Sri Lanka army kills 11 Tamil rebels in east

Published 9:47 am Wednesday, May 27, 2009

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lankan troops on a mission to flush out the remnants of the Tamil Tiger rebels killed 11 suspected guerrillas in the eastern jungles today, the military said, in the largest clash since declaring it had won its 25-year war against the insurgents.

The incident near the southeastern town of Ampara underscored the government’s refusal to withdraw the 30-year-old anti-terrorism law that gives the police and military sweeping powers of search and arrest.

The military said that along with 11 bodies its soldiers recovered five assault rifles, 20 Claymore mines, a handful of grenades and anti-personnel mines and medical equipment. The army suffered no casualties.

It was the second clash in the eastern district since the military completed a bruising three-year campaign last week to drive the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from the north and killed the LTTE’s top leadership, including its supreme commander Veluppillai Prabhakaran.

Despite that victory, the government has refused to scale back its tough security measures in the country’s urban centers, saying it believes some rebel cells remain in place and may be motivated by revenge to carry out suicide attacks.

The army also has said rebel holdouts were entrenched in the rugged eastern districts, which has been under government control since 2007.

On Tuesday, the government rejected a demand from the political opposition to rescind the 1979 anti-terrorism law and the state of emergency imposed after the 2005 assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, which the government blamed on the rebels.

“The termination of civil war does not suggest a complete halt to terrorism and related atrocities,” Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva told Parliament, where he also is the governing party’s legislative leader.

Leading Tamil politician Veerasingham Anandasangaree said it was unfair to keep the emergency powers in place, since most of the Tamil people “gave full support to the army to liberate them. If they are treated in this manner, there is no justice at all.”

The government also indicated today it would maintain restrictions on outside aid to Tamils uprooted by the civil war, despite complaints from the Red Cross that its workers were being locked out of some displacement camps.

Rishard Badurdeen, the minister for resettlement, said a limited number of international aid vehicles can enter the camps “subject to security procedures.” He declined to elaborate.

Nearly 300,000 Tamils have been herded into barbed wire-enclosures near the northern garrison town of Vavuniya under military guard and are unable to leave. The government says it is screening the displaced people for rebels trying to evade the military net.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said he has asked the government for access to all displacement camps.

“We have access to some camps and we don’t have access to others,” Kellenberger said in Geneva.

“Just now, what’s still not clear is to what extent the government of Sri Lanka will really make it possible for us to carry out the tasks we find important,” he said. “But we are in discussion with them.”

Also in Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Council was concluding a debate on alleged human rights violations during the fighting. A European-sponsored resolution would lament civilian deaths, condemn LTTE’s use of human shields and call for a government investigation of alleged abuses.

But that resolution was likely to be defeated by a Sri Lankan-sponsored draft that praises the government’s defeat of the rebels and describes the conflict as a “domestic” matter that doesn’t warrant outside interference.” It also would call on the government to provide aid groups with “access as may be appropriate” to refugee camps.

The United Nations says at least 7,000 civilians died in the war’s final stages. It put the number of deaths since the war began in 1983 at 80,000 to 100,000.

In Colombo’s diplomatic district, hundreds of Sri Lankans protested at the Canadian Embassy today over what they said was Canada’s support for the rebels and its failure to protect Sri Lankans and their property from pro-rebel ethnic Tamils in Canada.

Protesters pelted the embassy with stones, sprayed graffiti on the wall and painted over a security camera.

Meanwhile, Anandasangaree, the Tamil legislator, appealed for the release three Tamil doctors accused of delivering false information about war zone casualties to the media.

Thurairaja Varatharajah, Thangamuttu Sathyamurthi and V. Shanmugarajah spoke to reporters who contacted them about civilian casualties while continuously shifting their medical facility as the Sri Lankan army advanced. They fled the war zone just before the government routed the last of the rebels, and were immediately detained.

Anandasangaree said the doctors, although they were government employees, had acted under orders of the Tamil rebels who controlled the area. No one “was in a position to defy the orders of the LTTE and were bound to obey their orders without questioning, including interviews to the media as directed by them,” he wrote.

He said, however, the doctors’ reports were “100 percent true.”