Word: sri
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...decades, Sri Lanka lived with war, as the Tigers fought for a Tamil homeland in the north and east of the island. Now, after a four-year cease-fire, many fear it is drifting back into full-blown conflict. Norwegian facilitators have persuaded the Sinhalese government and the Tigers to meet in Geneva later this month, the first time the two sides have come together in three years. The sole item on the agenda is to discuss better implementation of a cease-fire agreement, signed in Feb. 2002, but which is now on life support. "There will be some pretty...
...Nobert lives with the consequences of such mutual intransigence. Mullaitivu, at the end of a spit off Sri Lanka's northeast coast, was once a village of red-tiled bungalows, purple bougainvillea and powdery white shores, where Tamil boatmen lived by shrimp-fishing and smuggling coconut whisky to India. But when civil war broke out in 1983 between the Sinhalese-dominated government to the south and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.) based in the north and east, Mullaitivu wound up on the front line. The village fell first to the Sri Lankan army. Then in 1996 the Tigers...
...Today, those left in Mullaitivu fear that war is returning. In the past two months, rebels and their proxies have carried out assassinations and deadly mine attacks on military convoys. On Jan. 7, a speedboat laden with explosives was driven into a Sri Lankan navy pursuit craft anchored a few hours south of Mullaitivu, killing 13 sailors. The Sri Lankan army and its paramilitary allies behave little better, raping, abducting and executing civilians thought to support Tamil nationalism. Both sides accuse the other, explaining any killings carried out by their side of the divide as forgivable retaliation. The violence over...
...Sri Lankans seem to have quickly forgotten the spirit of cooperation that flickered briefly after the tsunami. Across the Indian Ocean in Aceh, the disaster persuaded guerrillas and the Indonesian government to declare a truce and work together. Sri Lanka had a similar opportunity. International donors pledged more than $7.5 billion in development and tsunami aid?that's $375 for every person on the island. But bitter squabbles over how to share the cash?last summer, nationalist Sinhalese and Buddhist monks claimed giving aid to the Tigers legitimized terrorism?only aggravated divisions. Hagrup Haukland, Norwegian chief of the Sri Lanka...
...Tigers deny responsibility for recent attacks on the army, blaming them on spontaneous Tamil uprisings. Tiger political chief S.P. Tamilchelvan says the Sri Lankan army and its paramilitary squads have provoked such unrest. The Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights, which receives some funding from the Tigers but is reputed for its independence, has recorded the death of more than 70 Tamil civilians since Rajapakse's election, killed by the army or plainclothes death squads. The killings include the execution-style shooting of five Tamil students, the assassination of a Tamil parliamentarian in church on Christmas Eve, and the murder...