Aid Workers Massacre remain unresolved

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Aid worker massacre remains unsolved

Saturday marks exactly a year since 17 Sri Lankan aid staff working on tsunami reconstruction were gunned down in their compound in one of the most blatant and brutal attacks on humanitarian workers in living memory.

The team from international aid group Action Contre la Faim (ACF) were slaughtered, in the worst single attacks on aid workers since the 2003 bomb attack on the UN in Baghdad. But with no international staff involved and the world's attention fixed on the Lebanon conflict, the international impact was much reduced.

It seems a mixture of bad luck and poor judgement that left the group pinned down in the northeastern town of Muttur on the edge of Trincomalee harbour just as the first ground fighting since a 2002 ceasefire broke out.

Other aid groups were steering clear of the town after recent violence. With hindsight, the mainly ethnically Tamil team - who had carried out considerable amounts of their work in rebel Tamil Tiger areas until finding made it impossible - stood out in the mainly Muslim town held by security forces from the majority Sinhalese community.

Aid agencies in the Trincomalee area had long been accused of bias in favour of the Tamil community and of sympathies with the rebels. At the same time as the ACF team were killed, Sinhalese mobs were attacking aid vehicles. Some aid workers privately admitted that all the attention given to coastal Tamil communities in rebel territory after the tsunami had alienated inland Sinhalese villagers. There was a perception that aid agencies had hired predominantly Tamil staff and taken less notice of the sensibilities of other ethnic groups.

The ACF team were trapped in the town after a naval battle in the harbour forced the suspension of the ferry and the road south was cut by fighting. They could have escaped when Muttur's fled on foot through the shellfire on August 4, but either chose or were told to stay in their compound as the Tigers withdrew from the town.

It left them fatally exposed. The evidence suggests they were massacred the same day.

As I have recounted many times to those who ask, I landed in the town the next day with a media tour organised by the military, keen to show it was back in their hands despite the ongoing clashes in the suburbs. I did not know that the ACF team was missing, but I did push the local military commanders on the ground for details of civilian casualties. They never mentioned the massacre - but they were clear in saying that the rebels had withdrawn the previous day.

The first aid team into the town found the bodies, and ACF later recovered them. By the time they reached the hospital, the stench could be smelt several streets away, and some other families were already blaming the military.

The government was swift to try and put the blame on the Tigers, but it was clear it was not that simple.

There was outrage and demands for answers - although, if we are honest, nothing on the scale that there would have been if foreign staff had been involved. The government promised an investigation. Denied access, Nordic truce monitors ruled that the killings were a ceasefire violation by the government.

A year on, little has happened. Both foreign observers invited by the government and rights groups monitoring the process have expressed discontent with the investigation. A key bullet found in an early autopsy that appeared to come from an M-16 assault rifle - a weapon primarily used by Sri Lankan special forces in the town at the time - seems to have vanished. Security forces in the town at the time were not even interviewed.

Sri Lanka remains one of the most dangerous countries for aid workers. Two Red Cross local staff were taken in June from the main railway station in the capital by men who identified themselves as police officers. They were found dead in the highlands a couple of days later.

On Saturday, ACF will hold commemorations at its Paris headquarters and in Sri Lanka, where they say the event will be attended both by Sri Lankan human-rights minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and UN humanitarian coordinator John Holmes. Sri Lanka's government maintains its investigation will eventually yield results.

A year on, there is little evidence or realistic hope that it will.