If the two contending nationalisms celebrating recurrently their fleeting moments of military glory have proved anything in 25 years, it is that they have nothing to offer except unending futility and misery. The LTTE uses celebrations of heroism to chain the disillusioned and unwilling into military ranks. In the binge of euphoria over the Government�s claims that it is winning the war and liberating the East, crucial military and political uncertainties are being swept under the carpet. People with longer memories see the futility of celebrating taking areas several times abandoned before, driving the country�s human rights record to a new nadir, cannibalizing the economy for uncertain objectives and acting in blind defiance of the sensibilities of India and the international community. The most formidable military task in the North remains untouched and the costly military failures there and the damage done to civilians by regular bombing largely ignored. Contempt for international law would in time undermine the Sri Lankan state�s sovereignty and legitimacy.

Worst of all, the Government has virtually abandoned any attempt to win over the minorities and make them feel equal partners in the nation-building enterprise. Was it not the root cause of this tragedy that the minorities feel alienated by majoritarian absolutism? The ruling SLFP�s proposal before the APRC tasked with finding a political settlement undermines any hope people had in the prospect of neutralising the LTTE�s penchant for violence as its only weapon and attaining a durable peace. While the international community feels that the LTTE and its politics too are contributory to the predicament of the Tamil people, it is at the same time appalled by the manner in which the Sri Lankan state is squandering the opportunity provided by its crackdown on LTTE terror and extortion networks.

Most untimely is the Government�s extremist bent towards decimating the Tamil community in the name of fighting LTTE terror, coming just when the Tamils at large are beginning to acknowledge the LTTE for what it is � it will destroy, but never liberate � and the international community has created the ground for an enlightened approach. Those who guide military operations and make policy on behalf of the government have very little understanding of the complex dynamism of the ethnic problem, thus alienating the minorities, especially the Tamils.

Based on what we have reported in the past and in the current report, government policy towards Tamils, now a virtual monopoly of the Defence Ministry, appears to have the following strands centred on the East, drawing strangely on precedents set by the LTTE:

Silence the more prominent Tamil leaders who articulate Tamil aspirations, particularly in support of the North-East Merger. We find strong pointers to the Defence Ministry in the killings of Joseph Pararajasingham, V. Vigneswaran, N. Raviraj, Eastern University Vice Chancellor S. Raveendranath, and Eastern PLOTE leader Pakiarajah (Mama). Defence Ministry prot�g�, the Karuna Group has been associated with most of these. We reliably learn that Karuna has instructed his cadres to kill Eastern EPRLF leader Mr. Thurairatnam (who survived many LTTE attempts), in a way that would conceal their hand.
Kill Tamil leaders at local level to weaken the community, especially in the Trincomalee District, of which this report gives a number of examples.
Use violence, displacement and land acquisitions (as conceived in 1983) to marginalise the Tamils and to Sinhalise Trincomalee District.
Use terror and silencing of Tamil journalists to control news of severe violations.��

Once more security is being equated with capturing areas and bringing them under Sinhalese hegemonic dominion. Against such delusions, the Government�s much vaunted wining of the East is going to be temporary, the Tamils and Muslims are going to feel further insecure and in turn Sinhalese living in the East would further be turned into unwilling pawns in a devastating ideological game.

While we draw attention to historical precedents in demographic fiddling and uprooting of Tamil villages in the North-East as part of the Sinhalese hegemonic project, we reiterate that its renewal runs contrary to the wishes of the Sinhalese people. Credible revelations of a pre-election deal between the President�s men and the LTTE to disadvantage the UNP candidate, throw doubts on whether the President was elected. The party of extremist Buddhist monks (JHU) and presidential ally, currently wielding key influence in driving government policy in the North-East, was never by far elected as the representatives of the Sinhalese people.

This is not the first time when gnawing doubts of legitimacy have pushed leaders to indulge in violent heroics to image themselves as reincarnations of school history-book heroes fighting epic battles against the Tamils. We saw it after the controversial and violent referendum extending the term of Parliament in 1982. Such times enable fringe elements to use their leverage to enforce their narrow vision on the country and spike the possibility of democratic change for decades to come. We would then find events determined not by the strengths of people, but by their anger, weakness, vice and insecurity. Then historical antecedents and failed agendas take on a life of their own, where current aspirants to the status of epic heroes try to succeed where others failed. In turn these antecedents inflame the fears of those who are the intended victims.

We all become subjective. On 16^th July, Herath Abeyweera, Chief Secretary of the Eastern Province was gunned down as he left his office in Trincomalee. The President condemned it as a cowardly act, for which the LTTE are the leading suspects. We unreservedly agree with the President. But cowardly are also nearly all the killings described in this report. The Government is in total denial, while the Tamils feel angry and insecure.��

For its part, the LTTE will continue to appeal to the Tamil people that without their military might the Tamils have no chance of surviving a community with rights in Sri Lanka. Its contribution towards that very calamity would be glossed over. The people condemned to fear and insecurity would become fatally entrapped in the ideological agendas of both sides. Both Sinhalese soldiers and young Tamils and children dying by the thousands, sacrificing their life for misguided political agendas which they do not comprehend, bringing neither honour to the dead nor peace and dignity to the living.��

The East is now under a total militarisation of the civil administration, by a military enjoying a 23-year-history of absolute impunity, killing thousands of Tamil civilians without anyone being punished. There are no democratic structures where the civilians have a credible voice, such as a political settlement with meaningful devolution would have provided. State-affiliated killer groups run loose picking out targets among Tamils with leadership qualities. These precedents forebode ill for democracy in Sri Lanka.�

Against this anarchy, the Government has announced grandiose claims to rehabilitate the East on a priority basis, of course asking the international community and NGOs to foot the bill for the destruction of life and property it caused. Such an rehabilitation would inevitably be based on government-propaganda of what the people have been through. It is indeed true that the Sinhalese farmers suffered because of a ten-day LTTE-imposed water cut at Mavil Canal. But that is only part of the story of civilian suffering in the East that includes death and displacement among Tamils and Muslims because of government-shelling, loss of land and livelihood, and systematic looting of property and stored food stocks by the government forces. To speak of this is taboo. The Defence Secretary threatened a Daily Mirror journalist who touched on this with �extermination�.�

In the minds of the advocates of the Sinhalese hegemonic project, depopulation of Tamil villages in the Trincomalee District has been a long-term objective. One by one Tamils have lost areas where they were secure. Sampoor is one such area to which victims of violence fled in April 2006. The Supreme Court has already dismissed two fundamental rights petitions against the attempt by the Government to take away the land of those forced out of the Sampoor area by shelling. Contrary to a number of international treaties that Sri Lanka has acceded to, the petition was dismissed on the simple grounds that the Court cannot adjudicate on security matters. The ICCPR, which reinforces the right to return of the displaced, though acceded to by Sri Lanka, has been placed in limbo by a controversial Supreme Court judgment of 2006. It is time to demand that the Government takes steps to give substance to international treaties it has acceded to.�

The immediate task is to rehabilitate the displaced and provide them with protection against killers and abductors enjoying close collusion with the security forces. Only unobstructed international participation on the ground by international organisations such as UNHCR and international NGOs could ensure that humanitarian work is conducted based on principles of equity, non-discrimination and conflict sensitivity.

While humanitarian assistance should continue with the urgency it warrants, the situation in Eastern Sri Lanka is not conducive to either elections or reconstruction. Unless the government is willing to make major changes on the ground towards demilitarization, an end to state-linked human rights abuses and the independence of institutions, the local populations are not going to benefit from elections or reconstruction efforts.� Indeed the Government has the opportunity to make the multi-ethnic East a region of democratisation and co-existence, but all signs on the ground are in the contrary direction of ethnic polarization and anarchy fuelled by armed actors. And this picture in the East is unlikely to change without international participation to strengthen local civilians and their institutions.

Given the history violence in the East over the last two and a half decades, the East more than any other region calls for a UN Human Rights Field Operation, to ensure independent and impartial monitoring, investigation and reporting on human rights abuses as well as to contribute towards the protection of civilians.� If the government is serious about winning the confidence of the local populations, particularly the minority communities, a deterrent against abuses, as what international human rights monitoring offers, will also demonstrate the government�s commitment to protect civilians.

Following the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987, the increasing space towards democratisation and reconstruction, gave the people in the East much confidence, and it was the starting point of attempts towards rebuilding Tamil moderate politics and Tamil society as a whole, beginning in the East and extending to the North. Collusion between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government to undermine the Indo-Lanka Accord, soon aborted those efforts. Were the Government to put forward a credible political solution to address Tamil and Muslim aspirations and then work towards democratisation and economic development in the East, it could provide a new opening towards rebuilding Tamil society. This however, would require a shift in the political direction of the State and the military establishment in particular, which has been all too comfortable during the last two years in mirroring the project of the LTTE to decimate Tamil democratic politics and the Tamil and Muslim communities in the East.

1. The Cleansing of Mutur East � Back to the Calamities of Weli Oya

If one were to point to a single most potent reason why the LTTE thrives, it is state backed aggression over land that regards the minorities as aliens. It has led to an obsession with countering separatism to the exclusion of all other facets of nation building.

As conceived by the ruling section of the Sinhalese political class in the run up to the violence of July 1983, the guarantees against separatism were to be imposed through strategic areas from which the Muslims and Tamils were to be excluded through brute force and gazette declarations that found euphemisms for these exercises as �Special Areas� for some activity to do with allegedly security, economic or Buddhistic projects. Draconian powers of the Central Government under the present unitary dispensation, both military and administrative, have thus been used to target areas where Tamils and recently Muslims have hitherto been fairly secure.

It is this treatment of the minorities as subversive and undeserving of rights any civilized country accords its citizens that fuelled the Tamil militancy and enables an obdurate force such as the LTTE to thrive. Contrary to the propaganda bandied about in Colombo, it was not India or the Tamil expatriates who were the causes of �terrorism�. The attitude outlined above and its effects culminating in July 1983 created conditions for the simmering Tamil insurgency to boil over.

It is no accident that the first steps in the policy of creating exclusive Sinhalese zones in the North-East coincided with the unleashing of the July 1983 violence. That too was when the District Development Councils advanced as a political settlement in 1981 were shown to be mockery. For President Rajapakse to offer these as the SLFP�s position today is an insult to the country, which knows better. He has further signalled the Government�s intention to give new life to policies and practices that have advanced Sinhalisation and sought to cripple the minorities.

President Rajapakse�s gazette declaration of 30^th May 2007 establishing the Mutur East/ Sampoor High Security Zone, implicitly affirmed that the Tamil civilians displaced from the area would be deprived of their land. The new HSZ covers an area of 35 square miles touching Foul Point, Illankanthai, Uppural, Thoppur, Kattaiparichchan and Mutur. The population here had been predominantly Tamil (see Sec.7, Appendix VI �with Map and Documents). 15 000 civilians in 12 villages with arable farmlands, water resources and fishing facilities were turned into beggars, who were moved from one ill-provided refugee camp to another with state-sponsored vigilante groups let loose in their surroundings. Developments in Illankaithurai Muhattuvaram described below, suggest the HSZ extends further south de facto.

Also significantly, the Mutur East area from which Tamils are now being excluded is one of the few remaining areas where Tamils in Trincomalee District have been secure from state-backed communal violence (most recently in April 2006) that is a constant threat resulting from decades of planned Sinhalese colonisation. It is a place to which a large number of Tamils affected by reprisal violence in the Allai Scheme fled from April 2006.�

Government Defence Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwelle speaking to BBC Sinhala further confirmed that the civilians of Sampoor and Mutur East would lose their lands and justified the aquisition as an economic zone for development similar to the Mahveli project (1960s to 1980s) for which the people lost their �properties and ancestral lands�. This was the same pretext used in the Weli Oya precedent that was billed Mahveli System L (Special Rep.5 and Bulletin 3). These were unusual projects for the manner in which the land was acquired. In the recent case the people driven out of their homes were shelled on the run from April to December 2006, all the way from Sampoor to Batticaloa.

The same menace was implicit in what Rambukwelle told the Hindustan Times (19 Jun.07). He said that the civilian refugees from this area (Mutur East) would not be allowed to go back to their homes and lands, �both for their own security and the security of vital establishments to come up there.� Once more the President showed the world the value of his word. On 4^th September 2006, he told the SLFP�s 55^th Anniversary gathering, �We have salvaged Sampur from the grip of the enemy purely for the benefit of the people.�

Security through exclusive Sinhalese zones in the North-East was first mooted openly when on the eve of the violence in July 1983 Minister Lalith Athulathmudali told Parliament, �In those days it used to be said that there was a Tamil majority in the North. But now it is different. The time has come that the majority of Tamils live among the Sinhalese�. The arrangements already set in motion went unnoticed in the outrage of state-backed attacks on Tamils that immediately followed (see Appendix IV). The first exclusive Sinhalese zone, Weli Oya (Manal Aru), was carved out north of Trincomalee in the South of Mullaitivu District in October 1984 after driving out Tamils from Kent and Dollar Farms and moving in selected Sinhalese prisoners from Anuradhapura Prison, 62 of whom were massacred by the LTTE on 30^th November 1984.�

The Army accomplished the next step in driving out Tamils from the surroundings by brute violence starting early in December 1984. From several directions, beginning in the south with Amarivayal and Thennamaravady in Trincomalee District, the Army moved into villages in the South of Mullaitivu District leaving dozens dead or disappeared in several villages (e.g. 15 dead in Thennamaravady and 27 in Othiyamalai). In February 1985 displaced farmers who went south from their refugee camps in Mullaitivu town to harvest their paddy fields were fired upon from the air, and the Government itself admitted to killing 52 Tamil �separatists�. The number of persons missing compiled in refugee camps numbered 131. The result left about 3 000 Tamil families permanently deprived of their homes. (The facts with sources have been documented in Sri Lanka: Arrogance of Power�, esp. Ch. 13.3, 15 and 20, Special Report No.5 with maps and also the Appendix IV below.)

Any notion that the sovereignty of a state must be preserved through massacring and chasing minorities from their homes to create Special Zones is to deny them their birthright to their environment and render them aliens who must seek their own protection. Such an attitude is necessarily founded on violence and invites spiralling violence.

The current trend in Trincomalee District, from the execution of 5 students early last year, is comparable with that in 1985 � 1987 based on plans set in motion in 1983. (See Appendix IV.) What we see are variations of the same methods, but with the same objective � Sinhalisation of the East. ��

The project of exclusive Sinhalese zones brutalised both Tamils and Sinhalese and the first massacres of Sinhalese civilians by the LTTE go back to this period � 11 in Kokkilai on 1^st December 1984 and 120 in Anuradhapura on 14^th May 1985. We mentioned this history, because in Sri Lanka history does not go away. Far from any economic or security gain, this approach has been an unmitigated tragedy for the Tamils evicted and the Sinhalese planted in these exclusive zones.

2. Forcing the Exodus of Tamils from Mutur East

Clearing the land for Weli Oya involved outright massacres of civilians and disappearance. In Mutur East while the civilian dead and disappeared are of a similar order, genuine security threats posed by the LTTE have been more cleverly used to disguise the menace to civilians.

The villagers of Mutur East were a peaceful people engaged in farming and fishing. The area was under army control until 1996, when troops were moved from large parts of the East for operations in Jaffna and Vanni. The people in areas vacated by the Army came under the LTTE�s exclusive control and the LTTE abused and misused them for 10 years. This fate was imposed on them by the Military�s weakness and short sightedness and not of their choosing. Governments spared no thought for the civilians when they took or evacuated areas. During the CFA, the LTTE acted contrary to its spirit and turned the area into a Sea Tiger base having also long range cannon. It terrorised the Muslims and drove them out of several areas, which became LTTE high security zones. All this worked to the detriment of the Tamil and Muslim people (Special Report No.14 and Bulletin 34).

The security need for the Government to take back Mutur East, which was thoughtlessly abandoned, is understandable. But that is no excuse for penalising the people. As we pointed out in Bulletin No.45, the Military had a drill tested during the Vadamaratchy operation in 1987 to retake an area with minimum harm to civilian lives, by designating schools and places of worship as shelters while the Army advanced. It worked fairly well and deaths from shelling were relatively few.

The way Mutur East was emptied was so abominable that one must conclude that the eviction of the populace by bombing and shelling was deliberate. The people should not have been made to move beyond the nearest school, temple or church. The big school in the area, Senaiyoor Central, had been hit from 25^th April. Vigneswara High School in Kathiraveli was hit in on 8^th November killing over 40 civilians. Testimonies we received from civilians (Bulletin No.45) confirmed that in general, the LTTE did not fire at the Army from among civilians until the last stages in December 2006.�

The Government used the Mavil Aru (Canal) crisis as a pretext to go on the offensive and drive the Tamil civilians out of Mutur East. The accepted wisdom that the LTTE closed the canal and deprived the Sinhalese cultivators of water in order to start the war must be questioned in the light of several impartial testimonies.�

The suicide attack on Army Chief Fonseka on 25^th April 2006 was followed by indiscriminate reprisal shelling and bombing of the entire Muthur East area (including villages like Pattalipuram, where there was no LTTE base in the village, but far away from the coast). The Army further closed checkpoints for goods entering Mutur East, which was by then having a large displaced population from Mutur South, who from April fled violence in the colony area resulting from LTTE provocations. This caused severe hardship and food shortages by June.

Impartial observers who visited the LTTE Sampoor office two weeks before the closure of the sluice gates of Mavil Aru said that the situation had become acute, and people were putting a lot of pressure on the LTTE to do something. They strongly felt that something was bound to happen. It was subsequently that the LTTE closed the sluice gates (which hit mostly Sinhalese farmers as the Tamil and Muslim farmers had been unable to plough because of the violence in April). The Government persisted on a military offensive even after the SLMM and the reputedly hard-line Buddhist monks at Neelapola and Seruvila negotiated a settlement.�

Faced with massive bombing and shelling of Mutur East in early August 2006, the civilians were forced to move from one village that was hit to another that seemed safer. Thus many people who fled Sampoor, which was shelled first in April, fled to Illankaithurai Muhattuvaram. When Muhattuvaram came under missile attack in August, the displaced scattered again to wherever seemed safer, to Verugal, Kathiraveli and Vaharai before ending up in refugee camps in the Batticaloa District in December 2006. At every one of these places they were bombed, shelled or both. This would not have happened if the Government had designated places nearby from which they could have got back home once the operation was over. The point is that the Government did not want them to get back home as subsequent events show.�

A leading citizen from the area told us that the death toll resulting from the whole episode of flight is close to 180, adding that the list is still a tentative one. An unknown number of elderly and children died falling into pits while crossing Vaharai lagoon by night in a final act of desperation when Vaharai was being shelled. He explained that many had been killed during flight, because of random or misdirected shelling, and had simply been buried by the roadside and did not go into any official record. The refugees living scattered over Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Killiveddy and far beyond, makes documentation extremely difficult. The number 180 appears conservative, given the Non-Violent Peace Force�s figure of above 147 civilians killed in Batticaloa District for November 2006 alone. The number injured would be at least three times that figure. By then there was hardly anyone left in Mutur East and most of them were in the Batticaloa District.

An analysis of these operations from the standpoint of international law to determine the proportionality of the level of force employed by Sri Lankan Security forces in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage gained needs to examine factors such as:

(a) Were realistic precautions taken to minimise collateral damage?

(b) Were there alternative or less damaging ways of achieving the intended military objective?

The events in Mutur East could be a violation of International Humanitarian Law. It would call for an independent and international commission to investigate such violations.� In other countries, UN Human Rights Field Operations are tasked with such investigations, and clearly there is again a need for such an international monitoring and investigative presence.

3. Dying Defenceless, Robbed and Expunged from Record � Plight of the Displaced in Batticaloa

Before we return to the issue of the HSZ in Mutur East and Sampoor, land which was expropriated from persons displaced by shelling, we set the scene by illustrating the plight of the displaced especially in Paduvankarai (Sunset Shore), Batticaloa District which applies in general to the East of Sri Lanka. It places in context the attempt to further rob the land of people terrorised, driven from pillar to post and denied all rights, even the security of life. Inhabitants of Paduvankarai too were displaced by shelling and were forced to move into Batticaloa town in March 2007. It was the worldwide indignation resulting from the swelling of the displaced in Batticaloa town and environs from 90 000 to over 150 000 that pushed the Government to address the arithmetic by forcibly moving the Mutur displaced from Batticaloa to Killiveddy.

A number of incidents display the same spirit of impunity that has been witnessed in Trincomalee District. Several concern the manner in which the security forces pad up the Tiger tally to give more weight to their victory.

On 19^th July 2007, the President spoke at the victory parade in Colombo to celebrate the capture of Baron�s Cap, supposedly the last outpost of the LTTE in the East. He proclaimed, �Let us bequeath to [our children] a land where Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims can live together and smile as the children of one mother.� Yet on the ground the Tamils are treated as the defeated enemy having no rights, except to some redundant legal ritual without which things could have been worse.

Near Baron�s Cap lie scattered habitations, among which is the village of Akurana. The day after the President�s address, 20^th July, three Tamil youths in the village were killed and the Army refused their parents their bodies and took them to Valaichenai Hospital. The Defence Ministry web site duly reported:

�Three LTTE cadres were killed when Army troops continuing mopping up operations in the Thoppigala jungle confronted a group of LTTE terrorists in the Peraveli general area, South of Thoppigala this morning (July 20). The incident occurred when troops attacked the LTTE terrorists who had been trying to escape the Thoppigala jungle around 10:30 a.m. Troops also captured one 81 mm mortar gun from the fleeing LTTE cadres.�

At the Hospital, according to very reliable sources, the Police told the parents who went for the bodies that if they go to the courts, the Army would shoot them. The Army had claimed that they recovered from the unidentified dead, three cyanide capsules and a numbered identity tag. The parents then went to the army camp at Illuppadichchenai and were warned by the Army that if they testified in court, they would be killed. The Police brought no productions to substantiate the Army�s claims. Sources at the Hospital confirmed that the bodies of the youths, definitely less than 25 years, had no bullet marks, making it clear that they were beaten or tortured to death. Allowing three days the local authorities interred the bodies as unclaimed and unidentified.�

The following claim appeared in the Defence Ministry web site on 20^th June 2007: �Army troops with the assistance of Police gunned down three LTTE cadres who had attempted to infiltrate into Kalkudah village on Tuesday (19) night. During the subsequent search, troops found two hand grenades and two claymore mines along with the three bodies of the LTTE cadres.� The truth however, which we obtained from very reliable sources, is utterly shameful.�

The victims were fishermen from Akkaraipattu displaced a few months ago reportedly due to a local dispute with another community. They were Thiagarajah Asokumar (21), Govindarajah Kalaichelvan (25) and Shanmuganathan (17). The three were married respectively to Mahendran Mehala, Thangarajah Mehala and Ratnasingham Thanalatchumi. The men went out to sea on 19^th June and after they returned the Army accosted them and shot them dead. Their three wives and their mothers, one of whom is Samithamby Rasamma went to the beach to look for them after 7.00 PM. The security forces who met them told them that three bodies had been sent to Valaichenai Hospital.

The women went to the mortuary and identified the dead. The Police and Army told them that the bodies could be released only if they signed statements that the deceased belonged to the LTTE. The women refused, upon which they were beaten by the policemen and soldiers. They persisted in their refusal and went without the bodies, which were later released through the courts after due procedure.

In the Lurch: With the LTTE abandoning their establishments in the interior of Batticaloa, many of those it had forcibly taken to work in these were also left with nowhere to go in safety. Sellathamby Anandarajah (49) came home to Vinayagapuram in Valaichenai at 5.30 PM on 19^th June 2007 after escaping from the interior where fighting was going on. For two years he worked for the LTTE. A short time after his arrival, armed Karuna cadres came home and tried to drag him away. His wife and daughter Kamaleswari tried to protect Anandarajah by standing between him and the gunmen. The latter beat up the women and took Anandarajah. His corpse with gunshot injuries was found the next day at Karunkalicholai in Kalkudah.

3.1 LTTE Executes Prisoners:

We also received information from an escapee from an LTTE prison in the interior of Batticaloa, that in the final stages it was holding 74 prisoners of whom it executed 46 from February to April 2007. The LTTE men in charge of the prison were Imayavan and Kanimohan of Intelligence. There were then 200 intelligence cadres in the camp, including Kamson, Seelan, Oothappan (of Jaffna) and Thuronan (in charge of suicide training). The prison was at Avatiaveli next to Keviliamadu, otherwise known as Beirut.

12 persons were executed on 23^rd February, one of whom was Nedumaran. On 12^th April, nine prisoners were taken out for an �inquiry� and executed.� Among them were Rubaharan, a CTB conductor from Santhiveli, and two Sri Lankan Army soldiers, one known as Samintha. The latter two who probably surrendered during a skirmish were beaten to death rather than shot. On 21^st April again 13 persons were executed. Among them were Nazar of Mosque Rd., Katthankudy, who was taken for ransom and Karuvalthamby Rajaratnam of Central Camp taken over a local dispute. Prisoners according to this source, now abroad, were also executed during May. Those killed included persons taken in civil cases and on the charge of being Karuna sympathisers.

3.2 Muslim Extremism and Military Patronage:

From 1990, the Government used Tamil paramilitaries in addition to Muslim home guards. The latter used to collect their weapons from the police station when going for duty and return them. Over the years a number of them stopped being home guards and joined Muslim extremist groups, what are commonly referred to as Jihadi groups. Today in several areas the distinction between jihad and home guard elements has been lost. Often members of the same family are in both. Some home guards have sold their weapons to jihad elements, some bought them from cadres on the run after the LTTE split and recently the security forces have also given weapons to them. The Police have given up trying to account for weapons. In Valaichenai jihadis operate under military patronage parallel to the Karuna group in Tamil areas and novel things happen, such as a parallel legal system with the Military turning a blind eye.

Among the leading jihadis in Valaichenai are Auto Kaleel, Adambawa Ibrahim, Naufer and Pavadai Mahan. A recent instance of the impunity they enjoy is the case of the 15-year-old girl Hidaya. She was earlier sexually abused by a hadjiar, followed by several men. Her home was not a good place for her because her father used to come home drunk and beat her. She was sent to a children�s home where too an employee abused her. Recently, the jihadis caught hold of her, kept her prisoner for 15 days and executed her with a bullet in her head. This is a further aspect of anarchy in the East fuelled by Government patronage.

In Hidaya�s case the Police have simply ignored orders, which is now common, to arrest the culprits above. One reason why the security forces are tolerant of them is that much of the risky frontline fighting in the East had been done by the Karuna group and Jihad, both of which worked closely. Jihadis received training from the Karuna group in their common fight againt the LTTE and fought alongside Karuna cadres in Vaharai for example. When Mutur was under siege last year, Karuna and jihad elements took on difficult roles in fighting. Because of this the security forces let them do as they please.

In Valaichenai itself there are an estimated 300 jihadis, which is also a reflection on unemployment. While both home guards and jihadis operate with the security forces, the former are fairly well paid. The latter like the Karuna group support themselves by extortion, so that the Government gets their services for free. Hidaya�s case is the tip of the iceberg. There is far reaching intimidation of the local Muslim populace as extortionists go around demanding money and threatening dire consequences for non-payment, particularly from those better off, parallel to what Karuna and Pillaiyan are doing among the Tamils. In both communities, the victims dare not speak out. The East is thus footing the Government�s bill, supporting several satraps. The extortion and abductions in Colombo were an extension of practices well grounded in the East. After the LTTE evacuated, Karuna�s men and the jihadis once close, are now prone to clash.��

3.3 Paduvankarai:

In Paduvankarai region of Batticaloa, almost the whole population fled to the sea coast stretching from Valaichenai south to Batticaloa and Kalmunai when the Government commenced shelling the area from February end 2007, as a prelude to moving in. The resettlement of Paduvankarai began in mid-May 2007. People began getting back to homes where rafters, doors, window frames and stocks of harvested rice, had been systematically looted by the security forces and taken out through Valaiyiravu Bridge and Pulukkunawa in lorries. Karuna group too began conscripting cattle herders who went looking for their cattle. The LTTE too was around, and on 10^th June its member Sinnathamby shot dead Rajendran of Munaikkadu. The latter, once an LTTE supporter, after surrendering to the Special Task Force (STF) was suspected of helping them. The LTTE in June set fire to the house of Udalveddy Kasupathy, which the STF used to visit.

The area, which was under the LTTE for many years, had faced large-scale conscription of children from 2001. In many cases parents had been forced to hand over children. According to local sources, it was young conscripts from the area whom the LTTE had used in the defence of Baron�s cap, which fell to the government forces in mid-July 2007. 35 conscripts from the Pattipalai DS Division had been killed in recent battles. We look at the fate of one young woman conscript.

3.4 The Murder of Miss. Thavamani:

On 11^th July, four days after the incident in the night of 7^th July, Ariyanenthiran MP told the media that a young woman Miss. Thavamani had been killed in Paduvankarai. The incident was soon given worldwide publicity by the Asian Human Rights Commission and BBC Sinhala.�

We heard the story from two different levels. One was a casual admission by an STF officer that they killed the young woman because she was an LTTE spy. In his logic it was of no use arresting her because she would be sent to the courts and released. We also heard her story from several civilian sources in the area.

When the LTTE, even after the CFA, was in 2003 was applying punitive pressures on parents to hand over one child from each family, Thavamani�s parents gave her to the LTTE when she was about 23. She was duly trained and a year later in 2004, the Karuna faction split the LTTE. Thavamani was among the thousands released. She went home to her parents in their village of Mavadimunmari, 3 miles from Kokkadichcholai. To avoid any further pressures on her she was sent abroad to work and came back to her village, which was resettled after their displacement to Batticaloa in March 2007.�

Mavadimunmari had an STF camp of about platoon strength at Cholaiyam, a conference hall earlier used by the LTTE. Having consulted a number of sources on how the STF became interested in her, we give what we finally heard from a responsible source. While going on patrol past the wadis, STF men used to talk to Thavamani. She became quite open and told them the she was in the LTTE and gave even her identity tag number. But at some point she became anxious about the way they were questioning her. It was then that she got other women to sleep with her.

On the night of 7^th July, men came to where over a dozen women slept, and flashing torches, identified Thavamani and pulled her out. Following morning her body with stab wounds was found more than 100 yards away.�

The women who observed the men and probably their speech contend that it was the STF that killed Thavamani. This is further indicated by the fact that dozens of families left Mavadimunmari and moved close to Kokkadichcholai. The Police and local Military blamed the LTTE. The Military Spokesman in Colombo, Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe, denied the whole incident itself � the killing and the people fleeing. However, as mentioned above, the STF has not only admitted the murder in some quarters, but also defended it.

Thavamani�s father Rajasundaram gave the most important testimony in the case to the Acting Magistrate. He said that five men in uniform came to abduct his daughter without saying they were the STF. But it leaves hardly any other alternative. Her body was found next to Katpaham House. The forensic examination at Batticaloa Hospital said that Thavamany died of injuries to her heart and kidney. Although the report is silent on rape, it should not be excluded. It is too sensitive a pronouncement for a doctor in those conditions. (See Bulletin No.25 for the post mortem examination of the 2000 Vesak Day massacre by the Special Forces in Batticaloa.)�

Once more over another grave incident in the East with severe legal implications after the 5 Students case in Trincomalee in January 2006, the ACF killings, the Pottuvil massacre, the killing of four Muslim peasants in Mavil Aru, the system or what passes for it is in complete denial. In all except two, the STF is the party implicated. All were cases of wanton murder as in Thavamani�s case. Given the fact that the Tamil media which used to report such incidents immediately said nothing for four days or more is another token of how the Tamil media has been silenced, first by LTTE terror and now state terror.

Sources from the area also told us that the STF at Mavadimunmari was also responsible for killing another IDP. About three days after Thavamani�s incident, Sinnathamby (35) from Manalpiddy (between Kokkadichcholai and Mavadimunmari) passed Mavadimunmari and went to the Thantha Hill tank to fish. On his way back the STF reportedly stopped him at Mavadimunmari, tied his eyes and his body was found later by villagers. There does not seem to be an inquest record for the deceased.

Thavamani and Sinnathamby, are reflective of the cases of the displaced whose right to life too was finally violated. Practically all the obligations attaching to resettlement were unfulfilled. Where security is concerned, they became a herd of hunted animals. Material help for resettlement after their houses and stored grain were looted was largely absent and the crime unacknowledged. Food rations promised became irregular. In many respects they were worse off than in camps. The Defence Ministry is yet to give regular access to INGOs after vilifying them, because there is too much to hide.

In a memorandum circulated to the security chiefs and civil administrators in the fourth week of July (apparently in Sinhalese), Eastern Commander Maj. Gen. Parakrama Pannipitiya instructed them not to allow any NGO to start projects �according to their will� in the east. According to him, projects would be determined by a Rural Development Committee, including the Village Headman (GS) and representatives of the STF or Army, sent to the Divisional Secretariat and then assigned to NGOs. At a meeting in Vaharai to which Gen Pannipitiya summoned INGOs and NGOs, the latter were unilaterally villified and accused of doing little work despite receiving a lot of money.

The Military was thus imposing its heavy hand on both the civil administration (non-Sinhalese in most areas) and relief agencies. Persons who know the scene described the allegations against INGOs as a lot of sweeping nonsense. In the first place there is little to show in these areas after the military destroyed and then looted the places they moved into. Can there be any real discussion in these rural development committees with those who torture and kill with impunity? One could legitimately insist that INGOs and NGOs have proper channels of accountability, but not to the Military that with all its crimes and corruption is living in a world of illusion where they are totally insensitive.

We will now move on to the plight of refugees in Mutur South. Here the ideological anti-minority drive of the Government focused on Trincomalee makes their situation much more parlous. The crimes against them have been compounded by the attempt to grab the land of folk in Sampoor/Mutur East.��

4. �Resettlement� in Mutur South � Culling the Able and Active

The state of nearly fifty thousand shelled and displaced from Mutur and Vaharai who arrived in Batticaloa amidst the winter rains, starved and without food or shelter, with their stories of horror and loss, aroused worldwide indignation (see Bulletin No.45). To reduce the visibility of misery, under the pretext of resettlement the Government transported under duress in buses over 2000 of the Trincomalee refugees from Batticaloa to Killiveddy in Mutur South. A defence Ministry statement described it as a �transitional (sic) base at Kiliveddy for a brief rehabilitation program [for IDPs, to] be resettled in stages completing the resettlement by April.� Those from Sampoor languished there in flimsy shelters and now it is official that they are not going home (Bulletin 45). The others from Sivapuram, Menkamam, Killiveddy, Mallikaitivu, Iruthayapuram, Peruveli, Pattitidel and Palathadichchenai have been taken back to their villages. Hundreds from Eechchilampattai were taken back in July. Many of the displaced remain scattered in camps and are watching the security situation. Sampoor falls in the new HSZ and the displaced face uncertainty over their future.

Violence, coercion and intimidation from the State were constant companions of the refugees from the time they reached the government-controlled area, were photographed and processed by the security forces and taken to IDP camps. In the bulletin referred to above we have recorded instances of conscription of IDPs just outside camps by the Karuna group. In the case of those forcibly moved to Trincomalee, often ordered to get into buses without notice, they were beaten by the security forces, parted from children who were at school, and told that if they remained their huts would be bombed or if caught on the road in Batticaloa with a Trincomalee ID, they face an uncertain future (Bulletin No.45). The violence followed them. The violence these people suffered in both nature and scale is strongly reminiscent of their experience in 1985 (see Appendix III and Ch.20 of Arrogance of Power).

The standard legal reference, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (of which more below), defines internally displaced persons (IDPs) as �persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border.�

This definition makes it clear that all persons we refer to in the report are IDPs whether still in camps or have been transported back to what used to be home. Except for the fact that shells are no longer falling on them, the violence and deprivation they fled are with them, often in a worse and unpredictable form. As pointed out previously, the basic conditions for resettlement, especially security, remain unfulfilled. For many of those brought to Killiveddy, it was back home to a place they had fled beginning April 2006 to Mutur East, because of reprisal violence by the Sinhalese home guards and army. Despite the UNHCR�s involvement in sheltering those in camps, any expectation of long-term security has proved illusory. Soon killer and abduction teams of Tamil paramilitaries and Sinhalese home guards working in tandem with the Army got going with their tested ways of crushing the Tamil civilian population. Outside their camps, IDPs are vulnerable as others �resettled�.

The targets the state-sponsored vigilantes chose for elimination or disappearance varied. Some were reasonably well-to-do farmers who had survived the vicissitudes of the times. Some were picked at random to intimidate and scare off other Tamils. Some were either related to someone in the LTTE or had been on good terms or had a temporary connection with the LTTE. An early incident of a harrowing murder of both a prominent man and IDP is that of the 65-year-old Kathamuththu Perinparasa. On the very day he arrived from Mutur, 4^th August 2006, and entered the IDP camp at Killiveddy School, he was dragged out by the Army and executed in front of the School.

An important category among those eliminated is elderly men who gave moral support and courage to their fellows. They were the kind whom International NGOs wanting to interact with the community would seek out, such as Mr. Govindasamy JP (Appendix I), who was killed. Other senior persons killed, who were a source of strength to the community, were Gunabalasingham and Nadesarasa. INGO sources confirmed that the people are now afraid of talking to them lest they are marked. It is notable that beginning in May 2006 threats were made and incidents were staged in Mutur intended to force INGOs to quit. On 21^st May, Sunday, grenades were thrown at the offices of three INGOs, NVPF, ZOA and InterSOS, meaning to scare them off. The following month the office of Emergency Architects was robbed. ACF was sent warnings, but returned to reside in Mutur at July end. On 4^th August, 17 of its workers were massacred.�

A regular feature in this area is frequent round ups by the Army, after which an army officer addresses the people, at say a school. Local sources tell us that the officer commonly tells them for example that 10 more persons among them are to be eliminated, thus indicating the close link between the Army and the killer squads.�

After �resettlement� from the end of April through May 2007 saw 15 killings and 9 disappearances in the area around Killiveddy, mainly among persons resettled in the area. If someone is killed and the body is found, there is likely to be an inquest record. A disappearance is literally just that. No record, no investigation. Those from Sampoor and Mutur East were in camps in the same area. We learn that some or all of Pathmanathan, Muthukumar and Sivathas Sinthan who are missing after reportedly being stopped at the Palaththadichchenai army camp on 4^th April 2007, were from camps for the Mutur East displaced. For more details on abductions and killings in this area see Appendix I. The impunity is underlined in this area, which comes under the Mutur Magistrate, by the almost routine failure of the Police make arrests even when witnesses identified the culprits.

No Arrests Despite Evidence: The cases in Appendix I also illustrate the close link between the security forces and killer and abduction gangs. At the time Mutur Magistrate M. Ganesharajah was transferred out last January, he had kept open at least 20 cases of murder. In around 15 he had solid eyewitness evidence on the identities of the perpetrators, who were associated with the security forces. In the case of Ravichandran in Appendix I, his wife gave evidence along with some others, and the identity of the killer was known. In all these 15 cases where inquests were done, the Police failed to make any arrests. Now they are forgotten.��

5. Trincomalee District: General

The opening shots of the revival of the ideological project were fired in Trincomalee with the execution of the 5 innocent students on 2^nd January 2006. Not surprisingly the killing rate for state-linked killers in Trincomalee town alone has been higher than anywhere else in the North-East. Again the events are reminiscent of 1985 (see Appendix III and Ch.20 of Arrogance of Power) According to the official record compiled by the Divisional Secretary, Town and Gravets, out of 98 killings from 12^th April 2006 to 1^st January 2007, 5 were of Muslims, 7 of Sinhalese and 86 of Tamils.� Although we have not sorted these out, and are aware that the LTTE is responsible for some killings (e.g. the bomb meant for the Navy on 1^st May which killed two women passengers, a young boy and the auto-rickshaw driver and the 7 mainly Sinhalese who died in the market bomb explosion on 12^th April (Special Rep.21)), local sources agree that during this period the killings of Tamils, including over a dozen women, were overwhelmingly by pro-state parties including the security forces, Karuna group and Sinhalese thugs protected by the security forces. The latter according to local sources largely moved out due to fear after their role in the violence of April 2006.

The Divisional Secretary�s record in Thampalakamam has 12 killings from May 2006 to February 2007, of whom 2 are Muslims, 3 are Sinhalese and 7 Tamils.

5.1 An On and Off Pattern of Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearance

The incidents of killings and disappearance evince an on-off pattern. There are periods where they are relatively intense. Then they ease off, becoming isolated events. This reflects the fact that when the incidents become very noticeable, protests are mounted by NGOs and MPs, the embassies take note and the Government is placed under pressure to stop. But there is no reason for comfort. In the Mutur area for example, things were bad from April to August 2006, after which most Tamils from the area fled to Batticaloa and started coming back in March 2007. Again the intensity of incidents was high during April until about mid-May and eased off.

In the case of Thiriyai below, a number of disappearances took place within a week towards October end 2006 and stopped. It resumed on 10^th April 2007 and lasted for over a month and stopped. The patterns strongly suggest that the same party was involved in all the incidents. Whether on or off, the menace and intention remain constant: Namely, the ultimate eviction of the Tamils. It works by parents beginning to send the young people away. Certain areas are vacated. People are scared to go to their fields. The place slowly dies.

When incidents die down after a period of intensity, the Government is quick to take credit for dealing with the Human Rights question. No one should be fooled. We reiterate that during 2006, witnesses in Mutur identified to the Magistrate most of the perpetrators of more than 20 incidents of murder and abduction. The Police in Mutur arrested no one. (Two cases that led to arrest and prosecution are robberies at Emergency Architects and at a Saudi Arabian NGO, both involving home guard/ Jihad elements.) This has now gone on in the country for more than 25 years. Unless the perpetrators are identified and prosecuted, it would start again. The State wants to keep it that way.�

5.2 The Special Case of Thiriyai

Another area of significance is Thiriyai, the northernmost Tamil village in the district after the mass eviction of Tamils of December 1984 further north. Thiriyai belongs to an area where there are a number of Buddhist monuments along the coast, and has been especially targeted by Sinhalese hegemonists. These monuments (e.g. Kuchcaveli, Thiriyai) however reflect the plural origins of religious and social life in Sri Lanka. A number of these monuments inscribed in Sanskrit rather than Pali are of unorthodox Mahayana origin, subscribed to by South Indian merchants during the Pallava period (600 � 900 AD). Epigraphica Zeylanica Vol IV p.152 says of Girikandi Caitya on Kandasamy Hill one mile west of Thiriyai, �Girikanda Caitya which appears to have enjoyed a great reputation for sanctity hardly finds mention in the chronicles written by the [dominant] Theravadins.��

The people of Thiriyai were also forced out in 1985, and resettled after the Indo-Lanka accord. The few who went back have since led a tenuous existence (Report No.12). With the revival of the Sinhalisation agenda under the present government, there has once more been a move to make life for the people impossible and force them to flee. Of the several hundreds of families, all Tamils that lived in the area, Kallampattai is deserted, 50 families live in Kattukulam and 60 in Thiriyai village. Most people fled to India, to the refugee camp in Alles Garden near Trinco Town or live in the town itself.

During 20^th to 23^rd October 2006, five were abducted in this area under Navy control. As a prelude to this phase of abductions, a checkpoint jointly manned by the Navy and the Karuna group was set up in Thiriyai. A number of people started leaving the area after the abductions.

Appendix II gives 13 cases of abduction including the five above and one murder in March 2007. A second spate of abductions lasted from 10^th April to 25^th May 2007, during which eight persons were abducted. Among these, four cases stand out. On 10^th April abductors took away 14 year-old schoolboy Praruban from his Kaddukulam home in the night while his grandmother screamed. From a later case of his uncle Tharmarajah also being abducted, it appears that in the first instance the abductors came for the uncle and in his absence took the schoolboy nephew. A second case worth remarking is the abduction of Mr. and Mrs. Chandrabose also from Kaddukulam. The couple that was living in a hut was taken in the evening by abductors who on their return from a bath at a neighbouring well were waiting for them at home.

Following the latter spate of abductions the last residents of Kaddukulam left, leaving the village deserted for the second time since its first destruction by the Sri Lankan forces with bombs and arson in 1985. Many residents of Kattukulam moved into Thiriyai, and that was perhaps the intention of this terror. After the spates of abductions, the Navy called the people for a meeting and assured them that it would not happen again! This was very likely a reaction to complaints by MPs. It also shows that the higher authorities in command who instigate or allow extra-judicial action, could also put a stop to them.

5.3 Eechilampattai: Buccaneering in the name of Buddhist Ideology

People from several villages interior of Illankaithurai Muhattuvaram in the Verugal Division, on the sea coast of Mutur East, see in the desecration before their eyes that they are in the same plight as the Tamils chased out of Manal Aru to make way for Weli Oya.

Like Manal Aru, the area around Illakaithurai Muhattuvaram had a humble rural population and outsiders seldom went there. The Government could afford to prevaricate because their woes are unlikely to be heard. From Batticaloa where the displaced were an eyesore arousing the world�s pity, the Government has brought them back in the name of resettlement. Now most of their homes are non-existent or in ruins. Several families stay together or are at a camp at 49^th Mile Post, Batticaloa Rd. Economically they are broken, as much of their economic space is lost. Those who fished are not allowed to go to the coast. They had lands and used to grow the best coconuts.

Seven or eight villages interior of Muhattuvaram with about 900 families brought back found their homes, fields and cattle inaccessible. Their houses had been bulldozed and are now in an unofficial High Security Zone. They have virtually been left under trees. The Army does not let them go into the area, but they see Sinhalese from the colony area of Mahindapura going in with the Army�s complicity and coming out with the remains of their property.

The pretext for keeping the Tamils out appears to be a hill called Kunjithapathamalai with some Buddhist remains, which the locals had long used as a Murugan (Skanda) shrine, which could easily have preceded the Buddhist edifice. It is a phenomenon very common in South India, where shrines that were Buddhist or Jain have been adapted to other deities. Having driven the Tamils out, the Army has constructed a Buddhist shrine that it has without any basis associated with a lost Samudragiri Vihara. The displaced from the area have been robbed in contravention of international norms. We discuss this in Appendix V.

The other major non-Sinhalese component in the East consists of the Muslims who are the majority in Amparai District. Developments there, which were low key for a long time, accelerated last year. The long term nature of these developments must also be seen from the fact that from the mid-1960s, the administration of both the majority Tamil-speaking districts of Trincomalee and Amparai (which had just then been carved out of Baticaloa District), were continuously headed by Sinhalese government agents who wield enormous authority in land matters.

6. Muslims and the Wider Significance of the De-merger of the North-East

If the Government kept the people guessing about its approach to the ethnic problem, a quick succession of developments since mid-2006 allowed little room for doubt. The SLFP left to itself would have stuck to a moderate role, but this time became hostage to the disparate ambitions of the JVP, JHU, the President himself and his brother Gotabhaya, and the LTTE provided the military pretext to uproot the Tamils and destabilise the community. The state of anarchy in politics has also given the Chief Justice who has found refuge in the extreme Sinhalese-Buddhist segment of the spectrum a role in exacerbating the mischief and uncertainty rather than upholding the rule of law.�

From the middle of last year when the JVP brought the de-merger petition to the Supreme Court (which sanctioned it in October) things moved fast. The new Eastern Province flag represented the Muslim dominated Amparai District with the Sinhalese Lion, giving notice to the Muslims of things to come. The standard method of Sinhalisation involves a combination of brute force (military, paramilitary and hoodlums), politically amenable Government Agents for the Districts of Trincomalee and Amparai and ideologically motivated scholars (JHU-types) who identify ancient Buddhist remains to impose a Sinhalese-Buddhist claims on the land. The latter are now busy finding Buddhist antecedents, actual or fraudulent, in Sampoor and Pottuvil.

The last � Buddhist remains � is a curious argument for claiming ownership, since it would entail Sinhalese-Buddhist ownership of much of Tamil Nadu, leave alone the North-East of Sri Lanka. This criterion gives an insight into the viciously narrow outlook of Sinhalese hegemonists, who simply fail to understand that Buddhism is the common heritage of peoples and languages of the wider South Asian region who no less treasure this heritage. Among standard measures for claiming Sinhalese ownwership consists of claiming a site as Buddhist, planting a Sinhalese colony, and carving out a new Divisional Secretary�s (earlier AGA�s) division from which Muslims and Tamils would thereafter be administratively excluded (Report No.11).� In addition, the Divisional Secretaries are instructed by the Government Agent, who in the crucial districts of Trincomalee and Amparai has from the 1960s always been Sinhalese although the populations are more than 60% Tamil-speaking.

The harm being done to minorities by state aided Sinhalese colonisation in the East was evident from the communal violence in 1956 and 1958 and should have been resolved a long time ago. Instead they have been used as a base for further aggression over the years. (Interestingly, Tarzie Vittachi and S.J. Tambiah, the two authors of violence during this early period record that it was the labourers on the colonisation schemes, rather than the settled population with longer term interests, that attacked the Tamils.)� In the 1980s Lahugala AGA (now DS) division was carved out of the Pottuvil Division for 1600 Sinhalese families. Recently there have been moves to add to it areas that contribute to the livelihood of the Muslim (majority) and Tamil populations in the area and shut them out of future land allocations in the division.

We will cite two examples from the report Territorial Claims, Conquests and Dispossesion in the �New East�: The growing concerns of the Muslims of Ampara by the Coalition of Muslims and Tamils for Peace and Coexistence (CMTPC). In December 2005 soon after this government came to power, the GA Amparai wrote to the local councils asking for information on Buddhist sites, indicating ones already identified � seven in Pottuvil alone. In a move reminiscent of the fate of Sampoor, there were earlier rumours of making 1000 acres about the Shastriveli STF camp in the Pottuvil area a High Security Zone, depriving the Muslim population of the area its use. Actual intentions became clearer last September when 10 Muslim labourers who went into the area to repair an irrigation tank were massacred under the direction of the STF. Almost predictably, on 27^th April 2007, Minister for Planning and Implementation P. Dayaratne, wrote to Divisional Secretary Pottuvil, instructing that 1000 acres around the STF camp be allocated to the Shastriveli Buddhist Temple. Next would be a Sinhalese settlement.

Another minister throwing his weight in the area trying to take over land under various pretexts is JHU Minister for Environment Champika Ranawaka. On 21^st March 2007 the JHU discussed at its Head Office in Colombo, collaboration with the Karuna group in Amparai, and the Defence Ministry subsequently posted armed Karuna cadres in the area. The intention was none other than to repress the Muslims. The Daily Mirror�s (16 Apr.07) reporting of Muslim displeasure over this was one of the issues that led to the Defence Secretary phoning and asking the editor Champika Liyannarachchi to resign, threatening her with the Karuna group, besides threatening to �exterminate� another journalist on a separate article dealing with human rights issues of displaced Tamils. The events mark a new innovation in the Sinhalese hegemonic project where Muslim paramilitaries are used against Tamils in Mutur and Tamil paramilitaries against Muslims in Amparai.

In Mutur itself Muslim paramilitaries have been involved in killing Tamils while the security forces protected them (see Appendix I). The Karuna group was notoriously anti-Muslim while with the LTTE and now the Defence Ministry has deployed them in the Amparai District where the Muslims have become restive after the STF-instigated the killing of 10 Muslim labourers last September and the Government�s now open Sinhalisation agenda. Things could also become confused when violence flares up between Muslim and Tamil paramilitaries. Muslim elements called a hartal in Valaichenai during the second week of July after the Karuna group shot dead a jihad member Meerasahibu Nasoordeen (28). The Magistrate and the Police managed to control the situation without violence flaring up further.�

All branches of the State have been openly involved in Sinhalisation for more than four decades in the Trincomalee District. The posting of an ex-General T.T.R. de Silva as GA Trincomalee has seen a more aggressive approach erasing the distinction between the military and the civil administration. There is now a brash move to control and direct humanitarian agencies which civil administrators fought shy of.

Apart from the military and administration there are other signs, which do not bode well. While the rest of the world was loud in its indignation about the plight of refugees shelled out of their homes, the Chief Justice was conducted by the Army on a �familiarisation tour of the recently captured Verugal Aru area� empty of its miserable inhabitants. Shown a pinnacle with inscriptions �believed to be over 2000 years old�, the CJ promptly took steps �to inform the Archaeology Department of the need to translate the inscriptions and restore the pinnacle�� (Daily Mirror 20 Apr.07). What could follow is all too familiar. (See below for the CJ�s ruling on the Sampoor HSZ and Appendix V.)

It was the reading of an inscription that was the undoing of the Tamils in Trincomalee. A 12^th Century donative inscription in Sanskrit at the site of Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee referred to the site as Gokarna � a generic term for a shrine of Siva, which Koneswaram was. Having pointed this out correctly in 1955, the Archaeological Commissioner without any evidence (apart from Gokanna being the Pali transcription of Gokarna) went on to posit the long lost Gokanna Vihara at the same site. He thus advanced the claim that Koneswaram had supplanted the Vihara (the lost Vihara was almost certainly near Kataragama, see Arrogance of Power p 75 ff).

Since then the misidentification, supported by scholars, has been used relentlessly to advance Sinhalese-Buddhist claims over Trincomalee by discrediting the rich cultural traditions in the District centred on Koneswaram, which was held in high esteem by the kings of Lanka at least since the 11^th century AD.� In the last 40 years, the obliteration of the traditions centred on Koneswaram and the Tamil peasantry have proceeded apace. With the projected obliteration of Sampoor as a place of Tamil habitation, its famous Paththirakali Amman Temple stands to join the modern ruins of Sri Lanka.

6.1. The Killing of Four Muslims at Mavil Aru

A further incident reminiscent of the massacre of 10 Muslims in Sastriveli last September occurred near Verugal in the Trincomalee District. South across the Verugal River in the Polonnaruwa District is the Muslim village of Palliyagodelle. It was one among four, two Tamil and two Muslim, villages caught up in bloody massacres during 1992 owing to conflicts created by the presence of the LTTE and the security forces (Report No.11). A massacre by the LTTE left 50 widows in that village of chena cultivators, cattle herders and hunter-gatherers.

On 28^th June 2007 eight Muslims from the village went north across the Verugal with a two shotguns to look for cattle stolen by a nearby village. This was a common occurrence. Late afternoon the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) reported that troops had trapped LTTE cadres fleeing Batticaloa District, killing 11 of them, and seized a stock of T56 guns, three grenades and a radio. An army officer showed reporters, who were covering resettlement of Tamils in nearby Verugal, four corpses with two cyanide capsules, two grenades and a radio. The bodies were handed over to Kantalai Hospital. Because some of the eight Muslims escaped, the truth came out.

At mid-day on 30^th June, the MCNS put out a new story that fleeing LTTE cadres killed four civilians who came towards Mavil Aru to herd cattle and do fishing, without saying the victims were Muslims. One of the eight who had witnessed the event from hiding told BBC Sinhalese Service that the assailants had spoken Sinhalese, called out Sinhalese names and had killed four of his companions despite their pleas that they were Muslims.

Those shot and killed were Thanga Marikkar Mohamed Kareem (47), Ismail Samoon (40) and Bawa Sahibu Cader Meera (42). The soldiers beat to death Seeni Wappu Lathun (32), the youngest of them. One of the deceased was married to a widow who was very young when she lost her husband in the 1992 LTTE massacre. Another had two children born blind. As part of the emerging pattern, Muslim MPs in the Government told the families that the bodies would be released only if they do not blame the security forces. They did not have much trouble in getting the bodies from Kantalai Hospital. However the death certificates obtained after a hassle stated that the victims were killed because of mistaken identity.

These developments are part of a pattern of growing impunity and indiscipline among the Sri Lankan forces beginning with the 5 Students case, and showing increasing recklessness in lying and covering up through the ACF and Pottuvil massacres. This incident, along with the Pottuvil massacre reflects an attitude that the Muslims and Tamils who used the resources of the land for their subsistence for many centuries could do so now only at the risk of being murdered by the security forces.

7. The Supreme Court, High Security Zone, and Ethnic Engineering:

A number of High Security Zones have been declared in the North-East. In Jaffna they include 74 square miles of prime agricultural land, supposedly to protect key military installations. There does not seem to be a uniform legal procedure about these zones. Once the Army decides that an area is an HSZ, civilians sometimes find out the hard way, as when the Army apprehended and stabbed to death eight displaced civilians who went to see their homes in Mirusuvil, Jaffna, on 19^th December 2000. There is no legal declaration of High Security Zones in Jaffna, except a map prepared by Jaffna Kacheri (civil administration) informing administrators. Adjustments have been made, such as to enable Union College, Tellipalai to function or to cultivate some fields, purely by local negotiation with the military.

Weli Oya remained unofficially a zone banned to Tamils from 1984, until Minister Dissanaike made the dispossession official by a gazette declaration declaring it Mahveli project land. Trincomalee town would be considered a high security zone, but the Tamil residents yet remain.

We may thus distinguish two types of High Security Zones. The first is the type in Jaffna where the legal ownership to the land it encompasses unquestionably remains with the displaced civilians. It is simply that they dare not go to their land without clearance from the Army in the area. At least in Jaffna there is yet no fear that Sinhalese settlers would be inducted. The second type of HSZ is where the land has been legally brought under the possession of the Government as in Weli Oya and Sampoor. Even if on principle the dispossessed are entitled to compensation, those displaced and scattered in a community that is politically paralysed could hardly get a deal that is remotely fair. Where compensation in Sri Lanka is concerned, it is not what is promised that counts, but what the victims could get immediately.

With their other priorities and luxuries making demands on money, even the better governments have little to spare for Tamil victims. The Sansoni Commission recommended compensation for the victims of the 1977 communal violence in the early 1980s, which the Government accepted. Despite continual reminders by victims, the promise remains unfulfilled. On the 21^st anniversary of the July 1983 violence, President Kumaratunge with an apology paid 937 victims for injuries and destruction an average of USD 750. This deals with only a very minute fraction of the damage done in loss of lives (about 3000) and property. The best thing the displaced of Sampoor and Mutur East could have is their houses and properties. Otherwise they would be cheated wholesale.

The Government now appears reluctant to admit expropriation for the Mutur East/ Sampoor HSZ as evidenced in the Supreme Court. When the gazette notification says that no one shall enter the HSZ except under the written authority of the Competent Authority, a Major General, the intention is clear. Which Tamil speaking farmer would be admitted before a Major General, who besides has proved singularly inaccessible?��

The zones of the first type where civilians are barred are increasingly a source of discontent because the alleged security purpose has no time limit, making these zones an act of robbery of civilians� property and livelihood. If civilians must vacate every time the military feels insecure, owing to prevailing political and military inability to secure the surroundings while civilian life goes on, the logic is both questionable and an inversion of priorities. Such security becomes meaningless. The expanded HSZ from Palaly to KKS and Mathagal, which displaced 80 000 civilians, had a need in the early 1990s when the LTTE controlled the part of the Jaffna peninsula outside the base. That need is no longer there since the Army is in control of the hinterland. Indeed, civilians were living and working in most of this HSZ when the Indian Army controlled Jaffna.

One could understand the security forces wanting to restrict civilian use of certain areas in a time of war. This should be confined to the duration of hostilities and there should always be some process of consultation and independent assessment of genuine security needs. Such restrictions that must be temporary in nature should not be the means of achieving the objectives of conquest over another ethnic group such as in Palestine. Such would not only be contrary to international law, which we discuss below, but would constitute a permanent barrier to peace.

Land is already being used as a means of advancing Sinhalisation through playing Muslim against Tamil. Many Muslims in Mutur and Kinniya were displaced from outlying villages, as from Jaffna, after June 1990 when the LTTE oppressed Muslims. In any peace arrangement they like all other displaced should regain their lands. But what this Government is doing through its military GA Trincomalee is playing with the Muslims.�

The GA Trincomalee has ordered all Muslims displaced around Kinniya and Mutur since 1990 to be resettled in their villages. 200 Muslim families displaced from Arafanagar, which lies in the new HSZ between Kattaiparichchan and Sampoor, are being resettled. Meanwhile the Tamils are kept displaced and in a condition of extreme insecurity. This appears to be an attempt to use Muslims as a security corridor while pushing the Tamils out from wherever possible. Fostering Tamil-Muslim enmity has been a constant strategy of the security establishment since 1985.

Another element in the engineering is, the GA Trinco absolutely forbids any humanitarian agency from providing support to IDPs whom he does not recognise as IDPs. All such cases we learn are Tamils who have a history of violent displacement going back to 1985. There are a number of scattered cases of Tamil IDPs (e.g. 50 families in Thampalakamam) who do not get any assistance. Humanitarian agencies were not treated in this manner by former GAs from the civil service. In July 2007, Eastern Security Commander Maj. Gen. Pannipitiya confirmed in a circular that the security forces would supervise all development activity in captured areas of the East, making the regime in Trincomalee the general practice. How can those who wantonly kill civilians, especially Tamils, be a part of rehabilitation?

From the time the security forces captured Sampoor, they have looted the place, levelled houses and started building roads through paddy fields according to reports we have received, as though it were no concern of the civilians and without any formal procedure. That such practices are a crime against humanity, if they are aware of it, is regarded a minor inconvenience.�

7.1 Compensation for HSZ Victims:

�The Government we learn had identified land in Raalkuli west of Mutur and in Eechilampattai to move the displaced residents of Sampoor and Mutur East. 150 acres in Raalkuli we learn were cleared to this end. For one thing the displaced were never consulted. The land with which they were to be compensated is simply for name�s sake and grossly incommensurate with good and vast lands and water resources that provided them a decent livelihood. The Raalkuli land is close to the Mahveli River and local sources say it could go under four or five feet of water when the river floods. The Eechilampattai land in Panichchankulam is also noted for flooding. After the 2004 tsunami there had been an attempt to settle refugees from the coast on that land and they refused. Recently, a community leader told us that an official vehicle went there to check the land for resettlement and was stuck in the mud. The Government was playing with their original lands without any sense or assessment of what it meant to the inhabitants. This is a way of destroying the community as so many have been destroyed in the North-East with these high security zones. The best many of the victims got was food rations until they dispersed and disappeared.

The protests that followed Minister Rambukwelle�s announcement that the people of Sampoor and Mutur East would lose their lands, appears to have brought home to the Government that it cannot so easily get away with such measures. The Attorney General�s response to a fundamental rights case taken up in the Supreme Court by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) suggests equivocation on the question of people losing their lands.

7.2 The Supreme Court and the Sampoor/ Mutur East HSZ��

The CPA petition addressed the �infringement of the fundamental rights of a large section of Sri Lankan society who have been and are being further discriminated against and gravely prejudiced�. It argued that a section of society on the basis of their ethnicity and place of origin are being deprived of their rights contrary to the Constitution. The state counsel representing the Attorney General said ambivalently that the government is planning to resettle the displaced in the region after security forces clear land mines.

This provided a shaky pretext for the Chief Justice (CJ) to dismiss the petition at the leave stage. Accusing the CPA of creating news for �international consumption�, the CJ urged the petitioners not to bring sensitive issues that affect national security before the judiciary. He urged them not to provoke Sampoor residents by bringing in similar lawsuits. The Court observed that the government should be given ample time to complete the security measures related to the area.

Thus a host of grave rights issues were trivialised under the pretence that the question of people losing their lands is not an issue at present. But all the Government�s moves, what minister Rambukwelle said explicitly and attempts to site a coal power station in Sampoor have spoken otherwise. It is also significant that no one is saying seriously that Tamils living there would pose a threat to Trincomalee Harbour. Soon after the capture of Sampoor, the Military Spokesman Brigadier Samarasinghe affirmed that with the area taken away from LTTE control, there was no threat to Trincomalee.

The Supreme Court has simply skirted issues that are momentous in international law by hiding behind the military � they as it were know best about security matters. A hearing of the case where top military officials cited as respondents would have been summoned would have helped to clarify many issues: Nearly all other displaced have been allowed to return home, why are all persons in this large (Sampoor/ Mutur East) area being kept out for 11 months to date? Vaharai residents, the mine clearing apparently done, were forced to go back in March 2007, two months after its capture. Have they really been clearing mines in Sampoor for 11 months? Could there not have been some dialogue with civilian representatives to convince them that the delay is for their own good and at least arrange for schools to collect their records so that the education of children could continue without a hitch? Instead the Supreme Court has rubber stamped the whims of the military and Sinhalese chauvinists. Also, what are the criteria determining overriding security needs?

This avoidance of issues is a dangerous state of affairs for the minorities. Using similar pretexts, the military authorities could order all Tamil residents to vacate Trincomalee town. By their proximity, they are arguably a greater threat to Trincomalee Harbour than the residents of Sampoor 13 nautical miles away could possibly be. A fundamental question arises, if a person by being a Tamil is a threat to the Sri Lankan state, what alternative arrangement is there for the Tamils? Are military establishments meant to protect civilian life, livelihood and habitations, or should the latter be played about with unilaterally for the protection of the military?�

Also of importance is the fact that Sri Lanka has acceded to a number of treaties in international law. Of great moment in this matter guaranteeing the right of IDPs to return is the ICCPR (which will be examined below), which Sri Lanka had acceded to. In a very controversial judgment in the Singarasa case, which is strongly contested by legal scholars in Sri Lanka, Chief Justice Sarath Silva ruled in September 2006 that the ICCPR �does not have internal effect and the rights under the Covenant are not rights under the law of Sri Lanka� (see Appendix II of Special Report No.23). The same argument nullifies most treaties Sri Lanka has acceded to. Parliament could have removed any dispute by simple legislation, but did nothing. Thus Sri Lanka now holds a vice presidency in the Human Rights Council while acting systematically in defiance of basic international norms.

A second petition similar to the CPA�s was taken up before a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Nihal Jayasinghe, Nimal Dissanayake and Raja Fernando on 24^th July. The bench felt bound to reject the petition since the CJ had rejected a similar petition by the CPA on the 17^th unless the petitioners agreed to submit this before a bench where the CJ was present. The petitioners agreed and the hearing was deferred to 30^th July. So much for judicial independence.

The second time again the Chief Justice avoided the issue telling the petitioners not to bring such �sensitive� issues before the Court and if the Court granted this petition there would be 15 000 more of such. Granting that speedy action should be taken to resettle those displaced because of their area being declared a High Security Zone, he said that the delay was due to some safety measures that need looking into before allowing people to go back to their own places. The CJ said that those who wanted to get back to their own properties should apply to the Competent Authority (CA) Gen. Pannipitiya.

When Kanag-Iswaran PC, counsel for the four petitioners pointed out the difficulty in locating the CA to make applications, the CJ suggested that the CA should remain invisible for security reasons and suggested that the petitions could be forwarded through Deputy Solicitor General Yasantha Kodagoda representing the AG in court. He concluded by instructing the Registrar that in view of this arrangement no further petitions on this matter should be accepted. DSG Kodagoda maintained that resettlement would begin after consulting the Military.

The fact is that the position taken by the CJ and AG in dismissing the petition makes a judgment while refusing to examine the facts, which would have been brought up in a hearing. Are safety measures such as mine clearing the real reason for the delay? What was the real reason for declaring the area a HSZ? What is the point in going to the Competent Authority representing the Military after the Cabinet Defence Spokesman had categorically stated that the people would not get back their lands? What is the meaning of repeatedly pushing India to install a coal power plant there without any consultation with the people or their representatives?

The Supreme Court conceded nothing except to repeat platitudes in what could be an episode of �Yes Minister�. The hypocrisy of demining as an excuse is revealed in the document �Protection Issues to be incorporated in the Government�s Resettlement Plan for the East� issued recently by the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies:

�Although [UXO and Mine Clearance] was voiced as a pre-condition for return by UNHCR and other organizations, none of the resettlement areas have received land quality assurance certificates. While the GoSL security forces are engaged in battlefield mine and UXO clearance, it is pertinent that non-governmental organizations are also invited by the GoSL to provide support in humanitarian mine and UXO clearance in all resettlement areas. Reports indicate that areas such as Vavunativu and some pockets of Vaharai have a significant number of unexploded ordnances that continue to pose a risk to the communities, Government workers as well as the humanitarian community.�

Thus the Government �resettled� IDPs in Vaharai and Vavunativu in a record time of two months although UXO and mine clearance was incomplete. The same holds for Eechilampattai. Initially demining agencies refused to go into Vaharai as they did not want to be seen endorsing the Government�s political position.

The Chief Justice who went on a �familiarisation tour of the recently captured Verugal Aru area� in April 2007must have some idea of what is really going on. The landmines seem to affect only Tamils who are prevented from going to their properties in the Muhattuvaram area and beyond where the CJ it appears was shown inscriptions supposedly 2000 years old. But landmines notwithstanding, Sinhalese from the Mahindapura colony are allowed by the Army to freely go in and help themselves to the Tamils� property.�

If we believe that international laws are for the betterment of all, it is time to determine answers to certain questions and get the Government to abide by them. For how long could one cite security reasons and deny a disproportionate part of the land to civilians who have lived and thrived on it? If due to political and military ineptitude, and a basic inability on the part of the Sinhalese polity to put forward a viable political settlement, such deprivation is to last decades, should there not be strong international scrutiny of Sri Lanka?

Also in need of clarification is who is an IDP? The Sri Lankan government has had the habit of taking over land, pushing people into IDP camps, giving them rations for some months and forgetting all about them. No thought is given to their loss of livelihood. Often a family that loses its land needs to look for some unsatisfactory menial jobs. This cannot go on for long and the IDPs disperse, become scattered and lose their identity.�

One has lost track of those driven out to make room for the Sinhalese settlement of Weli Oya in 1985 and those driven out from ancient Tamil villages like Thennamaravady about the same time. One expects that like the residents of Thiriyai, many of them went to India, to live virtually stateless, but safe. They are still IDPs living in deprivation who should be offered the opportunity of returning to their land and living in safety. The protection international law guarantees IDPs should be redoubled for those formerly �resettled� but are forced to live in an environment such as in Mutur South where state sponsored killer groups with a sinister intent roam among them. This is a very dangerous phase of their displacement.��

What is very objectionable is to allow chauvinistic administrators, such as the present GA Trincomalee, with an agenda of ethnic engineering, to have the discretion of determining who is and who is not an IDP. The matter should rest with representative bodies in which eminent local persons are involved in whom the victims have confidence. The IDP in Sri Lanka�s East is a victim of political calculations as much as of humanitarian woes.

8. New Innovations in Violence

During the mid-1980s the evacuation of Tamil villages was accomplished by violence that was intense and of short duration. Now, once the first phase of displacement by sh

7. The Supreme Court, High Security Zone, and Ethnic Engineering:

7.2 The Supreme Court and the Sampoor/ Mutur East HSZ����������

7.2 The Supreme Court and the Sampoor/ Mutur East HSZ��