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The pet market has become a booming business in Sri Lanka with caged birds, rabbits and other animals being sold for big money on street sides.
Cramped and confined to small spaces these animals undergo immense hardship before they exchange hands for as much as thousands of rupees.
The prohibition on the sale of certain species appears to be openly flouted by the traders in their enthusiasm to rake in profits.
The Wild Life Department armed with flying squads appeared to be doing nothing about it, an animal rights activist said.
When contacted a Wild Life Department official said the flying squad had been out of Colombo.
By Susantha Goonatilake
The "MoU" was virtually the same as the
one that was leaked to the media — the
one that the Norwegian embassy disowned. In the office room where LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran signed the ceasefire agreement, a large Sri Lankan map on the wall showed the extent to which his Tamil Eelam extended. It not only covered the north and east but also reached upto Hambantota on the one end and Puttalam on the other.
It is alleged that Prabhakaran signed the agreement on Wednesday, even before the Cabinet knew its full contents.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga was presented a fait accompli by the UNP and Norway. It was thus not a Sri Lanka State-LTTE agreement but an ali-koti-Norway agreement. The President as Head of State and Commander-in-chief of armed forces did not know what the Norwegian ambassador, Prabhakaran — the state's enemy number one — and presumably all the Western diplomats and India knew. A foreign envoy was given precedence over the very Head of State, to whom he had given credentials. She was like a puppet pulled by Norwegian strings. One could say, it serves her right. When she was tinkering with her own package, her key minister at the time, G.L. Peiris, showed it to Western diplomats before the Sri Lankan people came to know about it. Our ruling class has elements of servitude not found anywhere else in Asia — an uncontrollable urge to turn us into people of a banana republic. Norway, the new potty colonial power-to-be was to demarcate the military "line of control" between the two sides. Our internal borders, "demarcation lines" are again to be drawn up by foreigners. Violations will go before an international committee. The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), however, will not monitor Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi, exclusive Tiger districts. They thus become a potential defacto governing body of non-LTTE areas. The SLMM will also identify "defence localities in all areas of contention". This will not extend to the location of LTTE bunkers in the Wanni but only to government positions. This "Monitoring Mission" becomes an extended policeman for the Tigers. Hope, the Indians who had dreaded internationalization of South Asia, take note of this.
Arms are not to be moved by "the area controlled by the other party". This will not apply to the Tigers who, being a guerrilla force by definition, moves arms by stealth as they did under their self-declared ceasefire.
Anti LTTE groups will be disarmed. These groups represent tendencies that do not bow to Tiger guns. There is military disarming combined with ideological disarming.
The "combatants" are allowed to "visit family and friends residing in areas under the control of the other party". This will not apply to government forces, as all Sinhalese and Muslims have been ethnically cleansed out of Tiger-controlled areas.
It will also not apply to Tamil groups fighting with the army. They have to change to civilian clothes - permanently or join the army away from the theatre of war. And if they go to meet their family and friends in LTTE held areas, they will be "well looked after", in the Tiger pistol fashion.
A guerrilla force by definition hides among civilians. The difference between a combatant who has temporarily dropped his uniform and a non-combatant vanishes. So allowing the LTTE to visit "family and friends" would bring large scale infiltration.
Unarmed LTTE members are to be permitted to do "political work" for which they shall carry identity papers. At a stroke of a pen the LTTE is de-proscribed. The UNP, PA or the JVP are not allowed to do political work in LTTE areas. A guerrilla force which is supposed to melt into the civilian population need not carry identity papers. What this "political work" of the LTTE means is already well known. Recent LTTE rallies in Mannar and elsewhere propounded the chauvinist platform Thamil engal uyir (Tamil Is Our Life) and wanted the army and Sinhalese to vacate the North and East (Sunday Leader Feb. 10 p2). A racist article in last week's Eelam Nation - using now shunned 19th century categories - speaks of an unbridgeable divide between alleged Aryan Sinhalas and Dravidian Tamils. The Tigers order Catholic clergy not to speak ill of them when US Ambassador Wills visited Batticaloa last week. CWC leader Thondaman was rushed to the East by the government to discuss LTTE forced conscription and extortion. LTTE Political Leader Thamil Selvam rejects the Norwegian propaganda line that Tigers were ready to drop separatism (Daily Mirror). Thamil Selvam calls Sri Lanka rogue state (on BBC). Political "work"!
This "political work" is the freedom to propagate mistruths. The Tigers have got their strength by planting historical myths into unsuspecting children, like the fiction of the traditional homeland which Mr. Wickremesinghe himself has publicly said he does not accept. LTTE cadres will now freely address schools and get child conscripts. It would be like the madrasas in Pakistan which allowed room for the Taliban to grow.
The MoU says that places of worship currently held by the two forces shall be vacated. [They should not have been occupied in the first place]. But hundreds of ancient Buddhist sites in the Wanni would still be debarred to Buddhist pilgrims.
There is a curious clause "the parties shall refrain from engaging in activities or propagating ideas that could offend cultural or religious sensitivities". This raises many questions. Does this mean that I will be barred from pointing out that in Norway, key government positions are reserved only for Lutheran Protestants? Would I be banned from saying that millions, including Sri Lankans - both Sinhalese and Tamils - were killed by the Portuguese and Spanish? Would it mean that lies about Buddhist chauvinists preached by the NGO, Christian and Tiger lobby would end? Would it mean that Buddhist groups which have said that in a multicultural Lanka there should not be exclusive ethnic enclaves like the cleansed mono ethnic Jaffna peninsula are debarred from speaking? Would it mean that the minimum requirements for an ethnic solution which Buddhist monks have suggested will not be allowed to be aired? That the present pressures brought on editors would be legally enforced and that only a sanitized "truth" will be allowed? This is a group which the so-called international community has described as the "deadliest terrorist group in the world". This is a time when this "international community" has attacked lesser groups all over the world.
The Indians armed the Tigers. Then, having realized their folly came to disarm them. Meanwhile, as the Tigers arm materially and ideologically, capital expenditure for the Sri Lanka Army is halved in the new Wickremesinghe budget from Rs. 4.4 billion to Rs. 2.4 billion. If the motto is to "be prepared" we are clearly not. We have somehow managed to extract defeat from the jaws of September 11 opportunity. No wonder Prabhakaran rushed to sign the agreement before Mr. Wickremesinghe could show it to his Cabinet or the President.
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