[IMC-UK-Features] Karuna feature repost

[Lee Salter]

Bugger, I just realised that if emails with attachments are not 
accepted, then nor will the text. If it has already appeared, forgive 
me, but here is the original email:

Hi all. I have not posted to this list before as have relegated my 
participation in UK to Legal (diverting the rest of my attention to 
Bristol). I recently completed a feature intended for the Guardian, but 
they are starting to fuck me about so I thought I might post it on Indy 
instead. It is an investigative piece on the complicity of the UK Govt 
in allowing the former Tamil guerilla, Col Karuna into the UK and then 
failing to prosecute him for human rights abuses. It fits with ed 
guidelines and could be posted under human rights?

I have attached the article (though I am aware that it may not come 
through so I have included txt below). Excuse the formal layout - as I 
said it is supposed to go elsewhere but I can't be fucked to wait.

_Crime without Punishment: The Strange Case of Colonel Karuna._

By Lee Salter.

Word Count: 2301

The trial, imprisonment and release of a former Tamil Tiger leader 
raises some tricky and potentially embarrassing questions for the 
British government. The former leader of the Tamil Tigers in the east of 
Sri Lanka Commander Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Colonel Karuna 
was arrested for travelling to the UK on a false passport in November 
2007 and sentenced to 9 months in prison at the end of January 2008.

He was released from prison on May 9 and transferred to an immigration 
detention centre. He was deported at the beginning of July having 
escaped charges of war crimes and human rights abuses committed in Sri 
Lanka.

For the past 25 years the Tamil Tigers have been fighting for a homeland 
in what is now north and east Sri Lanka. During this time Karuna, proved 
himself to be an adept guerrilla leader. He quickly rose through the 
ranks of the Tigers to become Special Commander of the eastern region of 
the Tamil Eelam, in eastern Sri Lanka. Shortly after his promotion 
Karuna broke from the Tigers to form his own army, the Tamil People’s 
Liberation Tigers.

After switching sides he began to associate with members of the Sinhala 
establishment, the dominant ethnic group in Sri Lanka. Tamils allege 
that the association was so strong, and Karuna’s army so important in 
the fight against the Tamil Tigers, that the Sri Lankan army and Special 
Forces aided his missions against the Tigers.

Throughout this period Karuna has been accused of being behind some of 
the most abhorrent abuses of human rights in Sri Lanka. Amnesty UK 
alleges such abuses include torture, hostage taking, the use of child 
soldiers, and crimes against humanity.

Human Rights Watch refers to Karuna as having a “long and horrific 
record of abuse”, and claim he is “one of the worst human rights abusers 
ever to end up in custody in the UK”. However, few Tamils believed he 
would become the first person to be successfully convicted in the UK for 
war crimes or human rights violations.

Shortly after arriving in the UK Karuna was charged under Section 25 of 
the Identity Cards Act for the possession of a false identity document, 
but the circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment are shrouded with 
secrecy and intrigue, raising questions about the role and competency of 
the British government.

At Isleworth Crown Court Karuna pleaded guilty to travelling on a 
fraudulent passport, but said he did so with the backing of the Sri 
Lankan Government. Karuna’s lawyer, David Philips, told the court that 
Karuna “entered the United Kingdom using a diplomatic passport … it 
contained a six month multiple visit visa, issued at the British High 
Commission” in Colombo. “The Sri Lankan Government gave him the passport 
and sent him to the United Kingdom” and it was the Sri Lankan Defense 
Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, also the Prime Minister’s brother, who 
organised it.

He went on to say that Karuna did not go to the British High Commission 
to collect the documents and was merely following the instructions of 
the Sri Lankan Government.

Karuna’s lawyer told me that none of Karuna’s allegations were 
investigated, and no questions about them have been asked in Parliament. 
He went on to tell me that his attempts to investigate were met with 
closed doors and a “wall of silence”.

Despite Karuna’s claims of a change of heart, his break with the Tigers 
was generally regarded as opportunistic. Very few sources are prepared 
to talk on the record about Karuna for political or safety reasons. 
However, Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, a prominent Tamil newspaper editor 
in Sri Lanka, and a friend of Karuna’s when he was in the Tigers, 
explained that Karuna jumped before he was pushed. Karuna had allegedly 
embezzled money from the Tigers, infuriating their leader, Velupillai 
Prabhakaran. Karuna was a marked man.

His relations with the Sri Lankan Government did not fare much better. 
By 2007 it seemed that Karuna’s usefulness to the Government was 
beginning to ebb away. In June of that year, the editor of the Asia 
Tribune, K.T. Rajasingham, met with the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda 
Rajapakse and his Minister for Social Welfare, Douglas Devananda, in 
Geneva to discuss Sri Lankan affairs, including the “problem” of Karuna.

The minutes of the meeting show Rajasingham’s stance on Karuna: 
“unfortunately, I supported Karuna thinking that though he started his 
career as a terrorist, he could be rehabilitated”, made to respect human 
rights and be repositioned in the democratic mainstream of politics. He 
went on to explain that Karuna was a liability to the Sri Lankan 
Government, “a spent force”. Three years after leaving the Tigers, “he 
has no more real stories to narrate and will be of no use to anyone”. 
Rajasingham’s most chilling comment is that Karuna’s former deputy and 
political rival Pillayan “is planning to arrest Karuna” but is 
hesitating due to opposition from the Defense Ministry. “I suggest the 
government get rid of Karuna, a liability and work with Pillayan and his 
men who are more popular in the east than Karuna”.

Pilliayan has since become the government’s man in the east. Banda (not 
his real name), a Sinhala, and a Sri Lanka expert for a major 
international news organisation explains, on condition of anonymity, 
that, “due to fratricidal animosities between Karuna and Pillaiyan 
[Karuna] sought the help of the government to get out of the country”.

Karuna was, then, willingly removed from Sri Lanka, but given 
allegations of serious war crimes and human rights abuses hanging over 
him, it is unlikely that he could have wished British authorities to 
hear of his escape.

In addition to Rajasingham’s evidence, independent sources have 
confirmed that, as Karuna alleged in court, Sri Lankan officials helped 
him through the through the airport, bypassing customs, and delivering 
his passport to him onboard the plane.

The British government seemed to have been convinced enough by Karuna’s 
evidence to call the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to the Foreign Office 
for an explanation. The Sri Lankan Government has denied all allegations 
of assisting Karuna.

The question is, however, if the Sri Lankan Government wanted rid of 
Karuna why go through such a convoluted process? This is Sri Lanka after 
all, where disappearances are part of daily life. A number of 
explanations exist. Vithyatharan suggests that assassination or 
disappearance was out of the question, for it would have heralded a 
“victory for the Tigers”.

Banda explains that Karuna is considered something of a folk hero 
amongst the Sinhala community in Sri Lanka for turning the tide of the 
25-year civil war against the Tigers. He is a “Sinhala hero, remember 
that. He’s the one who helped the government army to chase Tigers off 
the East”. Any obvious action against Karuna would have been deeply 
unpopular.

It is highly probably that Karuna would not have been able to leave the 
country without the help of the Sri Lankan government. Visas from Sri 
Lanka, especially those issued for diplomatic passports, are not given 
out without government assurances that that application is genuine. 
Further, all persons entering and exiting embassies and high 
commissions, especially in war zones, are logged for security reasons. 
Although identity fraud is common in Sri Lanka it is rare for diplomatic 
passports to be forged.



Karuna could not have picked up the passports himself. The journalist 
who broke the Karuna story in Sri Lanka for the /Sunday Leader/, Ranjith 
Jayasunderas, explains that British embassy officials he spoke to are 
“certain that his passport was delivered to them by regular Sri Lankan 
Foreign Ministry channels”.



The questions remains, however, of the competence of the British High 
Commission in Colombo and perhaps even the Foreign Office. One British 
member of the European Parliament with an interest in Sri Lanka said, 
off the record, that the British government issued the visa “on the 
basis of support” from the Sri Lankan Government, and was “stitched up 
by the Sri Lankan government” in a way that was “alarming to say the 
least”.

However, Karuna’s face is rather well known in Sri Lanka and among the 
diplomatic community in Sri Lanka – at least as well known as Martin 
McGuinness’s is in the UK. There is little chance that Britain’s High 
Commission staff did not recognise Karuna’s photo on the passport when 
issuing the visa. It would be remarkable if at least one official in the 
High Commission had not recognised Karuna’s photograph.

A senior British MP said, on condition of anonymity, that the “history 
of Tamil Tiger participants is that clearly there have been various 
covert and sanctioned exercises where individuals have left (Sri Lanka) 
over the years”. “I guess that our man in Colombo and the Foreign Office 
and other governments would not find themselves in unknown territory to 
allow free passage”.

Banda suggested that the Foreign Office may have intervened on behalf of 
the Sri Lankan Government to ensure Karuna’s safe passage. “My contacts 
within the HC in Colombo didn’t know this went through until it blew up 
they were not aware … so it looks like someone high up was really 
involved”.

Whether or not they were, there have been few if any questions asked 
about the conduct of the High Commission staff. As Jayasunderas points 
out, “this need not have been Karuna. It could very well have been Bin 
Laden with plastic surgery, smuggled in by the Sri Lankan government. He 
would have gotten through just the same”.

The Home Office refused to comment on the case. The High Commissioner at 
the time, Dominck Chilcott, told me that the questions raised here are 
“all very good” but that he cannot comment on the matter.

Perhaps the most disappointing element of the debacle, especially for 
human rights activists, was the inaction of the British government when 
they may have had the opportunity of securing a conviction of an alleged 
war criminal.

Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch petitioned the UK government and the 
Metropolitan police to charge Karuna but the case was not pursued. 
Yolanda Foster, Amnesty International’s expert on the case, claims that 
there was a collection of evidence from NGOs presented to the 
Metropolitan police, including a large number of credible cases of human 
rights abuse.

Human Rights Watch has gathered considerable evidence of Karuna’s role 
in human rights abuses, including the abduction of children to serve as 
child soldiers, in the form of case studies, witness statements, maps 
and photographs. Evidence gathered by the Norwegian Sri Lanka Monitoring 
Project and UNICEF confirm the allegations. UNICEF alone has documented 
evidence of more than 200 cases of child soldier recruitment by Karuna’s 
militia.

Amnesty is unhappy that despite the quantity of evidence, the police 
sent only a limited number of cases to the Crown Prosecution Service. 
The CPS says it dropped the case because it felt the information 
presented by the Met was insufficient. It says there was “insufficient 
evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal 
offences in the UK”.

The reasons for the lack of evidence presented to the Crown Prosecution 
Service are still unknown. The /Guardian/ made a freedom of information 
request, which was not fruitful. The Met have failed to respond to 
letters from Amnesty and the chair of Parliament’s Sri Lanka Group, Andy 
Love, attempted to find out more from the Home Office, but it refused to 
divulge details of the case.

“The claim about lack of evidence seems spurious” Chandra Sriram, the 
director of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict told me. The real 
issue for Sriram given the abundance of available evidence against 
Karuna “is the absence of political will to carry a case forward”.

“The British government blew it” says Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s 
Asia director. Adams accuses the government as a whole for the failure 
to prosecute, from the police to the Home Office. The police and CPS 
seemed not to understand who they had and lacked the resources to pursue 
the case. For Adams, the Government’s stated commitment to human rights 
is “not matched by its actions”.

Amnesty’s Yolanda Foster told me, “we are very disappointed that the UK 
government did not pursue the case”. “There were very serious 
allegations made against Karuna but he has been returned to Sri Lanka 
where there is a culture of impunity”. Amnesty is concerned that Sri 
Lankans who did come forward now face retaliation.

Having now been deported, Karuna’s fate in Sri Lanka remains uncertain. 
Whilst some who know him, including his lawyer, are impressed by his 
“fierce loyalty”, others believe that suspicion and in-fighting may 
spell the end of Karuna one way or another.

The Tamil People’s Liberation Tigers’s political wing, the United 
People’s Freedom Alliance contested and won elections in the former 
Tiger strongholds in the east earlier this year.

Although the victory was tainted by claims of intimidation and fraud, 
leading to the withdrawal of the largest Tamil party, the Tamil National 
Alliance party, the result has been accepted by the government.

Sri Lankan media have reported that Karuna has been reinstated as the 
leader of his party, leaving activists to bemoan a missed opportunity 
for the British government to show its commitment to human rights.

Karuna’s was, however, a pyrrhic victory, for in his absence his rival 
Pillayan was offered the post of Chief Minister of the Eastern 
Provincial Council. Just in time to meet the British Foreign Office 
minister, Lord Malloch-Brown during his 4 day visit to Sri Lanka. Karuna 
remains on the sidelines.

Karuna still has many enemies, both among Tamils and Sinhala. His fate 
hinges on his continued worth to the Sri Lankan government. The only 
certainties are that the human rights situation in Sri Lanka will 
continue to deteriorate and ordinary Sri Lankans will continue to suffer.

-- 
Dr. Lee Salter,
Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies
School of Cultural Studies
Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences
University of the West of England
Oldbury Court Road
Bristol, BS16 2JP
Email: Lee.Salter at uwe.ac.uk