenda and groom his successor. He and his allies are hoping to get 150 seats in the parliament election which will give him a two-thirds majority and the ability to change the constitution, though he has not signaled his intentions to make any changes yet. In his favour there is a resurgent post-war economy, propelled by a stock market that has gained more than 150 percent in 12 months, as well as accelerated development and foreign investment in government securities. Sri Lankans are likely to reward Rajapakse with a big win though he may find the hard work has just started.

Rajapaksa consolidates power after Sri Lankan election win

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa chose the nation’s first independence day since the end of the civil war to call on the Tamils to work with the government but he ruled out self-determination. Rajapaksa spoke in Tamil in Kandy today where he appealed to the ethnic minority to “solve our problems ourselves through discussions”. He said independence day had assumed greater significance as it was the first since the defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels last year."The freedom from colonial rule that we gained 62 years ago is now more meaningful because we have been liberated from the forces of separatist terror that marred our freedom for nearly half that period," he said. The speech was his first public address to the nation since his re-election as president last month. (photo credit: AP/Eranga Jayawardena)

But the international Tamil community is no mood to quickly forgive the Singhalese leader after his brutal suppression of the 25-year uprising last year. The Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations said the Tamil Diaspora continues to mourn Independence Day as it marks the beginning of national oppression. It says when Britain granted independence to Sri Lanka in 1948, it failed to provide a federal arrangement for Tamils and Singhalese to share political power. They say this paved the way for the majority to systematically and consistently discriminate and brutally oppress the Tamils and led to the struggle that followed. “The Sri Lankan state’s genocidal attack on the Tamil people in 1983 lead to a 26 year long armed conflict that ended on 18 May 2009 with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” they said.

Similarly the British Tamils Forum dismissed Rajapaksa's claim to want to resolve ethnic tensions. Suren Surendiran, a senior member of the Forum told Al Jazeera Rajapaksa has been saying that forever. "Mr Rajapaksa has proven to be a very oppressive and discriminating president. The Tamils are not celebrating today as an independence day,” he said. “Rajapaksa was not voted in the north and east, where the Tamils are - it's their land."

And while Rajapaksa was probably appealing in vain to the Tamils in the centre of the country, back in the capital 5,000 supporters of his defeated opponent, former army chief General Sarath Fonseka, took to the streets to protest the results. Rajapaksa has sacked a dozen senior military officers in the aftermath of the election. He accused the officers of breaching military discipline and siding with Fonseka. He also said they were plotting to stage a coup and assassinate him. Some of the officers were arrested after troops surrounded a hotel in Colombo last week claiming there were army deserters inside. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said it was a pre-emptive action by Fonseka. “[They were] trying to occupy premises in the city,” he said. “These are not done in a democracy.”

At a news conference on Saturday Fonseka strongly denied the claims of a coup but said a number of army officers had given him inside information during his campaign. “The information given by these officers pertained to efforts by the campaign managers of Mr. Rajapaksa to defame and assassinate me,” he said. Most of the officers forced to resign were closely aligned to him. In the election on 26 January, Rajapaksa defeated him by a large margin 58 to 40 percent.

According to the BBC there were a number of factors that helped Rajapaksa win so easily. They cited his “fiery rhetoric and sure popular touch” as well as his emphasis on the primacy of his role in last year's war victory. There is also little doubt that ordinary people's sense that their streets are safer than they have been for the past 30 years played a major role. But the Tamil minority voted in the main for Fonseka and ethnic tensions remain as strong as ever despite the end of the war.

There are also fears of a crackdown on democracy now that Rajapaksa has the best part of another seven years to rule the country. Media and human rights groups accuse him of closing and blocking news outlets and harassing, assaulting and detaining journalists who it claims were biased towards Fonseka. Human Rights Watch say that since the election authorities have detained and questioned several journalists, blocked news websites, and expelled a foreign journalist. At least one journalist has been assaulted and several have been threatened. HRW Asia Director Brad Adams said he feared the crackdown was just the beginning of a campaign to get rid of critical voices before the parliamentary elections due on 22 April. "Sri Lanka's friends should tell the government that any crackdown on civil society will harm future relations,” he said.

Indian Ocean tsunami fifth anniversary

Incredibly, five years have now passed since the Indian Ocean tsunami struck on 26 December 2004. The scale of the devastation was immense and it occurred on a hemispherical scale. 230,000 lives were lost in 11 countries, five million people were affected and $5 billion of damage was caused by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. (photo by simminch)

The drama of the day started at 7am local time in Indonesia when an earthquake of between 9.1 and 9.3 magnitude struck the sea between the west coast of Sumatra and the small island of Simeule. The event lasted an unprecedented ten minutes tearing a massive rupture 1,600 kms long. Depending on who’s talking it was either the second or third highest magnitude earthquake of the 20th century. Either way it was immense. The shift of mass and the massive release of energy very slightly altered the Earth's rotation. It caused the sea bed to rise several metres displacing billions of tonnes of sea water in the process.

Because of the north-south 1,600km fissure caused by the quake, the greatest waves went east and west. It took about a half hour for the wall of water to reach nearest landfall on the Sumatran Coast. Northern Aceh was worst hit with waves rising 20 metres high and travelling almost a kilometer inland. Some coastal villages were devastated losing up to 70 percent of their inhabitants. In all 167,000 were killed in Indonesia and another 37,000 listed as missing. An estimated 655,000 people were made homeless.

After another hour, the waves hit southern Thailand and its west coast islands. The waves swept locals and tourists off the beaches. 8,000 people died in Phuket, Phi Phi and elsewhere and a similar number were injured. At the same time the westerly-heading waves slammed 10m high into the east coast of Sri Lanka killing another 35,000 people and it made over a million and a half people homeless. A further 68 people died in Malaysia. By another half hour, it was taking severe casualties in India’s Tamil Nadu and Burma. The waves demolished railways, bridges, telecommunications facilities and harbours. The salt water contaminated large tracts of rich arable land.

And still it kept coming. After another 90 minutes, the tsunami engulfed the low-lying Maldives killing 100 people and displacing another 20,000. And two and half hours later still – some six hours after the original quake – the mammoth waves made landfall in Somalia. 300 people died there with 50,000 made homeless and many more livelihoods lost as 2,500 boats were destroyed. Most of the deaths were caused by asphyxiation from the silt and sand within the “black water” of the tsunami.

A massive worldwide relief operation began almost immediately. The biggest ever peacetime launch of military relief effort arrived in Aceh led by emergency teams from Australia, India, Japan and the US. Apart from immediate medical needs, the biggest threat was secondary death from famine and disease. One of the most important early tasks in Sumatra was to provide purification plants and potable water. This was difficult in a region where the Indonesian army was hauling over a thousand bodies a day from the rivers. Forensic scientists were stretched to the limit to identify the deceased. The process was complicated by sweltering heat, inconsistencies in data collection procedures used in various countries, and jurisdictional challenges. Port, road and transport facilities also needed to be restored.

Undermining the recovery effort was the influx of aid workers and media personnel who consumed scarce resources, making the cost of living soar. There were at least 500 journalists and news crews in the affected zone. And the sensationalism of much of the reporting added to the trauma of the survivors. Aceh did eventually recover and the tsunami had one unintended benefit; it brought an end to the long running war between the Indonesian military and Acehnese separatists.

Dealing with earthquakes will always be one of the perils of living in geologically active Sumatra. As recently as October, over 500 people were killed and thousands trapped under rubble when a 7.6 magnitude quake struck West Sumatra. But it will never forget the events of 26 December, 2004. The psychological trauma of confronting 20 metre waves is too deep. As one 10 year old girl told AFP "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't forget. It's the same for my friends who survived.”

Rajapaksa wins the Sri Lankan war but can he win the peace?

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is currently basking in outright military victory over the Tamil Tigers, but has he got a political solution for the peace that follows? This is the question the island nation is slowly coming to terms with, after the Tigers’ military defeat was confirmed on Monday. Rajapaksa must now prosecute the peace with the same urgency with which he fought the war and convince the Tamils their interests are best served in a united Sri Lanka. It will be, in many ways, a more difficult task. While the majority in the south celebrates the end of a war that claimed 100,000 lives in 26 years, the northern minority remains sullen, resentful and suspicious. Rajapaksa himself got first hand evidence of the problem last week. When he rose to publicly acclaim victory in parliament he was faced with 20 empty seats of Tamil parties who boycotted the speech.

The president offered some reassurance to those that stayed to listen. Speaking in both Sinhalese and Tamil, Rajapaksa said the defeat of the Tigers should not be seen as a defeat for the Tamil community. He also claimed that the protection of all people, Tamils included, was his “duty and responsibility". He should now be given time to show whether he can live up to this duty and responsibility.

The west has a role to play here. The EU has demanded an inquiry into war crimes because of the high civilian casualties during the latter stages of the war. It also has the ability to withdraw lucrative preferential trade status worth $150m to Sri Lanka. But Rajapaksa will be hoping more favourable views will prevail within the commission as they did three years ago to help him win the war. In 2006 the EU froze all Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam assets in Europe. That decision was a body blow from which the rebels never properly recovered. Having once ruled almost a quarter of the country, they were gradually squeezed into a corner. Their defeat seemed inevitable from the start of this year when they were hemmed into the tiny north-east coastal jungles of Mullaitivu.

On Monday Sri Lanka's army chief, General Sarath Fonseca announced all combat operations had ended in the north of the island. Tigers’ leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and several of his senior commanders were killed in a rocket attack in the final fighting. Fearing a last stand in an area the size of New York’s Central Park, LTTE official Selvarasa Pathmanathan issued an email to Associated Press that finally told the world the Tigers had surrendered. "This battle has reached its bitter end,” wrote Pathmanathan. “It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice — to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns."

The silence of the guns caused an eruption of celebration in the south. UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon arrived in the capital Colombo on Friday in an attempt to influence Rajapaksa’s plans. Ban would have found the streets full of revellers delighted that the war was “over”. But he also knows there are 300,000 refugees in the north for whom the war is far from finished.
Ban is visiting the refugees who are spread out at dozens of massive government-run camps scattered around the north. Rajapaksa also needs to reach out quickly to these people to ensure his military victory will not be vain. He has drained the swamp of insurgents but they can easily find a new breeding ground. Rajapaksa has to quickly stop Tamils from re-grouping as a disaffected minority who could eventually begin the cycle of guerrilla war all over again.

There are some signs it is happening. Last week, Rajapaksa sent his wife Shiranthi to visit the main refugee camp at Manik Farm (which was already a city of 30,000 people by the end of April and at least twice as big today). The Sri Lankan broadcasting corporation reported Shiranthi handed over a consignment of emergency aid while “one thousand spectacles were also donated to persons with vision impairments”.

But they will need to give a lot more than spectacles for the Tamils to see the government is serious. Having Velupillai Prabhakaran out of the way helps. The 54 year old LTTE leader was an extremist who could not, or would not deal with the government. He was instrumental in introducing suicide bombing tactics such as the 1996 Central Bank in Colombo attack which killed 90 and injured more than a thousand. Prabhakaran’s death would also have been welcomed by India. He has been a wanted man there since the Tigers were implicated in the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

Yet India’s role in shaping Sri Lankan affairs remains crucial. Directly across the Palk Strait from the island live 60 million Tamils people in one of India’s most volatile and important electoral regions, Tamil Nadu. People from Tamil Nadu began migrating to Sri Lanka a thousand years ago but Indian Tamils still strongly identify with their fellow ethnics across the strait. Colombo has always baulked at Indian demands for a federal constitution in Sri Lanka but now might be the time to listen. In the Tamil Nadu capital of Chennai, Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy reminded Sri Lanka again this week that a federal constitution was the best way to ensure Tamil rights.

Swamy is probably right, but a constitutional change will take some time to implement. In the meantime Rajapaksa has a large laundry list of reconciliation tasks to be going on with: quickly resettling the homeless, dealing with prisoners of war, ending the repeated security checks Tamils face in their daily lives, allowing freedom of speech in the media, and holding elections in the north as soon as possible. And he must do all this while preventing further bloodshed, convincing his own army it is necessary to compromise in victory, and persuading the west to support the nation’s redevelopment instead of probing into war crimes. Tricky times lie ahead. Mahinda Rajapaksa still has a lot of work to do to ensure his reputation as the saviour of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan Tigers take to the jungle

Sri Lanka is reaching an endgame in the conventional stage of the war between the central government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). After a campaign of several months, the Tigers were pushed out of their last remaining urban stronghold when the garrison town of Mullaitivu fell on Sunday. The loss of Mullaitivu was significant as it means the LTTE lost their use of heavy artillery and rebel forces retreated to the jungle after the fall of the town. But Colombo has not been able to bomb the idea of Tamil independence into submission. The cornered Tigers remain dangerous opponents and are likely to resort back to guerrilla tactics and asymmetric warfare.

Nonetheless, January has been a good month from the government’s perspective. The capture of the town of Kilinochchi followed by the fall of the Elephant Pass earlier this month were two devastating blows to the LTTE. The pass is the strategic causeway linking the northern Jaffna peninsula with the mainland. The BBC called its capture “arguably one of the military's greatest successes over the past two decades of war.”

Army chief Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka touted the official line that a victory for the army would mean that “the end of terrorism is near”. He also expressed confidence that “95% of the work” had been done in clearing the Tigers from the north of the island. But not only does his statement conveniently overlook his own side’s terrorism, it also fails to consider that the final five percent may not be as easy to win. Al Jazeera's Colombo correspondent Tony Birtley believes the Tigers will be familiar with the terrain having started out in the jungle 25 years ago. “It's going to be a much harder job to clear them out than it was out of Mullaitivu town,” he said today.

And on Monday, a Tigers’ spokesman B Nadesan told the BBC the rebels would fight on. The spokesman also denied local rumours that their chief military officer Velupillai Prabhakaran had fled the country. Nadesan explained that despite recent reverses the war will not be ending any time soon. “We took up arms to safeguard our people,” he said. “We need a guarantee of living with freedom and dignity and sovereignty... until that, we will not come to that point."

That point seems as far away as ever. Meanwhile there seems no end to the casualties coming out of this long and brutal war. At least 67 civilians have been killed in the latest fighting this week. 30 people were killed on Thursday when soldiers shelled a village and makeshift hospital. The village lies in a supposed "safe zone" demarcated by the military to allow civilians behind Tiger lines to take shelter and avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Another 37 civilians died in the fighting that took place on the road to Mullaitivu. Aid agencies say that another quarter of a million people are sandwiched between the two opposing armies.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon issued a press release today which expressed his fears for civilians caught in the crossfire. He called on the government and the LTTE to give priority to the protection of civilians and humanitarian aid workers in the area. He said both sides must ensure all people are treated in accordance with international humanitarian law. He called for respect of “no fire zones,” “safe areas,” and civilian infrastructure and also expressed concern about attacks on members of the media and urges all parties to demonstrate respect for the freedom of the press.

There have been three attacks on the media this month. The most well known media victim of the violence is the Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge who was murdered by unknown assailants three weeks ago. Wickrematunge was a harsh critic of the government’s push to destroy the Tamil rebel movement and said it was merely an excuse to cement the power of hardline Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. It is extremely likely that Rajapaksa authorised Wickrematunge’s death to remove an inconvenient voice of moderation. In his final, remarkable editorial published after his death, Wickrematunge issued a plague on both sides’ houses. He offered a third way that, in the end, is the only hope of peace in Sri Lanka:

Our commitment is to see Sri Lanka as a transparent, secular, liberal democracy. Think about those words, for they each has profound meaning. Transparent because government must be openly accountable to the people and never abuse their trust. Secular because in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society such as ours, secularism offers the only common ground by which we might all be united.

Sri Lankan government implicated in death of prominent critic

The death toll in Northern Sri Lanka’ 25 year old war has risen to 70,000 after the military captured two Tamil Tiger bases in a heavy air and ground assault. The hardline Colombo government has vowed to crush the separatist movement over the next few months after overrunning their administrative capital Kilinochchi a week ago. The government is also clamping down on internal critics and a heavy shadow has been cast over the country after the assassination of one of Sri Lanka's leading journalists last week. Lasantha Wickrematunge had been one of the country’s most prominent editors and was a scathing critic of government and military figures. On Thursday, he was shot repeatedly with an automatic pistol equipped with a silencer while driving to work in the capital and died of his wounds in hospital.

Wickrematunge was a freelance reporter for Time and the editor of popular Colombo weekly The Sunday Leader. The Leader was well known for being critical of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government. Wickrematunge founded the paper in 1994 with his brother and it quickly became one of the strongest voices for democracy in Sri Lanka. It spoke out against corruption, terrorism, organised crime and human rights violations. But it got in most trouble for its attitude to the war in the north. In a recent editorial, the paper accused the president of stepping up the war in order to stay in power. In return Rajapaksa called Wickrematunge a “terrorist journalist”. But Wickrematunge was more of a victim of terrorism. He had been subject to numerous threats and on two occasions he was brutally assaulted, while on another his house was sprayed with machine-gun fire.

Yesterday Wickrematunge’s niece Natalie Samarasinghe wrote an article in The Guardian defending her uncle’s legacy. She denied he acted against Sri Lankan interests, called him “a true patriot” and said he loved his county and was loyal to his principles. However she decried the lack of world attention to the brutal war going on in the country’s north. “Until justice is done and someone starts giving a damn about Sri Lanka, she said, “a nasty stain remains on the conscience of the world.”

Wickrematunge knew he was in danger. In the preceding weeks, he had received several threatening telephone calls. At home on the morning of his death he got a call from the Sunday Leader office that some people had observed suspicious activity and that he was being followed. However he was determined to go to office to commence writing his column and to take steps against this new threat. He never made it to the office. An eyewitness to the shooting said he saw motorbikes speeding off and people moving towards a parked car. When he approached the car he saw that the window on one side was smashed and the main windscreen was damaged. He looked into the vehicle and found a person lying across the two front seats. "I saw that he was finding it difficult to breathe. Then I called on some of the people standing around to carry him to a van that was there. We carried him into the van. He was bleeding heavily from the head," he said.

Wickrematunge was taken to hospital but died after three hours of extensive surgery. This weekend, his Sunday Leader newspaper printed his powerful final editorial where he foretold his own death. The article was entitled “and then they came for me” reflecting the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power. In it Wickrematunge knew his life was in danger but said the “call of conscience” demanded he continue his work to the end. The article even predicted what would happen after his death. “In the wake of my death I know you [President Rajapaksa] will make all the usual sanctimonious noises and call upon the police to hold a swift and thorough inquiry,” he wrote. “But like all the inquiries you have ordered in the past, nothing will come of this one, too.”

Wickrematunge’s death is the latest in a long line of attacks against Sri Lankan media workers critical of the government. Amnesty International last year said that at least 10 journalists were killed in the last two years. It said that many more were abducted, detained or had disappeared. The state has also locked up some of its more vociferous critics. In December Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the Sri Lanka government drop charges and free a prominent Tamil journalist on trial for his writings. J.S. Tissainayagam, a columnist with the Sunday Times newspaper, was arrested in March by the Terrorist Investigation Division and eventually charged for printing and distributing a pro-Tamil magazine and “aiding and abetting terrorist organisations”. HRW says that since 2006 the Rajapaksa Government has intimidated and silenced the media and any other dissenting views of the government's military policies.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on foreign ambassadors to “weigh in forcefully and immediately” with President Rajapaksa to stop the attacks on the nation’s media. Wickrematunge’s death came two days after an early morning assault on Maharaja TV (MTV) studios outside Colombo. 15 masked men shot at and destroyed broadcast equipment, held staff at gunpoint, and attempted to burn down the station's facilities after state media had called the station "unpatriotic" for its coverage of the war.

Reporters Without Borders also condemned Wickrematunge’s murder. They issued a statement which said Sri Lanka has lost “one of its more talented, courageous and iconoclastic journalists.” They warned that military victories against the Tamil Tigers must not be seen as a green light for death squads to “sow terror among government critics”, including outspoken journalists. “The international community must do everything possible to halt such a political vendetta,” they said. The last word belongs to the end of Lasantha Wickrematunge's extraordinary final message to his Sri Lankan audience. “Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.”

post ceasefire Sri Lanka unravels

Tamil Tiger rebels killed eight civilians and two policemen yesterday in southern Sri Lanka as the violence escalates following the end of the six-year ceasefire. The war has taken a new and dangerous turn with Tamil forces determined to take the battle to the relatively peaceful and mostly Sinhalese south of the country. The ten were killed in an ambush in the village of Thanamalwila, 250km southeast of the capital, Colombo. According to military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, rebels opened fire on civilians in the village killing three and wounding three others. After they fled the area, investigating police and army troops found seven more bodies.

Their deaths bring the toll to over 300 in the last two weeks. Violence has spiralled out of control in the Indian Ocean island nation after the Colombo government unilaterally announced the end of the ceasefire with LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam) two weeks ago. The latest incident happened just two days after rebels massacred civilians on an attack on a bus in a town in the same area. Attackers detonated a 20 kg roadside bomb alongside a passenger bus as it travelled through the remote town of Buttala. According to witnesses, gunmen then shot panicked passengers as they tried to flee. "Everyone that got out through the doors, they shot and killed," said 25-year-old passenger Sampath. "I jumped from the window and just escaped." 27 people died and another 62 were injured in the attack.

Meanwhile government troops have been wreaking their own havoc against the rebels as the country teeters on the brink of all-out war. Colombo claims to have launched a major offensive and killed 250 rebel soldiers in the last two weeks. There are conflicting claims about whether government fighter jets have destroyed a rebel base near the northern town of Kilinochchi where Tamil Tiger leaders were meeting. According to the pilots the base was successfully destroyed but the pro-rebel TamilNet website said the planes "bombed a civilian area with a mechanic workshop".

The government has defended its 2 January policy decision to withdraw from the truce citing “thousands of violations” to the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement made by the rebels and therefore the truce itself had failed. Confusingly they also claimed the termination of the truce would not hamper the peace negotiation process. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama tried to explain to reporters why this was the case: "[the end of the truce] gives us broader space to pursue this goal in a manner that involves all sections of the Sri Lankan polity, which remained sidelined due to the CFA, an agreement solely between the government and the LTTE.”

Nevertheless the real reason is more likely to be that the government believes the Tamil Tigers can be fatally weakened by a concerted attack. President Mahinda Rajapakse appears convinced that victory is near and is determined to push his troops into the northern jungles to kill LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran. Rajapakse is a rabble-rousing ultra nationalist determined to find a military solution to the problem. He has promised to hand over Prabhakaran to India where he is wanted in connection with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Gandhi had unsuccessfully sent in Indian troops to keep the peace in Sri Lanka.

With both sides willing to fight to the death, there is no end in sight to the killing. The armed conflict in Sri Lanka has already claimed over 65,000 lives since 1983. Tamil Tigers have been fighting for an independent state for Sri Lanka's 3 million ethnic Hindu Tamil minority in the north and east after decades of being marginalized by Buddhist Sinhalese-dominated governments. In 2002 Norway brokered a ceasefire agreement which gave the north defacto independence and would have brought a federal-type arrangement in Sri Lanka. That prospect raised fear in the Sinhalese community that the country would be eventually split in two. Now Rajapakse is running the risk of the country been torn apart to avoid been split up.

The teardrop explodes

Thousands of people are fleeing the latest round of violence in north-eastern Sri Lanka. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has been assisting local agencies with an estimated 21,000 people who have been displaced from the town of Muttur, which lies across Koddiyar Bay from the historic port city of Trincomalee. They are fleeing the latest outbreak of fighting between government forces and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Sporadic fighting continues around Muttur where 4,000 people are said to be trapped.

Before the latest outbreak of fighting, more than 312,000 people had been displaced within Sri Lanka since 1983, some 67,000 of whom are being assisted by UNHCR in welfare centres throughout the country. The 2002 ceasefire unravelled in April this year and before this weekend's displacement, 50,000 people had fled their homes to find refuge elsewhere in the country while another 6,000 have fled to southern India's Tamil Nadu region.

The conflict has its roots in ethnic tension between the Buddhist Sinhalese majority in the south and the mainly Hindu Tamil minority in the north (Tamil regions shown in map shaded areas) who accuse the government of discrimination. The dispute goes back to a “divide and rule” policy of British colonial times. The Sinhalese complained that the British gave the Tamils preferential treatment and better schooling. This meant that there were disproportionate number of Tamils in the civil service, and in medicine and law in post-independence Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka became independent in 1948 and its new parliament was dominated by the Sinhalese. Initially the transformation to nationhood was peaceful but that changed after the 1956 Sinhala Only Act was passed. English was removed as an official language leaving Sinhala as the only language of government. Most Tamils who worked for the government lost their jobs. Tamils protests against the act were broken up by Sinhala gangs while police did not intervene. Though sporadic riots continued in 1958 and beyond, the situation did not seriously deteriorate until 1970 when Sri Lanka decided to ban importation of Tamil cultural material (films, books, magazines and journals) from India. This was done under the guise of achieving self-sufficiency by the socialist Sinhala government.

Discrimination steadily worsened in the 1970s to the point where a coalition group proposed a separate state of Tamil Eelam for the north of the country. In 1981 an attack on Jaffna public library (which was burned to the ground) and as well as a Tamil newspaper office caused great distress and proved to be a turning point in attitudes towards the South. By 1983 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) started to attack military positions in the North. The government responded by unleashing riots in Colombo which killed thousands of Tamils. The violence intensified through the 1980s to the point where Jaffna was a besieged city. In 1987 India signed a peace accord with Sri Lanka which included significant concessions to Tamil demands. However few of these concessions were ever implemented. The Tamils lost their Indian support when ex-PM Rajiv Ghandi was assassinated by a suicide Tamil Tiger bomber.

Tamil was finally recognised as an official language in the 1990s but the war dragged on. Government forces finally retook Jaffna in 1995. However LTTE suicide bombers continued to wreak havoc in Colombo and elsewhere. They caused major damage to Sri Lankan infrastructure and the air force with their attack on the international airport in 2001. One third of Sri Lankan airlines were put out of commission. The attack also caused tourist numbers to plummet. The sides agreed to a Norwegian-brokered peace deal in 2002 but many Sinhala remain against the deal until the Tigers are disarmed. The government also believes that the Norwegians are biased in favour of the Tamils. When a new hardline president Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected in 2005 the Tigers reneged on the tenuous ceasefire. The situation in the country has been escalating since April this year with many tit-for-tat killings and bombings. In July, the government claimed the LTTE was blocking a sluice gate in the north-east that provided water to civilians. The Air Force attacked rebel positions and ground troops began an operation to open the gate. Following these moves, LTTE political leader S Elilan announced an end to the ceasefire.

29 countries (including India, USA, the EU and Australia) have proscribed the LTTE as a terrorist group. The LTTE proclaims itself the sole representative and protector of Sri Lankan Tamils. The government has accused them of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in the Jaffna peninsula. The LTTE position can be summarised as follows: 1) It is for a ceasefire and monitoring by international observers; 2) It seeks the lifting of the economic blockade and a return to normal in Tamil areas; and 3) but they are silent on the issue of a political settlement within a united Sri Lanka. The government position is unsurprisingly different. 1) The ceasefire will follow if preliminary negotiations make substantial progress. 2) The Army is unlikely to sacrifice its recent gains to political expediency. 3) There must be a definite timeframe for the negotiations which can overlap with a return to normalcy in the North. 4) The Tigers must renounce the idea of a separate state.

The prospects of peace in Sri Lanka are bleak while there is such a huge gulf between what any government in Colombo can offer and what the Tigers will be prepared to settle for. Over 60,000 have been killed since hostilities commenced in the eighties. The teardrop shaped island has many more tears to shed.