Country Advice Sri Lanka Sri Lanka – LKA38579 – Sri Lanka Muslim Congress – TMVP – Karuna 11 May 2011 Please provide me with information on: 1. The SLMCP and its leader Rauf Hakeem generally. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) is a Sri Lankan political party established to represent the Tamil-speaking Muslim population of Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province.1 The SLMC contested the 2010 parliamentary elections as part of the United National Party (UNP) alliance.2 In November 2010, however, the SLMC decided to join the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government.3 Rauf Hakeem has been leader of the SLMC since 2000.4 In the 2010 elections he was elected as a member of parliament for the electoral district of Mahanuwara as part of the UNP.5 Hakeem is currently the Minister for Justice in the ruling UPFA government.6 The Political Handbook of the World 2010 contains the following information on the SLMC and Hakeem: Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). Formed in 1980, the SLMC declared itself a political party at a conference convened in 1986 to represent Muslim interests in the negotiations for a political settlement of the Tamil question. The party won 17 seats in the North-East Provincial Council balloting in November 1988 and supported Mrs. Bandaranaike's bid for the presidency in December 1988. It obtained 3 legislative seats in 1989, adding 4 more as a coalition partner of the PA in 1994. In August 2000 comments by SLFP minister A. H. M. FOWZIE belittling the SLMC's importance to the PA led President Mohamed H. M. ASHRAFF to submit his resignation as ports minister, but the rift was patched at the end of the month. At the same time, the SLMC agreed to remain partnered with the PA for the October general election, although it decided to contest four districts separately. To broaden its appeal beyond its Muslim constituency, the party also decided to campaign as the National 1 UK Home Office 2010, Country of Origin Information Report: Sri Lanka, 11 November, p.217 – Attachment 1 2 ‘UNP slams SLMC’ 2010, Daily Mirror, 28 August http://www.dailymirror.lk/index.php/news/6138-unp-slams- slmc.html - Accessed 5 May 2011 – Attachment 2. 3 ‘SLMC HC decides’ 2010, Daily Mirror, 12 November http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/7727-slmc-hc-decides- .html - Accessed 5 May 2011 – Attachment 3. 4 Banks, Arthur S. et al. (eds.) 2010, ‘Sri Lanka’, Political Handbook of the World 2010, CQ Press, Washington, D.C. http://library.cqpress.com/phw/phw2010_SriLanka - Accessed 15 April 2011 – Attachment 4. 5 ‘Parliamentary Elections – 2010: Electoral District No:- 4 Mahanuwara’ (undated), Sri Lanka Department of Elections website http://www.slelections.gov.lk/pdf/GE2010_preferences/Mahanuwara_pref_GE2010.pdf - Accessed 5 May 2011 – Attachment 5. 6 ‘Rajapakse unveils new Sri Lankan Cabinet’ 2010, The Statesman, 22 November http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=349390&catid=37 – Accessed 5 May 2011 – Attachment 6. Page 1 of 6 Unity Alliance (NUA, above). In the balloting the NUA won four seats in addition to those won under the PA banner. Party founder Ashraff died in September 2000 in a helicopter crash. His widow, Ferial, was named to the cabinet announced after the October election, as was her party coleader, Rauff Hakeem. Hakeem soon supplanted Mrs. Ashraff within the SLMC, although she became the NUA leader. In June 2001 President Kumaratunga removed Hakeem from the cabinet, at which time he and six other SLMC members of parliament abandoned the government, thereby costing it its legislative majority. Ashraff initially resigned her cabinet post but continued her support for the government. She resumed her ministerial position in early July, leaving the SLMC/NUA asunder. Following the December 2001 election, in which the SLMC won five seats, Hakeem negotiated a coalition agreement with the UNP and joined the new cabinet. Mrs. Ashraff's NUA had remained with the PA. Subsequent efforts to resolve their differences did not succeed. In 2002–2003 the party splintered further, largely over the perception of a faction led by A. L. M. Athaullah that the UNP government was favoring the LTTE at the expense of eastern Muslims… For the April 2004 general election the SLMC ran independently, capturing five parliamentary seats. In May one SLMC MP defected to the UPFA, and three others did likewise in October, for which the three were named noncabinet ministers responsible for rehabilitation and district development in three Tamil districts. The SLMC leadership attempted to expel the three but was overruled by the Supreme Court. The SLMC supported the UNP's Ranil Wickremesinghe in the 2005 presidential contest. In 2006, however, it announced that it would extend issue-based support to the government, and in January 2007 Hakeem brought the SLMC back into the government, only to withdraw on December 12 because of insufficient progress on Muslim-related issues. In 2008 a faction of the party, led by M. Lalith GUNARATNE, announced that they would support the government at the local and regional level and rejected Hakeem's call for noncooperation. In 2009 several leading SLMC figures were reported to have left the party and joined the NC. Leaders: Rauff HAKEEM (Former Minister of Posts and Telecommunications), Basheer Cego DAWOOD (Chair), Hasan ALI (General Secretary).7 2. Deleted. 3. The Karuna and Pillayan cadres generally. The Karuna and Pillayan cadres are paramilitary organisations in Sri Lanka. The Karuna group is led by Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan (aka Karuna Amman) who was a former high ranking Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Commander in the east until he broke away to join the government in 2004, taking with him several thousand cadres. It is understood the group played a crucial role supporting the government’s campaign to regain the Eastern Province from the 7 Banks, Arthur S. et al. (eds.) 2010, ‘Sri Lanka’, Political Handbook of the World 2010, CQ Press, Washington, D.C. http://library.cqpress.com/phw/phw2010_SriLanka - Accessed 15 April 2011 – Attachment 4. Page 2 of 6 LTTE in 2007. Karuna subsequently registered the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (Tamil Peoples Liberation Tigers or TMVP) as a political party representing the Karuna group.8 The TMVP split into two factions in 2009 following tensions between Karuna and his deputy, Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan (alias Pillayan), which saw Karuna join the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Pillayan become the main TMVP representative.9 Karuna currently holds the position of Deputy Minister of Resettlement in the UPFA government. Pillayan is currently the Chief Minister of the Eastern Province.10 DFAT provided advice in May and September 2010 that confirms that government-aligned paramilitary groups, including the Karuna faction, have continued to operate in Sri Lanka since the end of the civil war in May 2009, particularly in the country’s north and east.11 DFAT also notes that international observers have expressed concerns about impunity in Sri Lanka and that there have been few, if any, successful legal prosecutions of paramilitary actors.12 The US Department of State (USDoS) also reported in April 2011 on the continued operations of paramilitary groups including the Karuna and Pillayan factions. USDoS noted: Nevertheless, during the year unknown actors suspected of association with progovernment paramilitary groups committed killings and assaults of civilians. These included the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), led by breakaway LTTE eastern commanders Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan, alias "Karuna," and Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, alias "Pillaiyan," in the east, as well as the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), led by Minister of Social Services and Social Welfare Douglas Devananda, in Jaffna. These and other progovernment paramilitaries also were active in Mannar and Vavuniya. All of these groups endeavoured to operate political organizations, some with more success than others, and there were persistent reports of close, ground-level ties between paramilitaries and government security forces. Whereas these groups served more of a military function during the war, often working in coordination with security forces, the paramilitaries now took on increasingly criminal characteristics as they sought to solidify their territory and revenue sources in the postwar environment.13 The past activities of the TMVP/Karuna Group are well-documented in human rights reports. The government used these and other paramilitary groups to assist its military forces in fighting the LTTE.14 According to the USDoS human rights report for 2008, the TMVP used a network of 8 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2010, Paramilitary groups in post-war Sri Lanka, 20 May – Attachment 7. 9 International Crisis Group 2009, Development Assistance and Conflict in Sri Lanka: Lessons from the Eastern Province; Asia Report N°165, 16 April 2009, p.4 http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-asia/sri- lanka/165Development%20assistance_and_conflict_in_sri_lanka___lessons_from_the_eastern_province.ashx – Accessed 18 July 2010 – Attachment 10. 10 ‘Government Ministers’ (undated), Sri Lankan Government website http://www.priu.gov.lk/Govt_Ministers/Indexministers.html - Accessed 9 May 2011 – Attachment 11; ‘Chief Minister’s Secretariat’ (undated), Sri Lanka Eastern Provincial Council website http://www.ep.gov.lk/CMindex.asp - Accessed 9 May 2011 – Attachment 12. 11 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2010, Paramilitary groups in post-war Sri Lanka, 20 May – Attachment 7; Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2010, Sri Lanka: Treatment of Tamils: CIS Request No LKA10612, 21 September – Attachment 13. 12 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2010, Sri Lanka: Treatment of Tamils: CIS Request No LKA10612, 21 September – Attachment 13. 13 US Department of State 2011, Country reports on Human Rights Practices 2010 – Sri Lanka, 8 April, Section 1.a – Attachment 14. 14 UN High Commissioner for Refugees 2009, ‘UNHCR eligibility guidelines for assessing the international protection needs of asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka’, UNHCR website, April, p.