COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s president yesterday ordered the military not to attack the Tamil Tigers during a two-day holiday to let thousands of civilians escape a no-fire zone where they are being held by the separatists.
Soldiers have encircled the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a 17 sq km no-fire zone on the northeast coast, and are close to crushing them and ending Asia’s longest-running civil war.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa said people should be “given uninhibited freedom of movement from the no-fire zone” in the Sinhala and Tamil new year period today and tomorrow, and again urged the Tigers to surrender and renounce violence.
A presidential statement said he had “directed the armed forces of the state to restrict their operations during the new year to those of a defensive nature”.
There was no immediate comment from the Tamil Tigers, whose agreement to let the civilians go is essential.
The United Nations and witnesses say people are being kept as human shields and forced conscripts, or being shot as they try to flee. The Tamil Tigers have so far refused any diplomatic entreaties to let the civilians go, and insist they are staying by choice.
In late January, Mr Rajapaksa gave a 48-hour window of safe passage to civilians and urged the Tigers to let them go, but the rebels refused. Diplomats have been working furiously to negotiate an exit strategy for those affected, who number 60,000 according to the government, and about 100,000 according to the United Nations.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon welcomed Mr Rajapaksa’s move “as a useful first step”, despite it being less than the several-day pause he had suggested to the president last week.
Mr Ban’s call echoed a statement from the mediators of Sri Lanka’s peace process – the United States, Britain, Norway and Japan – last Friday that urged the Tigers to end the “futile fighting” and the military not to shoot into the no-fire zone.
“With tens of thousands of lives at risk on the beaches of northern Sri Lanka, I call on government forces to adhere scrupulously to the commitments of the government about non-use of heavy weapons,” Mr Ban said.
The military denies shooting into civilian areas and says claims it does so are Tiger propaganda. It has also refused all calls for a ceasefire, saying the Tigers have repeatedly used them to regroup to fight another day.
In Oslo, pro-Tigers demonstrators yesterday broke into the Sri Lankan embassy and trashed it, police said. It was the first of several demonstrations by supporters around the world in recent weeks that has turned violent.
On Saturday more than 100,000 Tamils marched in central London demanding a ceasefire. The Tigers have vowed not to give up their fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority – a struggle that has engulfed the Indian Ocean island nation in a civil war that has killed at least 70,000 since 1983.
Since Tamil Tiger fighters wear vials of cyanide in case of capture, surrender is seen as unlikely despite the overwhelming military firepower facing them. – (Reuters)