COLOMBO, 22 September 2005 — Sri Lanka yesterday extended a state of emergency imposed in the wake of the August assassination of is foreign minister, a murder the government blames on Tamil Tiger rebels though it has yet to find proof.
The state of emergency gives government and police special powers to detain suspects and deploy troops if need be. The move comes as ties between the state and the Tigers are at their lowest ebb since a 2002 cease-fire halted two decades of civil war.
Slain Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar’s killers are still at large. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) deny any involvement — a denial analysts dismiss as a stock disclaimer.
“The motion to extend the emergency powers was passed in parliament,” speaker of the house W.J.M. Lokubandara told lawmakers.
The month-long extension also comes as Sri Lanka heads into a Nov. 17 presidential election, which will help set the course of the island’s future security and economic policies.
Left-of-center Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse is set to face off against his right-of-centre predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe in a Nov. 17 vote seen too close to call.
Rajapakse, popular with the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, has aligned himself with hard-line Marxists and monks who detest the Tiger rebels, fervently opposes privatization and has vowed to nurture local business to take on fast-growing foreign competitors.
The Marxists and the monks both want Rajapakse to take a tough line in a bid to turn the truce into a permanent end to the ligering ethnic war. They also want him to ditch plans to share tsunami aid with the Tigers, a demand that has angered the rebels.
Sri Lanka’s main donors stepped into the fray on Monday, urging the government and the Tigers to preserve the truce and halt a rash of killings that culminated in Kadirgamar’s assassination amid a silent war the military and the rebels each blame on the other.
Meanwhile, public transport came to standstill and offices, schools and banks remained shut in Sri Lanka’s embattled northeast yesterday as Tamil residents protested a heavy military presence in the region.
The one-day work stoppage in the district of Trincomalee, 260 km northeast of Colombo, was called by a pro-Tamil Tiger local organization demanding a withdrawal of security forces, police said.
A large number of government troops have poured into the area following stepped up clashes between rival ethnic groups since May.
Tension has been rising in eastern and northeastern parts of Sri Lanka since a split in the LTTE in March last year. The Tigers have accused the Colombo government of supporting their rivals, a claim denied by the military.
The government in turn has accused the LTTE of killing hundreds of rivals and intelligence operatives despite the Norwegian-arranged truce.
More than 60,000 people have been killed in Sri Lanka’s separatist conflict since 1972.
