SRI LANKA: A/S BLAKE FINDS SITUATION IMPROVED BUT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 05 COLOMBO 001135

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/INSB

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/14/2019
TAGS: PGOV PREL PREF PHUM PTER EAID MOPS CE
SUBJECT: SRI LANKA: A/S BLAKE FINDS SITUATION IMPROVED BUT
PROBLEMS REMAIN

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Classified By: AMBASSADOR PATRICIA A. BUTENIS. REASONS: 1.4 (B, D)


1. (C) SUMMARY AND COMMENT: During a December 8-10 visit,
Assistant Secretary Blake found progress on humanitarian
issues but also much that remained to be done. The IDP
situation had greatly improved, with about three-fifths of
the IDPs returned home or resettled, freedom of movement
allowed for those still in the camps, and plans by the
government to return all IDPs by the end of January. In
meetings with top government, opposition, and civil society
leaders, A/S Blake stressed the importance of concrete steps
towards national reconciliation and accountability for crimes
committed during the war, and a free and fair democratic
process in the recently announced January 26 presidential
elections. Interlocutors told Blake that progress on human
rights had been mixed: extrajudicial killings and
disappearances had dropped substantially, but threats to
journalists remained significant. GSL leaders said they were
preparing to release imprisoned journalist Tissainayagam on
bail and were considering a pardon. The president and his
inner circle told A/S Blake they would soon announce
relaxation of the Emergency Regulations, which curtailed many
individual rights during the war. Little has been done on
accountability for crimes committed during the war. In
short, progress has been made, but the U.S. needs to stay
engaged and to be patient as the GSL and opposition work
through the elections and beyond. A/S Blake undertook to
work with the Tamil diaspora to encourage them to do their
part to help provide livelihood and opportunities for the
300,000 Tamils of the north who must rebuild their lives
after 30 years of LTTE occupation and neglect. END SUMMARY
AND COMMENT.

HOMECOMING
--------------


2. (C) On December 8-10, Assistant Secretary for South and
Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake traveled to Sri Lanka, his
first visit back to the island since departing in May after
three years as ambassador. During the visit, A/S Blake
toured the Manik Farm camp for internally displaced persons
(IDPs) and traveled to Mannar to talk with returnees and to
visit a demining site (reported septel). A/S Blake met with
several senior government officials, including President
Mahinda Rajapaksa, Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama,
Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa (septel),Special
Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa, and Minister of Justice
Milinda Moragoda. He held meetings with senior opposition
figures, including probable united-opposition candidate
General Sarith Fonseka, Tamil National Alliance leader R.
Sampanthan, UNP deputy head Karu Jayasuriya, UNP number-three
Ravi Kurnanaya, SLFP(M) head Mangala Samaraweera, and DPF
head Mano Ganesham. A/S Blake also had a meeting with the
UN, ICRC, and chiefs of diplomatic missions and another with
pro-government and opposition-leaning civic activists on the
issue of human rights and national reconciliation. The
AmCham and EMBASSY co-sponsored a roundtable discussion with
business leaders and economists on development in the
war-torn regions of the north and east (septel). He held a
press conference on the afternoon before departing. The
following summary reports of those meetings are organized by
major themes that emerged during the visit, not by individual
meetings.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
--------------


3. (C) Top on the agenda for most interlocutors was the
recently announced presidential election scheduled for
January 26. A/S Blake throughout his meetings and at the

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press conference concluding his visit stressed that the U.S.
would not take sides in the election except to support
strongly a free and fair democratic process. President
Rajapaksa confidently boasted to A/S Blake that bookies were
not taking bets on whether he would win but on his margin of
victory. But this bluster masked an uncommon sense of unease
and worry on the president's part. (NOTE: The triumphalism
so evident in the immediate post-war period had already
seriously eroded by fall in the face of hard economic and
political realities, but General Fonseka's November 29
announcement of his candidacy dramatically altered the
political landscape and for the first time has made the
Rajapaksas worry that they could be defeated at the polls.
As Tamil leader Sampanthan told us last week, a crack had
appeared in the Sinhala-Buddhist edifice with both sides now
competing for the country's future. This split amongst
Sinhala voters has also sent both sides scrambling for allies
and has given Tamils, in particular, new-found political
leverage (as long as they are able to unite). END NOTE.)


4. (C) The president sounded dismissive of the importance of
the Tamil vote, telling A/S Blake "if the minorities want the
general, let them vote for him." But the president's brother
(and main campaign strategist) Basil underscored the
strategic significance the president's campaign was placing
on wooing Tamils. Basil said the president's focus had
shifted from winning the hearts of the people in the south
(predominantly Sinhala) to winning the hearts of the Tamil
people and that he wanted to be remembered as the leader who
unified the country. Though unstated explicitly, it appeared
that the Rajapaksas were calculating that they could win
Tamil political support through reconstruction and
development in the north (which UK High Commissioner Peter
Hayes told A/S Blake he also saw as their objective).
Confidently, Basil suggested that after the president won in
January, he would dissolve parliament and move quickly to
early general elections, followed by local elections,
including in the north. Provincial elections would come
"later in the year." For his part, TNA leader Sampanthan
said he was urging Tamils to keep their options open at this
point and not commit publicly to either candidate as a way to
maximize Tamil leverage for as long as possible. At the same
time, however, Sampanthan expressed great dissatisfaction
with the Rajapaksas, noting that they appeared uninterested
in any real change in their policies or direction.


5. (C) The opposition representatives avoided some of the
tough questions on their campaign and candidate, such as when
the executive presidency would be abolished, what Fonseka's
subsequent role would be, what role the leftist-nationalist
JVP would have in the UNF campaign and government, or
specifics on future policies if elected. They focused
instead on election fraud by the government and ticked off a
broad range of complaints. They accused the government of
using every resource at its disposal against them, including
state media, denying travel access to the North, security
provisions for Gen. Fonseka, and bullying of the elections
commissioner to prevent the naming of an elections
commission. (They were trying to file a court case to force
this.) SLFP(M) leader Mangala Samaraweera predicted this
would be the most undemocratic election in Sri Lankan history
and also expected a high level of violence from the
government. All in the group agreed that fraud would be more
overt in the North and there would be more subtle pressure on
voters in the rest of the country. On the question of Tamil
support for Fonseka, Mano Ganeshan justified his support by
saying he took time to consider it, but in the end he
realized the war was over now, and he was working to convince
his supporters that this was the best route. Mangala said
whatever progress made in returning IDPs home was because

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Fonseka forced the government's hand by running for election.
Because of Fonseka's candidacy, the president was now out on
the campaign trail kissing Tamil babies.

RECONCILIATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY
--------------


6. (C) A/S Blake expressed both publicly and privately the
need for steps to ensure political reconciliation and
accountability for abuses, including possible crimes
committed during the war. In meetings with GSL leaders, he
asked what steps the government was taking to address
reconciliation and accountability, noted that he was often
asked about this on Capital Hill, and said the U.S. was
looking to the GSL to meet its obligations in this regard.
He suggested that a truth and reconciliation commission or
other similar model might be useful and offered that the U.S.
could provide a list of possible approaches, if that would be
useful. On accountability for crimes committed during the
war, it appeared, however, that the government had given
little serious thought to the matter. The president had
formed a committee of eminent legal experts to examine the
report and provide its findings by the end of the year. One
committee member, Jezzima Ismail, told Blake that the
committee started late but was now meeting frequently to meet
its deadline. For his part, Tamil leader Sampanthan believed
accountability was important, but he also was realistic about
the dim prospects for the Rajapaksa government to take it up.
Granting that there were really no historical examples of a
sitting government anywhere in the world undertaking
wholesale investigations of its own troops or leaders for war
atrocities, Sampanthan nevertheless said it was important to
the health of the nation to get the truth out. While he
would not discuss "war crimes" per se in parliament for fear
of retaliation, he would emphasize the importance of people
knowing the truth about what happened during the war. Blake
urged Sampanthan to think carefully about what
accountability/reconciliation model he and other Tamils would
support to ensure national healing to help guide U.S.
thinking on this important matter.


7. (C) On national reconciliation, it was clear that the
Rajapaksa government did not intend to address the question
directly but to work towards it through economic
reconstruction and re-development. According to Basil, the
best thing the GSL could due in this regard was to bring the
north up to a "normal" level with other provinces so its
citizens could "work free, think free, live free." A/S Blake
agreed this was a worthy goal but also encouraged Basil and
the other leaders to give thought to reconciliation and
accountability, something that would be credible to the Tamil
population. Justice Minister Moragoda was enthused about a
"Northern Justice Initiative," which would entail such
projects as rehabilitating Jaffna University to attract and
retain Tamil students and a program to train -- with UNDP
assistance -- Tamil-speaking justices, lawyers, and other
legal officials. He asked for assistance from A/S Blake, who
promised to take it up with the Tamil diaspora in the U.S.
The opposition stuck to their standard talking points on
reconciliation, noting the importance of the implementation
of the 17th Amendment, a review of the Emergency Regulations,
and a freedom-of-information act that would allow access to
government information. For Sampanthan, reconciliation
mostly meant decentralization along the lines of the 13th
Amendment, and he suggested that the immediately forthcoming
visit to India of Basil, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, and
Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga might be related to
the decentralization issue, given the Indians' historical
connection to the 13th Amendment.


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8. (C) The best ideas on the obstacles and way-forward on
reconciliation came from a diverse group of pro-government
and opposition-leaning journalists, religious leaders, and
civic activists, with whom A/S Blake met on the evening just
before his departure. The current obstacles to
reconciliation included: the lack of trust between the ethnic
communities within Sri Lanka and on the part of the
population toward the government; the entrenched division of
ethnic communities; and, most importantly, the lack of GSL
leadership in making reconciliation a priority. They
suggested these obstacles could be addressed through:
investment in the private sector, specifically from the Tamil
diaspora; reforms to the educational system both to increase
the standards of education and to pluralize the system;
engagement with key groups, such as young people and
religious leaders; and the creation of a national dialogue on
unity. On the latter, A/S Blake proposed an Internet
campaign undertaken by a private organization to interview
prominent Sri Lankan opinion-makers from all walks of life
for 15- or 30-second public service-type announcements on
what they would do individually and specifically to foster
reconciliation in society. Such a campaign, A/S Blake
argued, could create grass-roots excitement and energy about
the issue and push the government from its current state of
inertia.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND PRESS FREEDOM
--------------


9. (C) A/S Blake advocated strongly for GSL action to improve
its record on human rights, stressing that unblocking
military assistance would require improvements. He explained
that progress on human rights would show that Sri Lankan
society was becoming normalized and urged the GSL to lift its
Emergency Regulations to show that civilian leadership was in
charge. (NOTE: The parliament voted that very afternoon to
extend the Emergency Regulations for another month. END
NOTE.) President Rajapaksa reacted angrily to the suggestion
of lifting the regulations, arguing that LTTE suicide cadres
were still being arrested every day and that to lift the
regulations would be irresponsible. Basil suggested that the
GSL's Emergency Regulations were less strict than the U.S.
Patriot Act -- to which A/S Blake and Charge Fowler retorted
that that was not true. Basil at his separate meeting with
A/S Blake also claimed that lifting the regulations had
nothing to do with switching authority from the military to
civilians since "the military leadership IS the president."
But he later told Blake that the government would soon relax
the Emergency Regulations. In the opposition meeting, UNP
deputy head Jayasuriya complained about problems of media
freedom and attacks on journalists. Other opposition figures
focused on the use of the government media by the president
and intimidation of those members of the press who criticized
the GSL. All denied government and press allegations that
the UNF coalition was responsible for the attack on an ITN
state television crew at an opposition rally several days ago
that had prompted state television to announce that it could
no longer cover UNF rallies because they were too dangerous.
(NOTE: Whether UNF supporters were responsible for the
attack, it is a blatant partisan mis-use of state media to
refuse to cover the opposition because of one incident. END
NOTE.)


10. (C) A/S Blake also raised directly with Basil and
Minister of Justice Moragoda the question of imprisoned
journalist Tissainayagam, suggesting that finding a way to
pardon or release him would have a big impact on the
international community. Basil claimed that he was working
on the problem but also said that it was "politically
disadvantageous" at this point to grant a pardon, though he

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held out the possibility that the president might still do
so. As for bail, Basil appeared confused about the legal
process, arguing that Tissainayagam would immediately get
bail if he were to file an appeal. (NOTE: Tissainayagam
filed an appeal of his sentence shortly after the conviction
in August. The president and others have argued that he
could not be granted a pardon until he exhausted the appeal
process, which we believe is not true -- Tissainayagam could
withdraw his appeal at any time, if the president were to
signal his willingness to grant a pardon. On bail, our
understanding is that bail could be granted at any time and
was not connected to the appeals process. The next bail
hearing is scheduled for December 16, and the judges have
ordered the Attorney General's office to be present at that
hearing to render its opinion on the bail request. END
NOTE.) Moragoda mostly danced around the issue, avoiding any
commitment to help, but he did note that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa
-- who is thought to be the force behind the persecution of
Tissainayagam -- had "eased off a lot" and now had agreed to
bail.

IOM/ICRC -- with Emphasis on Ex-Combatants
--------------


11. (C) A/S Blake raised the questions of the ICRC mandate
and access to ex-combatants with FM Bogollagama, Minister of
Justice Moragoda, and Basil Rajapaksa. Moragoda claimed that
the problem of the ICRC mandate and access to the
ex-combatants had shifted from Gotabhaya to Basil. In
raising the issue with the latter, A/S Blake asked Basil to
confirm that the GSL's objective for the ex-combatants was to
train and release them, not to detain them indefinitely, and
Basil affirmed that was correct. Basil claimed the GSL was
not bringing charges against the ex-combatants because to do
so would mean that they would forever have to mark on any
employment forms that they had been charged or prosecuted.
A/S Blake noted that Gotabhaya had thought that the ICRC
wanted to take over the IOM program for the ex-combatants,
but that was not the case. Rather, the IOM was doing fine
running the program and the ICRC just wanted periodic access,
pursuant to its protection mandate. A/S Blake pointed out
that because the U.S. was funding the IOM program, he had to
be able to affirm to Congress that the standards under which
the ex-combatants were being held were adequate, and that
required ICRC visitations. Basil responded that the ICRC
came to the island in 1972 under a conflict charter and now
the conflict was over. He said the GSL was not
re-negotiating the ICRC mandate -- that the Sri Lankan Red
Cross was totally against the ICRC doing development and
reconstruction programs. He asserted that the International
Red Cross charter said that organizations that came to a
country in response to a natural disaster had to come through
the national Red Cross. He asserted that the ICRC was doing
livelihood programs including building houses, and was
getting money from donors, including the United States. He
repeated that the ICRC could not do development activities,
that organizations such as World Vision and Oxfam were the
experts. A/S Blake replied that he thought Basil's
information was incorrect, that the ICRC was not interested
in doing development programs but rather was asking for a
renewal of its protection mandate. A/S Blake also pushed for
access for INGOs and NGOs in to the north, noting that the
assistance they had provided in the east had been a
tremendous help in the development and reconstruction of that
region. Basil suggested that INGOs and NGOs would be able to
work in the north in conjunction with a local partner.
BUTENIS