The Muttur Tragedy: A Re-Examination

On 20 July 2006 the LTTE closed the Mavil Aru anicuit, thus depriving irrigation water to downstream paddy land. This was, indeed, a classic ‘riparian gambit’ – a challenge for a showdown for control over the entire Mahaveli delta, based on the belief of the LTTE leadership that the recovery from the ‘Karuna’ and ‘Tsunami’ setbacks was adequate by this time for its fighting cadres to achieve the twin objectives of evicting not only the security forces of the government but also the Muslim inhabitants from this area

Armed confrontations between the security forces of Sri Lanka and the LTTE for which the riverine tract of Mavil Aru and the township of Muttur provided the venue in late July and early August 2006 appear in retrospect to mark a major turning point in the history of the ‘Eelam Wars’. The area has remained one of the most turbulent parts of the country throughout the past twenty years. It also ranked among the few localities of the ‘north-east’ in which the LTTE made significant advances over several years after the commencement of the ceasefire on December 2001.

The most pronounced demographic feature of this area – it is roughly coterminous with the Administrative Division of Muttur – is its highly intricate spatial mosaic of ethnicity. Forming a part of Trincomalee District in which the main ethnic groups of Sri Lanka are represented in the total population in roughly equal proportions, Muttur Division had, in 2004, a population of 45,298 of which 62% were Muslim and almost 38% were Tamil. There is here a fairly distinctive sectoral contrast in the ethnic composition of the population. In the urban sector, consisting mainly of the township of Muttur, Muslims account for 90% of the population. In rural Muttur 56% of the population is accounted for by Tamils. Superimposed upon this sectoral contrast is a distinct spatial segregation of population on ethnic lines.

In Muttur town, for instance, there are residential ‘neighbourhoods’ exclusively of one or the other ethnic group. More or less the same pattern is replicated in rural areas, with the majority of Muslim villages located in proximity to Muttur town, and the Tamil villages located in the eastern parts in the direction of Sampur, a predominantly Tamil township. The irrigated areas to the south of Muttur town are featured by a fairly dense scatter of Tamil and Muslim villages which extends westwards towards the Division of Seruwila in which the Sinhalese account for about 90% of the population.

The bustling township of Muttur covers an area of approximately two square kilometres. Since a regular ferry service is available between Muttur and Trincomalee town, and since overland travel between the latter and the areas south of Trincomalee Bay involves a circuitous route, Muttur town forms, in fact, the principal gateway for the entire area covered by the Administrative Divisions of Muttur, Seruvila and Ichchalampattu. Its location overlooking the Trincomalee Bay also makes its control vitally important from military perspectives.

The rural population of Muttur is served by a channel network fed by an up-stream anicuit along Mavil Aru that regulates the flow of water to a large segment of the command area (approximately 30,000 acres of paddy land) of the Allai tank. It was well within ‘government controlled territory’ (the so-called “cleared areas”) as demarcated (albeit somewhat imprecisely) under the Ceasefire Agreement. However, since early 2002, the LTTE had, in defiance of the terms of the agreement, established a series of bases and encampments in the southern and eastern parts of the Division.

Some of these were believed to have been equipped with heavy artillery that could bombard the government naval base at Trincomalee. This had been ignored by the government of that time in accordance with its policy of “confidence building”. Up to the outbreak of military confrontations in late July 2006, there were three camps of the Sri Lanka army sited at Kattaparichchan and Gandhinagar in proximity to Muttur town, and Palathoppur about 10 miles further south.

Mavil Aru-Muttur Battle

On 20 July 2006 the LTTE closed the Mavil Aru anicuit, thus depriving irrigation water to downstream paddy land. This was, indeed, a classic ‘riparian gambit’ – a challenge for a showdown for control over the entire Mahaveli delta, based on the belief of the LTTE leadership that the recovery from the ‘Karuna’ and ‘Tsunami’ setbacks was adequate by this time for its fighting cadres to achieve the twin objectives of evicting not only the security forces of the government but also the Muslim inhabitants from this area. Further, its capture would mean a vast enrichment of the LTTE granary and would also provide the Tiger forces supremacy over the entire coastal area south of the Trincomalee Bay and over a corridor of access with only minor obstacles between their principal domain in Vanni and the localities they hold in Batticaloa and Ampara districts.

The day after the closure of the sluice-gates armed LTTE cadres prevented officers of the Irrigation Department from reaching the anicuit, while ignoring a plea by the SLMM and a group of peasants from the affected villages for restoration of the flow of water along the channel. On 25 July, ‘Elian’ (LTTE political wing leader in Trincomalee District) conveyed a demand to the SLMM that the government should take immediate steps to construct a water storage tank at Paddalipuram (in a LTTE-controlled locality) for use by Tamil residents of that area. Though this was intended to appear as a precondition to the re-opening of the anicuit, government’s prompt agreement to grant the demand evoked no response from the LTTE leadership. Instead, two days later, there was a “community appeal” engineered by the LTTE containing a series of fresh demands, some of which infringed on conditions laid down in the ceasefire agreement.

The LTTE challenge had thus to be met with a decisive response, the ceasefire agreement notwithstanding, if not for holding on to an area the loss of which could have far-reaching repercussions from strategic perspectives, at least for performing the government obligation of defending an innocent farm population. Thus, a military counteroffensive, codenamed ‘Operation Watershed’, was launched by the security forces on 26 July with the objective of reopening the anicuit and flushing out the LTTE cadres from that locality.

Soon after the commencement of ‘Operation Watershed’ the LTTE captured the army encampments located in the vicinity of Muttur town thus opening a second front of the battle. The Tigers launched their occupation of Muttur town in a pre-dawn attack on 2 August. By the following morning a large number of well armed Tiger combatants appeared to be in control of the town, having forced most of its Muslim inhabitants to either flee or seek refuge at public venues such as schools and mosques. In the course of this ‘conquest’, the Muslims were evidently subject to the entire range of harassment including killing, looting, extortion, assault and intimidation, thus adding to the already embittered Tamil-Muslim relations in the town.

To elaborate this latter phenomenon, the history of serious clashes between the Muslims and Tamils of Muttur could be traced back to 1987 when a communal conflagration was ignited by the killing of a Muslim civil servant and the abduction of several Muslims, allegedly by LTTE cadres making their presence felt in the area. Thereafter, in the early 1990s, when the LTTE put into operation its programme of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the ‘north-east’ (this was the era of the large-scale ‘Mosque massacres’ in Batticaloa District and of mass eviction of Muslims from Mannar), there were several spells of violence in the Muttur-Sampur-Toppur area which, however, did not cause ‘internal displacement’ on the same massive scale witnessed in Batticaloa and Mannar. There was, in response, the formation of militias bearing names such as “Jihad” and “Al Fatah” reported from some of the main Muslim areas of the east at that time. Far more serious than these in destructive impact was the violence that erupted in the first year of the ceasefire to last with fluctuation intensity over several months. On 29 May 2006 the LTTE issued an ultimatum ordering the Muslims to leave Muttur within seventy-two hours. It had no immediate effect other than that of inculcating fear.

Soon after their arrival in Muttur on 2 August 2006 the Tiger cadres began a forced eviction of people from the town. According to an eye-witness account of a person in one of the groups so evicted, they were herded out of the town in the direction of the LTTE-held areas, and, while on their way, the women and children were ordered to proceed, having separated them from the men. When the women refused to obey this order, some of the men were allowed to re-join the group while the others had their hands tied and were led away. The whereabouts of these captives are still not known.

The counterattack by the security forces on Muttur began soon thereafter. By about 6 August the SLArmy had re-taken the town evicting the LTTE, killing a large number of its cadres. This had involved both artillery bombardment as well as close-encounter gun battles. It is possible that the workers attached to the French aid agency Action Contre la Faim or ‘ACF’ (16 Tamils and 1 Muslim; 13 men and 4 women) were killed in the course of these clashes. There are, of course, several other speculative explanations, equally plausible. For instance, one cannot rule out the Tiger high-command deciding that the sacrifice of 17 lives – had those of the aid team been genuinely engaged relief operations among the Muslims, they could also have been seen as “traitors” to the Eelam cause – is worth the gains that will accrue from the likelihood that the SLArmy would be held responsible for the killing, and thus ordering its cadres to kill the ACF workers prior to withdrawal from the town. (This possibility has been considered and discarded by a Reuter correspondent on the grounds of information conveyed by the grieving father of one of the victims according to whom the LTTE does not kill other Tamils!)

Inquisition and Propaganda Onslaught

Soon after reports of the killing of ACF workers reached Colombo President Rajapakse initiated an investigation – one that would use the expertise offered by several foreign governments. On the basis of preliminary discussions at which officers of the ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs, local experts in the field of forensic medicine, and representatives of several diplomatic and aid missions participated, an investigation strategy was decided upon, and the information on the killings as available at that time was disclosed to the media at a press conference. Indicating the prevailing mood, the ACF Executive Director Benoit Miribel, when asked by the press for an opinion on who was responsible for the killings, said: “I do not know who is responsible. We will take all steps to get to the bottom if this tragedy”.

In order to make that ideal descent to the bottom, it was vital for the inquiry to be far more thorough and objective than, say, the investigation conducted by the famous Allen Rock in November 2006 who, in a tour of a few places in the east of Sri Lanka that lasted no more than a few hours (he had no pervious experience in the country, no communication skill in a language used by its inhabitants, no access to its more turbulent areas, and much of his time in Sri Lanka was spent in Colombo) discovered, among other things, photographs of young Tamils residing in that part of the country being supplied by the Sri Lanka Army to the rebel group led by Karuna so as to facilitate their abduction for conscription as fighters!

To digress briefly from the main subject of this essay, there is reason to speculate that the Allen Rock “mission” was intended by its sponsors to harmonise with their ongoing efforts to rescue the LTTE from the impending debacle in the Eastern Province. At least one pro-LTTE journal gleefully proclaimed that Allen Rock was sent to Sri Lanka by Radhika Coomaraswamy, ‘UN Rapporteur for Children in Armed Conflict’ as her ‘Special Advisor’. The discovery by Rock referred to above is one of many mentioned in his report which provided the basis for his indictment of the armed forces of Sri Lanka for alleged collaboration with Karuna in the forced conscription of children. To those of us with some familiarity with how some of these visiting consultants conduct their investigations in the country, there could hardly be any doubt that most of the Rock “findings” would have been picked up from the “cocktail circuit” in Colombo. Further, a highly receptive atmosphere for the submission of the Rock report to the UN was created by Philip Alston, another of UN’s innumerable Special Rapporteurs whose repertoire included a report intended to persuade the Security Council that a UN-sponsored “international human rights monitoring mission is indispensable” to Sri Lanka. Had that effort succeeded, the advances being made by the armed forces against the Tigers in the Eastern Province would have been effectively halted.

Getting back to Muttur, since the killing had taken place at a time when the SLArmy and the Tiger cadres were locked in fierce combat for control of the town (i.e. on 4 August), there appeared to be no means of ascertaining the veracity of the mutually conflicting charges which the various accounts of the atrocity contained until the completion of the investigations to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.

With the exception of the propaganda organs of the LTTE, most publications that contained references to the Muttur tragedy were cautious enough to place the blame in general terms on both the government as well as the LTTE for the rising tide of violence in the country, but refrained from making specific accusations. There were, however, the exceptions. The earliest Reuter report on the incident, dated 6 February 2007, quoted Jeevan Thiagarajah, the Head of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (AHC) as stating: ”They (AHC relief team) found them (ACF workers) in the office on the ground, lying face down, executed, (and) the military, which says it now controls most of the town, said it knew nothing about the bodies and denied involvement”. A further report by Reuter correspondent Peter Apps datelined 8 August reported two persons he had interviewed – (a) Sinathambi Navaratnarajah according to whom on 2 August fighting raged throughout Muttur with the Tigers taking positions in key buildings in the centre, and that by 4 August most of the town’s people had fled, and (b) Richard Arulraja (father of one of the victims) who had said “… we heard the military personnel came and shot them.”

Far more significantly, the same report quoted Ulf Henricsson, the Head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, as saying: “When you (‘you’ refers to the monitors) are not let in, it is a sign that they (army) have something to hide” – a curious conclusion, given the fact that even by 8 August, Muttur town was still vulnerable to artillery attack by the retreating Tigers, and the army was still engaged in operations south of the town. Thereafter, in several published reports on the Muttur tragedy, Henricsson was cited as the principal authority for the conclusion that the ACF workers had been killed by the SLArmy. It was also probably on the basis of information from Henricsson that the ‘Resolution’ adopted by the European Union Parliament in on 7 September 2006 stated: “(T)he SLMM has found that seventeen aid workers employed by the French humanitarian agency ‘Action Against Hunger’ had been shot dead by government forces in Muttur” (EU Parliament Resolution of September 7, 2006, Paragraph D of the ‘Preamble’).

The reference in the EU Resolution to the SLMM “finding” that the ACF workers were killed by the Sri Lanka army evokes special interest for several reasons – first, by early September 2006, the in-depth investigations into the Muttur killings were still in their early stages; second, the Monitoring Mission’s own investigations at Muttur (if any) could not have been systematic and comprehensive because the process of resettlement of the displaced was far from being complete; and third, such a “finding” with the related evidence had not been formally conveyed by the SLMM to the government of Sri Lanka. This curious feature of the EU Resolution provides reason to speculate whether its references of Muttur represented an input of the Norwegians who, by this time, were not even attempting to conceal their pro-LTTE bias (It is well known that the government of Norway ardently opposed the passing of sanctions against the LTTE earlier that year).

A report in The International Herald Tribune of 30 August 2006 authored by Shimali Senanayake and Somini Sengupta, though not adding significantly to the facts on the Muttur tragedy, sheds light on how Henricsson arrived at his conclusion regarding the culpability of the SLArmy. Three reasons evidently formed the basis of the conclusion.
“First, security forces had been present in Muttur at the time of the killings. Second, the government had prevented the truce monitors from going to the crime scene to investigate immediately after the discovery of the bodies. Third, confidential conversations with "highly reliable sources" had pointed to the culpability of security forces. No other group, the peace monitors concluded, could have carried out the killings.”

This type of reasoning does cause surprise, especially in the context of the vital importance of Henricsson’s position as the Head of the Monitoring Mission and the absurdly extreme circumspection he had always shown in pinning any crime on the LTTE. To comment briefly on these “reasons”: (a) It is true that on 4 August, the SLArmy was present in Muttur, but so were LTTE cadres; (b) The army is very likely to have prevented the truce monitors from proceeding to Muttur, but its consideration could well have been the safety of the monitors. As for Henricsson’s reliance on “confidential conversations with highly reliable sources”, the question which he should have asked himself is whether it is reasonable to “convict” the SLArmy on the basis of evidence from undisclosed sources, given the fact that, contextually, the source of the information is vital to a determination of the credibility of the information.

A masked man identified individuals among the crowd, who were accused of being members of Jihad, and they were tied up by the LTTE. There are conflicting reports as to what happened next, with some stating that the LTTE began firing at the men. A shell landed in the vicinity reportedly killing some of the LTTE cadres and the fleeing Muslims. It is still unclear as to how many of the men were abducted by the LTTE, with rough estimates ranging from 30 to 60 and how many were killed in the explosion or shot by the LTTE.

In a paper by Mirak Raheem titled ‘Muttur: A Betrayal of a Community’ – probably the most detailed account of the tragedy published during its early aftermath – both the SLArmy as well as the LTTE have been charged with indiscriminate shelling of the town and causing immense suffering to its civilian inhabitants by way of both death and injury as well as large-scale eviction. Sri Lanka government, in particular, is criticised in the paper for its seemingly callous neglect of the safety of Muslims of the area. However, its statement that “(F)inally on the 5th (August), three days after the battle began, it seemingly ended, as the government intensified its attack and moved into secure control over the town and the LTTE made a strategic withdrawal from Mutur (sic.)” is of direct relevance to the specific issue on which the present study is focused, for, it implies continuing armed confrontations in the town on 4 August, the day on which the ACF workers were killed. In addition, the following extract from this paper provides a glimpse of the nature of LTTE relations with the Muslim community at the time of their evacuation of the town.

“When the Muslim community took the decision to leave south to Kantale, the LTTE said it would provide safe passage and even drinking water. Between the third mile-post and Pachanoor the LTTE cadres’ behaviour abruptly changed – they began to verbally and physically abuse the civilians and demanded that the men should separate from the women and youth under 15. A masked man identified individuals among the crowd, who were accused of being members of Jihad, and they were tied up by the LTTE. There are conflicting reports as to what happened next, with some stating that the LTTE began firing at the men. A shell landed in the vicinity reportedly killing some of the LTTE cadres and the fleeing Muslims. It is still unclear as to how many of the men were abducted by the LTTE, with rough estimates ranging from 30 to 60 and how many were killed in the explosion or shot by the LTTE”.

While preliminary investigations were still under way, the notion that a ‘Mai Lai’ type of massacre by the SLArmy had occurred at Muttur gained currency. Its origin has to be traced to Henricsson’s clumsy logic. Its propagation was, of course, the result of the coordinated campaign of propaganda by various agencies which, with diverse motives and impulses, have tended to lean towards the LTTE especially over periods featured by its military defeats and other setbacks. Certain well known human rights organisations – those that have had a record of silence in the face of atrocities of unimaginable brutality committed by the LTTE, and of justifying their silence on the grounds that there is no “hard evidence” to prove Tiger culpability – had no such reticence in pointing their prim fingers at the Sri Lanka Army. There was, in addition, the usual chorus of “genocide”, “holocaust”, “pogrom” and “extermination” charges from the LTTE propagandists and front organisations.

A discrepancy between the ballistics report submitted by the Government Analyst to the Magistrate’s inquiry on 7 March 2007 and the findings by Malcolm Dodd (Australian pathologist invited by the government to observe the forensic examinations in October 2006) reflected adversely on the investigation procedures being pursued. According to the former report, the bullets recovered from the corpses were all of 7.63 mm calibre. Dodd, however, though his expertise is in the field of forensic pathology, had ventured to make the ballistic-related observation that the calibre of one of the projectiles he had recovered from the skull of a victim was of 5.56 mm. Needless to say, the almost spontaneous response of all external vigilante was to accept the latter claim and to imply that the ballistic findings of the Government Analyst could well be part and parcel of a cover-up attempt. Such an insinuation, it should be noted, disregards the fact that the bullets being of either 7.62 mm or 5.56 calibre is of no consequence to an identification of the killers because cartridges with both types of projectile are in use by both the army as well as the LTTE. What is of even greater interest in the context of this display of prejudice is that a second report submitted by Malcolm Dodd in which he has admitted to an error in his earlier ‘ballistic’ findings, and stated that all recovered bullets are, in fact, of the 7.62 calibre, have had no impact whatever on publications of the recent past (including, it is sad to note, a report of the prestigious International Commission of Jurists) which have continued to highlight this so-called discrepancy.

Certain observations contained in the two ICJ reports (Text Box 1) generate doubt on whether the CJC has actually adhered to the “distinguishing” characteristic which it claims for itself – its “impartial, objective and authoritative legal approach to the protection and promotion of human rights through the rule of law” – to the preparation of its reports on Sri Lanka. For instance, in order to substantiate its claim that the investigations conducted by the government of Sri Lanka are featured by a “disturbing lack of impartiality” (Paragraph 3 in Text Box 1), the ICJ report refers to Michael Birnbaum according to whom “(O)fficial police reports indicate that from the outset, prior to any investigation, the police had decided that the LTTE were responsible for the killing.” The ‘police reports’ (referred to by Birnbaum as those compiled at “the outset”) are evidently the records that contain the initial impressions of the investigating officer. These are usually based on an examination of the crime scene and haphazardly conducted interviews with on-the-spot informants – no less methodical than, say, the investigation of a truce monitor of the type Henricsson has shown himself to be. This routine procedure (similar to that followed in most countries) does not tantamount to formulation of conclusions, especially those that restrict the scope of subsequent investigations. Nor can the records be construed as indicating prejudgment and prejudice. Does Birnbaum or the ICJ imply that, had the police found at the outset of its investigations evidence of LTTE involvement in the crime, that evidence should not have been reported? Thus, by both misrepresentation of the purpose of the police reports on the Muttur killings as well as making no reference whatever to the actual contents of the police reports (which could be quite revealing, unless there is a presumption that the police cannot be impartial), the ICJ itself has committed the same offence of prejudgment with which it has branded the investigations conducted by the Sri Lanka police.

Further, in its criticism relating to the subject of ‘collection of evidence’, the ICJ states that, “apart from the family members of those killed, no other Tamils of the area have been questioned (by the police)”. How did Birnbaum arrive at this conclusion? What the police places on record being evidence considered materially relevant to what is being investigated, surely, the record will not contain a comprehensive list of those questioned. Moreover, does this criticism imply that, in order to meet the level of adequacy demanded by the ICJ, it would be essential to record evidence from Tamil witnesses, regardless of the near certainty that, given the specific circumstances of this crime, those of the Tamil community (unless the were participants in the killing) would not have been present at the time it was committed? Does the ICJ criticism also imply that the government investigators ought to have gone on recording evidence from Tamil witnesses until such time that some such witness says that it was the army that had killed the aid workers?

Yet another suspicion which the ICJ disseminates without actually making a categorical accusation is that some of the ‘ballistic productions’ at the investigations could have been tampered with. The basis of this suspicion is that the items referred to were not produced at the magistrate’s inquiry by the authorised officer but by another, and that the sealed packets that contained the items were not opened in the presence of “an Australian expert observer”. Is there a display of naivety (if not traces of racial prejudice) even in this criticism? Had there been a genuine conspiracy to defeat the objective of the investigation, wouldn’t it have been possible for the conspirators to easily avoid any procedural irregularity?

In comparing the two ICJ reports, one also notes that the alleged “unwarranted interference” which the transfer of the inquiry to the Magistrates Court of Anuradhapura, made in the April report, does not appear in the July report. Was this due to a realisation that the charge made in the earlier report was later found to be unwarranted? Finally, as noted earlier, there is the ICJ persistence with the “bullet calibre discrepancy”, in disregard of the fact that it is unfounded and irrelevant to the determination of culpability to the killing.
How and why a group of seventeen aid workers (all, with one exception, Tamil) happen to be at the predominantly Muslim town of Muttur at such an intensely turbulent time has remained a mind-rankling question ever since the occurrence of this tragedy. In this context, the questions that have recently been raised (abridged as follows) by the Head of SCOPP, are, indeed, vitally relevant.

• Why were these workers sent to Muttur on August 1, 2006 – i.e. on the day before the Tiger cadres launched their attack on the town?

• Why were they not withdrawn, as workers attached to other aid agencies were, when, according to reports, some of them begged to be rescued

• Did the ACF act with a sense of responsibility regarding the safety of its workers?

• Why has the ACF refrained from paying any compensation to the bereaved families?

To recapitulate the facts relevant to the first of these questions: A group of young Tamils arrived at Muttur, a predominantly Muslim town, at a time when an almost week-long battle was raging in the hinterland of the town and when the capture of the town by the LTTE was imminent. Soon thereafter (on 2 August) a much larger group of young Tamils (note that even in the “battle field” not all LTTE cadres wear uniforms) arrived in Muttur, occupied it with the force of arms, and caused intense havoc and misery to the inhabitants of the town. While this latter group held sway over Muttur (i.e. 2 August) there was no reported attempt by the ACF workers either to request rescue or to escape from the venue of battle (the reported telephone conversations on that day do not convey a sense of desperation among them). Soon thereafter (from about 3 August), however, heavy fighting erupted between the LTTE cadres and the army. Given the embittered Tamil-Muslim relations that prevailed in Muttur, what specific “actions against hunger” were the young Tamil men and women employed by the ACF expected to perform? It is in the context of these considerations that questions such as ‘Why were they sent” and “What were they expected to do” assume significance.

The responses by the ACF authorities to these queries have hitherto been no more than a display of a level of imbecility which one does not associate with individuals holding positions of responsibility in organisations that have a global reach in the functions they perform. They have stated, for instance, that the T-shirts emblazoned with the ACF symbol worn by the aid workers should have immunized them from any danger. Implicitly, they have thus pretended both ignorance about the ground situation in Muttur at that time as well as lack of understanding of the reality that, for combatants (of both the LTTE as well as the army) constantly in danger of sudden death from any source and in any form, T-shirt insignia could hardly be of any consequence. Is this a pretence meant to cover a more sinister objective?

Implications of the reported information on the ‘crime scene’ from the perspective of motive should also have received the attention of the accusers of the SLArmy. The relevant information is that the corpses of the victims in the alleged “mass murder” had bullets embedded in the heads; firing had evidently been “close range”; the hands of some of the victims were tied at the back; and, as the Chief of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies was reported to have said, the corpses were placed on the ground face down when his team found them. These details, highlighted in pro-Tiger propaganda publications as evidence of not only a “mass execution” but also a post-execution “exhibition” of corpses, have been repeated even in reports published by reputed international organisations.

Admittedly, Sri Lanka is not unfamiliar with “executions cum exhibitions” conducted with the obvious motive of inculcating terror. The LTTE, for instance, has engaged in it on innumerable occasions especially in administering punishment to “traitors”. It was also a widely practiced terror tactic during the insurrection of the late 1980s. In the aftermath of the Muttur tragedy, however, no conceivable benefit could have accrued to the SLArmy by proclaiming in such a manner that a mass execution had taken place. Nor is there any evidence of an attempt on its part at concealment. Had concealment of the crime or confounding evidence been an intention, it would have been easy to place, say, a few guns and grenades amidst the corpses – not an entirely unknown practice among law enforcers – so as to make the killing look like an act of self-defence, while creating suspicion of possible collaboration between the ACF workers and the LTTE. What the army is reported to have done instead is to deny involvement in the killing, permit (as early as 6 August) a “relief team” dispatched by the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies to examine the “crime scene” and to transmit impressions to their Chief in Colombo (who, in turn, conveyed the information to the Reuter correspondent as early as 6 August), and then ensure, with commendable professionalism (in the context of the fact that the army control over parts of Muttur still remained uncertain), the delivery of the corpses to the District Hospital at Trincomalee, thus facilitating subsequent investigation. Is there in this conduct the basis for a charge of committing a “crime against humanity”?

About one year after the ‘Battle of Muttur’, Sir John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordination, while on a visit to Sri Lanka, was reported to have stated at an interview with the Reuter correspondent in Colombo that Sri Lanka "is one of the worst in the world” in respect of the safety of humanitarian workers. This came as a shock to the government mainly for the reason that both at Holmes’ meetings with various officials in Sri Lanka as well as at the news conference held prior to his departure, the impression he had conveyed was one of general satisfaction with the conditions under which those attached to aid agencies work in the country.

The post-Muttur attempts by various personages and agencies at denigrating Sri Lanka were expected to converge in an all-out attack on the government of Sri Lanka at the International Human Rights Sessions held in Geneva in September 2007, and to culminate in a major intervention sponsored by the UN in the name of safeguarding human rights which would, in turn, (hopefully) rescue the LTTE from the setbacks it has suffered in the previous months. As matters stand at present (late September 2007) this appears to have been averted (or, at least, temporarily halted) mainly as a result of the efforts of a few Sri Lankans including the country’s ambassador to the UN, Dayan Jayatillake, and the Head of SCOPP, Rajiv Wijesinghe. Judging on the basis of information made available to us by the press and other sources, they appear to have also demonstrated that the promotion of the country’s interests necessitates, besides the usual diplomatic niceties, the bold confrontation of duplicity, prejudice and arrogance.

(http://lankaguardian.blogspot.com)