Re: Along with Pakistan,India refuses visa to UN team probing SriLanka genocide.
The Hindu : LTTE and Muslims
IN OCTOBER 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ordered the 100,000 Muslims then living in Jaffna to leave. The Muslims vacated their ancestral homes and lands and fled south to mainland Sri Lanka in less time than the 48-hour notice the Tigers gave them. Earlier that year, the Tigers killed over 100 men in a simultaneous attack on two mosques in eastern Sri Lanka. The incidents drove a wedge between Tamils and Muslims. The Muslims — who are linguistically Tamil — decided to strengthen a separate religion-based political identity rather than continue to affiliate themselves with Hindu and Christian Tamils on the basis of language.
Since then, they have grown as a political force in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) helped form and topple governments in Colombo. But despite the mutual distrust between Muslims and Tamils that arose from the LTTE's actions, the two communities managed to live in tenuous peace in the east, where Muslims are most numerous. Since the February 2002 ceasefire between the Government and the LTTE, that peace has become increasingly fragile. Muslims have discovered their political gains in Colombo count for little with the Tigers, now the de facto rulers of the north-east. They form the biggest minority in the Tamil-dominated region, but the Tigers, who have been permitted to run it pretty much independently of the Sri Lankan Government, are treating them the same way as Sinhala politicians treated Tamils.
The Tigers have been picking on Muslims in the east, harassing farmers, fishermen and traders from the community, extorting money from them, occupying their lands and kidnapping individuals for ransom. Even before the ceasefire, Muslims were particular targets of the Tigers. After the ceasefire, the incidents have become more frequent. The University Teachers' Human Rights (UTHR), a Sri Lankan rights group that focusses on the situation in the north-east, says in a recent report that 26 Muslims have died since the ceasefire. Two are missing. There have been at least five curfew situations. Earlier, Muslims could turn to the army or the Government for protection. Now, with the Government's *laissez faire *attitude towards the Tigers, they feel stripped of that safety net.
The little fishing town of Mutur in Trincomalee in eastern Sri Lanka presents a clear picture of the current dynamic between the Tigers and Muslims. Trincomalee district has an even mix of Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese. Mutur, a one-hour boat ride from Trincomalee town across the waters of a wide bay, is home to 60,000 people, some 33,000 are Muslim, 22,000 Tamils and a thousand Sinhalese. Most of the Muslims are settled in the main town. Most of the Tamils live in the areas around it. After the ceasefire, Mutur was the scene of two major clashes between the two communities. The first incident came within months of the ceasefire. A concrete cross outside Mutur town was vandalised. Tamils, led by the Tigers, and Muslims clashed over the desecration. There were incidents of stone-throwing. Houses were damaged, a mosque was desecrated. The LTTE's office at Mutur, which had just then been opened under the terms of the ceasefire accord, came in for some stone-throwing. The violence spread to Valaichenai in Batticaloa where it assumed more serious proportions with fully armed Tamils fighting Muslims, resulting in deaths and injuries to many.
The tensions from that flare-up simmered till April this year when two Muslim youth from a fishing hamlet near Mutur disappeared after putting out to sea. Their families learnt that the two were being held by the Tigers in Sambur, an LTTE-controlled area. They visited Sambur every day to plead with the Tigers for the boys' release. Two weeks later, after the mother of one committed suicide triggering off riots in Mutur, the Tigers denied the boys were in their custody. By then, three people had died, houses and other property burnt and destroyed, and the divide between Mutur's Muslims and Tamils complete.
Denying their involvement in all these incidents, the Tigers allege a "third force" is inciting trouble between Tamils and Muslims to disrupt the peace process. But in a region where the Tigers have made it clear they brook no rivals and ruthlessly kill anyone who challenges their authority, the allegation of a third force is egregious. Had there been such a force, the Tigers would have produced the evidence by now instead of merely making allegations. Or they would have swiftly eliminated it.
The Muslims are clear they have issues only with the Tigers and not with the Tamil people. They suspect the Tigers' eventual plan is to drive out their entire community from the east as they did in Jaffna. But they cannot do it as crudely. Instead, they are making it increasingly difficult for Muslims to continue living in the east by targeting their economy. Muslims control much of the trade and business in the east.
Why are the Tigers doing this? At the heart of the problem is the LTTE's view of itself as the absolute ruler of the north-east, which may be acceptable to Tamils but not to the Muslims. See this against the changing ethnic composition of the east: in 1981, when the last full census was conducted in Sri Lanka, Tamils were 43 per cent of the population in the eastern province, that is in Trincomalee, Batticialoa and Ampara, while Muslims formed 33 per cent. The estimate now is that Muslims form nearly 40 per cent of the population, while Tamils are about 33 per cent. The changed proportions, the reasons for which are well-documented, have raised a question mark over the cherished Tamil notion that the north-east, from Jaffna to Ampara, forms a unified Tamil homeland.
In the mid-1990s, the SLMC pushed for a sub-regional council carved out of three Muslim majority enclaves in the east to be included in a new constitution that President Chandrika Kumaratunga was drafting with the aim of devolving powers to Tamils in the north-east. Or, the Muslims argued, keep the north and east as two separate provinces. Muslims fear that in a unified north-east they will drop to a mere 17 per cent of the region's population, putting them at the mercy of the majority Tamil population of the region. The late leader of the SLMC, M.H.M. Ashraff, agreed to drop the demand only after Ms. Kumaratunga had written in safeguards for Muslim rights and provisions for power-sharing between Tamils and Muslims in the draft 2000 Constitution that was later abandoned by the Government.
The present leadership of the SLMC is too beset by its own insecurities to help its embattled constituents in the east. In the first flush of the ceasefire, Rauff Hakeem, who has led the SLMC since Mr. Ashraff's death in 2000, rushed to meet the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, and signed a "memorandum of understanding" that the Tigers would not harass Muslims, would not impose "taxes" on them and would return the lands they had taken from Muslim farmers. The LTTE did not honour its commitments. Instead of cementing Mr. Hakeem's leadership of the Muslims, the Hakeem-Prabakaran meeting became an endorsement of the LTTE's control over Muslims.
Now the Government of Ranil Wickremesinghe is preparing to legitimise the de facto rule of the Tigers over the north-east through an "interim administration". The Government proposals for the interim administration include representation for the Muslims. The Tigers are yet to respond to these proposals. In any case, the Tigers will hold the reins of any administrative set-up in the north-east. Hardline Sinhalese see in the present situation an opportunity to deny the Tamil claim of north-east Sri Lanka as a homeland, exacerbating tensions between Muslims and Tamils.
Meanwhile, the attitude of the Tigers has given rise to an eye for an eye atmosphere in Mutur. A Tamil youth disappeared after the killings of two Muslim boys in Trincomalee town in August. The UTHR report points to rising vigilantism among Mutur Muslims. Community leaders deny rumours they are arming themselves. They say they are trying to channel Muslim anger through democratic routes. But they also warn that if the LTTE continues to treat them badly, Muslim youth might begin to think that the only way to claim their rights from the Tamils is through militancy, just as the LTTE took to arms to win Tamil rights from the Sinhalese. The Sri Lankan Government must heed this warning. It cannot pretend this is an issue between Muslims and Tamils and therefore not its problem. Ultimately, the Government has to take responsibility for all its people, regardless of ethnicity