Fears of mass suicide as Tamil Tigers face final defeat

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6301821.ece

May 17, 2009

Fears of mass suicide as Tamil Tigers face final defeat

Rebel leaders make historic offer to disarm as Sri Lankan troops close in to end

25 years of civil war and threaten more slaughter on the battlefield

Marie Colvin

THE satellite call came in the early hours of yesterday. The Tamil Tiger leader

was desperate. For the first time in their decades-long struggle against the Sri

Lankan government, the rebels were offering to lay down their weapons in return

for a guarantee of safety.

" Don't say surrender, " insisted the leader, speaking calmly, despite the obvious

desperation of the few survivors of the once ferocious Liberation Tigers of

Tamil Eelam (LTTE), now cornered in an area roughly the size of Hyde Park with

tens of thousands of civilians.

It was the sound of defeat. After more than 25 years, the civil war in Sri Lanka

was over. The only question was whether it would end in an ordered fashion or a

bloodbath.

The Colombo government was already triumphant. Just hours later the Sri Lankan

president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was claiming outright victory.

" I will be going back to a country that has been totally freed from the barbaric

acts of the rebels, " he announced. " My government with the total commitment of

our armed forces has finally defeated the rebels militarily. " Despite his

claims, shelling continued last night.

So desperate have the Tamils become that they have threatened a mass suicide.

Each fighter carries a cyanide pill for such circumstances. They also have a

network of underground cells throughout the government-controlled parts of the

country which they threatened to activate if their leadership is wiped out.

Yesterday, I was given a vivid insight of what may be the final hours of the

rebel leadership as they desperately tried to get a message to Washington and

London.

Heavy shelling in the area, which the Sri Lankan government designated as a

no-fire zone, continued yesterday according to doctors and independent

witnesses. The government in Colombo denied shelling the area.

A doctor in the enclave said yesterday that between 2,000 and 3,000 bodies were

lying unburied there, including 100 killed yesterday morning. He said a " stench

of death " hung over the area.

" We need a pause from the continued cannon and mortar fire to treat the

wounded, " he said. " The seriously wounded are being allowed to die without

medical attention. "

The doctor and others fleeing the zone said families had been trapped in bunkers

for all of last week, unable to get food or water. " All the people are in

bunkers and there are bodies lying in the streets, " said another witness reached

by satellite telephone. " The wounded are lying without care. "

He said the Sri Lankan army had begun shelling at 4.30am yesterday, Sri Lankan

time, and fierce bombardment continued throughout the day. Families were trapped

in makeshift bunkers, little more than trenches scraped into the sand. " Please,

we are saying to the world, please help us. "

Military officials in Sri Lanka also appeared to be anticipating a victory.

" They [the LTTE] are slowly giving up. They are blowing up whatever arms and

ammunition they have, " said Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman.

What appears to be an imminent defeat is unlikely to bring peace to Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Tigers have sleeper cells throughout the country, and are likely to

return to suicide bombings and guerrilla hit-and-run tactics that they have used

to devastating effect in the past.

As the day went on, and evidence of a decisive government victory became

clearer, the calls from Tamil leaders grew more and more desperate. In an

apparently final message late yesterday, there was a sense of panic.

Balasingham Nadesan, the head of the Tigers' political wing, spoke on one of the

few satellite phones left to the crushed rebel army. " We are ready to lay down

our arms if the Americans or British can guarantee our safety, " he said. " There

will be a tragedy if no one helps us. "

Until earlier this year, the Tigers ran what was essentially a mini-state in the

north of the country, with its own arsenal of tanks, small planes, ships and a

civilian police force.

" They said to me if they don't have an answer within 24 hours then they will not

be able to go on fighting, " said Selvarasa Pathmanathan, who is based outside

Sri Lanka and was given authority by the Tamil Tigers' leader, Velupillai

Prabhakaran, to negotiate because of the difficulty of sending messages from the

island.

" Then they have only one way - they will take cyanide pills. They will not

surrender to torture by the Sri Lankan army. That is 10,000 people - the

fighters, their wives and children. Please, ask the Americans and British,

please try to stop this. "

Most of that weaponry, which once made the LTTE one of the most feared and

disciplined insurgent groups in the world, is now gone, destroyed in the months

since the breakdown of a ceasefire in January 2008.

Since then the Sri Lankan army has relentlessly pursued a massive offensive that

has pushed the Tamil Tigers to their tiny last redoubt and, according to United

Nations figures, killed 7,000 civilians and wounded 16,700.

In a pincer movement early yesterday, the 58th and 59th divisions of the Sri

Lankan army battled their way from the north and south to meet at the village of

Vellamullivaikkal on a beach of white sand, cutting off the Tamil Tigers from

their last escape route across the Indian Ocean. It was the first time in

decades - almost since the Tamil revolt began in 1983 - that the entire coast of

the island, a former British colony, had been controlled by its government.

Nadesan offered clear terms for an end to the fighting, acknowledging that the

Tigers were coming from a position of weakness, but he insisted to me his

proposals would lead to a negotiated end to this carnage-filled phase of the war

and would avoid a bloodbath.

The LTTE was offering to lay down its arms to a third party, possibly the United

Nations, and wanted a guarantee from the Americans or British that its fighters

would not be harmed. They wanted protection from the Sri Lankan army where they

were, rather than seeking safe passage to another country.

Tamil sources said the LTTE wanted the guarantee to cover about 50 of its

leaders and about 1,000 lower level cadres who were the last foot soldiers of

the once feared Tigers.

Rumours flew yesterday that Prabhakaran had died or fled the country, but LTTE

sources denied that, saying he was sheltering in a reinforced bunker. Later none

of the top leadership could be reached, even by senior LTTE members outside the

conflict zone.

In that final call, there was still a message of defiance. " Any agreement must

be attached to a commitment to a political process that will guarantee the human

and political rights of the Tamil people, " Nadesan said.

He was holed up in a bunker in the tiny corner of Mullaitivu, in the northeast

of the Vanni, the LTTE's last toehold. With the Tigers' leaders and fighters

were tens of thousands of trapped civilians - nobody yesterday knew the number,

although the UN estimated civilians in the enclave numbered between 30,000 and

80,000.

The Sri Lankan army said the rebels were holding the civilians as human shields,

which the LTTE denied. It was impossible to verify the situation on the

battlefield because journalists and international observers have been banned

from the conflict zone by the Sri Lankan army.

The offer to disarm was passed on to both the United States and Britain. But it

may already have been too late. Vijay Nambiar, the chief of staff of the United

Nations secretary-general, was in India yesterday en route to Colombo to try to

stop the fighting. " My understanding is that there has already been large-scale

carnage, " Nambiar said by telephone.

He said he had gone to try to get access for the International Committee of the

Red Cross (ICRC) to the trapped civilians, but he did not hold out much hope. " I

think there is an unwillingness of the Sri Lankan government to accept a

surrender, " Nambiar said.

" My sense is that they want to push all the way to the end. I feel persuading

them to accept terms of surrender will be an uphill battle. "

Last week, the ICRC, the only international aid agency allowed access to the war

zone by the Sri Lankan government, tried unsuccessfully on three successive days

to land a ferry with relief supplies and evacuate the wounded. The fighting was

too intense to risk staff and civilians, said a member of the group. One ICRC

staff member was killed last Wednesday by shell fire.

Like the Tamil Tiger leadership, most of the civilians remaining in the area

were hunkered down in shallow bunkers dug by families in a desperate bid for

protection. The only working medical facility in the area - a school converted

to a clinic, where the few doctors and nurses remaining in the area had hung

intravenous lines from tree branches - closed last week when it was shelled for

a third time.

Men, women and children, desperate to escape, floated on tyres and makeshift

rafts across a lagoon to government lines. Men waded ashore in water-soaked

sarongs, women clutched children in T-shirts and shorts, and few had been able

to escape with more than a threadbare pillow case or plastic bag of belongings.

They were taken to internment camps set up by the Sri Lankan government. Colombo

faced international criticism about the camps because civilians were not allowed

visitors or to leave, and often lived in squalid conditions.

Few dared to cross yesterday as the fighting was too intense.

The fate of the Tamil Tigers was sealed in the past week. Since January 2008

when the peace process broke down, the Sri Lankan government decided to go for

an all-out military victory over the rebels. It was something that no government

had achieved since the Tamil Tigers began their military insurrection in 1983,

after years of persecution of the Tamil ethnic minority.

When the Tigers were encircled yesterday, they controlled only about a half

square mile inland, alongside a lagoon. They were surrounded by 50,000 troops.

Helicopter gunships added to the weapons hurled against them. The LTTE responded

with one of its own much feared weapons, suicide bombers, against the troops.

But the outcome was in little doubt.

International pressure for an end to the fighting has been mounting. " We have

called repeatedly for the violence to cease, " said Gordon Brown yesterday. " We

are backing UN efforts to secure an orderly end to the conflict. Sri Lanka must

understand that there will be consequences for its actions. "

President Barack Obama said the US was ready to work to end the conflict. " Now's

the time, I believe, to put aside some of the political issues that are involved

and to put the lives of the men and women and children who are innocently caught

in the crossfire, to put them first, " he said.

Rajapaksa, the president, was scheduled to head back to Colombo today from

Jordan, claiming victory on the eve of his departure.

He said he was returning as " a leader of a nation that vanquished terrorism " .

The president, whose brother is the defence minister who has spearheaded the

offensive, said his army " had finally defeated the LTTE militarily " .

Now that their military hopes are dashed, the fear in western capitals is that

the Tamil Tigers will again turn to terrorism. If the Tamil leadership goes

ahead with their threats of suicide will there be anyone left to negotiate with?