Unreported wars: Another struggle in Sri Lanka

By Jonathan Steele

LONDON: Satellite uplinks bring live TV pictures of street battles in Gaza and the West Bank into our homes, but the march of technology has not reduced the volatility of editorial decision-making on foreign issues. Of the roughly three dozen armed conflicts under way around the world, only a handful get attention and even then it is spasmodic rather than sustained.

Top place in this league of unreported wars surely goes to the struggle between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who want their own homeland. Close to 300 troops were killed in a single battle last week. Armies tend to inflate their claims of enemy dead and underplay their own, but here was the government acknowledging the loss of 221 men, while the Tigers admitting losing 75.

Internet surfers could find these figures in despatches filed by Colombo-based reporters for the international wire services, but they did not make their way into many newspapers or TV bulletins, even though the army offensive which produced these casualties was not only colossal (and futile) in military terms but significant politically. It marked the end of a four-month ceasefire, threatening the start of another bloody chapter in a conflict already in its 18th year.

Yet blame for this war's lack of coverage does not rest mainly with journalists. It lies with the Sri Lankan government which runs the tightest censorship in the world, at least for a functioning democracy.

When troops wounded Marie Colvin of the London Sunday Times newspaper as she made the perilous illegal crossing out of Tiger- held territory last month, her bravery reminded people that no reporter has been allowed near the front lines, let alone to cross them, for almost six years. This wretched phenomenon of "crouching Tiger, hidden war" equally restricts Sri Lankan journalists who are invariably denied permission to reach the area.

A few independent reports from Tiger-controlled territories emerge via aid organizations. They tell of great hardship for more than 300,000 displaced Tamils, living without permanent shelter and suffering from a government-imposed embargo which limits medical supplies and kerosene.

But they also speak of growing disillusionment with the LTTE which taxes the few supplies which enter or insists they are sold in its own shops at high prices. The Tigers still recruit children as young as 12.

On the government side there are repeated accounts of people "disappearing" or being tortured while held under the repressive emergency regulations brought in last year. Sri Lanka is second to Iraq in unexplained disappearances. Although most of the 12,000 cases precede President Chandrika Kumaratunga's election in 1994, at least 540 have happened in her time.

Her government has also failed to act against security officials named in commissions of inquiry, some of whom remain in high places. One hope is a peace mission by Erik Solheim, a Norwegian facilitator, which is modeled on the Oslo process which got Israel and the Palestinians together.

Earlier talks soon after Kumaratunga took power collapsed because they were hasty, personalized, and unprepared. The new approach is snail-like and by involving a third party may produce more. Solheim is trying to inject a vital human rights component into what is otherwise an elite diplomatic affair by persuading the government to relax its embargo.

The government has made concessions but its failure to respond to the ceasefire was disappointing, even though the Tigers halted the appalling atrocities of suicide bombing in Colombo and other southern cities.

But the concept of "talking while fighting" is still upheld by both sides, and neither has repudiated the Solheim process. Another cause for hope is that Sri Lanka's vibrant civil society has not been silenced or split into ethnic laggers by the war.

Independent bodies such as the National Peace Council have Sinhalese and Tamil representation and, even after the worst bombings, reprisals were not taken by Sinhalese civilians on Tamils.

The Tigers appear willing to accept something short of independence for their homeland and almost every Tamil politician who stands for non- violence has come out in support of the Tigers' right to sit down as an equal party with the government. Even the main Tamil party, the Tamil United Liberation Front, which lost a valued MP, Neelan Thiruchelvam to a presumed Tiger bomb in 1999, acknowledges the Tigers as the Tamils' main representative in the Solheim process and the talks which should flow from it.

Like all wars, this one has profiteers. Most people in Colombo are convinced the defense ministry and army command are full of men who take backhanders from the huge arms purchases of recent years. Kumaratunga has a hard task, but it would be easier if she opened the war and its devastating human impact, as well as the business deals which prolong it, to the scrutiny of the Sri Lankan and foreign press.

She should also ensure that those already named for human rights abuse or corruption are made to resign and face the courts.

-- Guardian News Service