US eases restrictions on Sri Lanka defense sales

AP | Boston Globe
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

The U.S. has eased restrictions on defense sales to Sri Lanka to allow exports of equipment for aerial and maritime surveillance.

The State Department enacted the changes Thursday, just as the U.N. Human Rights Council urged Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of war crimes during its civil conflict that ended in 2009.

The department said the two developments were unrelated.

It may, however, help ease strains in the bilateral relationship. The U.S. proposed the resolution approved by the U.N. human rights body.

© AP

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka press slams 'neo-imperial' war crime vote

AFP | Bangkok Post
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Sri Lanka's media reacted angrily Friday to a US-led resolution demanding a war crimes probe and said the island had done well to go down fighting at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The state-run Daily News said the 24 nations which voted in favour of the resolution urging a credible investigation into alleged war crimes during Sri Lanka's battle against Tamil rebels in 2009 were being destructive.

The countries that backed the resolution were making "a desperate attempt to disempower and undermine Sri Lanka and they are trying every trick in the bag to further this dark design," the Daily News said.

It reported Thursday's vote at the UNHRC under the headline: "Might overrules right."

The privately-run, but pro-government Island newspaper commended the hawkish administration of President Mahinda Rajapakse for putting up a fight in Geneva.

"The cornered badger bravely fought the mastiffs of neo-imperialism, savage in the fray, and went down fighting yesterday," the Island said. "It certainly was a defeat as good as victory."

The paper also took a swipe at Sri Lanka's traditional ally India which turned its back on Colombo during the council's contested vote.

"India has been a loser in Geneva, though it helped the US win," the Island said. "India failed to carry Asia, or at least South Asia with it. In other words, Sri Lanka has won against India in Asia."

Tabling the resolution, the US said Colombo had been given three years to hold its own probe into allegations of war crimes, but "given the lack of action... it is appropriate" that the 47-member UNHRC pushed it to do so.

Rights groups say up to 40,000 civilians died in the final months of Colombo's military campaign to crush the Tamil Tigers, who waged a bloody decades-long campaign for a separate homeland for minority Tamils.

Colombo has denied its troops were responsible for any non-combatant deaths, but UN-mandated experts have accused the Sri Lankan military of killing most of the civilian victims in their final offensive against the rebels in 2009.

The United Nations estimates some 100,000 people died during Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict between 1972 and 2009.

International rights activists welcomed Thursday's decision as a step in the right direction.

© AFP

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka unfazed by U.N. rights resolution

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

As the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) voted in, Thursday, a resolution asking Colombo to act on recommendations made by its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), Buddhist prayers reverberated through the Sri Lankan capital.

"It is a resolution that encourages Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its own LLRC and to make concerted efforts at achieving the kind of meaningful accountability upon which lasting reconciliation efforts can be built," United States ambassador to the Council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, said in Geneva.

As expected, Sri Lankan leaders rejected the resolution. Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, head of the Sri Lankan delegation in Geneva, termed it as misconceived, unwarranted and ill timed. "Shouldn’t we be given more time and space?"

But, two years and 10 months have elapsed since the Sri Lankan military decisively ended this island’s three-decade-old civil war, and the majority of UNHRC members thought it was time Colombo acted to safeguard the rights of the Tamil minority on the island.

Thousands of civilians died as the war ended in 2009 with a bloody offensive into the northern areas of the country where the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was then entrenched.

The U.S. – led resolution was passed with 24 voting in favour, 15 against and eight abstaining in the 47-member U.N. body.

"It is a matter of great satisfaction to us that 15 countries voted with Sri Lanka, despite the intensity of pressure, in a variety of forms, exerted on them all," said G.L. Peiris, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister, in a statement.

"As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, our policy in respect of all matters will continue to be guided by the vital interests and wellbeing of the people of our country. It hardly requires emphasis that this cannot yield place to any other consideration," Peiris’ statement said.

Significantly, Sri Lanka’s ally and influential neighbour, India, voted in favour of the resolution. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had indicated to Indian parliament, on Mar. 19, a shift in stance by a country that had stood with Colombo against U.S. and European moves to bring the war before the UNHRC in 2009.

An Indian official statement said the Sri Lankan government had committed at the UNHRC in 2009, to "forge a consensual way forward towards reconciliation through a political settlement respecting all the ethnic and religious groups inhabiting the nation."

India urged Sri Lanka to "take measures for accountability and to promote human rights that it has committed to. It is these steps, more than anything we declare in this Council, which would bring about genuine reconciliation between all the communities of Sri Lanka, including the minority Tamil community."

"As a neighbour with thousands of years of cordial relations with Lanka, with deep-rooted spiritual and cultural ties, we cannot remain untouched by developments in that country," the Indian statement said

Rights activists in Sri Lanka told IPS that the UNHRC resolution’s impact on the country would be symbolic.

"The symbolism is that many countries have expressed their assessment that the country has not lived up to their expectations in terms of international human rights obligations," Ruki Fernando, head of the human rights in conflict programme at the national advocacy and research body, the Law and Society Trust, told IPS.

Fernando said much now depends on "whether the government is willing to move ahead with the LLRC recommendations and work with the Council as suggested in the third recommendation in the resolution."

Established in September 2010 by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to look into the conduct of the war from 2002 till May 2009, when it ended, the LLRC handed over its final report with the recommendations last November.

Indications, in the build up to the vote in Geneva, suggest that the government is unlikely to cooperate. Sri Lankan delegation leader Mahinda Samarasinghe told UNHRC that his country would inform it periodically on progress, voluntarily, as it had done even before the war.

Barely 24 hours before the vote, President Rajapaksa told a public meeting in the northwestern town of Puttalam that he would not allow any form of foreign intervention.

"This is the second battle we are facing, after the war (against the LTTE)," Wimal Weeravansha, minister for housing, told another packed rally in Colombo on Mar. 13.

Weeravansha who has been leading public protests against what he terms as attempts by West to interfere – he launched a fast-unto-death in mid-2010 before the U.N. offices in Colombo that only ended when the president intervened – called on Sri Lankans to boycott U.S. products, including Coca-Cola and Google.

The overwhelming sense at public rallies is that Sri Lanka and the Rajapaksa government are being targeted by Western powers for independent policies and alignment with powers like China, Russia and India.

Tamil political leaders have a completely different view and support the U.N. resolution.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the largest party representing minority Tamils in parliament, said that it was pushed to support the resolution because of the government's lethargy in acting on power devolution and feels that only international prodding will help.

"The government has not done anything towards finding a solution (to power devolution) but has been going on according its own agenda. We have no option but to ask for international support," TNA parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told IPS.

"The LLRC is the government’s own baby. But, it has not even implemented the interim recommendations of the LLRC. We strongly feel that these issues cannot be solved without international participation," he added.

The resolution, however, avoids reference to war crimes or an international investigation, as called for by international rights groups like Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group.

The final draft said assistance from the UNHRC will be obtained "in consultation with, and with the concurrence of, the government of Sri Lanka" - reportedly through Indian influence.

These nuances are, however, no reason for a change of heart from the supporters of the government on the streets.

"This is a veiled attempt to influence our country, to make sure that they (West) can set up a proxy administration here," said Waragoda Premarathana, a Buddhist monk who had taken part in the Mar.19 rally.

© IPS

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka not to change policies despite outcome in Geneva

Xinhua | China Radio International
.............................................................................................................................................................................................

Whatever the outcome in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session in Geneva is, Sri Lanka will not change its policies and ongoing projects, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

Acting Cabinet spokesman Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena on Thursday said that the conduct of the government would not be changed depending on Thursday's decision in Geneva.

"Even before the U.S. backed resolution was introduced Sri Lanka had acted on various decisions to bring about reconciliation at the end of three decades civil war," he said.

Abeywardena explained that the government started resettlement of internally displaced persons, rehabilitated former rebels, recruited Tamil speaking policemen and developed former war-torn areas without any external influence after war.

He said whatever the outcome in Geneva, the country would continue with its policies that have already started.

Abeywardena added the U.S. sponsored resolution would not be able to be passed unless there is undue influence by the Western nations.

The vote on the U.S.-backed resolution on Sri Lanka is scheduled to be held on Thursday at the UNHRC in Geneva.

Over the last two weeks, supporters of the government and religious leaders conducted protest marches and demonstrations in capital Colombo, urging the United States and other Western countries not to exert pressure on Sri Lanka which is rising from the ashes of prolonged civil war.

The United States had moved for the resolution on Sri Lanka in order to push the government to address accountability issues during the final stages of the war against Tamil Tiger rebels and to also implement recommendations of a war commission.

© CRI

Read More

Summary only

UN adopts resolution on Sri Lanka

Photo courtesy:vikalpa.org

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

The UN Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution urging Sri Lanka to investigate alleged abuses during the final phase of war with Tamil rebels.

The US-backed motion called on Colombo to address alleged abuses of international humanitarian law.

It passed with 24 votes in favour, 15 against, eight abstentions. Sri Lanka denounced the process as "arbitrary".

Correspondents say that the US has become increasingly frustrated by Sri Lanka's approach to the rights issue.

In 2010 the European Union withheld trade preferences to Sri Lanka over its perceived failure to address human rights concerns.

In a statement, Sri Lanka's mission to the UN said the vote was a "selective and arbitrary process".

"The obvious reality is that voting at the Human Rights Council is now determined not by the merits of a particular issue but by strategic alliances and domestic political issues in other countries which have nothing to do with the subject matter of a Resolution," the statement said.

Sri Lanka's army defeated the separatist Tamil Tigers in May 2009, putting an end to 26 years of brutal civil war - but the final phase of that war has been a source of considerable controversy, with both sides accused of war crimes.

The resolution tabled by the US:

asks the government to explain how it will address alleged violations of international humanitarian law

asks how Sri Lanka will implement the recommendations of an internal inquiry into the war

encourages the UN human rights office to offer Sri Lanka advice and assistance and the government to accept such advice

But there have been unconfirmed reports the text was revised during the proceedings. Among the countries voting in favour of the resolution were Belgium, the US and India. China and Russia were among nations which supported Sri Lanka and opposed the resolution.

India's support for the motion is likely to cause diplomatic tensions, analysts say.

Thousands of people in Sri Lanka, including some religious clerics and former military officers, have taken part in marches to protest against the resolution in recent weeks.

Campaign against 'traitors'

The vote comes amid a government campaign against what it calls "traitors", which has targeted journalists and human rights workers.

State television is using long slots in its Sinhala-language bulletins to denounce Sri Lankan journalists, some now in exile but some still in the country, who it says are helping the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels or "betraying the motherland".

Those based in Sri Lanka are not named but the TV repeatedly zooms in on thinly disguised photographs of them, promising to give their names soon and "expose more traitors".

State media have been similarly deprecating human rights workers who are in Geneva for the Human Rights Council session, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says.

A local organisation, the Free Media Movement, has condemned the broadcasts as "highly unethical". Such state broadcasts have in the past resulted in violent attacks on some accused people.

The Sri Lankan government commissioned its own investigation into the war last year.

Its Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) cleared the military of allegations that it deliberately attacked civilians. It said that there had been some violations by troops, although only at an individual level.

But another report commissioned by the UN secretary general reached a different conclusion, saying that allegations of serious rights violations were "credible" on both sides.

Rights groups Amnesty International described it as "a vital step forward for the country and for international justice".

Human rights groups estimate that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the war. The government recently released its own estimate, concluding that about 9,000 people perished during that period.

© BBC

Read More

Summary only