<b>Tamil Tigers Under Flak for Taxation</b>

T.Sabaratnam

Colombo July 11: LTTE’s taxation structure is now under attack: from President Kumaratunga, Muslim parliamentarians, Tamil civilians and Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission.

The Tamil rebel organization, that had been taxing the people living in the areas controlled by it, had extended it to other areas in the North and East where it had been allowed to do political work.

A comprehensive tax scheme, announced by its Finance Secretary Tamilendi at Kilinochchi before the People’s Assembly, a representative gathering of officials and civilians, came into operation from June 1.

Tax ranges from 5% for essential goods to 35% for cigarettes. Twenty items considered essential commodities are exempt from tax. They are mainly educational, infant, food and medical articles.

Travelers using the recently opened A9 Kandy Road as taxed at Rs. 400 per person.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga had dubbed it as “extortion.” She wants an end to it.

“It is pure and simple extortion, we will not call it taxation and dignify it,'' President’s spokesman Harim Peiris told newsmen today.

Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader Rauff Hakims also calls it extortion.

“LTTE has no authority to tax people but they are doing it. Those who refuse to pay are either abducted or harassed,” he said.

Hakeem said taxing or extortion violates the ceasefire agreement and the Memorandum of Understanding he signed with LTTE leader Veluppillai Pirabaharan on April 12.

The MOU he signed with Pirabaharan contains the paragraph:
“The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam announced its decision to stop collecting money for the struggle from the Muslims of the Eastern Province.”

Hakeem accuses the LTTE of violating that undertaking.

Muslim law makers who met in the parliamentary complex today, decided not to do anything to jeopardize the peace process and to meet the LTTE as a group and to seek the appointment through Norway, the peace facilitator, to sort out the problems they have with the LTTE and to get an assurance that normal life of the Muslims are not interfered with.

LTTE had defended its scheme of taxation saying that it is running its own civil administration in the areas under its control and providing the people the basic services and its entitled, as a de facto government to raise money to maintain those services.

Its critics argue that, even if one admits their right to tax, it can tax only the people who live within the area of its control and not others, who live in government controlled areas. Such people pay taxes to the government.

Sinnathamby Sivakumar, a Colombo resident, said LTTE cadres collected 25% duty on the television set he took with him to his mother in Jaffna and charged Rs. 2 for every apple that was in excess of the free allowance of ten. He said the transistor and the mixer – the kitchen appliance, he carried were allowed free.

Traders transporting goods from Colombo to Jaffna, accuse the LTTE of levying duties. A trader who transported 124 bags of wheat flour to Jaffna, by lorry on the A9 Highway said he had to pay Rs. 17,000 in taxes.

In Jaffna traders say that they add the tax to the price and that make all goods costlier than in Colombo. Civilians have begun to grumble. “We expected the LTTE to serve us, but it is making things costly.”

President Kumaratunga’s spokesman Peiris charged extortion was one of the causes for the
Tamil-Muslim clashes in the east last month. "The extortion has to stop.''

Muslim leaders were also of similar view.

Gen. Trond Furuhovde, the head of the SLMM, told LTTE eastern leaders whom he met at Kokkaddichcholai, today that taxation should stop. It was a violation of the MOU. They undertook to inform their leaders.