Monday, Feb 03, 2003
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By V. S. Sambandan
A front organisation for the LTTE, the Independent Students Consortium,``summoned school principals and ordered them not to release any children to Colombo,'' the Sunday Times reported today. As part of the 55th Independence Day celebrations on February 4, the Government, which is engaged in peace negotiations with the LTTE, was planning to bring 1,000 children from the north, the newspaper said. The reasoning by the LTTE front organisation for the ban was that "the Government was trying to give a false impression that the people in the north were also celebrating the Independence along with the people in the south,'' it reported. According to other reports reaching Colombo, the LTTE front organisations had also asked the Tamil Government officers in the north to wear black bands on February 4, marking "the continued neglect of humanitarian issues by the Government.'' The hardened position comes just ahead of a shortened fifth round of peace talks to be held in Berlin between February 7 and 8. The talks, originally scheduled for four days in Thailand, were shifted to the German capital, against the backdrop of differences of opinion over the de-escalation of the northern Jaffna peninsula. Peace talks began last September but after a relatively easy run, which included a nod by the Tigers to jointly explore federal models with the Government to find a solution to the decades-long separatist conflict within a united Sri Lanka, the parleys have run into difficulties. While the LTTE wants de-escalation from the northern military zones, the Army has linked any such move to rebel disarming and de-commissioning. This position was rejected by the Tigers as "paranoid'' and ``intransigent.'' Since last year's ceasefire agreement, the Government also embarked upon programmes linking the Tamil majority north and the Sinhalese majority south. While link programmes involving the two communities did not witness any hurdle, the most symbolic one of a northern participation in the Independence Day events has reportedly been banned. The LTTE front organisation had "no objection'' to students travelling to the south under the link programme, but it held the view that "the Independence granted in 1948 could not be considered as Independence granted for the minority Tamils,'' the newspaper reported. The Sri Lankan crisis is seen as one that blew up largely because of its unitary constitution. State policies relating to language and employment sparked the conflict, which was aggravated by the advent of Tamil militancy in the mid-1970s. Sharp rivalry between the two main Sri Lankan political parties, the failure of parliamentary politics to deliver on the power sharing agreements between Tamil parties and governments of the day have widened the divide. An attempt by the President, Chandrika Kumaratunga, to change the constitution, providing for greater devolution of powers failed with lack of parliamentary support.
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