Incredible Findings of Allan Rock on his Short Stop in Sri Lanka

SRI LANKA UNITED NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA Box 55292, 300 Borough Drive, Toronto, Ontario M1P 4Z7 Canada Website: www.sluna.org E-mail: sluna@idirect.com MEDIA RELEASE Re-issued on January 8, 2007

Allan Rock, the Special Advisor to the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, on a flying visit lasting ten days covering areas far apart as Colombo, Ampara, Batticaloa, Kilinochchi and Jaffna, has naively rushed to conclusions, making wild accusations of complicity by members of Sri Lanka’s Security Forces in the abduction and forced conscription of underage children by the Karuna Group which broke away from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2004, on mere hearsay presented to him.

Mr. Rock has obviously been influenced by the controversial Nordic SLMM (Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission) whose partiality towards the Tamil Tiger Terrorists has been demonstrated previously by their leaking information confidentially given to them of planned moves by the Sri Lanka Navy to apprehend a vessel smuggling weapons for the LTTE, proposing special sea lanes for movement of the LTTE’s Sea Tiger Naval Craft in Sri Lanka’s sovereign waters, blaming unknown third parties to shield the LTTE from serious acts of violence including their sinking of a Chinese owned cargo vessel chartered to carry essential commodities to the civilians in the the northern Jaffna peninsula.

The SLMM now claims that they too were aware of cooperation between the beak-away Karuna faction and the security forces, even though they did not raise the issue until now for reasons not given. The recent faux pas where the SLMM representative in Batticaloa area, one Tveitan, assumed that five youth who had been abducted had been taken by by Karuna’s men, where he sought the help of the Sri Lanka Army to have them released, only to find that the LTTE were the real culprits, as one of the abductees had later been released following the intervention by a senior LTTE cadre, is a case in point, that clearly shows the bias and incompetence of the SLMM. Whilst Rock’s main mission should have been to deal with the LTTE’s continued abduction of under age children and using them as frontline soldiers including suicide attacks, strangely, he was side- tracked by the SLMM and the Dollar scrounging foreign funded NGOs’ that are pretending to agitate for peace by attempting to vilify the government and prop up the terrorists.

Rock made some scanty remarks about the LTTE’s child recruitment referring to their assurance of taking steps to release all of their child soldiers by January 2007, whereas the LTTE has scoffed at the UN despite their earlier undertaking to take similar measures as per their pledge given to the UN’s Special Representative, Mr. Olara Otunnu. UNICEF went on to grant Rupees 30 million to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization ( which is an arm of the LTTE that funnels funds raised for supposed humanitarian work towards weapons procurement ) for construction of a few shabby half-way homes costing a fraction of the grant, which remained unoccupied, as only a token lot of children numbering around 35 were released at the outset and none thereafter.

UNICEF meanwhile recorded complaints in respect of over 5200 children who had been abducted by the LTTE since the signing of the CFA in February 2002. The UN’s failure to have the LTTE fulfill their prior undertaking to release their child soldiers is a serious black mark on the UN’s ability to effectively safeguard children, which Allan Rock conveniently ignored and instead attempted to divert attention to alleged acts of wrong doing by the government’s security forces which he based on mere hearsay or village gossip, which he blurted our loudly to the media.

It is not beyond the LTTE of planting such bogus stories through intimidation and threats to persons who are within easy reach of their grasp , as Mr. Rock and other Canadians are well aware that the Tamil Diaspora residing 10,000 miles away from the LTTE leader holed up in a bunker in the jungles of Mullaitivu are afraid to speak freely, let alone criticize the LTTE, as they fear that they and their relatives could be seriously harmed by the LTTE thugs spread around the globe.

The unsubstantiated allegations made by Allan Rock was about members of Sri Lanka’s Security Forces scouting for potential child soldiers in the predominantly Tamil villages in the east to be abducted by the Karuna Group which split up from the LTTE. He even went on to say that the government troops would take photos of potential child victims which were then passed on to Karuna’s men, who would then grab them from the care of the parents.

How naïve could Allan Rock be to sell such absurdities, because Karuna led LTTE fighting units from 1976 to 2004, and does not need to have any party scout for him in Tamil villages as he knows the terrain including the surrounding jungles better than anyone else. Rock may fool other naïve persons in the UN and international community, but he cannot fool knowledgeable observers who understand the ground situation.

According to UNICEF and HRW, Karuna released nearly 2000 child recruits in his ranks at the time he broke off from the LTTE. UNICEF now reports that Karuna has since recruited about 185 child soldiers. The government’s security forces could only intervene if the abducted children being taken past government check points if any give an indication as to their position when their identity papers are verified, as otherwise, they have no authority to detain persons passing through. If Karuna is in fact abducting children to enlist in his forces, he would know of jungle tracts to reach his training camps in the jungles without using the main streets and risk detection.

Mr. Rock, is your motive to discredit the government’s security forces who are constantly risking attacks by armed LTTE cadres and doing a most difficult task to protect the civilian population from terrorist onslaughts? Your interim report which is heavily biased and carrying unstantiated tell tales is considered a joke in Sri Lanka Mr. Rock, we are aware that you were a key member of the previous Liberal Party Government of Canada that overlooked international obligations and recommendations of Canada's own intelligence agencies and allowed the LTTE’s front organizations to operate freely, including the raising of funds unhindered for procurement of weapons and carry out their propaganda from Canadian soil, notwithstanding the fact that such acts resulted in a multitude of deaths of ordinary civilians and democratic leaders from every ethnic community and destruction of valuable property in Sri Lanka, for the sake of a pottage of votes from the Tamil Diaspora promised by the fronts in just about ten electoral ridings in the Greater Toronto Region.

Mr. Rock should understand that Sri Lanka is an independent sovereign country and an equal member of the United Nations, and not a UN administered territory, which has contributed immensely in helping the world body to arrive at treaties in the areas of world trade, laws of the sea, nuclear non-proliferation, and suppression of financing of terrorism amongst others. Sri Lanka unlike the self declared champions of human rights in the west who refuse to negotiate with terrorists has already made six attempts to reach a negotiated settlement with the intransigent and internationally designated terrorist group known as the LTTE, that seeks to establish a mono-ethnic racist Tamil separate state in the north and east of the island by force of arms and suicide terrorism, comprising 30 percent of the land and 67 percent of the coastline and adjacent ocean for Tamils numbering approximately 8.5 percent of the total population, of whom over 60 percent reside elsewhere outside the north and east in mixed ethnic surroundings.

Sri Lanka with international assistance continues to seek a peaceful settlement despite unprovoked attacks launched daily by the terrorist LTTE in violation of the ceasefire accord, using both children and the captive civilians in areas illegally controlled by them in the Vanni region, in pursuit of the same separate state. Mr. Paul Murphy, the British emissary declared that only a home grown solution could bring about peace. Mr. Rock and other international players who tend to impose their preferred solution of a federal structure that is not favoured by the local populace and unsuited to the tiny island state, should help the democratically elected government to deal more effectively with the terrorist violence and pave the way for peace and stability.

India, which at one time trained and armed the Tamil terrorists should at least now desist from propping up the Tiger terrorists and instead use their influence to compel the latter to stop the bloodshed and enter the democratic process to build prosperity and stability for all citizens, in the common homeland of Sri Lanka. Mr. Rock, you should rise above the duplicitous Liberal Party partisan politics that was partial to the LTTE’s cause of breaking up Sri Lanka, which claimed to support Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity while advocating a two state solution from behind the scenes. Mr. Rock, in order to safeguard what is left of your reputation, you should at least at this late stage, admit that you had been misled and withdraw your wild and incredible allegations. The only place your biased and flawed report has in history is its rightful spot in the trash bin. Yours very truly, Mahinda Gunasekera Honorary President