[BRIEF NOTE] A Sri Lanka roundup

[rfmcdonald]

The major Toronto papers have had quite a lot about the continuing conflict in Sri Lanka. The Toronto Star's Ravi Nessman's "Tamil stronghold a ghost town" reported on his trip to an almost-deserted Mullaitivu, the last urban stronghold of the Tamil Tigers, while the paper's Raveena Aulakh and
Lesley Ciarula Taylor reported on yesterday's protests by Toronto-area Tamils outside of the Sri Lankan consulate.

The consulate closed its doors for the day as almost two dozen police officers monitored the gathering. Waving signs and shouting slogans, protesters of all ages started to congregate outside the consulate on St. Clair Ave. W. near Yonge St. just before 11 a.m. and stayed till 5 p.m.

When Gaza was being pounded by Israeli forces, it made headlines everywhere "but no one seems to care about the condition in Sri Lanka," said Jeyarasalingam, holding an enlarged photograph of two dead children lying on a floor. "Things have never been so bad in Sri Lanka."

The civil war in the tiny country has raged for almost three decades and thousands have been reported killed. The rebel Tamil Tigers have been demanding a separate state for minority ethnic Tamils in the island's north and east, but on Sunday Sri Lankan forces captured the Tamil Tigers' last major stronghold, confining the rebels to a narrow slice of jungle.

The neutral International Committee of the Red Cross said hundreds of civilians have died in the past two weeks and 250,000 are trapped by intense fighting between government forces and the Tamil Tigers.

The National Post reports that more Tamil-Canadians have been conflicted in the United States of trying to acquire weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.

Finally, in The Globe and Mail Stephanie Nolen ("Hard to achieve peace when 'they just want the Tamils ... wiped out'" reports on the despair of moderate Tamil and peace advocates in Sri Lanka, who fear that between the Tigers' elimination of competing Tamil leaders and the iron fist of a vengeful Sri Lankan government a just peace won't be possible.

Dr. [Jehan] Perera is an optimist and hopes the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa - who with his brother Gothabaya, the Defence Secretary, launched this crushing strike at the Tigers 18 months ago - can be magnanimous in victory.

"The hope lies in the fact that the President was in the past a human-rights campaigner, when he was in the opposition," Dr. Perera said.

"Because he has been fighting a war he had to have the Sinhalese extremists with him, but once he wins the war he won't need them. Maybe then the President will surround himself with different advisers. That's what we have to hope, that when the situation on the ground changes that our leaders will change accordingly."

Yet it seems unlikely that President Rajapaksa has any plans to negotiate. His stated goal is to eliminate "any trace" of the Tigers. And two weeks ago, his government "proscribed" the Tigers, making it illegal to talk to them.

Nor is it clear whom the President could have negotiated with, in any case: The Tigers, in their iron reign over the area they called a homeland, moved with cold precision against anyone else who tried to speak for Tamils.

"The Tigers wiped out genuine leaders of the Tamil people - now they have neither guns nor political leaders of any eminence," observed Dr. Perera, who is Sinhalese. "For peace to be just, it has to be negotiated between equals" but such a dialogue is now impossible, he said.

[. . .]

President Rajapaksa has promised Tamils their "peace and freedom" will follow the end of the LTTE, a pledge met with considerable skepticism by international observers here. "This government says all the right things but they speak with forked tongues," said a Western diplomat who is not authorized to speak on the record. "They just want the Tamils crushed and wiped out."

The diplomat suggested that traditionally Tamil areas would likely continue to be under heavy military occupation, while a few showpiece development initiatives are undertaken.

Mr. Ranmohan said that Tamils are worn down by the fighting and living under both regimes - either Tiger or Sinhalese-majority government - and have little energy left for anything but survival. "Probably we will be like your ... Indians, pushed into a reservation," he said. "It's going to be a terrible ending and the scar will be there for generations."