Demand the release of Tamil detainees in Sri Lanka

[sameera]

Demand the release of Tamil detainees in Sri Lanka
By the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka)
7 October 2009

The Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka and the World Socialist Web Site are launching an international campaign to demand the immediate and unconditional release of more than 250,000 Tamil civilians who have been detained in huge internment camps since the defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May.

The government falsely describes these squalid prison camps as “welfare villages.” However, detainees are not permitted to move in or out of their camps, which are surrounded by barbed wire fences and guarded by heavily armed soldiers. Relatives are allowed to see inmates only after the type of rigorous screening found in high security prisons.

Those inside are civilians—young and old, men and women—who lived in former LTTE-held territory and were simply herded into the camps. They had already suffered months of military blockade, with many starved, dehydrated, wounded and sick. Numbers had lost family and friends as a result of the army’s indiscriminate shelling.

Conditions inside the camps are appalling. There is inadequate food, sanitation, medical care, sufficient water or even space to sleep. Moreover, the military, which runs the camps, maintains an internal regime of terror and intimidation. Despite heavy media censorship, cases have filtered out involving the sexual abuse of women, the shooting of protesting prisoners and “disappearances”. Military intelligence personnel systematically interrogate young men and women. More than 10,000 have been branded as “LTTE suspects” and dragged off to “rehabilitation centres”, which are notorious for abuse and torture.

President Mahinda Rajapakse insists that forced detention is necessary to weed out “terrorists”, but none in the detention camps or the rehabilitation centres have been charged, let alone convicted, of any crime. In reality, the government is engaged in the collective punishment of a quarter of a million people solely because they are Tamils. In effect, they are being treated as prisoners of war, in flagrant breach of the country’s own constitution and laws.

The detention camps graphically underscore the communal character of the war that was waged by successive governments from 1983. This was not a “war on terrorism”, but a conflict aimed at entrenching the privileged position of the island’s Sinhala elites at the expense of their Tamil counterparts and all working people. Its roots lie in the decades of official anti-Tamil discrimination utilised by the Colombo political establishment, from the time of independence in 1948, to buttress its rule by dividing the working class.

Sri Lanka’s prison camps have few historical precedents. One is compelled to go back to the 1899-1902 Boer War, when the British pioneered the concentration camp and incarcerated the Boers, or to the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in the US during World War II. However, for the systematic persecution of an entire people, the only real precedent is the Nazi concentration camps during World War II, where millions of Jews, as well as trade unionists, socialists and communists were herded, and many killed.

Increasingly the Rajapakse regime functions as a politico-military cabal, openly flouting the constitution, the legal system and the courts. Parliament has become a powerless rubber stamp for decisions made by the president, his brothers, close advisers and top generals. The police state apparatus built up during a quarter century of war, and strengthened under Rajapakse, remains intact. Far from demobilising soldiers in the aftermath of the war, the government is boosting the army and transforming the North and East into a vast military camp.

Having mortgaged the country to the hilt to pay for the war, Rajapakse confronts a profound economic crisis, compounded by the global recession. He has already announced a new “economic war” to force the working class and the poor to bear heavy new economic burdens. The SEP warns that the methods that have been used to terrorise the island’s Tamil minority—arbitrary detention, “disappearances” and murder by pro-government death squads—will be used to suppress opposition by all working people.

The campaign to free the Tamil detainees is an essential component of the broader fight to defend the democratic rights and living standards of the working class as a whole. The closure of the prison camps must go hand in hand with an end to the military occupation of the North and East and the withdrawal of all troops. In this struggle, no confidence can be placed in the various opposition parties or on the “international community”.

Not one of the opposition parties has challenged the mass detention of Tamils. Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the right-wing United National Party, instead offered to support the introduction of draconian new regulations under the Public Security Ordinance to “legalise” the government’s anti-democratic measures. For its part, the Sinhala extremist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna has publicly supported the internment camps, asking only for the president to establish an all-party committee to alleviate the problems facing detainees.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a coalition of bourgeois Tamil parties that acted as a mouthpiece for the LTTE, has not demanded the detainees’ immediate release. After meeting with Rajapakse last month, TNA leader R. Sambandan declared that his party would “work with the government to alleviate the conditions of the IDPs [internally displaced persons] and to facilitate their early resettlement.”

The LTTE itself has launched no campaign for the release of the Tamil civilians. Its so-called transnational government in exile issued a statement in August over the detention of its leader, requesting “the international community to secure a speedy solution to the plight of the 300,000 civilians, as well as to ensure that Mr Pathmanathan receives the protection of all international norms.”

As for the middle class ex-left groups—the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) and United Socialist Party (USP)—they have also stepped in to promote the illusion that the “international community” will come to the detainees’ rescue. The USP has appealed to the major powers to block an IMF loan as a means of forcing the Rajapakse government to release them. The NSSP has simply hailed the US and European powers for their limited criticisms of the government’s human rights record.

In reality, the major powers accept the government’s prison camps, just as they tacitly backed Rajapakse’s renewed communal war. For all its calls for “greater access” and “early resettlement”, the UN foots the bill and is thus directly responsible for the Tamil civilians’ incarceration. To date it has handed over $180 million for the running of the camps.

Likewise, the limited criticisms expressed by the US and European powers have nothing to do with any genuine concern for democratic rights. The US stalled on the IMF loan, but eventually allowed it to go through. Its hypocritical concern over human rights in Sri Lanka is simply a convenient means to pressure the Colombo government and counter the influence of rival powers in the country, particularly China.

As for India, China and Russia, their contempt for the Tamil masses was graphically illustrated at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in May, when they pushed through a resolution praising the Sri Lankan government’s victory in its criminal war.

On this as every other issue, the appeals by the NSSP and USP to the “international community” stem from their hostility to any independent mobilisation of the working class, the only social force capable of mounting a genuine struggle for the democratic rights of Tamils and the entire working class.

The SEP calls on all workers to demand the release of the Tamil detainees and for billions of rupees to be provided to help them rebuild their shattered lives. Sinhala workers, in particular, must come to the direct aid of their Tamil class brothers and sisters. The campaign must be based, not on worthless appeals to the imperialist powers and the den of international gangsters known as the UN, but on a turn to the working class throughout South Asia and around the world.

The working class in every country has a responsibility to defend the democratic rights of working people in Sri Lanka. The Rajapakse government’s actions are only a particularly sharp expression of international processes. Under the banner of the “war on terrorism”, governments around the world, with the US in the lead, are tearing up long-standing legal norms as they prepare for new wars abroad and deepening class conflict at home. The defence of democratic rights is intimately bound up with a struggle against the outmoded capitalist order and for the complete refashioning of society on socialist lines.

The SEP urges workers, youth and all those concerned with defending democratic rights to support our campaign by sending letters, holding meetings and organising protests to condemn the Sri Lankan government and demand the immediate and unconditional release of all Tamil detainees

[sameera]

The Sri Lankan government’s “resettlement” of Tamil detainees
By Sarath Kumara
26 October 2009

The Sri Lanka government last Thursday carried out a much-publicised “resettlement” of around 6,000 Tamil detainees held in internment camps near Vavuniya. Every aspect of the exercise was a fraud designed to deflect criticism at home and internationally over the detention of Tamil civilians following the defeat in May of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Around 250,000 Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone in the final stages of the conflict were herded into military-controlled camps. The majority—about 160,000 men, women and children—are being held in the huge Manik Farm camp at Chettikulam near Vavuniya. While termed “refugees”, the civilians are not permitted to leave the camps. They are effectively being treated as prisoners of war in breach of the country’s constitution and laws.

At a government ceremony last Thursday, senior presidential adviser Basil Rajapakse, who is one of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s brothers, declared that “41,685 individuals [have] started returning to their original villages” and “will go to their villages gradually within few days”. Rehabilitation Minister Rishad Badurdheen told the BBC that 5,700 had left the camps and another 36,000 would be resettled in the coming weeks in the Vavuniya, Mullaithivu, Kilinochchi and Mannar districts.

Last weekend’s Sunday Times explained: “The government claimed that the IDPs [internally displaced persons] were sent to their homes, but reports said they had not gone to their homes. Questions have arisen when some of them were brought back to the camps while others were sent to transit camps or temporary shelters set up in schools and other government buildings.”

At Manthai West in Mannar, where the ceremony took place, around 1,200 detainees had been brought from the Manik Farm camps for resettlement. Journalists, who are barred from the detention centres, were encouraged to attend the media event. The IDPs were lined up for the cameras and reporters were told they were being sent back to their homes.

However, as the Sunday Times noted, the people “were asked to board the buses parked outside, but after a short ride, they were brought back to the original location where the ceremony took place. It was more a photo-opportunity for the journalists.”

The article also reported: “Other groups who were released earlier have also not reached their homes. A group of IDPs who were released to be resettled in Mullaithivu… were instead taken to transit camps in schools and government buildings at Thunukkai.” Government officials have tried to justify the move by saying their homes had been badly damaged or destroyed.

The government has been under mounting pressure to release the detainees. A fortnight ago, a parliamentary delegation from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu was told that 50,000 refugees would be released within 15 days. The public relations charade at Manthai West was no doubt designed to give the impression that the government was keeping its word. In May, the government claimed that it would resettle all refugees within six months.

The transfer of detainees to smaller transit camps and holding centres also serves another purpose. There is growing anger and hostility in the huge Mannar Farm centres where conditions are appalling—food, housing, water supplies, medical care are all inadequate. At least two protests have been violently suppressed by soldiers guarding the camps. The government and military are no doubt seeking to prevent a large-scale rebellion by dispersing some detainees to smaller centres.

The real purpose of the mass detention is to intimidate the island’s Tamil minority. An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 young men and women have been seized at these internment camps as “LTTE suspects” and transferred to secret centres. Amnesty International has noted that these detainees do not have “any access to family members or legal counsel and have not appeared in court”.

Basil Rajapakse told the state-owned Daily News on Friday that “up to now nearly 100,000 or almost half of the total number had been resettled”. However, apart from some elderly people and children, the government has released only 10,000 detainees. That “release” in September was also a public relations exercise timed to coincide with the visit of UN official Even Lynn Pascoe to Vavuniya. At least half were sent to detention camps in their home districts.

The government claims that resettlement is only possible once the areas have been de-mined and facilities built. But nearly six months after the end of the conflict, the focus of reconstruction is not the building of homes, schools and hospitals destroyed in 26 years of war, but the preparation for a permanent military occupation of these areas.

During the final year of the war, the military seized large swathes of LTTE-held territory, stretching from Mannar on the north-west coast to Mullaithivu on the east coast of the island. The vast bulk of the population is either in the detention camps or has fled. New military camps and police stations are being established in these areas. The army is recruiting 50,000 more troops to reinforce its control in the North and the East.

Five Security Forces Headquarters have been established—two in the former LTTE strongholds of Kilinochchi and Mullaithivu. The military is also planning a new coastal guard system to patrol the seas to the north and east of the island. According to Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran, a huge 150-acre army camp is being built at Kilinochchi.

The government has already set up 37 new police stations in the East and eight in the North. Four more police stations are to be located in the Kilinochchi district. A police training college is to be established in Mullaithivu.

The main A-9 highway connecting Colombo to Jaffna on the northern tip of the island has been opened to a limited passenger bus service. Buses are accompanied by military escorts. A resident of Jaffna who recently travelled on the bus told the WSWS that there was no sign of civilian habitation anywhere in former LTTE territory. From Meesalai on the Jaffna Peninsula to Omanthai near Vavuniya, a distance of about 110 kilometres, two armed soldiers were deployed every 100 metres, and there was a small military post every 500 metres. Passengers were not allowed out of the bus.

The Rajapakse government is planning to turn the former LTTE territory into a cheap labour platform. That process is already well under way in the East, which was “liberated” in 2007. A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has been established near Trincomalee and two more are planned in Batticaloa and Ampara. In the North, Kilinochchi and Mullaithivu have been earmarked for SEZs.

The Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka has launched a campaign to demand the immediate release of all Tamil detainees, the dismantling of the camps, assistance to the refugees to rebuild their lives and the immediate withdrawal of all security forces from the North and East.

The SEP urges workers, youth and all those concerned with defending democratic rights to support our campaign by sending letters, holding meetings and organising protests to condemn the Sri Lankan government and demand the immediate and unconditional release of all Tamil detainees.

Letters should be directed to:

Gotabhaya Rajapakse,
Secretary of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order.
Ministry of Defence, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Email: gotabaya@defence.lk

Lalith Weeratunga
Permanent Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka
Old Parliament Building, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Please send copies to:

Socialist Equality Party,
301 1/1,
Main Road, Attidiya, Dehiwala, Sri Lanka.
Tel/Fax: 0094 11 2712104

World Socialist Web Site,
E-mail: editor@wsws.org

[sameera]

Sri Lankan government resettles Tamil detainees in prison-like conditions
By Subash Somachandran
5 November 2009

The Sri Lankan government claimed last month that it had released some thousands of Tamil civilians held in the Manik Farm detention camps near Vavuniya and other northern towns to resettle in their home districts. These refugees have in fact been sent to areas under military occupation, with new prison-like conditions imposed on them

Facing criticism internationally and within the country, President Mahinda Rajapakse announced that his government had commenced resettling about 41,000 Tamils. About 250,000 Tamil civilians during the final stages of the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been incarcerated since May without charge, in violation of basic democratic rights, the country’s constitution and legal system.

There is no way of verifying the government’s claims of the numbers of people released. Independent journalists have been barred from the camps and drastic restrictions have been imposed on aid agencies. Neither the media nor aid agencies were permitted to scrutinise the “resettlement” following a stage-managed publicity ceremony. WSWS reporters, however, have been able to visit some of the villages where detainees have been sent.

Several thousand people from Manik Farm camps have been moved to islands in the Jaffna district. In some cases, they are staying with relatives. However, some have been left without any accommodation or live in previously abandoned houses. The islands of Kayts, Punguduthivu, Velanai, Karainagar, Nainathivu, Eluvaithivu, Analaithivu and Nedunthivu are connected to the Jaffna peninsula by bridges and causeways over shallow water.

These islands have been under military occupation since the 1990s and they are currently controlled by the navy. During the military offensive to capture these areas in the early 1990s, many people fled to the LTTE-controlled Vanni in the Northern Province.

After 1995, some people gradually came back to these islands. Others were unable to return because the military declared High Security Zones in large areas on the islands. Residents live under constant harassment by the navy and the allied paramilitary Eelam People Democratic Party (EPDP), which is a coalition partner in the Sri Lankan government.

People in these islands can only travel to and from Jaffna city after strict security checking and obtaining passes from the navy. They require the navy’s permission for each visit, regardless of its purpose. A ban has been imposed on using camera phones and other electronic goods.

Recently-released detainees explained their harrowing experiences to the WSWS. Before they were brought to the Jaffna peninsula by bus from Vavuniya, they were herded into Aruvithottam, a village near the Manik Farm camps, and interrogated.

When they returned to their respective villages, the military kept them surrounded with barbed wire for a day. First they were questioned by the navy or the army. Next they were photographed separately and with their families. Then they were sent to the divisional secretary’s office, where those who had relatives were allowed to stay with them, provided that the relatives signed a document taking full responsibility. Other detainees were taken separately back to the areas, which they had left more than a decade earlier.

Before processing by the divisional secretary, the navy informed relatives that the detainees “should not leave the island for six months and should notapply for new national identity cards”. The navy marked the identity cards of the people brought from Vavuniya. If they leave, they will face arrest and detention without trial.

At Velanai island, the navy confiscated the identity cards of young people before they were sent to their respective villages. They were asked to return later to collect the cards. When they did, several youth were badly beaten by navy soldiers. These youth, who are all treated as LTTE suspects, have to return every Sunday to the naval camp and sign a book.

Those families looking after their relatives have received no assistance. The government has washed its hands of providing basic essentials, including food, clothes or housing. People cannot go to a hospital outside their area for medical treatment. They have been released from the hell of the Manik Farm camps, but their situation has not improved.

One refugee told the WSWS: “We stayed in our relatives’ home which housed about 30 people. So as not to cause trouble to them, we decided to put up a shelter in our relatives’ land.” Another refugee said: “We came here with empty hands. We borrowed money to buy these things to put up a hut.” Coconut leaves, which are used for roofing, cost about four rupees each.

Some villages on Karainagar island, such as Thopukadu, Madathuvalavu and Rasavinthottam, have been converted into High Security Zones by the navy. Some 90 families from Thopukadu were resettled there but have no relatives to look after them. Their relatives left the island because of the navy’s restrictions. The refugees are living in 10 abandoned homes.

About 190 people attached to the Rasavinthottam and Madathuvalavu villages are being kept in seven abandoned houses. The owners of these houses were displaced in 1990. The roofs are dilapidated and unable to withstand the wet season.

A detainee sent to one of these villages said he could return to an old job some kilometres away, but no-one was allowed to travel. “We have no money. How can we survive? These houses were abandoned more than 19 years ago. Bushes have grown all around and it looks like a forest. There are lots of snakes and mosquitoes. This is looking like another Manik Farm,” he said.

Another person said: “We could survive by doing any type of work but we are unable to go leave the area. We are selling one kilo of flour of our relief supplies to get the money to buy vegetables and other items.”

Due to a drought, the wells have dried up. People have to walk a kilometre to get water. The local council supplies just 15 litres of drinking water per day for each family. A local volunteer institution provides another 30 litres of drinking water for 22 rupees.

A village dispensary is the only available hospital. Emergency patients can be sent by ambulance to Jaffna hospital, but former detainees are not free to go there. Patients must obtain a doctor’s recommendation which is screened by the navy—it is similar to the restrictions at Manik Farm.

School children have not been given uniforms, shoes or school supplies. One student said: “We were displaced in 2008. Since then we have not any schooling. At Manik Farm nothing was done for our students although there were propaganda units providing ‘education’ to us.”

One person angrily said: “When we got into the bus for resettlement in Jaffna, Douglas Devananda [EPDP leader and government minister] said we would be resettled on our own lands and given all facilities. But we cannot even go to our own land and we have no way to survive.”

The conditions facing civilians released from Manik Farm highlight their continued persecution. Hundreds of thousands more detainees have not been even considered for so-called resettlement. They continue to languish in Manik Farm and other camps.

The Socialist Equality Party and the WSWS have initiated an international campaign for the immediate release of detainees, the provision of government aid needed to live decently and an end to the military occupation of the North and East. (See: “Demand the release of Tamil detainees in Sri Lanka”).

We urge workers, youth and all those who defend basic democratic rights to send letters, issue statements and organise protests demanding the unconditional release of the Tamil detainees.

Letters should be directed to:

Gotabhaya Rajapakse
Secretary of Defence, Public Security, Law & Order
Ministry of Defence, Colombo
Sri Lanka
Email: gotabaya@defence.lk

Lalith Weeratunga
Permanent Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka
Old Parliament Building, Colombo
Sri Lanka

Please send copies to:

Socialist Equality Party
301 1/1, Main Road, Attidiya, Dehiwala
Sri Lanka
Tel/Fax: 0094 11 2712104

The World Socialist Web Site
Email: editor@wsws.org

[Christopher Hill]

Well it seems that this has happened  :)
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/12/200912123337359527.html