The Ceylon News

The Sri Lankan army says at least 70 Tamil Tiger fighters have been killed just hours after the country's president declared victory over the separatist movement.

The group were killed on Sunday morning as they tried to leave the pocket of land in the northeast of the country, Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman, said.

"Troops observed the six boats in the lagoon and destroyed them," he said. "We recovered 70 bodies and an identification process is under way."

He said the Libertain Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers, still controlled a "small patch of jungle".

Thousands of civilians have also been flooding out of the area during the past 72 hours, and on Sunday the government declared that all non-combatants had been able to escape.

On Saturday, Mahinda Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan president, had declared that the Tigers had been "defeated," after the military said it had captured an area of coastline held by them.

"I am proud to announce ... that my government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has, in an unprecedented humanitarian operation, finally defeated the LTTE," he told a summit in Jordan.

He returned to the capital, Colombo, on Sunday to street celebrations.

Civilian rescue

Despite the claim of victory, the whereabouts of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of Tigers, remain unknown, and hundreds of thousands of civilians are still either on the move or in camps for the internally displaced.

Focus: Sri Lanka

Q&A: Sri Lanka's civil war The history of the Tamil Tigers Timeline: Conflict in Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan ministry of disaster management and human rights said on Sunday it was continuing to process civilians rescued from the fighting.

Rajiva Wijesinha, a secretary at the ministry, told Al Jazeera from Colombo: "We heard that the last of them [civilians] had been saved. This was one of our great priorities in the last couple of weeks to make sure we got the civilians safely away."

Both the government and the Tamil Tigers have been criticised for not allowing civilians safe exit from the area and for precipitating a humanitarian disaster.

Wijesinha said that just over 30,000 people had left the area of fighting over the past few days.

"These are our people. We were committed to their safety and I think we have achieved it much more sensibly and carefully than any other country in the world could have done," he said.

"We managed to airlift 12 or 14 people who had been injured. I believe some of the younger members of the Tamil Tigers just refused to listen to the disgusting orders of their seniors."

The Tamil Tigers had been fighting for more than 25 years for a homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of the country, arguing that they were marginalised by the ruling majority Sinhalese government.

James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef, told Al Jazeera that civilians were arriving "sick and hungry" and that women and children were malnourished.

"This latest massive influx of people who have endured those extreme conditions is going to put even greater strain on those camps," he said.

'Non-combatants'

"These camps are being created by the government, which argues they are on the basis of state security and the time needed for mines to be cleared before resettlement can occur.

A Sri Lankan man waves his national flag as he celebrates in the capital [Reuters]

"At the same time, it is urgent that the government comes out with very clear screening and separation policies and a timeline so those who are termed non-combatants are allowed freedom of movement and are allowed to resettle."

Government forces continue to hunt for Prabhakaran and his deputies, but it is unclear if they have already fled overseas.

Defence officials told news agencies that sporadic fighting was continuing in a number of pockets across the small strip of land in the northeast of the country.

There was no immediate comment on the situation from the LTTE.

Reports are impossible to independently verify as the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone.

Jan Jananayagam, from a group called Tamils Against Genocide who has spoken to the LTTE, told Al Jazeera: "The Tamil Tigers have called for international intervention.

"They have said they are willing to co-operate with the UN and America. They do so because the people are suffering in the most enormous way," she said.

Palitha Kohona, secretary of the Sri Lankan ministry of foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera that though the Tamil Tigers had been "defeated comprehensively", achieving peace would take longer.

"You don't have peace the day after winning the war," he said.

'Time and effort'

"It takes time ... patience ... effort. The Sri Lankan government and people who have endured the nightmare of the LTTE's terrorism have all of those in plenty. I am very confident we will win the peace."

About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months and are being held in crowded displacement camps.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that there still remains the possibility of "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe" for the hundreds of wounded.

"No humanitarian organisation can help them in the current circumstances. People are left to their own devices," Pierre Krahenbuhl, the ICRC's director of operations, said.

Up to 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from January 20 until May 7, according to a UN document given to The Associated Press by a senior diplomat.

Since then, doctors in the war zone say that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces.

Malin Abeyatunga

I recently read in the print media that the Minister for Disaster Management & Human Rights Mr. Mahinda Samrasinghe saying that the Government is ready to grant amnesty to LTTE cadres who surrender. Is he serious? Is he kidding? This will be like granting another life line for them to recoup and recommence terrorist activities at a latter stage. Don’t forget that the Tamil Diaspora is still financially and logistically strong. They have funds to take this war for another couple of decades if we leave the Tamil Tigers free.

The remaining Tamils in the NFZ who are currently confined to an area of 4sq.km can be separated into four categories. The first category is the hard core “do or die” Tamil Tiger terrorists, be they are top rung or the lower ranks. The second category will be adults men & women who have been forcibly recruited by LTTE without their consent or willingness. The third category would be the under aged children conscripted by LTTE by force. There was a girl of 14 who surrendered told the media that she was given AK47 and grenades and put on the front line to fight against the armed forces. This only one case of many. The fourth category is feeble older men, women, children and infants (who will be of no use for LTTE).

Before granting any amnesty to LTTE cadres who surrender, every effort should be made to check to which category of the four mentioned above they belong to. There is no harm, if the government considers granting amnesty to the last three categories who had no choice but definitely not to the first category consisting of hard core Tamil Tiger terrorists. The first category has blood in their hands of massacring innocent sinhale villagers by families, killing civilians in bombing public transport, public and religious places, Commercial buildings and even fleeing civilians from LTTE captivity. Captain Ajith Gamage who was in the front in the operations of helping the fleeing Tamil civilians was shot dead by a Tamil Tiger camouflaged as one of them. There is also no moral justice whatsoever ever to grant amnesty to the Tamil Tiger Terrorists of the first “do or die” category and by that we are not doing any justice to the remaining kith and kin of the thousands of demised soldiers and the innocents who were killed by Tamil Tiger terrorists. If we give amnesty to hard core Tamil Tigers on surrender, we are asking for trouble by making room for the LTTE movement to protract for another ten years or so. Even if the top rank of LTTE is captured dead or alive, there will be another leader born or to take over. We should not forget that LTTE started with a rag tag gang of few members and without any financial support at the beginning., but now they have a well established financial backing from the international Tamil terrorist Diaspora.

Even Daya master and George master who have already surrendered should not be given any mercy and should be brought to justice as they have blood in their hands albeit they talk like saints now. In order receive mercy, they will come out with various false intelligent reports in an attempt to put the armed forces on the wrong track to save their LTTE brethren. However, our forces cannot be hoodwinked any more.

Let us show no mercy to Tamil Tigers even if they surrender but bring them to justice for waging a war against a legitimate Government and killing thousands of innocent civilians. The innocents who were brutally killed by Tamil Tigers will rise from their graves if their murderers are given amnesty. Imagine the trauma of the remaining kith and kin’s of the 639 policemen who were summarily executed by LTTE getting amnesty if surrendered. Karuna and Pillayan are no saints and they also should be dealt with according to the law of the country at some stage. I wish the idea of granting amnesty to Tamil Tigers if surrendered is only a GIMMICK by the Government to hoodwink the LTTE biased international community.

By Mario Perera, Kadawatha


This morning seeing our President return from abroad, descending from the plane, kneeling and worshiping the soil of Sri Lanka would no doubt have brought tears to many an eye, in any case it did to mine. If these white “hypocrisies” watched the reception accorded to our president, and the heart warming discourses of one and all that form the fabric of our civil society, they would perhaps realize, if they have eyes to see, that the entire nation is with its leader, that this leader is the embodiment of our fondest national aspiration, that of being ONE.

We celebrate the 4th of February as our National Independence day. We know however that our independence was an adjunct of Indian independence. We benefited from the struggle India undertook to rid herself of the white man’s rule. Furthermore, that independence was inserted into the history of our party politics which has been the bane of our civic lives. Long ago I expressed the view that we will never feel independent unless we win it, like so many others did, with our blood. That utterance shocked some of my friends. Do you want to see bloodshed in our country they asked? Nobody wants bloodshed, but freedom is somehow synonymous with blood, as shown in history. Our independence of the 4th of February was a paperwork effort, a lip service endeavor. We were paper lions, the beneficiaries of the Indian struggle, the struggle that saw the emergence of the Congress as the governing body. And today quite unexpectedly, surprisingly and surely SYMBOLICALLY, the same scenario has once again unfolded itself before our eyes. We have gained our Independence, our real one this time with our blood, and the Congress has swept the polls in India. Our destiny is somehow irrevocably tied together with that of India. The Congress victory in the whole of India and in TAMIL NADU especially, just goes to show the ‘eye-wash’ that is party politics. In Tamil Nadu the parties that espoused the so called ‘Sri Lankan Tamil cause’ were swept aside by Indian Tamil voters. They voted for the Congress knowing very well that it has no sympathy for the LTTE the murderers of Rajiv Gandhi. These ordinary voters, especially those of Tamil Nadu overtly accepted the fact that the internal matters of Sri Lanka are for Sri Lanka to solve. They have accepted the sovereignty and integrity of Sri Lanka, which the white so called ‘democratic hypocrisies’ could not see in their power hunger and greed for filthy lucre.

The arrival of our President into a reunified country is also symbolic. No one with even an iota of knowledge of our history will forget the arrival of MAHINDA the arahat on our soil. He too came through the air and from abroad. He came with the message of liberation, liberation from suffering. Independence is primarily freedom from suffering. It is freedom from chains, from bondage. The 4th of February event did nothing of that sort. From a colonial dominated country we made a transit to a neo-colonial dominated nation seeing nothing else but carrots and sticks held by white fingers, dangling before us, exactly as at this present moment. Just a few days ago Gordon Brown was menacingly pointing his finger at our President. My feelings of decency prevent me from telling the ‘White-Brown’ bluntly where to stick his finger. Moreover he has a multiple choice for inserting his digital suppository; himself, Hilary Clinton, Miliband, Kouchner among others. “Do it on your vile bodies, Brown”. We resisted them all and we conquered. Rudyard Kipling perhaps thought of Sri Lanka when he penned the ringing lines;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools;

Yes, we did just that and so witnessed the dawn of our real independence. We won it with our blood, our own our very own, the blood of the flower of our youth, the blood of our future. The blood that was shed, was not that of those nurtured in the colonial culture, but of those soaked in the “wewa (lake),gama (village),daboba (temple), civilization. No one will ever contest that.

Let us relegate the so called political party ushered independence dates, such as that of 1948, or that of 1956 or any other to their due places within their due perspectives. That was the paper independence wrought by cardboard giants for the vain glory of family power blocks, as a heritage for their scions. The independence of the 17th May 2009 is the reality we have dreamt about, the reality that has come about. We did it against all odds of crooked men and women hiding behind State power and State sponsored organizations and individuals working according to their egoistic agendas. We fought the terrorists of our own soil, and the State terrorists, the white ones of the USA and the European Union, headed by the detestable erstwhile colonial pirate and swindler.

And in this hour of our glory, our reunification written in the red letters of the blood of our youth, let us be grateful to those who stood by us to the last: India, China, Japan, Russia, Iran, Lybia, Turkey, many Muslim nations and the rest. Let us espouse their causes against these white hypocrites. Let us vote with them and for them at all international forums, without fear as they did for us. The day of victory has dawned; the day of truth has risen. The masks have been rent aside, the true faces exposed. We have won, the truth has won, and we are ONE.

President Mahinda Rajapakse kneels on disembarking from his aircraft at the Colombo International airport on May 17, 2009 and walks into a hero's welcome on his return from Jordan. The president declared that the island's separatist Tamil Tiger rebels have been "defeated militarily" after decades of bitter ethnic bloodshed. AFP

Sri Lankan Government

Troops have rescued all remaining civilians held hostage by LTTE terrorists; revealed military spokesperson Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara a few minutes ago today (May 17). He said that troops have rescued over 50,000 civilians during last 72 hours.

According to the battlefield sources, Army 53, 58 and 59 Division soldiers have entered into the area where LTTE leaders have been cowering among the civilians during last couple of weeks. Soldiers are now looking for sick and disabled people that may be left in the area as almost all the others held at hostage by the terrorists have been rescued.

Meanwhile, LTTE made an abortive attempt to breach the Army defence line on the Western bank of the Nanthikadal lagoon during the wee hours today (May 17). The LTTE cadres launched a surface attack across the Nanthikadal lagoon using several boats between 1.30 AM to 3.30 AM. According to the latest information, troops have been able to crush the LTTE attack causing heavy damages to the terrorists.

Troops have so far collected over 70 bodies of LTTE cadres.

The Sri Lankan military says the remaining Tamil Tiger fighters are surrounded [AFP] Sri Lanka's president has declared that the island's Tamil Tiger fighters have been "defeated," after the military said it had captured the area of coastline held by the separatists. Speaking to a G11 group of developing nations at a summit in Jordan on Saturday, Mahinda Rajapakse said he would return home as "a leader of a nation that crushed terrorism". "I am proud to announce ... that my government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has, in an unprecedented humanitarian operation, finally defeated the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] militarily," he said. Earlier, the military had said that the group's remaining fighters were surrounded with no chance of escape. Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, the defence ministry spokesman, told Al Jazeera: "After this linking up of two [army] divisions ... we have completely denied the LTTE's Sea Tigers access to the sea. "The LTTE have no other choice but to surrender or commit suicide. "They are slowly giving up. They are blowing up whatever arms and ammunition they have." Government forces have been hunting for Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE chief, and his deputies for months, but it is unclear if they are still in the coastal strip or have already fled overseas. Sporadic fighting Defence officials told news agencies that sporadic fighting was continuing in a number of pockets across a small strip of land in the northeast of the island. There was no immediate comment on the situation from the LTTE, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. Reports are impossible to independently verify as the government has barred most journalists and aid workers from the conflict zone. Focus: Sri Lanka Q&A: Sri Lanka's civil war The history of the Tamil Tigers Timeline: Conflict in Sri Lanka Jan Jananayagam from a group called Tamils Against Genocide, who has spoken to the LTTE, told Al Jazeera: "The Tamil Tigers have called for international intervention. "They have said they are willing to co-operate with the UN and America. They do so because the people are suffering in the most enormous way," she said. Palitha Kohona, secretary of the Sri Lankan ministry of foreign affairs, told Al Jazeera that the Tamil Tigers had been "defeated comprehensively", but admitted that achieving peace would take longer. "You don't have peace the day after winning the war," he said. "It takes time ... patience ... effort. The Sri Lankan government and people who have endured the nightmare of the LTTE's terrorism have all of those in plenty. I am very confident we will win the peace." The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for an independent homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of the Indian Ocean island for more than 25 years. Civilian situation About 200,000 civilians have escaped the war zone in recent months and are being held in overwhelmed displacement camps. Kohona said the Sri Lankan government has rescued civilians who were being held hostage by the LTTE. "We are looking after their health, food and shelter needs. That is the immediate challenge ... until we can send them back to their own homes. "There is an immediate need to remove huge quantities of landmines ... to restore homes, roads, railway lines, electricity, and water connections. The government is committed to doing this," he said. However, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that there still remains the possibility of "an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe" for the hundreds of wounded. "No humanitarian organisation can help them in the current circumstances. People are left to their own devices," Pierre Krahenbuhl, the ICRC's director of operations, said. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has sent his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, to Sri Lanka for a second time to try to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion. Nambiar is expected to meet senior government officials after he arrives on Saturday, and push for ways "to secure the safety of the 50,000 to 100,000 civilians remaining inside the combat zone", Gordon Weiss, a UN spokesman, said. Up to 7,000 civilians were killed and 16,700 wounded in the fighting from January 20 until May 7, according to a UN document given to The Associated Press by a senior diplomat. Since then, doctors in the war zone say more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in a week of heavy shelling that rights groups and foreign governments have blamed on Sri Lankan forces.