Sri Lankan Muslims oppose ties with Israel

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, JULY 10. Sri Lanka's main Muslim party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), has protested the Kumaratunga Government's recent re- establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel.

Sri Lanka resumed diplomatic ties with Israel last year,but it was only last week that the Israeli envoy to Thailand presented credentials to the President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga, for simultaneous accreditation to Sri Lanka.

The SLMC, whose walk-out from the People's Alliance Government last month plunged the coalition into crisis, has described the resumption of diplomatic relations as an act of ``ideological bankruptcy'' by the Government.

``(It) reveals the duplicity of the Government in its claim of advocating peace while implementing the agenda for prolonging the civil war,'' the SLMC leader, Mr. Rauff Hakeem, said in a press release.

The decision to resume diplomatic relations with Israel was taken last year in the aftermath of the military debacle against the LTTE at Elephant Pass, when the Government had to go on an emergency arms-shopping spree. Israel was one of the sellers.

A Sri Lankan mission began functioning in Tel Aviv soon after. But it took more than a year for Israel to put its envoy to Colombo in place. A previous attempt by the Israeli Ambassador to Bangkok to become accredited with the Sri Lankan Government a few months proved unsuccessful, and he went back without meeting the President. The recent exit of the SLMC from the PA might have made it easier for the Government to welcome the envoy this time.

Although Sri Lanka resumed diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv only last year, it has bought arms from Israel for more than a decade, and some of its elite security forces were trained by the Israelis. However, the protests from Muslim pressure groups began only after formal resumption of ties.

Colombo tentatively reopened its doors to Israel in 1985, allowing them to operate an ``interests section'' from the U.S. Embassy. But that too was discontinued in 1990.

Woman raped

As Tamil political parties protested the rise in sexual violence against Tamil women by the Sri Lanka military personnel, yet another rape case was reported in the Jaffna peninsula.

A 42-year-old woman in Kodikamam has lodged a complaint with the army and police that two armed men in uniform had dragged her out of her house and raped her.

A government press release claimed initial investigations had revealed the sexual assault to be a ``deliberate attempt by the LTTE to discredit the army'', and to disrupt the resettlement of displaced people in the Thenmarachchi area.

The incident came two weeks after the rape of a Tamil woman at a checkpoint in the capital. The woman and her husband were stopped at the checkpoint in the early hours of the morning. The woman was raped after the policemen and soldiers at the checkpoint sent off her husband to buy tea for them. At an identification parade on Monday, the victim identified a police constable as one of the persons who assaulted her.

Tamil political parties organised a shut-down last Friday to protest the incident, as well as those before it, including, the rape of three women in Mannar earlier this year. The protest paralysed all of the north-east and some parts of Colombo too.

In a statement today, the Tamil United Liberation Front said the armed forces seemed to have taken the success of the strike as ``a challenge and got involved in another gang rape incident in Thenmarachchi within four days of this massive hartal''.

It demanded expeditious and exemplary punishment for the culprits. `Unless very severe and deterrent punishment is meted out to the assailants, incidents of this nature will be on the increase''.

It was incidents of this nature that had driven the Tamil parties to support an opposition no-confidence motion against the government, the statement added.

The TULF also condemned the arrest and detention of an undergraduate student of Jaffna University, and demanded his immediate release.

This is the first time in Jaffna's troubled history that the university has been shut down. Since January this year, the institution had become the centre point for an anti- government protest movement launched by the students called ``Pongu Tamil''.

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Section  : International
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