The Sri Lankan government is threatening to execute Sarath Fonseka, the army commander who delivered victory over the Tamil Tigers, if he continues to suggest top officials may have ordered war crimes during the final hours of the civil war.
The threat, issued by Sri Lanka‘s defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is the latest sign of a bitter feud within the Sri Lankan political establishment, little more than a year after the end of the Tamil war.
Rajapaksa, who worked closely with Fonseka on the aggressive military strategy that crushed the Tigers and who is the brother of the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, told the BBC’s Hardtalk programme that the general had proved himself to be a liar and a traitor.
Fonseka resigned from the military soon after the defeat of the Tigers. He is an MP and was the main opposition candidate in January’s presidential election – winning 40% of the vote – but within days of his defeat he was arrested. The former war hero is in detention facing a court martial on charges of corruption and politicking while in uniform.
Fonseka roused the fury of the ruling Rajapaksa clan when he joined the opposition, a rift which deepened when he suggested there was eyewitness evidence of the defence secretary ordering army officers to shoot and kill surrendering Tamil Tiger leaders at the end of the war. That witness is said to be a Sri Lankan embedded journalist who is in hiding overseas. In a clandestine telephone interview, Fonseka confirmed that he had heard this account. He said he would be prepared to testify to an independent investigation of alleged abuses during the Tamil war. "I will not hide anything," he said.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa responded angrily to the prospect of Fonseka giving evidence. "He can’t do that. He was the commander!" Rajapaksa said. "That’s a treason. We will hang him if he does that. I’m telling you! … How can he betray the country? He is a liar, liar, liar."
The defence secretary also ruled out any possibility of an independent, third-party investigation of alleged war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers in the final phase of the war. "We are an independent country, we have the ability to investigate all these things," he said.
Colombo insists that no civilians were killed by the army during their final assault on the Tigers’ last redoubt, despite evidence from the UN and international NGOs which points to thousands of civilian deaths.
With a strong electoral mandate and a big majority in parliament, President Mahinda Rajapaksa seems intent on ruling postwar Sri Lanka without heed to critics at home or abroad. He has turned his administration into something of a family business. As well as his brother in defence, another brother is minister of economic development, another is speaker of the parliament, and his son is a newly elected MP. In all, the Rajapaksas are responsible for spending more than two-thirds of the state budget.
Sri Lanka’s budget deficit, at some 8% of GDP, is significantly above targets set by the IMF in return for a $2.6bn loan package, but the government is committed to a big programme of postwar spending.
In and around Kilinochchi, the former capital of the Tamil Tiger northern fiefdom, investment is essential. Houses are destroyed, farmland is lost to jungle and swaths of territory are off-limits to civilians as the army continues to clear mines.
The de facto internment camp at Menic Farm, which was filled with almost 300,000 Tamil civilians a year ago, is emptying fast. Every day, families line up for hours for buses heading to their home villages across the northern Vanni region. But they wait with precious little sense of expectation.
Thambirasa Karunamurthy, a farmer with three children, said: "We came here with one plastic bag of belongings and we’re going home with no money, no assets, nothing. We have to start life again in a barren land … we don’t know what we are going to do."
On every road and around every settlement, soldiers man guard posts and checkpoints. The government has promised to integrate the north into the national economy. It has ruled out significant Tamil autonomy.
"If there is no political solution, the conclusion will be that the government wants to impose military victory on the Tamil people, and that the Tamils will never accept," said the veteran leader of the Tamil National Alliance, Rajavarothiam Sampanthan.
He talks of "organising and resisting through non-violent means". But in the ruined villages of the north, resistance of any sort seems like a thing of the past.
The Tamil Tigers appear to have been finished for good. Those who were not killed in the war were rounded up and detained. Only a handful of fighters escaped. One of them, an LTTE bomb-maker now in hiding, denied reports that Tiger cadres forcibly held Tamil civilians in their last redoubt. Despite the evidence, he denied that the Tigers conscripted child soldiers, and silenced Tamil dissent. "You will see, within the next two or three years these very same Tamil people will begin a new armed struggle," he said. "A new war led by a new leadership."
"I am not afraid to die," he said, "but my only worry is that the Tamil people will slowly disappear."
Although the war is over, the government has not lifted the state of emergency. Authorities say Sri Lanka’s security is still at risk, whether it be from Tamil "terrorist organisations" overseas, or "traitors" at home.
"We want to bring normalcy to this country, but we have suffered from terrorism for 30 years, so it has to happen gradually," said defence secretary Rajapaksa.
Stephen Sackur’s Hardtalk on the Road series from Sri Lanka is on the BBC News Channel this week
The background
Sri Lanka’s government declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 19 May last year, ending a 25-year civil war. Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group have estimated that 30,000 civilians were killed in the final months of conflict, a charge the Sri Lankan government has denied.
Amnesty says 300,000 Tamils were displaced, detained in camps and denied access to aid during the closing months of the war. It also accused the Tamil Tigers of human rights violations, using civilians as human shields and using "threats and violence to prevent them from fleeing the conflict zone".
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