Those who long knew the LTTE, understood clearly where it was taking the Tamil people. In addition, the present government has an atrocious human rights record and its chauvinist leanings have led to widespread alarm. Such a government being in a war where mainly the Tamils are at the receiving end, would have predisposed most observers to see every incident in a light unfavourable to it.

Take, for instance, the incident when just before midnight on 1 February, Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) hospital was shelled killing nine persons. Questioned by Sky TV, the defence secretary said, “No hospital should operate outside the safety zone...everything beyond the safety zone is a legitimate target.” One wonders how someone in the Government could have demarcated a safe zone exempting the hospital barely two miles beyond its south-eastern edge.

The shelling of the hospital is a grave contravention of humanitarian norms for which there is no excuse. Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, in an ill-conceived exercise in damage control, produced an aerial video of the hospital in an attempt to discredit ICRC and UN reports of shelling. The minister also attempted to mitigate the killing of civilians by suggesting that injured LTTE cadres being treated in hospital could pass as civilians. He also charged that some persons in international organisations were on LTTE payroll.

That is, however, not the whole story. We now have testimony from a senior member of the refugee community that, prior to the shelling, the LTTE stood behind the hospital and fired into the air. While the government response is unjustified, the question arises how feasible is it to protect civilians when the group allegedly fighting for them holds them hostage and does everything possible to maximise their misery for propaganda. If that, too, does not enable them to re-emerge to a dominant position, they are quite capable of imposing mass suicide on the people. It was implicit in their politics from the beginning.

Testimony gathered by the UTHR(J).Testimonies exemplify the plight of civilians.

When Visvamadu fell at the end of January 2009, the ICRC was doing valuable work in transporting the injured by bus to Vavuniya. The LTTE had to “clear” those being transported.

The man in his late 50s had been fleeing the battle zone amidst fire from hi-tech weapons and had become weary and thirsty. He said from his hospital bed that he had been looking for a well so that he might fall into it and die. That was when he spotted a waiting ICRC bus taking in injured. No sooner had he climbed into it and slumped into a seat than an armed LTTE cadre stepped in and told him roughly to get out as he was not given permission to leave. He had replied that he could shoot. They left him alone and now he is in the local hospital.

Another highly traumatised lady in her late 50s is under treatment at another hospital (Cheddikulam). She with some others was caught between advancing troops and the LTTE defending fiercely. She spotted a bunker and crouched inside it for over six hours under a heavy exchange of fire overhead. Finally, the defenders retreated and the troops passed over her bunker in pursuit. She climbed out after some time, walked over dead bodies, some of them her kith and kin, to the army defence line.

A joint family from Mannar District who had for over two years been fleeing from place to place in search of safety got into a bunker, late January, to take cover from a heavy exchange of shelling overhead. One shell fell right into their bunker killing every one. Their only surviving sibling is an agonised Roman Catholic nun.

The civilians had been so caught up in a pincer movement where they got no relief, but have been continuously either kept on the run or confined to bunkers. Though all of them had some dry rations, money was in short supply, and given the collapse of the agricultural economy, purchase of other essentials was difficult. They survived by boiling rice with either soya meat or dhal and salt.

This was prior to the fall of Dharmapuram in late January followed soon by Viswamadu. At present, the trapped people rarely get the opportunity for a cooked meal. Many were maimed or killed when they were utterly exhausted by hunger and thirst after spending prolonged periods in bunkers, and had crawled out to have a cup of tea or to cook a meal. In one incident reported by IDPs a mother who left her family in a bunker and came out to prepare a meal was stuck by a shell and died. In another incident a whole family called up by the mother to have a cup of tea in the evening were struck by a shell and died.

On 25 February, about a hundred injured who had been transported by the ICRC from the coastal safe zone in Mullaitivu to Tricomalee were brought to the local hospital for further treatment. Among them were two siblings who had been separated from their father. Their mother and another sibling had died of shrapnel from the same shell that had injured them. Such traumatic separations are all too common. They were expressing the wish that the shells had fallen directly on their heads so that all of them had died together.

To many of the people of Wanni, it came as an unbelievable shock that the LTTE not only threatened to shoot those attempting to flee towards the army-controlled area, but actually did so, sometimes below the knee, but at other times to kill, and sometimes subjected fleeing civilians to mortar-fire. The military men on the front lines saw this with their own eyes and understood that, contrary to the view frequently held by their superiors and the propaganda of the nationalistic media on both sides, the civilians of Wanni were just as human as anybody else. This is perhaps the greatest contributory factor to the mellowed approach by the military in the handling of refugees.

When in a corner, the LTTE has on several occasions over the years strained towards collective self-immolation of the Tamils by massacring Sinhalese, as it did 21 Sinhalese peasants in Inginiyagala on 21 February in an attempt to provoke mass reprisals.

In response to international pressure arising from mounting civilian casualties, the government on 21 January established a safe zone atThevipuram, starting two miles east of PTK, lying north of the Mullaitivu-Paranthan Rd. From 21 to 29 January, this zone experienced intense shelling by the army resulting in several civilian casualties. It quickly became an international issue, prompting the Indian foreign minister’s hurried visit. There is also a different side to it.

Injured civilians have testified that after they moved to safe zones, the LTTE moved in with them and opened fire sometimes standing among them. A senior man in the education field also stated that the LTTE positioned itself next to schools and hospitals and launched artillery attacks on the military. Residents at Thevipuram said that the government’s counter artillery attacks were so accurate that they generally went over them eastwards towards the area from which the LTTE originally launched shell attacks and then vamoosed. Many civilians who were crowded into the safe zone received shrapnel injuries from shells exploding towards the eastern boundary.

Although one is usually sceptical about defence ministry reports, LTTE artillery positions as shown on its web site (defence.lk, 1/31/2009) are in fair agreement with civilian testimony above. The reality was that neither the LTTE nor the army did much harm to each other, but the civilians sustained enormous harm. The army returning the fire served no purpose, proportionate or otherwise. To quote from HRW, “having declared the area a safe zone for civilians, the SLA encouraged civilians to go to the area, increasing the vulnerability of civilians in the event of an attack...all feasible steps must be taken to distinguish between military targets and civilians, the weapons used must be able to discriminate between the two”.

One cannot, thus, on the evidence charge the army with premeditated killing or maiming of Tamil civilians, but it could have acted with greater imagination and restraint. It also raises a problem the south needs to deal with. We have cases of civilians escaping from the LTTE to the army-zone being shelled by the army while on the road. The soldiers would have been more restrained in responding to provocation had the civilians been Sinhalese, for the fear of hitting their kin. The Tamils are, aliens to them. Through this experience, the Tamils would continue to see the army as an alien, Sinhalese army.

Further, there has been too much politics and posturing with safe zones. Following the Indian FM’s visit, which was occasioned by firing into the Thevipuram safe zone, the president announced, “For all those civilians, I assure a safe passage to a secure environment.” A 48 hour grace period was announced. Questioned by LAKBIMAnEWS, the defence secretary confirmed that there was no ceasefire, just ‘an opportunity for the LTTE to send the civilians out to the safe zones.’ It was back to square one, to the same safe zone, the shelling of which was the original problem.

On 12 February, the government announced a new safe zone, a 7 and half mile stretch of the sea coast east of PTK, remarking that the LTTE had moved its heavy weapons into the Thevipuram zone. It did not rescind the safe zone status of Thevipuram. The people were neither asked to move to the new zone nor given a time frame. The people, including the old and infirm, had gone through a lot of trouble to settle down in Thevipuram. After the abandonment of Killinochchi hospital, several temporary hospitals were established to treat the rising toll of injured, including three around Thevipuram. Puthukudiyiruppu hospital, too, had to be moved to Puthumaththalan after the defence secretary had said that all outside the safe zone would be regarded as LTTE. Surely, these movements require reasonable time?

How another safe zone could solve the problem is also unclear. There is nothing to stop the LTTE moving artillery into any zone. Further, safe zones do not provide relief for an estimated one third of the civilian population sheltering everywhere in bunkers, because the LTTE blocked their entry. In the interest of the civilians, diplomacy and exposure of the LTTE’s conduct should have been tried to the utmost. That, too, became difficult when the UN and ICRC were constantly being abused by the government and its supporters as LTTE agents for reporting the civilian plight. Were the people’s safety the main concern, any inaccuracy in their reporting ought to have been sorted out amicably.

India and the international community would do far more good by pressing the government to take concrete and coherent measures to protect civilians and the hapless rank and file of the LTTE, rather than by futile ritual demands for both the government and LTTE to respect humanitarian norms. The government, too, ritually repeats its supposed policy of zero civilian casualties. Civilian protection is a challenge to be undertaken despite the obduracy of the LTTE leadership.

In what is being hailed as the eve of absolute military victory, we must guard against an alarming trend. The euphoria contrived is being used to crack down on democratic dissent in the south as well as the north-east. The country watches in disbelief as the assassination of Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunge is followed by vindictive police harassment of the elderly Mr. R. Sampanthan MP and N. Vithyatharan, who piloted Jaffna’s Uthayan newspaper through daunting vicissitudes. Hate campaigns on state media are the standard fare accompanying harassment. Witch hunting in place of generosity at this time, portends smallness. It could easily transform hopes of victory into another long nightmare.

(Rajan Hoole and Sritharan are Martin Ennals award winning human rights activists of the fiercely independent University Teachers for Human Rights.(J) which they co – founded.)