Sri Lanka - interview

Change policy to end war, says human rights defender

Article published on the 2008-11-15 Latest update 2008-11-15 14:26 TU

Sunela Abeysekera
(Photo: Aidan O'Donnell/RFI)

As Sri Lanka’s President calls on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to surrender, a prominent rights activist says that the conflict has cost thousands of civilian lives and that neither side can be believed when it comes to claims about the conflict. On a visit to Paris, Sunela Abeysekara, of the Human Rights Documentation Centre in Colombo, called on western governments to push for “moderation” to end the 30-year war in her homeland.

Abeysekara, who has been named one of Human Rights Watch’s “human rights defenders of the year”, says she wants European governments, including that of France, to use their influence “to try and move out of this military situation that we see at present into a more nuanced positioning where some kind of negotiation and discussion is possible”.

“In Sri Lanka we need a change of political vision and political leadership on both sides,” she told RFI. “Within the Tamil community and in the Sinhala community because at the moment there are only extremist positions and we need more moderate positions … We used to have moderate positions in the 1950s and 60s and we somehow have to build ourselves back to that.”

There is little sign of compromise on either side at the moment, especially since the breakdown of a Norwegain-brokered ceasefire and the start of a government offensive against the rebels.

Abeysekara, whose organisation monitors the effect of the conflict on non-combatants, puts the number of civilian deaths in the last five years at about 20,000.

“In September, you would have days in towns like Batticaloa, in the eastern province, you would find at least three bodies in one day in one town,” she says. “The dead bodies are people who have been executed.”

But, she adds, that accurate figures are virtually impossible to give.

“In the last two years, because the government constantly denies permission journalists to travel in the conflict-affected areas, our access to information has really shrunk.”

One side’s claims of the other side’s losses are not to be trusted, she says. The government claims that anyone carrying a pass issued by the LTTE is a Tiger fighter but that is often not the case.

“The LTTE forces everybody who lives in the north, and in the east when they were in control of parts of the east, to undergo military training,” she reports. “You don’t have a choice, the LTTE just takes out people from schools from government offices and conducts short training.”

The LTTE issues passes to those who had undergone training and the passes are necessary to survive in areas which the group control.

“But, if you die in an air-raid and you are found carrying this card, it is assumed that you are an LTTE cadre, when in fact you are not … So I think that slippage between who’s a civilian and who’s a LTTE cadre has been really exploited by the government.”

While most victims of the conflict in the north of the island have been Tamils, who are the majority in the area, Abeysekara says that both sides have been responsible for massacres and the LTTE forcibly expelled Muslims from the north in 1990.

And she is not optimistic about prospects for an end to the conflict, even if government forces capture the LTTE’s political capital, Kilinochchi.

“I don’t think historically there’s ever been a record of a defeat of a guerrilla army … the LTTE has been so-called ‘defeated’ before and they’ve always scattered and regrouped and come back to fight again.”