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New York Times on missing mortars
The mystery of the missing mortars has been played out in
instalments in The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka, in articles written
by Iqbal Athas, a journalist who writes often about the war against
the Tigers in a manner that angers the Government. He has been verbally
and physically attacked by both Government officials and thugs.
Mr. Athas's articles have provided the American and other embassies
with information about the saga, but he has been unable to get to
the bottom of it.
When The Sunday Times began revealing exclusively from July, last year,
the mystery behind the missing mortars from Zimbabwe, Deputy Minister of
Defence, General Anuruddha Rattwatte, denied the reports.
He declared publicly that whatever was ordered by the Government of
Sri Lanka from Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI) had arrived.
Gen. Ratwatte's claim was proved totally wrong. As the WORLD EXCLUSIVE
in The Sunday Times of October 5, 1997, revealed, State owned ZDI from
whom the Government ordered 32,400 rounds of 81 mm mortars did not arrive.
Colonel Tshinga Dube, Chief Executive of ZDI not only declared this to
The Sunday Times but also conceded that the cargo may have fallen into
the hands of the LTTE.
Last month, the TIME magazine carried detailed reportage on the mortar
mystery. On March 7, The New York Times, one of the world's leading newspapers,
had a front page account written by one of its staffers, Raymond Bonner.
Here are excerpts:
These are some of the weapons in the arsenal of the Tamil Tigers, the
guerrilla army waging a bloody war for an independent state on the tiny
island nation of Sri Lanka: surface-to-air missiles from Cambodia, assault
rifles from Afghanistan, mortar shells from the former Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe,
60 tons of explosives from Ukraine.
The Tigers are considered some of the more advanced and ruthless terrorists
in the world. Their suicide bombers, wearing specially sewn body vests,
are among the deadliest. The cadre, including young boys and women, are
so disciplined that if they are captured, they have pledged to kill themselves
by taking cyanide capsules that they wear around their necks.
The Tigers describe themselves as a liberation army, and for 15 years
they have been fighting the majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. The State
Department officially labels the Tigers terrorists, and their ability to
carry out suicide bombings like the one on Thursday that killed 36 people
in Colombo, the capital, reflects their remarkable success at acquiring
explosives and weapons.
A recent visit to Sri Lanka provided graphic insight into the Tigers'
military procurement, and more broadly into the world's light arms trade:
It showed how easy it is to find weapons, pay for them with money moved
through major banks and move them across borders. It also underlined how
ill prepared governments are to deal with the traffic.
Unlike the trade in heavy weapons like tanks, artillery and combat aircraft,
the movement of small arms is neither monitored nor reported by most governments.
Nor in most countries is it a crime to buy weapons to fight a battle
in a foreign land. And yet today's regional wars - from the Balkans to
Central Africa - are waged primarily with small arms: assault rifles, mortars,
grenade launchers and shoulder-fired missiles.
"The Tigers are on the cutting edge of arms trafficking,"
said Rohan Gunaratna, a leading authority on the Tigers who is currently
at the Center for the Study of International Terrorism at St. Andrews University
in Edinburgh. Mr. Gunaratna, who has good access to Sri Lanka's intelligence
services, said the Tamil Tigers have bought arms from dealers in Hong Kong,
Singapore, Lebanon and Cyprus; from corrupt military officers in Thailand
and Burma, and directly from governments, including those of Ukraine, Bulgaria
and North Korea.
These are the same venues where other insurgencies and terrorist groups
shop. Favourite arms bazaars are the states of the former Soviet bloc,
like Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Kazakhstan, countries that are long
on weapons and poorly paid officials, and short on cash and law enforcement.
War zones gone quiet, like the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Afghanistan
and Mozambique, are other places where arms traders look for wares.
Most of these countries do not have the intelligence expertise, training
or resources to monitor the illicit trafficking, nor does Sri Lanka. "We
are dependent on others," said Kalynanda Godage, a retired Sri Lankan
ambassador.
The head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is Vellupillai Prabhakaran,
43 years old, a fisherman's son who has become one of the most effective
guerrilla leaders of his time. The chief arms trader is Kumaran Padmanathan,
a 43-year-old university graduate.
'That's the man they should start the manhunt for," said Mr. Godage.
"He's the man who has made it possible for Prabhakaran to pursue this
war."
With several forged passports and aliases, Mr. Padmanathan travels widely
but his main bases have been Singapore, Yangon and Bangkok, and more recently
Johannesburg, according to Sri Lankan intelligence officials and diplomats
from countries where he has surfaced.
'He can pass off as any middle-class Tamil," said a Tamil militant
who knows Mr. Padmanathan from university days. A picture taken a couple
of years ago shows Mr. Padmanathan, who is about 5 feet 7 inches tall,
with black curly hair, a thick mustache and glasses.
Mr. Padmanathan has recently had bank accounts in London, Singapore
and Frankfurt, according to Sri Lanka and Western intelligence officials.
Accounts belonging to other Tiger cadres have been found in Denmark, Sweden,
Canada and Australia, they said.
And the accounts are bulging. By some estimates the Tigers collect $1
million a month, mostly from the Tamil diaspora in Canada, Britain,Switzerland
and Australia. (Having been designated a terrorist organization, the Tamil
Tigers are not allowed to raise money openly in the United States.)
Flush with funds, the Tigers have picked up weapons anywhere and everywhere.
Assault rifles, grenade launchers, antitank weapons and Russian-made surface-to-air
missiles have, for example, been purchased in Cambodia. One batch of missiles
was bought from corrupt Cambodian generals, another from the outlawed Khmer
Rouge, Sri Lankan officials said.
One of the Tigers' most recent deals reflects the mysterious nature
of the arms trade. It began when the Sri Lankan Government agreed to buy
70,000 mortar shells from Zimbabwe Defence Industries. To fill the order,
the company turned to an Israeli arms company, L.B.G. Military Supplies.
But the 81-millimeter mortars never reached Sri Lanka, or at least not
the Government.
The ship carrying them disappeared last summer, apparently highjacked
by the Tigers - or so it was first believed. Indeed, not long after the
ship was reported missing, the United States Embassy in Colombo received
a fax claiming the Tigers had seized it on the high seas.
But the fax did not have the tell-tale signs of the Tamil Tigers communiques,
which whirl over telephone lines from their offices around the world. The
Americans concluded it had not come from the Tigers, but they do not know
who did send it.
The mystery of the missing mortars has been played out in instalments
in The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka, in articles written by Iqbal Athas, a
journalist who writes often about the war against the Tigers in a manner
that angers the Government. He has been verbally and physically attacked
by both Government officials and thugs.
Mr. Athas's articles have provided the American and other embassies
with information about the saga, but he has been unable to get to the bottom
of it.
The full truth will be known only if the head of L.B.G. Military Supplies,
Ben Tsouk, is ever brought to trial, said the chief executive for Zimbabwe
Defence Industries, Colonel T.J. Dube. "He is the only one who knows
anything about everything," Mr. Dube said in an interview.
Mr. Tsouk did not respond to several telephone calls to his office in
Israel seeking comment. He has told Mr. Athas that he had no connection
with the sale of the mortar shells.
It was Mr. Tsouk, however, who loaded the mortars on the ship. "I
have checked personally part of the containers," Mr. Tsouk said in
a fax to Zimbabwe Defence Industries.
But they were not loaded in the Mozambique port of Beira, as has been
widely reported in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. They were loaded in Rijeka,Croatia,
Mr. Tsouk said in his fax. The Tigers did not have to hijack the ship;
they were loaded on to a ship the Tigers own, the Limassol, according to
Mr. Athas, an assertion confirmed by Colonel Dube.
Disappearance Commissions
point finger at UNP Politicos and Security Officers
That time of terror
By Imran Vittachi
Dozens of UNP parliamentarians, provincial politicians, and civic leaders
were responsible — together with hundreds of Army and Police officers —
for the presumed murders of nearly 1400 people, when they unleashed state
terror on Sri Lanka's heartland in the late-1980s, a Presidential Commission
of Inquiry has revealed.
At least 27 UNP MPs, 14 Provincial Council Members, 12 Grama Sevas,
and a Buddhist priest — along with 20 Police superintendents, 51 Police
officers-in-charge, 12 Army captains and four majors — have been implicated
in 1396 cases inquired into by the Commission that probed Involuntary Removals
or Disappearances of Persons in the Central, North Western, North Central,
and Uva provinces.
According to an annexed schedule to the Commission's final report —
a copy of which was obtained by The Sunday Times — an MP and a PCM were
each responsible for 14 disappearances in the Central province, while two
Police OICs — one who was posted in Central and another in the North West
province — were connected to 54 disappearances between them.
"In several of the complaints inquired into, the names of Members
of Parliament, Provincial Council and Pradesiya Sabha members have transpired
as those responsible for some of the disappearances," Commission Chairman
Thirunavukkarasu Suntheralingam said in his final report on July 7, 1997.
"In a few cases, there is evidence that they physically participated
in such activities, while in others the disappearance followed threats
by such persons."
At around the time these death squads terrorised Central Sri Lanka,
many hundreds in the North and East of the country — especially Tamils
— suffered a similar fate at the hands of members of the Armed Forces who
rampaged, according to another Presidential Commission of Inquiry's conclusions.
Two Army brigadiers, a colonel, three captains, plus several Army and
Police OICs, have been named in cases of arrests that led to the reported
disappearance of some 2500 people in Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara, and
Jaffna districts in the late-80s and early 1990s, the Commission of Inquiry
into the Involuntary Removal or Disappearance of Persons in the Northern
and Eastern Provinces has found.
"According to the evidence recorded, ninety percent of the removals
were ascribed to the security forces - Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Police,"
the Commission said in its final report.
Some of these alleged perpetrators have since died, while many remain
in power or — where members of the security services are concerned — have
been promoted to other ranks or transferred to other posts around the country,
an investigation by The Sunday Times revealed.
The Sunday Times also learnt that the two commissions of inquiry, under
Presidential Secretariat orders, were told to hastily wrap up their investigations
in 1997, despite not having finished inquiries in their mandated areas.
According to the heads of these commissions, at least 5000 reported
complaints of alleged removals and disappearances have yet to be looked
into. The reportedly high costs of running three separate Presidential
Commissions of Inquiry since November 1994, and pressure applied on President
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga by opposition MPs to show them results,
led her to dissolve the commissions, commission heads said.
They were told that the Presidential Secretariat would set up a single
commission to inquire nationwide into the balance of alleged removals and
disappearances. As a result, approximately 1000 cases in the North and
East, and at least 4000 case in the various provinces of the Centre, have
yet to be inquired into, commission heads said.
But, according to the former High Court judge who headed the Northern
and Eastern province commission, it remains to be seen whether the President
and her aides will deliver on that promise, and therefore abide by their
1994 electoral promise to investigate such cases and punish alleged perpetrators.
"They said that they would constitute a unified commission for
all three areas - one for the country so to say - and get the thing going
and completed," Krishnapillai Palakidner told The Sunday Times. "But
they haven't moved on the matter yet."
He later added: "They could have allowed us to proceed and finish."
Presidential Secretary K. Balapatabendi could not be immediately reached
to confirm this report.
The findings of both Presidential Commissions — as well as those of
the Commission of Inquiry into the Involuntary Removal and Disappearance
of Persons in the Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa provinces — were published
by the Government last September, but were only released to the general
public in late February.
The Sunday Times this week examines what the Central and Northern and
Eastern commissions had to say about alleged excesses carried out directly
and by-proxy by the State and its enforcers, when the late President Ranasinghe
Premadasa of the UNP ruled Sri Lanka with an iron fist.
Formation of the Commissions and their Mandates
The commission reports present extensive evidence to show that Sri Lankan
leaders and the security services murderously abused their powers from
1988 through 1990.
Conservative legal estimates have put the numbers of people liquidated,
when the second JVP insurrection had reached fever pitch, at around 50,000.
Had it gone unchecked, such carte blanche exploitation of Sri Lanka's
draconian national security laws — namely the Emergency Regulation and
the Prevention of Terrorism Act — could have brought about the further
disintegration of civil society in many parts of the country, the commissions
reported.
However, the evidence they gathered in testimonies from witnesses and
informants at commission sittings throughout their respective areas only
constitutes "credible evidence". In most cases, as the chief
commissioners have noted, this could not be used as irrefutable proof in
a court of law to punish or convict punish politicians and members of the
security services who were the alleged perpetrators.
This was clarified from the outset, said Mr. Suntheralingam, another
ex-High Court judge, when the President picked him — originally along with
M.D. Jesuratnam, who declined the appointment due to ill health, and H.M.S.B.
Madawala who eventually sought a discharge — to comprise the Central provinces
commission. The scope of their mandate was spelt out in a Presidential
Warrant on November 30, 1994. The same mandate was given to the second
commission — comprising Mr. Palakidner, L.W.R. Romulus and Dr. Wedaarachchi
Nawalage Wilson. They had been appointed by the President, it elaborated,
"to inquire into and report on the following matters:
(a) whether any persons have been involuntarily removed or have disappeared
from their places of residence...at any time after January 1, 1988; (b)
the evidence [is] available to establish such alleged removals or disappearances;
(c) the present whereabouts of the persons alleged to have been so removed
or to have disappeared; (d) whether there is any credible material indicative
of the person or persons responsible for the alleged removals or disappearances;
(e) the legal proceedings that can be taken against the persons held to
be so responsible; (f) the measures necessary to prevent the occurrence
of such alleged activities in the future; (g) the relief, if any, that
should be afforded to the parents, spouses and dependants of the persons
alleged to have been so removed or to have so disappeared; and to make
such recommendations with reference to any of the matters that have been
inquired into under the terms of this Warrant."
Article d, according to Mr. Suntheralingam, is the key clause in the
mandate. Although it may not constitute evidence that could stand up to
criminal court scrutiny, evidence gathered under the wide scope of this
article could determine the effectiveness of future police investigations
and deliberations made by the Attorney-General's Office.
Such "credible material" — based largely on eyewitness accounts
or hearsay rather than forensic evidence — may not prove the guilt of the
alleged perpetrators, but it is useful evidence, nonetheless, that could
point the Criminal Investigations Department or the AGO in the right direction
as well as facilitate their work, Mr. Suntheralingam said.
"That term is very helpful to collect information that is reliable,"
he said. "This prevents Police from saying there is no proof or evidence.
If Police want to send it under, they can't because this is recorded evidence."
It was also important that his commission be allowed to proceed with
its work without any interference from the Police, who may have been called
in to assist from the start, Mr. Suntheralingam said.
In his view, the danger existed that Police — with help from friends
in the local media — might intimidate witnesses and informants, and possibly
cover up criminal evidence. After all, most of the complaints brought to
his commission mentioned Police complicity in alleged removals and disappearances.
"You can't get Police to probe complaints which are generally made
against Police," he said. "We found that some of the complainants
were being threatened," he said.
This intimidation died down, he added, after the commission ordered
that court reporters be barred from the hearings along with members of
the general public.
Mr. Palakidner was blunter in touching on the point about interference
from members of the security services. From the beginning, he said, he
had been skeptical. He had had "no illusions" that the perpetrators
of alleged atrocities in the North and East would ever stand trial and
be brought to justice. Having felt certain that his commission would face
obstructionism from the Army in particular, he resolved to be realistic
and work towards recommending that some kind of compensation be secured
for the families of the victims:
"We were instructed to give priority about recommending compensation
for people who have been deprived of their breadwinners.... We had it foremost
in our minds, because we had no illusions about these fellows bringing
the culprits to book. And, of course, they were being protected by the
Army.... We had no illusions that the Army would block [it]."
As it turned out, according to his commission's final report, this is
exactly what happened. Mr. Palakidner commission would, as he put it, later
face a "blank wall" when dealing with Army brass on these matters.
In one instant, according to Mr. Palakidner, Army commanders went so
far as to claim that evidence concerning one set of arrests and disappearances
were destroyed, when Brigadier Lucky Wijeratne drove over the land-mine
that killed him.
"The army authorities do not expect the Commission to believe that
all the documentation regarding the arrests were taken by Brigadier Wijeratne
in his jeep when he drove over the land mine," the commission noted
with macabre sarcasm, in a letter sent to Brigadier Tennekone who was then
stationed at Army Headquarters in Trincomalee, but who has since been posted
to Mannar.
What They Found
The Commission inquiring into forced removals and disappearances in
the Central provinces has concluded that UNP politicians — directly or
indirectly — conspired with police and army personnel who formed death
squads.
In the midst of the 1989 General Election, they abducted, tortured,
and eliminated hundreds of political rivals, specifically SLFP activists
and their supporters, by using the pretext of wiping out suspected JVP
infiltrators and subversives, the commission said. It also alleged that
UNP insiders provided the death squads with lists of persons to be targeted
and terminated. The commission elaborated:
"In conclusion, it would appear that many persons lost their lives
after January, 1988 on account of their political convictions. An analysis
of the disappearances during this period would show that most of [them]
occurred in 1989. It should be remembered that Hon. R. Premadasa became
President in the latter half of December 1989. A General Election was held
in February 1989. By that time the Organisers, Activists, and Supporters
of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party could have been identified by the then Government
in power...
"It would appear that such persons were branded as JVPers and their
names given to the Police and Armed Forces for elimination. At the beginning,
the response from the Police and the Army as regards elimination appeared
to be slow, but later the Police and Army seemed to have been prodded into
action by threats, purportedly by the JVPers; one is not certain whether
this was a ploy, adopted by the then Government, to make the Police and
Armed Forces go all out to wipe out the [SLFP] supporters under the guise
of crushing the JVPers."
According to the commission's final report, the bulk of reported disappearances
— 43 percent — occurred in the Central Province, with North Western, North
Central, and Uva Provinces comprising a combined balance of 57 percent
(see graphic).
As a result of this breakdown of social order, guardians of civil society
became oppressors, and institutions once regarded as safe places, such
as the local college, YMCA, or garage, became torture and execution chambers,
the commission added in its findings.
The situation in the North and East was different, according to the
Presidential Commission inquiring into involuntary removals and disappearances
there, only in that the victims were not necessarily political opponents
of the UNP. They were mostly Tamils in their prime presumably wiped out
by members of the security forces who rampaged in 1990, in retaliation
for an LTTE massacre of around 100 policemen in the East, and after the
Tigers declared Eelam War II on Colombo.
"The fact is that the Army arrested people in large numbers. The
Army can only answer what happened to the corpus of those arrested. It
was no use denying that they have nothing to do with it," that Commission
reported in its conclusions.
Some of these detentions and arrests occurred near refugee camps, according
to the commission. Others took place near army installations or camps,
it added, despite an official denial to the commission from the Ministry
of Defence, in a letter dated April 20, 1995, claiming that "there
are no undisclosed detention camps maintained by the Army in existence."
The commission, in its final report, concentrated in great detail, nevertheless,
on disappearances that took place in the Eastern provincial districts of
Batticaloa and Trincomalee.
The commission found, for instance, that in Batticaloa District alone
64 percent of arrests leading to involuntary removals from 1988 to 1996,
was the work of the Army, while the LTTE was only responsible for two percent
of these. The commission also found that Tamils comprised approximately
500 out of 600 cases of disappearances, reported from in Trincomalee District
from 1998 to 1995-96, and 1100 out of 1200 reported in Batticaloa.
In its findings, the commission highlighted evidence gathered about
mass arrests that occurred at the Base Hospital and McHeyzer Stadium, Trincomalee,
in June and July 1990, when the Army launched cordon-and-search missions
around the port-city.
In those mass arrests, a total of 82 people were arrested. Many of them
were never seen again. But one of the few, who survived the McHeyzer Stadium
episode after being let go, gave an eyewitness account to the commission,
which it said could serve as "most damaging" evidence brought
so far against the notorious Plantain Point Army Camp in Trinco.
The witness — whose name has been withheld — after having spent most
of July 11, 1990 being detained, and being beaten with a sand-filled lead
pipe and tortured with a knife, described in vivid detail how he witnessed
the execution of other detainees by soldiers based at the camp:
"At the end of (a 45-minute bus journey) four people had died inside
the bus. One of them was Saravanabhavan, known to me. The dead bodies were
removed. At that time our blindfold was removed. After another 10 or 15
minutes journey, we were asked to get down. We were taken into a house
and asked to sit inside the house. They took an account of 28 people.
"At this stage my name was called out along with three others and
we were taken to a separate place. Then I heard the sound of automatic
gun fire. I realised that someone was being shot...."
Commission Recommendations
Reflecting on his commission's findings, Mr. Palakidner, in an interview
with The Sunday Times, said it was crucial that the Government act, especially
on the commissions recommendations that dependants of victims of those
who went missing — and were presumed dead after a year — be paid salaries,
or be given social security coverage, and other benefits to soften the
pain.
While Mr. Palakidner expressed pessimism that the perpetrators would
actually be punished, the head of the commission of inquiry into disappearances
in the Centre of the country expressed guarded optimism that the Government
wouldn't necessarily be swept under the carpet, provided it followed certain
recommendations.
It is important that, once the Presidential Secretariat passes the various
commission reports to the C.I.D., a team of neutral and competent investigators
be assigned to follow-up on these reports, Mr. Suntheralingam said. In
order to boost morale, it is essential that they also be properly lodged,
fed, and paid while doing their job, he added.
In the final analysis, it remains to be seen just how serious President
Kumaratunga and her advisers are about finally tackling the issue of disappearances.
"I think the President is serious," Mr. Suntheralingam said.
"As to whether the persons, who are advising her, let her know as
to what is really happening, I have my doubts."
So will the President go beyond just paying lip service this issue?
Or were the commissioners who deliberated for approximately 30 months on
this question — at considerable taxpayers' expense — merely wasting their
time, and only further dampening the hopes of the hundreds of families
who so tragically lost their loved ones?
As the President and her administration ponder the question, time is
running out since most of these presumed murders took place close to a
decade ago. The longer it takes for this Government to move on this, the
more likely it w
ill be that the killers might get away and, in some cases, continue
to hold their grip on power.
Next: The findings of the Commission of Inquiry into the involuntary
removal of persons in the South, West, Sabaragamuwa and the role of the
PA and the JVP in it.
Editorial/Opinion Contents
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