ON June 16, Sri Lankans in the Sinhalese-majority north-central Anuradhapura district buried their dead in a mass grave. A day earlier, at 7.45 a.m., a claymore landmine explosion killed the 60 persons, including women and children, in the worst massacre of civilians since the signing of the ceasefire agreement between the Liberation Tigers or Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government in Colombo in February 2002. A passenger bus, operated by the state-run Ceylon Transport Board, was heading towards Kebethigollawa, when it was blown up in the explosion, allegedly triggered by the LTTE.
As the gory cycle of violence continues, international attention on Sri Lanka is centred yet again on a critical question: Does the latest attack herald a return to direct confrontation between the government and the LTTE? The larger point missed in this broad question is that the June 16 massacre is a new nadir in the transformed nature of the confrontation between the rebels and the security forces. As the facilitator to the peace process, Norway, put it a day after the bombing of the bus, more than 500 people - Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims - have already been killed in months of continued violence across Sri Lanka, particularly in the north-east.
In its own way, the June-16 bombing - like the several incidents prior to the massacre, including the killing of Tamil youth in Trincomalee and a family in Jaffna and the sinking of a naval fast attack craft - would recede fast into yet another statistic. "The bodies are in pieces," military spokesperson Prasad Samarasinghe told Frontline soon after the incident. The intensity of the blast was such that the bus was thrown 20 metres off the road, the Army said. The authorities were unable to identify the victims. The bodies were buried in a mass grave. "They were all Sinhalese," the Army spokesman said.
As the numbers of the dead and wounded kept mounting to the final figure of 64 dead and 86 injured, the government commenced its "deterrent strikes" on "select LTTE positions". These "limited operations" mark the new terms of engagement between the government and the rebels since the April 25 assassination attempt on Army Commander Sarath Fonseka inside the Army headquarters in Colombo.
Hours after the landmine blast, fighter jets of the Sri Lanka Air Force took to the skies. The "selected targets" in LTTE-held areas were Mullaittivu in the north and Sampur in the east. The next day, areas around Kilinochchi in the north were among the targeted areas. There are no clear figures on the extent of damage caused by the state's deterrent strikes.
The government said it was convinced that the LTTE carried out the attack. "There is no iota of doubt that it is the LTTE," Keheliya Rambukwella, the spokesperson on security issues, told a press conference. Media Minister and government spokesperson Anura Priyadarshana Yapa described the attack as an "evil design by the terrorists to provoke a backlash". He appealed for domestic restraint and international support.
"The government appeals to all civilised people and the international community to take cognisance of such evil designs of terrorists and extend all the assistance and cooperation to the government at this crucial juncture," the Minister said.
The LTTE, for its part, denied involvement in the massacre and condemned it. It, instead, blamed the government for the carnage. The "reprehensible act of murders", an LTTE statement said, was "timed for the arrival of the LTTE delegation from Europe with the sole aim of blaming the LTTE." On June 15, an LTTE team led by its political wing leader S.P. Tamilselvan returned from Oslo after refusing to hold negotiations with the Sri Lankan government on the role and procedures of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, comprising Nordic truce monitors.
There has been international condemnation of the incident. India, the United States, Norway, Switzerland and France were among the countries that condemned the violence.
V.S. SAMBANDAN in ColomboCOMMents
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