Sri Lanka: Labour rights violations threatening GSP benefits

Read the Report for the WTO General Council Review of the Trade Policies of Sri Lanka

International Trade Union Confederation
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The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) reported today to the World Trade Organisation that "while Sri Lanka has ratified all eight of the International Labour Organization’s core conventions, it has largely failed to implement these conventions," as noted by Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC.

In response to human rights violations in Sri Lanka, in August 2010 the European Union withdrew the trade preferences previously granted under its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). The United States Trade Representative is currently investigating whether workers’ rights violations warrant removing Sri Lanka from its own GSP scheme.

Sri Lankan employers routinely delay certification votes and fire union activists to prevent workers from joining unions. These problems are especially severe in Export Processing Zones, where the government has encouraged employers to recognise "employees’ councils" instead of trade unions. Even where collective bargaining occurs, the government can and does make strikes illegal by declaring any industry an "essential service."

Sri Lankan law does not prohibit gender discrimination in the private sector and some industries still pay different wage rates to men and women doing the same job. While the law prohibits child labour and forced labour, both are prevalent in practice.

"As a first step toward maintaining normal access to its largest export markets, Sri Lanka must set out a clear timetable to reform its legislation and practice to meet its international commitments to uphold basic labour rights," said Burrow.

© ITUC

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Sri Lanka: Bail hearing for the arrested students scheduled for November 08

Sunday Leader Online
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The Colombo High Court has scheduled the bail hearing for the 21 university students arrested for Monday, November 8.

The 21 university students were arrested on October 14 for forcibly entering the Higher Education Ministry premises and damaging property.

The arrested students were among the group of students affiliated to the JVP backed Inter University Students’ Federation (IUSF).

The police had informed the court that the students have forcibly entered the Ministry premises and caused damages to public property.

The police in its report to courts said the damage caused to the High Education Ministry amounted to over Rs. 200,000.

The clash ensued between the students and the police had injured 29 people, 19 among them were police officers.

© Sunday Leader Online

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Sri Lanka: Thousands of Tamils still detained, torture alleged

By Lee Yu Kyung | Green Left Weekly
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It seems no one bothers about “them” in Sri Lanka. No lawyer or rights groups in the country dare to talk of “their” basic rights. Do they deserve to be abandoned or “disappeared”?

Alleged former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE — popularly known as the Tamil Tigers), an armed group that fought for an independent state for the Tamil ethnic minority, have become indefinite “prisoners of war” ever since the LTTE was militarily defeated by the Sri Lankan state in May 2009.

Tens of thousands known or suspected LTTE cadres were captured or surrendered during the last stage of war. The fate of some is unknown, while others have been located in various detention centres thanks to the desperate efforts of their families.

However, some family members, such as the 32-year-old Buddima, are too poor to afford the transport to visit those detained very often.

Promise to free surrendees

Buddima’s husband has been detained in Boosa camp in Galle in the south of the island. Having started to “resettle” in her war-ravaged hometown in the largely Tamil north, she has made just a few visits over the past eight months.

“Whenever I visited, I was also interrogated”, she told me. “My husband was an aid worker for Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation.

“He was a paid staff member, never was a combatant.”

During the last days of war, the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) repeatedly announced at the Omanthai checkpoint — the main checkpoint near the war zone — that anyone involved in LTTE for even a day should surrender.

Rangithan, a 43-year-old mother, said: “They said once the name of the person surrendering was registered, the surrendee would be immediately freed, or at most kept in detention for three months.”

On this basis, Rangithan told me she pressured her 25-year-old son to surrender, as many other mothers did. However, her son remains in detention after a year-and-a-half without being charged or facing trial.

None of those who surrendered were released after three months.

“My son was conscripted by the LTTE in April 2007, but he fled the LTTE the next year”, the grieving mother said. “I hid him inside a bunker for two years.”

There are said to be a dozen “surrendee camps” in northern Sri Lanka. But the number of these camps, their locations the number of prisoners varies depending on who you ask.

Detention - NO! Rehabilitation - YES!!

The state-owned Daily News recently quoted the minister of rehabilitation and prison reform, D E W Gunesekara, saying 5819 out of 11,696 detainees has been released as of October 23. This figure doesn’t include 800 alleged LTTE members who were to be charged

SLA brigadier Sudantha Ranasinghe, who has been in charge of the camps since February, told me in a phone interview: “It’s not a ‘detention centre’, but a ‘rehabilitation centre’. You yourself come over here and observe it.

“Having spent time together for more than a year, ex-combatants and the army are in a friendly mood.”

Asked about allegations of torture and beatings, the brigadier replied: “I don’t like those words you are mentioning. The words do not exist in my vocabulary.”

However, former detainees tell a different story.

Singing in Sinhala

Jeya, a 39-year-old former detainee, told me: “A day in the camp starts by singing national anthem in Sinhalese — the language of Sinhala ethnic majority. There’s a boy who had to kneel down under the scorching sun all day because he didn’t sing it properly.

“There’s another boy who got kicked because he coughed while the anthem played.”

Only Sinhalese was spoken in the camps, which most Tamil detainees couldn’t understand, he said. “In December, a boy who didn’t move promptly when the army said ‘disperse’ was kicked down. He couldn’t understand that word in Sinhalese.

“That was one of many cases.”

Jeya, who is disabled in one leg, was released in April, when disabled prisoners and women detainees with children were the first batch of detainees to be let out.

Just before his release, Jeya said 107 detainees were taken to a nearby school compound, out of which six disabled detainees were taken by the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) to an unknown place.

No registration process

There are reports some detainees were transferred to the Boossa camp by the TID. However, it is difficult to trace as there is no formal registration process for LTTE suspects overseen by an independent agency, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Given the Sri Lankan dark history of “disappearing” thousands of opponents, there is a legitimate fear some LTTE suspects have been disappeared.

Various rights groups have released videos that appear to show Tamil prisoners being shot by the SLA at point-blank range or tortured to death.

Jeya told me of an incident that stokes such fears: “One day, the army said three detainees ran away the previous night. We had to believe whatever the army said.

“But the camp’s surrounded with twofold fences and heavily guarded by armed soldiers. We were told if anyone tried to run away, soldiers would shoot immediately.”

Jeya denied he was a former LTTE member. He was one of many detainees transferred from Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp to the so-called rehabilitaion centres.

Torture in detention

When Jeya’s family was about to be released from an IDP camp in August, the army held him back. He was interrogated about 15 times until being taken to a “rehabilitation centre” in November.

“For the first four or five times”, he said, “they heavily assaulted me. They said, ‘somebody said you are LTTE’. If I denied it, they said ‘you have to prove it’, and assaulted me again with a cricket bat.

“I have difficulty breathing because of those assaults. There were many like me.”

Such testimony contradicts official government statements. BBC Sinhala reported on June 15 2009 that then resettlement minister Risath Bathiudden said: “Only those who admit to be LTTE members were taken to detention camps.”

The minister said: “The relatives of those [LTTE] cadres are informed of their whereabouts.”

However, a detainee in the “Zone 4” IDP camp told me there were roundups of youths aged between 17 and 25 in the camp last year.

“First, they have taken boys and then days later, girls as well”, 21-year-old Rani said. “Some parents were crying out as the army took more than one child from one family.”

Another former detainee of a “rehabilitation centre” is 36-year-old Suganthy, who was fighting on the civil war’s last battlefield. “They interrogated me until the last moment I was released in April”, she said.

“Over 11 months’ of captivity, different interrogators asked me the same questions repeatedly. They didn’t believe my answers.”

This account is different from that Jaya’s, who said he wasn’t interrogated much in the rehabilitation centre, but was made to do hard labour.

After Suganthy lost one leg in a battle in mid 1990s,she did administrative work with the civil administration of Tamil Eelam — the Tamil state set up in the areas of the largely Tamil north and east liberated by the LTTE.

But she said she had to fight again when the Tamil state was close to collapse in early 2009 after its capital, Killinochchi, was overrun by the SLA.

“Just before the fall of Killinochchi, the director of Voice of Tiger — the radio station of the rebels — came to us disabled cadres. He said there’s an order that all cadres now fight.”

Suganthy was positioned in the second line along with other disabled LTTE cadres. The battle became extremely fierce from May 13. When the front line collapsed two days later, she retreated with an injured companion.

“There were piles of dead bodies and injured people. No distinction had been made between civilians and cadres. There were no places for the wounded. There were no more commands.

“The cadre in charge told me I’d better to move towards the government side.”

At Omanthai checkpoint on May 19, she was taken to a “rehabilitation centre” in Vavunya.

Even after her release, Suganthy has been intimidated by state intelligence forces. She has been visited at home and her family questioned about her whereabouts if she was out.

“I’ve got a new job thanks to my computer skills and experience of administrative work. But intelligence people told me I have to prove that I’m really working. I don’t feel I’m free”

ICJ Report

The International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) published a report on September that said the detention centres may be “the largest mass administrative detention anywhere in the world”.

The ICJ noted the fact that “565 children associated with the LTTE were held in separate rehabilitation centres monitored freely by UNICEF and all released” as a positive development.

However, it criticised the Sri Lankan government’s “surrendee” and “rehabilitation” regime for failing to adhere to international law, and jeopardising the right to liberty, due process and a fair trial.

Ranasinghe rejected such criticism of the camps. He told me: “The international community and international journalists write what they want without evidence. The reality is different.”

Regarding the issue of ICRC access to the “rehabilitation centres”, the brigadier answered: “You have to ask a higher authority. I’m only working on the ground.”

ICRC has had no access to these centres or the IDP camps in Vavunya since July 2009. ICRC spokesperson in Colombo, Sarasi Wijeratne, told me the ICRC has access to some other detention centres, such as the Boosa camp and some police detention centres, “as we have visited them for many years”.

This is far from adequate monitoring of the treatment of LTTE suspects. The detention of LTTE suspects is a “don’t ask” issue in Sri Lanka — along with allegations the SLA committed war crimes.

However, the mass detention of LTTE suspects is a critical issue in the post-war period, where “reconciliation” is a word spoken by many. Before its defeat, the LTTE had a pervasive influence within the Tamil community. The mass detention of “suspects associated with the LTTE” can not but affect the Tamil community at large.

Thousands of people have been queuing at the government-appointed Lesson Learned and Reconciliation Commission, reportedly looking for missing family members who they believe are in army detention.

I asked Buddima, the wife of a detained aid worker, what was her family’s top priority in the post-war period. She simply replied: “My husband back.”

[The names of those spoken to for the article, asides from the ICRC spokesperson and the brigadier, have been changed.]

© Green Left Weekly

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Sri Lanka: IUSF launches campaign to publicise grievances

Photo couretsy: The Sunday Leader Online

By Sumaiya Rizvi | Daily Mirror
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The Inter University Students Federation (IUSF) launched a campaign to educate the public of their grievances by distributing handbills about their struggle, IUSF acting convener Sanjeewa Bandara said yesterday, while distributing handbills near the Fort railway station.

“We are answerable to the public; and this is our way of educating and increasing their awareness of our activities,” said Mr. Bandara. According to him this campaign will be carried out by their members in major cities and towns around the country.

The handbill goes on to explain their reason for their taking to the streets and their objectives, Mr. Bandara said. It also discusses the pressing issues in the secondary education sector while tackling the shortcomings of the government universities, he added.

© Daily Mirror

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Sri Lanka bishop accuses forces over missing priests

By Charles Haviland | BBC News
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At least two Roman Catholic priests have gone missing in Sri Lanka in the past four years, the church says.

Kingsley Swampillai, the bishop of Trincomalee and Batticaloa, said one of the priests vanished after security forces took him in for questioning.

Bishop Swampillai and his colleagues were testifying before a commission looking into the country's civil war.

It ended last year when troops defeated Tamil Tiger rebels, who had been fighting for a separate state.

The United Nations estimates the ethnic conflict killed up to 100,000 people. Many others disappeared.

The government says the commission will promote reconciliation and has rejected international calls for an external inquiry.

'Rights violated'

Bishop Swampillai, who heads the main diocese in eastern Sri Lanka, told the commission there were numerous missing and disappeared Sri Lankans whose fate had been unknown for many years now.

Most of the cases remained undocumented, he said.

They included priests - one, Rev Father Nihal Jim Brown, who he said had vanished in Jaffna in 2006; and another, Father Joseph Francis, who the bishop said was in his late 70s and had "got involved with" the Tamil Tiger militants while living in their heartland.

Bishop Swampillai said Father Francis was among those leaving the war zone in May 2009 and passing through the military checkpoint at Omanthai when people travelling with him saw him taken in for special questioning.

"And then he was no more - nobody saw him thereafter," the bishop said.

Six weeks ago the wife of a former Tamil Tiger official, testifying at the commission hearings in northern Sri Lanka, also mentioned that Father Francis had vanished.

The bishop was highly critical of the security forces.

"The rights have been violated with impunity by the security forces and by unidentifiable persons and groups especially in the north and east. The situation has worsened by the state sponsorship of paramilitary groups during the height of the war, out of the former militants."

'Dangerous trend'

The archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, who is soon to become a cardinal, said that attempts were being made to change the demographic make-up of northern and eastern Sri Lanka, which currently have an ethnic Tamil majority.

"This could be a dangerous trend if it is not arrested; unless people are allowed to move in and move out in a proper way without any colonisation as such, with or without government approval.

"Because what can happen is that there can be a kind of psychosis of fear about a cultural invasion of villages and areas of the country considered to be predominantly of one group or the other. This can cause friction and unnecessary clashes."

Others in the group of senior Catholic witnesses were similarly critical of the Sri Lankan government.

A member of the commission, Karu Hangawatte, repeatedly challenged their contention that the 27-year-old state of emergency should be lifted.

Earlier, the commission heard from Arjuna Aluwihare, a former member of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.

He said that violence and other ills in the country were fostered by aspects of its political culture.

Among things he strongly criticised were what he said was the failure to hold government people responsible for their misdemeanours, and the constant defection of politicians from one party to another, something he described as "diseased".

© BBC News

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A dark episode in Jaffna’s history

By Sutirtho Patranobis | Hindustan Times
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The recent incident of vandalism at the Jaffna public library could have been a case of spontaneous if misplaced public rage but it brought back memories of two chilling nights in 1981 when the library was systematically razed to the ground. The Sinhalese mob that lit the fire on the night of May 31, 1981,was organised and believed to have been efficiently led by a politician from the South. The fire stopped after 48 hours but the destruction of the library — a symbol of Tamil culture and history — left a festering wound in the relationship between the Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities.

This time, a group of tourists from the South wanted a library tour but was turned away as a national medical seminar was being held inside. The book-lovers were apparently not convinced. They forced their way in.

“No, no it wasn’t an attack. The tourists were angry with the staff and after they were stopped, some 1500 got inside the lending section and dismantled book shelves. The library guards were not able to stop them,’’ library official, S Thanabalasingam said.

After the guard was unable to convince them, the library authorities asked the Jaffna mayor, Yogeswari Patkunam, to intervene, who in turn informed the police. The TamilNet website said the rampage continued for three hours and signboards and placards were smashed. Access to the library has been restricted since.

The Government said it would protect places of cultural, educational and intellectual value to the Tamil people. But at a time when it was talking about learning lessons from the civil war and reconciling communities, the incident will leave a bitter after taste.

Since the north was opened up after years in isolation, thousands of Sinhalese have visited the Jaffna peninsula, majority surely with the idea to experience a part of the country out of bounds for decades.

But few, as a Jaffna-based journalist pointed out, were touring with the eyes of the victorious. And some as the library incident revealed with the intentions of the vandal.

© Hindustan Times

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