The Trinco-5 and a legacy of impunity July 11, 2013 From sprucing up the capital city to shelving anti- devolution plans, holding a much- delayed election and making gingerly steps towards addressing allegations of war time excesses, the Rajapaksa Administration is getting its house in order ahead of a major Commonwealth summit in November. But amidst the changes prompted by increased international attention focused on Sri Lanka as CHOGM 2013 approaches, the regime still seeks total control in the north and wants to rubber stamp its anti-devolution credentials in the south. And as the judicial process into the brutal murder of five T amil students in Trincomalee unfolds, it opens up a barrage of questions about alleged abuses and excesses in the war that broke out seven months after the killings It was only the second day in a brand new year. And 2006 was new in more ways than one. Sri Lanka had a new President who had assumed office barely 44 days ago afterdefeating his opponent by a slim margin, largely due to a LTTE enforced boycott ofvoting in the north and east of the island. The Ceasefire Agreement signed in 2002 between the Government of Sri Lanka headed by then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the LTTE was under strain but still technically in place. Despite his hawkish credentials, the newly-elected President did not abrogate the CFA soon after his ascension to the highest office of the land. Scandinavian peace monitors who
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
had arrived in the country to monitor the shaky truce in 2002 were still around. One
month and a few days into the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency, the ground was about
to shift, just months before a series of unfortunate events broke the tenuous peace
and propelled the country back into full-blown civil war.
Trincomalee had been a potential flashpoint given the town’s ethnic composition and
the ongoing tussle over a Buddha statue in the centre of the Port City. Despite a Court
order dictating its removal, the statue remained and was given security by armed
forces personnel stationed in the city for good measure. The tension had created
sporadic violence and a growing suspicion among residents of the increased military
presence in the town.
It was sundown on 2 January 2006 when a group of seven 21-year-olds, six of them
schoolmates, gathered on Dutch Bay beach. The informal gathering that was to bid
farewell to a friend who would return to the Moratuwa University after vacation went
tragically awry. Many in town heard the boys’ cries as one by one shots rang out into
the night. The area had been cordoned off by security forces who claimed soldiers had
been attacked by the LTTE. The lights in that area alone had been turned off. It took
four minutes – between 7:51 and 7:55 p.m. – for the five executions to take place. The
father of one of the boys was outside the security cordon and heard the screaming.
Half an hour later, five bodies and two grievously injured young men reached the
Trincomalee Hospital. (Terrible truth of the Trincomalee tragedy, D.B.S. Jeyaraj)
Spin doctoring
The lights now back on, the military circulated its version of events. They blamed the
deaths on accidental grenade blasts during a LTTE attempt to attack Special Task
Force Personnel. But soon enough Judicial medical reports refuted the military spin.
All five victims had suffered fatal gunshot wounds. Strangely the ballistics report filed
later showed that the guns used in the murders did not match STF issue weapons.
Desperate to hold on their version of events, Police personnel attempted to obtain
signatures from parents of the five youth, certifying that they were in fact LTTE cadres.
When the attempts at intimidation failed, the Police finally released the bodies to the
families. During a collective funeral at their alma mater, eulogists went out of their wayto reinforce the victims’ innocence and refute the military claim that they were LTTE
members.
The involvement of the security forces personnel in the killings became manifest very
quickly. Just three months after the murders, the University Teachers for Human
Rights in Jaffna released a damning report citing witnesses and pointed to the
culpability of a senior Police officer in the area and STF personnel in the murder of the
‘Trinco-5’. A WikiLeaks cable recently revealed that senior Rajapaksa regime officials
had been well aware of the killers of the Trinco-5 since the incident took place,
although it has taken the Government seven years and seven months and two UN
Human Rights Council resolutions to finally move on the prosecutions.
Basil says he knows
In October 2006, then Senior Presidential Advisor and younger brother of President
Rajapaksa told former US Ambassador Robert O. Blake that the Government knew
STF personnel had been behind the killings. “We know the STF did it, but the bullet
and gun evidence shows that they did not. They must have separate guns when they
want to kill someone. We need forensic experts. We know who did it, but we can’t
proceed in prosecuting them,” Ambassador Blake filed in a report to Washington as
revealed in a WikiLeaks Cable.
Ambassador Blake also wrote that the senior regime official had said that the Sri
Lanka Army had been sufficiently trained in human rights, but that the Sri Lanka Navy
had been credibly implicated in harassment and human rights violations. “We have few
complaints in areas of SLA presence, but we have a problem with the SLN,”
Rajapaksa explained. “We didn’t expect them to work with civilians and they weren’t
trained.”
Once their innocence was verified, the murder of the five young boys in Trincomalee
became an early symbol of the legacy of impunity that would plague the Sri Lankan
Government, both in its execution of the final war to defeat the LTTE and the
continued suppression of legitimate dissent both during and after the war. It was an
incident specifically made mention of in UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Navi Pillay’s Report on Sri Lanka to the UNHRC in March this year. During his speech
to the Council in March, in response, Presidential Special Envoy on Human Rights
Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe announced that non-summary proceedings into the
murder of the five youths in Trincomalee would begin shortly.
Building a case
Accordingly, the Trincomalee Magistrate is now conducting the non-summary inquiry in
which evidence is led by the Police. At the conclusion of this inquiry, if the Magistratebelieves there is sufficient evidence to indict the accused, the case will be committed
to the High Court by the Magistrate and the record sent to the AG for advice. From this
point onwards, the ball will effectively be in the AG’s Court, the department now
functioning directly under the President. The AG will review the evidence led at the
non-summary inquiry and will consider whether there is sufficient material to form a
prima facie case against the accused. If AG believes so, the department will send an
freedom issues will be front and centre of the run up to CHOGM 2013 even as the
accreditation and registration process for the summit begins this month, bringing with it
a host of complications for summit organisers. The controversial ‘No Fire Zone’ and
‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ Director Callum Macrae is seeking accreditation to cover
CHOGM and his attempt to enter Sri Lanka is raising red flags for the Government.
The final word on who enters the country for the summit rests with the Sri Lankan
Ministry of Defence, summit organisers say. This means that media accreditation and
registration will also be scrutinised by the Ministry.
Sri Lanka’s press freedom record being what it is, with journalists killed, maimed and
disappeared over the last eight years, organisers are correctly worried for the fate of foreign journalists who will cover CHOGM in November. It will also battle with the issue
of needing to save face with the international press if Sri Lanka decides to reject visas
for elements of the foreign media whose motives it deems are suspect.
Hectic negotiations are now underway to ensure unimpeded access for media
personnel seeking to cover the summit. Some sections of the Government, organisers
claim, believe the prudent move would be to allow the press into the country, even
Frances Harrison and Callum Macrae, and engage with them. Barring their entry,
these officials fear, would give further impetus to the notion that Sri Lanka suppresses
the media and has something to hide.
Other more powerful factions of the regime are equally adamant that such journalists
do not step foot on Lankan soil. The Commonwealth is therefore engaged in a delicate
balancing act, between the need to uphold its own values of media freedom and
democracy and the intransigence of the Rajapaksa regime in Colombo.
Enter Menon
Intransigence in fact is a feature of the ruling Government that its counterpart in New
Delhi appears to be compelled to deal with even as it hurriedly moves to put the
brakes on President Rajapaksa’s plans to dilute the provisions of the 13th Amendment
ahead of the election in the north. A visit to Colombo by India’s National Security
Advisor Shivshankar Menon this week proved that both parties to the 1987 Indo-Lanka
Accord were digging in for the long haul for the 13A battle.
Menon, who is believed to have carried a tough message to President Rajapaksa from
Indian Premier Manmohan Singh on his attempt to tinker with 13A and thereby alter
the conditions of the 1987 bilateral agreement, found the Government was equally
adamant on the need to repeal Police and land powers and seek “broader consensus”
on other provisions of the 13th Amendment through a Parliamentary Select
Committee.
In what appeared to be a strange coincidence, the PSC set up to go into constitutional
reform pertinent to the national question met in Parliament on Tuesday, shortly after
Menon had completed his rounds of political discussions in Colombo. The PSC that
currently only comprises Government members will not be the rushed process,
Cabinet Spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella promised three weeks ago, but will likely
take its time over matters. Faced with intense and relentless pressure from New Delhi
and a severe lack of consensus within its own coalition, President Rajapaksa has
decided to shelve plans to tinker with the 13th ahead of the northern poll – and more
importantly CHOGM.
Sri Lanka remains alive to the fact that the summit is going ahead in Colombo –barring any last minute manoeuvres – only because New Delhi intervened to prevent a
high level Commonwealth grouping in April from placing Sri Lanka on the official
agenda with regard to a deterioration of democratic values in the country. Hectic
lobbying by New Delhi ensured that the summit venue did not change and Colombo
remains concerned that if angered, the Indian Government could exert similar
influence to downgrade participation and embarrass Colombo. This would be a last