Sri Lanka's war crimes panel arouses strong emotions

Photo courtesy: Tamilnet

By Charles Haviland | BBC News
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In a crowded room in a government building there was an agitated buzz of people talking Tamil.

A man tried to organise things, telling them to get their sad case histories ready to submit.

Men and women of all ages held up pictures for the camera - pictures of their missing sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters - with dates of disappearance: January 2008; April 2007.

Raw emotions

The people were clamouring to appear before the war commission.

Before the commissioners arrived they unburdened themselves to us.

A woman told us her son aged 17 disappeared eight years ago while tending goats. Perhaps he was taken by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). He was later seen in an army detention camp but then vanished.

An elderly man told us his son disappeared four years ago - the police had not been able to find him.

Once they were testifying to the panel, raw emotions came through.

A weeping mother, R Bhuwaneswari, clutched a bundle of victims' written testimonies as she addressed the team.

Her 15-year-old daughter was forced to stay back by the Tigers as the family escaped the war zone. She was later seen in a government-run camp but is now missing.

"Tell her to give the information to the commission secretary," the commission chairman and former attorney-general, CR de Silva, told the interpreter.

"We'll try to trace her daughter."

'Nothing happens'

But Ms Bhuwaneswari continued speaking.

"They all say there's peace, but there's no peace," she cried, weeping.

"We people don't have any happiness or freedom. We live with tears. We've reported our missing children to so many but nothing happens. You at least, please give us some good news. There are so many wives crying for their detained husbands.

"If my daughter were here now she would have sat her O-level exams."

Another woman, R Virginia Shanthi, said she and many others had been assaulted while their children were taken.

Her son disappeared in 2007 on his way to a beer store in an area which she said was under navy control.

"We hope you'll dry the tears of these mothers," she told the panel, breaking down.

"We are hurt, both mentally and physically. We are becoming ill, thinking about our lost ones."

Scores of others waited restlessly to testify but there was not time for many. They were asked to submit written details of their missing family members.

Senior Catholic churchmen including the Bishop of Mannar, Rt Rev Rayappu Joseph, had already given a long submission criticising the government and military's actions in the north.

He told the BBC he would have liked more time for people to unburden themselves. He wanted them to accept that their relatives were dead and try to get death certificates for them.

At a later session the wife of the LTTE's former local commander, Anthony Rayappu, said she had seen him taken away by the army but there was now no clue of his whereabouts.

Not independent

At one of the Mannar hearings a soldier in uniform made witnesses nervous as he took photographs of them and the panel. His presence was brought to the attention of commission officials who asked him to go outside.

The commission, which began hearings in August, is supposed to determine who was responsible for the failure of a 2002 ceasefire, suggest ways to prevent another war and foster reconciliation and to promote restitution for those affected.

International human rights groups have refused to testify, complaining that it lacks a mandate to investigate alleged war crimes.

They also say the panel members are too close to the government and therefore not independent. The government denies this.

In May this year the LLRC is to give the president its final report, which may or may not be made public.

All of its public hearings so far outside Colombo have been in Tamil-majority areas.

But this month it will visit the Sinhalese-majority town of Anuradhapura, where 27 people were killed and 94 injured by an LTTE suicide bomber in 2008.

Witnesses have given extremely diverse accounts.

Bishop Joseph's team said it believed there were as many as 146,000 people still unaccounted for during the last phase of fighting - a figure higher than most other calculations.

But last week Champika Ranawaka, a government minister from a Sinhalese nationalist party, the JHU, declared that only about 1,100 civilians were killed in the war's last three years.

He said the ethnic majority had come out of the war worse than Tamils because Sinhalese people displaced from the north had never returned home.

© BBC News

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Over 800,000 hit in Sri Lankan floods

By R. K. Radhakrishnan | The Hindu
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Over 800,000 people have been affected in Sri Lanka as the monsoon fury worsened, leading to breaching of tanks, landslips and flooding.

The numbers affected could be higher since statistics are not available from at least four of the affected districts.

Assistant Director of the National Disaster Management Centre Pradeep Kodippili said the number of people affected island-wide was 819,759 (215,986 families). Sunday's rainfall of 300 mm in a day in Battocaloa is the highest in recent memory.

As many as 482,830 persons belonging to 127,980 families in the Batticaloa District and 306,998 persons belonging to 80,410 families in the Ampara District have been affected by the floods, the worst affected two districts in the island.

The entire arc spanning from Trincomallee in the north to Ampara in the south — covering 10 districts — have been affected. Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera put the losses due to the rain at LKR 30 billion.

In Anuradhapura district, one town — Horowpathana — was under water and the Tikkampatna dam had breached. Many roads in the hilly Kandy and Nuuwara Eliya have been rendered useless because of landslips.

Transportation by road and rail have come to a standstill in most of the affected districts.

More than 36,000 persons living in camps for the internally displaced in Batticaloa are among the affected.

Over 6300 IDPs in Polonnaruwa also have been affected by the floods.

Moved to safety

The Air Force rescued 24 persons from Batticaloa since Sunday evening. It said its Bell 212 helicopter transported a pregnant lady from Valaichchenai to Polonnaruwa Hospital.

Another helicopter carried out a ration drop at Thoppigala on Monday morning, providing relief aid to flood victims.

© The Hindu

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Pakistan to train SL spies

Daily Mirror
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Pakistan has offered to train the intelligence officers of Sri Lanka, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said yesterday.

He was talking to a Sri Lankan parliamentary delegation headed by Speaker of Parliament Chamal Rajapaksa who is currently visiting Pakistan, the APP reported yesterday.

The Sri Lankan delegation included among others Minister of Disaster Management A.H.M Fowzie.

The Pakistan President also stressed on enhancing the economic cooperation between the two countries, including exchange of gem and stone cutting experts.

© Daily Mirror

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Sri Lanka: Two years after the assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge

By Basil Fernando | Asian Human Rights Commission
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Two years have passed since one of the most infamous assassinations in Sri Lanka in recent times. The editor of the Sunday Leader and an internationally known journalist, Lasantha Wickrematunge, was killed in an attack that occurred in broad daylight. It is reported that the police have submitted around 50 reports at various court hearings regarding this murder but that they have been unable to bring any credible evidence against any of the perpetrators of this murder.

Two questions arise: is this due to the incapacity of the police investigators? Or is it due to the pressures brought on the investigators and those who are in charge of such investigations not to condult credible investigations into this murder? The possibility that the failure is in the capacities of the investigators is a difficult hypothesis to maintain as in the past much more mysterious and intricate crimes have been solved in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, if the question was one of incapacities in terms of expertise or technical difficulties, it is the obligation of the policing department and the police to seek assistance from international agencies as they have done in the past. No attempt was made to get the advice of professional investigators or forensic experts to assist in the investigation of this case. Therefore the possibility of the failure of the investigation on the basis of incapacity can be easily dismissed.

However, the argument for the other alterative, that it was due to political pressure that the investigation does not happen, is very much more plausible. First of all the open allegation by the family members and those who were close to the assassinated Lasantha Wickrematunge is that the assassins were those associated with the political leadership of the government. Lasantha Wickrematunge himself predicted the possibility of his assassination on political grounds. There had been previous attacks on him and his newspaper, which too have never been properly investigated. The previous attacks were indicative of the possibility that the final attack was also made the same persons. The public enemies of Lasantha Wickrematunge on record are also prominent politicians.

It is under these circumstances that the state owed a greater responsibility for providing all resources for to make a proper investigation into this crime. This has not been done and this points a finger at the government.

Today, the fact of the control of the police by the political authorities is no longer a matter of controversy. The collapse of the public authorities in general and the police in particular has been observed and commented upon by almost everyone. Vast documentation exists on this issue.

What sharply comes through this murder is that when the government does not want investigations to be done, the police investigation units no longer have the capacity to carry out any investigations. What happens by way of submitting reports to the courts is mere compliance with the legal obligations. However, the legal obligations relating to carrying out the obligations is not accompanied with the filing of the reports. Filing reports has become an empty exercise and, in fact, an exercise in hypocrisy. The police officers in charge of the investigation have to submit such reports to the courts and, if they are not submitted, then the judges have the right to take such officers to task. To overcome this problem, more reports are submitted claiming that the investigations are being conducted without giving any details of what is actually being done by way of continuing investigations.

In Sri Lanka the judiciary has not adequately challenged the police practice of the submitting of reports being simply a formality and that it is being engaged in compliance with the legal rules in purely hypocritical way. The question of the duty to investigate and the obligations of those engaged in this need to be more clearly spelled out by the judiciary itself, who ultimately have the obligation of conducting the judicial process.

Judicial process relating to murder becomes a pointless exercise if serious and credible investigations are not done. This is not a matter only on this particular case but about the whole issue of serious crimes. If political or other purposes could stand against the officers who conduct investigations into serious crimes, then the system of investigations into murder cannot effectively function.

If investigations into serious murder become a farce it threatens the security of the public. Throughout civilization one of the major concerns has been about how the murders of persons could be stopped. What has been inbuilt in the laws relating to murder and the investigations are the rules that have been developed over centuries in order to stop people killing each other.

If the rule made to stop people killing each other can no longer be implemented in Sri Lanka, that is a societal crisis of the highest nature. It is, in fact, as bad as can be.

Many look into the absence of an investigation into the murder of Lasantha Wickrematunge in a more cynical way, saying that such murders will never be investigated. What the cynics do not realise is that this is not about one man's death but about social obligation to investigate murder.

Can Sri Lanka remain a stable society if the rules relating to murder are so flagrantly abused? This is a question that needs to be reflected upon on the second anniversary of the assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was an opinion-maker in Sri Lanka.

There is some paralysis in the opinion making process in Sri Lanka, perhaps due to fears generated by murders of similar sort that were not investigated. This has led to the opinion-makers themselves remaining silent on great issues that affect society itself, including in terms of rules relating to murder and other serious crimes.

Added to this is the nationalist sentiment that the investigations into this murder may cause political rifts which may be dangerous to the idea of the nation as it stands now. If one murder were to be properly investigated, then what would happen to many others that are not investigated, which may be of those who were terrorists? The fear that a proper investigation into one murder may lead to others seems to lurk very high as a concern of many persons who don't want such investigations.

Nationalism that does not care about murders of citizens is a serious contradiction in itself. Nationalism is about citizens and their lives. If the lives of the citizens do not matter then how does a nation stand together? The nation is a gathering of individuals. If the death of an individual does not matter then there cannot be a deeper cause for internal divisiveness than that. One individual does not trust that another individual will intervene on his behalf if a catastrophe were to befall him, that they will not defend his right to life. What then is this so-called idea of the nation, a nation that does not care for the lives of the individuals? These are serious questions that arise on this occasion and not to reflect on such issues but merely make some kind of ritual celebration of the second anniversary is itself a farce. If death memorials become a farce, then what else is there in society to create basic societal meanings?

That is the kind of societal crisis that Sri Lanka is facing today. Rule of law is now been reduced to a noon day dream.

© AHRC

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