South African author Galgut boycotts Sri Lanka's literary fest

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

South African award-winning novelist and playwright Damon Galgut has boycotted a literary festival in Sri Lanka because of concerns over the country's rights record, organisers said Thursday.

Galgut, a winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2003 for "The Good Doctor", set in post-apartheid South Africa, declined to take part in the Galle Literary Festival despite arriving in Sri Lanka this week, organisers said.

"We are sorry to announce that Damon Galgut has decided to lend his support to the ongoing international campaign by rights activists to highlight shortfalls in human rights here," Shyam Selvadurai, the festival curator said.

"It's an unfortunate situation for us that Damon heeded this ridiculous campaign," Selvadurai told reporters. "But the festival will go on, with over 60 writers participating."

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and a Sri Lankan right group last week asked foreign writers to boycott the five-day Galle festival because of alleged rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

Galgut, whose latest novel, "In a Strange Room," is shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, was not immediately available for comment.

RSF said Wednesday that "hundreds" of Internet users had signed a boycott petition led by Noam Chomsky, Arundathi Roy, Ken Loach, Antony Loewenstein, Tariq Ali, Dave Rampton and R Cheran.

Nobel laureate Turkish-born Orhan Pamuk and his partner, fellow writer Kiran Desai, last week pulled out of the festival.

Pamuk's agent in India declined to give a reason while festival organisers said their absence was unrelated to the RSF campaign.

Pamuk, author of "Snow" and "The Black Book," attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in India last week.

Despite the international campaign, hundreds of local and foreign book lovers flocked to the festival that is held inside a colonial-era sea-front fort in Galle, 72 miles (115 kilometres) south of Colombo.

© AFP

Related articles

• War crimes: SA author to give Galle fest a miss (Hindustan Times)
• SA's Galgut boycotts Sri Lanka (Times Live)
• Author Damon Galgut boycotts Sri Lanka book fair (BBC South Asia)

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka search for missing continues

Prerna Suri | Al Jazeera
.............................................................................................................................................................................................


It's been a year since Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa returned to power after defeating his one-time military general in a presidential vote.

The Tamil Tiger rebels had just been defeated and Rajapaksa promised reconciliation between the country's Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority.

But as Al Jazeera's Prerna Suri reports, one year on, many Tamils are still looking for relatives that disappeared during the final days of the civil war.

© Al Jazeera

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka military to share war tips at forum

AFP| Google News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Sri Lanka's army Wednesday announced plans to share with other countries its success in crushing ethnic Tamil Tiger rebels and ending the island's 37-year-old separatist war.

Army chief Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya said they were inviting heads of military and defence establishments in 54 countries to a three-day forum starting in Colombo from May 31.

"After the war ended many countries have requested us to share some of our strategies with them," Jayasuriya told reporters in Colombo. "They want us to share our experience and expertise with them."

Many field commanders will make presentation at the forum titled "defeating terrorism -- the Sri Lankan experience," Jayasuriya said.

"The objective is to tell the whole story to the world. We have nothing to hide," he said.

Sri Lanka's military campaign has been marred by allegations of war crimes by both sides and provoked US-led calls for an independent international investigation.

The United Nations has estimated that at least 7,000 civilians were killed in the final months of fighting while three international rights groups have placed the figure at more than 30,000.

Sri Lanka insists that it was involved in a "humanitarian operation" to free Tamil civilians dominated by the Tiger rebels and claims that no civilian was killed by its forces.

Colombo has refused to allow any foreign investigation into the military crack down. Fighting between 1972 and May 2009 is estimated to have claimed up to 100,000 lives, according to UN estimates.

© AFP

Read More

Summary only

Terror campaign against Tamils reemerges

By S. Jayanth | World Socialist Web Site
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Death squads operating in collusion with the military have once again begun to terrorise Tamils in the North and East of Sri Lanka despite the end of the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009.

During December, a spate of killings, abductions, disappearances and robberies has occurred in the northern Jaffna peninsula. Similar incidents also have been reported from the Kilinochchi, Mullaithivu and Mannar districts that were previously held by the LTTE.

After President Mahinda Rajapakse restarted the war in mid-2006, hundreds of people, including politicians and journalists, were abducted or murdered by such hit squads, typically operating with white vans or on motorbikes. Invariably, despite the heavy wartime military presence, the killers escaped and were never brought to justice.

The list of recent attacks includes:

* The chief priest of the Murukamoorthy temple, Nithiyananda Sharma, 56, was shot dead in the temple at Chankaanai and his two sons were injured by an armed gang on December 11. The gun used to kill him was similar to those issued by the army. Jaffna security forces commander Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe denied any army connection, but he later admitted that an army corporal had been involved.

* Markandu Sivalingam, a deputy director of education in the Valikaamam Zone, was shot dead at his home at Urumpirai in Jaffna by an armed gang on December 26. The police have not arrested anyone. Tamil National Alliance MP, E. Saravanabavan, told parliament that Sivalingam could have been slain because of his opposition to forcing Tamil school students to sing the national anthem in Sinhala during the recent December 2004 Tsunami Remembrance Day in Jaffna.

* Mahendiran Selvam, 28, was found dead at Meesalai last month. His family had received calls demanding 8.5 million rupees ($US76,000) in ransom after he had disappeared. Rasiah Chandrasiri, 42, was found hanged three days after his disappearance in Jaffna on December 30.

* On New Year’s Eve, postal worker and environmentalist Ketheeswaran Thevarajah, 28, was killed by an armed gang in his home at Vadamaraadchi on the Jaffna peninsula. On January 3, Mahalingam Amirthrasa, 35, a father of five, went missing in Urumpirai.

* In Mannar on January 6, six people were abducted by a gang in a white van. Others tried to rescue them, but were threatened by the abductors who shot into the air. Several people followed the van, which was allowed to pass a military checkpoint without being searched. Five of the six were handed back to their families by police the next evening, after being taken to Colombo.

* On January 20, the newspaper Veerakesari reported that an unidentified gang in a white van had grabbed two students in Manner and beaten them. The abductors asked one of the students about his father, a businessman who was reported missing four years ago. The students were released on January 17.

The military is also actively collecting details about former LTTE supporters who have been released and are living in Jaffna. After the war, the military arrested about 12,000 Tamil youth and sent them to secret detention camps, where they held without trial and interrogated. The government recently claimed that it had released about 5,000 detainees. But they have been ordered to report to the detention camps weekly or even daily and are still in danger.

Some former detainees have complained to the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission (HRC) branch in Jaffna and sought protection. On January 10, a judge ordered a 32-year old man to be placed in protective custody after he asked for the HRC’s help. He had been hounded by a pro-government gang because of his earlier affiliation to the LTTE.

The Jaffna peninsula is under tight military control. A force of about 40,000 soldiers is deployed, with troops manning every junction and patrolling in vehicles. Paramilitary forces from the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP), one of the government’s coalition partners, operate with the military. Tens of thousands more soldiers have been deployed in the Vanni district. The killings and abductions cannot possibly take place without the military’s knowledge.

Facing growing public discontent over the criminal attacks, EPDP leader Douglas Devananda, a government minister, attempted to deflect attention from his organisation’s activities. Speaking in parliament on January 4, he called on the security forces “to bring to justice those who are responsible for these murders”.

Major General Hathurusinghe, the Jaffna commander, also denied the responsibility of the security forces, blaming “criminal activities by civilians” and “personal disputes” for the murders and disappearances. At the same time, he declared: “The army is also continuing to look for pro-LTTE elements in the peninsula.”

Government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella absurdly told a media briefing on January 7 that the killings were the responsibility of “anti-government elements” who were trying to tarnish the government’s image. He provided no evidence for the assertion.

The attempt by the government and military to deny responsibility flies in the face of a series of reports by international human rights organisations over the past four years that have provided considerable evidence for the operation of pro-government death squads who have been able to adduct and kill with impunity.

A secret US diplomatic cable recently published by WikiLeaks demonstrated Washington’s knowledge of the Sri Lankan government’s collusion with paramilitary groups. Former US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Robert Blake, sent a memo in May 2007 to the US State Department identified the EPDP and other paramilitary groups as involved in extra-judicial killings along with a range of other criminal activities including prostitution, drug running and extortion to which the government and security forces turned a blind eye.

The cable reported that Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the president’s brother, ordered Jaffna military commanders to “not interfere with the paramilitaries on the grounds that they are doing ‘work’ that the military cannot do because of international scrutiny”—in other words extra-judicial killings and other illegal activities. The defence ministry also instructed top officials “not to interfere with operations of military intelligence”, which worked closely the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries also operated in Colombo, where, according to Blake: “Frequent abductions by paramilitaries keep critics of the GSL [Government of Sri Lanka] fearful and quiet.”

The escalating death squad activities over the past month take place amid rising public dissatisfaction over the government’s driving down of real wages, social spending and living standards in order to implement budget-cutting measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Living conditions and the lack of basic democratic rights impact especially on Tamils in the war torn North and East of the island.

The government is seeking to whip up anti-Tamil sentiment, accusing the remnants of the LTTE of conspiring internationally against it. The communal campaign is not only aimed at dividing working people, but justifying the continued state of emergency in the country and the military occupation of the North and East.

In another chauvinist provocation, the cabinet recently adopted a proposal by President Rajapakse that the national anthem should be read in the Sinhala language in every part in the country. It was customary to sing a Tamil translation of the anthem in the North and East, where the overwhelming majority of people do not speak or understand Sinhala.

Far from the military annihilation of the LTTE in May 2009 leading to a new period of peace and prosperity, as the government claimed it would, communal repression has continued to deepen, with far-reaching implications for the basic and democratic rights of the entire working class.

© WSWS

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka: East reels under triple whammy

By Amantha Perera | Inter Press Service
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

The name Mawilaru will be indelibly linked to the history of over 25 years of civil strife in Sri Lanka, especially its bloody end. It was here that the final phase of the war was triggered in June 2006.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), fighting for a separate state for the island’s minority Tamils, closed an important sluice gate here depriving water to farmers from the majority Sinhala community who lived north of the gate. Then, after a few weeks of posturing, the government launched a military operation and gained control of the gate. The operation to regain Mawilaru would set off a series of other far larger military operations that would end the LTTE presence in the country by mid May 2009.

Recently there was yet another military intervention at the sluice gates. This time soldiers were brought in to battle nature. When floodwaters rose to alarming levels - threatening to burst from the sides of the Mawilaru canal - soldiers reinforced the banks with sandbags.

Unfortunately, the floodwaters found other routes, crashing through paddy fields, roads, bridges and anything that stood in its path. The waters from the Mahaweli, the country’s longest river that flows through the region, and the incessant heavy rains from Jan. 8 till 11 cut off some villages for over five days.

"It was battle alright, a battle we lost," Ponnambalam Thanesveran, the top public official at Verugal, a nearby village, told IPS.

Thanesveran was stuck in his office for five days and was forced to work from the second floor as floodwaters inundated the ground floor in six feet of water. He arrived and left the office building by boat while coordinating the relief effort for his divisional secretariat, all the time wearing a life jacket. "What we gained in the last three years has been washed away, we are probably worse off than we were in 2006," he said.

At least his office has survived, a little moist and disorganised, but it is still here. The same is not true of the road that runs in front of the office. Parts of road have been washed away. It is one of the three dozen or so ‘A’ grade roads in the country that fall under the purview of the central government. Tagged A 15, it links the eastern town of Batticaloa with Trincomalee, the scenic beach town north of Verugal.

Over 950,000 people of the over 1 million affected by floods live in the three coastal districts of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara.

No vehicles can travel beyond Thanesveran’s office as several small streams were flowing through the road creating three-foot deep canals. About three kilometres from the office, the road simple disappears into a large stream. The large river now flows where an old bridge once stood and enterprising villagers have tied thick ropes onto trees on either side, assisting others across the water for a fee.

Rani Vigneswaran now has to take a small boat and walk three kilometres to catch her bus until a new bridge is built. "This is our plight, we had the war, we were hit by the tsunami, somehow we were getting our lives together and now this," she said.

The damage in the area is severe. Thanesveran had gathered details that showed 250 temporary shelters used as homes by families returning post- conflict had been washed away. He estimates 15 kilometres of the main road needs repair, plus 35 kilometres of other minor roads. Two bridges in his division are gone, 10 kilometres of irrigation canals need immediate attention and over 10,000 farm animals have been washed away.

The biggest loss is that of over 6,400 acres of paddy and other crops. Thanesveran says the loss of the paddy crop will be severely felt. "It was good year and people were expecting a good harvest, now it will be worse than during the war," he said.

Farmers were expecting to make about 1,000 dollars per acre, with a 30 percent profit margin. The loss to Thanesveran’s division is approximately 500,000 dollars from the loss of the paddy crop.

"The average ten-year old in eastern Sri Lanka has lived through conflict, the tsunami and now risks facing a food crisis in the coming weeks caused by these floods," Gareth Owen, emergencies director of the UK humanitarian agency Save the Children said. Save the Children has sent out a 1.6 million dollar appeal to facilitate assistance of an estimated 400,000 children facing food shortages.

For Thanesveran there is sense of déjà vu. "Whenever we get going we seem to be stumped by nature or man," he said. "Maybe this time will be the last."

© IPS

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka: Hunger haunts the nation’s rice bowl

By Romayne Anthony | CARE International
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Two and a half months ago KD Majjid was a man whose ultimate dream was about to be realized after 10 long painful years. Separated from his wife, Majjid was forced to leave his job as a watchman in a nearby mill in order to take care of his elderly mother. Paddy farming was always a livelihood Majjid was eager to delve into but had never had the resources to initiate on his own. A majority of paddy farmers in Ampara are land owners and are treated as the richer members of their community. Majjid’s opportunity to join this league came when he was identified as a beneficiary for a livelihood project initiated by CARE Sri Lanka for vulnerable families in the Akkaraipattu area.

In a region where farmers own hundreds to thousands of acres paddy land Majjid carefully chose two acres to cultivate his precious crop. “I have been trying to have my own paddy field for 10 years - since 2000- finally in 2010 CARE helped me to make my dream come true so I worked hard at it and then the flood came.” The anxious wait to reap his first harvest turned into an anguished walk through dead or dying sheaves of paddy left in the wake of the floods which covered most parts of Ampara in January.

“We have to reap the harvest twice a year - we started cultivating two months ago and this month we were to harvest it - I was expecting 50,000 rupees from this harvest as profit! But today I can’t even cover the cost of the day labourers who would have reaped the harvest - They won't come to cut this kind of paddy.”

“The paddy seed opens up and when it starts raining it closes up - and when it rains the seed sticks to the one next to it and the rice inside it doesn’t grow. Nothing can be salvaged - Water just turns the whole thing black.”

Holding the blackened paddy in his hands Majjid rubs them together and watches the empty paddy crackle and fall from his hands with a look of despair and disappointment only matched by the dark cloud that now hangs over his immediate plight.

“I have no other means of earning money so I might do some labour work until then - I can’t even eat this paddy - so I have no means of eating or income.”
He may have lost his first ever harvest but Majjid is determined to stay with his dream. He will start the next season in April and reap the harvest in August he insists “I don't have money to clear the land so I’m just going to leave it like this - The cows and wild animals will eat up the crop and I will restart planting. This is the only thing I can do and I’m not going to give it up.”

In response to the floods, CARE has provided food and emergency supplies for nearly 16,000 people in Batticaloa, Ampara and Polonnaruwa Districts, and is working to supply water and water purification tablets to help families have access to safe drinking water. CARE, which has worked in Sri Lanka since 1950, is coordinating closely with the United Nations, other aid agencies and government agencies as part of the relief effort. CARE is appealing for additional funds as we work to scale up our relief response.
Bookmark and Share

© CARE International

Read More

Summary only