| Sri Lanka |
| 'Two LTTE leaders were killed as they marched to surrender' |
| 2009-05-24 |
| LTTE's political wing leaders B Nadesan and S Puleedevan were gunned down by the Sri Lankan army as they came out holding white flags to surrender, according to a media report. Balasingham Nadesan was the head of the political wing of LTTE, while Seevaratnam Puleedevan was the chief of the Tigers' peace secretariat. "For several days I had been the intermediary between the Tiger leadership and the United Nations as the Army pressed in on the last enclave at the end of a successful military campaign to defeat the rebellion," a Sunday Times correspondent wrote. The correspondent quoted a Tamil, who was in a group that managed to escape the war zone, to describe what happened on the morning of May 18 when the two leaders were killed. This source, who later spoke to an aid worker, said Nadesan and Puleedevan walked towards the Sri Lankan army lines with a white flag in a group of about a dozen men and women. He said the army started firing machine guns at them. Nadesan's wife, a Sinhalese, yelled in Sinhala at the soldiers: "He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him." She was also shot down. According to the source, who is now in hiding fearful for his life, all in the group were killed. |
| Link |
| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lanka: troops enter rebel headquarters |
| 2009-01-02 |
| COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Sri Lankan soldiers fought their way into the Tamil Tiger rebel capital Friday for the first time in a decade, military officials said, following months of fierce battles on the outskirts that left scores dead. Troops entered the northern town of Kilinochchi from two sides, senior military officials told The Associated Press. The level of fighting inside the town remained unclear. The military had predicted Thursday that soldiers would seize the town within two days. The fall of Kilinochchi would be devastating to the separatist Tigers, who have had used the town as their political and military headquarters for the past 10 years and have created structures for an independent state, such as a police, courts, and tax offices. Recent government military offensives have forced the rebels out of much of their territory in the north of the Indian Ocean island nation. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised to crush the rebel group and end the nation's 25-year-old civil war this year. Senior Sri Lankan officials have said repeatedly over the past two months that Kilinochchi would fall soon, but troops became bogged down by heavy rains and fierce rebel resistance. The rebels could not immediately be reached for comment. But Tamil Tiger political leader Balasingham Nadesan told The Associated Press on Tuesday that they began as a guerrilla group and would be able to keep fighting even if they lost much of the territory they controlled in the north. Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said that 15 insurgents were killed in daylong fighting near the rebels' northeastern stronghold of Mullaitivu on Thursday. Thirteen soldiers were wounded in the battle, he said. The rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent homeland for the minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization by successive governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people. I wonder what the death toll would have been if they had just crushed the movement at the beginning. |
| Link |
| Sri Lanka |
| Tamil Tigers open to peace talks with Sri Lanka |
| 2009-01-01 |
| Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger separatists are open to restarting peace talks with the government, despite the continuing military offensive aimed at crushing the group, a senior rebel official said. A new military push deep into the rebel heartland in recent months has forced the Tamil Tigers to retreat from vast swaths of land they once controlled, and the government has said it expects to finish off the group in the coming months. Rebel political chief Balasingham Nadesan told The Associated Press the rebels did not believe they were facing imminent defeat. "We have made several strategic withdrawals in order to save the lives of our people and maintain the strength of our forces. When the time and place is conducive, we will regain the land we have lost," he said in an e-mail sent to the AP late Tuesday. Nadesan said the rebels had not abandoned hopes for new peace talks. "We have always been ready for peace talks, but the Sri Lankan government has been always insisting on a military solution," he said. Condition for peace: The government said it would only consider new peace moves if the rebels agreed to disarm. "For three decades we were trying to convince (rebel leader Velupillai) Prabhakaran and his terror group to come to some sort of reasonable arrangement, but they failed," Cabinet minister Keheliya Rambukwella said. If the group refuses to lay down its weapons, "we will not move an inch from our position," he said. Fighting across the north continued Wednesday, and the rebel-linked TamilNet website reported that air force jets bombed a village killing four civilians and wounding 13 others. Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said there were no airstrikes Wednesday morning. The latest government offensive has squeezed the rebels into an increasingly shrinking area in the northeast. Fighter jets have relentlessly pounded their strongholds and the military has closed in on the rebels' administrative capital, Kilinochchi Nadesan said the rebels remained confident they would not be driven out of their heartland, but implied that if they were, the conflict would continue anyway. "We are used to all types of wars," he said, adding that the Tamil Tigers began as a guerrilla group. "We will struggle on with the help of our people until their political aspirations are met." |
| Link |
| Sri Lanka |
| Sri Lanka's Tigers say no surrender despite setbacks |
| 2008-12-24 |
| Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers on Tuesday vowed to fight on even if they lose more territory inside the area they want to establish as a separate nation for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. In an e-mail interview from an undisclosed location in northern Sri Lanka, Balasingham Nadesan, political head of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), said the group's "freedom struggle does not centre on a town or a city". "Losing land and recapturing it is common. It is not the real estate that matters. Our freedom struggle will continue to create war towns until our struggle reaches its goal -- until we win," he said. He rejected President Mahinda Rajapaksa's precondition that the rebels surrender their arms before coming for peace talks, which the Tigers have offered. "A peace talk at this juncture would not be possible as government has asked the LTTE to lay down their arms and surrender," he said. Nadesan admitted the Tigers had faced some recent setbacks in the war, but said their options for fighting back included sabotage against Sri Lanka's $32 billion economy. "The destruction of the economy is also an aspect of our defensive war. When the economy of the government is destroyed, its genocidal war against the people will also be weakened," Nadesan said, without elaborating on what the LTTE may do. "We will teach a good lesson to the forces in this Kilinochchi battle," Nadesan said, adding, "We are waiting for the time, place and setting to launch a offensive.""Our military capabilities are intact and we have no difficulties in acquiring weapons," he said. "We have confidence and we will regain the swathes of land." Refugees: Separately, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday thousands of Tamils fleeing heavy fighting in the north of Sri Lanka were trapped by the government and being denied basic provisions. People who have fled areas under control of the LTTE rebels to seek safety in government-controlled regions are detained in army-run camps, the New York-based rights group said in a report. "Civilians are trapped in a war zone with limited aid because the government ordered the UN and other aid workers out," HRW's Asia director Brad Adams said "To add insult to injury, people who manage to flee the fighting end up being held indefinitely in army-run prison camps." HRW said the camps were short of shelter and sanitation. "The government's 'welfare centres' for civilians fleeing the Wanni are just badly disguised prisons," said Adams. "The sad irony is that many of those now detained by the government were fleeing LTTE abuses." |
| Link |