Within the last three months, 6,500 Tamil civilians have been killed, 14,000 have been injured and almost 200,000 have been forcibly detained in military-run camps by the Sri Lankan government as part of its campaign to annihilate the separatist Tamil Tigers (LTTE). In its most recent attempt to address this situation, the UN Security Council has demanded that the LTTE simply surrender to the Sri Lankan government. Regardless of one’s opinion of the LTTE, the idea that it would be willing to surrender under the present circumstances is ludicrous. As the Country Director of a prominent international NGO* put it, “asking the LTTE to lay down arms – really stupid – why not just ask them to shoot themselves in the head?” His comment was probably an understatement.
Because it suspects that any one of them could have connections to the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government is holding virtually every civilian who emerges from the war zone indefinitely in “barbed-wire internment camps” in which there are “regular rapes and killings”, according to Medico International, “enforced disappearances” according to Human Rights Watch and “overcrowding, malnourishment, dehydration and limited medical facilities” according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Admitted LTTE members would almost certainly be subjected to even more egregious abuses at the hands of the worst human rights violator in South Asia. It is therefore unsurprising that LTTE members, regardless of their ideology, would prefer a relatively quick death via explosion or cyanide capsule rather than surrender and risk being tortured, raped, starved and/or imprisoned prior to being killed.
While the US’s suggestion that the LTTE surrender to a third party is more reasonable, it is also completely unrealistic. In a recent interview, Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary made it clear in no uncertain terms that Sri Lanka would never consider such a proposal, stating that the US “should be ashamed of that kind of request. We will not hand [LTTE members] over to anybody.”
If the international community is genuinely committed to ending the fighting in Sri Lanka, it needs to take practical steps, such as invoking the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and deploying an international monitoring mechanism, in order to create conditions in which both sides would be forced to agree to a ceasefire.
*Name has been withheld to protect the individual’s safety.