Vigilante killings fuel cycle of violence in Sri Lanka

As the funeral procession carrying the coffins of five Tamil students who were victims of alleged vigilante killings wound through the streets of the port town of Trincomalee on Jan. 7, there were whispers among the mourners that retaliation would be swift. The mourners burned down military checkpoints, emptied out for the procession, and warned visitors and journalists to leave town. Revenge was clearly in the air. And sure enough, in Trincomalee bay a naval patrol craft was rammed by an explosives-laden fishing boat, killing 13 of the 15-member crew on board. The defense ministry later confirmed that the patrol boat, which was utterly wrecked, had been attacked by suicide bombers from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tigers. That strike, the biggest against the Sri Lankan military by the LTTE since the February 2002, Norway-brokered ceasefire, was one more sign that the Tigers were ready for a revival of the two-decade-old civil war on the island. Initially, the military maintained that the five Tamil youth had died when a grenade in their possession exploded accidentally. But medical examination of the bodies revealed that they had each been shot through the head. The Tigers accused the Special Task Force (STF), an elite commando unit of the Sri Lankan police, of picking up students and shooting five of them through their ears. "This is a planned attack against the Tamil people," S. Ellilan, the LTTE political head in Trincomalee told IPS. Some newspapers carried reports naming a retired police officer, now high up in the government, of having ordered the killings. But STF inspector general Nimal Leuke denied that his commandos were involved. Based on the spate of attacks and counterattacks, internationally-known security expert Rohan Gunaratne told IPS that he expected the Tigers to "return to war." "This is a very big concern to us," the head of the Nordic staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Haugrup Hakland said. The mandate of the SLMM, however, limits it to a supervisory role and does not include any peace-keeping or implementation capacity. Norway's special peace envoy to Sri Lanka, Erik Solheim, is due on the island on Jan. 23, in what is seen as a decisive visit to salvage the situation. But civilians in the war-torn Jaffna have already had enough and are evacuating to safer places. With the increasing attacks, President Mahinda Rajapakse, who assumed office last November, has come under pressure from his hawkish, pro-Sinhala electoral allies to adopt a tougher stance against the Tigers. "This incident should not be considered as just another violation of the ceasefire agreement. By this attack the Tiger terrorists have indicated that they are prepared to escalate terrorist war, in a wrapping of peace," the People's Liberation Front (PLF), a Rajapakse ally said in a statement. "President Rajapakse's administration should take actions to apprise the countries concerned about the peace process in Sri Lanka and take decisive measures to defeat Tiger terrorism in any manner they ask for," the PLF demanded. The new president has thus far not changed his willingness to reopen negotiations despite the string of attacks. The Tigers and his administration have to first agree on a location for talks. Rajapakse prefers an Asian destination while the Tigers insist on Oslo. Even the international stakeholders in the peace process have had limited success in trying to halt the violence. The United States, European Union, Norway and Japan met with the LTTE political leadership last month but came away empty handed. Soon after the Jan. 7 attack on the naval patrol craft, the US state department voiced concern over the deteriorating situation. The mid-sea attack was only the latest episode in a cycle of violence that began on Dec. 4 when an army patrol was ambushed at Kondavil in northern Jaffna, killing seven soldiers. A week before that, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the reclusive Tiger leader, had warned that if Rajapakse failed to come up with a viable power devolution proposal, the Tigers would revert to war. Prabhakaran, the undisputed chief in more than two decades of hostilities against successive Sri Lankan governments since the mid-1980s, has been demanding a separate state for the country's minority Tamils in the northeast of the island. More than 65,000 lives have been lost in the fighting that has split the country's majority Sinhala community and the Tamils. The February 2002 ceasefire has held so far, though direct negotiations between the government and the Tigers have stalled since April 2003. Since the Dec. 4 attack, government security forces have been targeted both on land and in the sea. According to the defense ministry, the Jan. 9 attacks brought the number of servicemen killed over the past month to 65. Military spokesman Brig. Prasad Samarasingha described some the attacks as well planned and coordinated. "The Tigers have always tried to attack the forces, now they are using civilians as cover," he said. The Tigers, for their part, have denied any responsibility for the attacks. "We are investigating what happened, but we are not responsible for the attacks," Ellilan said. In fact, the Tigers charge the government with deploying deep penetration units to carry out attacks on selected cadres inside Tiger-held areas. Three mid-level Tigers were killed in two such attacks last week. One took place just hours after the naval attack in Trincomalee. The Tigers say that the military is using the services of cadres loyal to renegade commander Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan–their erstwhile eastern military leader, who broke ranks and defected to government areas in April 2004. The military has denied any link with the rebel Tiger or his loyalists. Meanwhile, a shadowy organization, calling itself the Tamil Resurgence Force (TRF), has claimed responsibility for at least three recent mine attacks on government forces. Letters released by the group in Jaffna said the group consisted of civilians who were armed and ready to attack the security forces and the Tigers have been openly giving basic military training to civilians. The TRF says that it is carrying out attacks as retaliation against harassment and violence by government forces. After 13 sailors were killed in the northwestern island of Mannar on Dec. 23, the TRF claimed responsibility saying that it carried out the attack to avenge the alleged rape and murder of a Tamil woman in northern Jaffna. During the funerals of the five slain youth, the TRF announced that Trincomalee would observe indefinite closure of public and private establishments till all new sentry points set up by the military are removed. Unlike in Tamil-dominated Jaffna and Mannar, Trincomalee has large populations from the two other main ethnic groups, Sinhala and Muslim. Samarasingha acknowledged that the situation was delicate. Civilians are taking no chances and most Tamils are heading for Tiger-held areas. Last week, the Tigers said that at least 450 families had arrived in their political headquarters, Kilinochchi. Visitors to the town said the figure could be as high as 1000. The military has reacted by arguing that most of the evacuees are either directly linked to the Tigers or have been trained by them. But the signs are ominous. The last time such an exodus took place was in 1995, when government forces launched an all-out assault to wrest control of Jaffna from the Tigers.