LTTE drafts ‘anti-terror law’

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels, listed as a terrorist organisation in many countries, are drafting their own “anti terrorism laws” to deal with Sri Lankan military and police personnel who enter their territory, a news report said.

The separatist Tigers, who run a de facto state in vast swaths of Sri Lanka’s Tamil majority northeast, often accuse the military of involvement in “state terrorism” in Tamil majority areas.

Hundreds of Tamils have been killed in shadowy circumstances since December, the start of a surge in violence that threatens to drag the country back into full scale civil war.

The Tigers put on trial in their own courts any government security personnel captured in their territory. In a faltering 2002 cease fire agreement, the Sri Lankan government agreed to stay out of rebel controlled areas.

The anti terrorism law is expected to be finalised by the end of this year, the independent Sunday Times newspaper reported, quoting Eliyathambi Pararajasingham, in charge of the rebels’ own legal system.

At least one government policeman and a soldier are currently held by the Tigers despite repeated attempts by European cease fire monitors to secure their release.

The guerrillas are listed as a terrorist organisation by India, the United States, the European Union and Canada. Also on Sunday, a Tamil civilian whom rebels labelled a military informer was fatally shot.

Unidentified assailants shot Sivaprakasam Thirunavukarasu, 66, in northern Jaffna peninsula, according to an official at the Media Centre for National Security.

The pro rebel TamilNet Web site said Thirunavukarasu was a military informant but did not claim responsibility for the killing.

Separately, a sailor was injured when rebels threw a grenade at a guard point in an islet off Jaffna, 300 kilometres north of the capital, Colombo, said an official, who requested anonymity.

More than 750 people — half of them civilians — have been killed since December but both sides deny responsibility and blame each other for the violence.

The Tigers began fighting the government in 1983 for a separate state for the country’s ethnic minority Tamils, saying they can only prosper away from the domination of the majority Sinhalese.