MR’s Sinhalese government uses state terrorism to militarily crush the political aspirations of the Tamils. Brazenly with impunity, the hawkish chauvinist regime tries all its best, resorting to all dirty tactics possible to bully the Tamil community into submission. They carried out extra-judicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, aerial bombardment, and closures of highways, forced starvation and displacements besides denial of their other basic facilities expedient and necessary.

Sinhalese armed forces have forcibly occupied their traditional homeland territories of North and East (N&E) displacing them in tens of thousands by force. Thousands of army camps have mushroomed all over N&E. Cultivation and fishing industry have been either crippled or perished...................

Terrorism in the modern sense is violence or other harmful acts committed (or threatened) against civilians for political or other ideological goals. Mahinda Rajapakse’s (MR) regime had committed unprecedented state terrorism unlike any of his predecessors combined. Impartial observers are worried that state terrorism in Sri-Lanka had been allowed to go on without any censure from the UN or the super power USA. The closest neighbour India which have 60 million Tamils in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu is dragging its feet to put a stop to this injustice and crime against humanity because it too is terrorising Kashmiri Muslims who are demanding self rule in the Indian section of kashmir. Kashmir is the only state in India that has a Muslim majority.

Queensland Pediatrician and Director of Townsville Hospital's Neonatal Unit, Dr John Whitehall has been working as a volunteer medical lecturer in Tamil areas lately. Talking with Richard Fidler of ABC radio program on 25 August 2007 he said “If you look at who has been inflicting terror on whom, it has been Colombo that has been bombing Tamil areas using fancy Jets”. He went on to site other examples of state terrorism. “Bombing of a school where 61 girls died (At Chensolai, Mullaitivu). Killing of people, forced refugee status etc. Human rights groups have said that at least 5,000 Tamils have disappeared in the last six months and many of them have later turned up dead with torture marks. The Chilean dictator Pinochet, whom we all revile, might have only 300 victims to his credit in those years. Using the same kinds of torture, the same kind of white vans to pick people terror is being inflicted upon Tamils. While we revile Pinochet, we don t even seem talk about the terror inflicted by Colombo”.

MR’s Sinhalese government uses state terrorism to militarily crush the political aspirations of the Tamils. Brazenly with impunity, the hawkish chauvinist regime tries all its best, resorting to all dirty tactics possible to bully the Tamil community into submission. They carried out extra-judicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, aerial bombardment, and closures of highways, forced starvation and displacements besides denial of their other basic facilities expedient and necessary.

Sinhalese armed forces have forcibly occupied their traditional homeland territories of North and East (N&E) displacing them in tens of thousands by force. Thousands of army camps have mushroomed all over N&E. Cultivation and fishing industry have been either crippled or perished.

D B S Jeyaraj for The Nation on Sep 22, 2007 describes the state terrorism of aerial bombing so beautifully in his article ‘Full-scale war imminent on the northern front’.

“But woe unto a non-state actor planting a bomb that kills civilians intentionally or unintentionally – it will be automatically labelled terrorism and very often does deserve that label. But dropping bombs from an altitude allows greater latitude in getting away from the terrorist label. All states gang up in refusing to admit state terrorism”.

He further described the terror war tactics carried out by MR’s Sinhala armed forces to capture the East from the LTTE recently. The government adopted the ruthless double-track strategy successfully in the east: A widespread campaign of bombing and shelling on a broad scale on points throughout the region on the one hand and on the other, a sustained campaign of intensive concentrated attacks on a limited target area.

The civilians were uprooted and their dwellings and infrastructure facilities demolished with scant respect for their human rights. Probably Tamils HR is no concern for the Sinhalese and apparently for the West. After the indigenous civilians fled in fear a particular area and move to another place, the vacated place is shelled and bombed to saturation point. Then the army advanced cowardly on ground, consolidated and established control of a limited area.

Thereafter, this process was repeated again and again. In a slow, systematic manner, the armed forces advanced and held target areas while the civilian population fled from place to place or to government areas. This is what happened in stages in the east and after 15 months, the armed forces dominated the Eastern province now.

Moreover, unofficial embargoes on food, medicine, fuel and essential items were imposed. Transport and movement of people were restricted. Payment of salaries of government employees, including teachers, was suspended. Agriculture, fisheries and cottage industries were reduced to a standstill. This was serious violation of human rights. The HR watch dogs of the UN, EU and America, though they had long tradition of fairplay remained mute over this dastardly acts of the Sinhala Sri-Lankan government against its ethnic minority Tamils.

He further added that the total number of Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) in the Vavuniya district remained about 15 000. It is to be noted that this IDPs were the result of government terror bombing of civilian areas during non-combat time to clear suspected enemy areas in violation of the government peace agreement with the LTTE. State Terrorism is stalking the Tamils in the Northern and Eastern Provinces (N&E) of Sri-Lanka.

Sinhalese racist government purposely prevented NGOs from delivering humanitarian medical aid to the war victims in order to crate frustration among the Tamils. Guillermo Bertoletti, director of operations for the French section of Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) October 19, 2006

“Fighting is increasing. Heavy bombing has displaced tens of thousands of people who are in need of assistance. Hospitals are in need of support in order to meet the demands. It is deplorable that we are not allowed to bring medical assistance to the population living in areas where heavy fighting is underway”.

MR’s government hypocritically denies all these accusations by international observers. Mr Gardner quoted Jehan Perera of non-partisan advisory group the National Peace Council (NPC) Sri-Lanka on Friday "The government is denying what is happening on the ground," "All the government's denials lead to is an erosion of credibility."

International experts observing a presidential commission probing a list of abuses and murders including the 17 Action Contre La Faim NGO workers, announced that the commission was not co-operating fully with them, was failing to meet international standards, and was proceeding so slowly the probe would probably fail.

Sunila Abeysekera, executive director of the Sri Lankan rights group INFORM, told a Geneva news conference on Monday 17 September “The national mechanisms don't work". She decried the prevailing "culture of impunity" in Sri Lanka among government and para militaries. Up to now about 70,000 people have been killed since 1983. Abeysekera said it was impossible to report a human rights abuse to police or other authorities because of terror.

She estimated there were more than 550 extra-judicial executions in the north and east of Sri Lanka, and more than 350 disappearances, between January and June this year.

At the same conference Charu Hogg, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said it was now very difficult to find information about abuses, especially in conflict-torn areas where access is next to impossible. It is widely known that the Northern provinve populated by the Tamils is an open prison now. No media or any humanitarian agencies or NGOs from outside Sri-Lanka are allowed into the North as the Sinhalese fear that the terrorist acts of the government will be internationalised by such foreign NGOs.

Shockingly, an estimated 5,000 people have been killed since early 2006 alone according to TETSUO KOGURE of news madia THE ASAHI SHIMBUN. All these atrocities are carried on with scant respect to internationally accepted norms and procedures. The Judicial Service Commission of Sri-Lanka, the highest authority relating to the judiciary in Sri Lanka, and the Judicial Service Association have condemned attempts by MR’s government to influence the judiciary through thuggery. Basil Fernando, director of the Hong Kong based Asian Human Rights Commission is well known for human rights work. He is also a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia and who had published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia. He stressed that the Sri-Lankan regime has quite blatantly demonstrated its lack of adherence to the U.N. conventions it has signed for.

With this background some of the countries that had been supporting the government of Sri Lanka politically and economically had begun to suspend most of their economic assistance, citing the deterioration of human rights situation in the country. For example Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland and USA.

Due to this sanctions MR is also cash starved to carry on the terror war. He tried to raise a $500 million high interest loan from HSBC bank. The bank had held back the decision under pressure from the opposition parties in Sri-Lanka. The opposition had threatened that any future government from the opposition will not honour the repayment terms on the loan as MR government had no wherewithal to pay back. Further the purpose of the loan was not made clear. If the loan was for developmental purposes the World bank or the Asian bank might have given it on low interest terms but of course with severe binding clauses to confine the loan for development only. With this limitations he would find it difficult to siphon part of this loan for war purposes. Deputy Finance Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya told Parliament yesterday (September 18), that Rupees 50 billion had been spent by the government this year alone on arms and ammunition for the present military exercise. He was referring to the liberation of the Eastern province from the LTTE. A huge waste of resources at a time when money should have been spent on infrastructure development for future prosperity of the two Sri-Lankan nations.

Desperate to plug the hole in its finances the government rushed through five highly debated controversial finance bills through parliament on September 6 increasing taxes on a range of goods and services. With the 2008 budget due in early November, these bills are a stopgap measure to raise around 10 billion rupees ($US88 million). Economists are of the view that these taxes will burden the nation. Defending his announced price increases, consumer affairs minister Gunawardene bluntly explained the economic logic of the government’s policies: “The defence bill is 140 billion rupees. We need to import bullets and shells. If we could shoot at [LTTE leader] Prabakharan with a catapult we would not have to spend foreign exchange.”

Fighting Prabaharan is different from killing innocent Tamil civilians who have no part in the fight between the government and the LTTE. It is the view of many intellectuals that Sri-lanka state is on a terrorist path.

For these reasons, all democratic politicians of the world had expressed in no uncertain term to Sri-Lanka that it should avoid war and settle the ethnic political problem through negotiations. The U.S. Ambassador for Sri Lanka, Robert Blake, addressing a seminar organised by Fullbright Association on "Sri Lanka: the Way Forward," in Colombo on Friday, categorically stated that Sri Lanka's conflict cannot be won by military means. As an observant diplomat working in Sri-lanka he had this conviction for a long time. He at the same time warned the ethno-centric (communal) Sinhala MR government against resettlement and development plans that change the ethnic composition of Eastern districts, restrictions on livelihood, and slow economic development. Mr Blake must have been disturbed by the “Rise of the East” celebration conducted by the racist Sinhala politicians and the 100% Sinhala army at great expense to the exchequer to the resentment and disappointment of the elected Tamil representatives of the Eastern province. The East is part of the Tamil’s homeland.

The other important personalities to give saner counsel to the Sinhala chauvinists were about 50 US lawmakers. They have written to President George W. Bush asking him to step up American efforts to help resolve the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka through peaceful resolution.

The Sinhala government had disregarded these offerings of wisdom and chosen the tragic path of terrorising the Tamils to subjugate them to second-class citizens and rob their traditional homeland. With this backdrop, MR’s visit to justify his criminal actions against humanity at the UN august assembly and to claim respect will be an impossible task as UN representatives from other countries are made of sterner stuff than MR. For example Mr Alan Rock who is a giant among intellectual giants can read between lines.

According to Simon Gardner of Reuters in Colombo (Sept 21), MR’s attempt to defend the likely censure motion of the UN on Sri-Lanaka against its Human Rights violation on Tuesday 25 September is unlikely to gain ground. His endeavour to attract aid to fund the unjust war is doomed to fail.

Two quotations from the Bard comes to my mind.

Truth is Truth. To the end of reckoning.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

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