Hardline Sri Lanka monks mobbed us: Dutch aid group

COLOMBO, Jan 12 (Reuters) A Dutch Christian aid group that Sri Lanka suspects of helping the Tamil Tigers said today hardline Buddhist monks allied to President Mahinda Rajapakse had mobbed their office and warned them to leave the island.

Monks in saffron robes identifying themselves as members of Jathika Hela Urumaya, the Sinhalese nationalist all-Buddhist monk party (JHU), stormed ZOA Refugee Care's office in a residential quarter of Colombo with dozens of supporters yesterday, the group said.

''Around 8-10 Buddhist monks from JHU with 70-80 supporters walked into our premises,'' said ZOA's general affairs manager, Anslem Mudiatta. ''They pushed their way through. They took our attendance registers and some keys and photographed everybody.'' ''They were saying: You are helping the Tigers, you are Christian, you have come to spread Christianity. This is a Buddhist country, you must get out within 24 hours,'' he added, but said staff were not manhandled.

The Venerable Lankananda, a JHU spokesman, said he had no details of the incident.

Sri Lankan government defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said on Thursday the government was investigating a number of foreign and local aid groups it suspected might be helping the Tigers.

He said the government might banish ZOA from the island after the military said this week it had found equipment belonging to the Netherlands-based group at a rebel base it had overrun in the eastern district of Ampara.

ZOA, whose projects -- funded by the Dutch government and the European Union -- are focused on helping refugees in Sri Lanka's restive east, deny helping the rebels. The group said that any recovered equipment with their logo must have been stolen from an office abandoned due to renewed fighting.

''It is outrageous to accuse them without providing at the same moment substantial evidence,'' said a European diplomat on condition of anonymity. ''Rambukwella's comments are only fuelling extremist elements and makes the government responsible for hampering the much-needed work of humanitarian organisations.'' ''By accusing ZOA, they are directly involving the government of the Netherlands and the European Union, because they fund it -- and that is very serious.'' The conflict has forced many aid groups to shelve or abandon projects in conflict-affected parts of the north and east, where aid workers say both the military and the rebels are hampering access to civilians trapped in the crossfire.

Some aid workers fear the government is mounting a witch-hunt against aid groups to appease hardline nationalists -- namely the JHU and the Marxist party JVP -- who blame the international community for the ravages of the island's ethnic conflict.

The government probe comes amid mounting international pressure on both the government and the Tigers to halt a new chapter in a two-decade civil war that has killed more than 67,000 civilians, troops and rebel fighters since 1983.

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