Sri Lanka: Protests erupt countrywide against fuel price hike

By Charles Haviland | BBC Sinhala
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Bus and lorry operators have gone on strike across Sri Lanka in response to sudden steep rises in the cost of fuel.

Roads have also been blockaded by fishermen who say the price hikes will ruin their livelihood.

There are fears that other basic goods will now get more expensive.

The dramatic rises in the cost of oil products came almost without notice late on Saturday.


Protestors in Negombo - 13 February 2012

In one fell swoop, the cost of diesel – used in buses and lorries – has increased by 36%, and that of kerosene, used by many poorer people, by a crippling 49%. Petrol has gone up by just nine percent.

Many people have responded angrily to the increases.


Protestors in Anuradhapura - 13 February 2012

In Chilaw on the west coast, fishermen burned tyres and blocked road traffic, chasing away the security forces and demanding a fuel subsidy. Private buses – which are more than half the total – have mostly been on strike, so people have had to use jam-packed public ones.

More than 40 people were arrested for attacking vehicles which ignored the stoppage.


Protestors in Anuradhapura - 13 February 2012

There are warnings of imminent rises in the prices of basic foods and of electricity, much of which is generated by fossil fuels in Sri Lanka.

The government says soaring world oil prices and a recent devaluation of the currency made the fuel price rises inevitable.

The opposition called the changes "anti-poor" and said they had been brought in to satisfy conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund, which is disbursing a large loan to the island.


Protestors in Chilaw - 13 February 2012

Many bus operators say they can no longer function unless the government gives them fuel subsidies or allows them to increase fares.

The authorities are nervous that US sanctions against Iran - being enforced in July - will worsen the fuel problem, as Sri Lanka gets 90% of its crude oil imports from Iran.

© BBC Sinhala

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Fuel Protests: Sri Lanka fuel users protest over steep increase

Lanka Business Online
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A steep fuel price increase in Sri Lanka to correct mounting economic imbalance and pressure on a currency peg has seen protests by bus operators and fishermen, reports said.

Fishermen blocked a road on the main road to the capital Colombo from Negambo, a fishery centre, a media report said.

Sri Lanka raised the price of kerosene by 35 rupees to 106 rupees a litre Saturday, and Diesel from by 31 rupees to 115 rupees, both fuels used by fishermen.

Sri Lanka does not have an automatic price formula to change prices based on cost, but sale prices arbitrarily changed by rulers based on political expediency.

When prices are held down for long periods, Sri Lanka's rupee peg comes under pressure, partly due to heavy borrowings from the banking system by energy utilities to buy dollars, putting pressure on both inflation and the rupee peg.

Sudden price corrections then lead to protests.

Commuters were stranded on roadsides Monday after a key bus operators' union kept buses at home

Sri Lanka's The Island newspaper quoted Lanka Private Bus Owners' Association President Gemunu Wijeratne as saying that they wanted a 17 percent fare hike of diesel at 76 rupees, lower than even the 84 rupee price before the hike

State-run buses, and operators of another union continued to run their vehicles.

The Federation of All Island Private Bus Associations a rival association had said they will continue to operator their busses.

"We have a total strength of 11,000 buses comprising 7500 for short distance travel and another 3,500 buses, on long distance running," the newspaper quoted the union chief Anjana Priyanjith as saying.

Media reports said the Treasury is expected to give a subsidy from tax payer's money to bus operators to prevent them from raising fares.

Tax payers are expected to subsidize diesel up to 80 kilometres a day per long distance bus and 60 kilometres for a short distance bus, The Sunday Times newspaper said.

The Island newspaper quoted minister for private transport C B Ratnayake as saying that Diesel would be issued at 84 rupees a litre for bus operators. Sri Lanka has a large number of ministers, including separate ministers for state and private transport.

© LBO

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Time for a reality check on the Sri Lankan civil war

By Emanuel Stoakes | The Independent
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The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) are expected to consider a motion tabled by the United States over Sri Lankan accountability for war crimes later this month, nearly three years after the end of the island nation’s bloody civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a rebelsecessionist militia.

The government has been accused of multiple atrocities committed during its war effort in 2008 and 2009, including intentionally shelling thousands of civilians in a “no-fire zone” declared by the army, extra-judicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances and attacks on civilian infrastructure including hospitals.The estimates suggest that between thousands and tens and thousands were killed in the endgame of the fighting.

President MahindaRajapaksa’s administration had responded toa body of evidence that indicates the army of Sri Lanka, following orders from its civilian leadership, committed atrocities in this period by denying all, but of late has peregrinated toward greater openness. It hasmoved on from echoing the president’s claim that “not one civilian was shot dead” toward acceptance of the government-appointed “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” (LLRC)panel’s findings that large numbers were killed.

This may be a sign of some progress, but the conclusions of theinternal investigation- which unsurprisingly exonerates the government of responsibility for suchalleged abuses, citing “crossfire” and other factors- contraststarkly with the views of authoritative external assessments. The report of a United Nations panel last yearfound“credible allegations of serious violations committed by the Government, including killing of civilians through widespread shelling”, and by other means of violence.

The UN high commissioner for human rights, NaviPillay, stated after the report’s release that “addressing violations of international humanitarian or human rights law is not a matter of choice or policy; it is a duty under domestic and international law”-duty or not, Sri Lanka have blocked any international inquiries to date and will try to do so again later this month.

The UN’s findings, reinforced by reports from human rights groups such as Amnesty International and international media which have included video footage of executions are all of a piece, according to apologists. They posit a malicious anti-Sri Lankan campaignby LTTE sympathisers who have duped / bought off the western media (apparently I’m in on it too, according to my trolls) in order to damage the country and intimidate itsleadership.

Unfortunately, some of the rebuttals provided by officials to disputethe more compelling evidence have onlyfurther damaged the credibility ofthe government’s stance. After Channel Four broadcast an alleged “trophy video” of Sri Lankan forces executing unarmed men in 2009, a panel of domestic experts investigated the footage and declared that they had “scientifically” proven that it was a fake assembled most likely by pro-LTTE conspirators, and listed their objections.

In response, Philip Alston, Special Rappourteur for Summary, Arbitrary or Extra-judicial killings at the UNissued a point-by-point refutation of the Sri Lankan panel’s findings, drawn from the conclusion of world-leading experts in forensic pathology, forensic video analysis, and firearm evidence. Receiving the backing ofChristofHeyns, -Alston’s successor- also, the case for the authenticity of the video is now very compelling indeed.

On another occasion, PalithaKohona, a government representative, was caught out live on Al Jazeera, responding to satellite imagery of a civilian “safe zone”that depicted shell craters. He admitted that the government had fired on the area, but denied there were civilians targets. Al Jazeera broadcast footage from earlier that year of himself denying that there was any shelling in the area, because civilians were present, a claim augmented by a number of military officials who backed up Kohona.

It has been around a thousand days since the conclusion of the war. In that time the response of the government to allegations of abuses, up to and including the LLRC report has been unconvincing,redolent of political self-servicerather than an authentic attempt at truth andreconciliation. Even some of the most ardent patriots who instinctively rally toRajapaksamust be growing weary of reflexive cries of “lies and propaganda!”every time new allegations surface.Any panacea’s placebo comforts dim with overuse.

For this reason, among many others, Sri Lanka should allow for an independent inquiry into crimes that are alleged to have occurred during the endgame of the war- to decisively prove the inference of its representatives that there is nothing to hide.

Having said that, here’s a thought: if America can table such a motion and expect a response, why shouldn’t the armed forces of Tommy “we don’t do body counts” Franks, and all Bush’s men not expect the same over, say, certain events in Fallujah, Haditha and Abottabad?And doesn’t Sri Lanka’sfailure to self-examine convincinglyalso apply to Britain’s patheticHutton report on Iraq?

Sri Lanka must be held open to international scrutiny for its alleged war crimes- Britain and America too.

But don’t hold your breath.

© The Independent

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My brothers’ keepers: In Sri Lanka the grip of the Rajapaksas only tightens

By Banyan | The Economist
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The president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, may well feel pleased with himself. On the face of it, more than six years after his first election, his prospects are still remarkably rosy. The economy clips along at about 7% a year. Mr Rajapaksa’s coalition controls over two-thirds of parliament, and opposition parties are so weak that a senior minister chuckles about not being held to account. The chief political threat, Sarath Fonseka, a former general turned popular presidential candidate, is in a Colombo jail. There, says an MP who has visited him, he wears short trousers and passes his days in a cell known as the “Scouting Room”, complete with a portrait of Baden-Powell.

Confidence lay behind the heavy hint dropped on February 8th by Basil Rajapaksa, the economy minister, that Mr Fonseka, a classmate chum, might soon leave prison and even return to politics. Basil is one of several Rajapaksa brothers, the one reckoned to be the brains of the ruling family. Possibly he thinks that Mr Fonseka may make a fool of himself at large, while enjoying martyr status behind bars.

On independence day, February 4th, the president chided his countrymen, urging them to be more grateful. It is true that since a bitter end in 2009 to a long, wretched ethnic civil war, the lot of many Sri Lankans has steadily improved. The state of emergency is gone, even if other draconian laws remain. Many of the tens of thousands of Tamils detained in the north at the war’s end have been released. New roads, ports, railways and power stations are spreading. In Colombo, the capital, various swanky structures are rising and the ground has been cleared for a lotus-shaped tower intended to be South Asia’s tallest.

How, then, to explain a persistent grouchiness among Sri Lankans? The past months have brought strikes, riots and protests by students, railwaymen, prisoners and public workers. The opposition Tamil National Alliance swept local elections in the north, leaving the president’s party in the dust. Ranil Wickremasinghe, the main Sinhalese opposition leader, no ball of energy himself, claims to see wide “protests and agitation against unfulfilled promises”.

Hushed café talk about a “Colombo spring” overstates things, but Mr Rajapaksa may remember how such grumbles and protests helped his own rise to power. Most outsiders focus on his headaches abroad. In March the United Nations will consider a resolution on Sri Lanka over suspected killings of thousands of Tamil civilians and rebel prisoners in the last days of the war. Last month Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, said America would vote against Sri Lanka. A retired senior official frets about an “adversarial lock” closing on his country.

Yet matters at home may be more troubling. Furious recriminations followed the murder in October of a senior politician, an old friend of the president, in a shoot-out with a fellow MP. Rumours of graft in infrastructure deals persist. A big investor calls the government “extremely corrupt and arrogant”. In the past this businessman went along with kickbacks of a “few million dollars: this is a developing country, after all”; but he balked once demands rose to tens of millions of dollars to win tenders for projects funded with Chinese loans. The bribes, he suggests, are split between Chinese state-owned partners and members of the ruling clique. Morals aside, he says this makes it impossible to turn a profit. He has been threatened, including with violence, for speaking out.

In the capital, commentators, activists and business types—who all demand anonymity on the topic of the Rajapaksas—warn of a family rule that has become more centralised, heavy-handed and authoritarian. Here, the defence secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is most often mentioned. Whereas the president has an earthy charm that appeals to rural Sinhalese, Gotabaya Rajapaksa wields power more bluntly. He presides over both army and police, 300,000 armed men in all—just what a good democracy needs, he says. This year the defence budget will top $2 billion, a fifth of all public spending—an alarming share for a country now at peace. The army’s role in business is also growing. An economist and opposition figure, Harsha de Silva, says the army is getting into hotels, farming, construction, golf courses, sports stadiums and even running roadside tea stalls.

The vegetarian strongman

The defence secretary, curiously, also oversees urban development, giving Gotabaya wide powers of patronage. His brother, Basil, calls him “fully vegetarian…the nicest, kindest person in the family”, yet he is widely feared. A Tamil leader says the army oversees “oppressive, insulting, humiliating” rule in the north, with tales of land grabs, murders and rape. In Colombo political observers worry about the militarisation of politics. And though Gotabaya rejects the natural comparison with Pakistan, he enthuses about his recent expansion of what he calls his “huge” intelligence agencies. A suggestion that spooks can undermine democracy is dismissed as merely “hypothetical”. Yet some local journalists are warned by editors never to write about him. Asked if he frightens people, he says: “If they don’t criticise me, it is because there is nothing to criticise.”

Some think that growing army clout could be the defence secretary’s personal route to power. It presumes potential discord among the brothers, of which there is no sign yet. Gotabaya disavows any interest in politics: he is an army man, he says. A human-rights lawyer, whose home was once attacked by assailants with grenades, raises a greater fear. If the ruling family feels it can rely on the army, it may worry less about appealing to voters; one day, it may even refuse to “go home”. Unsurprisingly, the Rajapaksas see it otherwise. “We brothers are a very successful family, maybe because we grew up close,” says Gotabaya. The brothers’ rule looks assured for a while yet.

© The Economist

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Sri Lanka: Tamil businessman abducted ahead of FR case

The Sunday Times
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An armed group grabbed a businessman from outside his residence at Wellawatte around 3.30 p.m. yesterday, two days before a fundamental rights case filed by him was to be taken up. Police said Ramasamay Prabhakaran, 42, was bundled into a white van by seven men armed with assault rifles and hand guns before it sped towards Dehiwala.

The men abducted the businessman in front of his wife and daughter shortly after the family had returned from Athurugiriya, police said adding that an islandwide alert had been sent out about the vehicle.

The Sunday Times learns that the businessman, had earlier been detained for about two years, on allegations that he had links with the LTTE but was released on September 16 last year due to lack of evidence and all charges were dropped.

Subsequently, the businessman had filed a Fundamental Rights case in the Supreme Court where senior police officers attached to the Colombo Crime Division (CCD) were cited as respondents.

The FR case was to be taken up for hearing tomorrow. Leave to proceed was granted earlier.

“The armed men were hiding in our compound, surrounded by a brick wall. They grabbed my husband by the neck and dragged him towards the vehicle. He was screaming for help as they sped away,” his wife Shiromi told the Sunday Times.

She later made a complaint to the Wellawatte police. “The police told me that the registration number of the white van was a fake,” she said.

© The Sunday Times

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