THE SRI Lankan government has rejected the ceasefire offer by Tamil Tiger rebels, further exacerbating the plight of more than 50,000 refugees trapped in the war zone in the northeast of the island starved of food, water and medicine.
Defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who heads the government’s successful campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, said there was no need for a ceasefire as the military was on the verge of defeating the rebels fighting for a separate homeland in northern and eastern Sri Lanka for more than 26 years.
“It must be a joke,” Mr Rajapakse said in response to the ceasefire offer, which the Tigers claimed would allow international aid agencies into the conflict zone to help civilians, the majority of them poor Tamils who are being used as human shields by the besieged and retreating Tigers.
“What is the need for a ceasefire when they are running away?” Mr Rajapakse asked, sensing victory and rejecting international appeals for cessation of hostilities on humanitarian grounds. “They should first lay down arms, surrender and let the people go.”
Military analysts say there is little likelihood of the military halting the fighting which they believe would give the Tigers an opportunity to regroup and for some to escape among the refugees.
The UN says more than 160,000 people have fled the area in recent weeks but more than 50,000 are still confined to the fighting area.
A UN document circulated around diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo estimates that some 6,500 civilians have died and 14,000 have been injured since January.
The mass of survivors who have fled, mostly Tamil women and children, are emaciated. One aid worker said the scene resembled a horror film. Many people had untreated festering wounds and were so ill they could barely stand. They were desperate for water, then food. The refugees, who had been forced by the Tigers to retreat alongside them as the Sri Lankan military advanced, had artillery shells and mortars rained on them.
They also faced frightening and unrelenting attacks by combat aircraft that dropped lethal ordnance on Tiger strongholds, pushing them back further.
Many relief workers who interacted with refugees undergoing treatment in hospitals quote them as saying that large numbers of them died like “flies” as they tried to escape or sidestep the military’s superior and remorseless fire-power. The Tigers had also fired from their midst, inviting ferocious retaliation from the military.
Meanwhile, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs John Holmes on a three-day visit to Colombo has urged the Sri Lankan government to open the war zone to humanitarian groups, but to little avail.
Aid workers have been barred from the war-ravaged areas since fighting escalated last September.
The fighting is in its final phase, with the Tigers, who once ran a parallel administration in large parts of northern and eastern Sri Lanka, squeezed into an area of less than eight square kilometres.
The Tamil Tigers, one of the world’s most fearsome terrorists, are capable of fighting set-piece battles against the Sri Lankan military. They are now surrounded on the northeastern sea board on three sides by the army and on the fourth by the navy, making any escape attempt by the rebel leadership virtually impossible.