Rights groups chastises Sri Lanka over rebel detentions

BBC News | South Asia
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The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) says Sri Lanka has failed to adhere to international law in detaining suspected Tamil Tigers.

The watchdog says the detention of nearly 8,000 rebel suspects for months without a trial is perhaps "the largest mass detention in the world".

It urges Sri Lanka's donors and the UN to urge Colombo to improve its human rights situation.

It also questions the reasons for continuing the state of emergency.

The human rights watchdog says there is a "legal vacuum" over the detention of former Tamil Tiger "surrendees".

There has so far been no response to the report from the Sri Lankan government.

The ICJ says that the donor support for Sri Lanka "must be provided only on condition of compliance with international law and standards, or else risk complicity in a policy of systematic mass arbitrary detention".

The ICJ however recognised the progress made in terms of releasing displaced people from camps and in releasing 565 former child soldiers after rehabilitation.

The government argues that the threat posed by the Tamil Tigers still exists despite their military victory over them in May 2009.

It says it is important to keep the state of emergency until the process of vetting them is over.

Addressing the UN General Assembly last week, President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for a rethink of international rules governing the conduct of war.

But the watchdog questions the reasons for maintaining emergency regulations and the Preventing of Terrorism Act (PTA).

"Conditions on the ground cannot be considered to give rise to a threat to the life of the nation so far as to justify a state of emergency," the ICJ said.

© BBC News

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Sri Lanka offers land for agri-business

Lanka Business Online
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Sri Lanka is offering 200 acres of land for commercial agriculture on the bank of a major river bordering the island north-eastern region, meeting long-standing requests from businesses for land, a statement said.

The land is available in plots of 50 acres each in the Maduru Oya river south bank of the Mahaweli River B zone, the statement by the Mahaweli Authority said.

Investors will have to get water for irrigation from tube wells, it said.

Preference will be given to agri-businesses approved by the investment promotion agency, the Board of Investment, and those paying taxes, the statement said.

Selected investors will have to make a million rupee deposit with the Authority which will be returned in two years if the Authority is satisfied with the progress of the venture.

The offer comes in response to repeated requests from agri-business firms who have been clamouring for land on which to start commercial agriculture.

© Lanka Business Online

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Questions over Sri Lanka's victory

By Jonathan Miller | Channel 4
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Jonathan Miller writes on the aftermath of Sri Lanka's gruelling war with the Tamil Tigers and whether there will be an investigation into the deaths of Tamil civilians during the fighting.

In January 2009, I reported from Gaza in the aftermath of the Israelis’ 22-day operation there in which Palestinians claimed more than 1,400 civilians had been killed.

By September that year, a UN fact-finding mission led by Justice Richard Goldstone, had concluded by both sides had committed serious war crimes and, in some cases, possibly crimes against humanity.

In Sri Lanka there has been no such investigation; no one has been held to account.

Although the UN officially maintains that an estimated 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the last five months of the fighting in Sri Lanka, many credible estimates put the figure much higher.

Louise Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and now the President of the International Crisis Group told Channel 4 News she believed that it was "not implausible" that more than 30,000 civilians had been killed.

Ms Arbour says peace demands justice and says the scale of civilian deaths and suffering demands a response. But there has been no response.

Sri Lanka’s Tamils - despite promises that they would be protected and would enjoy equal rights - remain a vanquished minority. Impunity reigns.

President Mahinda Rajapakse, the man who made the munificent promises, today rules like a god-king, unchallenged and, now, unchallengable.

His enemies are in jail or in exile - or are cowed into silence. In September 2010, parliament granted the President sweeping new powers.

A Tamil MP talked of the death of democracy. An independent trades union warned: "It is time that all democratic forces wake up to the danger the country faces." But democratic forces are dwindling.

© Channel 4

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Sunway to make foray into Sri Lanka with RM250m project

By Yong Min Wei | The Edge
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Sunway Holdings BHD is making its foray into Sri Lanka to undertake a mixed development project with a gross development value of RM250 million.

Sunway said on Friday, Sept 24 it was teaming up with Dasa Tourist Complex Pte Ltd to build residential and commercial units in Colombo.

Its unit, SunwayMas Sdn Bhd will have a 65% stake in the JV company and Dasa Tourist 35%.

The mixed development will comprise of at least 318,000 sq ft of net saleable areas of residential units and 60,000 sq ft of net saleable areas of commercial units in Colombo city.

Sunway managing director Yau Kok Seng said the project would consist of a 34-storey building comprising 70 commercial units and 180 residential units on prime freehold land in the premium mixed-use zone of Bambalapitiya in District Colombo 4.

He said the project was expected to be launched in the second quarter of next year and to be completed by mid-2014. He added it would contribute “very positively” to the bottom line of the group.

“We are targeting Sri Lankans in the high-medium income and the high-end income groups. Even foreigners and those who are part of the Sri Lankan diaspora are expected to be interested,” he told a press conference.

On the pricing, Yau said the group was anticipated to launch the upmarket property with the residential units priced at about US$200 (RM618) per sq ft while that of commercial units at US$350 per sq ft.

"We are anticipating more than 20% net margin from this project," he said adding that the project enjoyed a five-year "tax holiday" from the Sri Lankan government from the time of completion.

Yau said the project would increase Sunway's landbank to more than 430 acres with potential GDV of RM2.6 billion which would be developed over the next three years.

Dasa Group chairman and founder S D Gunadasa said the JV marked an important milestone for the company's first venture in mixed development in Sri Lanka, stressing that it looked forward to more collaborations with Sunway Holdings in its future expansions.

"While the Sri Lankan property market gears itself for robust growth in the next five years, international collaborations with premier property players such as Sunway Holdings will contribute immensely to raise the standards in the industry as well as to create new benchmarks," he added.

© The Edge

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Sri Lanka: Winning the Peace

Photo courtesy: Ross Tuttle

By Ross Tuttle | Foreign Policy
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On a late-summer day, a dozen tractors stopped in front of a Hindu temple just north of Jaffna, the once-future capital of an independent Tamil state. Each vehicle held aloft long wooden planks from which young men, with large metal hooks piercing the flesh of their backs and legs, hung horizontally; enormous crowds gathered around to watch and make offerings to the Hindu goddess Durga. It was a standard religious rite, an act of penance offered to a local deity -- and a sight largely unseen throughout the nearly three decades of war between Tamil separatists and the Sri Lankan government that ended in May 2009.

More than a year later, the rhythms of ordinary life are slowly returning. The overnight curfew has been lifted, local markets are doing brisk business, and the streets bustle with traffic, as tractors, bikers, buses, pedestrians, and sometimes even cattle jockey for space. Residents are cautiously optimistic now that the war, which caused an estimated 100,000 deaths and displaced more than a million people since it began in 1983, is over.

Jaffna, a peninsular city on Sri Lanka's northernmost tip, suffered the most. As the country's largest Tamil-majority city, Jaffna became headquarters for the Tamil Tiger separatist insurgency; as a result, it essentially lived under siege or military blockade for the nearly 30 years of conflict. Road closures and checkpoints cut it off from the rest of the country, and the land mines that dotted the city kept the populace in constant fear. The economy was a shambles: Power outages were a regular occurrence, and goods were scarce. When they were available, they were often exorbitantly priced. The Tigers were effectively driven out of the city in 1995, but peace didn't return until the separatists' leadership was entirely decimated last year.

Jaffna is now firmly under the civilian control of the Sri Lankan government in Colombo -- a situation whose attendant security benefits even locals seem to welcome. But a long-term political settlement with the Tamils has yet to be achieved, leading to quiet, but unmistakable tension on the streets.

"People are living freely," says Aiyathurai Satchithanandam, a Tamil journalist. "There is no fear, but where is the political solution?" Without it, he maintains, there will be no lasting peace.

Most Tamils were never party to the armed conflict against the Sri Lankan state, but many are still dissatisfied by the post-bellum political status quo; they nurse longstanding grievances against the government in Colombo for its lack of respect and recognition of their language and culture. They still seek "equal rights and equal opportunity," Satchithanandam says, and at their most ambitious they envision something akin to Canada's multi-national federal framework, with self-rule on a local level for Tamil-occupied areas in the country's north and east. Tamils expect to be presented with a political compromise, and soon.

"This is the most opportune moment to introduce a political solution," says Mirak Raheem, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a Sri Lankan NGO. Having won the war, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is enjoying wide popularity, Raheem notes. Tamils -- as well as many other Sri Lankans -- expect him to leverage his political capital for a lasting peace while he has the chance.

Judged from life in Jaffna, while the war is certainly over, Tamil autonomy seems a distant dream. The first thing one notices about the city is the overwhelming military presence. By some estimates, there are as many as 40,000 Sri Lankan soldiers on the tiny peninsula. According to a European development worker, however, that marks an improvement. "There used to be armed soldiers every 20 meters; now it's about every 50," he says. But their very presence is a reminder of their mandate: to ensure that Tamils obey Colombo's writ.

Ironically, the soldiers might now themselves be fomenting a renewed Tamil resistance. Many Tamils point to the amount and quality of land the Sri Lankan Army has occupied in Jaffna. Eighteen percent of the peninsula is designated a "High Security Zone" -- land that used to belong to Tamils, but is now virtually off limits to anyone not in army uniform. The seizure of land has also complicated the resettlement of those Tamils who fled or were forced to flee during the last 30 years of violence. Some have been relocated elsewhere, but many thousands more remain in makeshift refugee camps that have outraged the Tamil population at large, as well as international human rights observers.

Tamils are also unnerved by the fact that the soldiers are almost entirely of the country's dominant Sinhalese ethnicity, and thus don't readily speak Tamil. In fact, the only language they usually share is English, their common colonial tongue. Tamils are so discomfited by the Sinhalese soldiers that they take pains to avoid earning their attention. Locals instruct their guests not to take photos of monuments dedicated to Tamil resistance figures until the Sri Lankan Army is out of sight; residents of Jaffna also show a preference for hiring taxis and rickshaws with older drivers, because Sri Lankan soldiers more readily suspect young people of being militants.

The war's legacy is most evident in the city's devastated infrastructure. Bombed-out, bullet-pocked buildings are scattered throughout the city. Jaffna's central train station is now a massive ruin. The once-proud waterfront is now a sorrowful stretch of hollow building foundations, battleground remnants from the 1980s and 1990s.

Still, despite the simmering tension and lingering destruction, the people of Jaffna are mostly upbeat. Perhaps more than anything else, they are enjoying their freedom of movement. "For the first time in 30 years, we can go to the hospital in Colombo," one local says.

Restaurants and hotels are reporting that business is increasing after decades of stagnation. Indeed, there has been a spike in domestic and expat travel since the road connecting Jaffna to the rest of the country opened in January -- though some locals worry that tourism will drop precipitously once the novelty of visiting this once-forbidden city wears off.

Unfortunately, Colombo has been slow to commit resources or energy to a long-term rebuilding program for Jaffna. "In terms of development," says the CPA's Raheem, "the local concerns of the [Tamil] people are not being taken into account. They are feeling the lack of consultation and participation, and there is an overall sense of disempowerment."

Tamils are still enjoying the immediate fruits of peace, but everyone knows it is a fragile calm. Satchithanandam, who in addition to his reporting duties also writes the horoscopes for the daily newspaper at which he works, offers a less-than-reassuring prediction. The people of Jaffna are willing to struggle nonviolently for some measure of political autonomy and economic dignity, but, he says, "If they have to, they will fight."

© Foreign Policy

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