War without end

The last time he visited Sri Lanka, it was two days after the Boxing Day tsunami had struck. Yet among the devastation, a shaky ceasefire between Tamil rebels and government forces seemed to offer a glimmer of hope. So what went wrong? Euan Ferguson returns to find an island paradise once again torn apart by conflict. From The Observer:

Hard not to laugh, for a brief second, when you’re told about Claymore landmines. I am being told of them by a helpful young Sri Lankan near a military checkpoint, who is making a fairly compelling case not to be stupid by waiting till dark and dancing off around the guns and into the jungle. But I’m quietly laughing because I have just learned that the Claymore - shaped like a fat, convex, olive-green laptop with little legs to bury in the ground - has embossed writing on the business end. What the writing says is: ‘Front towards Enemy.’

Even the arms industry, apparently, can’t help but pap-feed us with health and safety disclaimers. And one of the most effective counters to tripwires, it turns out, is Silly String, which lands on the wires in all its gaudy, giveaway colours, without detonating them. The most inhuman, anonymous, cowardly, deadly weasels of modern warfare, and they come with safety warnings, and they’re battled by streamers designed more normally for parties featuring jelly. Hard not to laugh. Briefly.

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Monks and Tigers in Sri Lanka

Two monks, two conversations. Soon after meeting the Dalai Lama, James Astill interviews a monk MP in Sri Lanka. He comes away feeling distressed about the country’s war and dazed by the breadth of Buddhism. From moreintelligentlife.com

When it comes to being nice, few people would enjoy comparison with the Dalai Lama. So, it is bad luck on the Venerable Athuraliye Rathana, a Sri Lankan politician known as the “war monk”, that he is the second Buddhist monk I have interviewed in recent days.

The first, the DL, seems–no kidding–little less than saintly. I visited him in Dharamsala, his refuge in northern India, with The Economist’s China correspondent, who saw more of last month’s uprising in Tibet than any other foreign journalist. The Dalai Lama wanted to hear precisely what my colleague had seen. And where it contradicted what he thought he knew–generally, where the Chinese response had been less beastly than the Dalai Lama had been told–he listened extra hard, and he tried to understand.

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Elephants caught in Sri Lankan crossfire

The continuing conflict in Sri Lanka between government forces and rebel Tamil Tigers has unexpected casualities. Roland Buerk of BBC has the story.

“Gunshot wound, this is a gunshot wound, and this one, there are so many gunshot wounds,” said Sri Lankan government vet, Doctor Chandana Jayasinghe.

He was standing next to the huge, slumbering bull elephant in a clearing in the jungle, hypodermic syringe in hand.

“It is normal, they all have gunshot wounds.”

The men of the Wildlife Conservation Department had ventured into the tangled scrub to find the wounded elephant.

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In Sri Lanka, fear of being ‘disappeared’

Government offensive against Tamil rebels also claims civilian victims. Emily Wax in The Washington Post:

Maha Oya, Sri Lanka: Under thick tropical rains on a rutted country road, a bus packed with ethnic Tamil families screeched to a stop here in eastern Sri Lanka. At a heavily fortified government checkpoint, the families were ordered off the bus.

They were asked many questions. Where had they come from? Why? Whom did they visit? The experience, for many of them, was more than inconvenient. It was frightening. In places like this, they said, amid bungalows battered and burned by war, people go missing.

“It’s not waiting in the lines or the search of our bags that troubles us as much as the chances of being picked out, arrested and never being able to see our families again,” said a 19-year-old Tamil waiter, who was too fearful of government reprisal to offer his name.

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It’s a mud, mud world

A hut made of mud and coconut leaves? Dea Birkett sacrifices modern comforts for spectacular wildlife and top class service in Sri Lanka. In The Guardian, UK:

We were lost, very lost. Our driver couldn’t find the track and there were no signs. We were deep in the jungle, it was getting dark, and we were getting worried. Then we heard a strange sound. It was laughter. Not just ordinary laughter, but deep and continuous, more like an animal’s call than a human sound. But human it was - someone was very, very happy. Then that someone appeared, a short, stocky man in shorts and camouflaged beany hat, a paraffin lamp swinging in his hand. And that’s how we met Kumar, owner and manager of the Mudhouse. “Everything okay?” he beamed, followed quickly by, “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

The Mudhouse is in the central western jungle, far from Sri Lanka’s beach resorts and heaving Buddhist temples. The nearest town is Anamaduwa, a place not mentioned in a single guidebook. Kumar wants it that way; he’s refused to put up any signs to help people navigate miles of dirt paths. When the rains are heavy, he has to bring guests up from the local village on a tractor.

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Human Rights Watch: Sri Lanka ‘disappearances’ are a national crisis

Mahinda Rajapaksa gets his knuckles rapped by Human Rights Watch. A new report indicts his government for wide-spread abuse.

The Sri Lankan government is responsible for widespread abductions and “disappearances” that are a national crisis, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Human Rights Watch urged the government to reveal the whereabouts of the “disappeared,” immediately end the practice, and hold the perpetrators accountable.

Since major fighting between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) resumed in 2006, Sri Lankan security forces and pro-government armed groups have “disappeared” or abducted hundreds of individuals, many of whom are feared dead.

The 241-page report, “Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for ‘Disappearances’ and Abductions in Sri Lanka,” documents 99 of the several hundred cases reported, and examines the Sri Lankan government’s response, which to date has been grossly inadequate. In 2006 and 2007, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances recorded more new “disappearance” cases from Sri Lanka than from any other country in the world.

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In Sri Lanka, China makes some strategic moves

When the West complains of human rights violations, Sri Lanka may not have to listen. It’s now getting aid from China. Somini Sengupta reports from Colombo in The New York Times.

For 25 years, the dirty little war on this island in the Indian Ocean has stretched its octopus arms across the world. The ethnic Tamil diaspora has provided vital funding for separatist rebels; remittances from Sri Lankan workers abroad have propped up the economy; the government has relied on foreign assistance to battle the insurgency.

Today, a shifting world order is bearing new fruits for Sri Lanka. Most notably, China’s quiet assertion in India’s backyard has put Sri Lanka’s government in a position not only to play China off against India, but also to ignore complaints from outside Asia about human rights violations in the war.

The timing is propitious. The government jettisoned a five-year cease-fire this year, and is now banking on a military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In so doing, it has faced a barrage of criticism over human rights abuses and has lost defense aid from the United States and some other sources. And, in recent months, government officials have increasingly cozied up to countries that tend to say little to nothing on things like abductions and assaults on press freedom.

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In Sri Lanka, the ethnic divide is worsening

Somini Sengupta reports from Colombo in The New York Times:

There are no eyes on this war. A truce between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is over, and gone are the Nordic monitors who kept watch over it.

The government has refused entry to United Nations human rights monitors. Independent journalists are not allowed anywhere near the front lines. Only occasionally does a glimpse of the war’s damage surface, as when the Red Cross confirmed that in the first six weeks of this year alone, 180 civilians had been killed, a toll it called “appalling.”

While it is impossible to gauge what is happening on the battlefield, that is where, it seems, the government has placed its bets to settle the long-running ethnic war, once and for all. As it does, the public mood in this country is more divided than in many years, like an old scratch that has festered into a gaping wound.

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At 90, sci-fi guru wishes E.T. would call

Associated Press reports on Arthur C Clarke’s recent 90th birthday

Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke listed three wishes on his 90th birthday: for the world to embrace cleaner energy resources, for a lasting peace in his adopted home, Sri Lanka, and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings.

“I have always believed that we are not alone in this universe,” Clarke said in a speech to a small gathering of scientists, astronauts and government officials Sunday in Colombo where he lives.

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Return to conflict

 Sri Lanka shows every sign of slipping into savagery comments The Times   

What little most Britons know about Sri Lanka is coloured by the image of balmy hotels, a benevolent outlook on life and a fun-loving national cricket team. Yesterday’s terrorist attack on a civilian bus in the town of Okkampitiya, which killed at least 31 people, should force a rethink. The separatist Tamil Tigers terrorists were almost certainly responsible, though they routinely deny attacking civilian targets.

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Mahinda Rajapakse: I trust India

Indian Express 

The transcript of Shekhar Gupta’s conversation with Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse for his NDTV talk show Walk the

My guest this week, in Colombo’s presidential palace, is one of the most unassuming men to become a head of state. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, welcome to Walk the Talk. A wonderful setting, in the shade of a banyan tree that’s nearly 200 years old.

In 2008, Sri Lanka’s main hope for peace lies with its people

Reuters and AlertNet 

From Amjad Mohamed-Saleem’s blog, hosted on Reuters and AlertNet

There’s something rather strange about hearing “Frosty the Snowman” belting out on a loudspeaker when it’s 90 degrees outside, or seeing a skinny Santa dancing to the tune of Baila (local Sinhalese music) at one of Colombo’s shopping centres.

Over Christmas, TV and radio stations played Daniel O’Donnell Christmas classics or Boney M’s “Mary’s Boy Child”. Hotels were festooned with elaborate decorations; some of the largest resembling Santa’s grotto. One of the most romantic festive images was the lights glimmering in the trees beside the majestic Galle fort as the sun set over the Indian Ocean.