EPDP CARRIES ASSASINATED COMRADE’S BODY TO THE FRONT YARD OF SRI LANKA MONITORING MISSION OFFICE IN BATTICALOA IN PROTEST
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
August 16.07.25 AM:The body of the assassinated Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) member Arasaratnam Sadeeshkaran by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was carried to the premises of the Norway backed Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) office in Batticaloa and left there as a protest against Norway’s refusal to take the responsibility of inquiring or stopping the political murders of the rebel group continued with impunity under the Ceasefire agreement.
The assassination of Arasaratnam Sadeeshkaran alias Radeesh was the 115th killing done by the LTTE after terrorist leader Velupillai Prabhakaran signed a ceasefire agreement with UNF Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, 18 months ago.
Under the controversial Ceasefire Agreement , backed by Norway and supported by the United States Sri Lanka security Forces cannot be deployed inside the LTTE controlled areas to catch the assassins belonging to the Tamil rebel group.
Critics said the LTTE committed the assassination of Arasaratnam while Norway’s top envoy Eric Solheim was discussing matters in the SLMM office in the same town to show their contempt for the Ceasefire Agreement.
The EPDP spokesman Nelson Edirisinghe said, August 15, the relatives, neighbors and members of the EPDP took the coffin containing the dead body of their comrade to the Norway backed SLMM office at 3.30 p.m. in a placard carrying demonstration. He said the monitors, when they saw the coffin carrying demonstration closed the doors of the mission office and remained inside. The demonstrators left the coffin right in the front yard of the office with the placards criticizing the Norwegian monitors who are accused of being partial to the LTTE.
The assassination of Arasaratnam Sadeeshkaran, who died of three LTTE gun shots fired at from close range was a man who entered politics as a member of the EROS group at the beginning, and then served some time as a spy of the national intelligence service of the Sri Lanka Army. Thereafter, he joined the EPDP and became an active member of the most active anti-LTTE Tamil political party in the island..
When the London based human rights group Amnesty International in a joint statement with International Human Rights Watch criticized the SLMM for neglecting the continuing assassinations of the LTTE of its political opponents the SLMM in response said the Scandinavian monitors had no mandate, capacity and capability to deal with political killings.
The continuing assassinations also indicate the inherent and blatant weaknesses of a Ceasefire Agreement Ranil Wickremesinghe rushed to sign without discussing that in the parliament or the cabinet for short-term political gains. He reportedly entered in to the agreement for the LTTE’s support to the government through the parliamentary group, the Tamil National Alliance that is being openly controlled by the LTTE.
Finding the cause of the SLMM for not investigating, Brad Adams of the International Human Rights Watch said, “ We are concerned that Norway may be reluctant to investigate these crimes for fear of compromising its role mediating talks between the LTTE and the government.”
Some of the placards the demonstrators carried in the Batticaloa demonstration were: SLMM, Face up to Tiger terrorism, SLMM, Tiger violations are your business, Ceasefire agreement sheds civilian blood, Prabhakaran is another Pol Pot, Monitors are not spectators, Ceasefire agreement is Tiger license to kill, Norway, Palestine failure, Sri Lanka Disaster, Eric Solheim, you are inept, Prabhakaran is a murderer, Norwegians, your credibility is in question, If civilians are murdered-why monitors.
The EPDP website said, the assassination has “taken place while the Norwegian Special envoy Eric Solheim was in Batticaloa for talks with the LTTE. The action of the LTTE clearly shows the scant respect that the LTTE has for the Ceasefire agreement, the Norwegian facilitators and the International Community.”
Commenting on the SLMM and the political murders Colombo’s the Island newspaper editorially commented, “The rise in killings should come as no surprise in that the Tamil political groups opposed to the LTTE have been stripped of their arms in accordance with the MoU. This MoU provision has facilitated the LTTE’s killing spree. But the monitors have absolved themselves of the responsibility for investigating the killings. They insist that killings are a matter for the police to probe knowing only too well that with the troops confined to the barracks the police are unable to carry out investigations. The UTHR rightly points out that the police are aware that it will be the first to face an LTTE onslaught should the hostilities resume and therefore are hesitant to incur the wrath of the terrorists by pursuing investigations. The massacre of over 600 policemen who surrendered to the LTTE in 1990, when the then ceasefire failed, must be etched in the memory of the policemen deployed in the war prone areas. On the other hand, they can do very little about most LTTE killers as they, after committing crimes in government-controlled terrain, vanish into the terrorist-held areas.”
