The searchlight has once again fallen on Trincomalee, the deep-sea harbour in north-eastern Sri Lanka,where the Navy's northern headquarters is located along with an oil tank complex run by Indian OilCorporation.
The Sri Lankan Government, on August 9, 2004, officially complained to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM)that 13 camps of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), located along the southern mouth of the harbour,had been newly setup, violating the bilateral ceasefire agreement between Colombo and the Tigers.
On August 12, the SLMM commenced investigating the veracity of the charges by sending in teams to assess thelocation of the camps. The Sri Lankan security forces say that, from the camps, the LTTE could severelydisrupt the functioning of the harbour, which is the main supply point to the northern Jaffna Peninsula.Recent media reports filed from the Government-controlled side of the harbour have said that the Tigers havefortified the camps and have erected bunker lines along the coast.
The harbour and its environs can be easily monitored from the camps and the Tigers have used artillery fromthe area in the past. A bay located at Illankantai on the south-eastern side of the bay allows the Tigers todock boats deep inland and unload.
The monitors themselves admit that it would be no easy task to rule on the government complaint. "Itwould be difficult, but not impossible," according to the deputy head of the SLMM, Hagrup Hakland. Someof the camps mentioned in the government complaint are located in deep jungles off the Trincomalee Bay andwould require some effort to reach. The SLMM had notified the LTTE of its plan to check on the camps and didnot expect any protest from the Tigers.
On August 16, however S. P. Tamilchelvan, the political-wing head of the LTTE, publicly denied the charge thatthe Tigers were arming and fortifying the area in question.
This is not the first time that Trincomalee, and especially the southern Bay area, has come under thespotlight due to the Tigers setting up new camps since the ceasefire agreement was signed in February 2002. InJune 2003, the Sri Lankan Army lodged a complaint with the SLMM accusing the Tigers of setting up a new campat Manirasakulam on the south western side of the Bay. The SLMM inquiry ruled that the camp was within 600meters of Government-controlled areas and should be dismantled. The Tigers have preferred to ignore the rulingand the camp still stands.
Manirasakulam was one of the points of contention between then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe andPresident Chandrika Kumaratunga. Last August, Kumaratunga wrote to Wickremesinghe requesting him to takeaction to dismantle the camp. "You will understand that the non-withdrawal of this camp creates the mostabominable precedent," she said in her letter. Kumaratunga later took over the defence portfolio andthereafter dissolved the Wickremesinghe controlled Parliament. In elections held this April, her party wasreturned to power.
One of the difficulties the SLMM would face in its inquiry is the lack of clarity in terms of lines of controlbetween government forces and the Tigers in the disputed area, unlike in the North, where clear frontlineswere established following military operations.
The area was under government troops till about 1997. According to sources from within the Sri Lankan Army,troops had to be pulled out and the camps abandoned in 1997, when the Army launched Operation Jayasikuru(Victory Assured) to capture the main A9 highway that connects the Jaffna Peninsula to the rest of thecountry. The sources put Sampur, Gangai, Kadalkadu, Koonativu and Illankantai among the camps that wereabandoned. Sampur, Kadalkadu and Illankantai are now among the disputed camps. It was with the Army pull-outthat the LTTE moved into the area and set up bases. The camps have been fortified during the ceasefire, as isthe case all over the northeast. The last Army camp on the southern bay side is located at Kattaparichchanwhere an LTTE camp is situated as well.
While the government has zeroed in on Trincomalee, the adjoining Batticaloa District in the south has been themost violent since the former LTTE eastern 'Commander', Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias 'Colonel' Karuna,defected to Government-controlled areas in early April following an internal rebellion.
The LTTE central command in Kilinochchi sent armed units into the Karuna-controlled East on April 9 andoverwhelmed the rebels. Nevertheless, Karuna supporters were initially able to carry out hit and run attacksagainst cadres sent from Kilinochchi.
On July 5, the LTTE 'political head' in Batticaloa, Ramalingam Padmaseelan alias 'Lt. Col.' Senathiraja, wasshot while travelling to participate in commemoration ceremonies honouring LTTE suicide cadres. He succumbedto his injuries on July 13. The LTTE thereafter launched a clinical operation decimating whatever supportKaruna enjoyed in the East. They pulled back their political operatives and closed the political office inGovernment-controlled Batticaloa after the murder, but, according to monitors and security force sources,unleashed their military cadres.
On July 14, the day of Senathiraja's funeral, the LTTE said that it had killed a Karuna cadre and captured twoothers following a skirmish at a location called Punai south of the Polonnaruwa - Batticaloa main road.
The most daring attack came on the morning of July 15, when LTTE cadre Mahendran Pulidaran shotKanapathipillai Mahendran alias Satchi Master inside the Batticaloa Jail. Earlier the LTTE had accused SatchiMaster of working as the spokesperson for the Karuna faction from inside the Jail with the help of Armyintelligence.
Killings of Karuna supporters and members of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a party that hassupported the renegades, have continued into August. In the week of August 9-15, on two consecutive days,August 12 and 13, three bodies with gunshot wounds were recovered from Kiran, north of Batticaloa, Karuna'shometown.
The victims appeared to have been beaten before being shot. The bodies were manacled and bound with chains.
The bloody campaign has been the result of the determination on the part of the LTTE to wrest control of theEast. "It is clear that the LTTE is trying to consolidate itself," Susanne Ringgaard Pederesen, SLMMhead for Batticaloa, told the writer recently.
There have also been complaints against the LTTE that it was recruiting children and young adults in the East,to replenish the loss of cadres following the Karuna rebellion. From a strength of around 7,000 cadres, theLTTE is believed to have lost around 2000 through the mutiny, though estimates vary. UNICEF and UNHCR haveraised the issue of child recruits with the LTTE. The LTTE's new political command in Batticaloa, underKaushalayn, appears frustrated at its inability to rein in the military cadres operating directly underKilinochchi. On August 5, the LTTE released 24 children to their parents following pressure by the aidagencies.
The attacks against Karuna have spread to the capital, Colombo, as well. On July 25, seven Karuna supporterswere gunned down inside a house at a Colombo suburb. EPDP leader Douglas Devananda survived an assassinationattempt by a suicide cadre earlier in the month.
When he visited Sri Lanka in June, Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister, Vidar Helgessen, raised the issue of thekillings with the LTTE. Before he left after failing to achieve a breakthrough in the deadlocked negotiations,Helgessen warned that the truce was being seriously undermined by the violence and the inability on the partof the Kumaratunga government and the LTTE to reach a compromise.
On August 16, Kumaratunga, while warning that she would not shy away from military action, said during aninterview that she felt that the Tigers were more concerned about regaining control of the East. WhileKumaratunga spoke, the ceasefire once again came under serious pressure on August 16, when Sri Lankan Navalcrafts approached an LTTE trawler suspected of gun running off the north-eastern waters. The LTTE preventedmonitors from inspecting the cargo unloaded from the trawler and the trawler itself. At one point a Tigerdinghy suspected to be manned by a suicide cadre sped towards a Naval vessel closing in on the trawler. TheNavy vessel had later withdrawn. The government once again complained to the monitors regarding theirinability to inspect the vessel or the cargo.
With both sides willing to adopt a hard-line stance, the ceasefire is likely to be tested even more in thecoming weeks. On August 20, the former LTTE political head for Batticaloa, Vasu Bawa, was killed along withtwo other cadres during an ambush.
As Pedersen expressed it, "It is only the tip of the iceberg that we are seeing, it is the sadreality".
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Amantha Perera is Editor-News Features, The Sunday Leader, Colombo. Courtesy, the South AsiaIntelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
