LTTE continues to collect taxes

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are continuing to collect tax and ransom from the people despite an agreement with the government which prohibits this.

Contrary to expectations that collecting taxes from civilians, including farmers, fishermen, traders and land owners will come to a halt after the agreement, civilians in the north and east complain that the LTTE is still doing so.

The tax varies from place to place in the north and eastern provinces as the LTTE area leaders have been provided targets by their leadership.

The LTTE justifies collection of taxes on grounds that it has a large organisation to maintain and that it has also to look after the needs of the families whose members have been killed during the war. They claim that the money coming in from foreign countries is not sufficient to maintain their cadres.

But their justification is not being accepted by all civilians. Some people said that in the past the LTTE area leaders claimed that they were 'defending' the people in the north and east from the Army and were forced to spend a large sum of money for the war.

"We know that the government has now relaxed the ban on most of the items. But the taxes are still being imposed. We know that the LTTE is not spending on war. Then why should they impose a tax on us," says a resident of the northern Kilinochchi district.

In Jaffna, the tax collection has led to a rise in prices of food and hardware items over the past three weeks, despite expectations from the civilians that the prices would drop after the opening of a key land route to northern Sri Lanka.

A trader from Jaffna who arrived in Colombo this week said they were compelled to increase prices as they were taxed between eight and 25 per cent on items they were taking through the A9 highway which re-opened recently.

The tax collection in north eastern Trincomalee district is being harshly imposed and many of the traders belonging to the majority Sinhala community are victims.

In the eastern province the taxes and ransom is not the only harassment for the civilians. Some of them are forced to lend their tractors or motorcycles for periods ranging from one week to three weeks.

In the eastern province the farmers are forced to pay taxes at various stages of their cultivation.

In the northern Vavuniya district tax collection from the traders has become more convenient as they openly function as a political front from Vavuniya. One of the offices handling the LTTE's economic affairs co-ordinates the tax collection.

Traders are summoned and told about the payments they have to make. No complaints are made and the money is promptly paid.

Many of the rival Tamil groups which were thriving on tax collected from traders in Vavuniya now hardly collect any.