'OVER 60 KILLED IN SRI LANKA EXPLOSIVES DEPOT BLAST'

Photo courtesy: Tamil Net

Agence France-Presse
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At least 60 people were killed, including two Chinese contractors, in eastern Sri Lanka on Friday after an accidental blast at an explosives depot at a police station, a military spokesman told AFP.

Spokesman Ubaya Medawala told AFP that most of the victims were policemen, who were issuing explosives to Chinese road builders who needed them to blast rock on a nearby project.

"It's an accidental explosion. The munitions were kept at the police station for safety reasons. It exploded as police were issuing some munitions to the contractors," Medawala said.

The police station in Karadiyanaru, 235 miles (378 kilometres) by road from the capital Colombo, was extensively damaged.

Chinese infrastructure companies are highly active in Sri Lanka, fuelling concerns in neighbouring India about the growing influence of China in South Asia.

State-run firms are building two ports in Sri Lanka, one in the southern town of Hambantota and another in Colombo.

The nearest hospital to the site of the accident, in the town of Batticaloa, said several people injured in the blast had been admitted, but a spokesman was unable to say how many had been hurt in total.

© AFP

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China-Lanka agree to deepen military ties

Indian Express
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China and Sri Lanka today agreed to deepen their burgeoning defence ties as the powerful visiting Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa held a crucial meeting with a top Chinese military commander here.

The Chinese offer to enhance defence ties with Sri Lanka came during a key meeting between Defence Secretary Rajapaksa and Chen Bingde, the Chief of General Staff of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA).

China was willing to work with Sri Lanka to further enhance friendly exchanges and cooperation between the two nations and armed forces, to promote their comprehensive and cooperative partnership, Chen said.

There has been continuous consolidation and development of China-Sri Lanka relations in recent years, state-run Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted Chen as saying today.

He said Beijing appreciated Sri Lanka's firm support on the issues of Taiwan and Tibet, which were related to China's core interests.

© Indian Express

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Ban Ki Moon's 1st Meeting with Sri Lanka Panel Omitted From Schedule

By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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The panel of experts on war crimes in Sri Lanka, which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced in March, is supposed to complete its work within four months of formally beginning. On September 14, Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky why the panel had not yet even begun. Nesirky replied that it would begin later in the week, by meeting with Ban.

Ban's published schedule for Thursday September 16, while listing a meeting with a Grand Master of the Urasenke Tradition of Team, did not list any meeting with the panel. Inner City Press asked Nesirky about it.

Nesirky replied Ban's meeting with the panel would occur “today, this afternoon.” Inner City Press asked, why wasn't it listed on Ban's schedule?

“Not everything is on the schedule,” Nesirky replied.

What is the purpose of publishing the schedule that, if a meeting about war crimes is not listed?

“There are any number of reasons some things are on the schedule and some things are not,” Nesirky said. “Internal meetings typically are not.”

But Ban's meeting with, for example, the panel on the assault on the Gaza flotilla was listed.

Nesirky replied, “who's panel is it?” Good question -- some now think it is Mahinda Rajapaksa's panel.

On September 14, Inner City Press asked Nesirky to describe Ban's experience with Rajapaksa prior to becoming Secretary General of the UN, and to confirm that Ban's son in law Siddarth Chatterjee, while an Indian army officer, served in the Indian Peace Keeping Force in majority Tamil areas. Nesirky said he would “get back” to Inner City Press on these.

More than 48 hours later, Nesirky has provided no information in this regard.

From the UN's September 14, 2010 transcript:

Inner City Press: On Sri Lanka, I wanted to ask this, since, recently there has been a removal of term limits on the president Mahendra Rajapaksa, saying that he can run forever, and The Economist magazine said that Rajapaksa has “preferred to put the consolidation of his family’s power ahead of solely needed national reconciliation.” The Government has now banned The Economist, this edition from the country. Since the Secretary-General, you know, has referred a lot to his May 2009 joint statement with Mr. Rajapaksa that includes references to accountability for war crimes and reconciliation, one — does he have any comment either on the extent that the elimination of term limits or on the banning of a publication? Two — the panel that he announced in March and that sort of convened once in July has it yet begun? Has the four-month clock begun? And just relatedly, two questions, can you describe the personal relationship of the Secretary-General with Mr. Rajapaksa, including prior to becoming Secretary-General? And, can you confirm that the Secretary-General’s son-in-law served in the Indian peacekeeping force that occupied Tamil areas of Sri Lanka during previous peace negotiations? Just as a factual matter to know what the Secretary-General’s connections to Sri Lanka are?

Spokesperson Nesirky: On the term limits, that’s an internal matter for Sri Lanka. I don’t have any comment on that. On publications and the banning thereof or the difficulty of receiving in any place, our general view would be that freedom of the media is an essential part of, an essential ingredient for democracy in any country.

You ask about the panel of experts — the panel members and support staff have been conducting intensive preparatory work, and indeed the panel will meet with the Secretary-General this week, marking the formal commencement of its activities. And as the final two questions, I will get back to you.

We're still waiting.

© Inner City Press

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Sri Lanka Tamil party criticises presidential panel

By Ranga Sirilal | Reuters
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Sri Lanka's main Tamil party on Thursday ruled out participating in a new advisory panel set up to review government appointments by the president, dismissing it as a powerless body.

The opposition and Washington have criticised the amendment to the constitution that created the committee, which President Mahinda Rajapaksa pushed through parliament this month, for diluting the few remaining checks on the powerful presidency.

It also lifted the presidential two-term limit, freeing Rajapaksa to run for a third term in 2017.

"The parliamentary committee is a powerless body, which is not going to do anything and we do not want be a member of that council which can't do anything for the people," Tamil National Alliance (TNA) legislator Suresh Premachandran told Reuters.

The new parliamentary committee has no veto power on appointments and replaces a 10-member constitutional council set up under an amendment passed in 2001 but never enacted.

The TNA said its parliamentarian, M.A Sumanthiran, would not join the five-member panel.

Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP), who will sit on the new committee, had nominated Sumanthiran. The UNP and TNA opposed the amendment but were powerless to stop it in a parliament Rajapaksa's party controls.

The TNA is the largest party representing Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, and it had been the political proxy for the Tamil Tiger separatists whom the government defeated last year to end a civil war that had raged off and on since 1983.

The TNA has said it is willing to work with Rajapaksa toward devolution of powers, one of the main bones of contention during the war. Rajapaksa has promised to deliver some kind of political reconciliation to Tamils but has yet to do much.

Diplomats from the West and Japan, one of Sri Lanka's staunchest allies, have warned that a failure to bring meaningful reconciliation could spark new violence.

Scholars say Sri Lanka's constitutional changes or failings helped fuel the 1971 and 1988-89 uprisings by the Marxist JVP, in which more than 100,000 people were killed, and the Tamil Tigers' war, in which an equal number were killed.

© Reuters

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Young Tamils in Sri Lanka 'being held without charge'

By Charles Haviland | BBC News
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A retired senior diplomat in Sri Lanka says several thousand young people of the Tamil ethnic minority are being held in custody without any charges being brought against them.

Nanda Godage said some had been incarcerated in this way for years.

He was testifying before a war commission, which is examining the final years of the long-running civil conflict which ended last year

The commission also looks at ways of preventing war from breaking out again.

Mr Godage, a former Sri Lankan ambassador to the European Union, told the commission that at least 2,000 young Tamils had been in detention for years on suspicion of involvement with the Tamil Tiger rebels.

These were in addition to several thousand people who had been held in camps since the end of the fighting last year, he said.

They had been failed by the legal system, he alleged.

By holding them in this way, he charged, the Sri Lankan state was in danger of "breeding many more Prabhakarans" - a reference to Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil Tigers who met his death as the war ended.

Mr Godage told the BBC he was especially angry about 500 young people who were being held purely on suspicion in a Colombo jail, Welikada, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

If there was no evidence against them and the others, they should be freed, he said, although he acknowledged that the security of the state was vital.

Forgotten

He told the panel of a case he said was typical: a Tamil engineer who admitted to the police that he had given money to the Tigers while working in the UK.

The man had spent more than a year in prison despite explaining that many Tamils abroad were forced to make such donations.

The retired diplomat said some top officials sympathised with these detainees, but that complex bureaucracy meant they were forgotten about.

Former Tamil Tiger members or suspects who are still alive are receiving mixed treatment in Sri Lanka.

The most senior of them, nicknamed KP, is nominally detained, but is co-operating with the government in building links with the Tamil diaspora.

Another senior ex-Tiger has just told the BBC that he is helping to run a television station in the north while out on bail from a court case.

© BBC News

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China to build another port in Sri Lanka

By Indrani Bagchi | The Times of India
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First, it was Hambantota port in south Sri Lanka which went to the Chinese. Now, an ambitious programme to develop Colombo port has been given to another Chinese consortium.

The Sri Lankan cabinet recently decided to award the contract to build a new deep-water container terminal in Colombo port to a consortium consisting of China Merchant Holdings International and Aitken Spence. According to reports from the island nation, the terminal will be built by the same company that built the Hambantota port complex -- China Harbour Engineering Company ( CHEC) and Sino Hydro Corporation.

No Indian company even bothered to bid for the project.

After Hambantota went to the Chinese and Indian strategists saw it as part of Beijing's "string of pearls" strategy, it was believed that India would be more proactive when it came to strategic projects in its neighbourhood, where more than mere economic interests are at stake. But for the ADB-funded Colombo Port project, there were no Indian entities participating in the bids, leaving the Chinese consortium as the sole bidder for the terminal.

That when China's engagement with Sri Lanka gets deeper. India is Sri Lanka's biggest trading partner, but China is its biggest donor. In 2009, China gave about $1.2 billion to Sri Lanka.

When it is expanded, the Colombo port -- which will become bigger than most Indian ports combined -- will probably handle the bulk of Indian shipping traffic, making it more than important for India. Sri Lanka is positioning itself as a South Asia hub, which would work very well for India as it currently uses either Singapore or Dubai.

In fact, the Sri Lankan government has asked for bids for developing an industrial park in Hambantota. But so far, said sources, only a very small number of Indian companies have even expressed interest. Indian companies are getting into numerous sectors in Sri Lanka, but the headline grabbers remain the Chinese, adding to the perception that India is being "surrounded".

While it is a fact that China, with its deep pockets and state-owned enterprises has been increasing its footprint in South Asia, it's equally true that Indian entities are proving to be unequal to the challenge. Government and industry sources point to a number of reasons.

First, Indian companies venturing out in the neighbourhood are few because most of them are very risk-averse. They are also all private sector entities and not backed by India's government might as in China. The government is also hesitant about pushing companies in other countries for fear of being tainted by corruption charges.

Second, countries like Sri Lanka are only now emerging from decades of strife. But whereas this is seen as a strategic opportunity for China, India is far slower off the mark. China also instinctively invests in projects where its presence/benevolence can be seen. In Sri Lanka, as in Bangladesh, Beijing has built much needed convention centres. India could actually be thinking cricket stadiums in Sri Lanka or cricket training academies in Bangladesh. But there is none of that fleet-footedness in New Delhi.

In countries like Nepal, where anti-India feeling is rife, Indian companies are finding that tenders are tailored in such a way so as to exclude Indian companies. In this way, Indian sources estimate that over 900 Indian companies have lost out in the past couple of years.

Third, and most important, the top levels of the government remain obsessed with Pakistan, neglecting the other countries in the neighbourhood. The PM, for instance, has only travelled to Bhutan. And there is no brainstorming between government and industry about Indian outreach in these countries and how the public and private sectors can complement each other's efforts.

© The Times of India

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