விமான நிலையத்தில் கைது செய்யப்பட்ட மகிந்த - 1990இல்

In 1990, Mahinda Rajapaksa was arrested at Colombo airport trying to smuggle dossiers on the "disappeared" out of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in Geneva. Rajapaksa, then an rising politician from the country's south, worked to organize the mothers of the "disappeared" during an insurrection of 1988-90, when more than 16,000 people went missing.

Today, Rajapaksa is Sri Lanka's sixth president, leading a government accused of egregious human rights abuses. Since fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam resumed in full vigor in mid-2006, civilians have become the primary target - not just in direct clashes but in the insidious "dirty war" fought by both sides.

Human Rights Watch researchers spent months investigating allegations of abuses, publishing a report this month that uses eyewitness accounts to show how security forces have subjected civilians to "disappearances," indiscriminate attacks, forced displacement and restrictions on humanitarian aid. Critics of the government - as Rajapaksa was in the 1980s - have been threatened and demonized as national traitors and terrorist sympathizers.

The situation has deteriorated dramatically in the past couple of years. A cease-fire agreement in February 2002 had put a halt to serious fighting. While the Tamil Tigers continued to recruit child soldiers and assassinate moderate Tamils, the situation was relatively calm for a country that had been at war since 1983. The government still committed abuses, but it was able to claim the moral high ground against an opponent that pioneered the use of suicide bombings.

The government has lost that high ground. Since it resumed serious military operations against the rebels last year, 315,000 people have had to flee their homes due to fighting. The government has forced some to return home in unsafe conditions against their will. Since January 2006, more than 1,100 "disappearance" cases have been reported.

-நன்றி நிதர்சனம்.com