[Human Rights Server, 30 April 2010]
German authorities arrest Six Tamil activists
On the 3rd of March, in dawn raids, six Tamils were arrested in Nordrhein-Westfalen on the charge of forming a 'criminal group' to collect money for an ‘illegal organisation’. The obvious question that arises is, why is it that now, nearly one year after the Sri Lankan regime ended the war on the island - by killing, according to Gordon Weiss , 'as many as 40,000 civilians during the last stages' - the authorities in Germany have suddenly decided to arrest several individuals who are highly respected within the Tamil community? The important clue is, that soon after the arrests, the Sri Lankan TV news headlines featured the triumphant Major General Jagath Dias proclaiming his great success in working with the German authorities in securing these arrests. On the BBC, Jagath Dias justified the arrests in Germany thus, 'although the LTTE was defeated in Sri Lanka, the group is still very active in Europe in many other forms'. Major General Jagath Dias' proclamations of his collaboration with the authorities have legitimacy because he is, in fact, the deputy ambassador for Sri Lanka in Germany! He was also the highest ranking operational commander on the ground during the final stages of the massacre of the Tamils – the period that Gordon Weiss (United Nations' spokesperson in Sri Lanka at the time) was talking about.
Dias, is directly responsible for the indiscriminate air raids and the use of heavy weapons against the Tamil population, which by April 2009, according to United Nations internal documents, were resulting in the death of 116 people a day. He is responsible for bombing civilian habitations, hospitals as well as the government's self-proclaimed 'safety zones' or 'no fire zones' - causing innumerable deaths of civilians, doctors and aid workers, depriving essential services like food, water, and health facilities in war zones. He is directly responsible for execution of a group of LTTE civil-administrators and political leaders who had come unarmed and with white flags – despite that fact that wide publicity was given to this internationally negotiated surrender. Dias is responsible for the Sinhala soldiers under his command maltreating the dead bodies of the Tamils to add insult to the injury that the Tamil society underwent. He is responsible for ordering the military assault on the Tamil population forcing them to move en masse away from their homes – and at the end of the war - incarcerating, the remaining 280,000 people in concentration camps for six months. He has overseen the detention in unspecified location at least 12,000 Tamils - with no access to legal representation or any other kind of external contact, including that of the International Committee of the Red Cross (for details of the war crimes and crimes against humanity charges against the Sri Lankan regime and its military see the report of the Dublin Tribunal).
Why is the German government honouring Jagath Dias, a man facing charges of the most horrendous crimes, with diplomatic status? Even worse why is the German government providing him with a platform to proclaim that he is continuing, within Germany, the the same measures that he and the Sri Lankan government had implemented against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka? Why has the German government decided to start working explicitly with the perpetrators to launch an assault on the victimised community? (see a visual depiction of the triumphant Sinhalese and the tormented Tamils)
The background to the German government's current position
The position the German government took on the conflict in Sri Lanka, just 8 years ago, was not so one sided. In 2002, when the Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) was reached between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), Germany, strongly supported the even handed treatment of both sides by the Norwegians – the internationally recognised facilitators of the peace process. The CFA and the peace process brought much hope to the Tamils and the Sinhalese population that a just and durable solution could be found to the terrible ethnic conflict in the island. Apart from Germany and the European Union, powerful countries like the USA and Japan backed the peace process as 'co-chairs' - with implicit support from the whole of the international community. Norway’s facilitation efforts, based on the premise that the deep seated ethnic conflict in the island must be solved by political and not military means, was officially backed by the powerful co-chairs. We know from our discussions with officials during this period that the German authorities understood quite well that the genesis of the conflict in Sri Lanka was rooted in the oppression of the Tamils and that negotiations were the only way to a long lasting solution. Germany as well as the EU accepted that the Norwegians' according of parity of status to both sides (GoSL and the LTTE) in the negotiation process was an essential measure for the peace process to succeed.
For the Sinhala and the Tamil population the peace process was a great relief from the hardship and tension of decades of war. The advantages of peace were tangible and as time went by the mass of the people became attached to the conditions that peace brought. But as peace was flowering within Sinhala and Tamil society, conflicts were appearing within the powerful co-chairs who were underwriting the negotiation process. As the peace process was moving slowly but steadily forward, the world was moving rapidly towards war – the Iraq war. The conflict between USA/Britain on one side and 'old Europe' on the other regarding the invasion of Iraq was also reflected in their respective attitudes towards the Sri Lankan Peace Process. For the US, the strategically key Trincomalee Harbour in the Tamil majority North-East of the island was becoming a desirable staging post for the long term military conquest of the Middle East. The only military ‘forward position’ in the vital Indian Ocean region for the USA, Diego Garcia, was too small and too far away from the strategic sea-routes. Trincomalee was the perfect alternative. In the calculations of the US and the vocabulary of George W. Bush, Sri Lankan government was 'with us' and the LTTE would have been 'against us' (For more details see accusations of Crimes against Peace of the Dublin Tribunal).
Accordingly the USA explicitly embarked a coercive strategy of pressurising the LTTE to lay down their arms while arming the Sri Lankan state and urging the Sinhala radical forces to prepare for war. In this way USA disturbed the military balance of power by giving the Sri Lankan state the confidence think in terms of a military solution. As the US systematically used its statecraft to politically side with the Sinhala extremists in the island, internationally it put massive pressure on the EU to deviate from its neutral stand. The EU finally succumbing to US/British pressure to ban the LTTE was the final straw that signalled the international support for a military solution – laying the road free for the Sinhala supremacists to pursue the military option.
Paradigm shift in the EU
This is not to say that there was no resistance to US moves to destabilise the peace process. As the US wars in the middle east were changing the balance of power in the world - reasserting US dominance against all other power blocks including Europe - the part of Europe that the Americans called 'old Europe' did not have a real motivation to secure Trincomalee and Sri Lanka as a military post for the US. Because of this, many in Europe - even those holding powerful positions - were able look at the situation in a more humanitarian way. They were able to see that the peace process, quite apart from offering the tantalising possibility of a stable and just solution to what had hitherto been seen as an intractable conflict, also meant that an average of 3,000 lives were saved every year the cease-fire held. It is in this context that the EU asked the Nordic ‘Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission’ (SLMM), which had been appointed by the ‘co-chairs’ and the international community as neutral observers to monitor the cease-fire, to estimate how a EU ban of the LTTE would affect the peace process. The SLMM gave a clear message that they were opposed to the banning of the LTTE, as this would lead to collapse of the peace process (see the reasoning of the head of the SLMM Major General Ulf Henricsson)
In a similar way to the opposition to the war on Iraq, within Europe there was a various political tendencies that opposed the criminalisation of one of the negotiating partners in Sri Lanka while arming the other. The German Development Ministry (BMZ) which was working on the ground in Sri Lanka helping to rebuild the war ravaged North end East, strongly opposed the US pressure on the EU. The head of the SLMM Ulf Henricsson also understood the ground realities. He was vocal in his opposition to the ban and proclaimed that 'there was high pressure from the US and Great Britain to get it through (the EU ban)' even though 'there were top European Union politicians that do not think that this is a good decision'. He implied that the democratic processes in the EU were subverted by the US and Britain and that the important decisions regarding Sri Lanka were made made in the 'coffee shops in Brussels'. Further, as the Tsunami catastrophe resulted in a massive outpouring of support for the victims in Sri Lanka from ordinary people in Europe, and the hundreds of non-governmental organisation which were tasked to deliver the aid, did not want their efforts and rebuilding to be destroyed by a new war. This meshed in with rehabilitation and reconstruction actions by various the European based organisations (see a German example) and massive demonstrations from Tamil refugees (see the leaflet for a demonstration in Brussels opposing the EU ban). However, the opinion of European people who had real knowledge about Sri Lanka and showed humanitarian concern were over-ruled by US/British statecraft and the LTTE was banned opening the way for war.
Germany's disastrous policy shift
It is a shameful episode in German foreign policy history that the Government ignored the advice of its own development ministry, its own staff in Sri Lanka and in Germany to buckle under US/British pressure to (albeit passively) accept the ban on the LTTE. But now when the terrible consequences of European cowardice is clear to see, Germany compounds its mistake by giving diplomatic status to Jagath Dias and giving practical help for him to continue his racist agenda in Germany. Ironically the US and British – the powers that engineered the restarting of the war – is now hypocritically talking about war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government. Masters of spin, the US/British axis wants now to try to misdirect the Tamil Diaspora while at the same time use this issue to put political pressure on the Sri Lankan State to level out Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. In this way US and Britain wants to come out smelling of roses while Germany is left to do the dirty work.
Make a stand against collaboration with Genocide!
The Tamil Diaspora in Germany have been specially active and relatively effective in politically promoting the peace process and opposing US/British plans to destroy it. After the war too, a large part of the mainly refugee based Diaspora community here has stood firmly against US/British attempts to manipulate the Tamils and have made it clear that they will stand for the rights of their brutalised brothers and sisters in the island and do all in its power to expose those responsible for the genocide – whether in Sri Lanka or elsewhere. This is the reason why the vicious war criminal Jagath Dias was sent to Germany to 'neutralise' those Tamils whose principles cannot be bought or manipulated. The IMRV stands firmly for the release of the Tamils who have been arrested and call for the immediate lifting of diplomatic immunity from Jagath Dias so that he can face charges of 'war crimes', crimes against humanity' and 'genocide'. We call on all those people, whether individuals or organisations who have been engaged on the issue of Sri Lanka or the issue of the war on Iraq to work with us at this critical time.