Sri Lanka ’s Wild East Plans First Vote in Over 10 Years

[Harold Schiffman]

 March 10, 2008
Sri Lanka's Wild East Plans First Vote in Over 10 Years

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

VAVUNATHIVU, Sri Lanka — Lawless, contested, notorious for a string of
abductions and unsolved killings, this region has long been known as
the Wild East of Sri Lanka. For years, the guerrilla army known as the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had the run of the place, only to be
driven out last summer by the military, with help from a breakaway
Tamil rebel faction. The houses here are still battered from the
fighting. Its people are still rattled from having to run. On Monday,
voters here and across the region will go to the polls in the first
local elections in a dozen years. Beyond deciding who will serve in
local posts, the vote stands to demonstrate whether, after 25 years of
civil war, the government can restore a semblance of normality for the
area's ethnic Tamil majority.

Questions remain as to whether the election will be free and fair, or
simply a means for the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to
consolidate its hold on the region through its ally, the breakaway
faction that helped push the Tamil Tigers out. That faction has now
reinvented itself as a political party, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai
Pulikal Party, or T.M.V.P., and has been endorsed by the government.
Until recently, T.M.V.P. gunmen openly patrolled the East. The group
is accused by human rights organizations, as well as United Nations
officials, of recruiting child soldiers. Many people are fearful, and
critics worry that the party will browbeat or ballot-stuff its way to
an election victory.

Some opposition politicians have refused to run, fearing retribution.
Amnesty International reported last week that a man had been abducted
after having refused to run on a T.M.V.P. ticket. Today, the
T.M.V.P.'s heavily barricaded political offices are festooned with
their party symbol, a boat, along with garish murals dedicated to
their slain fighters. "Vote for the Boat," goes one slogan. "It will
ferry the wounded Tamils to the shore." Oddly enough, the faction's
leader, the former Tamil Tiger commander known as Karuna, is not on
these shores. He was detained in Britain last year on charges of
traveling with a forged passport.

The T.M.V.P. itself is hardly safe from violence. On a Sunday morning
in February, a suicide bomber attacked a village not far from here,
killing two T.M.V.P. workers who had tried to frisk him for weapons
near the site of an election meeting. The government swiftly blamed
the Tamil Tigers. Neither the T.M.V.P. nor other Tamil parties that
oppose the Tigers have laid down their arms. The pro-Tiger party is
not fielding candidates in these elections, saying they would not be
not safe. Paffrel, an independent monitoring group, has called on all
political parties to disarm. In February, it issued a report saying
that while law and order had improved in the weeks leading up to the
elections, several political parties and community leaders had told
its observers that the presence of armed men was "an obstacle to free
and fair elections." Its observers found little enthusiasm for voting
for particular candidates.

Likewise, a pre-election assessment by the Center for Policy
Alternatives, a nonpartisan research organization in the capital,
Colombo, found a climate of fear and cynicism among civilians. "Many
felt that the elections will not drastically change the ground
situation," said its report, released in mid-February. "The only
change envisaged is that the T.M.V.P. and other armed actors will be
elected into office and claim legitimacy for their role and activities
in the area." Several accusations of coercion and violence have been
made in recent weeks. Last week, two men on a motorcycle told women
leaving a political meeting of the Eelam People's Revolutionary
Liberation Front, a rival of the T.M.V.P., that their husbands would
not live if they voted for the Liberation Front, according to the
party's leader, Erasaiyah Thurairatnam.

Elsewhere, Mr. Thurairatnam said, armed cadres entered a party office
and verbally threatened its workers. A member of another party, he
said, was roughed up near a T.M.V.P. office a few days earlier.
"People are not in a mood to vote," Mr. Thurairatnam said. He said he
feared that the results would be rigged. His party was hardly sitting
idle. On a recent day, a large group of women bearing parasols in the
midday sun marched through the narrow roads of nearby Batticaloa,
stumping for their candidate. A woman with a bullhorn brought up the
rear. "We think this election has been imposed on us," she announced,
and went on to urge people to vote.

The candidate, Sellapillai Asirvithan, in a crisp white shirt and
traditional wraparound loongi, knocked on doors and handed out
leaflets. "Exercise your democratic right," a supporter bellowed
through the bullhorn. "You have the right to vote for the candidate of
your choice." Atanidas Arulanatham, poring over one of the leaflets,
said he and his wife planned to vote. Asked whether people would be
able to choose freely, he laughed. "Not sure," was all he would say.
"We hope those who win will bring peace."

Here in Vavunathivu, a T.M.V.P. candidate named Jegannathan Jeyaraj
sat under a wide-armed tree in the courtyard of a Hindu temple, making
his case. Once a child soldier, he later studied computers in India
and is now trying to make it as a politician.He told his audience that
his party had given up hope for an independent ethnic Tamil homeland
and had renounced armed struggle (though not yet their weapons, for
fear of attacks by their rivals). He pledged economic development for
the area. And he branded as terrorists his former masters, the Tamil
Tigers, whom he had joined at age 7.

The audience kept quiet, except for a very old woman. "I cultivated
three acres and got nothing because of the war," she told him.
"The past is past," he replied. "The T.M.V.P. will pave a new way."
Undeterred, the woman wagged a finger. "You admit you broke away from
the L.T.T.E.," she said. "Why are you blaming them now?" Then,
finally, she said the unspeakable: "Why don't you ask the government
to give us a separate state?"  Sri Lankan soldiers stood at the edge
of the meeting, machine guns at the ready. Clumps of young men wearing
T.M.V.P. jerseys stood in the shade. Asked if she planned to vote, a
woman sitting in the crowd nodded. Asked if she felt free to vote her
conscience, she shook her head and quietly said, "No." She smiled and
looked down at the ground, refusing to say more.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/world/asia/10lanka.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

[Moderator's note: "Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal"  translates as
"Tamil People's Liberation Tigers" which differs only slightly
from the LTTE, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam".  (hs)]
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