Like the Nazi days for the Jews in Europe : Sri Lanka orders Tamils in Colombo to register

Sri Lanka orders Tamils in Colombo to register

By RAVI NESSMAN – 6 hours ago

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The Sri Lankan authorities on Thursday ordered tens of thousands of ethnic Tamils living in Colombo to register with police as fighting in the country's civil war with Tamil separatists grew fiercer.

Fresh fighting along the northern front lines killed 25 rebels and one soldier, the military said Thursday, while brushing off reports the Tamil Tigers had unleashed deadly chemical weapons against advancing troops.

As the fighting intensified in recent months, the rebels have been blamed for a series of deadly attacks on buses, trains and other targets in the capital and other towns that have killed scores of civilians far from the war zone.

Authorities established a maze of roadblocks and checkpoints and continuously changed traffic patterns in Colombo in an effort to prevent new attacks. They have also required all residents of the north to register with the police upon their arrival in Colombo.

Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekera announced Thursday that every Sri Lankan who came to Colombo from the north in the past five years would have to reregister with police in a mass registration drive at police stations and other designated centers across the city.

The order will affect more than 100,000 people who came from the districts of Kilinochchi, Jaffna, Vavuniya, Mannar and Mullaittivu, he said. The overwhelming majority of those people are ethnic Tamils.

"We will not harass people, but we will request, 'Please come,'" Gunasekera said, adding that the exercise was simply an effort by authorities to update their records. He did not say what would happen to those who fail to register.

Ethnic Tamils living in the capital have complained of frequent police raids, harassment and arbitrary detentions as the fighting between government forces, dominated by the ethnic Sinhalese majority, and the Tamil Tigers escalated in recent years.

Authorities, who hold wide-ranging security powers under emergency regulations renewed by parliament each month, have long accused rebel sleeper agents of hiding amid the Tamil community in Colombo.

Mano Ganesan, a Tamil lawmaker from Colombo, said there would not be enough time to register everyone in one day and few will be able to produce the required documents from the government agents in their faraway home districts.

Those unable to register will likely be expelled from the city, he said.

"We will not allow it, we will fight against it, but that is their plan," he said.

In new fighting Wednesday, soldiers killed 15 guerrillas in scattered battles in the Vavuniya district bordering the rebels' de facto state, the military said. Other battles along the front lines killed 10 rebels and one soldier, the military said. The government previously reported 40 rebels and four soldiers killed in other fighting Wednesday.

Much of the communication to northern Sri Lanka has been cut, and it was not possible to contact rebel officials for comment. The military's figures could not be independently confirmed. Each side commonly exaggerates its enemy's casualties and plays down its own.

With the Tamil Tigers growing increasingly desperate in the face of a new government offensive, military officials said Thursday that some rebel fighters had attacked troops with CS gas, a type of tear gas.

The rebels have fought since 1983 for a separate homeland for Tamils after decades of marginalization by the Sinhalese majority. The conflict has killed more than 70,000 people.