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| Sunday, 5 May 2002 |
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Appeal to end harassment of North-East civilians The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) has appealed to the international community and the local civil society organisations to put an end to the incidence of extortion and abduction in the North-East, despite the encouraging developments taking place with regard to the peace process. The UTHR (Jaffna) citing a recent incident of abduction and extortion in the East has released a statement urging to protect the innocent civilians from any further harassment. The statement is as follows: "On April 15, Mr. K. V. Sithamparapillai, an 82 year old person from Thamaraikerny, Batticaloa was abducted and handed over to the LTTE in Paddiruppu. The LTTE threatened him and demanded a payment of 2.5 million rupees. After promising to pay the entire sum, he was released with instructions to bring the money. His nephew had to stand for surety to secure his release. Although he was at first reluctant to approach the Local Monitoring Committee (LMC) to complain owing to both fear and pressure, he finally met some of its members. "One of the LTTE nominees in the committee was asked to meet the LTTE to verify the veracity of the incident. On his return the member confirmed that Mr. Sithamaparapillai was indeed taken in by the LTTE, who were insisting that the ransom of Rs. 2,500,000/- must be paid in full for his release. "The LMC was powerless to deal with the problem. On the 26th of April, Mr. Sithamaparapillai went to pay Rs 300,000 with an intent to asking for more time to obtain the rest of the money. However, he was again detained by the LTTE and threatened for reporting the incident of extortion to the monitoring committee. "It is a crying shame that civilians, particularly the old and the feeble, should be subject to such predatory practices. In this case, an 82-year-old person's life savings is in the process of being expropriated extra-judicially under the very eyes of the international community. " This troubling experience points to some of the flaws in the ceasefire agreement. We wish to submit the following observations: (i) It seems that the MoU can be violated with impunity and the monitoring committee is powerless in defending the human rights, even when a violation clearly contravenes a provision of the agreement. (ii) The LTTE continues to demand ransom even after Amnesty International released a statement regarding this specific case. This indicates that moral pressure alone is inadequate mechanism to curtail terrorizing of the civilian population. (iii) Given the weight of the evidence, it is no longer adequate for the LMC to wait for violations to be reported. We urge that the Norwegian monitoring team proactively investigate, particularly, the systematic violations. It is apparent that passive monitoring function by itself is inadequate to protect the civilians in the East and preventive measures must be implemented to protect the civilians from systematic violations. (iv) The peace process, while providing a welcome relief to the war weary country, has also entrenched and legitimized terror politics in parts of the country, i.e., the issue of long-term internal terror and its implications for the society have been glossed over. Hence it continue to diminish whole political and social space in the community. (v) If the monitoring committee and the international community allow this action to stand unchallenged, it will undermine the credibility of all monitoring efforts and the peace process. "We urge all international and national civil society organisations to pool their resources, not only to secure the release of Mr. Sitharamparapillai and other prisoners, but go beyond the MoU and address the human dimension of the growing tragedy." |
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