Yes, what happened in the elections in the north is that, during the election campaign, there were a whole lot of acts of intimidation, threat and intimidation of citizens by the military in uniform and in civilian clothing as the civil defence force. This is not dissimilar to the type of thing that happened when Navanethem Pillay, the UN high commissioner, visited and those people who went to talk to her were also given this same treatment.
There was a fair amount of this kind of intimidation. In that respect, it took place in a context of institutionalized violence. The very presence of the military in certain districts of the north, such as Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi, is particularly intimidating, given the numbers and given the role it plays.
Furthermore, we had the situation earlier on in the year when, given the ratio of military to civilians I mentioned earlier, you had the distribution office of the key regional newspaper, the Uthayan newspaper in Kilinochchi, destroyed. You had the printing press of this newspaper in Jaffna again burned down. You had meetings of the Tamil National Alliance disrupted.
None of this would happen unless there is collusion and complicity by the military—