Lanka’s most intractable problem

Extract from the Statement by Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights at the High-Level Segment of the 10th Session of the UN Human Rights Council Geneva, 2nd March, 2009

The challenges we face are many. As we overcome some of the stiffest hurdles, new adversities rise up to meet us. This is a common phenomenon in a fast-evolving conflict situation. But we are confident that we will win the day, strengthened by our belief in democratic values and human rights and, above all, by our dedication to a search for a stable peace with honour and dignity for everyone.

For years, the most intractable problem we had to deal with in Sri Lanka was terrorism. The conflict which erupted from time to time caused much suffering to men, women and children of every ethnicity and religion and linguistic group which go together to make up the richly diverse Sri Lankan polity. Our Government is conscious that efforts should have been made earlier to resolve what was a political conflict by political means. This we are committed to doing. However, when there was a serious attempt at such a solution in 1987, the intransigence of just one group out of many led to terrorism taking on a central role.

Consensus

Since then, despite many attempts by many Governments to reach a negotiated consensus towards a durable peace, such negotiations were abandoned continuously by the forces of terrorism. That scourge returned redoubled in intensity after every attempt at negotiation by Government, and it is only now that we are close to eradicating it from our island nation’s shores.

But, just as no man is an island, even islands do not exist in splendid isolation. Soon enough Sri Lanka’s terrorists came to be globally acknowledged as a menace not only to Sri Lanka but to people in many countries across several continents, through assassination, narco-terrorism and gun-running.

Fundraising

But we are grateful that at least some of the countries affected have, by banning the terrorist organisation and striving to limit their fundraising and other criminal activities, enabled Sri Lanka to finally eliminate threats to her sovereignty and territorial integrity. But we need your continuing cooperation and support to aid us to eliminate terrorism and foster peace in our land, and a more peaceful polity too for all or you.

This intense effort on our part, occurred as I have noted after manifold efforts to seek a settlement through discussion. We tried direct discussions in 1985 in Bhutan with all armed militant groups, only to find that one of them took advantage of these discussions to destroy the leadership of others.

When those talks then failed, after however the LTTE, the most intransigent group, had immensely strengthened its own position, we thought we had achieved a settlement with Indian support in 1987. When that was subverted by the LTTE, admittedly helped in this by political changes in both Sri Lanka and India, two of our Presidents personally reached out to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1990 and in 1994 and talks were held in Colombo and in the Northern Peninsula. Finally, with international facilitation we talked in several cities in Thailand and Japan and Norway and even here in snowbound Switzerland, in the period from 2002 to 2006.

Our efforts were all unsuccessful. On each of these occasions the LTTE abandoned attempts to bring peace and ultimately returned to the tactics they know best - the tactics of terrorism. In two instances they used suicide bombers in attempts to kill the leaders they had negotiated with, just as they had killed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India for his pains in having negotiated a system of devolution acceptable to all parties except the LTTE.

Negotiations

In 2006, the LTTE returned to negotiations from which they had unilaterally withdrawn in 2003.

Whilst appearing sporadically at talks they tried to assassinate the Army Commander by using a pregnant suicide bomber, and then launched two massive attacks on our forces in the North and East of the country. It was only after that that His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa resolved that the right of self defence which was contained in the Ceasefire Agreement of 2002, an Agreement violated nearly 4000 times by the LTTE according to the Scandinavian Monitors, meant preventing such sudden attacks by destroying the strongholds, the airstrips, the arsenals, that had been built up during the Ceasefire period.

The people of Sri Lanka have, in successive elections, demonstrated their support for his resolve to stay the course.

Thus today we are able to finally see the light at the end of the long and dangerous tunnel through which we groped our way for more than two decades. Our march to military mastery over the forces of terror has not been easy. While our advances over the past two and a half years have outstripped all expectations, we have had to rethink and refine our strategies because of the intransigence of the LTTE in its refusal to allow civilians to leave the theatre of conflict. Thus the progress of our forces is slower now, in view of the even greater care that has to be exercised with regard to civilians.

Earlier, when we declared a safe zone, the LTTE moved guns into the area and used them without regard for civilians, as was indicated to us by the Bishop of Jaffna, in asking our Government to extend the safe zone. We have now declared a safe zone on the coast, which makes it less easy for the LTTE to continue with its dastardly tactics, especially since their last murderous cadres are restricted to an area of less than forty square kilometres.

But, as Sir John Holmes, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, stressed at the conclusion of his recent visit to Sri Lanka, our primary concern must be the people now in the safe area but not allowed to escape from there by the LTTE.

Civilians

For this reason the United Nations and other international friends and partners of Sri Lanka have joined us in the last few weeks in urging the LTTE to let go of the civilians they are now holding by force. We are glad about this, though we could have wished such calls had been made categorically much earlier, when the tactics of the LTTE in corralling these civilians as they withdrew were manifest. Our calls for innocent Sri Lankans to be let free go back to September last year.

To be continued