Sri Lanka promises to resettle war refugees

Click 'play' to listen to the report

A UN human rights official arrived in Sri Lanka today, where some 300,000 civilians displaced by the war are currently detained. Most of them belong to the Tamil ethnic minority.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has promised the UN that his government will resettle these refugees within the next four months, following criticisms from the UN and human rights organizations about their treatment. The government says it has to detain people until it is certain none of them have any connections to the Tamil rebels. FSRN´s Ponniah Manikavasagam has the story.

© Free Speech Radio News

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka: 120 attempted suicides a day

By Raisa Wickrematunge - An average of 12 people commit suicide a day in Sri Lanka, and there are 10 times more attempted suicides, according to Director of Sumithrayo Sri Lanka, Surangi Gunawardena.

However Gunawardena said that the suicide rate has actually declined since 1995.

In 1995 Sri Lanka had one of the highest suicide rates, with around 47 suicides per 100,000 persons. Now, Gunawardena estimated the rate at about 20 suicides per 100,000 persons.

“The rate has declined, but it is still too high.” Gunawardena said.

Gunawardena said the highest suicide rates were among the younger age groups, particularly tho

se between the ages of 18 and 30. The rate also increased after the age of 60, according to the Director.

Gunawardena added that it was usually a combination of psychological and social reasons, which lead to a suicidal situation. The three main factors, she noted were “inability to cope with difficult situations, mental health problems, and drug or alcohol abuse.”

It was noted that social and peer pressures were leading factors for teen suicides. However, even children as young as seven or eight have been known to attempt suicide.

There are also differences according to gender. More women than men say they have contemplated suicide, although more men have taken their own lives.

Gunawardena noted that media reports, which sensationalised suicide and gave details about the methods used often lead to “copycat suicides.”

Gunawardena noted that the current rate of 120 attempted suicides a day was worrying.

Meanwhile, Sumithrayo Sri Lanka, in a press release recently said that as attempted suicide was no longer considered a criminal offence, the majority of attempts were unrecorded. Gunawardena attributed the rising number of attempts to a lack of knowledge about resources available to the depressed.

Sumithrayo Sri Lanka has been operating for around 35 years, as a suicide prevention organisation. Their services are offered free of charge. They claim to “provide emotional support to people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including those that may lead to suicide.”

Globally, one person commits suicide every 40 seconds, while there is an attempted suicide every three seconds.

© The Sunday Leader

Related Links:
Watch for signs: Depressed teenagers turning to suicide - The Sunday Times

Read More

Summary only

Tissainayagam: A travesty of justice?

By Michael Hardy - Seventeen months after being arrested, and almost three years after writing two articles the government claims were meant to incite “communal disharmony,” journalist J.S. Tissainayagam was sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment on August 30 by the Colombo High Court.

Tissainayagam’s conviction drew worldwide condemnation, with Amnesty International declaring him a “prisoner of conscience,” and Reporters Without Borders calling the sentence “shameful.” Almost overnight, Tissainayagam became a symbol of government repression and a martyr for freedom of the press. To many observers, Tissainayagam’s treatment cemented Sri Lanka’s reputation as a totalitarian state in the making.

How did Tissainayagam go from being a humble columnist for The Sunday Times to being mentioned by American President Barack Obama as an “emblematic example” of persecuted journalists?

The story began in February of 2008, when he wrote an article about child recruitment for The Sunday Times. Soon afterward, Terrorism Investigation Department (TID) officers were dispatched to arrest Tissainayagam’s publisher, N. Jasikaran, and his wife Valamarthi. When Tissainayagam inquired about Jasikaran’s whereabouts on March 8, he too was arrested, along with the staff of his website, OutreachSL.com. (The staff members were later released).

The only problem was that the TID had neither a detention order nor anything to charge Tissainayagam with. Fortunately for the government, a search of Tissainayagam’s house turned up about 50 back issues of Northeastern Monthly, a now-defunct magazine with a small circulation that Tissainayagam then edited. Although they couldn’t read English, as was revealed during Tissainayagam’s trial, the TID officers confiscated these magazines, and the TID later used them as a convenient pretext for Tissainayagam’s arrest and prosecution.

Strange delays

Tissainayagam’s imprisonment was a travesty of justice from beginning to end. When he was finally allowed to see a lawyer, two weeks after first being arrested, he could only do so in the presence of the Officer in Charge (OIC) of the TID. The same condition held for meetings with his wife; Tissainayagam has never met his wife in private since his arrest. Since he never received an explanation for his imprisonment, Tissainayagam quickly filed a Fundamental Rights petition challenging his incarceration.

On March 27, 2008, during Tissainayagam’s first court hearing, the state counsel said they didn’t have the detention order in their possession, so High Court Judge Deepali Wijesundara ordered it to be produced. Later that afternoon, the order was delivered to Tissainayagam, backdated to March 7th. Strangely enough, the detention order was signed by Wijesundara’s sister. Although this is not technically illegal, the defense could have asked the judge to recuse herself from the case given this incident’s strong appearance of impropriety. (Wijesundara’s sister was later promoted to the High Court.)

On May 8, 2008, Tissainayagam’s lawyers finally received the OIC affidavit and a copy of Tissainayagam’s statement translated into Sinhalese. Crucially, however, the state withheld Tissainayagam’s original statement, which he wrote in Tamil. The defense would only get a look at the original confession during the cross-examination of the superintendent of police, who witnessed Tissainayagam writing it. According to the Emergency Regulations of 2005, detainees must be produced before court every 30 days to ensure that they haven’t been tortured, but the state disregarded this law time and again for Tissainayagam.

On May 12, 23, and 26 of 2008 Tissainayagam was scheduled to be produced at the Magistrates Court, but mysteriously failed to turn up. He was finally produced on the 27th, when the TID legal officer told the court that he needed more time to investigate. The magistrate ordered Tissainayagam to be produced on June 6, after his 90th day of detention.

Unsurprisingly, the state was unable to produce him on that day either, managing to delay his court appearance until June 13.

Tissainayagam charged

Ultimately, Tissainayagam would have to wait for over five months before he was charged, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), for inciting racial violence and communal disharmony by writing two editorials in 2006 for Northeastern Monthly. The first article, published in July 2006, criticized the government for failing to protect the northeastern Tamils, who Tissainayagam argued were being forced to seek protection from the LTTE.

The second article, published in December of the same year, accused the army of deliberately bombing and starving Tamil civilians in Vaharai in an attempt to clear the area for military operations. In a statement to the court, Tissainayagam defended his writings: “I was and am still an advocate against terrorism,” he said. “I have criticized terrorism in whatever form...my objective was to generate non violent means of resolving the conflict.”

The indictment consisted of three charges: (1) that Tissainayagam printed and distributed the Northeastern Monthly with the intention to “cause the commission of acts of violence or racial or communal disharmony and bring the government into disrepute”; (2) that Tissainayagam wrote the two above-mentioned articles, excerpts from which were reproduced in the indictment; and (3) that to fund the Northeastern Monthly, Tissainayagam collected money “for the purpose of terrorism.”

The state claimed during the trial that Tissainayagam had confessed to accepting funding from the LTTE. Tissainayagam has always maintained that the “confession” was dictated to him and that he was forced to sign it under threat of torture. He believed the TID’s threats because he had heard his publisher, Jasikaran, being tortured in a nearby room. (Jasikaran recently testified about his torture during his own trial, which is ongoing.)

Despite the dubious circumstances surrounding Tissainayagam’s “confession,” Judge Wijesundara ruled on December 5, 2008 that it was given voluntarily. The defense chose not to challenge this ruling, not knowing what was in Tissainayagam’s original statement.

Mysterious alteration

When the defense finally got a look at the original document, during cross-examination of the superintendent of police, it quickly became apparent that the statement had been doctored. In the statement, Tissainayagam admits that LTTE officials contacted him three times in 2006 to offer money to the Northeastern Monthly, but that each time he had refused. “However,” he wrote in Tamil, “I later discovered that Rs. 100,000 had been deposited in my bank account from an anonymous donor.”

But where Tissainyagam had written that he said “no” to the LTTE for the third time, his words had been crossed out and replaced with “I said yes,” making it sound like he had accepted the LTTE’s money. The change to the statement was made in a different colour of ink and in different handwriting than the original statement. Unlike the many other changes to the statement, Tissainayagam had not signed in the margin to approve this alteration.

As the defense pointed out, after the alteration the statement no longer made sense. Why would Tissainayagam, after admitting he had agreed to receive the money, then be surprised to find it in his account? Why use the word “however,” which implies that he had turned down the offer? When the defense brought these irregularities to Wijesundara’s attention, she said that she had already ruled the statement voluntary, and therefore couldn’t throw it out.

She also disputed the defense’s claim that the document was altered. This decision paved the way for Tissainayagam’s ultimate conviction. As Wijesundara notes in her judgement, “once the confession is voluntary, the accused could be convicted on the confession alone.”

In her judgement, Wijesundara also mentions that one of the defense’s witnesses, Kulasiri Hemantha Silva of the Human Rights Commission, contradicted what Tissainayagam wrote in his second article. On cross-examination, Silva stated that he had not seen the bombing and starvation of civilians in Vaharai. However, the defense later got Silva to admit that he had traveled to Vaharai two months before the article was written, and therefore wasn’t able to say what was happening at the later time. Silva also admitted that he had heard news of a Vaharai hospital being bombed by government forces around the time Tissainayagam was writing.

In his statement to the court, Tissainayagam said that he grew up in Colombo with friends from every ethnic group, and that throughout his career as a journalist and human rights activist he has “always agitated for justice for the oppressed.” He concluded his statement by saying that by writing the two controversial articles he “never intended to cause violence or communal disharmony and no such thing ever occurred as a result of those articles.” The whole world, with the obvious exception of the Colombo High Court, now stands with Tissainayagam in agreement and solidarity.

© The Sunday Leader

Read More

Summary only

JVP activist remanded for displaying a banner

Danister Gunasekera ,the owner of the premises, where the JVP displayed a Hoarding with the slogan ‘Is this the Democracy of the maha jara Rajapakse Govt.?’ was remanded for 14 days on charges of attempting to bring contempt on Govt.,according to JVP sources.

The JVP put this Board up in protest at 153/1/13 Aluthgoda, Tangalle after its elections office which was run legitimately by it at this premises was last 18th, destroyed by the PA hooligans and goons.

This office was run by the Hambantota District JVP group leader Wahalatantri after the Tangalle Police Station Chief gave permission. But on the 18th, it was attacked. The Tangalle Police took the owner into custody on 24th night however for displaying the Board.

Wahalatantri said, the Police is not taking any action for the complaints made by them against the destruction of the election office and acts of violence, neither is it allowing them to conduct their election activities democratically.

© Campaign for Free and Fair Elections

Read More

Summary only

Time Running Out for Sri Lanka's IDPs

Bart Beeson and Annalise Romoser - Everywhere in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, posters featuring smiling soldiers holding rocket launchers and machine guns celebrate the recent end to the nation's 26-year civil war. But in the government-run camps that still house more than 250,000 ethnic Tamils displaced by the war's fighting, the mood is far from celebratory.

In late August, heavy rains at the largest camp, Manik, flooded tents and led to unsanitary conditions. According to aid worker K Thampu, "The situation was heartbreaking. Tents were flooded and mothers, desperate to keep their children dry during the night, took chairs and tables from school facilities for them to sleep on."

Rains also caused toilets to flood, with worms covering large swaths of ground near latrines, says Thampu. At stake, according to local experts, is not only the immediate welfare of camp residents, but chances for long-lasting peace in Sri Lanka.

Most of the internally displaced people (IDPs) have been living in the camps since May, when they fled the intense fighting that marked the final battle between government forces and the insurgent group known as the Tamil Tigers. Publicly, the Sri Lankan government has committed to returning IDPs to their homes by November of this year, and several thousand people have been released from camps to live with relatives. But the government under President Mahinda Rajapaksa also maintains that others must remain in camps until the area around their former homes is cleared of mines. At the same time, government representatives are slowly screening camp residents to identify former combatants.

Aid workers and local experts agree that the government must move quickly, for several reasons. The most urgent among them is monsoon season, which starts at the end of September and will only exacerbate the already difficult camp conditions. More tents and toilets will flood, increasing the risk of communicable and mosquito-born diseases.

"We saw how bad things got after the recent rains, which only lasted 3 or 4 days," says Thampu, who works for the Baltimore-based humanitarian organization Lutheran World Relief. "Imagine how bad they will get once the monsoons are upon us."

In addition to the rains, long-standing tensions between Tamils and the Sinhalese-led government remain, even if the armed insurgency has been defeated. Many worry that if the government does not act quickly to return people to their homes, it will lead to new problems in northern Sri Lanka.

Thampu says that many teenagers in the camps are already frustrated. "Young people have told me, 'We have no freedom to talk, no protection, no education, no recreation and no employment! Everything looks like hell in our life. What do we have to live for?'"

Despite living in a warzone, many teenagers were able to pass the university entrance exams. But now they cannot leave the camps to begin their studies. Thampu adds, "Victory has been declared, but what does that mean for them? It is important to give them a new start in life."

According to T Thevathas, another aid worker in Manik Camp, "Peace and security in the north is the most important thing to consider. People have been waiting 30 years for this, but IDPs in the camps feel no security and have no peace of mind despite the government's victory."

Thevatas notes that for real advances to be made in the north, it is crucial for Tamils in the camp to feel that the national government is working on their behalf. "At this point," he says, "IDPs have placed all their hopes for return on local governments and the international community."

Bernard Jaspers Failer, of the aid organization ZOA Refugee Care, acknowledges that the Sri Lankan government has genuine security concerns. "But," he is quick to add, "those have to be balanced with the fact that the longer people remain in camps, new frustrations are being generated which will have long-term impacts on society."

The Sri Lankan government has strictly regulated access to the camps. But those organizations and governmental representatives who have been able to visit have expressed concern over the conditions. Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization, has said that the government "is threatening [IDPs'] health and even their lives by keeping them there during the rainy season floods."

U.S. officials have also put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to allow camp residents to return home. In comments made on Aug. 19, Eric Schwartz, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the State Department, said the "involuntary confinement is especially a source of concern given the recent rains and given the coming of the monsoon season, and it makes it all the more important that release from confinement be an issue that friends of Sri Lanka continue to raise."

In an effort to expedite the process, on July 27, the U.S. announced an additional $8 million in aid to assist in the return of IDPs to their homes in northern Sri Lanka.

With the monsoon season rapidly approaching, and frustration levels on the rise within the camps, local experts agree that time is a critical factor. For Thampu, it is "a situation where a successful return process would be a giant step towards long-lasting peace. But if these people who were forced from their homes are forced to stay in camps, it could result in increased tensions for the down the road."

While the Sri Lankan government has made moves to release some of the most vulnerable individuals, such as the elderly and disabled, aid workers and the U.S. government alike agree that the return process must be accelerated. For the people in the camps, their return home will mark an end to war in Sri Lanka. And, as T Thevathas notes, "It will finally provide relief from the fears they endured during war and continue to feel in the camps today."

Bart Beeson is a freelance journalist and campaign organizer focusing on politics and the environment in Latin America. Annalise Romoser is a freelance journalist who oversees Washington, D.C.-based advocacy efforts related to human rights and rural development in Latin America and Africa.

© World Politics Review

Read More

Summary only

India's power project in final stage: Sri Lanka

Press Trust Of India - Sri Lanka and India are giving final touches to the proposed $500-million thermal power plant at Sampur in Trincomalee, the island nation’s power minister W D J Seneviratne has said.

“We are giving finishing touches to the negotiations with India to construct jointly a coal power plant at Sampur in Trincomalee. This would be the country’s largest coal power plant with a capacity of 1,000 Mw,” the minister said.

An agreement on power purchasing of the new plant would be signed between India’s state-run power producer NTPC and the Ceylon Electricity Board after conclusion of the negotiations.

“The plant will be a joint venture between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments and the plant will be jointly owned by (the) two countries in equal shares,” the minister told the state-owned Daily News.

The minister said Sri Lanka would benefit from the project and that the power produced would be brought to Anuradhapura in North Central Sri Lanka and would be distributed to other areas.

Once the negotiations are complete, NTPC is expected to sign the commercial agreement with the Sri Lankan power authorities for construction of the power plant in eastern part of the island nation.

NTPC officials were holding discussions to this effect in the recent weeks. The project will consist of two phases and the first phase is expected to be completed by 2012.

The initial planning of the project has been completed and the commencement of the construction work is expected in November, according to officials.

The construction work of the plant would be undertaken by NTPC, while the Ceylon Electricity Board would monitor the engineering work of the project, it said.

According to officials, initially, both sides will invest $75 million each and later $350 million will be infused by both parties.

NTPC signed an agreement with the government of Sri Lanka and Ceylon Electricity Board in December 2006 for the development of a 2x250-Mw coal-based power project at Trincomalee in Sri Lanka.

According to the memorandum of understanding, the project would be developed through a joint venture company of NTPC and Ceylon Electricity Board.

© Business Standard

Related Links:
REGULATIONS made under Section 5 of the Public Security Ordinance
Trincomalee High Security Zone and Special Economic Zone - CPA
High Security Zones and the Rights to Return - COHRE

Read More

Summary only

Life as a Sri Lankan war refugee

By Charles Haviland - Tirumagal is sweeping the yard. The yard of an ordinary house in the palm trees.

She, her husband and their three-year-old daughter are back home in Trincomalee from their war-time suffering and from Menik Farm.

The largest and most controversial of Sri Lanka's refugee camps, Menik holds about a quarter of a million Tamils who fled the war zone in the final weeks as the government finally vanquished the Tamil Tigers or LTTE.

No-one is automatically allowed to leave the camp. But Tirumagal's family were among the first few hundred sent home by the authorities in early August to four districts in the east and north.

Like others at Menik, they had earlier been caught in the Tiger-held zone during the war's final spasms - a shrinking sliver of land between a lagoon and the sea.

Life in the zone of hostilities was a nightmare.

Hospital shelled

"One day I was getting ready to get some high-nutrition food for my daughter," she told me.

"Then I changed my mind and didn't go that day. But I saw people queuing up to get it from the clinic, several hundred of them.

"They were shelled. Just in that shelling 75 people were killed and many more injured. I only escaped because I'd changed my mind."

The UN says that the Tigers forcibly stopped people from leaving and that the army shelled civilian areas.

The dignified young woman says she does not know who did what. She did, however, hear stories of the Tigers shooting people and of a hospital being shelled.

She looks calm throughout our interview but her voice constantly breaks with emotion, betraying her trauma.

"Because of the fighting and shelling we moved into the no-fire zone. But we got shelled there.

"People got killed and injured. We wanted to get back to the place we'd come from. We just moved from place to place, taking nothing but the tent and a few utensils and some rice to cook, if possible.

"We started digging bunkers. But where the sand was too soft we couldn't."

Out on the beach near Trincomalee, Tamil fishermen prepare their nets for the day's outing, the sun's rays fierce even at 7am.

Their colourful boat is heaved into the water.

It is a reassuring everyday scene, not very far down the coast from the former war zone where catastrophe reigned until May this year.

'Terrible'

We meet another refugee who also left Menik Farm last month, 61-year-old Sadasivam.

He and his wife were trapped in Tiger-held land while visiting their children there back in 2006. As the war restarted, the rebels would not give the family a pass to leave.

"Life there was terrible," he recalls. "We had no idea what would happen."

From January onwards, constant shelling forced them to move their shelter five times.

"Wherever we dug bunkers, there was the smell of dead bodies."

In April their injured grandson and his mother were evacuated in a ship by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Then, on 9 May, Sadasivam was wounded.

"A shell landed. There was fire. My son-in-law's auto-rickshaw was parked and it caught fire.

"Then I saw the blood on my thighs. I was injured.

"I managed to come to the place called Mullivaikkal with the help of others. We started digging another L-shaped bunker and we put up a tent and stayed there.

"As we were putting up our tent, I saw dead bodies lying around. I saw the wounded people being loaded into a tractor and taken somewhere to be treated."

Extraordinary exodus

In mid-May the army arrived. It evacuated them in the endgame of the war.

Tirumagal had left a month earlier when the armed forces breached a Tiger rampart.

The extraordinary exodus of thousands across the lagoon was captured by cameras on unmanned air force planes, the images beamed around the world.

On the ground, outlandish rumours were swirling around, says Tirumagal.

"There was one story that men and women would have to walk naked for one kilometre before they got into the hands of the military. Hearing all this we were scared to cross over.

"But on 20 April we heard an announcement: 'Come to our area.' We weren't sure who was saying it but we decided to leave.

"There had been continuous shelling for two days. I wondered whether we would be able to cross the lagoon and get to the government area alive. We were lucky. Three of us managed to leave and cross the lagoon."

At the house in the coconut grove, Tirumagal's kindly elderly relatives - who themselves were war refugees earlier - give us tea.

Life is getting more normal. She tells the BBC about Menik Farm, the vast complex of camps to which she, Sadasivam and countless other Tamil refugees were taken.

'Things improved'

"When we came to Menik Farm there was no water. Then my daughter had diarrhoea and she and I both had flu for six weeks.

"I used to stand in the queue every day but there were thousands of people queuing up for the hospitals. I couldn't get a number for a doctor."

Tirumagal says that for the last two days in the war zone there was nothing to eat. At the camp, the army fed them but food remained in short supply at first.

"But later on we were given cooked food, then vegetables and rations to cook. So things improved."

Sadasivam agrees that is true, but only from a starting point where there were no basic facilities.

There have been uncorroborated accounts of some refugees being "disappeared" or abducted from the camps by shadowy paramilitaries. But he says he has not heard of any such thing happening.

I asked him about the screening process. The government says it has weeded out 10,000 former rebels and is still working on the exercise.

"When we all came to the big camp they made announcements, saying that if anyone had connections with the LTTE we should be separated and queue up separately," the elderly man says.

"They wanted to register those people and gave them numbers. They got separated."

Since July the Red Cross has had no access to these people, or indeed to Menik Farm. It is not clear how many of those detained are alleged fighters or those who, in the government's words, are simply "mentally" connected with them.

Tirumagal says it is a fact that many were entangled with the Tigers - but not necessarily through choice. For instance, her own husband was severely injured years ago in an LTTE bomb.

"So he's disabled. But we also had to pay money to the Tigers saying we couldn't take up arms or be part of their operations because he's disabled.

"When we all lived under their regime, you couldn't avoid having some kind of participation in their activities."

As screening continues, hundreds of thousands remain inside Menik Farm.

Many of those who have left still have close relatives inside and are not sure when they'll get out. They live in hope.

After years and months of indignity and trauma, Sadasivam and the other returned refugees display dignity above anything else.

They have returned to their homes in a still volatile corner of an unstable island.

At least the war is over, and they are no longer fugitives.

© BBC

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lankan leader skips meeting in US

Feizal Samath - When world leaders met at the opening of the annual United Nations General Assembly yesterday, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president, was a notable absentee.

The president instead sent his deputy, prime minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake, to lead the country’s delegation at the UN’s 2009 session in what is widely see as a reluctance to meet western leaders critical of the government over human rights issues, according to analysts.

The president has attended all three previous sessions since his election in late 2005.

Lakshman Kiriella, a Sri Lankan opposition MP, told reporters on Tuesday that Mr Rajapaksa should have gone to the UN to defend his administration against allegations of human rights violations during the country’s defeat of Tamil separatists last May. He pointed out that the general assembly has traditionally been a platform for developing world leaders to respond to western criticism.

“While serious allegations are being levelled against Sri Lanka, the president has failed in his duty to defend the country,” Mr Kiriella said at a press conference of the main opposition United National Party (UNP).

The UNP parliamentarian said the president speaks of an international conspiracy against the government but has evaded taking the issue up with world leaders at the UN.

Mr Rajapaksa and other government officials, at various public meetings, have spoken of an international Tamil-Tiger-led conspiracy – through media, international bodies and rights groups – against the Sri Lankan government.

Dullus Allahapperuma, the transport minister, told a press conference in Colombo on September 10 that the government had thwarted a plot to assassinate the president and the defence secretary in March.

Mr Allahapperuma said the “huge conspiracy” was the joint work of the Tamil Tigers – based in Sri Lanka and around the world – and both local and international sympathisers, though he did not give further details.

“We will [soon] reveal to the country and to the international community those who are responsible,” he said, the first time the public has been told of a plot to kill the president.

Mr Rajapaksa has resolutely defended allegations by human rights groups and western leaders that the military used brute force against civilians in the last stages of the battle against Tamil Tiger guerrillas.

World leaders have also criticised the government for keeping some 250,000 Tamil residents who fled the fighting in camps whose perimeters are patrolled by the military. The government says the refugees will be allowed home once de-mining of their towns in the war torn north are completed.

“It would have been embarrassing for the president to face up – at the UN – to world leaders like Barack Obama, the US president, or British prime minister Gordon Brown, who, among others, have been concerned about the Sri Lankan situation,” said a former Sri Lankan diplomat in Colombo, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The government last week announced that Mr Wickramanayake would lead the Sri Lankan delegation to the 64th UN General Assembly, where he is also scheduled to meet UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon. A government statement said Mr Wickramanayake will address the assembly on September 26 on the “strengthening of multilateralism and dialogue among civilisations for international peace, security and development”.

There has been no official explanation as to why Mr Rajapaksa is skipping the UN session except for a brief statement from the president’s spokesman, Lucian Rajakarunanayake, earlier this month, to The Sunday Times that reported that Mr Rajapaksa was travelling to New York for the session, saying he would not be attending this year.

However, according to other sources, there were other reasons for the president’s absence, which are related to a problem securing US visas for some members of his delegation.

The Times, which reported that the UN had named Mr Rajapaksa on the list of speakers for the opening day yesterday, also printed a list of the 50-member delegation, which included Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, a former rebel turned minister who is known by one name, Karuna, and MP Wimal Weerawansa, who has been critical of the US and other western nations. According to analysts the pair would have had trouble attaining visas for the assembly. A statement from the president’s office said no such list had been delivered to them by the UN.

Mr Muralitharan, a former Tamil rebel commander, was arrested in the UK in early 2007 and detained for some six months on charges of possessing a forged passport, before being sent back to Colombo. Mr Weerawansa, a former member of the Marxist People’s Liberation Front, heads a small party that backs the president.

Mr Rajapaksa is also busy with local government elections and preparations for parliamentary and presidential polls, which can be called any time after November.

Opposition parties are discussing selecting a common candidate for the presidential election, and former army commander General Sarath Fonseka, who was instrumental in winning the battle against Tamil rebels, has been tipped as a possible choice, according to several reports in local newspapers.

© The National

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lankan army clashes with detainees

A detainee was seriously injured and had to be hospitalized as a clash broke out between the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) and detainees being held at a school in Vavuniya in north-eastern Sri Lanka on Tuesday.

The detainee, Sri Chandramorgan from Kanahapuram, Kilinochchi, was initially reported to have been killed by the army when he tried to escape from the Poonthotham Teachers Training College, which serves as an unofficial detention centre. The rumour sparked unrest in the camp and the road to the facility was closed by authorities.

“The danger of serious human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings increases substantially when detainees are held in locations that are not officially acknowledged places of detention and lack proper legal procedures and safeguards”, said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia Director.

Detention centres such as the Poonthotham Teachers Training College are irregular places of detention. Since May 2009, an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 individuals suspected of ties to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers) have been detained in irregular detention facilities operated by the Sri Lankan security forces and affiliated paramilitary groups.

Several such groups are active in Vavuniya and have been implicated in human rights violations, including People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) and both factions of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP).

On 25 May, just a week after the Sri Lankan government declared victory over the Tamil Tigers, Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka announced that 9,000 Tamil Tigers cadres had surrendered to the army.

Since then, there have been regular reports of arrests. Some have been officially acknowledged and reported in the Sri Lankan press and others reported by relatives of detainees in displacement camps.

Many of these detainees are being held incommunicado, meaning they have not had access to family members or legal counsel and have not appeared in court.

Amnesty International has confirmed the location of at least 10 such facilities in school buildings and hostels originally designated as displacement camps in the north. There have also been frequent reports of other unofficial places of detention elsewhere in the country.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has no access to these detainees and there is no transparency about their registration and treatment.

Incommunicado detention of suspects in irregular places of detention (i.e. places other than police stations, officially designated detention centres or prisons) has been a persistent practice in Sri Lanka associated with torture, killings and enforced disappearances.

Amnesty International has called on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that the screening process for suspected combatants is carried out in ways that guarantee the human rights and dignity of all those involved.

Arrangements should be made for independent monitoring of screening processes. Tamil Tigers suspects must be held only in recognised places of detention and be brought before a judicial authority without delay after being taken into custody.

© Amnesty International

Related links:
'Clashes' in Sri Lankan centre - BBC

Read More

Summary only

Government moves to silence Thamilvani

The government in response to the damning and controversial interview given to the London Guardian by Thamilvani Gnanakumar after returning to London following her release from the “illegal detention camp” in Vavuniya, has arrested members of the family that provided lodging to her while she was in Vavuniya, Lanka News Web reliably learns.

Damilvani has stopped revealing details to the media following this incident. Although Thamilvani has told the media that she was unable to speak due to mental stress, the real reason for her silence is the arrests made in Sri Lanka. She has decided to revert from her initial decision of informing the international community about the real situation in the displaced camps through media interviews in order to protect the relatives who provided her with shelter back in Sri Lanka.

Lanka News Web further learns that the government has decided to delay the release of Tamil nationals who are citizens of Australia and Canada from the displaced camps in order to prevent the Sri Lankan government from facing a similar situation.

© Lanka News Web

Read More

Summary only