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Sri Lanka re-imposes formal ban on Tamil Tigers
Agence France Presse - January 7, 2009
Mel Gunasekera, Colombo – Sri Lanka Wednesday decided to formally ban the Tamil Tigers, a senior minister said, in a symbolic move that signals closing the prospect of early peace talks.
President Mahinda Rajapakse used emergency laws to reimpose the proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), government spokesman Maithripala Sirisena said.
"From today onwards, the LTTE is banned," Sirisena, who is also the agriculture minister, told reporters after a meeting of the cabinet.
The president reintroduced the ban lifted in September 2002 to allow the Tigers to attend negotiations arranged by peace broker Norway.
Those talks eventually collapsed in 2006. The move is essentially symbolic, given the scale of the current military offensive against the LTTE. Government forces captured the rebels' political capital, Kilinochchi, Friday after months of heavy fighting.
The Tigers, who are already outlawed by the United States and the European Union, have been waging a drawn-out campaign for independence for Sri Lanka's minority Tamil community.
Government officials said the president had given the Tigers an ultimatum to release civilians inside rebel-held territory by the end of December or face a ban from the start of 2009. The Tigers had not formally responded to the government's ultimatum.
Draft laws banning the rebels would be presented to parliament for rubber stamping, but the move would not prevent medical assistance reaching the guerrillas, the government said.
It formally allows the arrest of anyone associated with the Tigers, but even before the ban, the government had been using emergency laws to detain anyone suspected of links with the separatists.
Any person or organisation found to have helped the LTTE could be tried under the ban and jailed for 20 years, but the same penalties were already available under the tough Prevention of Terrorism laws.
Officials said the government had been considering reintroducing the ban since last Tuesday, with authorities debating the practical value of the move. Media minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa said the press would still be allowed to report on LTTE activities.
"You can go ahead and report as you normally do," the minister told reporters when asked if the ban would affect journalists having contacts with the guerrillas.
Just before the widely expected announcement, a powerful blast ripped through a railway track near Colombo, disrupting commuter services, police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but police said they suspected the Tigers may have been behind the blast, which was similar to past attacks and caused no casualties.
Sri Lanka's outlawing of the Tigers came after the government late last year seized money belonging to organisations it said were fronts for the LTTE.
Tiger chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran, 54, is a fugitive from justice in Sri Lanka, convicted of masterminding the January 1996 bombing of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka that killed 91 people.
Prabhakaran is also wanted in neighbouring India for the May 1991 assassination of former Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi, and the Tigers have been banned in India since 1992.
Sri Lanka reimposed a ban on the Tigers in January 1998, a day after the group was held responsible for the bombing of a key Buddhist temple in the central town of Kandy.
The ban on the Tigers had been in force from 1983 until 1989, when emergency laws lapsed, automatically removing it.
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