Spurning LTTE attempt to surrender during the final battle likely to be a key issue at coming presidential poll

by Shamindra Ferdinando (The Island, December 12, 2009)

The government yesterday said that a fresh attempt was being made to blame the Sri Lankan government for turning down an LTTE offer to surrender a few days before the army wiped out the last organised LTTE resistance on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.

A top government spokesman told The Island that this was an Opposition strategy to denigrate the Sri Lanka government before the international community. Responding to our queries, he said that the Opposition had fuelled speculation that the Norwegians had contacted Basil Rajapaksa, MP after the LTTE sought their help to facilitate an unconditional surrender. He said that Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had been accused of dismissing the LTTE appeal when it was brought to his notice by his brother Basil before directing the 58 Division to finish off the Tigers.

This was likely to be a key opposition standpoint at the presidential election.

Shortly after the army had wiped out the remaining LTTE cadres, including Velupillai Prabhakaran in the third week of May during a series of battles, the Tamil Diaspora, too, accused the government of spurning an LTTE bid to surrender. Referring to a statement attributed to former Army Chief General Sarath Fonseka, at his inaugural press briefing at the JAIC Hilton, an aide to President Rajapaksa said that the Opposition presidential candidate had declared that the offensive could not have been halted even if the international community demanded it. The press quoted the war veteran as saying that they (the military) had reached a point of no return.

The government emphasised that the LTTE had ample time to surrender had it really wanted to before being cornered on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon. The government said that the top LTTE leadership could have easily negotiated its surrender through the ICRC as the international relief agency had a presence on the ground to facilitate the evacuation of the sick, wounded and the elderly.

"In fact, we expected them to make overtures through the ICRC but they never did," the aide to the President said. He regretted that the Opposition had sought to make political capital out of purely a security issue at a time even the harshest critics of the government had changed their approach. He was referring to the US position recently articulated by Ambassador Robert Blake that the defeat of the LTTE had created a tremendous opportunity for the people of Sri Lanka. "For the first time in over a generation, Sri Lankans live in a country that is not divided by war or marred by violence," he told the media last Wednesday after meeting President Rajapaksa.

The government had also conveniently forgotten that almost 300,000 held by the LTTE, too, escaped during the final stage of the battle and reached the army-held lines. Among them were Prabhakaran’s parents and over 11,000 LTTE cadres, including child combatants, the government said. Had they bothered to check what the army and the Justice and Law Reforms Ministry had accomplished over the past few months, they would know that the prisoners of war were well taken care of. In fact, Justice and Law Reforms Minister Milinda Moragoda went to the extent of moving some of the child soldiers to the Hindu College, Ratmalana, the government said.

War crime charges to haunt incessantly until Sri Lanka clears the doubts

(December 12, Colombo - Lanka Polity) The incident of alleged shooting at a group of cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) political wing cadres is repeatedly haunting in political circles and on December 09 Sri Lankan ambassador to UN Paitha Kohona was queried about it by Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Presenter Sarah Dingle. Kohona was the Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka by the time and  he is also a citizen of Australia.

DINGLE: In the last days of the civil war, two political leaders of the rebel Tamil Tiger fighters tried to lay down their arms and surrender. The incident is mentioned in a 2009 US State Department report to Congress, on possible violations of international humanitarian law in Sri Lanka, from January until the end of May this year.

The report says the leaders, Nadesan and Puleedevan spoke to international and domestic figures, who acted as intermediaries with the then Foreign Secretary Dr Palitha Kohona to negotiate a surrender. Nadesan requested a UN witness, but was told he had the Sri Lankan President's guarantee of safety.

On May the 18th, Nadesan and Puleedevan led about a dozen men and women under a white flag to waiting Sri Lankan army troops. A Tamil eyewitness said the soldiers fired on them with machine guns. Everyone in the group was killed.

Dr Palitha Kohona is now Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United Nations. He is also an Australian citizen, and according to Hansard, a former senior official with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The ABC asked him what his role was in arranging the surrender.

KOHONA: Absolutely none, because I was in foreign ministry I had nothing to do with the defence ministry or the defence forces, I had no role in arranging anything, and I don't think anything was arranged anyway.

DINGLE: So there was no surrender agreed to?

KOHONA: Actually not as far as I am concerned, I don't think anybody else was involved in such a surrender either.

DINGLE: So did anyone contact you regarding the surrender of those two figures?

KOHONA: Anybody from the defence establishment, no.

DINGLE: Did anyone at all contact you about the surrender of those two figures?

KOHONA: There was an attempt to wake me up in the middle of the night, and I told them that I was not the person to contact about those demands.
There was a general query about surrendering, and I told them that there I was the wrong person, that I had nothing to do with surrendering and asked them to go and deal with the matter in the way it ought to be dealt with.

DINGLE: And what was that way?

KOHONA: I'm sorry, I can't answer stupid questions of this nature.

DINGLE: Three weeks after the shooting, Sri Lanka's army chief General Sarath Fonseka was reported as saying that the military had to overlook traditional rules of war and kill LTTE rebels who had come under white flags to surrender.

Don Rothwell is a professor of international law at the Australian National University. He says as a diplomat Dr Kohona has immunity from prosecution, but recently international law courts have begun to question this principle in the case of possible war crimes.

ROTHWELL: There's nothing to suggest Dr Kohona was directly responsible for committing these alleged war crimes, though international law does recognise principles of what's called command responsibility, where if someone had direct command whether it's legal or political with respect to the commission of these types of offences.

DINGLE: Professor Rothwell says in this case, there is enough material to launch a preliminary investigation.

ROTHWELL: Dr Kohona is a dual Australian Sri Lankan citizen, the fact that he is an Australian citizen automatically activates obligations for Australia to investigate this matter at the legal level, but the fact that he was a former high profile official for the Australian Government representing Australia in international negotiations, I think perhaps places an even stronger responsibility on Australia to at least conduct the initial investigations into this matter.

DINGLE: Dr Palitha Kohona.

KOHONA:
First and foremost, the allegations need to be substantiated, no country goes around investigating silly accusations based on innuendo and unsubstantiated facts.
DINGLE: It was reported that you once said only loser countries, countries that lose the war, get tried for war crimes. Is that true?

KOHONA: Historically that is a fact.

DINGLE: Both the federal government and the Australian Federal Police say they are aware of the US State Department's report. The AFP says it hasn't received any referral to investigate Dr Kohona for alleged war crimes. A spokesman for the Attorney General's Department says investigation and prosecution by the country in which criminal conduct occurred, is the most appropriate way to bring an alleged war criminal to justice.

London datelined PTI news report dated 23 May, under the title "Britain and Norway tried to save two top LTTE leaders: report" said, Britain and Norway made a last minute bid to save the lives of two Tamil Tiger leaders, but in vain, as Sri Lankan troops closed in, the media reported today.


It was further reported that the LTTE's political chief, B Nadesan, and 'peace secretariat' head, S Pulidevan, had attempted to surrender, The Daily Telegraph said, in a report quoting Vijay Nambiar.

According to a London datelined PTI news report David Miliband British foreign Minister and Norwegian Minister Erik Solheim and UN officials were all involved in trying to save the two proclaimed LTTE terrorists - B.Nadesan and Pulidevan.

The men were later found dead amid claims that they were shot while waving a white flag, and Western diplomats warned that the Sri Lankan government could face a war crimes investigation.

The World Socialist Website ran a detailed story about the incident and it is as follows:

British newspapers expose cold-blooded killing of LTTE leaders in Sri Lanka

By Robert Stevens
3 June 2009

The British press last week revealed that senior leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were in negotiations with British and American diplomats to surrender, immediately prior to their killing by the Sri Lankan army on May 18. Also involved in the talks was the United Nations secretary general’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar.

The Guardian and the Sunday Times both published reports stating that Balasingham Nadesan, the leader of the LTTE’s political wing, and Seevaratnam Puleedevan, the head of its peace secretariat, held talks with Nambiar through a series of intermediaries, including a journalist and a delegation of British diplomats.

The Guardian states that the LTTE leaders also made further contact with Norwegian Environment and Development Cooperation Minister Erik Solheim prior to their deaths. Solheim had been involved as a special envoy in attempts to broker a peace agreement following the 2002 ceasefire in Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war.

The Sunday Times article by journalist Marie Colvin was headlined, “Tigers begged me to broker surrender.” She explained how the initial contact between the LTTE, British and United States officials, and the United Nations had been facilitated through her.

Colvin has covered the civil war in Sri Lanka since being “smuggled into territory eight years ago” in order “to investigate reports that the government was blocking food and medical supplies to half a million Tamils.” She had met and came to know Nadesan and Puleedevan since that time.

The Guardian details how the two leaders of the LTTE attempted to agree to a last minute deal with the Sri Lankan government just hours before they were killed by the army in the early hours of May 18—while in the process of surrendering.

A British official states that UK involvement was “at most indirect”, but the article includes a quote from Nambiar saying that he had had “direct contact” with British diplomats in New York and also with an unnamed British minister. Nambiar added, “There was a ministerial demarche [a formal diplomatic representation] to the secretary general from the UK office in New York.”

Nambiar passed on the information obtained by the Times journalist regarding the proposal of Nadesan and Puleedevan to surrender to the Sri Lankan government. He says that he also spoke to Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona about the proposal.

The government had no intention of brokering a ceasefire or allowing any surrender by the LTTE leadership. Nambiar told the Guardian, “The Sri Lankan government did not say that they would accept the surrender. They said it may be too late.”

After being contacted by the LTTE regarding the surrender, Solheim “then contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Sri Lankan government”.

A text message was then sent from Kohona to the Red Cross, which read, “Just walk across to the troops, slowly! With a white flag and comply with instructions carefully. The soldiers are nervous about suicide bombers.”

In Colvin’s Times article she described the harrowing conditions facing the LTTE fighters as they were cornered into a tiny strip of jungle and a beach area during the final army offensive: “Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were trapped with them, hiding in hand-dug trenches, enduring near constant bombardment.”

“For several days I had been the intermediary between the Tiger leadership and the United Nations as the army pressed in on the last enclave at the end of a successful military campaign to defeat the rebellion,” she writes. “Nadesan had asked me to relay three points to the UN: they would lay down their arms, they wanted a guarantee of safety from the Americans or British, and they wanted an assurance that the Sri Lankan government would agree to a political process that would guarantee the rights of the Tamil minority.

“Through highly placed British and American officials I had established contact with the UN special envoy in Colombo, Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff to Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary-general. I had passed on the Tigers’ conditions for surrender, which he had said he would relay to the Sri Lankan government.”

Colvin corroborates the Guardian’s report. She states that in conversation with Nambiar during the morning of May 18, he told her that he had been told by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse that the two leaders would be able to surrender by hoisting “a white flag high”.
Colvin stated, “Once more, the UN 24-hour control centre in New York patched me through to Nambiar in Colombo, where it was 5.30 a.m. on Monday. I woke him up.

“I told him the Tigers had laid down their arms. He said he had been assured by Mahinda Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan president, that Nadesan and Puleedevan would be safe in surrendering. All they had to do was ‘hoist a white flag high,’ he said.”

Shortly after this Colvin lost contact with Nadesan’s satellite phone and spoke to an LTTE contact in South Africa, to whom she relayed the instructions to hoist the white flag.

Colvin reports, “A Tamil who was in a group that managed to escape the killing zone described what happened. This source, who later spoke to an aid worker, said Nadesan and Puleedevan walked towards Sri Lankan army lines with a white flag in a group of about a dozen men and women. He said the army started firing machineguns at them. Nadesan’s wife, a Sinhalese, yelled in Sinhala at the soldiers, ‘He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him.’ She was also shot down.”

The incident underscores the ruthlessness with which the Sri Lankan government and army slaughtered the LTTE leadership on the morning of May 18. Virtually all of the top LTTE leaders, including LTTE chief V. Prabhakaran, died in circumstances that have not been adequately explained. The Sri Lankan government claimed that Prabhakaran was killed in a gun battle trying to flee, but he may well have met the same fate as Nadesan and Puleedevan.

Certainly the army pursued the destruction of the last pocket of LTTE resistance with criminal indifference to the consequences of nearly a quarter of a million Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone. While Rajapakse’s government denies responsibility for any civilian deaths, the latest reports based on leaked UN estimates put the death toll at more than 20,000 since January.

Macho Rajapakse's metamorphosis to a mother; a definite failure in Sri Lanka polity

(December 12, Colombo - Lanka Polity) In 2005, when Mahinda Rajapakse was contesting the presidential for the first time, he was portrayed by his propaganda managers as a macho personality who can run up the ladders of a stage waving like a hero of a Kollywood film. His appearance was vis-a-vis United National Party (UNP) candidate Ranil Wickramasinghe who did not exhibit the macho outlook that is expected by most of the voters of Sri Lanka from a President.

People overlooked Wickramasinghe’s caliber as a seasoned neo liberal politician to the shallow patriotism of Rajapakse. One reason behind his victory was the macho personality.

In any case, as the President, Rajapakse flanked by his two younger brothers, was as hard as a rock before the Tamil nationalist rebellion. He led the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) and defeated the Tigers ultimately.

Just six months after the war victory he is currently facing a tooth and nail battle in the early presidential against his ex-Army chief retired General Sarath Fonseka who is the opposition common candidate.

Fonseka is considered a dominating character with all macho qualities among the Army ranks and now the pro-government media further decorate these characteristics with allegations regarding a charge against young lieutenant Sarath Fonseka over seducing a female domestic aide of an Army officer in early 70s.

Sri Lankan average voter who is not a sensible person in any sense usually respect these macho characteristics. For instance, famous actor Kamal Addaraarachchi was once charged with seducing a minor girl with whom he admitted had sex with consent but against law. In this case, there were more people that sympathized Addaraarachchi than the minor girl who was victimized by an elder.

Since the opponent Sarath Fonseka has more macho characteristics, the President Mahinda Rajapakse’s campaign managers now try to create an image of a motherly person that can cuddle the infants for Rajapakse.

It is a strategy that can fail in Sri Lanka where the polity loves the dictators, domineering rulers, swindles, rogues and the persons of that sort. In recent elections, Sri Lankans have elected all sorts of bad characters like mass murderers, thugs, thieves etc.

Our advise to the President and his campaigners is not to suspend marketing the conventional trademarks of the President, the moustache, the manly appearance and other such things not completely relevant to ruling the country.

Ruling and politics are different genres after all at least in this island.

Online petition to free Thissainayagam

(December 11, Colombo - Lanka Polity Free Tissa campaign has launched an online petition addressed to the UN General Secretary Ban Ko-Moon and International Governments (United States, Britain, India, Canada, Australia) urging to work for the release of Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam. .

The content of the petition is as follows:

I am deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of Jayaprakash Sittambalam (J.S.) Tissainayagam, a veteran journalist and columnist. On August 31, 2009, a Colombo High Court sentenced Mr. Tissainayagam to 20 years in prison. The charges brought against Mr. Tissainayagam primarily accused him of writings intended to create communal disharmony.

The sentencing of Tissainayagam, named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and singled out by President Obama as an example of a persecuted journalist, came amid a growing crackdown on the country's free media. Sri Lanka has seen 14 of its members killed during the current regime's rule and 30 more flee in fear of their lives. Those who seek to report the truth must not be suppressed, threatened or killed.

I am therefore writing to kindly ask you to take the following actions immediately to help safeguard the voice of the press:

1. Ensure the safety and security of Mr. Tissainayagam in jail

2. Work to ensure the immediate release of Mr. Tissainayagam

3. Work to immediately alleviate the current atmosphere of media suppression prevailing in the country - including the threatening, killing and jailing of journalists and media workers

4. Ensure the safety and security of Mr. Tissainayagam after his release

I hope that you will be able to intervene in a timely and effective manner to ensure the safety of Mr. Tissainayagam and of Sri Lanka's independent press.

Click here to sign the petition.

Lawyers of Sri Lanka civil society initiate a new association to protect democracy and human rights

(December 10, Colombo - Lanka Polity)The leading human rights lawyers of Sri Lanka have formed an association of lawyers to face the challenges to democracy and to establish rule of law in the country.

The Association will be launched today with its inaugural meeting and press conference held from 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm at OPA Auditorium, 275/75, Stanley Wijesundera Mawatha, off Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo-

 Lal Wijenayake, K.S. Ratnavale0, Chandra Kumarage,  J.C.Weliamuna and Sudarshana Gunawardana are among the conveners of the association.

Wijaya Godakumbura's award still not news in Sri Lanka

(December 10, Colombo - Lanka Polity)Wijaya Godakumbura' a Sri Lankan physician inspired by the deaths and mutilation of people by burns caused by unsafe kerosene lamps ran a safe bottle lamp project to win an international award for its excellence although none of Sri Lanka government, civil society and media focussed attention to him so far.

The news regarding Godakumbura's award will also be hidden from public in Sri Lanka where press is strictly controlled by the ruling regime. However, the safe bottle lamp that does not break and spill out kerosene will save more lives in unelectrified rural areas of the country..

World Challenge '09 organized by BBC has been announced after receiving over 900 nominations and a record breaking 127,800 votes from around the world.

Safe Bottle Lamp Project, from Sri Lanka, received the first prize of US$20,000 at a special ceremony held at The Hague. The 2 runners-up were also present and received US$10,000 each. They are Danamon Go-Green, form Indonesia and BTTR Ventures, from the USA.

Achim Steiner - Executive Director of UNEP was the guest speaker at this year’s ceremony. In his engaging speech he commented on the challenges facing this month’s Climate Change summit in Copenhagen and welcomed the winners of this year’s competition.

Fibre optic backbone for Sri Lanka's broadband services

(December 09, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Sri Lanka has begun an initiative to roll out a fibre optic backbone for broadband services, which will help improve access outside of Colombo and reduce costs significantly, says the Information Technology and Communication Agency (ICTA).

Rollout is expected to begin in the second quarter of next year and will take 9-12 months, said Reshan Devapura, chief operating officer ICTA. .

Internet subscribers are estimated at 1 for every 100 people (in 2007), up from 0.2 in 2000, says a recent World Bank report. 

Sri Lanka is to compile a government policy for the internet broadband sector, says  Sri Lanka’s Telecom Regulatory Commission (TRC).