Sri Lanka gives UK firm £ 35 million steel bridge deal

Lanka Business Online
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

The United Kingdom's Cleveland Bridge UK Ltd has won a contract to build 210 permanent steel bridges in Si Lanka in a project partly funded with a loan of 35 million sterling pounds (6.2 billion rupees).

A government statement said the Cabinet of ministers approved a proposal made by the minister of economic development Basil Rajapaksa for the project to improve access to villages.

The government accepted a proposal by Cleveland Bridge UK Ltd to build steel bridges of 06 - 30 metre lengths around the island, it said.

The total cost of the project, to be completed in the next three years, is 15,860 million rupees with the balance cost of 9,647.50 million rupees to be funded by the Sri Lankan government,

It said 9,400 kilometres of rural access roads had been modernised under a government programme to improve the rural economy by connecting villages with better roads.

"But due to the absence of bridges over perennial water bodies these developments have met with some hurdles," it said.

© Lanka Business Online

Read More

Summary only

Post-war boost for Lanka - Israel relations

By Shamindra Ferdinando | The Island
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Israeli Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Orit Noked is scheduled to arrive in Colombo on Tuesday night (May 3) on a brief visit, the first ministerial level call since establishment of full diplomatic ties in early 2002.

Ms Noked will be accompanied by Mark Sofer, the Israeli Ambassador in New Delhi, responsible for the Jewish State’s affairs with Sri Lanka.

Last January Ms Noked succeeded Shalon Simhon, who was earlier scheduled to visit Colombo in his capacity as the Agriculture Minister.

An Israeli spokesperson told "The Island" that the Minister and the Ambassador would be accompanied by a business delegation. The visiting delegation would meet Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne, External Affairs Minister Prof. G. L. Peiris, Agriculture Minister Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, Livestock and Rural Development Minister Arumugam Thondaman, Foreign Employment Minister Dilan Perera and Irrigation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva.

Ms Noked launched her political career after completing her service with the Israeli Army in the rank of Staff Sergeant.

Defence and External Affairs Ministry sources told The Island that there was scope for increased relations between the two countries in many other fields, in spite of a drastic drop in Sri Lanka’s need for arms, ammunition and equipment due to conclusion of the war in May two years ago. Israel remained a key supplier throughout the war by providing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Kfir fighters, Fast Attack Craft (FACs) et al.

Sources said that both countries could benefit from enhanced bilateral trade, while Sri Lanka could draw on Israeli expertise in many vital fields.

The Israeli embassy in New Delhi said that Ms Noked would reiterate Israel’s aim to become a fully-fledged partner in Sri Lanka’s development efforts.

Minister Noked and her Sri Lankan counterpart, Minister Abeywardena, will inaugurate an Agro-Business Seminar and sign an MoU to further augment the agricultural cooperation between the two countries and develop areas of mutual interest in the agriculture sector. The various topics of cooperation included in the MoU are: capacity building and transfer of know how; technology transfer; development of R&D Systems; exchange of scientific and agricultural technology information; promotion of Public Private Partnerships (PPP); water management and innovative irrigation technologies; rural development; land conservation and precision agricultural practices.

© The Island

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lankan carnage

Editorial | The Economic Times
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

A UN panel has indicted the Lankan army for killing tens of thousands of civlians towards the end of the civil war in 2009. It confirms the worst fears about war crimes having being committed. It is unlikely that Colombo will assent to any further international investigation , with President Mahinda Rajapaksa instead having issued a call to turn the upcoming May Day rally into a demonstration against a UN investigation. But the indictment of the panel's report warrants New Delhi taking a more proactive role on the issue.

The crimes listed are grisly enough — with most civilian lives having been lost due to indiscriminate shelling by Lankan troops during the months leading to the LTTE's defeat as well as the denial of aid and medical supplies to civilians in the conflict zone. Add the fact that these findings give the lie to Colombo's dismissal of video tapes aired late last year, which showed Lankan troops executing bound and stripped Tamils, as well as Lanka's insistence that it had not violated the 'No-Fire Zone' during the last stages of the war, and the scale of Colombo's tactic of denial while indulging in gross violations is manifest.

The Rajapaksa regime, meanwhile, has been using Chinese and Russian support to ward off discussions on the issue at the UN Security Council while whipping up even more Sinhala-nationalistic passions at home. The latter, in fact, posits the larger problem that the Rajapaksa regime has so far paid mere lip service to the broader need to devolve political power to the minorities as a lasting solution to the conflict as it wallows in its chauvinist, militarist belief that winning the war has ended all issues . Denial of having committed war crimes, leave alone acknowledging the necessity of conducting an investigation , fixing culpability and then possible reparations to the affected Tamil population, is an indication of the lack of any real intent to address the disempowerment of the minorities. That is the message New Delhi must, however diplomatically, deliver to Colombo. International opinion must make it difficult for China to offer support for Lankan reluctance to devolve power.

© The Economic Times

Read More

Summary only

Truth and consequences

Banyan | The Economist
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

In recent years the default mode for Sri Lankan diplomats has been a posture of affronted national dignity beneath a mask of outraged, sanctimonious innocence. This week, after the publication of a report by a panel of experts for the United Nations on the final stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, some were recalled to Colombo for “consultations”. Maybe they are brushing up their indignant-repudiation skills.

The war culminated in May 2009 with the army’s crushing of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Its climax was marked by ruthlessness and callous disregard for human life. The panel concluded that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that large-scale violations of international humanitarian and human-rights law were committed by both sides”. Since hardly any of the Tigers’ leaders outlived the war, it is the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, that is in the dock.

It is probably too much to hope the government might adopt a fresh approach to these familiar allegations. There were always at least three ways to tackle them. It could, early on, have argued brazenly that the benefits of ending the war outweighed the cost in human life. The Tigers were as vicious and totalitarian a bunch of thugs as ever adopted terrorism as a national-liberation strategy. Or the government could have insisted that its army’s behaviour was largely honourable, but that some regrettable abuses may have occurred, which would be thoroughly investigated.

Instead, it chose a third path: to lie, and to lie big. It insisted that it pursued a policy of “zero civilian casualties”. Even as its forces shelled the shrinking “no-fire zone” in which the Tigers held some 330,000 civilians as human shields, it either denied it was doing so, or promised to stop and did not. It kept foreign observers out and bullied the local press into silence. The UN report found that “tens of thousands” were killed in January-May 2009, with most civilian casualties caused by government shelling.

The report relates little that has not appeared in accounts by human-rights groups. But it is unusually blunt, perhaps reflecting exasperation at the Sri Lankan government’s obstructive, aggressive tactics. The three-member panel is distinguished enough to shrug off Sri Lanka’s accusations of bias. The chair, Marzuki Darusman, is a former attorney-general of Indonesia. The report calls the conduct of the war “a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace”.

The government, however, is now too deeply wedded to its strategy of denial to back down even an inch. It lobbied hard against the publication of the UN report, arguing it would damage efforts at national reconciliation. Now that Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has ignored its objections, it has whipped up a frenzy of national resentment against the perceived calumnies. This goes down well at home. Standing up to foreign bullying only enhances Mr Rajapaksa’s popularity among the ethnic-Sinhalese majority. Responding to the report, the president has said he would be happy to sit in the electric chair on behalf of his country. A huge turnout is expected for May Day rallies at which he has asked for a show of support for his government.

If the report has brought Mr Rajapaksa short-term political benefits at home, he may also conclude that the diplomatic fallout is easily manageable. Sri Lanka is not without supporters. Just days after the end of the war in 2009, the UN’s Human Rights Council passed a resolution praising its victory, condemning Tiger war crimes and overlooking altogether allegations against the Sri Lankan army. Of its diplomatic allies back then, India is now less staunch. But China and Russia remain firm defenders of the rights of sovereign governments to quell secessionist movements, and do not seem squeamish about the means.

They may be even keener, after the UN-authorised intervention in Libya, to show that was the exception to a rule of non-interference. So Sri Lanka will continue to resist calls for any formal inquiry into the war beyond the “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” (LLRC) it established. Though due to report soon, the commission has failed to earn credibility.

In the long run, however, the semi-official status the UN report gives allegations of war crimes will haunt this government. The well-organised, far-flung Tamil diaspora will hound Sri Lanka’s leaders when they go abroad, and put pressure on foreign governments to demand accountability. Skilled at exploiting the rivalry between India and China, whose arms supplies helped win the war, Sri Lanka’s diplomats may argue that they no longer need the West. But, proud of Sri Lanka’s democratic traditions, they will smart at being seen as front men for a shoddy dictatorship, engaged in what now looks like a desperate cover-up.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Though perceived foreign slights may enhance the government’s standing at home, it is there that the concealment of the truth about the war’s end will do most damage. It is not as if there were no witnesses. Some 300,000 people know first-hand parts of what happened. When the LLRC held hearings in the north, scene of the fighting, survivors told harrowing tales of loss and asked where missing loved ones were. Without answers, it is hard to see how they can be “reconciled”.

Nor does the government show any sign of moving towards a political settlement, to meet the grievances of the Tamil minority that fuelled the conflict. Gordon Weiss, the UN’s spokesman in Colombo during the end of the war, predicts in a forthcoming book (“The Cage”) that Tamil emigration will continue, “encouraged by political stagnation, a lack of rights and rule by fear”. And also by the government’s continued refusal to countenance any serious investigation into how it won the war.

© The Economist

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka: Tiger blood

By Gordon Weiss | Foreign Policy
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

At the end of May, a braided military gaggle will gather in Colombo's swank Galidari Hotel to extract lessons from Sri Lanka's thorough 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas. The seminar on "Defeating Terrorism" will lead foreign military guests through a series of helpful how-to-do-it PowerPoint presentations. Perhaps out of this forum we can expect a more secure world, and fewer 30-year-long, ethnically driven wars on small islands. Or perhaps this outcome is unlikely on both counts.

Undoubtedly, the world is a better place without the Tamil Tigers. A fearsome and cultish adversary of Sri Lanka's always-struggling democracy, the insurgent organization very nearly brought the state to its knees over three decades of war. The Tigers blew up high-rise buildings, killed Sri Lankan President Premadasa, slew civilians, and wiped out a moderate Tamil opposition. They used children as fighters, recruited women as suicide bombers, and carved out a de facto "homeland" in the country's north. They deployed scuba divers, submarines, shallow-water attack craft, and even light planes in devastating raids. In 2001, they destroyed 26 Sri Lankan aircraft on Colombo's tarmac in front of startled holidaymakers. They decimated an Indian force sent to keep peace, and assassinated former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi in revenge at his interfering temerity.

In 2006, under the capable political leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, a galvanized Sri Lankan state and army finally pushed back hard. None pushed harder than the president's brother. As defense secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa put steel in the gloves of the Sri Lankan defense forces. After years of hedging, and now under contract to build a billion dollar port in the island's south, China came to the party with cash, arms, expertise, and diplomatic cover in the U.N. Security Council. At Sri Lanka's request, Iran, Burma, and Libya followed up with varying packages of support. The gritty Gotabaya, a former Sri Lankan army colonel and U.S. passport-holder, shook up the officer corps, refined frontline tactics, and forged the defense forces into a unified fighting machine. Morale soared, and victory followed upon victory.

By January 2009 the army had bottled up the Tigers in a shrinking pocket on the northeast of the island, along with around 330,000 civilians. Foreign military observers I spoke with at the time continued to insist that the guerrillas were militarily unbeatable -- they were just too tough and resourceful to be defeated on the field of battle. Western leaders dutifully called for restraint and reminded the warring parties of their obligations under humanitarian law. Iran supplied oil, while China supplied easy credit, easing the Sri Lanka government's worries that material and cash-flow problems might collapse their strategy as they resisted diplomatic pressure. Sri Lanka cracked down on domestic opposition, gagged the press, and excluded foreign journalists and humanitarian workers. It assured U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that it was not using heavy weapons.

Troops fought doggedly in what was by all accounts a dreadful fight through marshland, scrub, and jungle. Artillery units pounded the Tiger front lines. By May, squeezed into an area the size of a few city blocks, Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was dead, and the few remaining Tigers were in captivity. Sri Lanka regained complete control of its coastline for the first time in close to 30 years. Officials in Colombo proclaimed that their "humanitarian rescue" of Tamil civilians was complete, and that nary a drop of innocent blood had been shed. Alone among the nations of the world, Sri Lanka had succeeded in "defeating terrorism."

So far so good. But a panel of senior international judicial experts appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in September 2010 has just come to a vastly different conclusion. In a report released this week, the U.N. panel has in effect outlined a prima facie case for war crimes. It alleges that both sides caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in just the last five months of the war. The government is blamed for a majority of the killing, as it shelled the Tigers with long-range artillery.

The report describes what it calls the "systematic shelling of hospitals" and says that the government also withheld life-saving humanitarian aid from civilians being held hostage en masse by the Tigers. It allegedly ordered the execution of most of the captured senior Tiger leadership as they surrendered. Trophy videos of the torture and killing of other battlefield captives began to leak shortly after the victory. It appears that alongside the government's much vaunted "hostage rescue," one of the larger war crimes of this century was discreetly committed.

That the government allowed itself to stray into unlawful warfare on the cusp of victory is something of a mystery. The Tamil Tigers were a spent force. For two years, the army had driven the Tigers' lines back steadily across the breadth of the island, without causing a grossly disproportionate loss of civilian life. It had synchronized bombardments that drove civilians away from the front lines with the dispatch of small commando teams that sowed disorder in enemy territory. Drones pinpointed Tiger artillery and hovered over columns of retreating civilians.

The Sri Lankan navy deployed new tactics to combat the Tigers' "brown-water" capability. India and the United States shared intelligence that enabled frigates to intercept and sink a dozen merchant vessels en route to re-supply the guerrilla army. The Defense Ministry buffed up its press briefings with drone video and slick target justification presentations. Against the backdrop of the "global war on terror," a majority of nations were quietly glad that the Tigers were defeated. In a post-9/11 world, their aggressive and ingenious use of terrorist tactics in the name of national liberation, quite simply, set a bad example.

So what went wrong? The army tried with leaflets and radio bulletins to convince civilians to escape. Families, however, continued to weigh their chances of survival in favor of moving away from the front lines, rather than toward and through them. This no-brainer was helped in no small measure by the Tigers, who coaxed, assisted, and then gradually enforced the retreat of all civilians as a buffer against outright attack by the Sri Lankan army. The army made a difficult tactical problem worse when it bombarded self-declared "No-Fire Zones," killing thousands.

From around February 2009, the besieged pocket shrank until there was simply no room left. The Tigers' lines converged, funneling hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians onto a sandspit the size of New York City's Central Park. The army continued to bombard the bedraggled guerrilla lines that now backed onto civilian tents. Army incursions clawed tens of thousands of civilians from the siege zone, but with many "hostages" killed.

Since the war ended in May 2009, life has improved immeasurably for a majority of Sri Lankans, predominantly Sinhalese Buddhists who support President Rajapaksa. The government delivered a decisive victory, but whether it has delivered a durable peace, let alone any measure of justice to its Tamil minority, is quite another question. The release of the U.N. report is a "Srebrenica moment" for Sri Lanka, as the pieces of the crime scene fall into place. The same is true for humankind at large. What really happened in 2009, and will there be a war crimes tribunal for Sri Lanka?

The Tamil Tigers and their quarter-century fight were a direct result of anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 that killed thousands. Modern counterinsurgency doctrine tries to win over a contended population, and to separate guerrillas from their constituents by delivering meaningful security and a better deal. Sri Lanka did things rather differently, and is touting its model of counterinsurgency without factoring in the true cost to civilian life or acknowledging that such brutality is hardly a formula for long-term peace. It is unlikely that the real price of the "Sri Lanka solution" will be on the agenda of the meeting in Colombo this May. The opinion of the U.N. panel is that the sheer scale of alleged crimes constitutes "a grave assault on the entire regime of international law." Hardly a formula for success.

© Foreign Policy

Read More

Summary only

A Second chance to confront war crimes in Sri Lanka

By Armin Rosen | The Atlantic
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

In early 2009, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa faced an opportunity, and possibly a moral quandary. Since 1976, the country's Sinhalese majority had weathered a brutal campaign at the hands of one of the deadliest terrorist groups in modern history: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an ethnic Tamil separatist group that occupied parts of the country's northeast. For the previous two years, Rajapaksa's government had stepped up its fight against the Tigers, using means that were effective as well as morally dubious.

In 2007, the military waged a campaign in the country's northeast that was often restrained but also included, for example, extensively shelling the city of Vakarai, including its civilian hospital. Targeted killings became common: over sixty aid workers had been killed in Sri Lanka since 2007. In January 2009, masked gunmen murdered the editor of the Sunday Leader, a newspaper often critical of the government. But the Tigers were on the run, and months of shelling had confined them to the northern corner of the Vanni region. The endgame to the 26-year civil war came with civilians tightly clustered on a stretch of beach that the government had designated a "no fire zone." And although Rajapaksa seemed committed to exterminating the LTTE, it was not yet clear just how violent that endgame would be, according to Alan Keenan, the International Crisis Group's Sri Lanka. "No one was sure that the government was willing to use such brutal and indiscriminate fire power against areas so densely populated with civilians," he said.

Yet that is exactly what it did, according to a United Nations report released late Monday. By May 19th, the Tigers were defeated, and a panel of international legal experts appointed by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon catalogues the cost of the government's victory. "Between September 2008 and 19 May 2009, the Sri Lanka Army advanced its military campaign ... using large-scale and widespread shelling, causing large numbers of civilian deaths," the report states. The government shelled three "No Fire Zones ... where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate." It shelled a "United Nations hub," as well as food distribution lines set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was the only humanitarian organization the Sri Lankan government allowed in Vanni. "All hospitals in Vanni were hit by mortar and artillery," while the internally displaced were herded into squalid refugee camps.

It was the horrifying conclusion of a campaign that, in retrospect, Sri Lankan leaders had seldom waged with transparency or international law in mind: as early as 2006, the government had devised "measures to control information about and access to the combat zones," and had been providing "deep penetration units" comprised of former LTTE militants with heavy weaponry. The panel found that "white vans were used to abduct and often disappear critics of the Government or those suspected of links with the LTTE, and, more generally, to instill fear in the population." Faced with the prospect of ending a three-decade long civil war, the Sri Lankan government decided to ignore international legal norms, and expelled or otherwise silenced the journalists or activists who could hold them to account. The report puts the number of civilian dead at between 7,000 and 40,000 -- a wide variance attributable to the Sri Lankan government's expulsion of NGOs, journalists, and international observers from Vanni in September of 2008.

The report is detailed and even-handed, and it discusses the LTTE's use of human shields and forced conscription. But it is only a first step towards establishing accountability in Sri Lanka. The panel was not a formal investigation: the Sri Lankan government prevented panel members from touring the former conflict zone or interviewing LTTE prisoners or military officials, and the expert panel's mandate was limited to advising the Secretary General on how to proceed with investigating any possible war crimes. Ban could now urge the United Nations Security Council to set up a more formal commission of inquiry -- which is unlikely, given China's close political and economic ties with Sri Lanka, as well as China and Russia's general wariness of international investigations into how governments treat their own citizens. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva could authorize its own report, as it did after the Israeli assault on Gaza in January 2009. But this is even less likely. In May of 2009, a few days after the end of major hostilities, the UNHRC approved a measure congratulating Sri Lanka on its defeat of the LTTE, and ignoring allegations of war crimes. "Sri Lanka is a long-time player in the Non Aligned Movement," explains Hillel Neuer, director of the Geneva-based organization UN Watch, "and supports all Arab and Islamic initiatives. So in turn they all shielded Sri Lanka."

Ban could also order an investigation on his own initiative, as he did in 2009 after the killing of protestors in Guinea, according to James Ross, the legal and policy director for Human Rights Watch. But Ban could also choose to do nothing -- a possibility that would be drearily consistent with the UN's moral and political equivocation both during and immediately after the Sri Lankan government's final push against the LTTE.

As the Sri Lankan civil war reached its ugly culmination, the UN adopted a stance that probably made the conflict's endgame far bloodier than it otherwise would have been. The world body hastily acquiesced to the government's request that all humanitarian agencies (other than the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has a policy of confidentiality with respect to what it witnesses) pull out of Vanni in September of 2008. Although the government claimed humanitarian organizations were being expelled for their own safety, the move "paved the way for the ability of the government to sort of fight an absolutely no holds barred kind of war," Keenan says. If the UN was concerned about this possibility, it kept these concerns to itself. "The very least they could have done is objected publically," Keenan argues. "They could have said 'listen, we could operate there safely if you respected our safety' and made it clear that they're not simply going to leave and close their eyes."

They did neither, signaling the UN's accommodating policy towards the government of Sri Lanka. In the final stages of the conflict, Ban Ki Moon sent Vijay Nambiar, his chief of staff, to help negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict. While he was in Sri Lanka, Nambiar helped establish a line of communication between the government and LTTE officers, who were later killed while waving white flags in the no-man's land near the Sri Lankan army's front lines. Sree Tharan, an activist with the U.S.-based organization Tamils Against Genocide, says that Nambiar's role in the so-called "white flag killings" should be investigated. "We're not saying that anyone's faulted," says Tharan, "but there's enough evidence to know that he was part of the negotiating group." He also suggested that Nambiar, whose brother is a high-ranking Indian army officer who served as a consultant to the Sri Lankan government in 2002, "should never have been involved with anything having to do with Sri Lanka."

The UN also failed in treating the situation in northeast Sri Lanka like the humanitarian catastrophe that it was. Ross faulted the UN for refusing to publicize their casualty numbers during the closing months of the war. The report says that the UN's Sri Lanka country team estimated that 7,721 civilians had been killed before May 13 alone. Making those figures public could have brought much-needed global attention to the government's actions during the final months of the war. Keenan adds that the UN should have pressured the government into admitting that up to 300,000 civilians were living in Tiger-controlled areas in Vanni. The government claimed that only 75,000 to 100,000 civilians were caught in the conflict zone. But the UN could have shared their internal, more reliable population statistics with the public, perhaps forcing the government to allow more humanitarian aid into the northeast -- and making it more difficult for them to cover up the number of dead or missing after the war. But they did not, and the UN's refusal to publicize their casualty and population statistics during the conflict allowed the government to lie about the scope of the humanitarian emergency in Vanni.

Days after hostilities ended, Ban toured IDP camps with President Rajapaksa, in what some interpreted as a propaganda victory for the government, which used the visit to bolster its legitimacy. "What the UN never did was really grapple with the nature of the regime they were working with," says Keenan. "They never realized that these guys were willing to do anything to win."

This week's report offers a second chance for the UN to uphold its own vaunted standards of accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka. The stakes are arguably as high as they were during the conflict itself: without a formal investigation, the Sri Lankan government's effective yet brutal counterinsurgency tactics could seem irresistible to countries with their own internal security issues. Already, 31 countries have agreed to send representatives to a seminar entitled "Defeating Terrorism: The Sri Lankan Experience," which the Sri Lankan government has scheduled for this May. The UN Security Council, Human Rights Council, or, if necessary, Ban Ki Moon himself now have an opportunity to do what they should have done in early 2009: expose "The Sri Lankan Experience" for the atrocity that it was.

© The Atlantic

Read More

Summary only

Editorial: Sri Lankan war crimes

The Peninsula
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Wars are about death and destruction. So long after they end, its ripples haunt its perpetrators as justice has a way of catching up with those who have trampled on it.

A United Nations report published this week has put the spotlight back on the conflict in Sri Lanka where government troops crushed a Tamil separatist uprising in 2009. The report has said both the Lankan army and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam guerillas may have committed war crimes during the conflict. As expected, the publication of the report has led to international cries for an independent probe into the war to expose human rights violations and punish the guilty. The LTTE was decimated in the war, and as a non-existent group, has nothing to worry about charges of war crimes. But the government of Sri Lanka is finding itself in a precarious position and if the charges are proven, it will have serious consequences for them.

The UN panel gives a very different version of the final stages of the war than that maintained by the Government of Sri Lanka. The government maintains it pursued a humanitarian rescue operation with a policy of zero civilian casualties. In stark contrast, the panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indeed, the conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace.

The Government systematically shelled hospitals on the frontlines. All hospitals in the Vanni were hit by mortars and artillery and some of them were hit repeatedly despite the fact that their locations were well-known to the Government. At the same time, despite grave danger in the conflict zone, the LTTE refused civilians permission to leave, using them as hostages, at times even using their presence as a human buffer between themselves and the advancing Lankan army.

The Sri Lankan government has a duty to come clean on the war crimes charges leveled against it. For this, the government must agree to an independent international probe. Any probe conducted by the government will not be acceptable to the outside world as it’s a party to the war. The government even distrusts the UN and at one point organised demonstrations against UN staff in Colombo.

The responsibility for establishing the truth now lies with the UN. It has to finish the work it has started and the government has a duty to cooperate.

© The Peninsula

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka website LankaeNews is suspended

Photo courtesy: vikalpa.org

BBC News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

A magistrate's court in Sri Lanka has suspended the operation of the pro-opposition LankaeNews website.

The court ordered the closure because a contempt case was still pending against journalist Shantha Wijesooriya, who has been remanded in custody until 12 May.

The case relates to an article about a magistrate, which was regarded as slanderous.

The court ordered Sri Lanka's telecoms regulator to suspend the website until court proceedings are over.

The website published three apologies before Mr Wijesooriya was arrested on Monday.

The site is currently not available inside Sri Lanka but is accessible outside of the country.

LankaeNews has been facing attacks, threats and intimidation since the presidential election of January 2010.

Its editor has been in exile since then.

In January 2011 the website's premises came under arson attack and two months later its news editor Bennett Rupasinghe was arrested for allegedly threatening a suspect in the arson attack.

Mr Rupasinghe was later released on bail.

Correspondents say that the recent publication of a report by a UN panel - which said that government forces were responsible for killing tens of thousands of civilians in the final stages of the war against Tamil Tiger rebels, means that it is likely there will be a significant hardening of the already tough approach of the authorities towards freedom of speech.

© BBC News

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka: Authorities continue drive to stamp out opposition news media

Reporters sans frontières
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Reporters Without Borders condemns yesterday’s refusal by a court in the Colombo suburb of Pugoda to release Shantha Wijesuriya, a journalist with the Lanka E-news online newspaper, on bail pending trial on a contempt of court charge for an erroneous news report. Access to the website was also blocked on an order from the court pending the outcome of the trial.

Wijesuriya has held in Mahara prison since 25 April for wrongly reporting on 19 April that the Pugoda court ignored a directive from the attorney-general’s office when it released two police officers accused of murder. Lanka E-News posteda correction and apology three days after the original report.

“It is unacceptable that Wijesuriya is being detained and is facing a possible jail sentence over an error in a news report,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “Any journalist in the world can make this kind of mistake. Wijesuriya acted according to professional ethics by publishing a correction and apologizing to the court. There are absolutely no grounds for either the jail sentence he is facing or the order banning the website from publishing any more articles. By blocking the site, Judge Aravinda Perera has assumed powers that until now were reserved for the ministry of mass media and information.”

Julliard added: “Lanka E-news is one of the last opposition news media to keep going in Sri Lanka despite the harassment and threats. Their criticism of the government is now resulting in an unprecedented degree of harassment. We may be witnessing this online newspaper’s final days. Journalists in Sri Lanka are gagged by the entire state apparatus. We appeal to the United Nations to put pressure on the government to end this policy of suppressing opposition media, which are entirely legitimate in a democracy.”

Wijesuriya’s lawyer, Manjula Pathiraja, reiterated the online newspaper’s apology yesterday to the court, which adjourned the case until 12 May and ordered the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission to block access to the website within Sri Lanka until the end of the trial.

© Reporters sans frontières

Read More

Summary only

SRI LANKA: COURT ORDERS CLOSURE OF LANKA-E-NEWS WEBSITE

Urgent Alert | Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Journalist For Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) protests against the unprecedented move where a court in Sri Lanka has ordered the closure of a website critical of the government.

Pugoda Magistrate and Additional District Judge Aravinda Perera ordered the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TLC) on Thursday to take measures to ban Lanka-E-News website in Sri Lanka. While JDS is of the firm view that there is no legal provisions for the judiciary to obstruct media sites, we strongly believe that in gagging a media outlet for an erroneous news item, the courts has overstepped its mandate. JDS also wishes to state that Lanka-E-News has already published an apology for the news item found to be in contempt of court.

Despite publishing an apology, on the 25th of April, the police arrested journalist Shantha Wijessoriya attached to the website charged with contempt of court by publishing the report. The Magistrate also ordered the arrested journalist to be held in protective custody until 12th May, when he was produced before courts today (28).

Journalist For Democracy in Sri Lanka calls upon all democratic forces to oppose and to urge the courts to immediately revoke this order that poses a serious threat to freedom of expression in Sri Lanka.

Executive Committee
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka
28 April 2011

Read More

Summary only

'Casualty Figures withheld as Sri Lanka made threats ' says Ban Ki Moon

By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

After the Sri Lanka war crimes report by the UN Panel of Experts was quietly presented to the UN Security Council by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Inner City Press asked Ban two questions about the report.

Among his answers on Sri Lanka, Ban implicitly acknowledged the report's charge that the UN withheld casualty figures during the conflict.

Asked to "respond to the criticisms in the report that the UN failed in those last months to do what it could to help protect civilians, including keeping statistics of the actual casualty figures back," Ban said that the Sri Lankan authorities said that they couldn't guarantee the safety of UN staff:

“the security situation was very precarious, at the last stage of the crisis. And we were told by the Sri Lankan Government, as I understand and remember, that the Sri Lankan Government would not be able to ensure the safety and security of United Nations missions there. Then we were compelled to take the necessary action according to their advice.”

So, allowing the Rajapaksas to in essence point a gun at UN staff, Ban's UN withheld the facts about how many civilians were being killed. At the time, UN whistleblowers gave Inner City Press an internal count of deaths by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which the UN in New York refused to confirm even after Inner City Press published it.

Asked about his senior adviser Vijay Nambiar's role in the White Flag killings, Ban dodged the question by saying he will set up a review of the UN's performance, after consulting with his senior advisers -- that is, with Nambiar:

“I will try to review the work and performance of the United Nations missions in Sri Lanka at that time. I am going to discuss this matter with my senior advisors.”

Ban's cover letter to the report stated that for an “investigation mechanism, [Ban] is advised that this will require host country consent or a decision from Member States through an appropriate intergovernmental forum.”

Inner City Press asked Ban WHO advised him of this, and why after Ban three times claimed the Panel's members could travel to Sri Lanka, they ultimately did not.

Ban did not say who advised him, rather saying that he would welcome a mandate voted by Member States in an intergovernmental forum:

“about the future course of action, it is true and it is a fact that if I want to establish any independent international commission of inquiry, I will need to have a clear mandate from an intergovernmental body or the consent of the Sri Lankan Government.”

But when asked if he was requesting the Security Council to take the matter up and vote whether to start an investigation, Ban merely said that all members have the report. So, he is not asking.

This was confirmed by April's Security Council President Nestor Osorio of Colombia, who when Inner City Press asked if Ban had requested a vote in the Council replied that “we just took note” of the report, calling this the “normal course of justice.” But Ban says without a vote, there can be no investigation -- and refused to specify who gave him this advice.

Inner City Press asked Ban to explain his three statements that the Panel could go to Sri Lanka, and the fact that they were not allowed to go. They tried very hard, Ban said, then referred to the meeting, made secret at the time, by Attorney General Mohan Peiris with the Panel:

“We have been trying very hard to get the Sri Lankan Government to [agree to a visit] by the Panel of Experts. They have been very reluctant to receive the Panel of Experts. Finally they dispatched some high-level officials who met the Panel of Experts.”

That is a meeting which the UN initially denied took place. What explains all these irregularities? What gun might the Rajapaksa government have pointed?

© Inner City Press

Read More

Summary only

Indian civil society’s conscience stirred for Lankan Tamils

By Akash Bisht | The Weekend
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

The Indian civil society has woken up to the human rights excesses of the Sri Lankan government against minority Tamils. A group of Delhi based civil rights activists have initiated an online campaign demanding an independent international enquiry into charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Sri Lankan State.

Sri Lanka has been accused of killing thousands of innocent Tamil civilians during its war against the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) - which was fighting for a separate State - in 2008-2009.

A petition prepared by the group has demanded that a White Paper be presented in the Indian Parliament on the role of Indian intelligence, armed forces, politicians and bureaucracy in the Sri Lankan war crimes.

The petition comes in the wake of the UN Expert Panel’s report that has found credible evidence of the Lankan government’s role in the deaths of thousands of Tamils caught in the war zone.

The petition has demanded that punishment be meted out to those in the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and Establishment found guilty, as per international law and in proportion to the gravity of their crimes. It also demanded that the UN report should not be used as an excuse to orchestrate any form of violence against the Tamils in Sri Lanka

The activists intend to take the petition to former Chief Justice of India Rajinder Sachar for endorsement. Sachar had earlier served on a “People’s Permanent Tribunal” in Dublin that investigated allegations against the Sri Lankan government. Sachar had then said that though the war was over, the situation was yet to change and Tamils were yet to get their due respect as fellow citizens.

The tribunal had found conclusive evidence of wanton atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan state on Tamil civilians and combatants alike. The petition stated: “These included usage of banned chemical weapons, cluster bombs, rampant torture, summary executions and sexual abuse of captured women. The Tribunal also concluded that the charges of genocide require investigation considering evidences of systemic violence against the Tamils, even after the war was said to be over.”

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has directed his party officials to use May 1, Labour Day, for protests against the UN Report. He has urged Sri Lankans to gather in millions in Colombo to express their anguish over the report.

Civil rights activist Satya Sivaraman, who filed the petition online said, “The issue isn’t a Tamils issue, it’s a human rights issue. The standoff between the Sri Lankan government and UN is for everyone to see. The Labour Day rally is anti-Tamil in nature and the situation is very tense in the island nation as fascist sentiments seem to have taken over.”

He also added that with the petition they intend to bring the Sri Lankan Tamils issue out of Tamil Nadu to the rest of India and South Asia.

“While reports of Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka are making headlines in the West, there is hardly anything that is being reported by the South Asian media. We want to make it a pan south Asian issue that should concern all in the region,” Sivaraman added.

He also mentioned that the role of the Indian government should also be investigated and if guilty the country should be implicated too. “Rajapakse was the chief guest at the Republic Day parade held in New Delhi. What does this mean? Does it imply that the Indian government and Sri Lankan government are hand in glove with each other?” he questioned.

Even writer-activist Arundhati Roy had raised serious doubts about the role of Indian media in its coverage of war crimes in Sri Lanka. Roy in her piece on the issue for Guardian in April 2009 wrote, “The horror that is unfolding in Sri Lanka becomes possible because of the silence that surrounds it. There is almost no reporting in the mainstream Indian media - or indeed in the international press - about what is happening there…”

Members of Delhi Tamil Students Union, Jawaharlal Nehru University, are playing an active role in the campaign.

Karthik, a member of the Union said they hope to get the support of Rajinder Sachar, and Arundhati Roy for their campaign to make the Sri Lankan government accountable for its war crimes.

At the same time, he expressed concern at the Rajaapkse government’s call for the May 1 rally.

"Rajapakse's call for strike could have serious repercussions. We want to bring it to the people's notice that every time there is a call for strike (on Tamils issue) either by the government or opposition, violence is unleashed against the Tamils," he said.

© The Weekend Leader

Read More

Summary only

With truth about Sri Lankan war crimes emerging, we need a proper inquiry

Photo courtesy: Guy Calaf

By Gordon Weiss | The Guardian
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Sri Lanka's response to the release of a UN panel report on the end of the civil war by three eminent international judicial experts has been entirely predictable.

After failing to stall its release altogether, the country's government has set about attacking it with its customary sledgehammer diplomacy.

Unlike Libya, the battlefields in Sri Lanka were sealed off to reporters, preventing them from covering the alleged war crimes as they happened. The government is similarly hoping to limit coverage of the report.

But, in the words of a friend of mine who worked in the camps which filled with wounded, frightened and desperate civilians who managed to escape from the Tamil Tigers during those months of 2009: "We're learning now what we knew then."

During the final phase of the war between January and May 2009, the government consistently denied that its forces were using heavy weapons. We now learn through the UN report that government shells accounted for most civilian deaths.

In February 2009 the government denied that there were any more than 70,000 civilians left inside the siege zone, when we now know there were at least four times that figure.

It denied constantly that it was shelling hospitals or makeshift clinics where children wounded by its artillery were being stitched. We now know that there were dozens of criminal attacks that killed patients and staff.

It even denied that it was stopping aid shipments to the stricken, trapped population. We now know that many died needlessly for want of medical supplies and food.

Similarly, the government continues to this day to deny that its forces killed any civilians during the conflict. It has called the UN report biased and unfair, and methodologically unsound.

It says that the reopening of old wounds will spoil the process of reconciliation. It has asserted that the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has no authority to examine allegations that the government of Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers committed war crimes.

Explanations gush from the government, all except the one that matters: an admission of responsibility for what seems to have been one of the worst war crimes of recent history.

The UN panel says that the sheer proportion of the alleged crimes constitutes a "grave assault on the entire regime of international law".

The Tamil Tigers are held responsible for effectively holding hundreds of thousands of its own people as a buffer against government assault.

They evidently killed women and children who tried to escape, and forced other children into the front lines as fodder. However, those Tigers responsible are mostly dead, many of them apparently summarily executed when they tried to surrender.

So it is no wonder that the government of Sri Lanka is little interested in investigating war crimes.

Culpability for any alleged crimes would almost certainly stop at the doorstep of the small circle of people who surround the Rajapaksa family. President Mahinda Rajapaksa instituted a domestic inquiry (the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission) which, as the panel report notes, is a political sop.

The very clarity of this unambiguous UN report leaves a gaping challenge for a world that tries to define its relationships according to the rule of law.

Given Sri Lanka's record of determined obfuscation, the next step must be a fully constituted international criminal investigation into the events of 2009.

Gordon Weiss is the author of The Cage: the Fight for Sri Lanka in the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers

© The Guardian

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka says UN report has pro-Tamil bias

Photo courtesy: Business Today

Radio Australia
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

A United Nations report has painted a brutal picture of the final months of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009.

The report accuses Tamil Tiger rebels of using people as human shields, and government forces of killing tens of thousands of civilians through indiscriminate shelling. Sri Lanka's government has rejected the report as biased and fraudulent. Its External Affairs minister says the UN panel assumed for itself, a quasi-judicial role and its findings "bore the ingredients of the Tamil diaspora." Sri Lanka's military has denied it deliberately targeted civilian areas. Sen Lam spoke to Lakshman Hulugalle media director-general, at Sri Lanka's Ministry of Defence. Mr Hulugalle says foreign media was allowed access to cover the end of the civil war. But the Sri Lankan government has carefully controlled media access for many years and did not allow the foreign media to freely cover the last stages of the civil war.

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Lakshman Hulugalle, director-general, media, Ministry of Defence, Sri Lanka

HULUGALLE: This is a panel appointed by the secretary-general of the UN in his personal capacity, and this is not a UN-appointed panel, first of all. And the panel's recommendations and details - the government of Sri Lanka totally rejects. There was no shelling of civilians. Unfortunately, this panel is talking about the last two weeks of the humanitarian operation happening in Sri Lanka, but they don't talk about the thousand three hundred weeks before, (when) the terrorists gunned down innocent civilians. We were able to keep the civilian numbers very low, because the government forces were very careful on the operational side, and we were able to protect the interests of the civilians.

LAM: The report also said that hospitals, UN centres and indeed, ships belonging to the Red Cross were deliberately targeted by the Sri Lankan military. Do you refute that as well?

HULUGALLE: Yes, we totally refute, because during that time, many UN representatives came into the country, and we allowed the foreign media to go into the areas during the operational times, and there were no allegations. And all the embassies were practically all western and asian embassies were in Sri Lanka and those representatives were there. So, there was no allegation against the Sri Lanka forces of shelling or killing of civilians during the war.

LAM: The government of Sri Lanka of course, has rejected this report as "biased and fraudulent" and yet the report also criticised the Tamil Tigers - that they found that both sides were guilty of human rights abuses?

HULUGALLE: Unfortunately, this report is being biased, because before the report was produced, no responsible government officer was contacted, or done anything. This is (based) on the information that they got from various sources, but they have not mentioned the killings and the terrors, what the LTTE did for the last thirty years. Killing innocent civilians who did not carry any arms, the clergy, pregnant mothers, innocent children - all these were not in the report.

LAM: If the Sri Lankan government wanted the truth, why did it not allow the UN investigators onto the island to conduct their investigations?

HULUGALLE: No, we have already appointed a Commission and they have now interviewed more than five hundred people. This is an independent body, so we don't have to give in to a private (UN) panel. So, we have appointed a very senior official, independent official, former judiciary officials into the Committee, so they're also giving the report, so we can see whether any Tamil people have made allegations like this.

LAM: What is the Sri Lankan government's response to a thorough, international, independent investigation into these claims and counter-claims of atrocities during the last few months of the war?

HULUGALLE: Any independent body can have an investigation, but they can't force into Sri Lanka, because we are in the process of development, after three decades. We have saved the Tamil community, Tamil nation from the LTTE terrorism, and the people of this country are really enjoying the freedom, Tamil, Sinhala, Muslim, everybody's right now enjoying it. So, we don't want these independent bodies to come and harm that unity. But if there is an official request, we are prepared, because we have all the evidence and documents to prove that Sri Lanka has not killed innocent civilians.

LAM: So are you saying then, that if the United Nations makes a formal request, that Sri Lanka will allow an independent investigation to be conducted?

HULUGALLE: Yes, Sri Lanka is a member of the UN. But that's a very high level answer, I think the government of Sri Lanka will have to answer. For me to answer that question, it's too early, because the UN Security Council or nor the UN has made any request yet. So let us see where or if they make a request.

© Radio Australia

Read More

Summary only

"Why do we respond to a report we do not accept?" asks SL Minister

By Chamikara Weerasinghe | Daily News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella yesterday said that the controversial Darusman report on Sri Lanka was about breathing life into a dead terrorist organization.

The report was released publicly yesterday.

‘No one in the civilized world would accept it’, Rambukwella pointed out.

‘It is totally in favour of the LTTE, which had been one of the most ruthless terrorist organizations to have been banned internationally’, the minister said.

Commenting on the release of the Darusman report, Rambukwella said they were asked by the creators of the report to respond to their work.

”Why do we respond to a report we do not accept?,” he said.

© Daily News

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka: No-inquiry zone

Photo courtesy: vikalpa.org

Editorial | The Guardian
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

When Richard Goldstone, the judge who headed a UN fact-finding mission to Gaza, partially recanted last month – an act that was disowned by fellow members of the mission – the saga was used as Exhibit A in the case against the UN. The organisation, it was claimed, was so inherently biased against Israel that it lacked the moral authority to investigate it. Where was the Goldstone report about Sri Lanka, some asked?

A UN panel has just produced such a report about the carnage of civilians which took place two years ago when government forces crushed the Tamil Tigers. It is as hard-hitting as anything Goldstone produced, and therefore is just as likely to be shelved. The point is that truth and accountability, let alone international justice, are not divisible. One country's ability to bury the evidence of war crimes endangers how civilians are treated in all other conflicts. A single failure of international justice is also a collective one.

That there is credible evidence that government soldiers targeted civilians, shelled hospitals and attacked aid workers in the final months of the war against the Tamil Tigers is indisputable. That the Tigers used civilians as human shields and shot those attempting to flee the carnage at point-blank range is equally true. Tens of thousands died as a result of these twin brutalities. The zone that the government established in the north-east of the country in the final months of its civil war was an area where savagery was organised on a daily basis. Civilians queueing at a food distribution centre would be shelled while President Mahinda Rajapaksa's office instructed the army to stop what it claimed it had not been doing. It was a no-journalist, no-aid-worker zone, but it was anything but a no-fire zone.

Two years on, the goal has to be to establish an independent inquiry into these events. The Sri Lankan government has consistently opposed the UN, and at one point organised demonstrations against UN staff in Colombo. It has established two ad hoc bodies, but no one has been held accountable. Its supporters claim that anything more trenchant would endanger the peace that has reigned on the island since. All of these arguments are self-serving.

That leaves the UN itself. The secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, claims he lacks the authority to order an inquiry into the mass killings without the consent of the Sri Lankan government, which is not a member of the international criminal court, or a decision by an appropriate international forum of member states. Human Rights Watch is right to disagree. Having fought to establish the panel, the UN secretary general has a responsibility to finish what he started.

© The Guardian

Read More

Summary only

A Canadian witness to shelling in Sri Lanka civil war

Stewart Bell | National Post
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

She was in a bunker on a desolate beach in Sri Lanka’s war zone when a shell exploded 100 metres away. A hunk of shrapnel tore through her tarpaulin tent and struck her in the chest.

A Canadian, she sometimes thought about how her family would take it if she died. But she got lucky. By the time the shell fragment hit her, it had lost its force. It burnt away her skin but otherwise she was alright.

“Every life is precious and that is why I really hope that no more lives are taken away in a war,” the Canadian told the National Post. (She asked that her name not be published due to fears about the safety of her family.)

A United Nations report has corroborated her account of wanton shelling during the final stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka, where she got trapped by fighting and survived for months until making her escape.

The report by a UN panel says there are credible allegations the Sri Lankan military used “large-scale and widespread shelling” between September 2008 and May 2009, causing “large numbers of civilian deaths.”

It says government forces shelled “on a large scale” in the no fire zones that had been demarked for civilians fleeing the fighting — and where the Canadian had her close brush with a shell on May 4, 2009.

According to the report, the government shelled the UN, food distribution lines and hospitals. “Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling,” the report says.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ordered the controversial study last year. He appointed a panel of experts to look into whether war crimes were committed at the end of the Sri Lankan conflict.

The panel’s 196-page report, made public Monday, concludes that, despite the government’s claim it adhered to a “zero human casualty” policy, Sri Lankan forces may have violated international law.

The government not only shelled civilians, the report says, it also denied humanitarian aid to those caught in the war zone, detained survivors in overcrowded camps and silenced the media and critics with threats, abductions and killings.

For their part, the LTTE rebels used civilians as human shields, shot those who tried to flee, fired heavy weapons from civilian areas, recruited children, made civilians dig trenches and killed civilians in suicide attacks, the report says.

“Even when civilian casualties rose significantly the LTTE refused to let people leave, hoping that the worsening situation would provoke an international intervention and a halt to the fighting,” it says.

The government, which did not cooperate with the investigation, has denied the allegations. But the Canadian said the UN got it right. She said she was among hundreds of thousands of civilians who made their way to the no fire zones only to face daily shelling.

She said she helped out at a hospital.

“Every day, every minute, volunteers would bring in truckloads of bodies, some injured, some dead. I was in the admission area initially trying to attend to their first-aid needs and later in the theatre. Deaths were to be reported in a book but sometimes it was too many, we would not even have the time to write down the name of the dead in the hospital registry book.

“Children as young as four months were brought in. Mothers with fractured limbs, head wounds, bullet wounds from bullets flying from the frontline, which was only a kilometre away,” she said. “Even at the hospital, shells were continuously fired.

“We lied down inside the theatre room or admission room, wherever we were, hoping that the shrapnel pieces wouldn’t hit us. Many civilians who were already wounded were wounded again in the shelling inside the hospital premises. Doctors were killed while attending to patients.”

The woman said she hoped the UN report would not be shelved. “I just hope that the report is not another eyewash by the international community and I really hope that something constructive will be done for the reconciliation of these people.”

© National Post

Read More

Summary only

UN feared for staff amid Sri Lanka conflict: Ban

Photo courtesy: UN News & Media

AFP | Yahoo! News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

The United Nations feared for its staff in Sri Lanka as government troops crushed a Tamil separatist uprising in 2009, UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said defending the actions of UN agencies.

As pressure grew for an international investigation into the killing of "tens of thousands" in the conflict's brutal finale, Ban was asked why the United Nations had played down casualty figures at the time.

The UN secretary general indicated that the global body could not have known the true number of dead in 2009 because staff had been withdrawn after the Sri Lankan government refused to guarantee their safety.

A UN panel this week said the Sri Lankan army and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam guerillas may have committed war crimes in the conflict. But the three member panel also said the UN should investigate the actions of its own officials and agencies.

They said that the UN could have saved lives by putting more pressure on the government by highlighting the true number of dead.

Ban has agreed to the review. But he said: "At the time, the security situation was very precarious at the last stage of the crisis.

"And we were told by the Sri Lankan government, as I understand and remember, that the Sri Lankan government would not be able to ensure the safety and security of United Nations' missions there."

"We were compelled to take the necessary action according to their advice," he added.

The UN panel said the Sri Lanka military killed most of the tens of thousands of civilian victims of the offensive when it shelled Tamil territory between January and May of 2009.

It concluded that "tens of thousands" died and both sides may be guilty of war crimes as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had used civilians as a "human buffer" and shot people who tried to escape.

The United Nations is still waiting to hear an official response from Sri Lanka to the UN report which called on the Colombo government to set up a "genuine" investigation into the conflict.

Before the release of the report on Monday, the government had attacked the panel as "bias" and called its report "preposterous."

Ban has said he cannot order an international investigation unless Sri Lanka agrees or if an inter-government body such as the UN Security Council or General Assembly requests it.

He called on all nations to carefully read the report and added that if a mandate was secured "then I would be prepared to take the necessary actions" to set an investigation underway.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said earlier than an international inquiry was desperately needed.

"The eyewitness accounts and credible information contained in this report demand a full, impartial, independent and transparent investigation," said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

"Unless there is a sea-change in the government's response, which has so far been one of total denial and blanket impunity, a full-fledged international inquiry will clearly be needed," she added.

The United States, which has taken a tough line on Sri Lanka over the conflict, also welcomed the panel's recommendations.

The report "makes a valuable contribution to next steps that should be taken in support of justice, accountability, human rights, and reconciliation in Sri Lanka," said the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice.

Rice said there has to be "an independent and full accounting of the facts in order to ensure that allegations of abuse are addressed and impunity for human rights violations is avoided."

© Yahoo! News

Read More

Summary only

UN must act now on Sri Lanka war crimes report - Amnesty

Amnesty International
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

A United Nations report on war crimes committed during the final stages of Sri Lanka’s civil war underscores the need for international accountability for those responsible, Amnesty International said on Tuesday (26).

The report, which was made public today, concluded that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in northern Sri Lanka from January to May 2009 and that the Sri Lankan Government knowingly shelled areas where it had encouraged civilians to gather.

The report gives credibility to allegations that both the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) committed serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

“Almost two years after the end of the conflict, this UN report finally exposes the Sri Lankan government’s whitewash in its efforts to deny justice to the war’s victims,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director.

“UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon must ensure that the UN established a commission of inquiry to collect evidence on the alleged crimes by both sides, to determine who did what to whom, and to recommend next steps for bringing suspected perpetrators to justice in a transparent and timely manner.”

The report also adds weight to other allegations made since the conflict ended.

These include claims that the Sri Lankan government deliberately underestimated the number of civilians remaining in the conflict zone and systematically deprived them of humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies.

The LTTE recruited child soldiers, held civilians hostage, using them as human shields, and shot people who attempted to escape, the UN panel found.

“Eyewitness accounts by survivors of the final months of fighting paint a very grim picture,” said Sam Zarifi.

“They lived in profound fear, suffering injuries and loss of life, and were deprived of food, water and medical care. Many of those who finally escaped the conflict zone were detained by the army in miserable conditions; some remain in detention without trial two years later. How can we deny them justice now?”

In a statement posted on a state news agency website on 21 April, the Sri Lankan government called on the UN not to release the report and rejected its findings.

China, Russia and other states that supported the Sri Lankan government’s campaign against the LTTE have blocked moves at the UN to consider alleged war crimes during the conflict, and joined Sri Lanka in opposing the establishment in June 2010 of the Panel of Experts that produced the report.

These states have looked to a Sri Lankan government-established Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission as a possible substitute for an international commission of inquiry into war crimes.

The UN report bolsters Amnesty International’s position that the national Commission is not impartial and has no mandate or will to investigate and prosecute the alleged crimes.

“It is time for the governments that have obstructed international scrutiny of the crimes to step aside now. The many other governments who have remained disturbingly silent must now come forward and demand justice for the conflict’s victims,” said Sam Zarifi.

Amnesty International also calls on the national authorities of other countries to exercise universal jurisdiction to investigate crimes identified in the report and to prosecute them in their national courts, where appropriate.

“An international inquiry, especially into the violations committed by the LTTE, will greatly help the process of reconciliation in Sri Lanka,” added Sam Zarifi.

© Amnesty International

Read More

Summary only