“Gota Ordered Them To Be Shot” – General Sarath Fonseka

• General Fonseka speaks on the killings of the LTTE’s Pulidevan, Nadeson and Ramesh
• Basil denies involvement
• General Shavindra Silva says “no comment”

By Frederica Jansz –

Pulidevan, Nadesan and Ramesh

Common opposition candidate General Sarath Fonseka says Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa instructed a key ground commander in the north that all LTTE leaders must be killed and not allowed to surrender.

In an explosive interview with The Sunday Leader General Fonseka the then Army Commander said he had no information communicated to him in the final days of the war that three key LTTE leaders had opted to surrender to Sri Lanka’s armed forces as the battle drew to a bloody finish.

Fonseka charged that communications were instead confined between the LTTE leaders, Norway, various foreign parties, Basil Rajapaksa, Member of Parliament and the powerful senior adviser to the President and such information was never conveyed to him as he supervised the final stages of the war. “Later, I learnt that Basil had conveyed this information to the Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa – who in turn spoke with Brigadier Shavendra Silva, Commander of the Army’s 58th Division, giving orders not to accommodate any LTTE leaders attempting surrender and that “they must all be killed.”

General Fonseka explained how on the night of May 17^th this year desperate efforts of three senior LTTE leaders trapped in the war zone to save their lives failed as they were instead shot dead as they prepared to surrender to government forces.

The government later claimed that troops found bodies of three key LTTE leaders identified as Nadesan, Pulidevan and Ramesh during the mop- up operations in the last LTTE stronghold on the morning of May 18.

General Fonseka said the incident took place as the remaining LTTE cadres were boxed into a 100m x 100m area, North of Vellamullivaikkal.

Balasingham Nadeshan a former police constable of Sri Lanka police was the political head of the LTTE. Seevaratnam Pulidevan was the head of “LTTE peace secretariat” while Ramesh a senior special commander of the military wing.

Hours before they surrendered, in a flurry of emails, text messages and telephone calls between NGOs, a foreign government and Sri Lankan officials in Colombo, the two LTTE political leaders had frantically inquired as to how they could give themselves up.

They were told: “Get a piece of white cloth, put up your hands and walk towards the other side in a non-threatening manner.”

But the attempt to surrender by the three LTTE leader and their families failed. Sometime between midnight on 17 May and the early hours of the next morning, the three men and their family members were shot dead.

General Fonseka said it was Basil Rajapaksa together with the Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa who through foreign intermediaries conveyed a message back to the LTTE leaders who wished to surrender to walk out carrying a piece of white cloth. “It was their idea,” he said.

GENERAL SILVA AND ARMY COMMANDER SAY ‘ NO COMMENT’

When we contacted Shavendra Silva, now promoted to Major General he sounded very shocked when told of the allegation but insisted he could not respond to this charge until he had clearance from the military spokesman.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told us he had to get clearance from the Army Commander Jagath Jayasuriya.

Later in the day the military spokesman said that he had contacted both the Army Commander and General Shavindra Silva and both had said that they would not comment on the matter.

The chief intermediary for the three LTTE men was the Norwegian government’s then Environment and Development Minister Erik Solheim. (Solheim is now the overseas development minister) On Sunday 17 May, Mr Solheim apparently received calls from LTTE figures who said they wanted to surrender.

The ICRC in Colombo later confirmed that it had received word from the Norwegians that the two leaders were looking to give themselves up. “The ICRC was approached on this matter by the representatives of the LTTE as well as the Norwegian authorities,” spokeswoman Sarasi Wijeratne was quoted saying at the time of the incident. “The information was referred to the Sri Lankan authorities. We have no idea what happened [then]. We lost contact with everyone in the last conflict.”

The government’s point man in the negotiations appears to have been former foreign secretary Palitha Kohona who is now Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United nations He was quoted by news agencies saying that in the days leading up to Sunday evening, he had received a number of messages indicating from Mr. Nadesan and Mr Pulidevan – whom he has met at various peace talks – wanting a way out.

In one interview with ‘SiberNews’ Mr. Kohona said that his response had been that “there was only one way to surrender that is recognised by military practice”. He said they should obtain a white flag and give themselves up. “I kept saying this for three days,” he added.

But General Fonseka maintains that Nadesan, Ramesh and Pulidevan had been shot dead by government troops as they advanced towards them carrying a white flag, as they had been instructed to do.

Fonseka said he later learnt about what exactly had taken place as a result of journalists who had been entrenched at the time with General Shavendra Silva’s brigade command. These reporter’s according to Fonseka were privy to the telephone call received by the Army’s 58^th Brigade Commander from the Defence Secretary –“telling him to not accommodate any LTTE surrenders but to simply go ahead and kill them.” – “These journalists later told me what exactly took place,” Fonseka said.

“Norway never got in touch” – Basil

Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa refuted this damning charge. He told The Sunday Leader, “The Norwegians never got in touch with me over this particular incident. I have been in touch with the Norwegians over various issues pertaining to the conflict but never once on this particular issue.”

When asked if he had been unaware then that three LTTE leaders were seeking surrender during the last stages of the war – Rajapaksa replied, “No. I won’t say that. But Norway never got in touch with me.”

Asked nevertheless if he did convey something to this effect to his brother and Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Mr. Rajapaksa said “If I had not been informed by Norway in the first instance then obviously the second did not happen.”

Our attempts to contact Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa failed. When we telephoned the Defence Ministry Friday we were told Mr. Rajapaksa had not been in office the entire day. His staff refused to release any other telephone number.

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2009/12/13/%E2%80%9Cgota-ordered-them-to-be-shot%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-general-sarath-fonseka/

Nambiar reveals ‘white flag’ incident

With controversy revived about Sri Lankan war crimes including the murder of surrendering prisoners, Inner City Press on February 24 asked UN official Vijay Nambiar to explain his role in these “white flag” killings.

Nambiar said that British journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed in Syria earlier this week, had spoken to him during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka and attempted to broker the surrender of some top LTTE leaders.

She talked to me, you know that,” Nambiar said of Colvin. Inner City Press asked, hadn’t Colvin urged Nambiar to go witness the surrenders?

Nambiar nodded yes. “I asked to go, twice I contacted [US diplomat] Bob Blake, the two of us were planning to go… the ICRC was not able to go by sea route. The Government refused to give us permission. There was no way we could just force our way in.”

With no witnesses, those who tried to surrendered ended up dead. Inner City Press asked Nambiar why he hadn’t then spoke out.

Nambiar continued with this story: “in the middle of the night, Marie called me, the two people, I’ve forgotten the names, one was on the Peace Commission, they wanted to surrender. We need to get assurance, free passage. I said OK, I’ll do it. I took it up with foreign minster, the defense minister and the president. They would be treated like any surrendering prisoner, What happened after that, I couldn’t…”

Again Inner City Press asked Nambiar, if you passed on the assurances, then were blocked from going to witness and those you assured got killed, why haven’t you spoken out?

Nambiar “subsequently said they could have been shot by own people. I am not prepare to hazard any guess. Even Basil [Rajapaksa], he also said that. It was mainly Gotabaya [Rajapaksa] and the President [Mahinda Rajapaksa].”

Nambiar told Inner City Press, “I spoke with Palitha Kohona, the Foreign Secretary.”

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2012/02/25/nambiar-reveals-white-flag-incident/

India trumps Pakistan's Iran rice trade boom with oil rupees

(Reuters) - Iran's oil export revenues are helping Indian rice exporters to claw back some of the lucrative business lost to cross-border truckers in Pakistan as a result of Western sanctions.

Indian rice exports direct to Iran have bounced back, thanks to shippers being paid up front in rupees from a huge pool of oil money owed to Iran by Indian refiners.

"Now business is being done directly because Iran is allowed to open letters of credit in Indian rupees because the government has to pay money to Iran for the oil," said Suresh Manchanda, marketing director of a Delhi-based company which exports rice, wheat and sugar globally.

"For the importers back in Iran, Indian rupees are easily available to them via the government, so they can do business in a much easier way than doing business in any other currency," Manchanda told Reuters at the Gulf Food trade show in Dubai.

"For all practical purposes the money never leaves anywhere, the money is already in India."

India is Tehran's biggest rice supplier but shipments were held up in early 2012 after Iranian buyers defaulted on payments. Many Indian suppliers then stopped sales on credit.

Tightened sanctions on shipping and bank transfers between Iran and India started a boom in Pakistani rice trucked across the remote border into Iran by groups based in Quetta, grains traders from Pakistan and India said at the world's biggest food show last week.

Problems getting paid by private Iranian buyers hit by a slide in the value of the rial also saw the rice flow from India being routed through Dubai, with wholesalers there taking on the payment risk in return for a mark-up.

Before Western sanctions aimed at stopping Tehran's disputed nuclear programme began to bite, Indian official data show rice sales to the Islamic Republic were surging.

They more than doubled in the financial year of 2009-2010 and also rose in value by nearly 35 percent to over $600 million from April 2011 to the end of March 2012, but this was a period when India's overall rice export earnings almost doubled in value globally.

Dubai's role in the India-Iran rice trade has withered since oil pool payments started.

From April 2011 to the end of March 2012, $821 million of Indian rice was shipped to the United Arab Emirates, more than anywhere else. But in just nine months from April to December last year Iran imported over $725 million of Indian rice, up 20 percent on the previous 12 months, while Indian exports to the UAE slumped to $287 million, official figures show.

There is effectively no limit to how much Indian rice exports to Iran can be funded by the oil money pool, because even when India's oil imports from Iran fell more than 40 percent from January 2012 to 2013, their value was still nearly $1 billion in one month.

"The new payment mechanism has been helping Indian rice exporters. Competitors in Pakistan don't have any such facility," M P Jindal, president of the All India Rice Millers Association said.

"This year we are estimating at least a 10 percent rise in basmati rice exports. Exports are booming, especially to Iran and Iraq."

Pakistan exported around 30,000 tonnes of rice, worth $21 million, directly to Iran in the second half of 2012, a sharp fall from the 12 months to the end of June 2012 when sales approached 140,000 tonnes, according to the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP).

Pakistan's rice sales to the UAE, the main shipping route into Iran, also dropped sharply to less than 52,000 tonnes in the second half of 2012, compared to nearly 228,000 tonnes in the previous 12 months, REAP data showed.

Iran relies on imports for about 45 pct of its annual rice consumption of 2.9 million tonnes, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

END OF MONOPOLY

Iranian buyers prefer Indian basmati rice, but shipping and payment problems faced by Indian suppliers created an opportunity for Pakistani dealers based near the border with Iran to make big profits, rice exporters based in Karachi said.

Those willing to take the risk of trucking goods along hundreds of kilometres of highways of western Pakistan to the remote border area with Iran could charge premiums well above Indian rice prices.

"Last year India had a lot of currency issues and then Pakistan was selling at around a $150 premium over India because India could not sell to Iran directly... It became a monopoly," Mohammad Raza, a Karachi-based rice exporter, said.

"This year that's not happening... This year it has shrunk considerably, but it has not completely finished."

The success of India's oil pool for funding exports direct into Iranian ports over the last few months has hit Pakistan's rice truckers' profits hard, slashing premiums to well below $80/tonne in early 2013, he said.

These border traders who have problems getting paid by Iranian buyers are also driving a boom in barter of fuel for food, several rice traders at the show said.

"The trucks are not going to Iran. They used to go there but not anymore because the money is not coming from Iran to Pakistan so the trade has virtually stopped," Tariq Ghori, director of Karachi-based Matco Rice Processing Ltd, told Reuters at the Gulf Food trade fair in Dubai last week.

Matco, one of Pakistan's biggest Basmati rice exporters with sales of over 100,000 tonnes last year, and Raza's company were not part of the border food trade boom because the risks of shipping across Pakistan are high and the competition from Quetta-based groups fierce.

"They are done by people at the border. They have links with the Iranian people... Family ties, they know each other, speak the same language, so they do the trade," Ghori said.

"Big companies like us, sitting in the big cities, cannot do that trade."

Many mainstream competitors shipping out of Karachi still rely on Dubai middlemen buy their product and sell it on to Iran, putting them at a disadvantage to Indian exporters now able to ship direct.

Many Indian rice sales to Iran were also done through Dubai on credit until a slump in the rial in early 2012 prompted several Iranian buyers to default on payments. Since then most Dubai traders will only deal with Iranian buyers paying up front or brandishing a letter of credit from their government to tap the oil revenue pool in India. (Additional reporting by Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai, editing by William Hardy)

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/india-iran-rice-idINDEE92703K20130308

War Crimes and Curry

Publishing a book about a highly charged ethnic conflict in which tens of thousands have died is no path to a peaceful life. You only need to look at the racial abuse and filthy language in the comments sections of online sites frequented by Sri Lankans to see how intense the emotions still are.

Like anyone who writes on Sri Lanka I've had my share of abuse from both sides. I've been told I am covered in the blood of the babies who perished in the killing fields, that I've been making money out of the dead, and am a terrorist or "white Tiger" not to mention, a hysterical liar.

But what the public doesn't see are the private messages from readers around the world. Every few days I receive a message of thanks from a Sri Lankan - mostly Tamils but a few Sinhalese too. Some just wish me a long life, say I will always be in their hearts or bless me. When I meet them at book events there are men and women who envelope me in a bear hug. A few confide that they've bought the book but are too scared to read it because they themselves are so traumatised as refugees from earlier phases of the war.

I sometimes pass on the messages to the characters in the book, who are the ones who deserve the credit, not me. They have taken huge risks to speak out, feeling it's their duty to bear witness to the carnage. Many readers write commending the doctor in Still Counting the Dead for his extraordinary bravery. In Canada a Tamil group gave him a "living hero award" which was the first public recognition of how much he'd contributed, literally saving thousands of lives with no thought for his own. Because the doctor has to remain anonymous for his own safety, the award plaque was hand delivered to me in London so I could post it on to him. Unfortunately it was made of glass, but luckily survived the journey intact.

Last week a grey haired Tamil gentleman came up to tell me how he'd read the book in two days flat, gripped but appalled. "I am a seventy years old man but I cried at several points while reading" he announced proudly. Another man from Melbourne sent me a message on Facebook saying:

"I cried when I read that it wasn't a palmyrah fruit but a head of an infant child. I was in the train. People were surprised and one kind lady offered me a tissue. It wasn't embarrassing. The same thing happened too when I read about the dead mom breastfeeding her baby. I wonder how you managed to pull it off without breaking down".

It's not just Sri Lankans. Tamils from neighbouring India write to say how ashamed that they didn't take more notice of what was going on in Sri Lanka. One graduate student in southern India told me he arranged discussions on the book at his university and then organised students to do outreach work. This involved taking the Tamil version of the book into the Sri Lankan refugee camps to show them someone had written about the war. He said, "Once a refugee saw the original work with the map, his face lit up. He began to explain it to his wife the details of the nation; the fertile northern part etc".

A Tamil in London, himself once a refugee, donated a hundred copies of the Tamil version of the book to libraries throughout the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He's now roped in his cousin and friend and they're sending ninety copies to diplomats at the UN. Others in Canada and the UK tell me they've posted the book to government ministers and MPs, urging them to read it.

Three days after Still Counting the Dead was published I encountered a Tamil man after an event in London who went up to the bookseller and in broken English demanded fifty signed copies. Misunderstanding ensued; she thought he wanted them on a sale or return basis and was being rather cheeky. Someone had to intervene in Tamil to straighten things out. Soon the man had whisked out his credit card and carried off the bookseller's entire stock in his backpack. It turned out he was going door to door selling my book to Tamil households and community centres - not for profit - but as a public service.

Although the English version of the book has been openly on sale in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, I'm told Tamils in the north are scared to be seen carrying it into Jaffna because their belongings are searched by the army. Nevertheless it has been read there and discussion groups held on it. At the launch in the UK people were buying up five or ten copies to send to their aunt or cousin in Jaffna. Sri Lankans - including some Sinhalese - have come to thank me in person, saying how important it is that someone has told the story of the final phase of the war.

More used to literary fiction, my British publishers have been astonished by the level of engagement. They were open mouthed that tickets for the launch event in London sold out well in advance and two hundred and fifty people packed the hall. Now they are less surprised when I demand a hundred copies of the book at the author's discount for someone who's buying in bulk.

Writing and talking about war crimes every day is corrosive and soul destroying and yes it takes it out of you slowly. Of course it's nothing to experiencing a war first hand. But there are some perks - the warmth of ordinary people. Now in Australia for the Adelaide Book Festival I got chatting to some Sri Lankans after an event and in no time they'd decided to hold an impromptu dinner party for me. The Australian publicist couldn't believe it. I tried to explain how normal this was but she said it simply never happens to their authors.

Courtesy: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/frances-harrison/war-crimes-and-curry_b_2810959.html

Sri Lanka's Killing Fields Tourism

Posted: 27/12/2012 00:00

The Sri Lankan military is advertising a newly constructed hotel in the heart of the killing fields in the north of the island, where tens of thousands of minority Tamils were killed in 2009. The holiday resort, called Lagoon's Edge, caters for Sinhala war tourists who want to see the last bastion of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels.

Billed as a once in a lifetime experience, one Sinhala language newspaper, Mawbima, boasted to readers that Lagoon's Edge is constructed entirely of teak, has a dance floor for parties and is situated in a "place were thousands of war heroes, terrorists and others died". The paper touted this as an opportunity to spend the night beside the lagoon where the Tamil Tiger rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran died, all for a price equivalent to $100.

Right in the heart of what was rebel territory, the hotel overlooks the stretch of water that became the frontline during the final bloody months of the conflict, in which it's now estimated by the United Nations 40,000 or possibly 70,000 civilians died in a few months. Tamil survivors describe wading through the neck-high water, passing floating corpses and dodging bullets. Several children and injured or elderly people drowned in the water in the struggle to escape. On the far side of the lagoon from the hotel built by the army, lies the sandy spit of land, which is considered Sri Lanka's killing fields.

This is fourteen square kilometres of territory into which hundreds of thousands of people were crammed in haphazard makeshift encampments and then pounded by heavy artillery and bombed by supersonic jets belonging to the same military now offering sightseeing trips.

Opened by the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his brother the defence secretary, the tourist hotel is part of a triumphalist approach to what's viewed as purely a terrorist problem. The victors deny the Sri Lankan military committed war crimes and crimes against humanity as alleged by a UN report. And nearly four years on they have shown no desire to address the root causes of decades of ethnic violence and discrimination.

As if to underline this, photographs of the hotel's opening ceremony show traditional Kandyan drummers performing - part of Sinhala culture - but totally alien to this exclusively Tamil part of the island.

And this luxury teak hotel for tourists from the south of the island to view the spoils of victory must be little comfort to local people who shelter in flimsy tents. According to an article in TimeMagazine in May 2012 the UN estimated 100,000 houses were destroyed in the final phase of the war but only 16,000 had been rebuilt.

An International Crisis Group report this year said most Tamils returning home after the war live "in makeshift and inadequate shelters and many struggle to afford food, with few jobs or economic opportunities and little or no savings. Few schools and medical centres have been rebuilt'.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/frances-harrison/sri-lankas-killing-fields-tourism_b_2356247.html

The final atrocity: Uncovering Sri Lanka’s ‘white flag incident’

In May 2009, as the civil war was drawing to a close, the Sri Lankan army executed influential Tamil leaders even though they had already surrendered. Frances Harrison spoke to two Tamil fighters who witnessed the incident and revealed the atrocity to the world

The stocky Tamil man twisted himself nervously inside his thin black anorak, ill suited to one of the iciest days of winter, as he explained how he turned informer, betraying the very man he was supposed to protect, in order to save his own life. We endured the bone-chilling cold sitting outdoors on a deserted verandah sipping coffee in a café in Victoria Station, interrupted occasionally by the peremptory platform announcements. Indoors it was warm but there were too many people who might be listening; after all, we were talking about summary execution.

Kumaran, who doesn’t want to give his real name out of fear, had once been a Tamil Tiger rebel fighting for a separate homeland in north-eastern Sri Lanka. Now a refugee in a land where he doesn’t speak the language, he still exudes the confidence that might come from having once carried a gun. This was a man trusted enough to be the bodyguard of the political leaders of the Tamil Tigers.

In the chaos of the last weeks of the civil war in 2009, Kumaran was badly injured when a cluster bomb landed close to him. Medicine and even bandages were running out and the handful of doctors left were amputating limbs with butcher’s knives and no anesthetic. Without medical treatment Kumaran had no chance of recovery. He decided to make a run for it across the frontline – first throwing away the cyanide capsule that’s standard issue for Tamil Tigers rebels to swallow in case of capture.

Surrender

Telling the story of his escape, Kumaran is tellingly short on details.  Tamil Tiger rebels were supposed to fight to the death – surrender was considered a cowardly act of self-preservation.

As soon as he crossed the frontline, two former rebels turned traitor immediately spotted Kumaran and pointed him out to the army.

“They had no choice if they wanted to live,” Kumaran said with sympathy. “They only informed on people who were very obviously fighters and would be noticed anyway,” he said, explaining why he too turned informer once in the hands of the enemy. The screams of his comrades being tortured in the detention centre were enough to turn him.

I was sitting in a deserted portion of Victoria Station across a table from Kumaran and a second Tamil man who used to teach maths in another life. They are the first eyewitnesses to come forward to speak about what’s known as “the white flag incident”. This euphemistically refers to the murder of a group of Tamil Tiger political wing leaders after they had negotiated a surrender on the last day of the war.

Frantic

Even the Sri Lankan President knew that the group planned to surrender  – they’d sent frantic messages through everyone they could think of – the UN, the Red Cross, Norwegian diplomats, Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin, intermediaries in Europe and a Tamil member of parliament. All the indications from top officials in the Sri Lankan government were reassuring – that the surrender would indeed be accepted in accordance with the Geneva Convention.

One of those surrendering was Pulidevan, whom I’d known more than a decade ago when he was a peace negotiator for the Tamil Tigers and I was the BBC correspondent based in Sri Lanka. Puli – as his friends called him – loped about in that slightly ungainly apologetic way tall men sometimes do in places where being short is the norm. He loved nothing more than to sit down on his office sofa and chew over the current political situation at rapid speed like a man starved of discussion. When I left Sri Lanka for another posting he resolutely stayed in touch.

Pulidevan was ready for the Tamil surrender.

By the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 Puli started coming online almost daily to chat. It was a desperate cry for help. Sometimes we discussed politics, battlefield strategy and the uncertain future, but mostly he wanted to escape the daily reality of severed body parts and screaming mothers. It’s a strange thing but if you talk to someone continuously through months of war you start rooting for their survival even though rationally the chances are slim. We even discussed the fact that if he was caught trying to escape or surrender he’d likely be killed.

For the last four years I’ve been trying to piece together what really happened to Puli and the others. This meeting in Victoria Station was a huge breakthrough. It was surreal to be discussing layer upon layer of treachery on the battlefields of northern Sri Lanka amid the mundane hustle and bustle of commuters in the middle of London.

Soon we’re drawing an untidy map on my notebook to mark the frontline and the bridge across the lagoon over which tens of thousands of emaciated civilians escaped at the end  - leaving behind them billowing black smoke and pounding shells. Kumaran shows me where he was positioned by the Sri Lankan military – behind an earthen embankment near a tree. The army wanted him to confirm the identity of the Tiger political leaders crossing over. Who better than their former bodyguard? It never crossed Kumaran’s mind that he was endangering them because this was clearly a well-planned and organised surrender. Senior Sri Lankan military officials were everywhere with bodyguards and walkie-talkies.

White flag

The first batch to cross the frontline carrying a white flag included the wife of the Tiger political leader. She was not a Tamil but Sinhalese – the same ethnic group as the soldiers. As they approached she was urgently screaming something in their language that Kumaran couldn’t understand – probably urging the soldiers to hold their fire. He watched the Tiger leaders cross over. They were received by the soldiers who escorted them across the bridge, moving towards a cluster of vehicles in the distance. More groups of Tigers walked past him at intervals and surrendered.

Once it was over Kumaran waited around for an hour or so before being driven away by the military. After a while Kumaran, sitting in the back of a pick-up truck, noticed a crowd of soldiers gathered alongside some open ground next to the road. They were taking pictures on their mobile phones of corpses laid out there. As they drove past Kumaran was horrified to see Puli and his boss, Nadesan, the political leader, lying there dead, their shirts stripped off their torsos.

Kumaran quickly understood that as a witness to this crime he was even more in danger than before. “I thought if they can do this to them, what can they do to me,” he recalled, his eyes filling with tears, “one of the hardest things in the hours and days ahead was to keep this knowledge inside me and not speak of it to anyone”.

The last known photo of Puli before his death.

Kumaran had no idea that there were other Tamil witnesses to the surrender who might also make it abroad one day. Sitting next to him is Sharmilan, who once taught maths to rows of neatly dressed school children in blue and white uniforms in the area of northern Sri Lanka under the control of the Tigers. He won’t tell me his real name or which school he worked in lest it identify him and endanger his relatives in Sri Lanka.

Sipping coffees to keep warm and keeping a careful eye on who was coming and going in the cafe, the two men are cordial but not especially chummy with each other. There’s awkward laughter all round when I ask Sharmilan if he was forcibly recruited by the Tigers. He cited the rule that every family had to give one fighter to the rebels – and goes on to explain how after only a month’s training he was press ganged into digging bunkers and disposing of dead bodies in the last year of the war.

The night before the top political leaders of the Tamil Tiger surrendered, Sharmilan had decided to make a run for it with a large group of civilians. It was still dark so the army held them in a destroyed building on the frontline waiting for dawn.

Escort

Sharmilan was surprised when he looked through the window and saw the Tiger political leaders walk by with white flags; he knew surrender was a taboo for an organization that glorified martyrdom. Sharmilan observed the soldiers receive the first group of about 15 people and frisk them for weapons before escorting them over a bridge until they disappeared from sight. In the distance he spotted not just military vehicles but also big white jeeps of the kind used by international aid organisations. Sharmilan estimates there were about five hundred soldiers in the area. He’s adamant all the Tiger political leaders surrendered successfully.

This is of course not what the Sri Lankan military says. It claimed that the Tigers were shot in the back by their own people. If this were the case it’s surprising the military never produced the bodies as evidence of the rebels’ perfidy. Instead they quickly disposed of all the evidence.

After a while a photograph appeared on the Internet – probably shot by one of the soldiers Kumaran saw. It showed the half naked corpses of  Puli and his boss, Nadesan, with burn marks and lacerations on the front belly. Puli’s chest had what appeared to be a bullet entry wound while Nadesan looked as if it had been shot in the side of the face.

The bodies of Puli, left, and Tamil political leader Nadesan. Pic: www.ilamayil.com.

It appears the Sri Lankan government did not want to take senior leaders of the Tamil Tigers prisoner, especially those who were well connected and spoke English.  Their detention and any legal proceedings would be subject to international scrutiny for a long time to come. This was a risk as they were witness to multiple war crimes – the deliberate bombing of hospitals, food queues and civilian safe zones by government forces. And there was the chance that alive these men could lead Sri Lankan Tamils in another chapter of their struggle. The victors wanted a definitive end to the conflict. But in their haste they violated one of the most basic norms of war. Without respect for the white flag there’s no way to protect civilians and those who decide to stop fighting.

Even with a group as disciplined and inured to casualties as the Tamil Tigers there came a point when many of its members could see no use in fighting on. The two men shivering opposite me in Victoria Station ignored the organisation’s mantra of martyrdom and chose instead to save themselves. Now by coming forward to tell their stories they’ve put themselves at risk once again.

__________________

Frances Harrison is a former BBC foreign correspondent based in Sri Lanka. Her book of accounts of survivors from Sri Lanka’s civil war “Still Counting the Dead” is available in good bookshops and online in ebook form by Portobello Books . 

http://asiancorrespondent.com/100094/sri-lanka-white-flag-incident-pulidevan/

Indo-Lanka Relationships - My Memories

by R. Cholan

Current Indian analysts mesmerized by the famed Sinhala hospitality may not fully comprehend all of this. The new chumminess is interpreted as Sri Lanka’s final acceptance of India’s regional super-power status. Given past history, and the subliminal Indophobia that still exists, this is an obviously flawed assumption.... President Jayewardene once said at a news conference in Hong Kong, “the Sri Lankan government will accept help from the devil himself” to fight the Tamils. Currently, the Sinhala leaders are consorting with the Indian 'devil' for this help.

One of my earliest memories of the Colombo harbor was of a large graffiti on a wall (facing the sea and the ships), which read: “INDIA GO HOME”.
I grew up in Colombo in the forties and fifties, witnessing the many manifestations of Indophobia in Sri Lanka. It was called Ceylon then. The Indophobia of that era was not limited to graffities – it was everywhere. The Sinhala disdain for anything Indian was open and omnipresent. All Indians were called Kalla-Thonis, a derogatory term coined originally to describe smugglers and illegal immigrants. Even in the educated middle-class households this term was freely used to describe Indians.
Indian traders, who were in the country in significant numbers at that time and patronized regularly by the Ceylon Tamils, were shunned by the Sinhalese. Indian grocery-stores had hardly any Sinhala customers. Indian textile merchants sold their saris only to Ceylon Tamil customers and the Sinhalese bought theirs from Sinhala owned shops. Indian restaurants were frequented mostly by Tamils, except for a few Sinhalese who bought ‘one’ Dosa (for 10-cents) in the sixties, for the ‘unlimited’ sambar and sambal that came free with it! At the Sinhala owned Restaurants, a bread-meal (1/4 lb of bread for 25-cents) got them only two small dishes of parippu and sambol – No seconds!
Analysts who today sing the praises of a healthy Indo-Lanka trade relationship probably have no idea of what I am talking about. They were not there then to know. Perhaps a simple chat with a Tamil clerk, who lived in the Sinhala towns at that time, would be illuminative to these pundits. Any Indian who cares about the future Indo-Lanka relationship must research the events of that era.
Quite apart from the ordinary Sinhala citizen’s scorn towards the Indian traders, there also existed a state level Indophobia. From the fifties on, a series of measures were taken by successive Sri Lanka governments to make life harder for the traders from the south Indian states of Madras and Kerala. The end result – by the mid-sixties these Indian traders had completely disappeared from Sri Lanka.
The first of these administrative acts was the requirement that all non-Ceylonese businessmen register themselves, for a fee of Rs. 400.00, a huge burden to these small time traders from India at that time. Indian grocers, who eked out meager profits by selling Indian eggs for 18-cents, as opposed to the local price of 21-cents, couldn’t afford this fee. Most chose to leave the country.
Imports of groceries and magazines from India were then banned – not just deterred with increased tariffs, but a complete ban. Readers of Indian magazines, like Femina (English) and Kalki (Tamil), couldn’t get them anymore. What the hell, these readers were only a miniscule minority and besides most were Tamils. Those who could afford it got them in the black-market anyway, and the rest of the readers didn’t matter.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Ironically, Tamil farmers in the north Sri Lanka welcomed the ban on Indian onions, as the price of Jaffna onions skyrocketed (as did their profits), little realizing what the Sinhala government was doing. When the Sinhala farmers started growing onions, the transport of onions from Jaffna was bottlenecked at the Elephant Pass army checkpoint, with a ‘permit’ requirement. Those in Jaffna (me included) ate onions for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Indian onions were nowhere to be seen.
The Indophobia of that era also resulted in the Sinhala government going after the so called Tamils of ‘recent’ Indian origin. These immigrant plantation workers imported by the British more than a hundred years earlier had already been stripped of their Ceylon citizenship by a prior legislation – the first Legislative Act of the newly independent Ceylon in 1948. Since then, these Tamils had been living in Ceylon as ‘stateless’ persons.
India came under increasing pressure from the Sinhala leadership to accept a forced repatriation of these stateless Tamils. The first Indian PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had resisted the pressure effectively, died in 1964. A weak leadership that followed, and the fact that India was distracted at that time by a war with China, gave the Sinhala leadership the best opportunity to ratchet-up the pressure. The new Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri caved-in, agreeing to accept more than 50% of the stateless Tamils (Sirimavo-Shastri Pact; October 1964). Over 500,000 Tamil plantation workers were forcibly deported.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

Intoxicated with this success, Sri Lanka was relentless against its large neighbor, and succeeded on many fronts. The island of Kachchativu, a piece of Indian Territory, was wrenched from India in 1974 with similar pressure tactics. It must be remembered that the wrangle for this piece of Indian land occurred less than three years after the first JVP insurrection (1970), when India was the first to come to the rescue of the Colombo government. That’s Gratitude.
The next major issue with India was when India came to help in the ethnic conflict in 1987, and ended up eating humble pie. Lured by one president to help fight the Tamil rebels, India was booted out by the next, who mockingly joined hands with the same rebels to kick India out. It was a classic example of Sinhala leaders’ penchant to renege on solemnly signed agreements.
If India's meek and complete acquiescence to its little neighbor is to keep out its northern detractors from the island, it is obviously a failed strategy. India never enjoyed a reciprocal loyalty from the Sri Lankans. Contrarily, the Chinese and the Pakistani presence and influence in Sri Lanka have been significant and at present growing alarmingly.
It is hoped, at the highest echelons in India, that helping Sri Lanka fight the Tamils will somehow diminish the Chinese and Pakistani influence there, at least in the short-term. Quite apart from the fact that this policy has not produced the desired results even in the short-run, the long-term outlook for India if Sri Lanka wins the war against the Tamils is even gloomier.
A strong Tamil presence in the Sri Lankan polity (either federal or as separate countries) is India's best bet. It is the only way India can counterbalance the congenital and hereditary Sinhala Indophobia.
I base this on another of my early childhood memories in Sri Lanka. It is about my own home and that of my relatives and friends. Every Tamil home during that period had a framed photo of Mahatma Gandhi displayed in their living rooms. Many had pictures of other Indian leaders, like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subash Chandra Bose, etc. as well. In some cases these were kept in their shrine rooms among pictures of their gods. No Sinhala home ever had pictures of Indian leaders.
Sri Lankan Tamils are the natural allies of India. The Sinhalese are congenitally and hereditarily ill-disposed towards India, perhaps their attitude being rooted in the historical memories of invasions in centuries past, or the Mahavamsa teachings, or whatever. Merits of these dissimilar dispositions apart, it is the ground reality. It is something that India needs to understand and recognize, or ignore at its own peril.
Current Indian analysts mesmerized by the famed Sinhala hospitality may not fully comprehend all of this. The new chumminess is interpreted as Sri Lanka’s final acceptance of India’s regional super-power status. Given the past history, and the subliminal Indophobia that still exists, this is an obviously flawed assumption. The Sinhala leaders are acting friendly today only for India’s help to crush the Tamil rebellion. President Jayewardene once said at a news conference in Hong Kong, “the Sri Lankan government will accept help from the devil himself” to fight the Tamils. Currently the Sinhala leaders are consorting with the Indian devil for this help.
A politically weakened Tamil population in Sri Lanka will in the long run result in the realization of India's worst nightmare. Nothing can be worse for India than a country in its backyard, ruled by an innately hostile population. India needs a strong Tamil hand in Sri Lanka, and the sooner it understands this basic fact the better it is for them.
A Chastened Indian Foreign Secretary, Jyotindra Dixit, six years after his debacle in Sri Lanka, told me something privately, which he didn’t (or couldn’t) say openly in his book, Assignment Colombo (1998). He said to me “I say, if I were Prabakaran, I won’t trust any of the Sinhalas. Tell him that I told you so.”
I never have had the opportunity to tell Mr. Pirpaharan that.