US FET Marines share experiences with Sri Lankan Armed Forces

Photo courtesy: U.S. Marine Corps Photo

By Corporal Gabriel Velasquez | US Navy
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The women of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit's Female Engagement Team (FET) on the Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52) shared their personal military experiences with the female service members of the Sri Lankan Navy and Air Force July 14.

"We invited them on board the Pearl Harbor to meet with them and discuss differences in our militaries and just in general being a woman in the military," said Marine Corps 1st Lt. Briana Carter, the assistant operations officer for Combat Logistics Battalion (CLB) 15.

During the interaction, Marines explained their roles within the organization, said Sgt. Krystal L. Marshall, CLB 15 communications detachment maintenance chief.

"We explained to them what a FET is and what we do on deployment," said Marshall "We told them that we're trained to go into hazardous zones with the male Marines and do everything from searching females to working security."

Sri Lankan and U.S. medical personnel inquired about different techniques and shared differences in their practices.

"I demonstrated to them what a sucking chest wound was and also what to do with a protruding intestine wound," said Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Lesheka D. Moore.

A modular tactical vest (MTV) was displayed so the Sri Lankans could see what kind of gear FET members carry.

"They really liked our [MTV]," said Marshall. "They said it was much more comfortable than the ones they wear, but they did say it was heavier."

Some participants were surprised by some of the differences.

"We found out that they do not serve on ships, so they were amazed that we live and work here with the males," said Carter. "It really showed us how different it is for women in other countries."

After their time together aboard Pearl Harbor, the FET members and Sri Lankans joined in the nearby Sri Lankan Naval Academy tug-of-war competition.

For the FET members, it was time well spent.

"It was a really awesome experience," said Marshall. "It was definitely time well spent, and I can't wait to do something like it again."

© US Navy

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US 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit become teachers in Sri Lanka

Photo courtesy: Michael Russell | US Navy

By Cpl. Gabriel Velasquez | Marine Corps News
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The sun beamed down on the Marines as they stood in full riot gear, facing sailors from the Sri Lankan Navy Special Boat Squadron.

During a Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief demonstration the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit held for the Sri Lankan Navy, Marines from Battery C, 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment taught riot control and searching techniques to sailors of the SBS.

“We started by teaching them different formations when in a situation where riot control is needed,” said Staff Sgt. Osman Lima, platoon sergeant, Battery C, 1st Bn, 4th Marines. “We also taught them snatching procedures for an injured person or a high value target,” added the Los Angeles, Calif. native.

The sailors from the SBS listened intently to the Marines, absorbing all the Marines had to teach about riot control. The Marines explained in cases of disaster relief or humanitarian aid, chaos may ensue and safe control of the crowds would be needed.

Eventually, Marines turned over their gear and gave the sailors of the SBS an opportunity to apply their newly learned techniques.

“We gave them our helmets, the shin guards, and batons for some practical application,” said Cpl. Daniel Middlebos, artilleryman, Battery C, 1st Bn, 4th Marines. “They nailed all the techniques we taught very quickly and accurately,” added the 24-year-old artilleryman.

The Marines explained to them the different uses for the gear and the various parts of the weapons system used during riot control situations.

“We showed them our different non-lethal rounds used from the M203 grenade launcher,” said Lima. “We then instructed them on how and when we would use them,” he added.

Another topic of discussion was proper search techniques for any detained persons during a humanitarian operation.

“I gave a class on how to search detainees properly and safely,” said Sgt. Derek Stegall, artillery section chief, Battery C, 1st Bn, 4th Marines. “They were very eager to learn and performed the techniques well during the practical application,” explained the 28-year-old Festus, Miss. native.

With both the SBS and the Marines having an amphibious doctrine, the similarities between the two services were apparent.

“They’re incredibly intelligent and disciplined,” explained Stegall. “They picked up everything we taught and didn’t make any mistakes,” he added.

Overall, the Marines of Battery C agreed that the training was a success.

“I think the training went really well,” said Middlebos. “They were really hospitable, friendly, and the beach environment we trained on was great,” he added.

For one Marine, the experience was one that he will remember for his entire career.

“The camaraderie between the Marines and the Sri Lankan Navy will probably be one of the best memories I ever have in the Marines,” said Lima. “I really hope I get the opportunity to do something like this again,” he added.

© Marine Cops News

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Sri Lanka: Six university students arrested

By Sherwani Synon | Daily Mirror Online
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Six university students have been arrested by the police for putting up posters saying that police officials involved in the death of Ruhunu university student Susantha Aruna Bandara should be arrested.

Speaking to Daily Mirror online the spokesperson for the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF), Udul Premaratne said these students were arrested last night in Nugegoda while they were putting up these posters.

While two Sri Jayawardenepura University students were arrested by the Kirulapone police, four students of the Indigenous medical faculty of the Colombo University were arrested by the Welikada police.

The students are placed in remand custody at present. He further said that the police had also removed cut outs placed at the Kelaniya , Sri Jayawardenepura and the Indigenous medical faculty of the Colombo University.

"We will be filing a case at the Supreme court within this week as we think this is a violation to our freedom of expression," Udul said.

Meanwhile, when Daily Mirror online contacted Police media spokesman SP Prishanth Jayakody, he said he wasnt aware of such an incident as he had not recieved any details of these arrests.

© Daily Mirror Online

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All things black since Black July

By Kusal Perera | The Sunday Leader
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It was exactly 27 years ago this day. The day was a Poya Sunday. Late Saumyamoorthy Thondaman, the respected plantation sector trade unionist and political leader, on a short visit to Chennai immediately after, was quoted in Tamil Nadu media as having said that in Sri Lanka, “It is Sunday sil – Monday kill”.

It was a day when my parental house was cramped full with about 50 men, women and children, wanting refuge and security. All, neighbours and ordinary Tamil families, with whom we grew together from our infancy. With whom we played, went to school, quarrelled and made friends the next day. Long time neighbours in Rathnakara Place, whose houses were being looted and burnt, while my parents were helplessly watching two whole days, trying desperately to find a way out to move them to safety.

They moved out on the third day to Saraswathy Hall, Bambalapitiya and Hindu College, Ratmalana in navy escorted convoys with tears they couldn’t hold on to, in swollen eyes. My father was admitted to the Cardiac Unit of the Colombo General Hospital, the same evening. All that after a belated 48 hour curfew, imposed by President Jayewardene.

That was “Black” July in 1983. There were more horrific incidents acted out without shame and with braggardismo, in broad daylight. Doped heroes in mobs looking for loot and humans to kill. How many heroes have we had since that “Black July”, in this motherland given in custody to the Sinhala Buddhists by Lord Gauthama Buddha himself?

Sinhala heroes they all are. The Rajapaksas right in front, led by President Mahinda R. with brother Gotabaya close on his heels, or close by his side. The architects of the now concluded war and President Rajapaksa honoured as King Mahinda VII by that archaeological scholar, Ellawala Medhananda Thera of the JHU.

Gen. Sarath Fonseka also claims he alone commandeered the army to victory against the Tamil separatist Tigers, paraded as a hero by the JVP and their DNA. Now we have the Honourable Minister Weerawansa who almost starved to death on a saline drip, whose photo went up on city walls with gratitude, for that “heroic” fast.

They are descendant heroes after Kaluwa Dewage Cyril Mathew, a prominent minister in the UNP government of J.R. Jayewardene, who gave Sinhala extremism the modern day hard line brutality. Mathew was conspicuously racist with a vengeance in his call for Sinhala supremacy. He was openly accused for his role in creating mayhem in Jaffna, burning down the Jaffna Public Library and the residence of TULF MP Yogeswaran, during the final days of the District Development Council elections in 1981. Mathew was also accused of the pogrom on Tamil people on “Black” July itself.

The rest is knotted history with a protracted war and a human tragedy that kept heaping more and more complications over the past decades. In between there were All Party Conferences, the Annexe “C” as it was known, the famous Thimpu talks which brought consensus among all Tamil armed groups and the TULF on the concept of a “Tamil Homeland” with three other conditions that laid the basis for any further negotiations. There were also three further attempts at negotiations under Presidents’ Premadasa and Kumaratunga and then under PM Wickremesinghe.

Each failed attempt made it far more complex and brutal to live with and the war crossed seas and geographical borders, bringing in many and varied actors. Some wanting to push geo political agendas and some wanting to live and earn with the war. This war, concluded in May last year, left all the agonies of a never attempted reconciliation in a distraught, divided and a devastated country. It still leaves the decades old, unanswered question, “do we really want peace and reconciliation the decent and honourable way as a modern, democratic, nation state ?”

I would beg to answer in the negative, even after all the blood we’ve shed and lives, infrastructure and environment destroyed. After unaccounted numbers of soldiers, Tiger combatants and even civilians who never wanted this war, have been left disabled for life. They would say an emphatic “no”, though it may insult thousands of young war widows on both sides of the divide, Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. And with children — how many exactly none would still not know — who are orphaned, have lost one or both of their parents in the North, Wanni and the East and those from soldier families added.

We yet take pride fooling ourselves that we Sri Lankans are the noblest (loken uthum rata) and we don’t take orders from imperialist Western and international countries, calling them conspirators. We still try to fool ourselves that we do best, our own way, a Sinhala society that has pushed for political hegemony over six decades and in the process have woefully failed to find positive answers to any of our national issues in a decent, democratic manner. We don’t have to listen to or take orders from any, if we are truly working towards solving our own socio economic problems, within democratic politics. But we honestly, DON’T.

Leaving aside all the criticism, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LL&RC) established by President Rajapaksa, does not prove the regime is sincere or committed in achieving what is said, it would. The way it is constituted, leaves no trust, no confidence for battered and bruised Tamil and Muslim people in North and East to walk up to the LL&RC, to say what they have to say. Will those people held in barbed wire camps under military guard, ever come up to this LL&RC to say how they were treated, how their relatives went missing and what they now need ?

If there was any serious commitment and a sincere political will for reconciliation in this ethnically divided and polarised society, the proposal for the LL&RC should have been brought to parliament for due consent from all political parties, including Tamil and Muslim members. A serious commitment would have sought a national consensus for honest reconciliation between estranged and polarised communities. But such was not even thought of. The LL&RC was established ex parté by the regime in control, only to counter any investigation, campaigned for in human rights circles.

It was the same with the APRC. As at all times in the past, there was no serious attempt to include democratic Tamil representation. The likes of EPDP were thought of as enough excuse. Dragged on for more than a year, the APRC began deliberating on a draft that is supposed to have spelt out the basis for a new constitution. Two years more and 128 APRC meetings to discuss the chapters of that draft document, produced a final report that was given to President Rajapaksa in June this year, only to be shelved and for other reforms to be approved by the Cabinet of Ministers for supposed extension of presidential terms.

That shelved on political uncertainties, Wickremesinghe as UNP and Opposition Leader accepts dialogue with Rajapaksa to bring in an Executive Premiership, totally outside the efforts of the four year old APRC.

It is again only about accommodating the political agendas of the Sinhala South and their post Mathew leaders, Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe, et al. Where are the answers to the crying need of reconciling a nation that bled on either side of an ethnic divide for decades and is numbed for life ? Where are the answers for democratising a society to accommodate all within a secular, plural state ? Where are academics, intellectuals, civil society and corporate leaders, artistes, trade unionists and journalists, who should lead the people in finding answers ?

There are no leaders, no intellectual leaders, for sure. July ‘83 was a cardiac arrest that left us sick like dead. It left all things BLACK beyond that July, for sure.

© The Sunday Leader

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A network of permanent bases in North-East with Chinese assistance

By Shamindra Ferdinando | The Island
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The government is engaged in an ambitious programme to establish permanent security forces bases in the Northern and Eastern Provinces as part of a strategy to thwart any possible attempt to revive LTTE terrorism. Authoritative government officials told The Island that the deployment of security forces in the Northern and Eastern Provinces as well as other parts of the country would be solely at the discretion of the military top brass.

In keeping with the government policy, the army has established the 68 Division headquarters at Sugandirapuram, Puthukudirippu east of the Kandy-Jaffna A9 road. Army Chief Lt. General Jagath Jayasuriya on Thursday (22) visited the new headquarters to meet senior officers and men deployed in the area.

Lt. General Jayasuriya told a gathering of men and officers that permanent bases were necessary to move security forces from private and public property currently occupied by them. Although the Jaffna peninsula had remained home to the largest concentration of forces before the outbreak of Eelam war IV in August 2006, today the single biggest deployment is in the Vanni.

The army chief appreciated the Chinese assistance to speed up the re-deployment process by making available what he called pre-fabricated technology. Lt. General Jayasuriya said: "These types of permanent buildings were made possible due to pre-fabricated technology from China. The government wants us to vacate all buildings, belonging to the civil sector, so that owners of those buildings could reclaim them and help bring normalcy to the area. Civil life should be restored and facilitated in the area. In the future, once married quarters of the officers and the other ranks are set up in respective areas, they would be able to live with their families as well while serving the areas."

The Army Chief thanked his officers and men for the ongoing development projects under ‘Uthuru Wasanthaya’ programme in the sphere of demining, bridge building, constructions, other humanitarian projects, etc.

The newly opened headquarters is the second new command headquarters established in the area controlled by the 59 Division.

Military spokesman Brigadier Ubaya Madawela said that permanent bases were being set up both east and west of the A9 road. Responding to a query by The Island, Madawala said that some of the new constructions would come up at Tunukkai. He emphasized that all new bases would be set up on State land, though some accused the government of taking over private land.

According to him, as part of the re-deployment in a post-LTTE era, a section of the 53 Division had been moved to the South to intensify security and also to assist in development programmes. The 53 Division troops are deployed in Galle, Hambantota and Moneragala, while a section of troops remained at Mankulam. Major General Amal Karunasekera, formerly head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) recently took over the 53 Division.

Brigadier Madawala said that the army was making an effort to vacate private property occupied by troops deployed in the Jaffna town area. He said that due to severe ‘space constrains’ they were finding it difficult to move troops, though they were looking for ways and means of finding alternative accommodation for them.

The army consists of 200,000 personnel. It numbers increased exponentially due to massive recruitment drives carried out during Eelam war IV to strengthen fighting formations.

© The Island

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Sri Lanka widows 'under stress'

By Charles Haviland | BBC News
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A Roman Catholic priest in northern Sri Lanka has been speaking of the extreme stress suffered by the tens of thousands of war widows in the region.

At the same time a government minister says he believes women in the former war zone, including the widows of former rebel Tamil Tiger fighters, need to be helped in getting employment and compensation.

Father ESC Mariathas, a priest, quoted in the Sri Lankan Daily Mirror, gave a bleak picture of the situation faced by the widows he works with.

He alone gives pastoral care to 625 widows and 25 orphans and said many women just squat by their shelters with their children clinging to them, relating stories of loss, grief and anger.

At times they wake screaming in the middle of the night, he said, and some seem like mad people.

Social stigma

Father Mariathas said social stigma meant few widows could remarry; many were reacting to stress by taking painkilling drugs.

The minister of rehabilitation, DEW Gunasekera, has echoed the priest on the urgent need to help women in the north.

He told the BBC he and his team recently met 8,000 women, many of them widows, in the north to discuss their needs.

He said the government hoped to work with UN agencies as soon as possible to set up schemes for self-employment.

Mr Gunasekera said he’d had “very friendly” conversations with some wives and widows of senior leaders of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels and had told them he was “not worried about their politics”.

The minister said that in some cases he did not know whether their husbands were alive or dead.

There have been conflicting accounts of the status of some senior former rebel leaders, leading some to speculate that they may have died in detention.

The government recently said there were at least 40,000 widows in northern Sri Lanka and 50,000 in the east.

© BBC Sinhala

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Sri Lanka against asylum

Daily Mirror Online
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The Sri Lankan government has warmed the international community that granting asylum or refugee status on perceived claims of persecution would only be a covert encouragement for illegal and irregular migration.

Deputy Minister of External Affairs Gitanjana Gunawardena said that Sri Lanka, has enhanced surveillance in intercepting illegal trafficking in the high seas, especially in curtailing trafficking of persons and goods smuggling by small boats.

He told the 17th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Hanoi Vietnam that solutions to the illegal and irregular migration problem should include transparent policies by originating, transit and receiving countries to discourage illegal migration and irregular movement of people.

“Granting asylum or refugee status on perceived claims of persecution would only be a covert encouragement for illegal and irregular migration. Hence, security networks and policing of territorial waters alone may not be able to prevent the illegal movement of people and illicit trade,” he said.

The Deputy Minister also highlighted the ability of terrorist organizations to operate by exploiting cross border linkages, and to have easy access to sophisticated and advanced technologies.

He therefore emphasised the importance of marshalling collective efforts to curtail transnational operations of terrorists, including financing of illicit activities by Diaspora groups and sympathizers.

“No country or region would be entirely free and safe of the scourge of such threats and associated illicit activities” without collective efforts”, he said.

He also reiterated the importance of abiding by the time tested principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of one another as well as the mutual respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and national identity of all nations.

© Daily Mirror Online

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