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The pull-out of an international expert group supervising a key human rights investigation has dented the credibility of the inquiry, said activists, but the government is confident the perpetrators will be brought to justice.

The International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), headed by former Indian chief justice P. N. Bhagwati, withdrew from its watchdog role on 31 March.

It charged that the Commission of Inquiry (COI) appointed by President Mahinda Rajapakse to investigate 16 high-profile incidents of rights violations in 2006 and 2007, failed to conform to international norms and standards. The IIGEP had experts from 11 countries: India, France, Indonesia, the US, Netherlands, Bangladesh, Canada, Cyprus, the UK, Australia and Japan.

One case heard

The move coincided with the termination of the one-year mandate given by Sri Lankan President Rajapakse to the 11-member IIGEP during which the COI took up only a single case, involving the murders of 17 employees of the international NGO, Action Contre La Faim. The 16 Tamils and one Muslim were killed in the eastern town Muttur in August 2006.

They were trapped in their office during fierce fighting between the security forces and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which is fighting for an independent state for minority Tamils in the island’s north and east. Over 60,000 people have died since the early 1980s in Asia’s longest running separatist conflict.

“We didn’t ask the IIGEP to leave. They had their reasons for going to which the COI and the attorney general’s department have put forward their own positions,” said minister of human rights and disaster management Mahinda Samarasinghe. “We still have confidence the COI will produce results. I’m as desperate as anyone else to show results, especially when I have to go before international forums.”

Alleged killers identified

The inquiry took a new turn when a rights organisation, the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR), released on 1 April the names of the alleged killers of the ACF workers, the result of its own investigations.

They included two Sinhalese police constables, special force officers of the navy and a Muslim home guard. It also accused senior police officials of covering up the murders.

The UTHR said if action had been taken against a particular senior police officer who was allegedly responsible for the January 2006 killings of five Tamil students in eastern Trincomale, the ACF murders may never have taken place. The murders of the five Tamil students, allegedly by the security forces, will also be taken up by the COI. “Both killings flowed from the same compulsion to kill young Tamils,” the UTHR report said.

ACF, which has criticised the COI’s slow pace, demanded that those named by the UTHR be served with criminal indictments immediately. However, the minister said the report had been referred to the defence ministry to ascertain if there was any culpability on the part of those named.

Witness Protection

Although Samarasinghe said the COI had replaced closed-door sessions with public hearings, human rights campaigners pointed out that one of the factors crippling the inquiry was the lack of an adequate witness protection system.

“For the government the COI is a showpiece for the international community, although there is no substantive progress being made,” said an activist who represents a civil society organisation that is closely following the COI proceedings and did not want to be named. “The IIGEP has been consistent in saying from last year that the process has not been moving forward, that witness protection is very weak, among other matters. Their assessment was that nothing was going to change.”

Scores of people killed by hit-and-run gunmen, unidentified bodies dumped in isolated places and people abducted in vans all over the island have been reported by various organisations and the media since the government renewed its military offensive against Tamil Tiger separatists in April 2006.

Figures vary

However, accurate figures are difficult to obtain and vary from source to source. International NGO Human Rights Watch has said at least 1,500 people, mostly Tamils living in the north and east where hostilities have been worst, have disappeared between 2006 and 2007.

Legislator Mano Ganeshan, who is also the convener of the Civil Monitoring Committee which documents disappearances and killings in and around the capital, Colombo, said there has been “a suspension” in the abductions and killings of minority Tamils in the area in recent months.

[Mano Ganesan MP]

“We can’t say the killings and disappearances have stopped, only that they have been suspended. People are disappearing, but their bodies are not being found,” he said, adding that his organisation lobbies diplomatic missions and international bodies to bring pressure on the government.

“We regret that the IIGEP left but if they had stayed, they would only have given credibility to the government,” he said.

Besides the withdrawal of the international experts, the ongoing ACF inquiry has been plagued with conflict of interest issues which have sometimes overshadowed the main proceedings.

The delays have some in the humanitarian aid community, like Jeevan Thiagarajah of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, an umbrella organisation of aid organisations, preferring that the allegations are examined in court. “Otherwise presumptions of innocence and guilt are being debated and pre-judged even before anyone is formally charged, proceedings begun, judgements delivered,” he pointed out.

“Ultimately justice is delayed and maybe denied. The bottom line is due process must work with the administration of justice swiftly,” Thiagarajah said.

Changing rainfall patterns in Sri Lanka have prompted later paddy planting by farmers and affected the country’s overall rice yield, government officials said.

Traditionally, rice farmers would begin planting in early October for the Maha harvest – the main growing season in the country.

However, variable rainfall in that month over the past two decades has pushed farmers to wait until the rains arrive, sometimes as late as the end of the month.

“For about 15 years we have noticed this. The farmers would wait till the rains arrive,” Dr B Poonyawardena, head of the Agro-climatology Division at the country’s Department of Agriculture told IRIN.

[Rain is the last thing a mature paddy field requires and can severely harm the quantity and quality of the harvest]

But now the Maha crop, generally harvested in February and traditionally a dry month, is falling in mid March.

“This year stronger than usual torrential rains in mid-March left the harvest even more vulnerable,” Poonyawardena said.

Heavy rains affect 400,000 people

According to the National Disaster Service Centre, heavy rains beginning on 12 March lashed the island nation, affecting close to 400,000 people in 10 districts.

“In some of these areas the rainfall was sometimes 70 percent higher than the usual,” S H Kariyawasam, the deputy director at the Department of Meteorology told IRIN, resulting in heavy flooding in Ampara, Mannar, and Batticaloa districts, as well as parts of the Polonnarauwa District – all major rice producing areas.

Sri Lanka produces around 3.3 million metric tons of rice annually, says the country’s Department of Census and Statistics.

But this year’s rains and the subsequent flooding destroyed about 2.5 percent of the total yield, Shantha Emithiyagoda, deputy director at the Agriculture Department noted.

“The problem is that this will add to the 10 percent shortfall between the harvest and local demand, making it 12.5 percent,” he said, referring to this year’s yield.

Rice price rising

This in turn has increased pressure on local market prices, and led to a drop in quality, Emithayagoda said.

“We would have to locate seed paddy for the next harvest and also there will be qualitative and quantitative effects on prices,” he explained, adding his department has already moved to locally procure six million kilogrammes of paddy seed for the next harvest.

Rice prices have already risen significantly over the past year due to a combination of factors, including high local demand and rising global prices.

Some varieties have recorded price gains of between 60 to 90 percent in the retail market, according to the Census and Statistics Department.

Limited understanding of climate change

Meanwhile, researchers and experts worry that limited scientific studies on climate change and local harvests have prevented them from gaining a proper handle on the situation.

“Obviously, there have been changes to the harvesting due the changing rains over the years,” Nalin Munasinghe, programme associate at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Colombo said.

[A Sri Lankan farmer stands near his paddy field in the country's eastern Trincomalee District-pic by Amanatha Perera]

But planting delays in October may be an indication that the farmers have already begun adjusting. “They may not have the scientific knowledge, but they feel the practical changes and that may be one reason why the planting is delayed,” he said.

One solution being suggested is to use sturdier rice varieties, rather than trying to tinker with planting patterns.

“Most paddy cultivations are on low level fields and excess water flows over those fields. One way (to get over this) is by selecting suitably tolerable paddy varieties for floods,” Gunawargana Banda Giragama, research fellow at the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute said.

“If there are warnings of bad weather the crop can be harvested even two weeks before maturity. But it should be consumed as early as possible. It is difficult to store for longer durations,” he added.

The last 18 years of Kanavathipillai Thangarasa’s life have been in constant flux. The 62-year-old man and his family have been displaced from their home on numerous occasions since 1990 by fighting in eastern Sri Lanka between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

[Children in front of the shelters they live in in Ichchanthivu, Batticaloa District]

In 1991, his 15-year-old son disappeared while travelling to the capital, Colombo, 330km from his native village Vavunathivu in Batticaloa District. The strain of those years shows on Thangarasa’s face, which is dominated by wrinkles and heavy-set eyes.

“All we have ever wanted is peace, to live like anyone else without fear of having to run in our night clothes,” he told IRIN. Like many in his village and thousands of others in eastern Batticaloa District, Thangarasa hopes the latest phase of eviction and resettlement is the last of his lifetime.

Thousands fled and returned to villages like Vavunathivu and Vakari, further north of Batticaloa town, within a span of six months in 2007 when fighting flared up. They remain nervous about their economic futures.

“A year ago I was either living my life in a bunker or running from shell fire,” Nalathambi Shanthi, a 23-year-old woman from Vakarai, said. “Today, I am living in a house but still unemployed.”

Resettlement plans

Signs of over a decade and a half of fighting are evident. “There are still big holes in the walls of my house,” Thayabaran Premila, a 29-year-old mother of three from Uriyankettu village in Vakarai, said.

The last harvest was one of the first in recent times that allowed farmers in the newly resettled areas to cultivate without fear of war. “The last crop was good because we could sell the paddy at a high price,” 29-year-old Sinnathambi Wimalendran from Vavunathivu said, noting that rice prices were high throughout the country.

[Villagers in Vakarai stand in front of their home, which still bears the marks of fighting-pic: Sanjaya Nallaperuma]

When fighting broke out between government forces and the Tigers in early 2007, thousands of civilians fled villages like Vavunathivu and Vakarai, which were then under the control of the Tamil Tigers, to the relative safety of government controlled parts of the district.

By June 2007, government forces had chased out the Tigers from areas they held in the eastern district and a massive resettlement drive was launched. According to the Ministry of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services, 31,200 families (104,000 people) have been resettled in the district, with 27,000 of them, including the Thangarasa family, returning to Vavunathivu.

Lagging behind

Despite the mass resettlement, areas like Vavunathivu still lag far behind the rest of the country in development, according to economist Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, the author of the recent study Economy of the Conflict Region in Sri Lanka: From Embargo to Repression, published by the East West Center, in Washington, DC.

[A bicycle repair shop in Ichchanthivu, Vavunathivu which is doing brisk business due to a lack of public transport-pic: Amantha Perera]

“Newly settled areas have a long way to go,” he told IRIN. “They lack basic amenities and infrastructure such as proper houses, roads, electricity, water supply and telecommunications. Further, human resource development is at a very low level.”

“It is very important that jobs are created to ensure long-term sustainability of these areas,” Thandi Mwape, the head of the Batticaloa sub-office of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Several international organisations have launched programmes targeting people involved in fishing, home gardening and food crops in the newly resettled divisions of Batticaloa.

Roads need repair and houses, most of which still bear the tell tale signs of a protracted war, need rehabilitation.

Kick-start development

Mwape said the UN and other agencies provided transitional shelters during the resettlement and that government agencies were looking at ways to reconstruct permanent houses.

The government hopes the successful completion of elections on 10 February for nine bodies in the Batticaloa District, including those overseeing Vavunathivu and Vakarai, will kick-start localised development projects.

Each of the councils was allocated Rs 2.5 million (about US$23,000) by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the 20 March swearing-in ceremony in Colombo. “You now have to find solutions to their (voters) problems,” he told the newly elected members.

The Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), a breakaway faction of the Tamil Tigers, won control of all nine councils at the election, the first held since 1994.

The newly resettled families are eager to get back to normal productive lives. “My village is still overgrown and looks like a jungle,” Thangarasa said. “With half broken houses, flooded roads and people still living off handouts . . . it’s time for all of this to change.” [irinnews]