By Jesse Bauman | The Spec
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
At the time I knew very little about Sri Lanka, and would have required a few moments to find it on a map. (It almost touches the southern tip of India). I knew that the Tamil Tigers were fighting for a separate state, and that as a result of that civil war, hundreds of thousands of Tamils — the ethnic minority in Sri Lanka — now live abroad, many of them in Toronto.
Rick Mercer spoke at my graduation, and asked his audience to be strong Canadian citizens. He suggested voting and travelling throughout Canada as ways of exercising that citizenship. Living and working abroad means the former is difficult and the latter impossible. Nonetheless I often reflect on Mercer’s words, and feel that there might still be something deeply Canadian about my present experience.
After all, isn’t the humanitarian work I’m doing part of that proud Canadian self-image, which sees peacekeeping and diplomacy as a responsible, considerate alternative to the callous real-politiking of our American friends? As our narrative of multilateralism goes, we care about the suffering of strangers, which is reflected in foreign policy and domestic politics.
We are a deluded nation, more today than yesterday, and more tomorrow still. Afghanistan is a violent and sustained contradiction to our wholesome Canadian self-image. Do any of us actually know how many Canadian soldiers are currently involved in peacekeeping missions? (According to the United Nations, there are 126.)
While Canada-as-peacemaker obviously requires revision, I write this with the assumption that Canadians care, and that Canadians assume their government cares as well. To care, we should also try to understand our suffering neighbours’ situations.
One such neighbour is Rajan Putulingam, whose story is painfully similar to many others’ in the north and east of Sri Lanka. He is 41 years old, his wife 39, and they live with their five children in the Eastern District of Batticaloa. Rajan works as a daily labourer on wealthier farmers’ rice paddy lands, and Delaney, his wife, runs a small shop. This year they used their savings — from Delaney’s jewellery — to purchase seed and plant one and a half acres of rice paddy. Delaney’s shop generates an income when her neighbours have enough work and extra rupees to spend.
Heavy rains started two days after Christmas, which is not unusual in this part of the world. As days of constant rain stretched into weeks, the family was displaced to a shared community building. More than 300,000 people, the Putulingams included, sought refuge in common shelters. As hundreds of families squeezed into buildings built for dozens, toilets filled up and food simply ran out. Rajan and his family stayed for five days in the office of the local farmers’ society.
For others, the situation was worse. According to John Thevatas, a senior NGO worker in the North, in certain places there was no dry land, and many “did not even have a tarpaulin to cover their head. The living conditions are not acceptable, but what to do? There is water everywhere.”
This was the Putulingam’s third displacement. War had chased them from their home twice before. Delaney’s mud-walled shop is basically destroyed, as is the family’s mud-walled home. Glass bottles of soda, muddied by the high water, are all that remain in her shop. Their contents are a luxury none can presently afford.
High water destroyed over 80 per cent of the paddy fields in the East. In Sri Lanka, rice is a staple food in more than one sense: for hundreds of thousands no harvest also means no labour in the paddy fields and therefore no income. Thevatas describes the two harvest seasons (October to January and April to August) as “lone opportunities for a good income for 90 per cent of these flood-affected peoples.” According to the United Nations, there were more than a million people affected.
The Putulingams have few prospects. They were not a part of that lucky group whose crop survived. The children’s school supplies are gone, drowned along with hundreds of thousands of chickens, goats and cows. In Rajan’s words, “every time we start to earn something again it is destroyed by war or displacement.”
He said that days before a second equally massive flood arrived. Most families lost all that remained of their homes and livelihoods.
Bob Dylan should have followed “when you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose” with, when you have next to nothing, you have everything to lose. The Putulingams and countless families like them will require support long after the flood waters finally recede, first to survive, and then to rebuild.
So what do the Putulingams, or any desperate family in poor country X, have to do with Canadian citizenship? Maybe nothing, but maybe by listening to these stories we start to appreciate a little bit of what it means to be “displaced,” to be one of one million flood-affected peoples. As a result, we can exercise that supposedly Canadian capacity to care, and in a more substantial and responsible way. Statistics take on a much deeper meaning when faces are paired with figures.
Finally, with that little bit of knowledge we can see this country in at least a few more shades of grey. A boat full of Tamils seeking asylum is not simply a terrorist threat to national security (no matter what Vic Toews tells us) and the Tamil Tigers are not the one true voice of the Tamil people.
Those shades of grey also reveal the dignity and extreme perseverance of many Sri Lankans, who don’t choose to be Sri Lankan any more than I choose to be Canadian.
Jesse Bauman is McMaster University graduate now working as a “management trainee” at ZOA Refugee Care. For more information: jesse@zoasrilanka.org
© The Spec
Saturday, March 05, 2011
... And then the rains came
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Drowning in media indifference
By Nalaka Gunawardene | Himal
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
That might explain the gleeful tone with which the Colombo media reported the Sri Lankan Parliament being flooded after torrential rains in mid-November. Newspapers and television channels repeatedly showed images of the Parliamentary complex – built three decades ago on a marshland – completely marooned. The hapless people’s representatives were ferried across the expanse by the military, to take part in a brief session to extend Emergency Regulations. The symbolism was inescapable.
When the trapped rainwater engulfed many areas in and around Colombo, thousands of affected people groaned, but no one was really surprised. By now Sri Lankans know this is almost an annual routine. As I sat knee-deep in my own flooded office, I had a strong sense of déjà vu.
It was early June 1992. While Prime Minister Dingiri Banda Wijetunga was away in Rio de Janeiro attending the Earth Summit, Greater Colombo received the heaviest rainfall in living memory: 492 mm, or more than an eighth of its annual rainfall, in a single night. This created a flash flood that cut across all class divides: the city’s most plush residential, diplomatic and business areas were united with shanties in their damage and misery. That was the first time the Japanese-built new Parliamentary complex went under water. The country could not have received a ruder awakening to the urban environmental nightmare it had created.This was also my first close encounter with a disaster: my home was under three feet of water. Yet I was among the luckier ones – I had an upper floor to evacuate to.
Then, as now, the blame game started even before the waters had receded. Eighteen years ago, the flood victims accused irresponsible local government bodies, greedy property developers and incompetent town planning. The country’s media devoted much space and time to discussing the floods of 1992, partly because the waters had directly affected many journalists and some press barons. Not only did ‘spot’ reporting take place on a large scale, but the follow-up coverage went on for months. There were persistent demands by the media ‘to know who should be held responsible for the floods’.
I joined that debate by pointing out that all residents in and around Colombo, many of whom are narrowly focused on their own welfare, shared the blame. Many had either corrupted a corruptible system, or had simply looked away when expediency replaced the due process. As such, I argued at the time, ‘We drowned in our own apathy and indifference’.
As it turned out, the real indifference was yet to come. In December 1993, a much larger flood covered nearly a third of the island. Although it affected twice as many people for a much longer period than the previous year, there was far less media coverage. Most likely, this was because that flood had hit the northern, north-central and eastern provinces, a safe distance away from the capital, where most of the media are based.
Fast forward to the present – and how little things have changed! During the past three months, as the fury of the formidable little girl (La Niña, the global weather anomaly) played havoc on the island, this writer has been struck by the similarly lop-sided coverage in the country’s mainstream print and broadcast media. Urban flooding once again received ample front-page coverage and ‘breaking news’ treatment. Everyone, from cartoonists and editorialists to talk-show hosts and radio DJs, ranted about what was taking place. Yet the much worse flooding, once again in the north, east and centre of the country, received proportionately much less attention. There were a few honourable exceptions, but by and large the 1992-93 disparity was repeated wholesale.
It is not as though communications have not progressed in the intervening period. In fact, the media landscape has changed drastically. From a monopoly of two state broadcasters, today there is a plethora of FM radio and terrestrial TV channels crowding the Lankan airwaves. Mobile phones have driven the country’s tele-density to higher than 90 percent, while Internet access is spreading fast and becoming more affordable, especially through mobile devices. Information (and gossip) now travels at the speed of light. But more delivery channels have not given Sri Lankans greater plurality of information or opinions in the mainstream media, and that is why those living in the country initially heard more about the floods in Brisbane than about the equally horrendous ones in Batticaloa.
Media researchers have long accused the Western and globalised news media of having an implicit ‘hierarchy’ of death and destruction, in terms of how they report disasters in developing countries. But Sri Lanka’s own media’s indifference is equally appalling – the story of a quarter-million displaced people languishing in squalid conditions for weeks on end did not constitute front-page news. A starlet entering hospital after a domestic brawl excites news editors more than thousands of flood-affected provincial people starving while waiting for relief.
Fumbling mediasaurus
One notable difference in the recent flooding was how those outside the mainstream media tried to fill these gaps. For several years, citizen journalists have been bearing witness to unfolding natural and humanitarian tragedies and sharing impressions on blogs, online videos and, more recently, short ‘tweets’. Paid journalists initially scoffed at these unpaid and scattered enthusiasts. Thereafter, they questioned the latter’s credentials and skills to marshal vast volumes of information: What do these minnows know?
The December 2004 tsunami amply demonstrated citizen media’s complementary role. The late author Arthur C Clarke called it a turning point for all media. In 2005, he wrote: ‘Having evolved highly centralised systems of media for half a millennium, we are now returning to a second era of mass media – in the true sense of that term. Blogs, wikis and citizen journalism are all signs of things to come.’
Sanjana Hattotuwa, a leading practitioner of this new wave of people’s journalism and founder editor of groundviews.org, notes: ‘Citizen journalists, flawed as they may be as individuals, are nevertheless tremendously powerful as a group. They have the potential to capture, over the long term, a multiplicity of rich and insightful perspectives on disasters not often covered by the traditional media.’
Without the trappings and inertia of the institutionalised media, citizen journalists are quick to adopt new communication tools and platforms. Some of the first images of the devastating flooding in Batticaloa were posted on Facebook. Tweets with vital updates came from grassroots organisations such as Sarvodaya, which quickly leveraged Twitter and Facebook to raise awareness and solicit flood-relief donations. Local-language websites such as Vikalpa translated key updates into Sinhala.
Covering a geographically distributed disaster is never easy for any media. Most Colombo-centred media groups rely on provincial correspondents to feed their headquarters with information and images. When some were directly affected by the recent floods, media houses found their news feeds suddenly cut off. The more widely distributed citizen journalists, on the other hand, were more robust due to their multiple numbers, locations and technology tools. But by and large many mainstream media organisations failed to join hands with the citizen journalists to improvise for the sake of quality and speed of disaster coverage.
Six years after the tsunami, Sri Lanka’s mainstream media still tries to go it alone. Of course, we do keep seeing feeble attempts by the media companies to co-opt the new media tools. During the recent flooding, for example, an English-language daily’s disaster-related tweets were largely indecipherable: readers had to click through to read the full story on their website. This shows a poor understanding of new media: attaching online appendages to content that is still conceived, produced and distributed in the ‘old media’ mode.
Many mainstream newsrooms also lacked the ability (or, perhaps, interest) to rapidly organise disaster information in user-friendly ways. With floods spread across several provinces, policymakers and relief workers needed to chart out their response plans, yet the static maps that newspapers and TV channels hastily produced were inadequate – and rapidly rendered obsolete. To fill this void, Groundviews created the first – and, to date, only – online maps on the ground conditions, relief work, shelters and weather conditions during both of the most recent incidents of devastating flooding in Sri Lanka.
‘The most informative updates throughout the two waves of flooding came from citizen journalism website and social networks,’ says Hattotuwa. ‘Yet even with numerous examples of how free, relatively easy-to-use web and social-media platforms can enhance reporting and provide context, the mainstream media in Sri Lanka remains incredibly obdurate, believing that old thinking and ossified models of journalism can outlive drastic changes in media consumption and delivery.’
So, what is to be done?
As Sri Lankans brace for more extreme weather events and disasters thanks to the changes in climate, our mainstream media needs to adapt fast to better serve the public interest. We need all our media organisations to be more caring, robust and innovative. To survive the new-media tsunami, media managers must come to terms with the new reality of collaborative, user-involved news generation and consumption. ‘Business as usual’ is hardly an option, even for commercial survival and growth. In Sri Lanka, large sections of the media missed the story on the recent floods – let us hope that they at least will learn its larger lessons, and not let a good crisis go waste.
Nalaka Gunawardene is a science writer in Sri Lanka, and co-edited Communicating Disasters.
© Himal
Saturday, March 05, 2011
US Senate war probe call 'unfortunate': Sri Lanka
AFP | Yahoo News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The Sri Lankan government said "well motivated groups" had pressured the Senate to adopt a resolution earlier this week calling for an international investigation into the final stages of the island's war against Tamil rebels.
"It is all the more unfortunate that those who framed the text of the resolution have overlooked the capacity and strong track record of the LLRC (a government-appointed Sri Lankan panel) to work for reconciliation," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Senate resolution urged an "independent international accountability mechanism to look into reports of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other human rights violations" in Sri Lanka.
It came as a top US official warned the island that it could be hauled before a war crimes tribunal over the killing of "many thousands of civilians" in 2009.
In the toughest warning since the end of fighting in May 2009, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, said Sri Lanka risked a forced international investigation.
Sri Lanka has refused to probe war crimes and instead appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
International rights groups have said the LLRC failed to probe war crimes during the 37-year conflict.
Sri Lanka's relations with the United States were strained in 2009 when Washington voiced concern about human rights as the army killed the top leadership of the Tamil Tiger rebels, ending decades of insurgency.
© Yahoo News
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
'Govt. will decide on emergency' - Sri Lanka's Human Rights Minister says to the UN
By Dianne Silva | Daily Mirror
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told the 16th sessions of the HRC, “We believe that it is our authorities that will make this judgment. We assure the Council that the rollback process of the regulations will be concluded in an appropriate and timely manner.” He also said the LTTE’s international network was still active and cautioned against “being lulled into a sense of complacency.” The Minister detailed the number of instances when elements of the LTTE were apprehended or attempted to engage in terrorist activities around the globe.
He said there was now progressive dialogue between the Government and Tamil Parties. “The Tamil political mainstream is now fully engaged with the Government as part of a wider group - the Tamil Political Parties Forum – in an ongoing dialogue on economic development, and legal and Constitutional reforms. Having met twice already, they are scheduled to meet again early next month,” he said.
Samarasinghe also elucidated on elements of the National Action Plan for Human Rights which he pledged to implement at the HRC. “Consequent to stocktaking of the human rights situation in the country, eight thematic areas have been identified. The process involved an examination of Sri Lanka’s UPR, including civil society submissions and recommendations of UN human rights mechanisms over the past ten years,” the Minister said.
In the days prior to the HRC sessions Minister Samarasinghe had met more than 40 diplomats and briefed them on the conditions in the North and the East and addressed allegations on media freedom in the north.
On Friday during his meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navaneethan Pillai he had briefed her on the facilities being provided to IDP's, the rehabilitation work with ex-combatants and the infrastructure development projects in the north.
© Daily Mirror
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Sri Lanka: Dual citizenship axed to avoid war crime charges?
By Ranga Jayasuriya | Lakbima News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The government directive stopping dual citizenship is not retrospective - hence it would not affect the citizenship status of those who have already obtained dual citizenship. But it effectively deprives thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of expatriate Sri Lankans of their Sri Lankan citizenship. And, there are other explanations, as advanced by diaspora Tamils on the discontinuance of the applications for dual citizenship.
A reader commented on a popular website - Transcurrents
“The news coming out of Sri Lanka says that the Sri Lankan government has stopped considering applications for dual citizenship. Will it retroactively cancel the dual citizenship; in which event Palitha Kohona will be only a Sri Lankan citizen and then he will be beyond the jurisdiction of International Criminal Court. Sri Lanka has not recognized the ICC.”
“What a smart ostrich style move to protect its own.”Expatriate Sri Lankans obtain citizenship of their host countries for practical reasons. With the citizenship of the host country, come other opportunities which are exclusive to the citizens such as educational opportunities, better career prospects, security clearance and voting rights, etc.
Yet, many have opted to keep their Sri Lankan citizenship, more so for their emotional attachment with their motherland. Now that the process for dual citizenship is put on hold, Sri Lankans who obtain foreign citizenship would naturally be forced to renounce their Sri Lankan citizenship.
The Controller of Immigration and Emigration, W.A.C. Perera, stresses that the discontinuance is temporary. He said that the system (of granting dual citizenship) is in need of improvement and hence, the accepting of applications is temporary. But he does not know when the new system will come into effect, nor could he say what the proposed procedural requirements would be like.
“I have to make a presentation (on the new system) to the His Excellency the President. Only if he approves the proposals that I can speak to the media,” Perera told Lakbimanews when asked to comment on the new system. He denied that the decision is politically motivated. “There is no intention of denying citizenship to anyone,” he added.
Until the recent government directive, dual citizenship was granted under five main categories: 1.Professional category; 2.Wealth category; 3.Fixed Deposit category; 4.Senior Citizen category; 5.The category of Non-Resident Foreign Currency (NRFC), Resident Foreign Currency (RFC) or Special Foreign Investment Deposit Accounts.
Perera says existing categories could be amended but he declines to elaborate, saying proposals have to be first approved by the President before they are made public. Expatriate Sri Lankans who would be affected by the government’s directive are perturbed by the arbitrary nature of the decision. “The recent decision is arbitrary and an absolute insult to the intelligence of expatriates who came through to help the government during every crisis experienced in the country,” says Anjalika Silva, an expatriate Sri Lankan and a naturalized US citizen. “Not only will this decision anger the expatriate community, it will also result in loss of cooperation from expats when called upon to help their homeland which happens frequently at every turn including financing wasteful projects,” she adds.
Moolah for cash strapped economy
Two years back, this government launched a much hyped residential visa programme to woo retired foreign citizens to the island. The programme which aimed to make Sri Lanka a dream home for foreign senior citizens, was expected to bring foreign remittance to the cash strapped local economy.
According to the programme, each visa applicant was required to deposit US$15,000 in a Fixed Deposit account with a local bank and make a monthly remittance of US$1500 for the principle applicant and US$750 for each dependent for their upkeep. The programme which was launched at the height of the war fell short of its expectations due to obvious reasons.
Yet, Sri Lankan workers abroad remitted money to the national coffers to the tune of US$3 billion.
Also, time and again, the government has wooed expatriate Sri Lankans to invest and share their expertise for the development of the motherland. Recently, the President called upon the expats to counter anti-government propaganda propagated by the LTTE front organizations in the West.
There are one million expatriate Sri Lankans, of which 100,000 are professionals. That is in addition to nearly a million strong Tamil diaspora.
In addition, every year, approximately 7,000 Sri Lankan students go abroad for higher education and many of them opt to stay in greener pastures after obtaining their degrees.
“Students decide to stay in the West due to better prospects, but that does not mean they have forgotten their motherland,” says, Anuradha Kohona, a Sri Lankan student at the Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.
But this suspension (of the acceptance of dual citizenship applications) would sever that relationship, he warns. “We hold on to our Sri Lankan identity, very dearly,” he says.
Kohona, who is awaiting his Australian citizenship, however adds that if he cannot retain his Sri Lankan citizenship, he would have to be content with the Australian citizenship. “After all, with an Australian passport it is easier to travel,” he quips.
© Lakbima News
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Amnesty calls for new UN probe in Lanka
By Sutirtho Patranobis | Hindustan Times
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
"Impunity persists for past violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law, and new and serious violations of human rights continue to be reported. In the two years since fighting ended in Sri Lanka evidence of serious violations and abuses by parties to the conflict has continued to mount, but the Sri Lankan Government has refused to acknowledge credible allegations of war crimes and other crimes under international law by its armed forces in the course of the conflict that ended in May 2009," the statement said.
The AI urged UN Secretary General’s office to investigate new reports of abductions, enforced disappearances and killings in northern Sri Lanka and throughout the country, and ensure perpetrators identified are brought to justice and tried in full conformity with international standards for fair trial. ``Stop harassment, intimidation and attacks against human rights defenders, journalists and other peaceful critics exposing past or present violations or abuses,’’ it said.
Referring to UNSG Ban Ki-moon’s panel of experts, appointed in 2010 to advise him on accountability in Sri Lanka, AI said the report was expected to issue its report in March while the Human Rights Council was meeting. It urged the ``Secretary-General to issue the report publicly without delay to ensure that the Human Rights Council and other UN bodies can consider its findings and recommendations without further delay. The Council must consider that report carefully.’’
It further urged the UN to ensure the independence of key justice institutions in Sri Lanka necessary to protect human rights and combat impunity; initiate reforms to bring domestic institutions into line with international standards, including by establishing an effective witness protection scheme.
© Hindustan Times
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Ban Ki-moon & Nambiar meets Sri Lanka's controvesial Major General
By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
Silva has been the subject of controversy, for his role in the military assault in northern Sri Lanka in 2009. It has been reported that the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa converted such as General Shavendra Silva into an Ambassador to give him diplomatic immunity, and sent him to the UN to see if the UN would in a sense legitimate him. Inner City Press observed and took a photo as Ban Ki-moon shook Shavendra Silva's hand on Wednesday.
In recent days, Inner City Press has asked Ban's spokesperson's office for a response to the inclusion of Nambiar in a filing with the International Criminal Court, which asserts:
“a basis to question whether Vijay Nambiar was in fact an innocent neutral intermediary or in fact a co-perpetrator within the negotiation related community.”
The filing, which has been reported in the Australian press, recites that,
"Nambiar again through the United Nations-24 hour dispatch center in New York. Nambiar replied to Colvin that Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and Palitha Kohona had assured Nambiar that the LTTE members would be safe in surrendering to the SLA and treated like “normal prisoners of war” if they “hoist[ed] a white flag high.”
Ban's lead spokesman Martin Nesirky would not say he would seek a response from Nambiar or the Executive Office of the Secretary General to these descriptions.
Nesirky's deputy Farhan Haq issued an on the record statement to another journalist that “the Inner City Press story is inaccurate; there has been no complaint formally filed at the International Criminal Court.” Earlier on February 23, Inner City Press asked Nesirky to explain the statement; he has declined.
It was also unclear if Wednesday's meeting was intended to replace what Ban had announced as his Panel's ability to travel to Sri Lanka. The trip has not happened, and Inner City Press has been told by sources on both sides that Sri Lanka said the Panel could only “make representations” to Rajapaksa's own Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission, not interview Peiris, External Affairs Ministry Secretary Romesh Jayasinghe and other officials.
Inner City Press has been told, and has reported, that while Sri Lanka insisted that its officials would only meet with the Executive Office of the Secretary General -- run by Nambiar -- and not the UN Panel, the UN counter offered a video conference call with the Panel, or even written questions.
Now, instead, there has been a meeting with the Executive Office of the Secretary General, including Nambiar and Silva. The meeting, after Inner City Press yesterday reported its scheduling, was denied by Sri Lanka's Deputy Minister of External Affairs Neomal Perera:
The Government today rejected reports that External Affairs Ministry Secretary Romesh Jayasinghe and Attorney General Mohan Peiris were in New York to meet with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Deputy Minister of External Affairs Neomal Perera told the Daily Mirror that the External Affairs Ministry Secretary was overseas on a private visit and that, to his knowledge, there was no meeting scheduled between the Attorney General and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The Minister further rejected claims that the government had hindered the UN Secretary Generals’ Expert Panel from contacting the local Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
“We are in constant contact with the UN Secretary General’s office and they have not requested to meet with the LLRC. If they so wish they can contact them through us or even directly”, he said.
A representative of the LLRC told the Daily Mirror that any contact between the panel and the LLRC would generally have to be through the External Affairs Ministry. “The Commission has not been contacted, normally however it is understood that any contact would have to be made through the External Affairs Ministry; the Secretary Generals office or the UN office in Colombo would have to contact them- but no such contact has been made,” the representative said.
Reports claimed today that besides disallowing the UN Panel to visit Sri Lanka the government had rejected the Secretary Generals offers for those from the Panel to contact members of the LLRC through video conferencing or written questions.
As Inner City Press stood at the UN's stakeout on the second floor of the North Lawn building, Permanent Representative Palitha Kohona, named in the ICC filing, walked by with the ministers. Inner City Press asked, what about the denial? Kohona said that the deputy doesn't know anything, just ask him. But he has declined to comment on the ICC filing, not wanting to “dignify” it.
© Inner City Press
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
UN Envoy Nambiar facing calls for ICC investigation
By Joseph Aallchin | Democratic Voice of Burma
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The charges were submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the US-based Tamil’s Against Genocide (TAG) and the Swiss Council of Eelam Tamils (SCET). They refer to Nambiar’s time as the UN’s Chief of Staff when he was sent to Colombo to aid negotiations towards an end to the country’s lengthy civil war.
Following instructions from Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in May 2009 Nambiar told surrendering Tamil Tigers that they would be safe to cross no-mans land if they hoisted a white flag. “Just walk across to the troops, slowly! With a white flag and comply with instructions carefully. The soldiers are nervous about suicide bombers,” said a text from foreign secretary Palitha Kohona, sent via the Red Cross.
But in what has come to be known as the ‘white flag incident’, all were gunned down in what observers say would be tantamount to a war crime.
Nambiar’s complicity or involvement in the incident, which Rajapaksa later triumphed in, is yet to be fully investigated. Sri Lankan opposition politician and then-chief of the Sri Lankan Army, Sarath Fonseka, claimed in an interview that there was a direct order from then defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to shoot dead the entire leadership of the Tamil Tigers.
Fonseka is now in jail following the claims and his attempt to oppose Mahinda Rajapaksa in the subsequent polls.
The submission by the two groups, TAG and SCET, asks “whether VIJAY NAMBIAR was in fact an innocent neutral intermediary or in fact a co-perpetrator within the negotiation-related community.
It also pours doubt on the efficacy of Nambiar’s presence there, given that his brother, Satish Nambiar, was at the time working as an advisor to the Sri Lankan military, as well as questioning his “subjective knowledge” of the Sri Lankan Army’s “widely (or routinely) adhered to policy of executing surrendering [Tamil] combatants, after generally blindfolding and stripping them naked”.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has however rejected calls for an inquiry into Nambiar, despite the Chief of Staff’s own assertion in May 2009 that, “As far as the UN is concerned, where there are grave and systematic violations of international humanitarian law [in Sri Lanka], these are things which should be looked at by the international community, by the United Nations.”
This reluctance of senior members of the UN to investigate possible human rights violations will likely concern Burma observers, particularly given that Than Shwe visited Sri Lanka shortly before the incident and is alleged to have offered his Sri Lankan counterpart anti-insurgency “advice”.
Nambiar was in Burma shortly after the elections in November last year to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi and senior members of the junta.
© DVB
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Ashes of Sri Lankan rebel leader's mother desecrated hours after cremation
Photo courtesy: Tamil Net
By Krishan Francis | Associated Press
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
Kanagalingam Sivajilingam said the incident took place Tuesday night, shortly after slain rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran's mother was cremated in his native village of Valvettithurai.
Sivajilingam said relatives who visited the cremation site Wednesday to collect the ashes found them scattered and three dead dogs with bullet wounds lying nearby.
"This a barbaric act. I won't say who did it, but everybody knows who they are," Sivajilingam said.
Killing and dumping dogs, which are considered lowly and unclean, is an expression of contempt for the dead person.
Prabhakaran led the Tamil Tiger rebels during a quarter-century civil war that ended with their defeat and his death in May 2009. The rebels were seeking a separate state for ethnic minority Tamils, claiming discrimination from majority Sinhalese.
Prabhakaran's parents were not involved in politics but were arrested by the military days after the war ended.
After the death of Prabhakaran's father in detention last year, his mother Parvathi was released and spent her last year in hospitals under Sivajilingam's care.
The military, which has a large presence in the Tamil-majority north, has been accused of destroying monuments and rebel graves in an attempt to eliminate every trace of the rebels.
© Star Tribune
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Senior Sri Lankan diplomat could face court over Tamil Tigers deaths
By Dylan Welch | Sydney Morning Herald
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The man, Palitha Kohona, was the international face of the Sri Lankan government's war with separatist militants, the Tamil Tigers, and played an important role in the surrender of Tamil Tiger soldiers following their defeat in May 2009.
But reports of mass killings and the extrajudicial killing of surrendering Tigers have since surfaced. Dr Kohona and the Sri Lankan government strongly deny the claims, and so far the international community has been reluctant to investigate them.
Advertisement: Story continues below
However, two international Tamil organisations have made a series of war crimes allegations to the International Criminal Court involving Dr Kohona and his role in the negotiated surrender of three Tamil Tigers who are believed to have been killed.
While Sri Lanka does not recognise the jurisdiction of the court, Dr Kohona's citizenship of Australia - a country which is a party to the court - means unlike other senior members of the Sri Lankan government, he can potentially be prosecuted.
That does not mean that a full investigation is likely, however, as only a very few of the requests for prosecutions each year are pursued by the court.
Dr Kohona became an Australian citizen in the 1980s while working in Canberra with the Foreign Affairs Department. He is now the Sri Lankan government's representative at the United Nations.
During the 2008-09 civil war which led to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, Dr Kohona was secretary of the Sri Lankan foreign affairs ministry and played a role in negotiating the surrender of Tamil Tigers.
Among those who surrendered were three senior Tiger members, Mahindran Balasingham, Seeveratnam Pulidevan and a man known only as Ramesh.
On May 18, the day after the Tigers admitted defeat, the three men, along with at least a dozen others, negotiated a surrender with the Sri Lankan army. They waved a white flag when surrendering to show their intent.
Watched by hundreds of other Tamils, the group walked into an army-controlled area. Several minutes later shots and explosions were heard, witnesses said.
Balasingham and Pulidevan have not been seen since and Ramesh was seen at a hospital months later but subsequently disappeared. The Sri Lankan government has confirmed the death of two of the men.
The request, filed by the Swiss Council of Eelam Tamils and the US group Tamils Against Genocide, alleges Dr Kohona had been involved in the trio's surrender in the days before their death.
''On about May 17, 2009, in the evening or night, Palitha Kohona communicated … that the surrendering [Tamil Tigers] members would be safe if they surrendered with a white flag raised,'' the request claims.
A day later the three men surrendered. ''Some time after 8.15am [the trio] walked towards SLA lines with a white flag, along with 12-40 combatants and non-combatants … the SLA attacked by gunfire.''
A spokeswoman for the Home Affairs Minister, Brendan O'Connor, would not comment on the case except to say: ''Australia is a party to the Rome Statute and, as such, supports action by the court to prosecute crimes falling within its jurisdiction.''
Dr Kohona told the ABC yesterday the claims had no substance and were politically motivated.
© Sydney Morning Herald
This site is best viewed with firefox
Visit the JDS New Website
Read the urgent alerts - act now!
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields
No Impunity for Enforced Disappearances
UN REPORT ON SRI LANKA
where is prageeth?
Amnesty: Failures of Sri Lanka's LLRC
Permanent Peopls's Tribunal on Sri Lanka - Final Report
Sivaram: A walk down memory lane
Remembering Lasantha
Subscribe to JDS newsfeeds
UN EXPERTS conclusion backs the JDS video
SL Execution Video : The truth comes out
A legacy unforgotten
Post-war justice in sri lanka : International Commission of Jurists
Evidence of Police Brutality in Sri Lanka
A Study of Police Torture in Sri Lanka
