யாழ்ப்பாணத்தில் எவ்வித சுதந்திரமும் இல்லை- கனேடிய செய்தித்தாள்

யாழ்ப்பாணத்தில் எவ்வித சுதந்திரமும் இல்லை என நெசனல் போஸ்ட் என்ற கனேடிய செய்திதாளின் செய்தியாளர் ஸ்டுவட் பெல் எழுதியுள்ளார்.

யாழ்ப்பாண நகரம் சைக்கிள்களால் நிரம்பிக் காணப்படுகிறது. முச்சக்கர வண்டிகளும் குடைபிடித்த பெண்களும் கொழுத்தும் வெயிலில் தமது பணிகளில் ஈடுபட்டுக் கொண்டிருக்கின்றனர். அங்கு பெருமளவான படையினர் தன்னியக்க துப்பாக்கிகளுடன் நடமாடுகின்றனர். பேரூந்துகள் நிறுத்தப்பட்டு பயணிகளின் அடையாள அட்டைகள் பரிசோதிக்கப்படுகின்றன.

கொழும்பை அடுத்து இரண்டாவது பெரிய நகரமான யாழ்ப்பாணத்தில் துப்பாக்கி சன்னங்களால் துளையிடப்பட்ட பல வீடுகள் ஆட்கள் அற்ற நிலையில் காணப்படுகின்றன. அவை உள்நாட்டு யுத்தத்தின் தாக்கத்தை காட்டுகின்றன.

யாருமே அடையாள அட்டைகள் இன்றி பாதையில் நடமாடுவதைத் தவிர்த்தே வருகின்றனர். பொதுமக்கள் படையினரின் அனுமதியின்றி எங்கும் பயணிக்கமுடியாது. பொதுமக்கள் கைது செய்யப்பட்டு சில வேளைகளில் இரவோடிரவாக விசாரணைக்கு உட்படுத்தப்படுகின்றனர்.யாழ்

Inside Sri Lanka: 'There is no freedom' in Jaffna

City an open prison where fear, bloodshed reign

Hundreds of thousands have fled Sri Lanka's civil war, many of them to Canada. While the war zone has been off limits to journalists, the National Post's Stewart Bell recently toured the front lines just as the conflict appears headed for a decisive showdown. This is the second of a six-part series.

The streets around Jaffna City's downtown bazaar are filled with bicycles, trishaws and sari-clad women carrying umbrellas to shade themselves from the harsh tropical sun.

There are also a lot of soldiers. They patrol the streets with automatic rifles and stop buses to check the identity cards of passengers.

In this northern city, the population is almost entirely Tamil -- which to the soldiers means that any of the people on these streets might be Tamil Tigers guerrillas.

Jaffna City was once the second-largest centre in Sri Lanka, after the capital, Colombo, but the rows of empty, bullet-pocked houses on the outskirts of town are a reminder that the civil war has hit hard here.

The Tamil Tigers controlled Jaffna until the Sri Lankan forces retook it in 1995, but more than a dozen years later, daily life could hardly be described as normal.

Troops are everywhere; a curfew remains in effect; nobody dares step outdoors without their National Identity Card; and residents cannot leave without the army's permission.

Locals say the military routinely cordons off neighbourhoods, takes everyone to a school or a playground and holds them overnight for questioning.

Getting out of Jaffna means a two-week wait for military permission and a 24-hour boat trip.

That's because the region is cut off from the rest of the country by the war zone.

"It's like an open prison," says Gajen Ponnambalam, the Member of Parliament for Jaffna and a member of the country's main Tamil opposition party, the Tamil National Alliance.

Even though he is an elected representative for the region, Mr. Ponnambalam lives 400 kilometres away in Colombo. Jaffna is too dangerous. Two TNA MPs were assassinated in 2005 and 2006.

"There is absolutely no security. All the TNA members of parliament from Jaffna have been threatened the government uses paramilitary groups to carry out these threats."

He says his phone calls to Jaffna are monitored, and when the discussions turn to topics considered sensitive by the government, the line gets cut. "It's a police state, so everything is being monitored."

Journalists considered sympathetic to the Tamil cause live in constant fear. Bullet holes mark the walls inside the Jaffna office of the Uthayan newspaper. A stack of computers sits idle, their screens blasted by gunshots.

Editor M. V. Kaanamylnathan thumbs through a book filled with photos of his reporters and staff, all killed in recent attacks. The newspaper continues to publish regardless.

"We have decided that despite what happens, we have a duty to our readers," he says. "We are just speaking for the rights of the people. This is a newspaper's function."

The civil war that has torn apart Sri Lanka and driven tens of thousands of refugees to Canada has been notable for its horrors. Both sides have been accused of abuses.

The list is long: Suicide bombings, abductions, recruitment of children, torture, ethnic cleansing, political assassinations, unlawful killings and arbitrary arrests and detentions.

Ethnic Tamils can be arrested for "suspicion," which requires no more than a belief they are linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas waging a separatist war against the government. Some are released. Some are never seen again.

"Outside of the war zones, Tamils are very vulnerable to human rights violations, which come in the form of their houses being raided in the night or being searched in the night," says Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka. "They have to prove their innocence, that they are not LTTE."

Disappearances and killings have occurred in Colombo, but they are said to be worst in Jaffna, he says, although he adds that there are no reliable statistics. Adding to the concerns is the sense that nobody is ever brought to account for the abuses, he says.

"There is a problem of terrorism, people need to be arrested, but this can't be done arbitrarily," he says. "It is happening enough that all Tamils are frightened."

Since the collapse of Sri Lanka's ceasefire in January, international human rights groups have become increasingly alarmed as government forces drive north in an attempt to defeat the Tamil Tigers, and the guerrillas resume their random terrorist attacks.

Deaths of civilians have reached "appalling levels," according to a February report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which says almost 200 civilians died in the first six weeks of 2008.

A Human Rights Watch report released in March blamed pro-government forces for abductions and disappearances of suspected rebels as well as clergy, aid workers and journalists.

In April, Amnesty International accused both the government and the guerrillas of intentionally targeting civilians and conducting indiscriminate attacks. "Since 2006, the conflict in Sri Lanka between government forces, the LTTE and other armed groups has escalated and has continued to be marked by widespread human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law," Amnesty wrote.

A young Tamil man, too afraid to allow his name to be published, spoke nervously about the August night his life was turned upside down.

It was after dark and he was with a friend. They went to meet another friend. All were Tamils. Someone saw them together and told the police.

"I didn't expect they were going to put me in jail," he says, but the next thing he knew, he was taken to a cell. "They took us to a bad ward. There were 250 people staying in a single hole."

The cell was full of hard-looking men, some of whom were smoking ganja. Until that night, he had never even seen the inside of a police station. He was held for a week before being released without any charges.

Now he is uneasy. He believes the police will be watching him. He says if police pick him up again, he will never get out. He says he will no longer venture outside after 8 p. m. "Earlier, I never thought about these things. But now I am afraid."

The Sri Lankan government does not deny that abuses occur, but says they are not state policy and that those found responsible are held accountable.

Attorney-General C. R. De Silva told the United Nations that a Presidential Commission of Inquiry was looking into disappearances, and that police had formed a Disappearances Investigation Unit.

In the past year, 61 police officers have been charged with torture, he says, while in the past decade, 599 members of the security forces and police have been charged in connection with abductions and extra-judicial killings.

Mr. Ponnambalam, the Tamil MP, says that in the past, international pressure could be wielded to curb government excesses. But unlike past Sri Lankan governments, the current administration lacks strong links to Western countries that have typically pushed for negotiations to end the conflict. "President [Mahinda] Rajapaksa is someone of a totally different mindset. He has no such hang-ups basically."

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary and the President's brother, says some people reported as disappeared have actually joined the guerrillas. He cites the case of a man reported missing by his mother. It turned out the man had died while committing a suicide attack near the Colombo Hilton Hotel.

Searches, arrests and detentions are all necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, he says.

"Now we know that each and every Tamil person is not a terrorist, but unfortunately 98% of the terrorists are Tamil because this started as a freedom movement, it started from the Tamils," he says.

"So when you adopt certain control measures, of course the Tamil population will be targeted. You go and search where there are more Tamil people, then you question with a doubt when you see people coming from the north and east. So for these things we get a lot of criticism, but at the end, you save a lot of lives."

The National Post hitched a ride to Jaffna on an Air Force transport and travelled through the high-security zone to the city in a Unicorn armoured vehicle before leaving the company of the military to explore.

Jaffna's roughly 600,000 residents had a brief respite from the war during the ceasefire that began in 2002. The A-9 highway that links the region to the south was reopened for the first time in decades, but the ceasefire soon collapsed and the road was closed once again.

The guerrillas and the army face each other on the eastern edge of Jaffna, where 100 metres of no-man's land separates the forward line of the Sri Lankan Army from the Tamil Tigers. Both lob mortars at each other on a daily basis.

"A lot of skirmishes are going on -- last night there were 12 attacks," says Major General Gammampila Chandrasiri, Area Commander for Jaffna. But he insists life in Jaffna is "coming back to normal."

One prominent Tamil man scoffs at the positive image painted by the General. He says the Tamils of Jaffna are treated like second-class citizens and live in constant fear of the security forces.

"It has gone to the depths, there is no freedom," he says. "Whether you are three or 65 years, they will stop and check your ID card. Now they are suspecting every citizen.

"How can you say that we are living peacefully, how can you say that there is no problem?" he says, afraid to have his name published.

"It is 100% occupation."

TOMORROW

Stewart Bell visits the eastern city of Trincomalee, where he meets a former child guerrilla who left the Tamil Tigers and now serves in the government.

http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/s....html?id=812380

Inside Sri Lanka: Part 3 of our investigative series

Stewart Bell, National Post

Published: Monday, September 22, 2008

Hundreds of thousands have fled Sri Lanka's civil war, many of them to Canada. While the war zone has been off limits to journalists, the National Post's Stewart Bell recently toured the front lines just as the conflict appears headed for a decisive showdown. This is the third of a six-part series.

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka -- Supreme Commander Pillaiyan has spent most of his life wearing the jungle camouflage uniform of the Tamil Tigers.

He joined the guerrillas at age 16, angry at the hardships faced by Sri Lanka's Tamil minority and the rough way they were treated by the country's armed forces.

But four years ago, disillusioned with the Tamil Tigers' longtime leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, he was among thousands of guerrillas who defected to the government side.

He now wears a beige safari suit and black loafers and serves as Chief Minister of Sri Lanka's Eastern Province, although he still answers to his nom de guerre, Pillaiyan.

In an interview at his ultra-secure headquarters on Trincomalee harbour, he said that Tamil Tigers supporters in countries like Canada are misguided and should stop sending money to the separatist rebels.

"A lot of these people who keep shouting ‘we want a separate state' are not aware of what the conditions are here," said Pillaiyan, whose real name is Sivanesathurai Santhirakanthan.

That view was echoed by his former commander, Colonel Karuna Amman, who also left the Tigers to help the government.

Colonel Karuna said money sent from abroad to help civilians in guerrilla-held areas was routinely used to buy arms. He called Canada the number one source of external income for the guerrillas, followed by Switzerland.

He said while Canadians might believe the money they send to Tiger-controlled areas is being used for humanitarian aid, Prabakaran uses it all to buy military hardware instead.

"They use all the money for the war," he said, the first senior guerrilla to speak publicly about the Tamil Tigers' reliance on cash from Canada. "They didn't give anything to the people."

The money from overseas feeds not civilians but a procurement network that buys weapons, often from former Soviet countries, and ships them to the island, he said.

"They have a lot of money. They bought many ships for smuggling arms," he said. "Diaspora people, they don't understand what is happening in Sri Lanka."

Trincomalee is a northern industrial city with a deep water harbour and long white sand beaches that were hammered by the Asian tsunami of December 26, 2004.

The city sits at the top of the Eastern Province that encompasses the coastal fishing villages along the warm Indian Ocean. While many in the east are Tamils, there is also a large Muslim population, unlike northern regions such as Jaffna, which are almost exclusively Tamil.

This used to be Tiger country.

It was part of the crescent-shaped swath of Sri Lanka where the Tamil Tigers controlled territory they envisioned would become part of their independent state.

All that changed in 2004 when Colonel Karuna, who was the eastern commander of the Tamil Tigers, defected to the government and took his 6,000 rebel fighters with him.

It was a devastating loss for the Tamil Tigers. With Karuna's departure, the guerrillas lost the entire eastern branch of their territory.

It has also cost Karuna; he is almost certainly near the top of the Tamil Tigers' list of assassination targets. To interview Karuna, the National Post was taken by van to a secure location in Colombo.

Colonel Karuna is a controversial figure in Sri Lanka. He only recently returned to Colombo from the U.K., where he was briefly imprisoned for entering the country on a fake diplomatic passport he says was supplied by Sri Lankan officials.

Britain deported him this summer, although human rights groups had urged the government to charge him with war crimes. His faction is allegedly responsible for murders, abductions, intimidation and child recruitment - allegations he denied in the interview.

Karuna, who spent 22 years in the Tigers, said he broke with Prabhakaran in a dispute over Norwegian-brokered peace talks. Karuna thought there was a good deal on the table but Prabhakaran wanted to restart the war, he said. So Karuna announced he was leaving.

"He got angry with me, but he's a very angry person," he said. "I told him, ‘I don't want to fight with you, we are brothers and sisters.'"

Nonetheless, clashes soon erupted between the northern and eastern factions of the Tigers. The Sri Lankan military and Karuna's faction of ex-Tigers teamed and cleared the eastern province of rebels. Today the region is in government hands and development projects are underway.

Karuna has since formed the Tamileela Peoples Liberation Tigers (TMVP), which in addition to being a paramilitary group, registered itself as a political party.

When the government called a provincial election in the east in May, the TMVP fielded candidates and fared well enough that one of Karuna's commanders, Pillaiyan, was appointed chief minister.

"Prabhakaran had no political vision," Pillaiyan said in an interview. "If the Sri Lankan Army hits, he wants to hit back. He really relished hitting back, fighting, rather than thinking politically, where do we go from here?"

Pillaiyan knew where he wanted to go. He not only abandoned the rebels, he also entered politics. That a former child guerrilla is now in charge of one of Sri Lanka's most needy provinces has unnerved some. But others see it as a sign of hope that Tamil rebels can abandon the war and pursue their goals through other means.

Pillaiyan, who has a Grade 8 education, said he was among a group of about 130 youths who joined the Tamil Tigers in the eastern city of Batticaloa at about the same time.

In 1993, he was sent north to the Wanni for arms training. He spent the next four years with the rebels in Wanni and Jaffna before returning to Batticaloa, where he spent a year before going back north in 2000.

His idealism began to wane when he noticed that guerrilla cadres from the east were doing most of the hard fighting, while northern Tigers like Prabhakaran seemed to stay safely away from the front. "There was this feeling among the cadres in the east that they were being used as cannon fodder," he said.

In 2002, the Tamil Tigers entered into a ceasefire agreement with the government, but Pillaiyan said Prabhakaran simply used the lull to prepare for the next round of war.

"The LTTE members of the east, since they had sacrificed more cadres, they were not keen on another fight and they felt the leadership was not leading them to any worthwhile point," he said.

The east is no longer an active war zone but it has problems. Although a legitimate political party, the TMVP is still an armed faction with a militia that carries AK-47s. The TMVP has also been accused of election violations, forcible conscription of children and abductions of opponents.

In addition, the Tamil Tigers have re-infiltrated fighters back into the east to attack TMVP supporters and security officers. Earlier this month, the Tigers bombed Trincomalee using a small aircraft.

But the Tigers appear to have bigger problems than Karuna and Pillaiyan right now; an aggressive military advance has them backpedalling in their northern stronghold and possibly close to total collapse. Should the Tigers fall in the north, the government says it intends to replicate there what it has done in the Eastern Province: clear the region of any remaining guerrillas, hold elections and begin development work.

"We will restore democracy, as we did in the east," said Palitha Kohona, the Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary. Funding for reconstruction and rehabilitation will quickly be made available, he added. "The goal is to give the young an alternative to violence in mosquito-infested jungles."

After that, the government will try to address some of the long-term problems by giving the Tamil-dominated regions more autonomy, he said. "The idea is to devolve as much power as possible to the provinces."

Just how much power can be a touchy subject: Tamils have been subjected to decades of repression under Sinhalese-dominated governments and want some degree of autonomy; at the same time, hardline members of the country's Sinhalese majority want to keep a strong central government and do not want to hand Tamils a de facto state.

For the moment, Pillaiyan has more practical matters to deal with like what to do about the thousands of former Tamil Tigers fighters struggling to adjust to civilian life.

"We have one major problem. That is how to take care of the cadres and their families...because not all of them have an education," he said. "The highest priority has to be given to that because they also bought into this."

Another priority: resettling the thousands of families displaced by the fighting. On top of that, abductions and disappearances remain "a very serious problem for us," he said.

Pillaiyan believes if he can succeed in the east, Tamil guerrillas will realize there is a better way, but he holds out no hope that Prabhakaran will surrender his dream of a Tamil homeland called Tamil Eelam.

"Prabhakaran will not give up his thought of a Tamil Eelam. So long as Prabhakaran is there he will always want people to believe that he can deliver Tamil Eelam, and Tamil Eelam in his vision includes the east as well."

But he believes the Tamil Tigers are almost finished, bottled up in the north, having lost 60% of their territory and running out of fighting men and women.

"He can't go on like this because there is a limit to the manpower that he commands," Pillaiyan said. "Just by shortage of manpower he will lose."

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=813314

Edited September 23, 200817 yr by Tamilmagan

Inside Sri Lanka: Worship in war

Part 4 of our investigative series

Stewart Bell, National Post

Published: Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Stewart Bell/National PostFather Emilianuspillai Santhiapillai outside the Madhu Church in Sri Lanka's Mannar region Sept. 9, 2008.

Hundreds of thousands have fled Sri Lanka's civil war, many of them to Canada. While the war zone has been off limits to journalists, the National Post's Stewart Bell recently toured the front lines just as the conflict appears headed for a decisive showdown. This is the third of a six-part series.

MAHDU, Sri Lanka -- The one-lane road through the thick Mannar jungle passes a "Dangerous Area Do Not Enter" sign and the remains of a Tamil Tigers camp with twisted metal and collapsed trenches. Beyond that, an improbable sight appears in a clearing: a large Catholic Church with bright stained glass windows, marble floors, Roman columns, arches and a rooftop cross that rises above the palm tree jungle.

Madhu Church is the site of Sri Lanka's holiest Catholic shrine, and it lies right in the heart of the country's northern war zone - so close to the shifting front lines it has changed hands several times. The war has been hard on the church. The roof and walls are patched where they were blasted by artillery shells, and the statue of Jesus with outstretched arms is cracked, having smashed on the floor during fighting.

The village that surrounds the church is a ghost town. Lawns where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have stood are empty, except for wandering cows and the occasional mongoose. Monkeys have taken over one of the shelters.

"No life here," says a frustrated Father Emilianuspillai Santhiapillai, sitting on the shaded veranda in his white robe, beneath a framed photo of Pope John Paul II.

When he first arrived here two years ago, the church was under the control of the Tamil Tigers guerrillas. As clashes escalated, the church pleaded with both sides to avoid fighting on the grounds. The war came through anyway.

During that latest wave of fighting, shelling completely destroyed one building, although the main church took only a few direct hits. "I think it is the grace of Our Lady nothing happened to this church," says Brother Justin Anthony. Sri Lankan government forces recaptured the area around the church a few months ago.

"This is a useless war," Father Santhiapillai says in an interview. "And we are losing our people, whether Sinhalese or Tamil, we are losing our people. It brings death, destruction."

He thinks it would be best if the fighting stopped and the two sides started talking, and one of their topics should be how to respect the rights of the country's Tamil minority.

"War is not the answer," he says.

Nobody seems to be listening but Father Santhiapillai continues to hold weekly mass anyway, even if the only congregants are three church workers and three Catholic brothers studying for the priesthood.

Reaching the church means driving west from Vavuniya, deserted and under lockdown following a Tamil Tigers attack. On the outskirts of town, signs of everyday life return.

The road is filled with kids riding bikes and walking to school in their uniforms - the girls wearing white dresses and neckties, the boys in dress shirts and shorts.

Soldiers patrol the road, some checking the identity cards of Tamils. Otherwise, the road is empty except for ambulances and troops riding double on motorbikes. Every so often, another checkpoint stops traffic.

The A-30 road cuts through open grasslands lined with coconut palms and peacocks. Every few hundred metres, there are small army posts, primitive houses built from mud, wood and corrugated metal, and surrounded by a defensive bulwark. A soldier shaves in front of a mirror hanging from a palm tree. A military uniform hangs from a clothesline. More than anything, the soldiers look tired and bored.

Turning north, through another checkpoint, the road enters what was until recently Tamil Tigers territory. A concrete arch over the road reads, "Welcome to Madhu Church."

The church shrine, Our Lady of Madhu, is a 450-year-old statue of uncertain origin. "Some people say that this statue was floating in the sea. Some people say it was brought by the Portuguese when they captured Ceylon," the priest says.

Religion is an important part of Sri Lankan life. Buddhism is the dominant faith, practiced by two thirds of the island's population. The minority Tamils are Hindus and Catholics in almost equal measure. The Portuguese brought Catholicism to the island in the 16th century. The first converts were massacred by the Jaffna king and persecuted by the Dutch and eventually moved their shrine deep into the jungle at Madhu.

Religious persecution ended under British colonial rule and the statue was crowned by a representative of Pope Pius XI in 1924. The church was consecrated two decades later.

The statue of Our Lady is said to protect against snake venom but when fighting broke out in the area, it became better known as a haven for war refugees.

By 1999, 10,000 civilians displaced by the conflict were camped around the church. That November, 44 of them died and 60 were injured in shelling that both sides blamed on each other.

About 200,000 civilians are currently trapped in the northern war zone, facing hardships from a shortage of food and shelter to indiscriminate shelling.

The military recently dropped leaflets from helicopters urging civilians to leave the conflict areas in advance of an anticipated offensive, but few have taken up the offer.

The government also ordered humanitarian workers to leave, and most have now pulled out, except for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was allowed to stay.

Madhu church is no longer considered safe for the war-displaced. Government forces took control of the area in April, but it remains under tight seal behind roadblocks.

Only soldiers wander the streets. A no handguns sign hangs on the wall outside the church. The area is still being de-mined.

In the past, Sri Lankans of all faiths made pilgrimages to the Madhu church. "When there is a festival, all the people come here, Hindus, Buddhists, even Muslims," said Father Santhiapillai.

In 2005, half a million came. "We lived here, one family. It made no difference, Sinhalese, Tamils ... everyone was engaged in prayer, meditation and religions activities. That's the beauty of this place, and still we want to have this as a place of unity."

Father Santhiapillai points out a plaque thanking a group of Sinhalese for repairing the church roof in 2005. Another plaque thanks a Muslim for donating one of the chapels.

A Tamil, he sees symbolism in the contributions the church receives from Sinhalese Buddhists and Muslim Sri Lankans, a sign of unity that offers a rare fragment of hope.

"These are symbols," he says. "If 500,000 Sinhalese and Tamils can come together and live here for three or four days, why can't the whole country live together?"

National Post

sbell@nationalpost.com

Edited September 25, 200817 yr by Tamilmagan

Inside Sri Lanka: A life given over to war

Part 5 of our investigative series

Stewart Bell, National Post

Published: Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Hundreds of thousands have fled Sri Lanka's civil war, many of them to Canada. While the war zone has been off limits to journalists, the National Post's Stewart Bell recently toured the front lines just as the conflict appears headed for a decisive showdown. This is the fifth of a six-part series.

WELIOYA, Sri Lanka -- Brigadier Mohan K. Jayawardena is sitting at his wooden desk, a framed portrait of the President on the wall behind him, when a loud boom rattles his office.

He does not flinch.

He is apparently used to the sound of 130-mm artillery guns firing off into the Mullattivu jungle, home of the Tamil Tigers guerrillas he has battled his entire military career.

Brig. Jayawardena was an 18-year-old in basic training when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam started fighting for independence for Sri Lanka's ethnic Tamil minority.

Twenty-eight years later, he is still fighting Tigers, now as the Area Commander for Welioya, a northern district that is experiencing some of the most intense fighting of the civil war.

The Sri Lankan conflict is one of the world's longest-running insurgencies. A whole generation has never lived in times of peace. Newspaper articles about the latest bombings no longer even make the front pages of the country's dailies.

"We have to somehow or other sort out this problem," says the general, who has slicked-down black hair, a moustache and three rows of ribbons on his uniform. "That is our aim. We want to finish it altogether."

The army is pushing hard against the rebels in this region of rice paddies and coconut trees northeast of the garrison town of Vavuniya. The road to the base begins at Kebitigollewa, a town centred around a clock tower whose modern red digital face seems out of place above the gritty streets.

One of the bloodiest attacks of the war occurred here in 2006, a roadside mine explosion that killed more than 60 civilians. From Kebitigollewa, the road cuts north through open fields and rows of lookalike houses built to resettle families displaced by the war.

The countryside is filled with a strange mix of images: an egret wades in the flooded farmland and a mongoose darts into the bush; a woman in a white sari balances a water jug atop her head; and there is the red flag of the hardline People's Liberation Front party fluttering from a power line.

The town of Parakramapura is very close to what the military calls the "non-liberated areas," the misshapen chunk of territory controlled by the Tamil Tigers. The road is rutted as it follows the Welioya river, where a woman washes her long, gray hair below a sluice gate, and another dunks her laundry, wrings it tight and slaps it onto a rock to dry.

"Troops ahead, drive slowly," reads a road sign.

The guerrillas in this district are fighting fiercely to hold their line against the advancing government forces, the general says. "It's heavy fighting, almost every day. Our aim is to move forward; day by day we are moving forward."

Using a red laser pointer, Brig. Jayawardena traces the front line on a map that hangs on his wall between two spent artillery shell casings. He says it has been shifting north a few hundred metres at a time, moving deeper into territory formerly held by the rebels. (As he speaks, there is another eardrum-shattering artillery boom, but again, he takes no notice.)

Last month, government forces captured a Tamil Tigers camp called Jeevan Base. As they took the camp, they found holes that lead into a maze of underground bunkers - offices and sleeping quarters all but invisible from above.

"They have made all these bunkers with full concrete. This means even an artillery shell or an air strike, it won't destroy it," he says. "Maybe the top leader has been staying there," he adds, referring to the elusive Tamil Tigers boss Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Brig. Jayawardena commands Area Headquarters -Welioya, the rear base of the 223 and 224 Brigades of the Sri Lankan Army. Each has three battalions that patrol the roads, protect local villages and fight the Tamil Tigers west and north of here. Welioya is also a transit point for guerrillas. It lies between the rebel stronghold in the north and the eastern province where the Tigers have been trying to reignite their civil war after losing the area to government forces last year.

Guerrilla fighters regularly try to cross through the paddy fields to infiltrate the east, the general says. "About 10 days back, a couple of terrorists infiltrated the FDA (forward defence area) and we did an operation and killed all the terrorists and captured all their weapons."

One of the handful of generals who command troops along the front, Brig. Jayawardena was trained in India, Pakistan, Georgia and Hawaii. He has studied counter-insurgency and counterterrorism.

The scar on his wrist shows he has also done his share of combat duty. He got it three years ago in Jaffna, where he was a brigade commander. A mortar shell landed near him and the shrapnel struck his right arm.

"In my opinion, they are not strong," he says of the guerrillas. "What they do is they find our weaknesses and they do various things. If we keep alert and train, they can't do damage to us."

His boss is Lieutenant-General Sarath Fonseka, who makes weekly visits to the region to check on the war's progress and talk strategy.

In an interview, Lt.-Gen. Fonseka talks candidly about the war, which he believes will be over in less than a year, and his views on the militant Tamil nationalism that has spilled from Sri Lanka into countries with ethnic Tamil diasporas, Canada included.

"The national leadership basically is determined to solve this problem," he says. "The task given to us is to eradicate terrorism ... If we have the same commitment one more year, the LTTE's destination is, I think, decided."

In the general's view, the war is driven by Tamils who want a homeland and have chosen Sri Lanka as the place. But he says the country's ethnic Sinhalese majority will never allow the ethnic Tamil minority to break the island apart.

Lt.-Gen. Fonseka is a competitive swimmer who won the U.S. Green Card lottery but has remained in Sri Lanka, heading the army he has served for three decades. He is lucky to be alive. On April 25, 2006, a suicide bomber attacked his limousine in Colombo. He was seriously injured in the assassination attempt and nine others were killed. The Tamil Tigers never claim responsibility for such attacks but were almost certainly behind it.

"I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people," he says.

"We being the majority of the country, 75%, we will never give in and we have the right to protect this country.

"We are also a strong nation ... They can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things."

He dismisses concerns by international human rights groups about the conduct of his forces, saying that while civilian deaths are inevitable in war, relatively few non-combatants have died in the Sri Lankan conflict.

The guerrillas' central problem is manpower, he says. During the current phase of the civil war, the Sri Lankan forces have killed 8,000 rebel fighters in the north and 2,000 in the east, while another 1,000 have been killed in air strikes, he says.

According to the army's calculations, that leaves the Tamil Tigers with no more than 4,000 remaining cadres, while the Sri Lankan forces have 250,000 men and women, and plenty of weaponry.

"So it's a matter of time," Lt.-Gen. Fonseka says.

But the Tigers are well-armed; they have ammunition, artillery, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, multi-barreled rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons and mines. "Every inch is booby-trapped in the jungle. De-mining those areas will take minimum 20 years," he says.

Brig. Jayawardena does not deny it is a tough fight; that moving forward is a slow, painful task, and that he will lose more soldiers. But he believes the government's strategy is working and that the war will be over soon enough.

"It is a big headache for us, for development, for the economy. War is not a good thing but we have to fight and protect our normal citizens.

"That is our duty."

National Post

sbell@nationalpost.com

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=832374

Edited September 25, 200817 yr by Tamilmagan

Inside Sri Lanka: An end to violence in sight

Part 6 of our investigative series

Stewart Bell, National Post

Published: Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Stewart Bell/National PostA poster showing Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa. He has stepped up the campaign against the Tamil Tigers.

Hundreds of thousands have fled Sri Lanka's civil war, many of them to Canada. While the war zone has been off limits to journalists, the National Post's Stewart Bell recently toured the front lines just as the conflict appears headed for a decisive showdown. This is the sixth of a six-part series.

COLOMBO -- At the bustling Fort Railway Station, the walls have been patched and the bloodstains scrubbed away, but everyone still remembers what happened.

A woman stepped off a commuter train onto Platform 3 and detonated a suicide bomb in a crowd of D.S. Senanayake College students. A dozen died, eight of them kids.

"This is very ridiculous because only schoolchildren were dead," says Kumar Jayartha, a tour guide who was waiting for customers outside the station last February when the blast occurred.

Though far from the front lines of the civil war, Sri Lanka's seaside capital has been steadily rocked by bombings, the work of Tamil Tigers guerrillas making their case for independence.

In response, yellow metal barricades and military checkpoints made of stacked green sandbags seem to be everywhere. Security is especially tight along the downtown Galle Road waterfront, a designated high-security zone that encompasses the Ministry of Defence, Army Headquarters and Temple Trees, the official residence of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Fortified behind high walls, the presidential compound is guarded by soldiers in high gun towers. To get inside, visitors must pass through four vehicle checkpoints and undergo two full body searches.

In the President's office, framed black-and-white portraits of his mother and father are displayed on a small table and a photograph of the mountaintop holy site Sri Pada - said to be a footprint left by Buddha on his way to paradise - hangs behind his desk.

During the 2005 election that brought him to power, President Rajapaksa campaigned on a platform of ending the country's civil war through negotiations with the Tamil Tigers guerrillas who have turned the tropical island into a battlefield.

But within months of taking office, the President changed course; he ordered his armed forces back to war and last January formally pulled out of a 2002 ceasefire agreement. His stance now: War will continue "until the last rebel is killed or every inch of land is captured."

The Rajapaksa regime, which includes the President's brother, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who is the Defence Secretary, has come surprisingly close to accomplishing that: After 25 years of civil war that has cost more than 60,000 lives, Sri Lankan troops are now within a few kilometres of the rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi.

Asked in an interview with the National Post if the war was almost over, the president replied: "Yes, I think so. It will take a little more time," although he quickly added, "terrorism you can't just finish it overnight."

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The Rajapaksa brothers are members of a political dynasty that has held public office since the 1930s, when the island was a pleasant British tea-growing colony called Ceylon.

The President is a 62-year-old Buddhist lawyer first elected to Parliament in 1970 at age 24. He is never seen in public without his maroon shawl, which represents the peasant farmers whose political interests his family has long represented.

His brother served two decades in the armed forces but moved to Los Angeles before returning to Sri Lanka to oversee the 250,000-strong armed forces. Two other brothers and a niece are Members of Parliament, as was their late father and uncle.

"We said we were ready to talk to them," the President says of the Tamil Tigers. But three weeks after he was sworn in, the guerrillas resumed their attacks.

"I didn't even react because I was trying to negotiate with them," he says.

But following a failed assassination attempt against the commander of the army, the President ordered retaliatory air strikes and before long the war was once again in full swing.

"You can't trust him," he says of the longtime Tamil Tigers boss Velupillai Prabhakaran. "He's a killer, he and his number two, Pottu Amman. So this is what I thought, you know, they can't understand the language that you and I talk. The language he understands is force."

To finish off the Tigers, the President appointed a new Army Commander and added 50,000 troops to the ranks, an increase of 25%. The armed forces went on a buying spree. New guerrilla-fighting tactics were introduced. Small commando units were deployed to confront the Tigers deep in their territory.

"We started dominating the jungles, not only the built-up areas, not only the townships, not only the villages. We started operating in small groups ... of commandos and special forces," the Defence Secretary says in an interview.

"We didn't just go in to grab land but we were more keen to confront them and because of this they lost a lot of cadres, bases, guns, air targets. This weakened them a lot, then only we moved forward."

The Navy also stepped up its fight, engaging the Tigers' supply ships in deep waters and sinking 10 floating weapons warehouses. At the same time, countries like Canada, Britain and France cracked down on the Tigers' international financial network, leaving the guerrillas short of cash to buy arms.

Government troops cleared the guerrillas from the east last year, then went north. The major obstacle at the moment is what to do about the up to 200,000 civilians in the area under Tamil Tigers control. Army helicopters dropped leaflets last month telling them to leave the war zone and a corridor has been established so they can flee south.

"This will help minimize civilian casualties," the Defence Secretary says. "If the civilians come out of this place, then that is the end."

Nobody is certain when that day might come, but commanders seem confident it will be over in a matter of months, although the rebels could still retreat into the more isolated jungles to continue guerrilla attacks.

"We have to expect delays, casualties, but we can see it goes according to the military strategy, according to the plans, so the commanders are confident and we are winning."

The government's claim that it is liberating Tamils from the Tigers has the backing of some Tamil leaders.

Veerasingham Anandasangaree, President of the Tamil United Liberation Front party, says Tamils are happy that government troops are beating the Tigers.

"People have to be liberated from the so-called liberators," he says.

But others argue the war won't solve the country's underlying ethnic problem, which is how to include the country's Tamil minority in a united Sri Lanka.

"I don't think there can be a military solution to this problem. It's a political problem," says Rajavarothayam Sampanthan, leader of the Tamil National Alliance.

"As far as I'm concerned this is not going to be a solution to anything."

While the government's view is that the Tamil Tigers are the cause of the country's ills, he believes the guerrillas are a symptom of the failure of successive governments to resolve Tamil grievances.

Current complaints include a drive forcing ethnic Tamils living in Colombo to register with police. "No Tamil in this country feels absolutely safe and free. The fact that you're a Tamil puts you in danger," says Mr. Sampanthan, who is the Member of Parliament for Trincomalee.

Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council, does not support the government's approach either. The council is a non-governmental organization that promotes the notion that the country's ethnic conflict must be negotiated and not settled on the battlefield.

Its platform: War won't buy peace, the Tamil Tigers should be at the negotiating table and the solution is a federal system, with a strong central government. For this, the council is at odds with both the guerrillas and the government, which fears giving too many powers to the Tamil-dominated regions. "The fear of the Sinhalese is that eventually federalism will lead to separation," he says.

President Rajapaksa says that after the Tigers are defeated he intends to begin devolving powers to the regions. He has appointed an all-party committee to report to him with proposal to address Tamil grievances, he says.

As for international concerns about human rights abuses, he says government forces do not engage in abductions although they do take suspects into custody.

The President accused Tamils seeking refugee status in the West of exaggerating conditions in Sri Lanka.

He urged Canadian Tamils not to support the Tamil Tigers and their fight for independence.

"They must stop this. They should not encourage the terrorists. They are not helping the Tamils," the President says. "Prabhakaran will never succeed."

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Colombo is the capital of a divided, exhausted, beautiful country. Compared to the tension in the north, the capital seems relaxed. Tourists talk excitedly about their day's adventures on the veranda of the Galle Face Hotel, and young couples sit on benches facing the pounding Indian Ocean.

But even here, soldiers and police watch over everything and bombers sometimes slip through the security walls. So far this year, almost 200 civilians have died in terrorist attacks that have targeted public figures and public transportation around Colombo. Five attacks on buses and trains between January and April left 75 dead. Bus bombings continued last week.

"We couldn't believe what happened," says Indra Sumana, a young Buddhist monk with a shaved head and a saffron robe. Mr. Sumana was inside his temple on Colombo's Lotus Road in May when he heard a blast.

A suicide bomber had rammed a police guard post beside the temple's main entrance, killing 10 people, injuring 90 and shattering the windows of the white pagoda.

It was the second time the temple had been hit. The last time, the victims included the chief monk, who is memorialized in a bust displayed next to a giant golden statue of Buddha. Mr. Sumana is a young man but he has had enough and he says he supports the government's drive to wipe out the Tamil Tigers.

"I think we have to finish this."

National Post

sbell@nationalpost.com

Edited September 26, 200817 yr by Tamilmagan

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