President clearly states

Ethnic cleansing is false propaganda at ILO Conference

President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his speech delivered at the 96th International Labour Conference in Geneva on Friday made the Government's stand on terrorism clear to the international community while giving an elaborated explanation to the criticism levelled against the Government on ethnic cleansing.

"Today, there is a misunderstanding and false propaganda that we are involved in ethnic cleansing. This is absolutely false", President Rajapaksa said in his speech delivered to the International Labour conference while recalling the way LTTE resorted to heavy ethnic cleansing from the early nineteen eighties evicting Muslims and the Sinhalese from the North, President Rajapaksa also made use of the forum made available to him by the International Labour Organisation to explain the recent incident involving the eviction of Tamils living in lodging houses in Colombo.

Eviction of Tamils

"Recently, there was much concern when we cleared some lodging houses in Colombo. On average 20,000 persons occupy these lodges and only 302 persons were subjected to this evacuation. In fact many left voluntarily.

Please do not forget that over sixty per cent living in Colombo are Tamils and Muslims", the President said.

He also recalled that almost all suicide bombers who were involved in assassination of politicians and Security Forces personnel have operated from these lodging houses.

"Therefore, we have had to keep an extra vigil over them. As our government declared, if any inconvenience was caused to innocent persons, we regret it very much", the President told the International Labour Conference.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's explanation to the international community on his Government stand on terrorism at the Geneva Forum came at a time Colombo was undergoing a high risk security situation.

The first alarm bell on the high risk security situation in Colombo rang when two claymore mines exploded in Colombo and Ratmalana.

The two claymore mine explosions were clear indication that Tigers have brought explosives to Colombo and many Tiger cadres have infiltrated into various parts of Colombo and suburbs with the aim of the creating mayhem in Colombo . The Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is well aware that the only way they have to come out of the current crisis they have confronted in the face of Security Forces operations in the North East is through the creation of mayhem in Colombo .

The explosive laden lorry with 1025 Kg of C4 explosives detected by the Police at Kotawehera Police Division in Nikaweratiya was only a part of their plan to create mayhem in Colombo.

According to Security Forces and Police the quantity of explosives found from the lorry detected at Kotawehera was the largest recovery of explosives ever to be detected in Sri Lanka during the conflict.

The explosive experts indicated the way the explosives were packed in the lorry can do the maximum collateral damage if it exploded in an open space and the ball bearings contained in 37 charges in various sizes were placed with the intention to penetrate even a bullet proofed vehicle.

The Security Forces believe the explosive laden lorry detected at Kotawehera Police check point was only one instrument to be used in the Guerrilla type raid to be done in Colombo city targeting an economic nerve centre as Police sleuths uncovered the massive plan of the Tigers to create mayhem in Colombo.

Create mayhem

It was a blood bath Tigers were planning to have in Colombo by launching simultaneous sea-born a attack coupled with air raid and using suicide cadres.

The intention was to inflict a massive blow to the economy of the country and to destabilize the military balance. According to this revelation the attack has been planned to be accomplished on a date in the middle of this year on the discharge of orders from a person called Arivumudan in Mullaitivu.

Passenger ship MV Green Ocean

According to this revelation Arivumudan, had conducted a workshop to give clear instructions to the cadres involved in the operation.

The sea borne attack to destroy the Dvora Fast Attack Crafts engaged 24 hour surveillances in the sea off Colombo has been entrusted to Black Tigers Nandan and Deeman once Dvora Attack crafts come under Sea Tiger attack using the few boats from Wellawatta, Dehiwala and Mount Lavinia area.

Once this attack is going on Kathiravan and Sheelan has been instructed to arrive in the location in ambulances while five other groups have been instructed to take different targets in the location.

To accomplish this operation Achchunath and Elivannan in Vavuniya have been instructed to give orders to Kathirawan and Sheelan.

According to the revelation of the Tigers they have planned this attack according to the data they had collected in 2005 and 2006. The map of the location has been given to Kathirawan and Sheelan by Achchunath in accordance with the internationally accepted codes.

Five member teams arrived in Colombo from different location in the North and East has been instructed to take different targets within the location and has been entrusted to complete their missions within three to five minutes.

Their prime aim is to create panic situation targeting oil storage facilities.

According to the Tiger plan, as stipulated during the workshop conducted by Arivumudan as sea borne attack on Naval craft in Colombo is going on, few explosive laden vehicles will be exploded in different places to create more panic.

To divert the attention of the Security Forces the Tiger also had planned to launch a major artillery assault on a Army camp in the North as the operation was going on in Colombo.

Few Tiger cadres will be deployed at the Fish Market in Colombo to shoot at the aircraft arriving at the scene to thwart the attack.

Tiger cadres Sasandan Kalaiarasan has been given the task to video the battle ground. The Tiger plans to create mayhem in Colombo is now being studied by intelligence cadres Sangiliyan and Kapilan.

The Tiger plan also envisages the ways of Tiger cadres arriving in Colombo to accomplish their plan. The five Tiger cadres arriving in Colombo from Wanni has been given instruction to arrive in Vavuniya through Vavuniya Puwarasakulam road and later to arrive in Colombo by train, bus and a lorry. They have been instructed to stay at Wellawatta and Mattakkuliya areas.

The second group has been instructed to arrive from Vedithaltivu to Arippu in Mannar and later arrive in Puttalam by bus. They have been instructed to stay in Alwis Place in Wattala and in Grandpass.

The third group comprising of five cadres from Trincomalee have been instructed to arrive in Colombo by train on two different nights.

Fourth group from Mannar has been instructed to arrive in Colombo disguised as fishermen by boats and to stay in Mount Lavinia . The fifth group from Wanni has been asked to arrive in Batticaloa via jungle routes and to arrive in Colombo by buses.

These groups have been given clear instruction to carry enough arms and ammunitions to carry out their target within the given time frame and to accomplish their target according to the orders of the group leader or on their own under the circumstances in which the leader gets killed during this operation.

The Tiger Air Wing has also been instructed to have an air raid on Kelanitissa Power House and Kolonnawa Oil storage facility to further divert the attention of the Security Forces. However, that plan will depend on the weather conditions of the day fixed for the operation.

The Tiger outfit has been carefully selected the cadres who had over six years experience in sea and ground battles for this operation and they are now being trained under the leadership of Kapilan.

Sea and ground battles

The Tiger leadership has out rightly rejected the proposal to allow the family members of all Tiger cadres involved in this operation to stay with them in Wanni for one single day but later allowed the Tiger cadres in Wanni to meet their family members. The others living outside Wanni have been deprived of the chance of meeting their family members.

The cadres who are not willing to participate at this operation has been asked to give their consent to participate at this operation prior to the completion of the workshop and those who are not willing to participate in this operation have been asked for valid reason for their decisions.

Fifty three Tiger cadres including that of the Supply section had participated at this workshop.

After the conduct of this workshop the Tiger outfit has completed 80 per cent of the task and are now awaiting to deploy 32 highly trained cadres to carry out their operation The supply of weapons and ammunitions will be supplied to a cadre called Kalaiwanan in a Colombo suburban area, three hours prior to the commencement of the operation.

However, the Tiger outfit is contemplating whether one member deployed on espionage mission had gone missing or had escaped to India after leaking their plan to Security Forces.

They are waiting till they receive confirmed reports about the whereabouts of the missing cadres and all the cadres have been informed to participate at another workshop on a date to be informed to them after the Tiger leadership received the report.

The Tiger outfit has also instructed the cadres involved in this operation to refrain from using Dialog mobile connections. They have been issued with Tigo cell cards for the cadres involved in the operation while providing satellite phone connections for the Tiger leaders involved in the operation.

The revelation of the highly sophisticated Tiger plan to launch a major attack on a economic nerve centre in Colombo has put the Colombo security situation at a high risk situation.

Therefore, the Security Forces and the Police will have to be more vigilant on the situation in Colombo to avert such mayhem in Colombo without allowing the achievement they have made during the past one year to go down the drain. The security in Colombo too is important, at the outset Security Forces are engaged in their final battle to capture the Thoppigala jungles these days.

According to Security Forces they have almost completed more than 75 percent of their task of neutralising Tiger bastions in the Thoppigala jungles reducing the number of cadres to at least 250 by Friday morning.

The Security Forces expedited the process of capturing the Thoppigala Tiger bases as the third phase of the resettlement of the displaced civilians from Vavunathivu began in the middle of this week, to ensure the safety of the people returning to their villages.

All though almost all the supply routes leading to Thoppigala jungles have been cut off by the Security Forces for the past few months, the Tiger outfit has been able to infiltrate arms and ammunition to Thoppigala jungles the within past few weeks.

Security Forces believe that they have infiltrated these arms and ammunitions via sea routes mingling with the fishing boats.

Significant factor

But the most is that the Tiger cadres entrapped in the jungles have been forced to have only one meal per day as they are undergoing severe food shortage since they had not received food stocks for the past few months.

The Tiger cadres have to depend on their dry rations due to this situation. As food shortage has severely affected the Tiger outfit, many young cadres tend to leave the organization and to surrender to the Security Forces after arriving in Government Controlled areas.

So far, with the commencement of the operation to capture Thoppigala and the areas in the West and South of Batticaloa, the Security Forces have been able to kill nearly 300 cadres.

They have already handed over bodies of over 50 Tiger cadres through the ICRC and the number has been confirmed through technical sources.

The capture of four satellite Tiger bases last week had ensued differences between Jeyam and Ramanan who are leading the Tiger cadres entrapped in the Thoppigala jungles.

The basis for their differences is due to Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's orders to hold onto the area in the face of the Security Forces advancing towards their bases.

Despite the willingness of the Batticaloa cadres to flee the area in the face of the Security Forces operation, the Wanni cadres who giving leadership to the Batticaloa cadres are pressurising them to stick to their positions.

However, the Tiger outfit won't be able to stop the forward march of the Security Forces who are now engaged in a determined effort to liberate the entire eastern province from the clutches of the LTTE.