Operation SCF

Sarath Chandralal Fonseka commanded the Army in the victory of war. He recently told the SundayLeader that Gotabharya ordered to kill surrendering leaders of LTTE. The SundayLeader is notorious for  publishing articles which are harmful to the country. Everybody know the paper is pro-Ranil. Surath Fonseka was thinking he belongs to UNP and made those comments. The SundayLeader and Sarath Fonseka wanted to attack Gota because both of them are angry with him. The SundayLeader  does not care about Sarath Fonseka since their main enemy is Gatabhaya.  On Sunday Sarth Fonseka, in his news conference, said the claim in the SundayLeader was not a war secret and mentioned the same thing without naming anyone. Everything backfired and on Monday Sarath held hurried organized news conference on the advice of JVP and Mangala. At that meeting he did not refuse it but said he was misquoted. He said anyone in the army did not violate any human right law. He said nobody came to surrender waving flags. He said the SundayLeader will publish correcting note.

But today Frederica Janszof of the SundayLeader said that they have not misquoted General Fonseka at any stage.  As far as I know there is a court order to the SundayLeader not to publish abusive news articles regarding Gatabhaya. So I don't think they will publish something what Sarath Fonseka has not told.  He knowingly or unknowingly fell into the trap. But damage has been done.

It is bad if Army killed the surrendering LTTE leaders. The government has rejected these claims from the beginning. They accepted that there had been attempts to surrender and during the incident they were gunned down by the LTTE. But now Sarath Fonseka saying there were no attempts to surrender.  As far as I know he has told different story in Ambalangoda. There are lot of contradictions.  Now the government will be getting more pressure from the West and NOGs for war crime investigation. The government should decide on that. It is totally wrong Sarath Fonseka mention third party information (he now say he got information from a journalist who was with Shavendra Silva.) on the incident to anti-government newspaper. The SundaLeader did their job to get international funding.

I will quote guardian.co.uk article named "Sri Lankan government killed surrendering Tamil Tigers, says general".  It start by saying "Sacked commander running for president says three rebel leaders were machine-gunned on minister's orders". The SundayLeader said they were shot now it has become machine-gunned, which may be true under the circumstance. The article then describe what Sarath Fonseka told the SundayLeader. Then they add supporting information. I will enumerate those supporting informations in the article.

1. A Tamil eyewitness account said Nadesan's wife, a Sinhalese, called in Sinhali (Sinhala) to the soldiers: "He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him." She also died in the hail of bullets.

2. Despite disavowing his earlier remarks, Fonseka's claims about the circumstances surrounding the three men's deaths resemble contemporaneous reports in regional and western media, including the Guardian, that were denied by the Sri Lankan government.

3. Fonseka's whereabouts during the incident was also a matter of confusion. He told a press conference in Colombo on Sunday that he was in China. It was unclear how this statement could be reconciled with his appearance on Sri Lankan state television on 18 May to proclaim victory over the Tigers and confirm that their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, had been killed. "We can announce very responsibly that we have liberated the whole country from terrorism," Fonseka told Rupavahini television.

4. His claims about what happened last May, and subsequent backtracking, will be viewed in the context of his presidential campaign.

5. Fonseka's allegations echo a report published in June by a Sri Lankan human rights group, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), that cited army sources in stating that a "politically ordered massacre of people who wanted to surrender or surrendered" had taken place.

The most important point for me is forth one. There they have said that they would view subsequent backtracking in the context of his presidential campaign. So I believe the pressure on the government will be drastically increase due to the remarks of Fonseka.