VALAICHCHENAI, Sri Lanka, 8 October 2007 — A petrified woman scrambles to hide at the sight of a van, fearing the return of her husband’s killers. A 20-year-old man won’t leave his home, in case the militants who tried to abduct him are lying in wait. Gangs of gunmen demand exorbitant “taxes” from businessmen.
Months after driving the Tamil Tiger rebels from eastern Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapakse told the United Nations on Sept. 25: “We have freed the eastern province from terrorism and restored law and order there.”
But people here tell a different story. Thirteen years of ruthless Tamil Tiger rule may be over, they say, yet killings, kidnappings and extortion continue to plague daily life as armed groups compete to control the territory.
In extensive interviews with The Associated Press, Sri Lankans describe a region paralyzed by fear, where gunmen shoot opponents in broad daylight, snatch new conscripts — some of them minors — from their homes and run a web of mob-like rackets to fund their militias.
“As far as the public are concerned, they are not liberated,” said S. Sugumadas, a 66-year-old peace activist in the eastern city of Batticaloa. The gunmen “still are taking ransoms, they are harassing people, they are abducting children.” The worst of the new tormentors are said to be a faction of former Tamil Tigers who joined the government’s fight against their old comrades and then replicated many of the rebels’ old tactics to cow the population.
The soldiers and police posted throughout the territory have done little to stop the violence, residents said. Their impression is that the government is unwilling or unable to confront the armed groups. The government denies it.
“Things cannot turn completely within 24 hours or 48 hours,” says government security spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella. “But certainly the law and order situation is improving. It is very much better. I am not saying that everything is perfect.”
Yet people are so afraid of retaliation from the militias for speaking out that many of those interviewed begged that their names be kept secret.
“If I talk, there can be danger to my children,” said one woman, who saw her husband killed by two masked gunmen in their courtyard in the coastal town of Valaichchenai on a May evening, well after the Tigers were pushed out of town.
The shooting underscored how freely the gunmen operate, while the aftermath showed how deeply terrorized the community is.
When the woman began screaming, her brother inside the house watching TV with her 8-year-old son begged her to stop so the gunmen wouldn’t come back. They waited half an hour before calling relatives to make sure the attackers were gone for good, she said.
They called the police to collect the body, by then sitting in a pool of blood on the light blue tile of the living room floor. The police refused to come, saying the house was not safe, the wife said. None of her relatives would drive the body to the morgue for fear the attackers might shoot them.
So she spent the night sitting over her slain husband’s body, mopping up his blood until police arrived more than 12 hours later.
The capture of the east this summer was a big military victory for the government after 24 years of fighting against the Tamil Tigers, who demand a homeland for the minority Tamil community in the north and east of this Indian Ocean island.
The Tigers still control a ministate in parts of the north, where they are engaged in near-constant fighting with government forces.
