Mr Jon-Hanssen Bauer
Special Envoy
Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs
7, juni plass 1
N-0251 Oslo
Norway

Dear Mr Bauer

I attach a self-explanatory letter that I have sent the current Head of the SLMM. I hope that you too will take this issue seriously, and make it clear that the Special Envoy too dissociates himself from the unsupported allegations of Gen Henricsson, if indeed no evidence is forthcoming for his ruling.

1794 cases of child recruitment (Government of Sri Lanka none),
32 cases of force recruitment of adults (GOSL none),
587 cases of abduction of adults (GOSL 3),
197 cases of abduction of children (GOSL none),
18 cases of  assassinations (GOSL none – there were 143 allegations against the LTTE and 13 against GOSL),
13 cases of torture (GOSL none).
The list is endless, amounting to 3471 violations by the LTTE as ruled by the Monitors, as against just 162 by GOSL (out of 6751 allegations against the LTTE, 1313 against GOSL).

Despite this, as you know, the Facilitator and, to a lesser extent, the Co-Chairs looked on both parties as equally committed to the Ceasefire. Though this may have seemed strange, in a world in which we should try to give each other the benefit of the doubt this was perhaps excusable, since the 3471 violations could have been described, if not entirely convincingly, as individual aberrations for which the LTTE as a whole could not be held responsible.

In August 2006 the situation changed completely, with two full scale attacks on Sri Lankan positions, at Muttur in the East and Muhumalai in the North. The ferocity of these sudden attacks may have led to the destruction of the Sri Lankan state had it not been for the response of the armed forces. However, instead of categorically condemning these egregious systemic violations of the Ceasefire by the LTTE, the Head of the Monitoring Mission engaged in what now seems to have been an unsupported and entirely arbitrary attack on the Sri Lankan armed forces, fighting under tremendous pressure for the state that had, as the SLMM figures testify, resisted provocation for nearly five long years.

Had the SLMM acted with at least a modicum of objectivity and a sense of responsibility, it may have guaranteed by other means the imperative national need to ensure that such sudden attacks would not be repeated. Instead, Gen Henricsson provided what is now used as a fig leaf by proponents of terrorism, as a precursor to another round of appeasement in which Scandinavian monitors from the EU were withdrawn and negotiations were limited to a single day by a sudden LTTE withdrawal, without any clear assertion from the international community to the LTTE that there was no alternative to continuing with them.

It would be useful if even now you as Special Envoy registered what actually happened last August, and clarified the responsibility of the LTTE for the full scale attacks that took place then. Withdrawing the unsupported ruling of Gen Henricsson will remove the cloak that has, with remarkable success as far as the international media goes, covered the breach of the Ceasefire that took place then, a breach that would have been repeated had the Sri Lankan forces not responded effectively.