this email contains:
1). "Sri Lanka Takes Control Of Coastal Line" (Malaysian National News Agency)
2). "'Safety zone' in smoke, close-quarter fighting is on" (Tamilnet.com)
3). "Seylon: Blood & Dishonour", by Mark S Brown (to be published in
forthcoming issue-7 of 'The Land' magazine - Summer 2009).
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1).
Sri Lanka Takes Control Of Coastal Line
May 16, 2009
Malaysian National News Agency
Ref: http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=411453

COLOMBO, May 16 (Bernama) -- Sri Lanka's military said here Saturday the entire
coastal line of the northern island have been captured from Tamil Tiger rebels'
control, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

Defence officials said the military sealed off the entire northeastern
Mullaithivu coast.

The army's 58 and 59 divisions linked up on the Mullaithivu beach front early
Saturday morning, the military said.

Analysts said the government troops have thus taken control of the island's
entire north and east coastal lines for the first time in the three-decade
separatist armed war waged by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
rebels.

This was to be the last phase in the final military victory for the government
troops led by the Commander of the Army, Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka.

Gen Fonseka's troops began its military campaign in mid 2006 by liberating the
entire eastern province.

Their capture of the north began early January this year with the fall of the
rebel administrative capital of Kilinochchi.

Military said the exodus of the remaining civilians trapped in the last rebel
hold began on Thursday.

Some 9,900 people had crossed over to the government areas by Friday evening.

The LTTE fought a bitter war with the army to create a separate Tamil homeland
and the campaign cost more than 70,000 lives since the mid 1980s.
********************************************************

2).
'Safety zone' in smoke, close-quarter fighting is on
[TamilNet, Friday, 15 May 2009, 05:39 GMT]
Ref: http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=29368
The entire safety zone area is in smoke since the early hours of Friday as
shelling by the Sri Lanka Army was destroying all the structures within a narrow
strip of coastal land which is densely populated with tens of thousands of
people. 75% of the population remains under bunkers as close quarter fighting
was heard. Hundreds of civilians are being killed and maimed in the carnage
caused by the SLA, which attempts to enter the remaining part of the so-called
safety zone before the election results are published in India.

People were dying without water and food as gunfire by the SLA was reaching from
all the directions, a rescue worker who remains under the bunkers near the
hospital told TamilNet. Casualties are uncountable.

Nobody is there to take care of the wounded at the hospital as all the civil
activities have come to a standstill.

No civil movement was reported as SLA was using its maximum fire power on
densely populated safety-zone which has been under siege for months.

*********************************************

3).

Seylon: Blood & Dishonour

By Mark S Brown

Sri Lanka, an idyllic island off the southern tip of India and home to 20
million people, is a tropical paradise boasting golden beaches straddled by palm
trees. It is a land of unquestionable beauty, abundant in resources from tea and
rubber, to coconuts and diamonds. However the ordinary people of Sri Lanka live
in dire poverty and the country has been torn apart by civil war. Those
civilians currently trapped inside the `no-fire zone' are being forced to endure
hell on earth.

Whilst a human rights catastrophe has unfolded across the northern region of
Sri-Lanka, military forces of the Sri Lankan government are on the verge of
seizing the last small patch of rebel held territory on 16/05/09.

Since January 2009, the Sri Lankan government advanced and took over large
swathes of Tamil Tiger (LTTE) territory across the north of the country, pushing
Tamils into narrow strip of northern coastline measuring 10 sq km in the
north-east of the island - LTTE's last remaining enclave in Vanni. An
unquestionable brutal military offensive of a captive Tamil civilian population
is already shown to have been a clear violation of various UN conventions on
human rights. More than 300,000 Tamils have been under siege by the Sri Lankan
forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which rarely makes public
comment, called this conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil
rebels, 'nothing short of catastrophic'.

The Sri-Lankan government's version of events have been largely accepted by the
western media, principally that Tamil civilians were being held hostage by the
LTTE in the military standoff. Details within this latest escalation in the
long-running conflict between the Sinhalese government and Tamil liberation
forces bypassed by western media include the use of chemical weapons and aerial
bombing of a captive civilian population including the targeting of hospitals in
the so-called "no-fire zone", the withholding of supplies of food and medical
aid and water supply to a captive population, the dismemberment of young adults
and allegations of rape and torture in 'welfare centre' camps by government
forces. Meanwhile the ICRC ship carrying emergency supply of food provided by
the World Food Organization (WFO) was prevented from delivering its consignments
due to refusal of the Sri Lankan Government to provide security guarantees, even
though LTTE has given all clearance and guarantees . And another ship working on
medical evacuations also prevented from reaching shores with the same reason.

The Sri Lankan state & military mindset is formed by the knowledge that Israeli
attacks against similarly confined civilians go with impunity. It is estimated
around 100,000 people have already died in the conflict, with accusations of
genocide rife. That the UK media is once again acquiescing in their own
censorship is hardly surprising, as in the `war on Gaza,' western media
organizations have been denied access to the Tamil enclave surrounded by
government forces.

Sri Lankan airforce Generals who say they do not target civilians, publicly
state that if they are being hurt, it is not because the SL army have been
raining down artillery shells upon them, but because of Tamil Tigers (LTTE) who
are continuing to resist the forces of law and order.



Background

Sri Lanka's current problems can be traced back to the legacy of British
colonialism, when Great Britain forced independence on Ceylon in 1948 as one
administrative unit, a move originally made in 1833 to rule over three distinct
kingdoms. The island of Sri Lanka (known as Ceylon until the promulgation of the
new Republican Constitution in 1972) is the historical homeland of two ancient
civilisations – the ancient Dravidian (Tamil) population, who greeted the
arrival of the Sinhala people who arrived on the island with their legendary
Prince Vijaya from the `city of Sinhapura in Bengal' in the 6th century BC. When
the Portuguese first landed on the island in the beginning of the 16th century,
and the Dutch after them, both imperial powers governed the Tamil nation as a
separate kingdom, recognising the Tamil homeland and the ethnic identity and
integrity of the Tamil people. The British occupied the island from 1796, and in
1833 merged the Tamil and Sinhala nations into one unit for administrative
convenience.

Between the 1840s and 1850s, a million people were imported – mainly poor,
oppressed castes from Tamil Nadu. Tamils, who under the British had had a
greater success in business and administration than the Sinhalese, were
discriminated against.

Balasingham: "British colonial rule forcefully amalgamated two separate kingdoms
of two nations of people. However, the British encouraged the higher-caste
Tamils and provided them with an adequate share in the state administration
under a notorious strategy of divide and rule, that later sparked the fires of
Sinhala chauvinism, as a section of the high caste Tamil population adopted the
English educational system. Tamil dominance is the state administrative
structure as well as in the plantation economic sector, together with the
privileges enjoyed by the English educated elites and the spread of Christianity
are factors which propelled the emergence of Sinhala nationalism." [Source:
Taken from "War & Peace: Armed Struggle & Peace efforts of Liberation Tigers",
by Anton Balasingham (2004) Fairmax Publishing Ltd].

With independence from British rule in the transfer of political power to the
Sinhalese majority, fuelled a vicious and violent form of state oppression
against the Tamil people. State oppression
has a continuous history of more than half a century since independence and has
been practiced by successive Sri Lanka governments. The following are the main
events which occurred over time to perpetuate this trend:
1948: Citizenship Act; 1 million Tamils declared non-citizens
1949: Sinhalese colonisation of traditional Tamil homeland starts
1956: Sinhala Only Act passed; Sinhala made sole official language
Mass non-violent Tamil protest brutally repressed by government forces and
Sinhala mobs. Further state-sponsored violence occurs in 1958, 1961 and 1974
1970: `Ethnic standardisation' slashes university admission to Tamils (same
entrance exam, but Tamils are forced to score 30%)
1972: New Constitution without Tamil participation passed
- unilateral name change of country from `Ceylon' to `Sri-Lanka'
- declaration of Sri Lanka as a republic
- Buddhism declared state religion

It was this series of events which gave birth to the Tamil Tiger guerrilla
movement in 1976 and the growth of the armed resistance campaign of the Tamils.
The raison-detre of the Tamil fight for independence was perhaps most succinctly
expressed by Anton Balasingham who said in his book `War & Peace': "national
oppression is the enemy of class struggle …working class solidarity is
practically unattainable when national oppression presents itself as the major
contradiction between the two nations."

The Tamil Tigers were comprised of a sea and air force, and previously launched
attacks on government military airports. They assassinated former Sri Lankan
President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. However, it attracted negative attention
for deploying suicide bombers and has been lambasted for allegedly recruiting
children as young as twelve to engage in armed combat against government troops.



Downward spiral of ethnic violence

Civil war erupted in 1983. After the LTTE killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in an
ambush, 3,000 Tamils were slaughtered in government-instigated Sinhalese
programmes in `Black July'. Since then the violence has spiralled out of
control, claiming over 70,000 lives.

Major military gains by the Tigers and the dire state of the Sri Lankan economy
as a result of the ongoing war were the key factors that forced the Sri Lankan
Government to respond positively to unilateral LTTE ceasefires declared in 2000
and 2001. The February 2002 Norwegian-mediated ceasefire agreement has been the
longest-lasting attempt to bring peace. However, practically all attempts from
talks in 1985, those held in 1987, the failed negotiations in 1994-95, to the
most recent ones in 2002, have eventually all collapsed or stalemated in the
end.

This might have something to do with the fact that the LTTE are a proscribed
terrorist organisation, and reports that the use of Tamil civilians as human
shields by the Tigers are rife also, though have not been corroborated by
anyone. The discrimination against LTTE in negotiations that give full
representation to the views of the Sri Lankan Singalese government is a key part
of the problem and the ongoing political stalemate. As a former colonial
territory which existed in its own right alongside the Singalese nation, the
Tamil Nation has not received true recognition for it's own history and how it
came about. Any historical analysis of this situation is similarly never
examined.

Several Tamil MPs elected in the last pariamentary elections in the country in
2004 have been murdered, including Mr Maheswaran and Nadarajah Raviraj. Veteran
Eastern Province Parliamentarian Joseph Pararajasingham was shot dead last year
at the St. Mary's Cathedral in Batticaloa during midnight mass for Christmas.




Land grab under the guise of development

The Mahaweli River diversion project, started in 1977, included the construction
of a cascade of large dams along river Mahaweli, which drains one sixth of the
country. [Lessons from the Communities Displaced by the Mahaweli Multipurpose
development project Sri Lanka", Werellagama D.R.I.B - Department of Civil
Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, Jeyavijithan V - University of
Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, Manatunga J - Saitama University, Japan, and Nakayama M,
- Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology, Japan; Ref:
www.wrrc.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~aphw/APHW2004/proceedings/LFP/56-LFP-A364/56-LFP-A3\
64.pdf ]

The Mahaweli Development Project, the largest single development programme
undertaken by the Government of Sri Lanka so far, channelled water to irrigation
projects in the drier north-central parts of the island and provided
hydroelectric power from 3 dams. The scheme had the added effect of splitting
the north and east of the country, dividing the Tamil enclave with large
resettlement of the Singalese population occurring – principally a land grab
under the guise of development. Environmental effects included a rise in the
watertable thus necessitating drainage and increased salinity in some areas and
contamination of natural water ways due to high usage of agrochemicals in
agricultural practices. Additionally, the Victoria dam wiped out the last
habitat of the Veddha tribe, a dam built by UK-based Balfour Beatty which was
allegedly completed in part-exchange for military armaments.



Environmental crimes

Marco Polo once described Sri Lanka as the island paradise of the earth. In the
1920s, the island had a 49 percent forest cover but by 2005 this had fallen by
approximately 20 percent. [Ref] Between 1990 and 2000, Sri Lanka lost an
average of 26,800 ha of forests per year. Forests in Sri Lanka have been removed
to make way for agricultural land and plantations and to provide fuel and
timber. The sale of timber is a part of the national economy to raise revenue.
The country is a major producer of tea and the land required for tea plantations
is substantial, dating back to it's establishment on what was previously
forested land by the British in the 1840s. National parks, reserves and
sanctuaries now cover as much as 15% of the island's total area as of 2007 [MSN
Encarta Encyclopedia. Retrieved on April 22, 2009. Ref:
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761568352_2/sri_lanka.html ].

In the north of the country in the Yapana district (Jaffna), a sustainable
agricultural system developed over centuries involving smallholders and
maintained through external trading with the rest of the island was rapidly
overhauled after the siege of the peninsula in 1991 by government forces in the
`First Battle of Elephant Pass' in 1991.

Recent military offensives in the north by government forces which swept entire
populations of Tamils into the enclave in the north east over recent months have
resulted in a widespread dispersal of munitions and landmines in forests across
the region.


China's `String of Pearls'
Observers have pointed to the fact that China is quietly strengthening its
strategic position in the Indian Ocean. China's strategic interest in the
island, underscored by it's military assistance to the Sri Lankan government, is
manifest in the building of a $1 billion port at Hambantota on Sri Lanka's south
coast, to use as a refuelling and docking station for its navy - an essential
component of China's need to secure shipping lanes across the Indian Ocean and
through the Straits of Melaka and the South China Sea for it's supplies of Saudi
oil. To safeguard its shipping, China needs to be capable of projecting power
into the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and Africa. From ports and airfields like
Hambantota, sited along the Eurasian seaways like a 'string of pearls', Chinese
forces could gather intelligence, protect its shipping and attack hostile
navies. [Source: The Strategist - Ref:
http://kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist/2009/05/chinese-in-sri-lanka.html ].
Ever since Sri Lanka agreed to the plan, in March 2007, China has increased
military aid and arms sales to Sri Lanka. China became it's biggest arms
supplier in the 1990s; in April 2007, Sri Lanka signed a classified $37.6
million (£25 million) deal to buy Chinese ammunition and ordnance for its army
and navy, according to Jane's Defence Weekly, and according to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, China gave Sri Lanka — apparently free
of charge — six F7 jet in 2008. China's aid to Sri Lanka jumped from a few
million dollars in 2005 to almost $1 billion last year, replacing Japan as the
biggest foreign donor. [Source: "Chinese billions in Sri Lanka fund battle
against Tamil Tigers", The Times Online, May 2, 2009 – Ref:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6207487.ece ].

China's impartiality in taking their seat as a permanent member of the UN
Security Council must be questioned in this respect.


IMF loan denounced
Following the 750bn IMF Emergency funding received at the recent G20 leader's
Summit in London in April, the first real test to any improvement in the abysmal
human rights record of the International Monetary Fund has been fortified by a
'letter before (legal) action' to the British Government. In the letter sent to
high level British Government officials, Public Interest Lawyers, a group of
attorneys representing a Tamil activist group in UK, charge that in light of the
Sri Lankan Government's systematic and gross violations of international
humanitarian and human rights law "the UK under international law has various
obligations, namely, to denounce and not recognise the situation in Sri Lanka as
lawful [and] not to render aid and assistance to Sri Lanka. Amongst other
things, the letter seeks:
"An immediate, clear and unequivocal declaration that the UK government will
vote against the proposed $1.9 billion IMF emergency support loan to the Sri
Lankan government."



End Game no nearer

A victory by the Sri Lankan state at this juncture is no victory even for that
state.

The Sri Lankan state in aiming for feudal or colonial ambitions, will never end
the actual war in this way. The LTTE and the struggle are not only sure to
survive but will find resurgence in a more severe
Form, returning to an underground resistance with the return of suicide bombing
as a tactic.

Furthermore, the current military operations and the possible incompleteness of
them in the annihilation of the LTTE leadership, which Colombo is soon going to
realise and going to complain about, will serve only for its excuses of not
agreeing to meaningful political solutions.


Further sources of info:

Bloodbath unfolding in Sri Lanka
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/05/429989.html

Tamil humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka deepens, world looks away
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LegacyofColonialism/message/2090