Former Sri Lanka rebels 'abused in detention'

By Swaminathan Natarajan | BBC Tamil Service
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Former Tamil Tiger rebels detained in Sri Lanka say they have been ill-treated in government camps with no basic facilities.

In letters and phone calls to BBC Tamil, ex-militants say they have been "tortured and beaten" in the centres.

They accuse camp guards of being corrupt and demanding bribes before releasing detainees.

The government says all those being held in custody following the end of the war are being well cared for.

It has consistently refused to allow any kind of independent investigation into allegations of human rights abuses in the final weeks leading up to the end of the war in May 2009.

Recently President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that "not even a single civilian was killed" during the conflict.

But human rights groups say thousands were killed or injured towards the end of the fighting and in the war's immediate aftermath.

Unsanitary conditions

"Military officers often call us dogs - even if we don't shave for a day we are beaten up badly," said one of the letters, which was written by a detainee being held at a Tamil school in Vavuniya.

"The detainees are forced to bear the expenses for electricity and cleaning charges," continued the letter.

"If we say we don't have money, they threaten to transfer us to the notorious Boossa prison."

Another letter said: "We don't know whether we will be released or... shot."

The claims - mostly made in letters to BBC Tamil but sometimes in telephone interviews - are difficult to verify as there is no direct access to the camps.

It is estimated that some 10,000 Tamil Tigers either surrendered or were captured at the end of the war; many of them remain confined.

Some of the camps are located in military bases, others in schools and colleges.

The government refuses to allow journalists, aid agencies and the UN to visit these camps - but in most cases, relatives are allowed to see their loved ones.

Their accounts and the letters written by those being held all speak of unsanitary conditions and shortages of water.

The government says it is giving technical and vocational training to the detained cadres to make them more employable. Detainees say "no meaningful training" has so far been provided.

'Disappearances'

One letter written by a woman from the eastern town of Trincomalee said some young detainees had been "beaten black and blue".

"Some are hanged upside down," she wrote. "Some are made to lie down in the floor and beaten with belts and sticks. They don't take the injured to hospital."

Others accuse the authorities of providing no information on the whereabouts of their loved ones and of orchestrating "disappearances" from the detention centres.

They say that detainees taken away for questioning have not returned and no-one knows what has happened to them.

But these claims too have been strenuously denied by the government.

"I have visited Jaffna, Killinochi and Vavuniya where I met many people - including wives and relatives of the detainees," Rehabilitation Minister DEW Gunasekera told the BBC.

"No one made any complaints to me.

"Instead of writing letters to the BBC in London, ask them to write to me and I will look into it."

The minister said 3,000 people had been released from the camps in the past year and 8,000 former rebels - including 600 women and 1,300 men classified as "hardcore fighters" - remained in custody.

"Overall I would say we have been very magnanimous," added Mr Gunasekera.

© BBC News

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"SL Government dominated by racist ideologues" says former UN Spokesman in Sri Lanka

By Gordon Weiss | The Australian
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Sri Lankan government warnings that half the Tamils seeking asylum in Australia have links to terrorists are dangerous, mendacious and self-serving.

The Tamil Tigers were the most ruthless, tactically efficient, destructive, and committed terrorist organisation in the world. Between 1990 and 2000, Tiger operatives using suicidal tactics killed thousands of innocent Sri Lankans. Their presence was an abomination, and a by-word for violence and fear among ordinary citizens.

Despite Sri Lankan government claims that it decisively defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, they continue to suggest that the Tigers remain a danger. Yet analysis of the defeat of the Tigers, their methods, those in the Tamil diaspora that supported them, and the massive securitisation of the Sri Lankan state, contradicts that view. To internationalise violence by, for example, hijacking aircraft, would be pure folly to any narrow nationalist cause in 2010. For Tamil Sri Lankans who once supported the Tigers, there is no "military option" left to support. The Tamil Tiger is extinct.

The Tigers were a response to perceived state repression. This is true of all national liberation groups, many of which, like the Tigers, undercut sympathy for their cause by killing innocent people. In 1956, contrary to the constitution left by the British and agreed to by Sri Lanka's leaders, the Sinhala Only Act was passed. As incendiary in operation as its title suggests, this law compelled, for example, Tamils to seek judicial redress in the Sinhala language instead of English or Tamil. Things have never been the same since. In 1983, an orchestrated mob pogrom killed some 2000-3000 Tamils across the island. Within a year, the Tamil Tigers had mushroomed from a rabble of 50 men into an army of thousands who sought revenge.

In Australia, both the Tamil and Sinhalese communities include extremist elements. Both have organisations that have promoted radical politics and intolerant solutions to the ethnic divide that bedevils Sri Lanka. For example, Sinhalese-language programs on SBS are said (by Australian Sinhalese) to promote an extreme nationalist view of Sri Lanka that by definition excludes Sri Lankan Tamil claims to the island as also their home. This kind of nationalist narrative, nurtured from generation to generation in a new country (that often leaves emigre communities quite out of step with developments in their own countries) is true of all radical groups who now have deep roots in Australia, be they Kurds, Burmese, Palestinians, Armenians, or Croats.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians have direct memories of the murder of their family and friends in foreign lands. Rarely do they use this soil for the explicit manufacture of terrorism. But within these communities, identity and historical grievance remains a matter of the deepest pain, even as these Australians remain law-abiding citizens, grateful for the equitable justice this country has provided. Occasionally, such as with the Australian-Serb Dragan Vasiljkovic, who returned home during Yugoslavia's wars and allegedly killed and terrorised Croats, one will carry those memories to an extreme. But these are aberrations.

One must then ask why, with the fanciful claim that as many as half of all Tamil boatpeople have "links" to the Tigers, does the government of Sri Lanka seek to trigger alarm bells in our ears? What interest do they have in claims of links between al-Qa'ida and the Tamil Tigers? Why, as reported in recent days, do they incite Australians worried about illegal immigration with the suggestion that boatpeople are "taking advantage" of our asylum laws? And why do they play on Australia's poor understanding of this distant war by reducing the causes of their conflict to just the emergence and destruction of the Tamil Tigers?

The answer lies in another little understood creature that is far from extinct. From an easygoing island paradise in 1948, Sri Lanka has been transformed into one of the most militarised societies in Asia. Its government is dominated by racist ideologues who promote the notion of the Sinhalese as a "chosen people" (the words of their first prime minister). Government death squads have snatched thousands of people from the streets over the years. The country's highest court has explicitly rejected the role of international human rights instruments in Sri Lanka's affairs. And the government continues to deny that it killed civilians during the recent war, that there were battlefield executions, that it bombed hospitals, or that there is anything wrong with the sham democratic machinery of the state. The repressive creature of extreme nationalism is alive and well in Sri Lanka.

The UNHCR reported recently that there was a vast improvement in Sri Lanka, and hence it has raised the bar for refugee status for a large number of people. But this is so after any war. The refugee agency also noted that large numbers of Tamils still have grounds to fear persecution. By way of an example, the government of Sri Lanka has yet to make good on the three key points of an agreement it made with the UN Secretary-General in May 2009.

It still holds tens of thousands of civilians in internment camps. It shows no sign of instituting a political process to redress the half-century-old grievances of the Tamils, and thus remove the causes for any future conflict. And it shows no sign of seriously investigating allegations that both sides committed war crimes.

It broke every guarantee that it gave Ban Ki-moon not to use heavy weapons in civilian areas. Its interests lie in repression, not confession, and it has no interest in potential witnesses reaching these shores.

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Gordon Weiss was UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the war. He is the author of forthcoming The Cage; The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Pan Macmillan

© The Australian

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• Half of Sri Lankan arrivals have ties to Tigers (The Australian)
• Most Tamils real refugees, say experts (The Age)
• Should we be mindful about refugees seeking entry into Australia? (Curtin News)

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Child abuse rampant in Sri Lanka

By Achalie Kumarage and Madushika Gunawardane | Daily Mirror
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In a shocking revelation, the Department of Probation and Child Care Services said yesterday it received nearly ten complaints of child abuse from around the country daily.

“We direct the complaints to relevant authorities at national, school and provincial levels,” Commissioner D.M.S. Abayagunawardana said and added that the department had dealt with some 150 cases during the past six months.

He said most of the complaints related to the employment of underage children and children who were not sent to school.

The Police, Provincial Child Care Commissioners, Divisional Secretariats and the Education Ministry carry out the necessary investigations into the complaints.

He said as a means of dealing with the complaints at a Divisional level, the department had appointed Child’s Rights Promotion Officers at all the Divisional Secretariats.

“Last year we set up a help line – 1929 for the lodging of complaints, which is being handled by the National Child Protection Authority. We are also monitoring the counselling programmes set up in schools,” Mr. Abayagunawardana said.

© Daily Mirror

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Sri Lanka: A Massive Naval base under construction in Eastern Province

Tamil Net
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Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) has begun the preliminary work on the construction of a big base in a 1200 acre land in Koa’ra’laippattu North Divisional Secretariat division in Batticaloa district denying the people of this area their livelihoods besides affecting them socially and economically, sources in Batticaloa said. The Minister of Economic Development who presided over the recent District Development meeting said that the land in question had not been made use of when Batticaloa district Tamil MPs, members of Provincial Council members and local government bodies of Batticaloa raised protest over the encroachment of public land, the sources added.

The reason for people not using the said area was that Sri Lanka Army (SLA) during war had not allowed the local people to enter the area and had shot and killed the people who happened to enter, the minister was told.

The construction of the SLN base continues despite the protests of the elected representatives of the area.

Construction of new camps of SLA and SLN in Batticaloa district even after the war had ended and the SLA restriction on travel and harassment continues to keep the public gripped in fear, the sources added.

© Tamil Net

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• 'Navy camp' in cashew farm in east (BBC Sinhala)

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Sri Lanka Prime Minister leaves for China

Colombo Page
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Sri Lanka's Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne has left for China on a six-day official visit from 16th to 21st July to participate in the Expo 2010 Shanghai commerce and cultural forum, the government announced today.

During his visit the Premier is expected to hold discussions with the high ranking Chinese officials on bilateral economic development. He is also scheduled to meet investors in China to discuss ways to develop Sri Lanka's export sector and attend several business forums.

Among the business items to be discussed is the possibility to increase the frequency of national carrier, SriLankan Airline flights to Beijing to meet the increasing demand.

The Prime Minister will discuss matters regarding signing of several agreements in the fields of Education, Tourism, Energy and Agriculture with Chinese leaders and in addition, he will also discuss on areas of technology transfer and training between the two nations, the Government Information Department said.

Jayaratne will also deliver a speech on the possibilities of Asian Approaches to Poverty Alleviation.

However the main event of the visit will be the Expo 2010 Shanghai held under the theme "Better City, Better Life." Sri Lanka is among the 246 countries and international organizations participating at the event.

© Colombo Page

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Sri Lanka gives rail contracts to India, China

Lanka Business Online
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Indian and Chinese companies have been awarded two deals to modernize and rebuild parts of Sri Lanka's railway network damaged by war and extend tracks, a government statement said.

It said the Cabinet had approved a deal to rebuild the Northern Railway Line signaling and telecommunication system to be given to the Indian Railway Construction International at a total cost of 86.5 million US dollars.

The track was destroyed during the 30-year ethnic war which ended in May 2009.

The state-owned Ceylon Government Railway is also to enter into a contract with China National Machinery Import and Export Corp (CM) l to develop the southern Matara – Beliatta railway line at a cost 290 million dollars.

The contract will include the signaling and telecommunication system, the ticketing system and their maintenance, the statement said.

Sri Lanka is rebuilding and extending the railway network with the end of the war.

The government intends to make the railway carry a bigger share of the passenger and cargo load to ease congestion on roads.

Indian and Chinese firms have already been given contracts to rebuild or modernize other parts of the rail network in the north and south of the island.

© Lanka Business Online

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NTUC launches struggle for Rs.8000 increment

Lanka Truth
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National Trade Union Centre which is the largest trade Union consisting of state, private and estate consolidated trade unions is about to launch a struggle to win over a salary increment of Rs.8000. NTUC has already begun a country wide awareness program regarding this.

When 'Lankatruth' contacted Convener of Inter Company Employees Union Mr.Wasantha Samarasinghe to get more information about this issue, he said, "At the last presidential election Presidential candidate and incumbent president deceived masses stating he would grant a pay hike of Rs.2500. However From the budget this year no salary increment was granted to the employees of government sector or private sector. Therefore we as NTUC decided to embark on a struggle to win a salary increment.

Since President Mahinda Rajapakse took office in 2006, the cost of living has been sky rocketing. As such Central Bank reports the escalation of cost of living is 13842 rupees. However the government affords only 5200 rupees to government employees at present as cost of living allowance. Accordingly, a minimum salary increment of Rs.8000is essential for them.

As such central Bank reports that monthly expenditure of an ordinary family is about Rs.39186. But the minimum salary paid to the employees of private sector is Rs.6500 and the daily wage for estate employees is only Rs.250 . Minimum salary paid to the employees of government sector is Rs.16000. Can they survive on such amount of salary? Therefore the salary increment of Rs.8000 for the employees of state sector, Private sector and estate sector should be implemented.

NTUC has decided to embark on massive trade Union actions if the government is reluctant to comply with that demand. We have already started distribution of leaflets in Colombo for this issue. Furthermore an awareness program at institutional level is expected to be commenced on 19th of July. Thenceforth NTUC would give leadership up to salary increment struggle”.

© Lanka Truth

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On Sri Lanka, NAM will wait

By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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We'll “take our time” on the Sri Lanka letter, the current head of the Non Aligned Movement told Inner City Press on Thursday night, to see if they can “make up to Secretary General” Ban Ki-moon.

He added that “a lot of comments” against the letter were received from NAM members, on “the relation to the flotilla” and other issues.

Meanwhile the Council representative of a Permanent Five member, also on Thursday evening, told Inner City Press that Sri Lanka is “out of control... they went too far.”

This representative confirmed to Inner City Press the identity of the chief of staff of the UN's Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka: Jessica Neuwirth, a long time UN human rights official and founder of Equality Now, friend of Navi Pillay.

Some in Sri Lanka government circles say the appointment of Neuwirth, at a high level, smacks of patronage or nepotism, as does staffing the panel with eight people. “Goldstone didn't get that,” one noted. “The Sudan panel didn't get that.”

With a staff of eight, the Panel should at least opine of the credibility of the Rajapaksa Administration's “Lessons Learnt” panel. The Rapjapansans are afraid, they say, of this “becoming like Cambodia,” with a UN affiliated tribunal, or even Sierra Leone.

© Inner City Press

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Sri Lanka: GSP+ out Aug. 15

By Kelum Bandara | Daily Mirror
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The EU has sealed the withdrawal of GSP Plus concessions to Sri Lanka by issuing the Custom Information Papers for all the member states.

Thereby there would be no GSP concession for textile and clothing from August 15, a UK customs circular instructed.

The HM Revenue and Customs of the United Kingdom had issued this circular meant to be read by all involved in importing goods from Sri Lanka. Accordingly, the standard GSP+ rates will apply to all consignments of products from Sri Lanka after midnight of August 14.

For textile and clothing products, a GSP rate from 5.5 percent to 9.6 percent will be applied instead of nil rates currently applicable under the GSP + trade concessions for the country. The suspension will lead to a loss of Rs. 57 billion or a loss of 12 percent of the country's apparel exports," Joint Apparels Association Federation (JAAF) says. Sri Lanka was entitled to the concession since 2005. However, the EU has now decided to withdraw this trade facility since the government rejected its proposals. The EU put forward 15 proposals such as the implementation of the 17th Amendment, the repealing of certain sections of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the upholding of media freedom.

© Daily Mirror

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