Ill-Conceived responses to the abrogation of a flattened Ceasefire - 18th January 2008

'''The Peace Secretariat is astonished at what seems the general amnesia afflicting many persons who pontificate about the recent abrogation of the Ceasefire Agreement. Whilst initially this Agreement was signed in a spirit of idealism, it rapidly became clear that the LTTE was unwilling to work in accordance with this spirit.'''

There were two principal aims of the CFA. The first was, obviously, to Cease Fire. But, from the very beginning, the Ceasefire Agreement was violated. In the over five years ending in April 2007, when the SLMM stopped issuing determinations, the LTTE was ruled to have violated the Ceasefire 3830 times, whereas the Government of Sri Lanka violated it 351 times.

Recent statements by the new head of the LTTE political wing, suggesting that the LTTE had not really violated the CFA, and was the target of misleading allegations, may be credited by the pontificators. The SLMM statistics prove the opposite. In fact there were 7669 allegations against the LTTE, of which just short of 50% were ruled by the SLMM as violations. There were 2053 complaints against the GOSL of which just over 17% were ruled as violations.

A selection of some of the SLMM rulings, now available on the SLMM website|, is attached to this statement. They include the ruling of the SLMM where it ‘questions whether there is still a Ceasefire in Sri Lanka‘, a ruling issued on 13th January 2006 after ‘the latest attack on Sri Lanka navy soldiers in Cheddikulam’ which the ‘SLMM strongly condemns …..The LTTE claims that “the People” are behind the attacks on the military. SLMM finds this explanation unacceptable. It is safe to say that LTTE involvement cannot be ruled out and we find the LTTE’s indifference to these attacks worrying’.

Another ruling that should be studied is about what the SLMM termed ‘The Tragic Delft Incident‘ of February 6th 2003 when an SLMM monitor (Mr Skarkvik who recently served in Sri Lanka again) discovered

a) ‘1 x 23 MM Gun barrel (built as Anti-Aircraft) b) 1 x Complete mechanism for the 23 MM Barrel c) 1 x Complete steel mounting for the 23 MM gun d) Several hundred rounds of 23MM ammunition in a plastic barrel and 2 metal boxes e) Several hundred rounds of AK 47 assault rifle ammunition in a sealed metal container’

These were on a ‘trawler being towed by a speedboat with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) crew on board …. The Captain on board the LTTE speedboat stated that both boats belonged to the LTTE’. Mr Skarkvik found the guns when he ‘went into the fish-hold where he removed a new wooden panel with new nails and thus broke through a false wall into a hidden compartment below deck’.

The Head of SLMM then ‘suggested the following: 1. The trawler should be towed to the nearest port by the SLN 2. SLN would confiscate the military equipment and do their own inspection of the trawler 3. SLMM should be responsible for the three LTTE cadres and transport them in a SLMM vehicle to the LTTE controlled territory’

However, following radio contact by one of the LTTE crew members ‘with his Headquarters'…one LTTE crew member went to the back of the trawler. Just as the conversation was over, a second crew member already had a bottle and a lighter in his hands inside the wheelhouse. One monitor took the lighter from him and threw it into the sea. At the same moment the SLMM monitors saw that all the back of the trawler was already on fire. Then the monitors ran to the front of the trawler and jumped into the sea. The monitors were in the sea for 10-15 minutes until they were picked up by the SLN vessel. According to the SLN personnel and the SLMM interpreter on board the SLN vessel, the LTTE crew members took their own lives while the monitors were in the sea.’

All this is strong stuff, but the pontificators do not care, just as they do not care about the SLMM ruling about ‘The Sea Incident on the 14th of June 2003’ or the 11th May 2006 ruling, when the LTTE shot at a vessel on which a Norwegian monitor was traveling, entitled ‘LTTE is seriously violating the CFA with sea movements and attacks on Sri Lankan navy’ or the ruling of April 2nd 2003 on ‘The Attack on the Chinese Trawler’ or the ruling on 14th July 2002 on ‘Two SLMM Monitors held against their will onboard a LTTE vessel’ or the ruling, or the ruling on 16th June 2006 on the ‘claymore mine attack on a civilian bus near Kebetigollewa’.

So, when the pontificators claim to be sorry for the people of Sri Lanka that the SLMM is leaving, it is clear they care not an iota for the CFA, which had been violated with almost total impunity by the LTTE over five long years. They ignore also the fact that the LTTE had thrown out monitors from three of the five countries constituting the Mission, which led the SLMM in May last year to stop making deliberations. Neither when the Monitors were decimated, nor when the SLMM stopped delivering deliberations, did our sanctimonious pontificators raise objects as vociferously as they do today. Whilst we assume most of them are foolish rather than malicious, it is possible that at least some of them were not unhappy then that the categorical evidence provided by the SLMM against the LTTE and its frivolous attitude to the CFA would no longer mount up.

The second purpose of the CFA was to institute negotiations leading to a peace settlement. The LTTE did come to negotiations for just over a year after the CFA, but there seems to have been no continuity in their approach. After they withdrew in March 2003, instead of there being concerted attempts to bring them back to the negotiating table, reactions from the pontificators generally sought to placate them by urging both parties to negotiate. This unproductive bleating still continues, the latest idiocy coming from Amnesty International which calls on ‘the Sri Lanka government to uphold the CFA ceasefire agreement and enter into immediate talks with the LTTE’. Obviously – as the redundancy suggests - they do not understand what CFA means, and that an Agreement must be upheld by more than one person, and that you cannot enter into talks with someone who has resolutely refused to talk for 14 months (or 57 if you exclude one and a half meetings in Geneva since, of the three sessions scheduled by mutual agreement in 2006, one proved entirely abortive when the LTTE refused to talk at all, while another saw just one day of talks after which they were withdrawn after another infamous call to their headquarters in Kilinochchi).

There is however a third aspect of the Peace Process, which was made clear when the GOSL in 2000 appointed a Facilitator. This was the understanding that Sri Lanka’s political problems required a political solution. Problems of governance had elicited various responses, including terrorist ones, but these last were not threatening until, in the early eighties, by a process of hamfisted violence accompanied by belittling of democratic forces, the then government indicated that confrontation alone was its hallmark.

In the aftermath of that approach, negotiations proved unsuccessful, in part because the LTTE tended to use negotiations to destroy less extreme Tamil forces. This began with the decimation of TELO in 1986, went on with the killing of the TULF leadership in 1989, and was repeated with assaults on EPDP, PLOTE and the murder of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar during the current Ceasefire Agreement. Dignified as the LTTE seemed to be by the CFA, other Tamils were sidelined, and it is a tribute to the leadership of EPDP and PLOTE and of course the TULF in the form of Mr Anandasangaree that they have continued to raise sane voices. The abrogation of the CFA should lead the international community, and in particular the Facilitator and the Co-Chairs, to treat them more seriously and support their efforts to evoke a political solution that will uphold democratic and pluralistic values.

Over a hundred years ago the distinguished novelist, George Eliot, was reflecting on massive intellectual changes that had occurred in her lifetime. When she was a child, she said, there had been three absolutes that were absorbed in her upbringing, God, Immortality and Duty. Following the scientific discoveries and the intellectual innovations of the Victorian era, she said, the first was incomprehensible and the second inconceivable. But, she said, that did not take away from the importance of the third, indeed it made it even more essential.

A Ceasefire Agreement with the LTTE has proved impossible if not incomprehensible. Negotations with the LTTE are inconceivable. But the importance of a political solution on the basis of negotiations with democratic pluralistic forces remains absolute. The Government of Sri Lanka understands the reality of all these aspects. Unless the pontificators, at least those in the international community whose goodwill is genuine, do not understand the whole reality, they will not be able to assist the peace process in any meaningful fashion.

[Further information http://www.peaceinsrilanka.com/peace2005/Insidepage/SCOPPDaily_Report/CeasefireattachmenttoSCOPPReportonIll-Conceived_responses-English-Release.pdf]

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha

Secretary General

Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process