Madhu on fire

By Amantha Perera

A week during which over 80 combatants died in the fighting the lime- light was more on Colombo, initially due to the murders of the two ICRC workers and then the mass expulsion of Tamils staying in lodges in and around Colombo.

Last weekend saw some of the worst fighting reported in the volatile  areas north west of Vavuniya. The area has been a hive of activity with the army trying to breach into Tiger held areas according to truce monitors. Last week's episode proved that the troops had been operating in areas at least 10 km ahead of the forward defence lines.  Heavy fighting had been reported in the area since mid-March and once again it exploded.

On June 2 night artillery points used by the army at Pampaimadhu, north of Vavuniya came under Tiger artillery attack around 8 p.m. The area has been used as an artillery point by the army for sometime now.

The Tigers said that the existence of the gun position had been raised with the SLMM  sometime ago and they had sought action to remove the point. "It is the no man's area and we have been asking it to be removed," Tiger military spokesperson Rasiah Ilanthirayan said.

Successfully repulsed

The military said that the Tigers had initiated the attack and also tried to breach the line with a ground attack - "during the LTTE artillery and mortar fire they also attempted to infiltrate the FDLs which were successfully repulsed," the Media Center for National Security said.

However Ilanthirayan denied that there was any attempt to breach the line, "it was just artillery and mortar fire."

 The Tigers had fired 130 mm  artillery and mortars at the base.

The ground attack however took place further north of Pampaimadhu, at Mullikulam and Vilathikulam north west of Vavuniya. Both sides agreed that fierce ground battles took place in the area.

"It started around 8 p.m and went on till the next day, the army was moving in two lines on a westerly route and our cadres cut them off," Ilanthirayan said.

Retaliatory attacks

"The army  successfully repulsed and counter attacked inflicting heavy damage to the Tigers. In the retaliatory attack, 52 terrorists were killed and large numbers were wounded. The terrorists who fled in the face of the army retaliatory attack had abandoned a haul of arms and ammunition," the MCNS said.

The Tigers said that  30 soldiers had been killed in the attack and in fact tried to hand over 13 bodies through the ICRC. The army accepted two and the remaining 11 were cremated by the Tigers.

The military denied the high casualty figure quoted by the Tigers and said that only 13 soldiers had died.  The area came under heavy air attacks in the ensuing four days after the attack.

Airforce jets also bombed Tiger artillery positions at Puliyankulam, north of Omanthai close to the A9 highway and at Palampiddi close to Madhu. The Palampiddi mortar positions were again bombed on June 4 morning as well. The Defence Ministry said that Tiger gun positions were bombed.

The area calmed considerably after the battles over the weekend, but the trouble in Colombo meant it went quite unnoticed. 

SLRC murders add to Government's worries

They stood in front of the Fort Railway Station, in the afternoon heat. Some in sunshades and under the cover of umbrellas, others their mouths shut tight with black bands. Locals, foreigners and some from the UN staff were among the protestors who gathered at the Fort Railway Station to protest the latest  tragedy to hit humanitarian workers - the murders of Sinnarasa Shanmugalingam (32) and Karthikesu Chandramohan (26) the two Sri Lanka Red Cross volunteers whose bodies were found in Kiriella, Ratnapura 100 km from Colombo.

Police have so far been unable to make any breakthrough on the investigations, despite the personal interest shown by President Mahinda Rajapakse. He visited Jayaratne funeral parlour on Monday afternoon to pay his respects and the day after met with officials of the SLRC and ICRC. He has ordered a full probe and told IGP Victor Perera to hand in a report within two weeks.

But the lacklustre investigation into the last August  murders of 17 local aid workers with the French agency  Action Contre le Faim  has forced international agencies including the UN to call for actions that matches the rhetoric.   

'Outrageous act'

"This is another outrageous act in an apparent trend of deliberate targeting of aid workers, which severely jeopardises and impedes their ability to deliver humanitarian assistance in a secure environment. We note the government's public commitment to investigate these killings, but urge this process be expedited, with international assistance, as appropriate. We remain concerned that the killings of humanitarian workers, including the 17 workers of Action Contre le Faim, in August 2006, remain unsolved.

We urge the government, the LTTE and other armed groups to take all measures to protect aid workers and provide a secure and conducive environment to the functioning of humanitarian assistance," Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders, Hina Jilani, and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston said last week. And international pressure is likely to mount unless police investigation makes a big break.

Almost a week after the murders, the police have been unable to say anything but that the vehicle numbers provided by those who were with the two victims were false. "We have not heard anything," SLRC Head Neville Nanayakkara told The Sunday Leader.

Shanmugalingam  and Chandramohan have been with the Red Cross for over five years and recently were involved in the resettlement of the IDPs, according to senior military sources in Batticaloa.

Initial reports said that the Karuna group was suspected of the murders, however  K. Mahesh of the TMVP office in Colombo said that one of the victims  Chandramohan was a relative but not a supporter of the faction.

The murders have without doubt put the government in a yet another bind.  They have brought the focus back to the dangers faced by relief workers in Sri Lanka. "The circumstances in which these men were abducted and killed demand a thorough investigation by the police. The IASC is deeply concerned about the security of all aid workers in Sri Lanka. It is just 10 months since the killing of 17 workers from Action Contre le Faim. These latest killings are an ominous sign of an evolving situation," ISAC made up of UN and other relief agencies said.

The ACF investigation has been slow to progress. A recent report by the International Commission of Jurists found inherent flaws in the investigations. The government dismissed the report and said that it would only accept the determination of the Special Presidential Commission and the International Persons advancing it.

Pressure from UN

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also weighed in and called for an immediate investigation, once again referring to the ACF murders.

The ACF murders have caused a great deal of controversy. The 17 local aid workers were murdered between August 4 and 5. According to the SLMM, the finger has been pointed at the armed forces who were in control of Muttur at the time of the murders. The government has rejected the claim.

The state under which the ACF workers were gunned down has been clouded in mystery. It was a delegation of Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies that was in Muttur on August 6 that stumbled across the bodies at the ACF office. "On approaching the office we came across this gruesome sight with a very strong stench. The bodies were all face downwards on the front lawn seemingly lined up and shot at  very close range. The sight was too much to handle," the CHA report said.

The SLRC murders have now opened the whole can of worms, and with the ACF investigation moving at snail's pace, international pressure will most certainly mount. "We will not let this go," Nanayakkara said.  The government will have to prove that its public avowals of defending human rights can be matched with action.

Dead bodies have a role to play

The Defence Ministry website last week carried an interesting story on how bodies of dead combatants play a role in the propaganda war. The story came out two days after the government only accepted two of the 13 bodies handed over by the Tigers through the ICRC.

Excerpts of the piece are given below.

"Defence sources have recently revealed, how the LTTE leadership denied the final rights to one of its senior most cadres, Sinnathambi Kanapathipille Shivamoorthi alias "Colonel Nagulan." Self styled colonel Nagulan was killed along with six other LTTE cadres by the army at Eravur in Batticaloa on May 23. Self styled major Maniwannan Master, the LTTE's intelligence coordinator for Batticaloa; and LTTE female cadre Mala, a senior member of LTTE's Sothiya band were also killed in the same confrontation.

'Nagulan was the leader of the LTTE's 'Charles Anthony' band and known to be one of the most battle hardened members of the LTTE. A senior defence official speaking exclusively to defence.lk said, that Nagulan had taken over the Charles Anthony band in the year 2006. The band is one of the LTTE's oldest fighting units named after the son of terror chief V. Pirapaharan. Nagulan was appointed as the leader of the band after the death of Weeramani who died in an accidental explosion at Nagarkovil, the official further added.

The LTTE identity card found with the body and a video of Nagulan speaking at an LTTE camp were also provided as  proof.

"Nagulan was an exception from other Wanni LTTE leaders. He used to lead from the front and his loss will certainly have an adverse effect on the terror outfit" the official said.

"The bodies were later handed over to the LTTE through the ICRC. One female body was identified by the parents as of their young daughter abducted by the LTTE, and taken to their residence at Batticaloa. The other six were taken to Thoppigala by the ICRC," the official further said.

According to the sources, Nagulan along with other senior LTTE cadres were buried in a mass grave without any funeral honours. Not a word was published on any of the Pro LTTE websites on Nagulan's death.

In early April 2007, the LTTE played a similar drama in Wanni by giving an enemy burial for over 50 of its own cadres. The LTTE cadres who were killed in action during the end of March and early April in north of Mannar were buried in a mass grave as 'army' soldiers, before a large gathering of junior LTTE cadres. An ICRC official who had also seen the bodies reported to army that he saw over 50 mutilated bodies clad with army overalls being piled up at an LTTE camp. The LTTE heads in the area had refused to hand over the bodies except one to the ICRC, though they had claimed that the bodies belonged to army. Upon receipt of the body army officials identified the body as one of the soldiers who had gone  missing after the battle. However, the military proved with its records that the bodies buried by the LTTE did not belong to any of the army soldiers."