Sri Lanka's former war zone highlighted in travel guide

Two British travel writers have published a guide book on tourist attractions in Sri Lanka's former war zone in the north and east, now accessible to the visitors after 30 years of conflict.

Juliet Coombe, a photojournalist for the BBC Lonely Planet guide book, and her co-writer Daisy Perry spent six months roaming through areas which were once strongholds of Tamil Tiger separatist rebels.

The region became accessible after government forces crushed the Tigers in May 2009, ending three decades of war and resulting in a revival in travel to the island.

The guide book, which also covers the island's central hills, famous for its tea plantations, highlights the beaches, ruins and wildlife parks that for long were out of bounds for visitors.

Coombe says she traveled with her one month old baby as her 'chief negotiator' in gaining access to the north and the east where the security was still tight even after the end of the war.

Starting from the busy capital Colombo, and on to the ancient cities in central Sri Lanka and the former war zone the book covers a wide array of information with words and photographs by Coombe.

Dileep Mudadeniya, Managing Director of the Tourism Promotions Bureau, said the guide book has new content and a new approach to Sri Lankan tourism.

“After a 30-year conflict the entire country is open for tourism. When the country is open, it is very important for us to have material to know where to go and how to get there."

Coombe says her fascination with Sri Lanka’s North and East, began with an interest in the northern Jaffna library, which was destroyed during the war.

As seven-year-old child and an avid reader, she had read about the library and since then been fascinated with coming to Sri Lanka in order to immerse herself in the many books the library offered.

'Sri Lanka's other half; a guide to the Central, Eastern and Northern Provinces' is now available to the public from the Ministry of Tourism and bookshops in the country.

© Lanka Business Online

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Sri Lanka, Britain spar again over Tigers

By Amantha Perera - Tensions between Sri Lanka and Britain may have calmed down somewhat after the civil conflict ended in this South Asian country last year, but are rising again after the government accused London of aiding the defeated Tamil Tigers to regroup internationally.

The latest tensions were sparked by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s attendance at the Global Tamil Forum (GTF), held on Feb. 24 in London.

The Sri Lankan government did not take lightly the fact that Miliband spoke to the forum, which is considered a grouping of support networks and sympathisers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as the Tamil Tiger rebels are called.

For about two years before the Sri Lankan government militarily defeated the Tamil rebels in May 2009, ties had been strained between Britain and its former colony. The government had seen Britain as one of the staunchest critics of the conduct of the war, which had drawn international concern.

At one point, pro-nationalist groups supporting President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s drive against the separatist LTTE, which fought for decades for a homeland for minority Tamils in this majority Sinhalese nation, accused the British government of having a colonialist-era attitude and worse, of using diplomatic arm-twisting tactics.

On Mar. 1, protesters gathered near the British High Commission, located in one of Colombo’s most expensive neighbourhoods, to vent their anger on what they saw as continued meddling by the British on Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.

About 200 protesters aligned with the National Freedom Front (NFF) shouted anti-Miliband slogans and derided Prime Minister Brown. They were led by former member of parliament Wimal Weeravansha, a key supporter of Rajapaksa.

"What the British government is trying to do (by its support to the GTF) is to revive Tiger terrorism, and by extension, it is supporting the division of this nation," Weeravansha told the protesters.

He handed over a petition signed by the protesters to the High Commission. "This is not a democratic act, supporting the division of a country," Weeravansha said. "We ask the British public not to support such moves."

Hours before the GTF meeting, Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama summoned Mark Gooding the Acting British High Commissioner in Colombo to the Foreign Ministry to convey the message that Miliband should not go ahead with attending the event.

"The Foreign Minister in this context emphasised that Foreign Secretary Miliband, by participating at today’s GTF Meeting in London, would unfortunately lend credibility to an organisation which is propagating the separatist agenda of the LTTE, and would be acting in a manner inimical to the national interest of Sri Lanka and its legitimate government," the Foreign Ministry later said of Bogollagama’s meeting with the British diplomat.

In his address to the GTF delegates, Miliband said that "the foundation of the Global Tamil Forum, the inauguration of its international work, is an important moment for politics and above all politics in Sri Lanka, because there is no substitute for political voice in asserting political rights."

The GTF delegates also met with British Prime Minister Brown.

The British government has tried to show that Miliband’s address was part of its wide-ranging efforts to foster national reconciliation in this South Asian island nation at the end of decades of a sectarian war that cost over 70,000 lives.

The British High Commission in Colombo said that Miliband emphasised the need for national unity in Sri Lanka in his speech. "It is for all Sri Lanka’s people to decide what that solution should look like. The United Kingdom firmly believes that the only way to achieve lasting and equitable peace in Sri Lanka is through genuine national reconciliation,’’ it said in a Feb. 24 statement.

But these have not gone far to allay fears that the British are moving behind the scenes to undermine the Rajapaksa government, which faces elections for the parliament on Apr. 8.

The NFF leader Weeravansha also warned that the protests would spread across the country. "If the British government wants to maintain cordial relations with Sri Lanka, it should respect our sovereignty and stop these kinds of vicious acts," he argued.

This week’s protests come during a politically charged atmosphere in Colombo. The island went through a bruising presidential election in January where Rajapaksa successfully staved off a challenge by his former army commander, Sarath Fonseka.

Two weeks after the Jan. 26 election, Fonseka was arrested by military police. The arrest initially sparked off protests by pro-Fonseka groups that later died down.

But the political climate is unlikely to stay calm as the country heads for a parliamentary election on Apr. 8.

Even before the allegations against Miliband and the British government, complaints have been rising against ‘foreign powers’ trying to influence national politics. The Fonseka campaign, for instance, was accused of receiving funds from foreign donors, although no substantive evidence has been presented.

Before the latest spat between Sri Lanka and Britain, the former reacted angrily in February when the European Union decided to suspend a concessionary tariff scheme that gave imports from Sri Lanka an annual tax break of over 100 million U.S. dollars.

The EU decided to suspend Generalised System of Preference (GSP) Plus scheme based on its findings that Sri Lanka was in contravention of human rights conventions. The Sri Lankan government’s response was that it appreciated the benefits derived from the concessions, but was not ready to compromise its sovereignty.

© Inter Press Service

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China's 'pearls' spook Indian observers

China is weaving a web of trade and maritime agreements around its old rival India, encircling the country with strategically placed construction projects and schemes to enlarge port facilities. In the days of the Bush administration, US analysts hatched a theory that has since become accepted wisdom: China is putting together a “string of pearls” in India’s home ­waters.

“The ‘string’ is part of an indirect strategy, which ... aims to trap India in a spider’s web, reducing its options in the event of crisis,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Beijing claims it is pursuing exclusively commercial goals, but the ­Indian Ocean is China’s main route for importing energy supplies, increasing the likelihood that these facilities could be used for military purposes should a regional conflict erupt, observers say.

The project giving India most cause for concern is a Chinese-funded port being built at Gwadar on the coast of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

In Burma, another Chinese ally, Beijing is involved in the construction of ports at Sittwe, Mergui and Dawei. China is also extremely active in Sri Lanka, where it is busy developing the port of Hambantota. China Eximbank is funding 85% of the work on port facilities, worth an estimated $1bn. Beijing also helped fund part of the war effort against the Tamil separatist movement quelled last year.

In Bangladesh China is contributing to the modernisation of the deep-water port at Chittagong, slated to become a major container hub.

The last pearl on the string, Nepal, is a landlocked country but one that occupies a strategic position for Beijing. Since the unrest in Lhasa, the capital of neighbouring Tibet, in 2008, the Nepalese have come under pressure from China to tighten Tibetan border controls and suppress demonstrations by Buddhist monks in Kathmandu.

Last month the Nepalese prime minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, led a visit to Beijing that, according to the Chinese media, resulted in an agreement on Sino-Nepali border security.

But an editorial published last month on the Chinese Global Times website sought to reassure. “Worry about China competing for dominance of the Indian Ocean runs deep inside India,” it explained. “Such worries are unnecessary. China watches closely over the Indian Ocean because oil imported from the Middle East and Africa has to go through it.”

So is the military threat posed by an increasingly tight string of pearls exaggerated? “The ports could serve as logistical bases should China’s navy need to evacuate its nationals from an emergency somewhere in Africa or the Middle East. But things could be much more complicated if there was a war on,” Cabestan said

© The Guardian Weekly

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How Lankans pay for war against LTTE

Premier Ratnasiri Wickremanayake has attributed the high cost of living in Sri Lanka to large payments being made to other countries for weapons purchased to fight the recently-concluded war with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The final phase of the Eelam IV war had concluded in May last year, with the killing of LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran.

"We are yet to complete payment of the bill on certain things that were provided to us by other countries as assistance for the humanitarian operations," Wickremanayake said, adding it is not proper to expect the government will have enough money immediately after such a protracted war.

"The people should be made aware of this. Some think that since this is now over, the money will be saved. They also think the prices of goods can be reduced and various other forms of relief can be granted," he said.

But we still have to pay many bills, the Prime Minister insisted.

"Therefore, we cannot reduce the prices of goods very drastically in line with world market prices. But we can provide concessions. We have even provided tax concessions on
certain goods," he told a recent meeting in Horana in Western Sri Lanka.

However, economists have argued that the government could have reduced prices of certain commodities
when prices remained weak in the international market last year.

Wickremanayake also stressed that the government hoped to implement a rapid development programme after the April 8 general election to fulfil the aspirations of the public.

Meanwhile, the state radio quoted the Prime Minister as saying that the argument that cost of living should come down soon after the war was over, was not correct.

He explained that it is not practical to reduce cost of living immediately as the government has to pay large amount of money for weapons that were bought during the war time, the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Sri Lanka has exceeded the 2009 budget deficit target of 7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) provided for under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme as it rose to 9.7 per cent during the period, according to an official report.

"While the short term economic stabilisation aspect of the IMF programme has been achieved, the government continues to remain engaged with the Fund to address medium term economic recovery in the context of post-war economic prospects and global economic recovery," said the Sri Lankan Ministry of Finance and Planning in its 'Pre-Election Budgetary Position Report' released recently.

Accordingly, the release of the third tranche of IMF loan amounting to USD 326 million will be delayed till the review is completed, as at this stage there is no urgent requirement to further strengthen external finances, it said.

© NDTV

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Pillay repeats call for probe into war crimes allegations

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Navi Pillay, today, once again repeated her call for an independent investigation into war crimes allegations in Sri Lanka stating that human rights abuses in the country were damaging prospects of reconciliation after 25 years of the civil war.

“I am convinced that Sri Lanka should undertake a full reckoning of the grave violations committed by all sides during the war, and that the international community can be helpful in this regard,” she said in a speech presenting her annual report at the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva.

Last May, the council held a special session on Sri Lanka just after the end of the war against the LTTE, but the Sri Lankan government deflected criticism by introducing its own resolution praising its defeat of the Tigers, which was then passed, boosting the Colombo stock exchange.

© Daily Mirror

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China emerges as Sri Lanka's top lender in 2009

China has emerged as Sri Lanka's biggest single lender in 2009, overtaking the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the treasury said Wednesday.

China lent 1.2 billion dollars to build roads, a coal power project and a port in the island's south last year, more than half the total of 2.2 billion dollars in foreign aid in 2009.

Project loans accounted for 1.9 billion dollars of the total, with another 279.6 million dollars in grants, the treasury said ahead of the 2010 budget.

Western donors have curbed aid to Sri Lanka over human rights issues and the government's handling of the final weeks of a 37-year-old conflict with Tamil Tiger separatists, which ended last May.

The US has scaled back military assistance to Colombo, while Germany and Britain have pruned their aid to Sri Lanka. The European Union is also set to withdraw trade concessions to Sri Lanka from August.

As ties with allies in the West have soured, President Mahinda Rajapakse has deepened ties with Japan, India, China and Myanmar, as well as Iran.

"The government of China, Asian Development Bank and the World Bank were the three main donors who accounted for 1.9 billion dollars or 84.3 percent of the total commitment in 2009," the report said.

Japan and the Manila-based Asian Development Bank have in the past been the biggest lenders to the island.

© AFP

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Sri Lanka probe army officers over editor's murder

Sri Lankan police are to question dozens of military intelligence officers in connection with the internationally condemned assassination of a senior editor, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Investigations into the January 2009 slaying of Lasantha Wickrematunga, chief editor of the anti-establishment Sunday Leader, had led them to military personnel, said police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody.

Sri Lanka's opposition and rights groups had blamed the government for the killing of Wickrematunga, a staunch critic of the military campaign that eventually led to the crushing of the Tamil Tiger rebels last year.

President Mahinda Rajapakse has denied that his administration was behind the murder, which was condemned by the US, the United Nations, European Union and both local and international rights groups.

The privately run Sinhala-language Divaina newspaper said the head of the military intelligence unit, a major general, was already in police custody and being questioned.

The military declined comment.

Wickrematunga was last month named one of the 60 World Press Freedom Heroes by the Austria-based International Press Institute (IPI).

The IPI said 17 journalists were killed in Sri Lanka because of their work over the last decade. Two were killed in 2009. No one has been brought to justice in connection with any of the killings.

© AFP

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SRI LANKA: NGOs brace for tighter Gov’t control

By Feizal Samath - Local and foreign non-governmental organisations have had a liberal existence in Sri Lanka, but this may not last for much longer under the government’s plans to amend a 1980 law that would tighten control over them.

But if activists have an ominous feeling about the proposed law, government officials like Newton Perera, additional secretary to the Ministry of Internal Administration that oversees non-government organisations (NGOs), says the amendment would just bring the country’s laws in line with modern developments.

Local and international NGOs have grown to several hundreds from a few dozens in this South Asian island nation, from the time fighting broke out between Tamil rebels and government troops in the early 1980s.

Government officials now say that the 1980 NGO Act does not allow them enough room to deal with accusations that some international NGOs, or INGOs, are involved in political work.

"It is inevitable that the government wants to control the activities of NGOs. But we knew this was going to happen eventually. We will lose our free hand," says Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council (NPC).

Last week, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake was quoted in the ‘Daily Mirror’ newspaper as saying new measures would rope in ‘errant’ agencies for lack of accountability and political involvement. The minister of Internal administration comes under the Prime Minister.

"INGOs found to be conspiring against the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa will be banned once investigations are complete," Minister of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services Rishard Bathiudeen also told the ‘Mirror’ on Feb. 22, without giving details.

While most NGO officials treat this as the usual cat-and-mouse, never-ending contest with governments, NPC’s Perera – whose NGO promotes peace as a means of solving ethnic conflict – believes the government is serious in seeking stricter control especially over international NGOs.

"This has nothing to do with the issues relating to defeated presidential opposition candidate General Sarath Fonseka. This concern (over NGOs) has been there for a while now," he said, dismissing speculation that political motives triggered the move to tighten control over NGOs. Most of the attempts to rein in NGOs happen after a political event and in this case, he was referring to the joint opposition backing of former army commander Sarath Fonseka at the Jan. 26 presidential poll, which he lost to incumbent Rajapaksa.

That had led to accusations by Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa that the United States and Norway had been involved in Fonseka’s campaign. The two countries vigorously rejected the claim.

Now and then, the western international community has been seen as extending its influence in Sri Lanka through the INGOs that it funds – although they have repeatedly denied this.

In February, the European Union suspended a crucial trade concession for Sri Lankan exports based on a report by a team of investigators that found the country had not fulfilled its obligations toward U.N. conventions on human and labour rights.

The government rejected the probe and did not allow any investigation in Sri Lanka, compelling the team to receive one-sided evidence and petitions from non-government sources including NGOs, some of which are funded by the U.S. government and other western countries.

Looking back, western governments have had a rocky relationship with Rajapaksa from the time he turned his back on repeated calls to suspend fighting with Tamil separatist rebels.

The U.S. and its allies urged the President and the rebels to call a ceasefire, as civilians deaths mounted in the fighting. But Rajapaksa shifted alliances to countries like India, China, Iran, Libya and Russia, and the armed forces – sans international pressure – crushed the rebels in May 2009 after two to three years of intensive fighting.

"Essentially accountability is about how these groups (NGOs) spend the money here. Our responsibility has been to ensure no one breaks the law," said Rajiva Wijesinhe, secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights and a critic of INGOs.

Wijesinhe, a former university teacher and politician, said guidelines were already brought in last year. "These are not new measures. Rather, they are an enforcement of what is already there to give us some control as to how money is being spent," he told IPS. "It is crystal clear that the government didn’t know how and where these (NGO) funds were being used ever since the 2002 peace process, when the rebels were having peace talks with the government," he said. "The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels) wanted the international community to play a bigger role in the peace process and that’s when the troubles started."

In that peace process, the rebels and the then government agreed to a ceasefire and began talks aimed at ending the rebel campaign for an independent homeland for minority Tamils. But after a few years, the process broke down and the two sides returned to fighting each other.

During this time, many NGOs undertook different projects in the country, ranging from confidence-building activities to rehabilitation of conflict-affected areas. But the work of some groups drew suspicion from the government, which accused them of being sympathetic to the Tamil cause or the LTTE itself while working in areas the rebels controlled years ago.

Perera said that there has been no strict monitoring of his organisation by the government. "We are asked for quarterly reports and or work plans but there is no comeback on our reports," he said. "Sri Lankan authorities are liberal toward NGOs and this environment allows NGOs to criticise the government, which could stop if the government gets tough," he pointed out.

Firzan Hashim, deputy executive director of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), believes the latest criticism of NGOs is the usual rhetoric. "So far, NGOS have not got any queries from the government or the state-run NGO Secretariat, which is responsible for all NGOs. We have also not been asked," he said.

The CHA is an umbrella group of dozens of INGOs and NGOs and acts as a liaison between the authorities and these organisations.

But over the last 18 months, he says, the monitoring of NGOs has become stricter.

Visas have been issued to foreign nationals based on a security clearance by the Defence Ministry. Foreign staff must be qualified, and explain why their jobs cannot be filled by local workers. Visas are generally given for three years and for U.N. agencies, four years.

"The government is generally not worried about NGO workers from Asian countries. It’s the west and particularly countries like Norway that is some concern," Hashim said.

Officials are particularly ‘hostile’ toward Norway, which facilitated the 2002 peace talks and which, they say, was partisan toward the Tamil rebels.

Projects in the north and the east, where the Tamil rebels were most active, need the approval of a new presidential task force headed by Basil Rajapaksa, a younger brother of the President, which has overseen those two regions after the war ended last year.

© Inter Press Service

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Sri Lanka: Complaints on 17 missing persons

The Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission says that it has received 17 complaints about missing persons within a period of one month and three weeks between January this year and February 23.

Of the complaints eights had been received during the month of January and the rest in three weeks of February.

An official at the commission said that most of the complaints were from the North and East and that some of the missing persons may have been found in relative’s houses.

The 17 complaints also include the cases of journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda and NGO activist Razik from Puttalam.

The official also said that complaints have been received on the irregularities that had taken place when admitting students in to Grade 1 in national schools and appointments and promotions made in state institutions in violation of election laws.

© Lanka News Web

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Sri Lanka to call back parliament to extend emergency

Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa will reconvene the island nation's dissolved parliament on March 9 to extend an emergency law by another month ahead of parliamentary polls in April, officials said on Tuesday.

The government has yet to lift the powerful wartime emergency regulations that give it wide powers of arrest and detention without trial despite an end to the 25-year war against Tamil Tiger rebels last May.

Opposition parties have complained the government is using the emergency law to suppress them politically, but the administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa says it is needed to mop up remnants of the Tamil rebel network.

Susil Premajayantha, the general secretary of president Rajapaksa's ruling coalition confirmed the move to extend the law, which was extended for a month on Feb. 5.

The president, who can use his executive power to extend the emergency law, has to ratify it within 10 days of his announcement through a vote in parliament.

Rajapaksa dissolved parliament last month and called for legislative polls on April 8 after winning the presidential election in January.

© Reuters

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