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David Costello Global Briefing

Source: AFP

SRI Lanka’s brutal civil war ground to a halt in May 2009 when government forces routed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and killed their notorious leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The world breathed a sigh of relief that the conflict which had killed up to 100,000 people over nearly 30 years was over. But the fallout from those final battles continues to poison relations between the West and the Sri Lankan Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

And it has inflamed tensions in Sri Lankan expat communities, including Australia, where representatives of the Tamil community and the majority Sinhalese ethnic group have very different versions of what happened during the fighting and in the aftermath of the LTTE defeat.

Sam Pari of the Australian Tamil Congress points to the release of a United Nations report in April this year which alleges that government forces shelled hospitals, safe zones and refugee camps, causing mass casualties. She wants a thorough independent inquiry. Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd wants the UN Human Rights Council to have another look at allegations of war crimes.

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In March this year, I interviewed Dr S.J. Emmanuel, a Catholic theologian who heads the Global Tamil Forum. Dr Emmanuel, now exiled in Germany, said Tamils were suffering widespread human-rights abuses in the aftermath of the civil war. He also alleged that Colombo was sponsoring colonisation of Tamil homelands by Sinhalese Sri Lankans.

Sinhalese community leaders in Australia beg to differ. They allege bias in the April UN report which was handed down by a three-member panel of experts appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

And they say that the issues were already being investigated by a commission in Sri Lanka.

These sentiments have been backed by Rohan Gunaratna, the Sri Lankan-born terrorism expert widely regarded as an authority on al-Qa’ida and Islamist terrorism.

When I interviewed him last month, he said the Sri Lankan Government was doing the right thing and working hard to re-integrate Tamil militants and civilians.

It remains difficult to get the facts about what happened in May 2009 when government troops cornered the remnants of the LTTE and as many as 130,000 civilians on a sandy strip of land between the Nanthi Kadal Lagoon and the Indian Ocean in the northeast of the country.

A very bleak scenario is painted by the documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields which was made by Britain’s Channel 4 and aired on ABC-TV’s Four Corners last month.

The documentary quotes UN “estimates” that up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final battles. While conceding that the LTTE used civilians as human shields and hostages and shot people trying to flee, it provides evidence that government forces shelled civilians in "no fire zones".

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the program was footage of bound, naked prisoners being executed by uniformed soldiers.

Channel 4 said some of this material was taken from mobile phones used by Sri Lankan soldiers.

It is no surprise that the Rajapaksa Government disputes the authenticity of the execution scenes.

UN experts say they appear to be genuine.

That figure of 40,000 civilian deaths keeps cropping up even though it has not been validated.

So does the Sri Lankan Government’s claim that it operated under a policy of “zero civilian deaths”.

In a report released this year it does explain that troops were hampered by LTTE tactics, including the use of innocents as human shields.

The UN report of April 2011 cites credible evidence that “tens of thousands” were killed.

It has also been reported that doctors working in the Tamil no-fire zone in April-May 2009 were given inflated casualty figures by the LTTE.

Rohan Gunaratna says he has conducted extensive interviews with former LTTE militants in Sri Lanka and his research indicates they are being well looked after. He emphasises that there was no wholesale slaughter.

“Some 11,500 Tamil Tigers surrendered,” he told The Courier-Mail.

“They have undergone rehabilitation and 6000 have been released.

“The story that there was deliberate killing (by government forces) is not true. The very presence of 11,500 Tigers that surrendered shows there was no policy to kill Tamils.”

Gunaratna says the LTTE militants still in detention will eventually be released by the Government has chosen “the path of rehabilitation rather than prosecution”.

He also says the Rajapaksa regime has made a strong start in rebuilding the country and had achieved in two years what has taken a decade in the former Yugoslavia.

The challenge now, he says, is for Sri Lanka to reach out to overseas Tamil groups and invite them to return home to see what is happening on the ground.

This will be no easy task given the support the LTTE enjoyed in Tamil communities in the West.

“Without the LTTE international network there would not have been war in Sri Lanka,” Gunaratna says.

“Some 95 per cent of the supplies for the Tamil Tigers came from North Korea

“The funding for the arms, ammunition and explosives was all raised in three places – Canada and the US, Europe and thirdly, Australia and NZ.”

According to Gunaratna, Australia can play a part in reconciliation by urging the various Sri Lankan groups here – Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers – to unite in the task of reconstruction.

Given the current level of hostility that will be no easy task.

And it doesn’t help that the Sri Lankan Government keeps stonewalling on requests for a thorough inquiry into what happened in 2009.

It is accepted that the LTTE had a horrendous record of terrorism and human rights abuses. It is now up to the Government to confront the very damning body evidence that its troops killed people in cold blood.

Once this is sorted, everyone can move forward.