THREE TAMIL Tiger rebel leaders who tried to surrender during the bloody climax of Sri Lanka’s civil war last May were shot and killed on the orders of the country’s defence minister and a senior adviser to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the army commander at the time has claimed.
Gen Sarath Fonseka said he had been personally unaware of the Tamils’ attempts to give themselves up, which included frantic, last-minute appeals for help to a Norwegian minister, diplomats, journalists, and UN and Red Cross officials. The general helped direct the final offensive against the Tigers but later broke with the government and is now running for president in next month’s elections.
“Later I learned that Basil [Rajapaska, a senior presidential adviser] had conveyed this information to the defence secretary, Gothabaya Rajapaksa, who in turn spoke with Brig Shavendra Silva, commander of the army’s 58th division, giving orders not to accommodate any [Tiger] leaders attempting surrender and that ‘they must all be killed’,” Gen Fonseka told the pro-opposition Sunday Leader newspaper in Colombo.
The general said Balasingham Nadesan – head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s political wing, Seevaratnam Puleedevan, head of the group’s peace secretariat, and a Tiger leader known as Ramesh – had been assured through intermediaries by Basil Rajapaksa and Gothabaya Rajapaksa, brothers of the president, that they would be given safe conduct.
According to subsequent accounts, the men were advised: “Get a piece of white cloth, put up your hands and walk towards the other side in a non-threatening manner.”
“It [the surrender method] was their idea,” Gen Fonseka told the newspaper, referring to Basil and Gothabaya Rajapaksa.
When the three men approached government lines some time after midnight on May 17th, they walked into a trap, the general suggested. Troops opened fire with machine guns, killing all three and a number of family members.
A Tamil eyewitness account said Nadesan’s wife, a Sinhalese, called in Sinhali to the soldiers: “He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him.” She also died in the hail of bullets.
Faced by government denials and threats of legal action yesterday, Gen Fonseka appeared to backtrack, claiming the newspaper reported his remarks out of context. “They never committed any criminal act. There was no attempt at surrender on May 17th, 18th and 19th,” he said.
He would take full responsibility for any human rights violations during the final stages of the war, he added.
Despite disavowing his earlier remarks, Gen Fonseka’s claims about the circumstances surrounding the deaths resemble contemporaneous reports in regional and western media denied by the Sri Lankan government.
Sri Lanka’s conduct of the final phases of the war, in which up to 20,000 people may have died, its subsequent internment of an estimated 270,000 Tamil civilians, and violence against government critics, including last January’s assassination of the Sunday Leader’s former editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge, have provoked widespread condemnation by human rights groups, NGOs and some western governments.
But calls by Amnesty International and others for an independent investigation by the UN or another independent body have so far been blocked. – (Guardian service)