I wanted to write about Sri Lanka last week, but got side-tracked by the Burma cyclone, so forgive me for going back in time a few days now.
Karuna is accused of using child soldiers, torture and extortion
However, the news that the former Tamil Tiger commander Colonel Karuna will escape war crimes prosecution in Britain is, to put it mildly, profoundly disappointing.
Karuna, who had formed a hazy alliance with the Sri Lankan government after setting up a breakaway movement from the main LTTE four years ago, was jailed last December after he arrived in Britain on a Sri Lankan diplomatic passport with a false name on it.
The Sri Lankan government denies assisting him, although at his trial Karuna’s defence team alleged that the brother of Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the defence minister Gotabhaya Rajpaksa, provided him the documents.
That’s the unproven assertion of an alleged war criminal, but for what its worth my sources tell me that the passport was a genuine document. It was only the name on it that was fake.
So why isn’t Karuna being prosecuted for war crimes? The short answer is ‘lack of evidence’, even though the use of child soldiers, extortion, killing us and torture by members of the ‘Karuna faction’ and his political party the TMVP are increasingly well-documented.
Even the usually mild-mannered UN children’s fund (UNICEF) have joined those organisations accusing Karuna’s organisation of gross violations of human rights.
Such is the record of this man, that a British government minister (Kim Howells in May 2007) described him as “appalling”, adding in the House of Commons that “we believe Karuna and his faction to be responsible for extra-judicial killings, abductions, intimidation of displaced persons and child recruitment.”
You don’t need to know much about Karuna, his men and his methods to understand why people aren’t queuing up to give evidence against him.
But if you want a clearer idea why exiles in London won’t testify, then I suggest you read an article in the Independent on Sunday by Dan McDougall, a former colleague of mine in New Delhi who always dug out ‘real’ stories.
He relates in compelling detail how the now-routine abductions in Sri Lanka by Karuna’s agents lead to extortion and misery in London where gangs demand huge sums of money from diaspora Tamils for the return/safekeeping of their loved ones back home in Sri Lanka.
McDougall’s main interviewee is a 27-year-old Tamil called Ariyathas Pushpathas, whose brother and cousin were kidnapped in Colombo six months ago.
The perpetrators, he alleges, were Karuna agents with links to the Sri Lankan government’s security services. "The Karuna Faction are kidnapping young Sri Lankan men in Colombo as a business enterprise and targeting the same diaspora the Tamil Tigers have been milking,” says Pushpathas.
"The trouble is, the Karuna are now an extension of the Sri Lankan army. The question I want to know is: am I being extorted and threatened by government agents?”
Of course this extortion-funding is the kind of practice which led the Tamil Tigers and its charity front-organisations to be outlawed across the world, and which the Sri Lankan government continuously accuses the wider world of failing to do enough to stop.
Sadly the increasingly discredited government of Mahinda Rajapakse seems unable to apply the same standards to its new (former LTTE) friends like Col Karuna who are now serving a dirty purpose in their current war to “make extinct” the Tamil Tigers still fighting in the north.
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, put his finger right on the point, when he issued a statement expressing his disappointment that Karuna was apparently going to escape trial, and calling on British prosecutors to look again at the evidence.
“If he [Karuna] does leave, the Sri Lankan government should be preparing to prosecute Karuna should he return to Sri Lanka. Its failure to do so would only highlight its complicity in his recent crimes.”
But of course, the Sri Lankan government won’t dare (or want) to prosecute Karuna, which means his deportation from Britain is, for all practical purposes, a free pass. Justice is not being done.
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