By Halik Azeez | The Sunday Leader
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Most of the funding for the projects is being generated from China; mainly from the China Export-Import Bank. The loans are offered at concessionary rates with short grace periods. But these, together with borrowings made for other development projects, still add up to huge amounts of potential debt for the Sri Lankan government which will have to be paid back. How the current government of Sri Lanka is going to do this is anyone’s guess.
The Sri Lankan people get little or no benefit from the large amount of monies spent on the projects. The money lent from China is going back into the pockets of Chinese construction firms and workers, completely bypassing Sri Lankans and minimizing any trickle down and/or multiple effects which could have stimulated the local economy.
The Sri Lanka Ports Authority signed a contract with a Chinese firm, China Harbour Engineering Company, to start the second phase of a new port in Hambantota on the South Coast.
Phase two would start in November this year with the completion of the first phase of the port project.
This agreement was signed by SLPA Chairman B. Wickrama and the Chairman of the China Harbour Engineering Company Sun Ziyu.
China will continue to provide finances for the second phase of the port project. Phase two of the project will include further excavation of the site for the harbour basin and dredging of the approach channel as well as building berths for ships.
Reaping Benefits
Whether the use of the port in Hambantota will be monopolized by China or if it will completely belong to Sri Lanka is as yet unclear. Officials have stated that the port will be turned over to the Ports Authority who will then repay the debt to the government.
It is also unclear yet whether the other projects, once completed, will remain in state control or not. Public-private partnerships are a mechanism to ensure that state institutions run with efficiency but given the recent track record of the government, which looks to be on a reverse privatization spree, such partnerships don’t look likely. Meanwhile, the inefficiency in the Ports Authority and Mihin Air does not bode well for the new institutions at Hambantota. The Sunday Leader was unable to reach Minister Basil Rajapaksa for comment on this issue.
A Political Partnership
Speaking to The Sunday Leader, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Colombo, Dr. Srimal Abeyratne said, “Partnering with China is seen as more of a political move rather than an economic one. It is in step with the current government’s tendency to partner with non-traditional countries”.
The Professor went on to state that any potential benefit from the projects will heavily depend on the state of the overall economy and business environment.
“Infrastructure such as ports and airports are heavily dependent on robust economies. Successful implementation of the government’s five hubs concept and steps to create the connectivity, compliance and business friendly environment of an open economy will be necessary to ensure profits from these initiatives.” Not a lot of information has been released to the public on costs and completion dates.
At the inception of looking for potential construction partners, Sri Lanka apparently looked to other nations like the US, but China seems to have offered the best terms and hence seem to have been accepted. “We have no favorites,” said Jaliya Wickramasuriya speaking to the New York Times on the subject. China has recently emerged to become a global construction powerhouse capable of offering major cost advantages as compared to competition.
String of Pearls
International controversy surrounds the Chinese entrance, worrying India; Sri Lanka’s powerful neighbour. China has been engaged in similar activities throughout the region; setting up powerful naval bases in areas of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. It has also begun constructing railroads in Nepal, a country which previously had no railway system at all. This strategy, the Indian government somewhat sarcastically calls the ‘string of pearls’; to indicate an emerging Chinese stranglehold. Though China insists that this is merely to strengthen regional markets for its products and secure its supply chain, India fears that China is beginning to pose not only an economic but also a security threat.
The two nations do not exactly have a rosy past. The countries fought a war in 1962 over the Himalayan border and to India’s annoyance, Pakistan, with whom India has fought four wars, maintains close military ties with China. Sri Lanka could become the latest battleground between these two giants with both of them eager to be exacting the most influence. India has invested heavily in Sri Lankan projects and has just committed a 200 million credit line for a power project in Trinco, as well as agreeing to construct a railway line between Talaimanar and Madhu in the North.
© The Sunday Leader
Monday, July 05, 2010
China holds sway at Hambantota
Monday, July 05, 2010
Sri Lankan Army obliterates Tiger Heroes' Cemeteries, erects military bases
Tamil Net
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All the Heroes Cemeteries maintained by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Vanni had been completely razed to the ground and all the graves, memorial plaques and the dais where the Common Flame is lit on Heroes Day have been totally destroyed.
The SLA is very particular in erecting its bases on the grounds where Tamil Hereos cemeteries had stood so that nothing remains to remind the fighters who had sacrificed their lives for the cause.
LTTE war heroes' memorials in Jaffna peninsula at Koappaay were bulldozed by the Sri Lanka Army in 1995. The other cemeteries destroyed in Jaffna were: Chaaddi in Veala'nai (1995), Kodikaamam in Thenmaraadchi (1996) and Ellangku'lam in Vadamaraadchi (1996). These war cemeteries were re-built following the February 2002 Ceasefire Agreement.
The war heroes cemeteries located at Kagnchikudichcha'ru in Ampaa'rai district, Thaa'ndiyadi, Tharavai, Ka'ndaladi and Maavadi Munmaari in Batticaloa district and Aalangku'lam, Iththikku'lam, Verukal, Uppaa'ru and Paalampoaddaa'ru Trincomalee district were destroyed after the SLA occupied LTTE held areas in the East in 2006 and 2007.
In Vanni, there were at least ten War Heroes Cemeteries. The cemeteries were located in Aa'ndaangku’lam, Aadkaaddive'li and Pa’ndivirichchaan in Mannaar, Kanakapuram and Muzhangkaavil in Ki’linochchi district, Uduththu’rai in Vadamaraadchi East of Jaffna district, Eachchangku’lam in Vavuniyaa and four at Vanni-vizhaangku’lam, Visuvamadu, A’lampil, and Mu’l’liyava’lai of Mullaiththeevu district.
During the last battles of Eezham War IV, when genocidal attacks were launched from all fronts by the Sri Lankan military, the Tiger fighters killed in the war were buried at Ira’naippaalai and at Iraddaivaaykkaal in Mullaiththeevu.
The Sri Lanka Army bulldozed the Heroes Cemetery at Visuvamadu between March and April 2009. The SLA captured Tamil civilians of Vanni, who were made to pass through Visuvamadu on 21st of April 2009, before reaching internment camps in Vavuniyaa, had witnessed the complete destruction of the largest Maaveerar Thuyilum illam in Visuvamadu, where more than 4,000 war dead Tamil fighters had been buried by the Tigers.
© Tamil Net
Monday, July 05, 2010
National sovereignty or Rajapaksa sovereignty?
By Tisaranee Gunasekara | The Sunday Leader
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“…tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” — Voltaire (Philosophical Dictionary)
Amidst this verbal melee, the IMF announced its decision to release the third tranche of its Lankan loan, a reward for the post-election willingness of the Rajapaksas to implement the attached conditionalities. If national sovereignty is not violated by IMF conditionalities, why is national sovereignty violated by EU conditionalities?
The IMF conditionalities have a disastrous impact on the living conditions of the people but they have no impact on the Rajapaksa Dynastic Project. The EU conditionalities do not have a disastrous impact on the living conditions of the people but they would impact on the Rajapaksa Dynastic Project. That is why the regime forgets national sovereignty with the IMF and remembers national sovereignty with the EU. That is why the regime embraced the IMF conditionalities as its own, while rejecting the EU conditionalities as alien interference.
The government’s assertion that the IMF loan came without conditionalities is an infantile propaganda gimmick, like its ‘zero-casualty’ myth. The IMF website has a separate page defining and explaining MF conditionalities. The conditionalities for the Lankan loan include reducing the budget deficit, overhauling the tax system and ensuring that the Electricity Board and the Petroleum Corporation become ‘breakeven’, as the Letter of Intent and the Memoranda indicate. And as proof of its capacity to abide by these conditionalities, the government cites past tough measures, such as increasing the ‘Nation Building Tax’, oil prices and electricity rates.
The third tranche of the IMF loan was suspended in February because of the Rajapaksas’ election oriented spending orgy. But once the election season ended, the government could and did revert to the obedience mode. As the IMF statement of May 21 put it, the government pledged to “correct the slippages and move toward sustainable deficit reduction”. Indirect taxes were increased and subsidy cuts effected pushing up the prices of many essential commodities. The IMF was appeased and the third tranche was released, even as the regime was putting Sri Lanka on a collision course with the UN and the EU in the name of national sovereignty.
Government of, by and for the Rajapaksas
The different responses to IMF and EU conditionalities are proof positive that what is really at stake is not national sovereignty but Rajapaksa sovereignty. The IMF operates within the Washington Consensus and has no concerns about democracy or human rights. The IMF demands deficit reduction, but does not object if developmental expenditure is reduced while defence expenditure remains intact. The IMF demands deflationary measures, but cares not if they further depress the purchasing power of the poor and the middle classes.
The IMF therefore has no issues with the Rajapaksa policy of maintaining defence expenditure at astronomical levels at the expense of social and developmental expenditure; nor does it object to obese cabinets, tax breaks for luxury vehicles or wasteful extravaganzas such as the IIFA, so long as there are tax hikes on essential commodities, subsidy cuts and wage freezes in lieu. The choice of guns over butter and of the super rich and the super powerful over the rest would have serious consequences for the development prospects of a country and living conditions of its people; but this is not the IMF’s concern.
Little wonder that the Rajapaksas embraced IMF conditionalities, the way innumerable anti-democratic regimes did in the past. After all, the IMF never interferes with a regime’s sovereign right to violate the democratic and human rights of its people; on the contrary, the IMF knows that the successful implementation of some of its conditionalities may require such aberrations.
The EU conditionalities are of a different order. Promoting good governance and sustainable development are the declared purpose of the GSP+ criteria. The GSP+ is therefore a politically motivated programme. Just as the IMF demands a structural adjustment regimen to qualify for its loans, the EU demands adherence to 27 international covenants dealing with human rights, workers rights and environmental protection. And unlike IMF conditionalities, many of the EU requirements interfere with the Rajapaksa project of concentrating all power in the hands of the President, and through him, the Ruling Family. That is why the regime, though remarkably flexible towards IMF demands, have rejected in toto, the EU demands.
National sovereignty does not give a government the right to act with impunity, in total violation of a country’s democratic system, its constitution, its national law and its international obligations. Many of the EU conditionalities are aimed at compelling the government to act democratically, constitutionally and lawfully. What most EU conditionalities erode is not the ‘authority of the government of Sri Lanka’ as the External Affairs Ministry claims but the Rajapaksas’ right to impunity.
This is why the Rajapaksas are reacting with ferocious negativity towards such unexceptionable demands as the full implementation of the 17th Amendment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the repeal of the Emergency and some provisions of the PTA, the publication of the full report of the 2008 Commission of Inquiry and the ensuring of journalistic freedom. The GSP+ issue is therefore not a heroic battle by a beleaguered government to safeguard the national sovereignty but an attempt by a megalomaniac family to safeguard its right to absolute rule without checks and balances.
The President told The Times of India that the loss of the GSP facility is ‘not a problem’ because Sri Lanka can find alternate markets. Sri Lanka became a major garment exporter thanks to the Multi-fibre Agreement which gave us access to European and US markets via a quota system. The MFA ended in 2004; but due to the GSP+ facility our access to the EU markets expanded and the garment sector regained its vitality. If we lose the GSP+ our garments will be taxed (currently we enjoy zero taxation) and the resultant higher prices will cause us to lose most of our EU markets.
Given the intensity of the global economic crisis, our chances of finding alternate markets are miniscule; China or India cannot fill the vacuum because both are garment exporters and thus competitors. Consequently, many garment factories may have to curtail their operations or close down altogether. Losing GSP facility will have a catastrophic impact not on the Rajapaksas, but on the families of garment factory workers and on small scale entrepreneurs who have indebted themselves to start micro export enterprises aimed at European markets.
Unemployment and poverty will increase while many a woman may be compelled to seek employment abroad — not a happy fate given that a Lankan migrant worker dies or is killed everyday, and more than 60% of the victims are women.
Sri Lanka is rapidly becoming a government by the Rajapaksas, of the Rajapaksas and for the Rajapaksas. The nature of the constitutional reforms clearly indicates that their main purpose is neither national security nor popular wellbeing, but the perpetuation of Rajapaksa rule. According to media reports, Basil Rajapaksa is negotiating to purchase the former British High Commission building for his Ministry of Economic Development. The next G15 summit will be held in Colombo because Latin Americans do not want to spend billions on hosting an event of dubious political import and Rajapaksas have no such compunctions.
First Son, Namal Rajapaksa’s Tharunyata Hetak began a project to construct a swimming pool in Jaffna Central College, with much fanfare. This project is now abandoned and instead of the promised swimming pool, the students have been left with a mosquito breeding hole of enormous proportions. This failure may well be a forewarning of what is in store for the country and the people, if the Rajapaksa Dynastic Project is a success.
A Land Polarised
Post-war Sri Lanka is a virulently polarised land with no space for the moderate centre. Though the war is over, war mentality dominates Lankan rulers and the search for enemies continues apace. The Navy is to be expanded, though the Sea Tigers are no more. According to the Army Commander, not only will the army be
entrenched in the North and the East permanently; “Army personnel arriving in those areas for duty are to be provided permanent houses and allowed to engage in cultivation work” (Daily Mirror – 28.6.2010). This time the North and the East will be colonised not by Sinhala civilians but by Sinhala soldiers. The President boasts that the world need not be concerned with the Tamils because they are our concern and yet, according to media reports, the displaced are given food and financial assistance by the WFP, housing and agricultural assistance by India and other necessities by INGOs such as Caritas. Defence costs is swallowing the peace dividend and the Rajapaksa vision of post-war Sri Lanka, as a theatre of permanent political conflict with omnipresent ‘enemies’, intent on violating our national sovereignty and territorial integrity, will cost the country dear.
Insensitivity and intolerance are hallmarks of the Rajapaksa regime. No Sri Lankan government would have dreamt of celebrating the day the JVP’s brutal insurgency collapsed as a day of ‘national victory’ or of instituting a practice of holding an annual victory parade to mark the occasion. And yet, the first anniversary of the defeat of the LTTE was celebrated with greater fanfare than the day of independence. The triumphalist tone and tenor of the official victory celebration made no allowance for the collective human and material losses of the Tamil people, their present uncertain existence and their fears for the future. Meanwhile the UDA, reborn as an arm of the Defence Ministry, has graduated from hounding pavement hawkers and shanty dwellers to demolishing churches; a 25 year old church in Rajagiriya was branded an unauthorised structure and destroyed on Poson Poya Day.
As President Rajapaksa’s Victory Day speech indicated there is no room in Rajapaksa Sri Lanka for any who do not subscribe to the Rajapaksa worldview (or at least makes a pretence of it). And so long as the ‘any challenge to Rajapaksa rule cannot but be a threat to national security’ fallacy remains dominant, the Rajapaksas will be able to persecute and prosecute any opponent of the family as an enemy of the nation. In this context, a demand by Wimal Weerawansa’s National Freedom Front (which in general functions as a mouth-piece of the Rajapaksas) for a constitutional amendment decreeing that any person charged with the crime of separatism be tried by the Supreme Court within a period of 90 days, with the onus of proof on the accused assumes an ominous import.
The proposal seems incredulously preposterous, but we need to remember that under Rajapaksa rule, measures and developments hitherto considered incredulously preposterous, do tend to become transformed into banal realities. One year ago, constitutional amendments removing presidential term limits and enabling the president to appoint members to the independent commissions would have seemed incredulously preposterous. And yet today they are fait accompli, politico-psychologically and will become so legally and constitutionally before the year is out. We are living in a transformative period and during such times, no development, no measure, however abhorrent or aberrant, can be predetermined as impossible.
© The Sunday Leader
Monday, July 05, 2010
GSP Plus suspension will cost Lanka Rs. 570 billion a year
By Leon Berenger | The Sunday Times
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“This will mean a loss of 12 percent of the country’s apparel exports,” Joint Apparels Association Federation (JAAF) President A. Sukumaran told the Sunday Times yesterday.
Speaking on the telephone from New York, he said export earnings from apparel which stood at US$ 3.3 billion (Rs 376 billion) last year would drop to US $ 2.7 billion (Rs 307 billion) or 2.8 billion (Rs 319 billion), this year. Earlier, Government officials had placed the loss of revenue at US $ 150 million or Rs 171 billion.
The news of staggering losses comes as trade unions in the apparel sector voiced concerns of cost cutting by employers in the apparel sector. “The future looks bleak and fears of retrenchment are worrying the workers,” Progressive Union President Palitha Athukorale said.
He said 40,000 workers had been laid off during the past 14 months. “These figures can rise rapidly when the suspension of the GSP Plus scheme takes effect,” he said. Free Trade Zone and General Services Employees Union Secretary Anton Marcus said there were fears over the future of workers. Cost cutting to cope with the losses caused by the GSP Plus suspension would naturally affect some members of the workforce, he said.
Their remarks came as the Government granted clearance for a team of US officials to visit Sri Lanka to discuss the planned review of worker rights. This is to determine whether the United States should continue its own GSP tariff concessions for exports from Sri Lanka. A US embassy official said, “We are working on dates and other issues for the visit.”
The US Embassy in Colombo said in a statement last Wednesday that the US Government had accepted a petition from the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and CIO (Congress of Industrial Organisations) for a review of worker rights in Sri Lanka. This is to ascertain whether Sri Lanka was following the designated criteria to remain eligible for the GSP preferences from the United States.
Union leader Marcus said US officials have been visiting Sri Lanka regularly to consult many stakeholders on worker issues.
© The Sunday Times
Monday, July 05, 2010
As Sri Lanka party in power threatens UN staff, Ban stays silent
By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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Inner City Press inquired a second time, and the same UN spokesperson, Farhan Haq, said “we have received some indications that an apology might be in order... I’ll let you know if something like that comes through.”
Now, Weerawansa has said he was and is speaking for a political party that is part of the Rajapaksa coalition, the “National Freedom Front.”
The UN hasn't clarified or amended its obfuscation of the threat against its staff. In fact, a senior UN official tried to call the threat “Gandhian,” a sort of non-violent hostage taking. Talk about the Stockholm syndrome, one wag mused.
In fact, the UN's hopeful or intentionally misleading statement of receiving indications - from whom? - that “an apology might... come through” was shot down the next day, with the UN on vacation:
“When asked by Daily Mirror online if he was under any pressure regarding his comment after it had created a lot of controversy, Weerawansa said there was no such pressure as the position was that of his party. 'We should surround the UN office in Colombo and put pressure on UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon to reverse his decision to appoint a panel on Sri Lanka. I am saying this as the leader of the NFF.'”
Mr. Ban, who was spending a full eight hours in a pro-Kabila parade in Kinshasa when the first threat came in from Colombo, is now headed to Jamaica. Will he address the clarified and sharpened threat to UN staff?
© Inner City Press
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Self-deception and waiting for an unidentified enemy
By Shanie | The Island
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How grave the faces have become!
Why are the streets and squares rapidly emptying, and why is everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because it is night and the barbarians have not come.
And some men have arrived from the frontiers and they say that barbarians don’t exist any longer.
And, now, what will become of us without barbarians?
They were a kind of solution."
Constantine Cavafy, the Greek poet, wrote Waiting for the Barbarians in 1904. Seventy five years later, it inspired the South African novelist J M Coetzee, to write a novel by the same title, for which he won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature. The word ’, in its Greek root, is said to suggest an unidentified enemy, anyone who does not speak your language or share your ideals. A literary analyst has commented that Cavafy’s ‘poem is an internal dialogue, reflecting the sense of unreality we all feel as we watch our own national political rituals. Reading the poem, we become like the child in "The Emperor’s New Clothes," seeing clearly what the rituals of power and the ideology of fear seek to hide from us. But the poem’s conclusion should make us ask the question that remains unspoken throughout the poem: Who are the real barbarians here? Who fails to understand what really motivates their actions?
Every empire needs enemies to justify its existence: when one enemy is defeated or simply disappears, it is necessary to create new figures of terror with which to threaten the population. The anxiety that sweeps through the city at the end of the poem suggests this realization; there is no sense of relief that they will not be conquered by the barbarians, only the terror of finding themselves suddenly alone, with no enemy to embody – or solve – their problems. Like Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, the poem reveals the ways in which we depend upon our self-deceptions to protect us from having to take responsibility for ourselves.’
The shrill cacophony that is being orchestrated now in Sri Lanka now is not just tilting at windmills but meant to create new enemies for the public to hate – the international community, United Nations, non-governmental organizations, anybody who is not us’. A cabinet minister wants to surround the UN compound and keep the UN staff as hostages. Chandima Withanarachchi, who editor of the critical Lanka News Web site and who has been living in UK for the last ten Years, now finds himself facing charges and allegedly reported to the Interpol. Prageeth Ekneligoda, another journalist from another web site, disappeared soon after the Presidential Election and has now been missing for over five months and a pro-government journalist suggests that he is actually in hiding! The Defence Secretary wants the former Army Commander and Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka hanged if he gives evidence against the government. Cavafy’s poem seems to ring so true. The LTTE is defeated and new threats and new enemies have now to be created to find a fear-substitute.
United Nations Panel
We are now on a collision course with the United Nations over the Secretary General’s appointment of a three-member panel on possible violations of international law by the parties involved in the recently concluded civil war. There have been reports that there was a massive loss of civilian lives. The government has denied that its security forces targeted or killed civilians. If that is the position, surely there is nothing to hide and a probe should be welcomed to lay any allegations to rest. It has also been stated that such an investigation is an infringement on our sovereignty. All member-states have not only abide by the UN Charter but also the relevant international conventions to which they are signatories. That is why our Ambassador Palitha Kohona is heading a panel to investigate possible violations by Israel of these conventions. The Israeli Government is also unhappy with that investigation. But such investigations only promote better governance in each country and a better world. No doubt, there would be situations in a civil war where some violations would take place, unintended and sometimes even inevitable. But these would be the exception. Any investigative panel would differentiate between such exceptions and the deliberate killing of non-combatants as has happened in other countries. We should not, as Wimal Weerawansa has done, go hysterical in denouncing the appointment of a UN panel.
Sarath Fonseka has stated that he is prepared to testify before the UN panel if he is allowed to do so. He was the Army Commander at that time and his evidence will be vital. He had stated earlier that he takes full responsibility for the actions of security forces under his command and that he would stand by his men. He has proved to be a man of his word and we have no reason to believe that, despite his fall-out with the President and his brothers, he will bring disrepute to the Army that he commanded.
Indemnity for illegal actions
A study of history is useful for those who take a hysterical stand in matters where the rule of law is challenged or sought to be upheld. Most students of our political history will be familiar with the Bracegirdle Affair that shook the colonial government in the late nineteen thirties. Bracegirdle was a young British/Australian planter who had communist leanings and moved freely with the plantation workers, upsetting the British Raj. The Governor issued an Order to deport him but the newly founded LSSP took up his case and Supreme Court ruled that his deportation order was illegal. The then Governor then wanted the British Government to enact an Order-in-Council indemnifying him from any action for damages. The British Cabinet rejected this request based on the opinion of the Legal Adviser to the Colonial Office: "The present Constitution of Ceylon is, subject to certain safeguards, a form of self-government…To use that power (the safeguards or reserved powers) in defiance of the will of the Legislature in Ceylon, to deprive an individual of his civil rights seems to be unconstitutional and not a proper exercise of the power. Further, I know of no reason why an individual who has suffered a wrong should be deprived of any remedy which he may have in a court of law….To my mind, the spectacle of a Governor or the Chief of Police being made subject to the consequences of an illegal action is more likely to enhance the impartiality and integrity of British rule."
A similar situation arose in the United States over a Presidential Order placing ethnic Japanese in detention camps during the Second World War. This was challenged in the Supreme Court. The Supreme held, by a six-to-three majority, that the Presidential Order was constitutional. Justice Robert Jackson, one of the dissenting judges, had this to say in his judgment: "Judicial construction of the due process clause (of the US Constitution) that will sustain this order is a far more subtle blow to liberty than the promulgation of the order itself. A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency…. But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure…..I should hold that a civil court cannot be made to enforce an order which violates constitutional limitations even if it is a reasonable exercise of military authority. The Courts can exercise only the judicial power, can apply only law, and must abide by the Constitution, or they cease to be civil courts and become instruments of military policy." Jackson may have been in a minority of three then but his stand has received the vindication of history. The Japanese detainees (or their descendants) were, nearly forty years later, given compensation for the deprivation of their life and liberty.
It is perhaps appropriate to end with a quotation from the writings of Rosa Luxembourg, a leading Marxist intellectual assassinated by state forces in Germany in 1919: "Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. (It is) not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege."
© The Island
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Rights groups eye Sri Lanka
By Feizal Samath | The National
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Adding to Colombo’s woes, an EU deadline for the government to provide written guidelines to implement conditions for the extension of zero-duty imports into Europe ended on Thursday.
“It was missiles raining all over,” said a senior economist working at a local think-tank who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The external affairs minister, G L Peiris, had rejected the call for a “written undertaking” from the EU and denounced the UN panel as unwarranted.
The EU ambassador in Colombo, Bernard Savage, said on Thursday that the July 1 date on the written guidelines was flexible. “Even if the government responds by Monday [July 5] we are prepared to accept it,” he said by telephone.
The government has yet to respond to the US decision on workers’ rights, which involves whether Sri Lanka has met the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) eligibility criteria related to workers’ rights.
The preference system is designed to promote economic growth in the developing world.
Dayan Jayatilleka, a former Sri Lankan ambassador and permanent representative at the UN in Geneva, said of the AFL-CIO, the US organisation that filed the petition, that it “traditionally exercises a huge influence on the Democratic Party, its senators and congressmen.
“If we lose our access to the important US market, on top of losing the EU market, our economy and more importantly our working people and their living standards will be badly affected,” he said in an e-mail.
The US Embassy in Colombo said in a statement that a public hearing is likely to be held next month to discuss the workers’ rights issues raised in the petition, adding that the Sri Lankan government will be invited to participate in the hearing.
The UN Panel on Human Rights appointed last week triggered a furore in Colombo with Wimal Weerawansa, a cabinet minister who represents one of the coalition partners in the government, cajoling the public to surround the UN office in Colombo as a protest against the appointment of the panel. He made the call at a press conference on Wednesday, which drew a response the following day from the government – in a statement – that Mr Weerawansa’s view was his own and did not reflect that of the government.
Also on Thursday, Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, issued a statement welcoming the UN Panel and urging the government to fully co-operate.
JC Weliamuna, a human-rights lawyer and executive director at the Colombo office of Transparency International, lamented the lack of diplomacy in Sri Lanka’s dealing with the international community.
“We need to display a sense of diplomacy and tact in our response,” he said. “We need to save both trade pacts with the EU and the US, and we can do it. Unfortunately the president is ill-advised by a set of incompetent advisers and politically motivated persons, and is going by this advise,” he said, declining to name the individuals.
“I am sure if the president gets good advice he can win over the international community like winning the war.”
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s armed forces crushed the Tamil rebels in May last year, ending a 30-year-long battle by rebels to set up an independent homeland for minority Tamils.
Since then, Mr Rajapaksa has come under intense pressure from the West to respond to allegations that there were large-scale civilian casualties during the last stages of the conflict. He has repeatedly denied the claims and rejected any attempt by the international community to launch a war-crimes probe.
© The National
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Sri Lanka hit by trade suspension
By Toby Vogel | European Voice
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The suspension, which takes effect on 15 August, is expected to cost Sri Lanka's exporters – primarily in the textile sector – more than €100 million annually in higher import duties. In 2008, Sri Lanka exported goods worth €1.24 billion to the EU under the preferential trade regime known as GSP+.
The economic impact of the suspension will be significant but not crippling, according to sources familiar with the situation. Sri Lanka's industrial exports grew by 0.3% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2010. Overall economic growth was 3.5% in 2009 and is projected to be double that figure this year.
The Sri Lankan government says that many of the improvements demanded by the Commission are being undertaken but that others are “unacceptably intrusive”.
On 17 June, Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, and Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, wrote to the Sri Lankan government with a list of demands, around half of them relating to implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The letter suggested that a written commitment by the government to meeting these conditions would prompt the Commission to propose that the trade preferences be maintained.
Strong-arm tactics
The EU's human-rights concerns increased after the government's crushing of Tamil rebels last year, a refugee crisis it triggered, and strong-arm tactics by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in elections in January and April. However, the government relaxed its emergency rule in May and has accelerated the resettlement of Tamil civilians who were displaced in last year's fighting.
In an interview in the Times of India on Monday (28 June), Rajapaksa said that he was “not bothered” by the suspension, calling it “politically motivated”. About the GSP+ status, he said: “If the EU does not want to give it, let them keep it. I do not want it.”
A spokesperson for De Gucht rejected the accusation. “To suggest that any decision by the EU is politically motivated and to link it to the elections of this year is entirely false,” he said.
Ravinatha Aryasinha, Sri Lanka's ambassador to the EU, said the Commission had been “rather clumsy” in dealing with the matter. “It is disappointing and unfortunate because there was a vibrant process of engagement” between the two sides that has now been cut short by the Commission's ultimatum, he said.
The GSP+ gives 16 developing countries access to EU markets with preferential conditions in return for implementing international conventions on human rights, labour standards, sustainable development and good governance.
© European Voice
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Sri Lanka: East feels left behind as agencies move north
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)
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"There are no jobs here. I have to support my family with what I earn here," said Ravidranathan Valarmadhu, 18, from Pillumallai Village of Batticaloa District.
Her father is unable to work, her mother does odd jobs around the village and her younger brother is still in school, leaving Valarmadhu to work six days a week as a milk collector earning about US$17 a month.
After clearing separatist Tamil Tigers from the east three years ago, government forces moved into the Tiger stronghold in Northern Province, finally defeating them in May last year. Almost 300,000 people were displaced by the conflict in Northern Province, which has been the focal point of assistance.
Closing shop
Several international agencies working in the east have closed shop in the past year, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, which moved out after a government request, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is closing its office in eastern Batticaloa District, where it has been since 2002. The agency will continue its eastern operations from Trincomalee.
"Our work there [Batticaloa] has been shrinking. This was a planned phasing-out," said Jennifer Pagonis, UNHCR deputy country representative in Sri Lanka. "Our office in Trincomalee will oversee this work. There will be no reduction of activity or closing down of any other offices."
Vinyagamourthi Muralitharan, deputy minister for resettlement, said UNHCR on 30 June discussed with him the closure of the Batticaloa office and continuation of UNHCR's work in the district.
"Most of the work that came under the UNHCR is now ending in Batticaloa. Their main workload now is in the north," Muralitharan told IRIN.
Almost all the displaced in Batticaloa have been resettled, according to UNHCR. Only 90 families - 433 individuals - are awaiting the completion of demining activities in their villages before resettling in the next few months.
UNHCR will maintain a small presence to the end of the year to provide non-food items and a 25,000-rupee ($212) cash grant to each returning family.
"There are other agencies that can look after the wellbeing of the people in the east," Muralitharan said. "We need the agencies like UNHCR that help the displaced to focus on the north right now."
Housing needs
"We need to build 346 new houses to replace those destroyed or damaged by the war," said Arumugam Balkrishnan, a government official in Pillumallai.
Vaharai, a village of 22,500 people about 90km northeast of Pillumallai, suffered massively in the 2004 tsunami, but rebuilding was halted when violence erupted in 2007, said Rasanayagam Rahulanayani, the top government official in the area.
"We were building at least 1,700 new houses when everything had to be stopped," she said, adding that now "we need to build at least 2,000 houses destroyed or badly damaged by the war".
More than 22,000 civilians displaced by the war have since resettled in Vaharai, according to the Divisional Secretariat.
Some NGOs working in the east are struggling to get funding for projects.
"We have made requests, but we are not sure whether we will get the funds," said Pon Sundarajan, deputy director of the North East Housing Reconstruction Programme.
"We have been able to complete only 13 percent of 22,000 new houses for the displaced in the district," he said. "There is no sign whether we will be able to complete the full quota."
© IRIN
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Court blow for Lanka row author
By Aniqa Haider | Gulf Daily News
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Sarah Malanie Perera is facing charges over her book From Darkness to Light, which described her conversion to Islam but was deemed offensive to Buddha.
The 38-year-old was detained on March 20 after being accused of "anti-state" activities and having links to Islamic militants.
She was released last month after paying a bail of 50,000 Sri Lankan rupees (BD166).
But during the latest hearing at the Colombo Magistrates Court the case adjourned until November 27.
Ms Perera, who first came to Bahrain in 1985, was arrested for allegedly distributing anti-state and anti-government information across the border.
However, she claims she was simply trying to send copies of her books to Bahrain and has denied having links to extremists.
The defendant has been charged under two sections of a law that makes it illegal to insult the religion of others.
The first carries a maximum 12-month jail sentence, while the second up to two years in prison and a fine.
Ms Perera's sister Mariam yesterday told the GDN the family was still in a state of shock following the court case.
"We were all hoping for good news, but it turned out to be a really bad," she said.
"We didn't expect the court to adjourn the case until the end of this year.
"When I spoke to her yesterday, she was really down.
"She told me that the only question judge asked her was if she is guilty of writing these books and insulting Buddhism or not.
"She agreed to writing the books but not insulting the religion and that was it.
"No other question was asked and no lawyer was allowed to talk in the session."
Bahraini MP Shaikh Adel Al Ma'awda met with India-based Dr Zakir Naik, a Muslim public speaker and writer on Islam and other religions in May, and has raised the issue with politicians and human rights activists in the hope of securing her freedom.
Ms Perera said 13 Buddhist priests, who were asked to check her book's authenticity, converted to Islam after reading it.
Her lawyer Lakshan Dias previously argued the author had no intention of insulting the Buddhist faith and there were no grounds for a criminal case.
However, prosecutors claimed the book was offensive to Buddhists.
The author's family blames global courier firm Aramex for her arrest, believing one of its workers in Sri Lanka reported her to police.
However, the company has denied responsibility saying it had no choice but to forward the materials to Sri Lankan authorities since as mandated by law.
© Gulf Daily News
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