SRI LANKA: Norwegian Truce Dead – All Sides Agree

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Feb 23 2007 (IPS) - Five years after the Sri Lankan government signed a Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement (CFA) with Tamil separatist rebels, all actors are now agreed that the document now remains solely on paper.

Five years after the Sri Lankan government signed a Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement (CFA) with Tamil separatist rebels, all actors are now agreed that the document now remains solely on paper.

On Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the CFA, Erik Solheim, the Norwegian diplomat most closely associated with the pact, said his country would do its best to salvage it provided the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government are ready. “Norway is willing to go the extra mile to assist their peace endeavours at their request.’’

But in Colombo there was little public support for the CFA’s continuance. The anniversary saw thousands of pro-Sinhala nationalists, supported by saffron-clad Buddhist monks and Marxist radicals, marching through the streets calling for its scrapping. ”We will continue our agitations until the CFA is abrogated,’’ Dambara Amila Thero, a monk, told IPS.

Thursday also saw an intensification of fighting and there were reports of a ground offensive into Tamil areas in the north by the Sri Lankan army which has kept up steady pressure on the LTTE after driving the group out of the eastern areas last year. An official statement said the Sri Lankan navy had sunk two boats suspected to be carrying rebels on the north-western coast, killing nine people.

In a statement, the LTTE warned that the military offensive would only succeed in adding to the ”bloodstained pages of the island’s history.’’ The statement added: “Even though today it (CFA) exists only on paper, it remains a unique document in the search for an end to the national conflict in the island of Sri Lanka.’’

Of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people 74 percent are Sinhala speakers and follow the Buddhist faith while Tamil is spoken by 18 percent of the people who are Hindus, Muslims or Christians. Many see the genesis of the conflict to an act passed by parliament in 1956 making Sinhala the sole official language of Sri Lanka.

According to the Scandinavian-staffed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), nearly 4,000 people have lost their lives during the past 15 months in contrast to less than 130 deaths during the three years that immediately followed the signing of the truce on Feb. 22, 2002.

In a statement released on Thursday, the SLMM noted that ”a large number of persons have been seriously injured and thousands of families have been fleeing from areas of fighting. In contrast, during the three previous years less than 130 deaths related to the conflict were recorded’’.

The mission found it necessary to remind the belligerents that they were ‘’committed to refrain from conduct that would undermine the spirit of the agreement,’’ and also restate the objectives for which it was set up: – to inquire into and report on violations of the ceasefire agreement – to assist the (two) parties with implementing the ceasefire – to serve as a means of communication between the parties.

”Following the agreement, a considerable reduction of violence was reached, particularly welcomed by the families in the north and east who had lived for two decades in areas ravaged by war. At the time of the five-year milestone, however, abductions, harassments, killings, shelling and air strikes are taking place at a warlike level,’’ the SLMM statement recorded.

While sporadic violence has always punctuated the ceasefire, the current escalation in fighting began after the November 2005 elections in which the moderate United National Party (UNP) candidate, Ranil Wickremesinghe, narrowly lost to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) of Mahinda Rajapakse.

The upset was mainly attributed to Rajapakse’s grand strategy of allying his SLFP with two staunch ultra-nationalist opponents of the LTTE – the Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), controlled by Buddhist monks.

Before the elections that brought him to power Rajapakse had signed an agreement with the JVP pledging to ‘fully review’ the CFA, if he was elected. The allies have been holding him to that promise and find a military solution to the conflict.

According to Omalpe Sobitha Thero, general secretary of the JHU, the ceasefire actually ended when the Sri Lankan army captured the eastern town of Mavilaru from the LTTE last year.

The LTTE has viewed Rajapakse’s anti-LTTE coalition, known as the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), as unlikely to adhere to commitments, including those for power devolution, made by the UNP.

While the government is yet to respond officially to the LTTE declaration that the ceasefire was dead, President Rajapakse had, in an interview with the BBC earlier this month, described the pact as a ‘mistake’. ”Through the peace pact, we have demarcated areas called LTTE-controlled areas, and they have taken the rights of the people through this pact,” he was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the UNP said it accepted ‘full responsibility’ for signing the CFA. Its assistant secretary Jayalath Jayawardhene explained to journalists that its sole motive was to end the violence and suffering that had gone on for decades. ”Not only were 60,000 people killed and 30,000 disabled but nearly a million people were internally displaced in Sri Lanka by 2002,’’ the parliamentarian said.