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Monday, June 02, 2008 - 07.30 GMT |
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Ban terrorist front organizations - FM |
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Foreign Affairs Minister Rohitha Bogollagama
addressing the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in
Singapore called upon all states to ban
front organizations which extend financial
assistance and other assistance in kind need
to terrorists.
“Financial authorities of respective
countries, including central banks, could
play a pivotal and instrumental role in
markedly deterring such illegal and
illegitimate transactions executed by all
terrorist groups”, he added.
“We can succeed in countering and
suppressing terrorism in the Asia-Pacific,
only if there is an invigoration of
cooperation and concerted efforts in dealing
with this trans-national threat” he further
said.
He also called for greater focus on policing
and vigilance in the usage of
sea lanes by terrorists for the smuggling of
illicit arms, drug trafficking and people
smuggling.
The text of the Minister’s Address:
Mr Chairman
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to have the opportunity to lead
the Sri Lanka delegation to the IISS
Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore once again.
I thank you Mr Chairman for extending an
invitation for me to share Sri Lanka’s
experience in counter terrorism during this
session. Undoubtedly, there are lessons and
experiences to be learnt and dissected,
information to be shared, which could
greatly enhance the individual as well as
collective capacities and competences of
countries in our region to deal with the
challenge posed by terrorism. Indeed, the
debate on the definition of terrorism
continues but for those of you who are
professionals in the military and experts on
defence, the primary concern should be with
the methods used by terrorists and the need
to contain and eradicate this menace. This
would lead to the formation of a secure and
congenial milieu for the region of Asia
Pacific in particular and the world in
general.
Since 9/11 and the Bali bombings of 2002,
counter terrorism measures in the
Asia-Pacific region have largely centered
around the Al-Qaeda network and Jihadi
movement. This has mainly been a consequence
of the US led “war on terror”. The
perception is that the Al-Qaeda network is
operating in the predominantly Muslim States
and among sections of the Muslim diaspora in
the West and that their actions are mainly
targeted against the US and its allies. I
foresee an increasing danger in this
approach which extends almost exclusive
focus on the Al-Qaeda network as the agents
of global terror.
I wish to illustrate the danger of dealing
with terrorist groups in a compartmentalized
manner. In June 2000, the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) carried out a suicide
attack using an explosive laden boat on the
Sri Lanka Navy ship MV Uhana off the coast
of Point Pedro in north of Sri Lanka. In
October of the same year, the Al-Qaeda used
an almost identical method in its attack on
the USS Cole in Yemen. The precision
targeting and execution of the attack by the
terrorists on the hull of the vessel by
Al-Qaeda operatives was almost identical to
the mode of attack conducted by the LTTE’s
sea Tigers. One could discern from the
similarity of attacks that there would have
been a transfer of knowledge and expertise
in the field of maritime terrorism. The
Al-Qaeda attacks in Bali and Jordan also
demonstrate many of the hallmarks of suicide
technology that have been previously used in
Lebanon and Sri Lanka. It is too well known
of a fact that terrorists are consistently
learning from each other’s tactics and
devices, thus assisting one another,
irrespective of diametrically different
ideologies and causes they claim to
represent and portray.
In dealing with the post 9/11 challenge, the
US and her allies rightly agreed to deal
with the immediate threat with all its
military might and valor, with fully
revamped information and intelligence
sharing arrangements, enactment of tough new
legislation and laws, increasing the number
of days in detention etc. The overbearing
concern has been to destroy this network,
arrest its leadership and thereby, diffuse
the threat of Al-Qaeda. The attempt to
address some of the underlying causes for
this hostile attitude towards the West as
reflected in the rhetoric of the Al-Qaeda
leadership by promoting respect and
understanding of other cultures and people
has been a parallel political process.
However, it has been clearly independent of
the law enforcement aspect. Today, it is
understood by many an experts that military
victories would not necessarily materialize
permanent solutions, but they could create
an environment and space for political and
economic solutions to be evolved. This
premise could clearly be a strong
justification of the interventions in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ladies and Gentlemen
I wish to remind you that the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers
who operate in Sri Lanka is unique among
other ethno nationalist terror movements in
that they are engaged in trans-national
terrorism and have indeed been so long
before the emergence of the Al-Qaeda on to
the centre stage of the terrorism discourse.
Long before the 9/11 bombings, the LTTE
rammed an explosive laden truck in January
1996 on the Central Bank building in the
heart of Colombo city killing a number of
people and seriously injuring several
thousand others. Similar suicide missions
were executed against our most sacrosanct
Buddhist shrine in January 1998. The LTTE
possesses ships crossing international
waters smuggling arms and ammunition, a
worldwide fundraising and propaganda network
through sections of the Tamil diaspora,
involved in the global narcotics and illicit
drug trade, money laundering, credit card
fraud, human smuggling and a myriad of other
illicit activities. According to Jane’s
Intelligence Review, it has described the
LTTE as second only to Columbia’s FARC
terrorist group in its income and has
documented that it raises $200-300 million a
year for arms procurement among others. The
former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan once
described terrorist groups, which capitalize
on the nexus between drug trafficking and
arm smuggling as representing a supra
national subversive threat to the humanity.
Today, the LTTE has established a presence
in the arms black market and has been
servicing several other terrorist groups as
well.
Today, the Government of Sri Lanka has to
grapple with the challenge posed by this
terrorist movement, unlike the war on
terror, almost single handedly. The war on
terror is heavily resourced by the world’s
most powerful economies, who have identified
them as the most potent threat to global
peace and security. This is due to a lack of
awareness and knowledge, in my view, on the
manner in which the terrorist groups network
and mostly groups such as the LTTE, whose
commercial activities are not confined and
limited to the areas, where they are
physically waging violence and acts of
terrorism.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Sri Lanka has adopted a similar approach in
countering the threat of terrorism and as a
democracy, our people very much supported
and have endorsed the Government’s courses
of action. Successive Governments of Sri
Lanka attempted to negotiate with the LTTE
in order to evolve a political settlement.
This would be something alien to the West.
We entered into a ceasefire in 2002 with the
LTTE. To restore trust and confidence as
well as transparency, we engaged the Royal
Norwegian Government as the facilitator of
our peace process but was of no avail. The
LTTE flagrantly violated ceasefires and used
the period to re-arm, re-group, infiltrate
into new areas, conscript children and
launch massive suicide bombings. My
predecessor the late Lakshman Kadirgamar was
assassinated in 2005, whilst the ceasefire
agreement was in force. They withdrew
unilaterally from negotiations and refused
to discuss core political issues aimed at
reaching a political solution to address
their purported grievances. Further, the
LTTE vehemently insisted at talks based on
seeking strategically advantageous
concessions on the ground. As Hannah Arendt
argued in her book “Armed struggles”
terrorists could be described as persons of
violence who had taken extended respite from
politics. They have embraced what she calls
the “instrumentalities of violence rather
than the complexities of generating
political power, to struggle for doable
social and political change”.
Ladies and Gentlemen, what options does a
sovereign State have under such demanding
and exacting circumstances and vicissitudes?
Harold Rood in his book ‘Kingdoms of the
Blind’ cautions on what could happen if
democracies such as ours become negligent
and fail to take action to enforce the law
in the face of threat to sovereignty and
territorial integrity. Having stated this
premise, it is of no surprise that eternal
vigilance would be the price of liberty and
democracy.
Our President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his
address to the UN General Assembly, last
year, reminded member States that “terrorism
anywhere is terrorism.” With this in view,
the Government conducted swift and
efficacious courses of action to clear parts
of the eastern province in Sri Lanka, which
had been dominated by the LTTE. The
successful clearance of the LTTE from the
east by the military took place with a
minimum of civilian casualties. As a direct
result of these courses action, we have been
able to hold Local Government elections in
March this year in areas where the people
were deprived of the opportunity to elect
their representatives for a period of over
one and half decades.
Last month, we held Provincial Council
elections as well. This has given rise to
the full return to a democratically elected
administration in the east. It has provided
the space for the commencement of major
development programmes aimed at empowering
the people and creation of employment, among
others, in this province. It is a
significant milestone that the party which
won the overall majority in this province
known as the TMVP, is a break away faction
of the LTTE. I am pleased to state that the
Government successfully and sincerely
managed to assimilate the political group
i.e. TMVP, a group which had resorted to
violence in the past in order to achieve its
means, to the political mainstream. This
course of action would not only establish
greater normalcy in the region but would
also enhance greater conformity among the
communities as well as more economic
opportunities and new vistas to the people
of the eastern province. This political
paradigm shift could be viewed as a
transmogrification of the polity of the
eastern province of Sri Lanka. The results
of the elections did reflect the
multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and
multi-religious representation within the
council.
This was a text book example of assimilation
of once a violent group to the political
mainstream. These gains for democracy would
not have been realized if we had not pursued
select and measured military action against
the LTTE. A similar military operations have
been launched in parts of the northern
province, where the LTTE continues to defend
ground. The Government’s resolve is to clear
the north of the country from the LTTE and
to restore democracy to these parts of the
country as well whist at the same time
leaving the door open for the LTTE to disarm
and enter the democratic process. The
Government of President Rajapaksa has a
meticulously structured agenda to pursue and
achieve peace.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me, however, reiterate that the
Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa
has been fully responsive to the grievances
of all communities in our country and that
it has sought to address them through the
process of the All Party Representative
Committee (APRC). The APRC has already made
a series of interim recommendations which
includes full implementation of the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution which set up
the provincial council system and wider use
of the Tamil language in public
administration. The APRC process continues
to examine at and scrutinize on several
issues, including further devolution of
power.
In order to tenaciously and resolutely
implement our counter terrorism strategy, we
have confronted many a challenges. This
would be of no surprise to any a country,
which confronts one of the most ruthless
terrorist groups. The LTTE’s propaganda
machine via sections of the diaspora in the
West has attempted to distort our
Government’s policy and suggest that we are
seeking to resolve this conflict militarily.
Those gullible to this propaganda have
turned a blind eye to the minimal civilian
casualties in the military operations in the
East and the precision targeting by the
forces of LTTE installations. The prompt and
proactive measures executed by the
Government to investigate allegations of
human rights violations via the National
Human Rights Commission as well as the
special Presidential Commission of Inquiry.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is our considered
view that it could be detrimental to the
interest of the country when some of our
friends overseas attempt to pontificate
about conflict resolution, without seeing
the clear distinction between the process of
addressing the grievances of our communities
and having to deal with heinous and ruthless
terrorist groups. For record, at the height
of the IRA insurgency, the UK Government
launched a massive border surveillance
force, arrested terrorist activists, and
interrogated and detained suspects.
Stringent emergency laws were enacted,
including the setting up of the non-jury
Diplock courts etc.
In December 1977, the European Court of
Human Rights ruled on the inhumane and
degrading treatment of terrorist suspects by
the Police in Northern Ireland. Numerous
examples could be drawn from the US-led
military intervention in Afghanistan and
Iraq from the detentions in Guantanamo Bay
to the accidental bombing of civilian
targets around Kandahar and Basra. Of
course, measured military offensives have
certain consequences for Democracies such as
ours. But as Democracies, as I pointed out
earlier, we have an inherent responsibility
to protect our people from the shackles of
tyranny and terrorism.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is in this context,
I wished to assess and expound the topic of
this session. We can succeed in countering
and suppressing terrorism in the
Asia-Pacific, only if there is an
invigoration of cooperation and concerted
efforts in dealing with this trans-national
threat. For all record purposes, Sri Lanka
is a signatory to 11 out of 13 of the UN
Conventions for the suppression of various
acts of terrorism. We ratified the SAARC
Regional Convention on the Suppression of
Terrorism, way back in 1987 and are now part
of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) as well.
Several countries in this region too have
proscribed several terrorist groups,
including the LTTE.
I wish to place on record that to a great
extent the legal framework to prosecute
terrorist suspects and criminalization of
the various activities committed by them is
in place. Unfortunately, this alone would
not eradicate terrorism in general nor lead
to the total prosecution and annihilation of
LTTE in particular. We need closer and
active cooperation in sharing intelligence,
exchanging of information and comparing of
developments vis-à-vis and terrorism related
activities.
It is extremely vital for countries to
proscribe and ban, so called, “Front
Organizations” of terrorist groups. Many of
these front organizations, often operate and
conduct their functions to raise funds for
charitable purposes. These front
organizations, obviously, function as a
pretext of the terrorist organizations.
Needless to state, that these funds would be
transferred to the accounts of the terrorist
organizations. I wish to add, that some of
these front organizations function even as
legitimate organizations, on paper, but
judiciously shield their end objectives,
which are funding of terrorist
organizations. The Tamil Rehabilitation
Organisation (TRO) operated in the UK,
raising funds for the LTTE. The TRO astutely
portrayed themselves as they were raising
funds to uplift the livelihood and empower
the people of the North and the East of Sri
Lanka. The fact of the matter remained that
not a single cent had gone to the said
locations but to fund the war chest of the
LTTE. I am heartened to state, at this
juncture, today the TRO remains as a
proscribed organization in the UK.
Similarly, the other countries in the West
and in the US had proscribed such front
organizations, which extend financial
assistance to varied terrorist groups. It is
often stated by many a experts in terrorism
that similar to fish which cannot live
without water, the terrorists cannot live
without funds. It may be presumptuous for me
to state to an august gathering such as
this, the front organizations, which extend
financial assistance and other assistance in
kind need to be banned and proscribed at the
earliest. This is an imperative measure,
which countries need to implement if we were
to counter terrorism. On this note, I
earnestly and unequivocally request the
countries in the Asia Pacific, in
particular, to ban such suspicious front
organizations, after conducting due
diligence of their conduct.
I am of the conviction that greater priority
and focus should be extended to the
functions of policing and vigilance in the
usage of our varied sea lanes by terrorists
for the smuggling of illicit arms, drug
trafficking and people smuggling. Sri
Lanka’s experience is that the LTTE’s arms
shipments transit through many a countries
in this region, very often with absolutely
no cognizance to the authorities in those
countries. If we were to deter and impede
the arms supplies and the movements of
terrorist activists by sea, we need greater
assistance and cooperation of the countries
in the Asia Pacific region, in particular.
The other areas of deep concern are money
laundering and hawala banking functions.
Needless to state that in order to address
these issues with the highest degree of
efficacy and success, pro-active cooperation
and concerted efforts of the countries in
the region of Asia and Pacific are
indispensible. On the same note, the
financial authorities of respective
countries, including central banks, could
play a pivotal and instrumental role in
markedly deterring such illegal and
illegitimate transactions executed by all
terrorist groups. In this regard, the
financial institutions and banks could
strengthen their respective regulations and
make them more transparent, thus diluting
any ambiguous and illegitimate transactions.
Mr. Chairman,
I believe that during my address, I have
highlighted certain aspects, dynamics and
developments with regard to the experience
of Sri Lanka in counter terrorism in the
region of Asia Pacific.
I also believe that I have been able to
delineate some aspects and dynamics of our
own experience of counter terrorism, which
would encourage and stimulate further
intellectual and pragmatic discussion and
discourse, followed by question and answer
session, as customary. I take this
opportunity to thank the International
Institute for Strategic Studies popularly
abbreviated as IISS and organizers of
Shangri-La Dialogue for inviting Sri Lanka
and the Government of Singapore for the
excellent hospitality extended to us during
the stay of my delegation.
I thank you Mr. Chairman.
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