Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Colombo (Agenzia Fides) - Sad to say 2008 threatens to be another year of suffering for Sri Lanka after a government announcement yesterday that the cease fire had been broken, followed by fresh outbreaks violence and growing numbers of displaced persons. Today 16 January two bomb blasts attributed to the rebel Tamil troops were reported: in the southern city of Buttala at least 24 people died and 67 were injured, many of them children, in a bomb attack on a bus and three soldiers were injured when a bomb exploded close to an army truck. Some 300 people have died on the northern front since Colombo warned that the treaty had been broken. Another sign of the atmosphere of terror was a bomb explosion on 8 January in the north of the capital Colombo, in which Sri Lanka's Building Minister D.M. Dassanayake was killed.
The official resuming of hostilities (although the treaty had been violated in the past) led Norway to withdraw its mediation after helping the parties to reach a cease fire agreement in 2002.
In his new year address to Diplomats in the Vatican on 7 January Pope Benedict XVI said: “ In Sri Lanka it is no longer possible to postpone further the decisive efforts needed to remedy the immense sufferings caused by the continuing conflict.”.
While the government has decided to intensify military operations against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who refuse to negotiate, it has also announced through its spokesperson Chandrapala Liyanage a new peace plan for a political solution to the crisis in February. The president of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised Tamils "political autonomy” with a “new chapter in the Island's history”.
However observers fear Sri Lanka a return of “total war”, insecurity and terror which is bound to affect the already waning flow of tourists on which the economy so depends. But Tamils say 'war on a vast scale' is the only reply to army incursions with many civilian victims.
In the meantime the United Nations has said humanitarian organisations are finding it hard to assist over one million displaced persons.
Since Tamil separatists started the conflict in the 1980s up to on 2002 with the Norwegian mediated treaty, 65,000 people were killed. Since fighting resumed in 2005 at least 5,000 lives have been lost. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 16/1/2008 righe 26 parole 268)
