Monitor the monitors

Disturbing news comes from the East that a ceasefire monitor, a lawyer by profession, has filed a motion on behalf of two LTTE members, who had been taken into custody recently while abducting two school girls, and obtained bail for them. He as a lawyer, no doubt, has a right to appear for a client and obtain bail. But when he appears for the LTTE, which is a party to the ceasefire agreement which he is expected to monitor as a member of the Norway-led Monitoring Mission, his action invariably leads to serious doubts about his impartiality and thereby that of the Monitoring Mission, which he represents.

The Monitoring Mission has come under fire from various quarters for its failure to do effective monitoring and its alleged partiality towards the LTTE, which critics of the peace process say, is evident from the involvement of LTTE sympathisers like Eric Solheim in the peace process and the leniency the monitors has shown in dealing with serious ceasefire violations committed by the LTTE.

The abuse by Norwegian Ambassador Jon Westborg of his diplomatic immunity at the insistence of the Sri Lanka government a few months ago to help the LTTE import radio equipment sans taxes through the Colombo Port for its clandestine Voice of Tigers, has already dented credentials of impartiality of Norway and the Monitoring Mission led by it irreparably.

How the LTTE has taken the advantage of the indulgence and the alleged partiality of the monitors could be seen in the latest incident reported from the Eastern Province. As we reported yesterday some armed LTTE cadres had entered a government-controlled area and were checking a bus carrying pilgrims on the Kuchchuveli-Thiriyaya road when they were surrounded by the Navy. Refusing to surrender, the LTTE men had - true to form - threatened to commit suicide. This led to a stand-off, which continued late into Sunday night.

The Monitors wanted the LTTE cadres released despite gravity of the ceasefire violations they had committed. The government in the end had to agree to release them in exchange for a soldier who had been in LTTE captivity for two months and a constable the LTTE captured recently.

No government with an iota of self-respect would have agreed to this kind of swap. Neither the soldier nor the constable had committed a ceasefire violation. Neither of them was armed at the time they mistakenly ventured into LTTE-controlled areas. Even if they had, the LTTE had no authority to ‘arrest’ and ‘remand’ them as the LTTE ‘police’ and ‘courts’ are illegal. All what the LTTE should have done was to hand them over to the monitors.

When the government agrees to exchange the LTTE cadres for security personnel, it besides admitting its impotence to secure their release, indirectly accepts the authority of the LTTE to make such ‘arrests.’

The government committed a similar blunder a few months ago when it allowed the LTTE to obtain bail for two of its cadres who had been remanded over carrying illegal weapons in a government-controlled areas - a non-bailable offence - in exchange for six soldiers whom the LTTE abducted in retaliation. The LTTE cadres who were bailed out were ordered by the court to report to the Kanthalai police station every month. But to date, they have not done so!

The US, which is behind Sri Lanka’s peace process - its envoy in Colombo once called upon the Sri Lankan government to ‘shout down’ those who opposed the peace process - has sent 150 Special Forces troops to Colombia to help over 2,000 Colombian troops with the rescue of three CIA men held by FARC rebels. The US has also offered pounds 250,000 to anybody who would provide information on the three men. "The rebels are ruthless killers and deserve to be treated as such," President Bush is quoted as having in a report we reproduce from the Daily Telegraph today. So much for efforts made by governments with self-respect to rescue their men.

The government in view of the ceasefire cannot obviously launch offensives to rescue military personnel and policemen when they are abducted by the LTTE. But it must insist that the international communit, including the US, which urges it to negotiate peace with the LTTE, bring adequate pressure to bear on the LTTE to desist from ceasefire violations.