By P.K.Balachandran | Express News Service
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The belief stems from the fact that India has been observing an intriguing silence on the issue when the UN, backed by the US and its Western allies, seems to be bent on pillorying Sri Lanka on war crimes charges.
The silence intrigues Sri Lankans because India has greater political, strategic and economic stakes in here than any other country. Lankans contrast India’s silence with Russia’s open support for the island nation in its hour of crisis. Although China is yet to make its views known, Lankans are sure of its support.
Calls Manmohan
Top government sources confirmed that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had spoken on the phone to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the report. Lakbimanews even said that Colombo sent a copy of the report to Singh for perusal and appropriate action. But, Singh gave Rajapaksa no assurances.
India privy to contents
An official in the top echelons of the Lankan government told Express that India’s man in the United Nations, Hardeep Singh Puri, had met the panel before the latter finalised its report, suggesting that New Delhi had known the panelists’ mind and had a fair of idea of what their report might be like, but had done nothing to prevent it from taking the vituperative form it did.
“The feeling in government circles is that India is playing a double game,” the official, who did not want to be identified, said.
Bid to dominate
It is felt here that India may be wanting to use Lanka’s discomfiture to extract concessions from it as it did at the time of the India-Sri Lanka Accord in 1987.
“Big Brother has always wanted to dominate us,” the Lankan official said, pointing out that India’s Permanent Representative at the UN now, had cut his teeth in diplomacy in 1987 in Colombo under the tutelage of the then Indian High Commissioner, J N Dixit, who, according to the Lankans, thought and acted as if he was a “Viceroy”.
Disillusioned with Prez
The Sunday Times has said that New Delhi’s silence has to be seen in the context of the problems India’s projects in Sri Lanka are facing under the Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime. The paper noted that New Delhi had been pressuring Rajapaksa to address the Tamils’ grievances.
© Express Buzz
Monday, April 25, 2011
India playing double game: Sri Lanka
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sri Lanka faces its 'Srebrenica moment'
Photo courtesy: Guy Calaf
By Gordon Weiss | The Australian
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The parallel is apt when I write that, with the release of a UN report, Sri Lanka has reached its "Srebrenica Moment".
In August 1995, a month after the mass execution of 8000 Muslim boys and men by the Bosnian Serb army, the full proportions of this notorious crime began to break to the wider world. David Rohde, an US reporter, had hiked through frontlines to reach the outskirts of the empty town.
Evidence of the systematic killing of males as they tried to flee the siege lay all about. The journalist wrote of prayer beads, human remains, bullet casings, shopping receipts and clothing scattered like confetti through the fields and forests. There were survivors. For days, weeks and months skeletal wraiths continued to emerge from their woodland hideouts. A young Bosnian friend of mine was Rohde's translator. She spoke with men as they appeared at the edge of forests near the town of Tuzla, held by Bosnian Muslim forces. They listened in disbelief at the stories of those who could barely believe their own tales of survival. They had been shelled, picked off by sniper fire, corralled into groups of hundreds who were then shot and machine-gunned.
Gradually, each dazed survivor tale confirmed the others. US spy planes photographed Bosnian Serb units trying to conceal their crimes by shifting the human refuse of bone, tissue and clothing to even more remote locations such as mine shafts. Rohde confirmed the facts from the ground.
When the graves were uncovered by foreign forensic teams, the pieces literally fell into place. In November, the UN's Hague Tribunal indicted the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. A trophy video of the Scorpion death squad executing crying young men emerged only in 2005. Karadzic was finally arrested in Belgrade in 2008, and sent to The Hague to stand trial. There are thousands of survivors from what a UN panel of judicial experts now alleges is likely one of the 21st century's large-scale war crimes. By January 2009, the army of Sri Lanka had penned the remnants of the Tamil Tiger guerilla forces into a pocket of land the size of New York City. It was the culminating moment of a 30-year civil war. For five months, determined to kill the Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, the army pounded Tiger positions and about 330,000 Tamil civilians.
By then civilians were being held hostage by the rebels, but the army continued its assault. According to the UN report, the army also systematically shelled hospitals and denied humanitarian aid to civilians. It finds credible claims that tens of thousands were killed by shelling.
This was no Libya. The scale of the crime, committed behind the shutters of frontlines that were sealed by the army of Sri Lanka, and from which independent humanitarian workers and journalists were excluded, is just beginning to leak out. Using as a justification the fraternal jingoism of the global war on terror, the government of the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, unleashed death squads on domestic dissenters and sent gangs to attack newspapers and TV outlets.
It choked off visas for foreign journalists trying to reach the island, and stopped those already there from meaningful access to the battlefield. It dispatched its eloquent English-speaking and Oxbridge-educated emissaries to plead in diplomatic assemblies that its "humanitarian" war was "bloodless". If any civilians were killed, they said, it was the Tigers' doing.
In May 2009, with Prabhakaran dead, the remaining 290,000 people were interned in camps. The government prevented the UN legal experts appointed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from visiting Sri Lanka. Many survivors bribed guards and fled abroad, where their testimony formed some of the 4000 submissions to the panel. Sri Lankan soldiers gave information on probable atrocities.
The final UN report, an advance copy of which was provided to the Sri Lankan government, was leaked this week by a Sri Lankan newspaper. The full report of some 200 pages, to be released imminently, dismisses Sri Lanka's domestic judicial process as a decoy, and calls for a full international investigation.
The government of Sri Lanka duped the UN, foreign journalists, diplomats and world leaders. Like the perpetrators of Bosnian crimes, their first line of defence remains a concoction of blanket denial, smooth assurances and indignant bluster.
Two years after the end of the war, foreign reporters and humanitarian workers still do not have access to the alleged crime scene, the final battlefield.
The Sri Lankan government has had ample time to destroy the confetti of evidence. Meantime, it touts its brand of the war on terror as a self-evident success.
This is a "Srebrenica Moment" for the international community of nations, too. The UN report says that the alleged crimes of both the warring parties and subsequent cover-up by the government constitutes "an assault on the entire system of international law and security".
By that, it means that should the government of Sri Lanka be allowed to get away with it, the system of international justice built on the back of the crimes in Rwanda and Bosnia is weakened.
Srebrenica recalls a painful and costly UN failure. In a month during which the UN swiftly forestalled potentially disastrous internal conflicts in Libya and Ivory Coast, Sri Lanka cannot be allowed to erode the basic tenets of international peace, justice and security.
Gordon Weiss was the UN spokesman in Sri Lanka. His book, The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, will be published in May by PanMacmillan.
© The Australian
Sunday, April 24, 2011
World Bank decides to double funds granted to Sri Lanka
Ada Derana
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He stated that these funds would be utilized for the development of education, health and many more sectors.
Amunugama also stated that they hope to increase the economic growth rate of Sri Lanka to 9% by next year.
He further added that at a time when most economies in the world were facing a crisis situation the performance of the Sri Lankan economy has indeed been exemplary.
© Ada Derana
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sri Lanka: Making a mockery of the UN
By Usha S. Sri-Skanda-Rajah | South Asia Analysis Group
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The regime has used every tactic in the book before, during and after its brutal war with the LTTE to cleverly out-maneuver the UN and twist Ban round its fingers. All this at a high cost amounting to colossal loss of lives; untold human suffering; obstruction of justice including distortion of the truth. The UN Panel of Expert’s Report has turned out to be an expose of the Rajapaksa regime’s conduct of the war and the aftermath. Although cornered, the Rajapaksa.
regime is defiant; while denouncing the report and in a last ditch effort to prevent the publication of the report is engaging in political and diplomatic maneuvers in a multi-pronged attack against the Panel’s findings. The regime described the report, according to AFP, as “fundamentally flawed and patently biased,” and adding that it was “presented without any verification”.
Also hitting hard at the UN and its organs and bodies, the Panel lay blame on the UN for not protecting lives.
There was indeed a manipulation of the United Nations system by the actions of the Rajapaksa Regime and a few individuals and nations, fraught with lies, intrigues and cover-ups which led to the failure of the system to protect lives and enabling however the passage of a “deeply flawed” motion, put forward by the Rajapaksa regime in May 2009 soon after the war at a special session of the Human Rights Council, prompting the Panel to call for both a reconsideration of this resolution believing it was “acted on the basis of incomplete information” and a “comprehensive review of the humanitarian and protection mandates” of the United Nations.
But in direct contrast G L Peiris, Sri Lankan External Affairs Minster resisting publication of the report said the release of the full report would actually damage the UN system.
Jeeva Skandamoorthy in an article titled ‘Sri Lanka Tamil Genocide and the Failure of the UNand International Community to Protect’ alludes to Ban’s low-key rhetoric and implicit support of GoSL’s conduct of the war, the TIMES revelation that Ban was told in advance that at least 20,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the Sri Lankan Government’s final offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels: “Mr. Ban never mentioned the death toll during his tour of the battleground on 23rd May 2009,” and “never mentioned this figure to his Sri Lankan interlocutors” (Gulf Daily News, 7th June 2009).
Skandamoorthy also refers to Prof. Boyle’s criticism of Ban for not appointing a commission of inquiry: “UN Secretary General has an obligation to act to prevent criminal activity and either refuses to or fails to do so, that would render him ‘complicit’ with the underlying criminal activity- in this case genocide - article 111(e) of the 1948 Genocide Convention which prohibits, criminalises and calls for the punishment of those ‘complicit in genocide’.”
In addition he cites the revelation by “THE TIMES, relating to Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff to Ban, in his role as a UN envoy and his dealings with GoSL which was called into question since his brother Satish has been a paid consultant to the Sri Lankan army since 2002 and was a close supporter of General Sarath Fonseka (Commander of SLA forces).
Jeeva also cites TamilNet which on 30, May 2009 carried an item from the French paper Le Monde, which quoted Vijay Nambiar as telling UN representatives that the “UN should keep a low profile” and play a “sustaining role” that was compatible with the (Rajapaksa) government”. He refers to Prof. Boyle’s comments about the complicity of both the UN and its officials in aiding the Rajapaksa regime: “In other words both the United Nations organizations and its highest level officials are guilty of aiding and abetting Nazi-type crimes by the GoSL against Tamils.”
Skandamoorthy recalls certain anecdotes which clearly reveal Sri Lanka’s strategy to get the member nations on board for its war of attrition against the oppressed Tamil population by depicting it as a ‘war on terror’ and preventing the application of the principles embodied in R2P – Responsibility to Protect: On UN failure with R2P in Sri Lanka, Norman Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of linguistics at MIT said at the UN General Assembly the “hypocrisy was so profound, it was suffocating.”
The International Crisis Group said in its report dated 11, January 2010. “India and Western governments may yet come to regret giving Sri Lanka the green light and even assisting it to fight a ‘war on terror’.”
As the world waited on Thursday 21, April to finally see the official version of the UN Panel’s report in full, what it got was a late briefing from Ban’s, Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq telling the media that the Sri Lankan government “is being given another chance to respond.” This was contrary to Haq’s position just the previous day that the Rajapaksa regime’s lack of response, “doesn’t need to tie our hands down regarding when we are going to put out this report. As we have said repeatedly, we’ll put it out this week.”
The Executive Summary of the Panel’s report and parts of the main document were mysteriously leaked after it was delivered to the government to look at first. Kusala Perera journalist explains: Ban Ki-moon's Independent Advisory Panel of Experts on Sri Lanka, that is not based on any UN resolution and is not binding on UN to follow up on, is being hyped and carried as an official investigation by the UN, to give MR the space to go on a blitzkrieg that would once again have the Sinhala majority running behind Rajapaksa patriotism. For this, there was a necessity to have some "leak" to work on, make statements and start a campaign. The Sunday Island seemed the immediate pick. Its Editor Prabath Sahabandu has told ICP, his newspaper has no issue like other
news papers with this government, as they see eye to eye on the war.” The UN itself thinks the leak was orchestrated by the regime.
In another new development it seems going by the Trancurrents website the release of the Panel’s Report has been put on hold “pending discussions between Ban and External Affairs Minister, G.L. Peiris scheduled for April 23. According to sources the portal said the story is that G L Peiris wants to discuss an issue with Ban. G.L Peiris is also expected to persuade Ban not to publish the report and Ban on the other hand wants to publish the report in full whether the response is ready or not: “Pressure exerted by powerful western nations and International human rights agencies on Ban would ensure such release.
Sarah Smith reporting from New York for Channel Four News UK describes how the Rajapaksa regime orchestrated a sabotage of UN’s plans to release the report on 21st April, before the Easter weekend: The Sri Lankan government “knew they were about to be accused of war crimes and insisted that they be allowed to publish their response at the same time and they had so far refused to come up with that response so they have deftly managed to avoid having the report published and embarrass the UN at the same time.”
Sarah Smith alluded to the regime’s tactics of finding a good time to bury bad news: “They have had a copy of the report for nine days now. They have had time to leak substantial sections of it to the Sri Lankan newspapers. They have had time for the Foreign Minister to have a press conference denouncing the report’s conclusions and insisting that the UN don’t publish it. But at the same time not coming out with their official response, he has done that and stopped the UN from publishing it. And it means it is likely to come out over the Easter weekend getting a lot less attention than it would have otherwise. And it is a pretty clever way to find a good time to bury bad news to the Sri Lankan government.”
The so called “bad news” for the Rajapaksa regime being the Panel’s findings of “credible allegations” which “if proven, indicate war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed,” both by the Rajapaksa government and the LTTE.
While buying time, advancing its cause and using its persuasive powers and influence, as before amongst certain member countries in the UN at the expense of further sullying the reputation of this august body and its officials, the Rajapaksa regime is busy pursuing political and diplomatic maneuvers to try to scuttle due process. The regime though cornered is defiant as ever, denouncing the report and engaging in a multi-pronged strategy against the Panel’s findings at home and abroad:
At home it’s planning a massive May 1st Rally mobilizing the faithful to protest against the Panels findings of credible allegations. Although according to BBC a “Rift over Sri Lanka president's call for anti-UN rally” has emerged. Trade unions affiliated to Sri Lanka's ruling coalition are divided over the president's call for mass protests against a UN report.
The Rajapaksa regime has also initiated a petition the Sunday Leader reported. A government minister C.B. Ratnayake involved in the project launched the public petition aimed at gathering a million signatures against the report at a private bus stand in Pettah.”
The Ground Views web portal was critical of the Rajapaksa regime’s efforts to whip up mass appeal: “This petition, and others that will invariably follow after the report’s official publication, is emblematic of Sri Lanka’s peculiar democracy, where highly emotive issues ratcheted up by expedient politicians with little or no grounding in actual fact are actually able to whip up mass appeal….. and support of Sri Lankans who know little or nothing of what they oppose, reflects the significant challenge of reconciliation and accountability, post-war.” Ground Views ncluded.
The Rajapaksa regime in its most crucial counter offensive to win diplomatic support against the report is ironically using the issue of reconciliation to argue against the publication of the report. Sri Lanka asked the United Nations on Thursday not to publish a forthcoming report on alleged war crimes… saying it could set back reconciliation efforts: “The publication of this report will cause irreparable damage to the reconciliation efforts of Sri Lanka. It will damage the UN system too,” Peiris told reporters in Colombo, stating This UN report is preposterous.” But most human rights defenders and journalist and legislators think truth, accountability and justice is most crucial for genuine reconciliation.
The Rajapaksa regime has dispatched its envoys to persuade all of its allies, especially those countries which supported Sri Lanka in the 2009 UN HRC resolution. The countries which voted for Sri Lanka’s motion were: Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Madagascar, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Uruguay and Zambia. Those who voted against were Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and those abstaining were:
Argentina, Gabon, Japan, Mauritius, Republic of Korea and Ukraine.
In Russia’s case according to Sri Lanka Daily Mirror, the Russian envoy in Colombo visited Gotabaya Rajapaksa and is supposed to have said the UN must not complicate the reconciliation process: “We speak not about a 'UN report', since it was prepared neither by a UN body or nor even by its request. It was just a personal initiative of the UN Secretary General”, the Sri Lanka defence ministry said quoting Russian ambassador in Colombo Vladimir P. Mikhaylov. Finally, the Ambassador concluded saying “we believe that now, when Sri Lanka is healing its wounds after long armed conflict, the UN may render its assistance, if needed, and not complicate the process of reconciliation. Our representative to the UN in New York recently reconfirmed this
position.” It’s also interesting to note that Ban is visiting Russia himself and is seeking its support for his re-appointment for a second term.
Well known Tamil Analyst Ithaya Chandran explains the regimes strategy: Rajapaksa purposely leaked few pages of the report through the Island, in order to mobilize the Sinhala masses, religious leaders and politicians against UN. His first move began yesterday to obtain 10 LAKHS signature from Sinhalese to oppose the report. Gotabaya’s planned meeting with Russian Ambassador Valdimir P.Mikhaylov at the Defence Ministry was to get an undertaking from
Russia. Gotabaya has declared that he has got the Russian and Chinese veto powers in hand. Through the leftist Minister, Vasudava Nanayakkaara, he is trying to get the support of left- oriented and anti-US countries, especially from the NON-Aligned movement. By manipulating the friction between Ranil Wickremasinghe and Sajith Premadasa, he would obtain the support of one faction of the UNP. By portraying the UN report as a ploy by western nations and by bringing all the left politics towards his authoritarian center, he plans to ultimately, deny access to any form of 'concurrent international mechanism’ suggested by the UN trio.
Most Tamils are looking to India for its response to the Panel’s finding that tens of thousands of people were killed by government shelling which the Tamils think constituted a crime of genocide. Meenakshi Ganguli, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, told PTI that “if India wanted to emerge as a leader on the global stage then the country's leadership would have to show its intention of "protecting the rights of people over government.”
If calls for accountability grow, observers have noted that the Indian government would probably discuss the issue privately with the Rajapaksa regime. India's position on human rights has come under increasing scrutiny as New Delhi hopes to get a permanent seat in the Security Council. Recently India, which is currently a non-permanent member on the Council, voted for the first round of sanctions against Muammar Gaddafi but it abstained on the resolution authorising use of force. “There are people in Tamil Nadu who also care about it (India's position on the Lankan war crimes),” Ganguli said.
Although India is keeping silent on the leaked contents of the UN Panel’s report so far, it would be interesting to find out how it would react to the report. Recently Sonia Gandhi who was visiting the UK to deliver a Common Wealth Lecture on “Women as Agents of change” declining to comment on the war crimes issue but replied to concerns raised by Global Tamil Forum about the militarised north, crimes including rape of women committed by the military and the need for Tamil rights to be restored: “I am very, very concerned about the situation in Sri Lanka. Tamils should have their rights restored and it’s their rights you know. We are with the Tamils, you must know, we are with the Tamils.” It is these rights that we would examine in part III.
And just today April 22, 2011 Jayalalithaa herself “demanded that the government take 'immediate steps' to make Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa stand trial for alleged war crimes during the conflict between the Lankan armed forces and the LTTE following a UN report.
Slamming her arch rival and DMK president M Karunanidhi for his 'three-hour fast' in 2009 demanding a halt to the Lankan government offensive, she said the UN report "clearly holds that the carnage lasted till May 2009, well after Karunanidhi had made his dubious claim that hostilities had ended following his fast on April 27."
"The Indian Government, on its part, should initiate immediate steps to make Rajapaksa and his cronies stand trial in the International Court of Justice for his war crimes," she said. Jayalalithaa’s statement before her anticipated victory in the Tamil Nadu legislative elections is timely and comes when a high profile statement was found wanting from the Indian sub continent.
While the release of the real, unmodified report in full is being awaited, there are a few measures recommended by the Panel which the Rajapaksa regime must seriously consider taking as an important step towards genuine reconciliation: Making a public and formal acknowledgment of its role and responsibility for extensive civilian casualties and institute a reparations programme. The question is will the Rajapaksa regime be prepared to do it?
© SAAG
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Sri Lanka: Law College whistle-blower goes underground
By Raisa Wickrematunge | The Sunday Leader
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Jayaratne’s story was splashed all over the newspapers and was taken up by the Asian Human Rights Commission. Jayaratne claimed that one of the law exam papers was leaked, and that preferential treatment was provided to fellow law student, President’s son, Namal Rajapaksa.
In January, the Sri Lanka Law College issued a statement that the allegations were untrue. The office of the Chief Justice confirmed that investigations into the incident had commenced on January 12.
However, Jayaratne insists that he is telling the truth.
Thushara’s story
On December 3, Jayaratne was at the Law College, preparing to sit for a Commercial Law paper, which was an open book examination. He noticed that an air conditioned room was unlocked.
The exam was starting at 2 pm, so Jayaratne was at the canteen, having lunch and talking to a student from the Open University. At that point, Namal Rajapaksa was also there with security personnel who were dressed in plain clothes. Some of the group proceeded to discuss a difficult question. Later on, Jayaratne discovered that the question they had spoken of was part of the paper. What’s more, he claimed that Namal Rajapaksa had a computer with an internet connection on his desk, whereas the other students were not even allowed mobile phones in the examination hall.
He also claimed that Namal had taken the examination in the air conditioned room, separate from other candidates. Jayaratne added that there was space in the exam hall he sat in, though it was claimed there was none.
Incensed at what he saw as an injustice, Jayaratne went to the Law College Registrar to complain. There he ran into his first roadblock, when the Registrar refused to accept his complaint. Undaunted, Jayaratne went to the Keselwatte police, but there too he met with refusal. Next he went to the Police Headquarters. By this time, the media had got wind of the story, Jayaratne said. The complaint was duly recorded. A fellow student at the Law College telephoned Jayaratne to tell him that the police had questioned the Registrar and Principal.
However, Jayaratne decided to go to the Bribery and Corruption Commission on December 4. Here too, his requests to record a complaint were ignored. Before leaving he spoke to an official who told him to drop the complaint, “or what happened to Aristotle will happen to you, if you tell the truth.”
The warnings didn’t stop there. On December 6, Jayaratne received at least three calls from the Law College Registrar’s office. The caller told him to abandon the issue or leave the college. It was around this time the law student began receiving death threats. He was unable to sit his final two exams, afraid something would happen to him if he entered the College again.
Several times police attempted to take Jayaratne into custody, but he evaded them with the help of friends.
Jayaratne went to the Human Rights Commission on December 15 and filed a letter detailing the threats to his life. The letter was also addressed to IGP Mahinda Balasuriya and the Commissioner Ombudsman.
Finally on January 8, Jayaratne received a letter calling him to appear at the Law College for an inquiry into the incident. They warned him that if he did not attend, legal action would be filed against him. Though he was afraid for his safety Jayaratne went back to the College, accompanied by IUSF Convenor Udul Premaratne amongst others, to tell his story.
A report was later released to the media to the effect that Jayaratne’s testimony was based on hearsay.
Around a month passed. Then on March 3 the Human Rights Commission said they would be taking no further action on Jayaratne’s complaints as it fell outside their purview. The next day, Jayaratne was en route to a family member’s home when two men accosted him. Though they were in civilian clothing, they were very fit and appeared to be military personnel, Jayaratne said. They had asked him to come with them to record a statement. Jayaratne agreed, but asked that he be taken in an official police vehicle. The two refused.
Seeing a 120 route bus passing, the law student jumped onto it in an effort to escape. However, on looking behind him he saw that the two men had followed him onto the bus. He alighted in front of the Boralesgamuwa police station, and seeing no other option had gone with the two men. The two wanted to know who had been contacting Jayaratne. They noted down some details, finally releasing him around 11 pm. A three wheeler parked outside then transported him away.
The Human Rights Commission said the abduction also fell outside their purview, though Jayaratne in a letter said that police officers later took down a statement, supposedly in response to his complaint. However the officer refused to note down Jayaratne’s complaints against Namal Rajapaksa and the Law College Registrar.
On March 28, Jayaratne was assaulted by two people while sitting outside his home.
This was followed by another visit by two people in civilian clothing on April 10. Jayaratne said he recognised one of them, who had also threatened him in March. The duo forced Jayaratne to sign two documents, written in English. As he was afraid for his life, Jayaratne complied. He is afraid the documents might have amounted to a withdrawal of his complaint about the Law College. He has already written to the Asian Human Rights Commission about the incident.
The other side of the coin
The Law College Principal confirmed to The Sunday Leader that an investigation had been held into Jayaratne’s claims. “He was even allowed to bring a lawyer and give a statement,” the Principal confirmed. It was found that his allegations were based on hearsay, he said. “He had absolutely no knowledge. They were unfounded allegations,” he said. He added that as the matter was settled he thought it unnecessary to further publicise the issue.
For his part, Jayaratne continues to insist on the truth of his accusations. “The statement that my complaints are based on hearsay is a lie,” he said.
However Police Spokesman Prishantha Jayakody told The Sunday Leader in January that Jayaratne’s evidence was almost exclusively based on what he had overheard at the canteen. “He has no direct evidence that the paper was leaked. It’s just a rumour,” he told The Sunday Leader at the time.
MP Namal Rajapaksa did not respond to phone calls and text messages requesting a comment. IGP Mahinda Balasuriya was also unable to speak to The Sunday Leader.
Although Jayaratne’s claims have been largely dismissed by the Law College and police as false, he continues to fear for his life. His finances have been disrupted and he has come up against enormous difficulties, he says. To date, he remains in hiding, having abandoned his former residence.
© The Sunday Leader
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UN rejects Sri Lanka`s call to hold back war crimes report
By Masood Haider | Dawn
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Responding to questions on the controversy generated by the report in Sri Lanka, spokesman Farhan Haq said: “As wev`e repeated from the outset it is our intention to release it as soon as possible.”
Mr Haq also said that the UN was awaiting a response from the government of Sri Lanka on the report saying “we would like to publish it simultaneously with a response from the Sri Lankan government”.
At a press conference in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka`s Foreign Minister G.L. Perisis urged UN not to publish the report as it would stall the reconciliation process and damage relations between Sri Lanka and the world body.
The UN panel found “credible allegations” of civilian deaths, which it blamed mostly on the government, and urged the prosecution of those responsible for violations in the last stage of a quarter-century war with ethnic Tamil separatists.
Besides, excerpts of the findings of an advisory panel appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have been leaked to Sri Lankan newspapers.
“Everybody knew what happened, so what`s the point of punishing now?”, asked Prithika Shanmugam, a 27-year-old Tamil, according to an agency report.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris again rejected the report as flawed.
“The charges are unsubstantiated,” he said at the news conference also attended by his Bangladesh counterpart Dipu Moni. “The evidences are weak and not appropriate.”
© Dawn.com
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UN report verifies Sri Lankan government war crimes
By Sarath Kumara | World Socialist Web Site
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The three-member panel was belatedly appointed in March 2010, after widespread accounts of atrocities carried out by the Sri Lankan military in the final months of its long-running war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in May 2009.
The full 196-page report is yet to be officially released, but the executive summary was leaked to the media last Saturday. It rebuts the claims made by President Mahinda Rajapakse and other Sri Lankan politicians that the military was engaged in a “humanitarian rescue operation” with a policy of “zero civilian casualties.”
The report, which covers the period from September 2008 to May 2009, concludes that the military campaign into the LTTE-held Vanni region used “large-scale and widespread shelling causing large numbers of civilian deaths. This campaign constituted persecution of the population of the Vanni. Around 330,000 civilians were trapped into an ever-decreasing area, fleeing the shelling but kept hostage by the LTTE. The government sought to intimidate and silence the media and other critics of the war through a variety of threats and actions, including the use of white vans to abduct and to make people disappear.”
The persecution of the Tamil population underlines the communal character of the civil war. Successive Colombo governments fought the war to entrench the dominance of the Sinhala elite that has used communal violence and systematic discrimination against the Tamil minority for decades to divide working people to maintain its rule.
The executive summary also accuses the LTTE of refusing to allow civilians to leave its territory—in the final months shooting those who attempted to leave—and forcibly recruiting children as young as 14. Such practices make clear that the LTTE’s defeat was primarily political, not military. Confronted with a concerted government offensive, the LTTE was unable to mobilise any significant active political support from the Tamil population, let alone more broadly from the working class in Sri Lanka and internationally.
However, as the report stated, “most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling.” The military bombarded its own “no-fire zones” where it had encouraged civilians to congregate and assured them of protection. Despite being informed of their locations, the government shelled the “United Nations hub, food distribution lines and near the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ships that were coming to pick up the wounded and their relatives from the beaches.”
The government also shelled designated hospitals, some repeatedly, and “systematically deprived people in the conflict zone of humanitarian aid, in the form of food and medical supplies, particularly surgical supplies, adding to their suffering”.
The government and military deliberately underestimated the number of civilians trapped in the LTTE-held zone in order to cover up the number of dead and wounded that resulted from its shelling. The UN report estimated that “tens of thousands lost their lives from January to May 2009, many of whom died anonymously in the carnage of the final few days.” The figure is significantly higher than the previous UN estimate of 7,000.
Following the LTTE’s military collapse, around 280,000 civilians—men, women and children—were forcibly and illegally detained in so-called welfare camps run by the military. “Massive overcrowding led to terrible conditions, breaching the basic social and economic rights of the detainees, and many lives were lost unnecessarily,” the report stated. Some of those singled out as “LTTE suspects” were tortured and summarily executed and the remainder sent to secret prisons.
Nearly two years after the LTTE’s defeat, the pervasive role of the military and the government’s anti-democratic measures continue. As well as the ongoing use of emergency powers and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the report drew attention to “the continued militarisation of the former conflict zone and the use of paramilitary proxies, all of which perpetuate a climate of fear, intimidation and violence.”
Despite the seriousness of these crimes, the Expert Panel’s recommendations effectively let those responsible off the hook. The report was scathing on the lack of accountability through the Sri Lankan court system and described the government’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) as lacking “independence and impartiality” and compromised by the “deep-seated conflicts of interests of some of its members.”
However, the report’s main recommendation leaves the investigation of the war crimes to the Sri Lankan government—that is, in the hands of the criminals themselves. It calls for the Rajapakse regime to immediately commence “genuine investigations” into the “credible allegations” of international law identified by the panel. A separate international mechanism is proposed to monitor and assist the Sri Lankan government.
The Rajapakse administration immediately dismissed the UN report with contempt. In a brief statement, the External Affairs Ministry declared that “the UN report is fundamentally flawed in many respects.” It went on: “Among other deficiencies, the report is based on patently biased material which is presented without any verification.”
The response is hardly surprising. President Rajapakse was hostile to the UN Panel from the outset and refused to allow its members to visit the country or interview civilian or military officials. In other words, the government actively blocked evidence gathering, in the same way that it prevented the media and most aid organisations from the war zone in the final months of the war. It continues to deny responsibility for any civilian deaths.
At the same time, the government is mounting a crude anti-Western propaganda campaign, claiming that the country faces a vast international conspiracy. Rajapakse has called on his Sri Lankan Freedom Party to organise a May Day rally as a “show of strength” against the UN Panel report and any calls for war crimes investigations.
Rajapakse accused Western countries of conducting a campaign to punish Sri Lanka for defeating the LTTE. The claim is ludicrous. Right up until the final months of the war, the US and European powers had quietly backed Rajapakse’s renewed war against the LTTE, the military’s open breaches of the 2002 ceasefire and its shelling of civilians, abductions and extrajudicial killings.
The US and its European allies only began to raise concerns about the Sri Lankan military’s actions in the final months of the war when the scale of the savagery became apparent and was generating international outrage. Even then, the main purpose of the limited criticisms of Western powers was not to prevent the slaughter under way, but rather to boost their political influence in Colombo.
The US in particular was deeply concerned that rival China had exploited the conflict to forge close ties with the Rajapakse government by providing military, financial and political support. China had already been granted the contract to build a sophisticated modern port at Hambantota in the south of the island. The port is part of a broader Chinese plan to build harbours adjacent to key shipping routes from Africa and the Middle East to North East Asia.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, underscored Washington’s vital interests in Sri Lanka in comments on April 5 to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Positioned directly on the shipping routes that carry petroleum products and other trade from the Gulf to East Asia, Sri Lanka remains of strategic interest to the US,” he explained.
While the government’s record on human rights and the weakening of democratic institutions was “worrisome,” Blake declared, “Sri Lanka stands poised to be a capable and willing partner to effectively combat violent extremism, trafficking and piracy, and thereby help to ensure the maritime security of the region.” Since late 2009, Washington has further played down “human rights”, as it has sought other means to establish the Rajapakse government as a reliable US partner.
Even the UN report was compelled to acknowledge that the UN Security Council and other UN bodies “failed to take actions,” including in the final months of the war, to protect civilians. The “failure” simply demonstrates that lack of any real interest in the plight of hundreds of thousands of civilians on the part of all the major powers as each sought to exploit the issue for its own political ends. The same considerations will determine the fate of the Expert Panel report itself.
© WSWS
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Sri Lanka: Cry from the Graves?
By Sivanendran | South Asia Analysis Group
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Fifty years of ethnic cleansing have wiped out whole generations who knew any sort of peace, and have made cohabitation between the Tamils and the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka virtually impossible. The Sinhala politicians have transformed the country into a counter-insurgency state like Columbia, in which repression, torture, imprisonment without trial and disappeared people are institutionally embedded. It appears that it is an extremely difficult task for the Sri Lankans to reverse this process.
Violation of Human Rights in Sri Lanka
With the end of the civil war, there was a glimmer of hope in resolving the longstanding crisis. However, this is unlikely. The current regime having come back to power appears to block meaningful efforts at accountability of individuals for past violations of human rights.
Sri Lanka will continue to be faced in the future by challenges of justice and reconciliation arising from the grave human rights abuses that have been committed by all armed groups in the course of the conflict, as documented over the years by international human rights groups and UN bodies, which have long declared that impunity reigns increasingly unchallenged in the country.
When the Sri Lankan Government formally terminated the ceasefire agreement in January 2008, the previous UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, warned that violations of human rights and humanitarian law could entail individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law, including by those in positions of command. She and her successor, Navi Pillay, have had cause to repeat this warning on several occasions since.
In the course of fighting, both sides violated humanitarian law. The LTTE forcibly conscripted adults and children, and forced civilians to travel with its retreating forces and to serve as a buffer against the approaching Sri Lankan army. Thousands of these civilians died when government forces fired artillery into areas densely populated with civilians, who were forced to remain at risk in the conflict zone. The LTTE reportedly opened fire on and killed civilians who attempted to escape.
The Culture of Violence continues
The demand of the Tamil people for a separate state started only after the repeated pogroms suffered by the Tamil people at the hands of the Sinhalese. Inaction by successive governments in Sri Lanka to provide security to the Tamils resulted in their alienation from the Sri Lankan state as it progressively identified with the Sinhala thugs in the streets. Instead of providing protection to its citizens the Sri Lankan state became more tolerant of the inciters to violence on the Tamils. This resulted in the demand for Ealam, a separate state by the Tamil people.
Nothing has changed for the Tamils since the end of the war. In the North the Tamil people are terrorised by an occupied Sinhala army and kept virtually in an open prison. The Tamils in the East are condemned to live in terror of being killed under the joint patronage of the government and the feuding para-militaries. And in the Vanni, where a battle was waged between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan State - where the Government indiscriminately bombed and maimed the Tamils who they claim to be their own citizens – the whole area is evacuated since the war and the government is cleaning up the land and removing all evidence of its atrocities. And in the remainder of Sri Lanka, where any Tamil is viewed with suspicion and treated more as an outsider than as a citizen of Sri Lanka, subjected to arbitrary arrests, killings, kidnappings, extortion all carried out with impunity from apprehension or justice. In short, the Tamil people are still languishing in all corners of the Sri Lankan state and find themselves as exiles in their own land.
The government removed all international NGO’s, UN organisations and all media from the war zone and continued with a war described as a War without Witness. The civil war thus created more than 500,000 Internally Displaced People (IDP), most of them still dispersed and still living outside their homes. The IDP’s have been generated by the expulsion of the Tamil population from their land so that the security forces could establish secure areas. Hence the entire Tamil population along the coastal line of the Northeast have been expelled. Further the people who inhabited the Vanni areas are now dispersed.
Further, it is estimated that more than 100,000 Tamils must have perished during the civil war over the past 25 years and at least a further 100,000 maimed and injured. It is estimated that another 50,000 – 100,000 were killed during the last weeks of the war. It suggests a determination by the State to simply wipe out as many people as possible and not to follow the rules of international humanitarian law. Some of those who came to surrender to the security forces holding a white flag were shot. There is video footage of troops killing surrendered people that is published and verified for its accuracy.
There have been reports of abductions of children from the camps and the ‘disappearance’ or murder, possibly by paramilitary groups operating within the camps, of LTTE cadres who are currently being held in them. Once they have been identified, the authorities are sending LTTE cadres to separate camps where they will undergo “rehabilitation”. There have been accusations that the authorities are treating every civilian in the camps as a possible LTTE suspect and sent to special camps.
4.1 Cry for Justice
In the circumstances, accounting for the conduct of soldiers, their commanding officers, and civilian superiors during the fighting is crucial. However, it is only part of the challenge Sri Lanka faces in repairing its battered human rights record and restoring public faith in its government, justice system and the rule of law. Today Sri Lanka has a chance to rebuild its institutions so that they can protect efficiently and without discrimination the human rights of every woman, man and child. Accountability for violations of human rights and humanitarian law is an important precondition to bind up the nations wounds and rebuild the country and achieve a lasting peace.
The conflict in Sri Lanka has not yet been put on the formal agenda of the UN Security Council as a country situation. While in general there was little appetite for doing so until late 2008, in recent months it is Russia and China that have blocked more concerted efforts by other members of the Security Council. The apparent inaction of the Security Council has been the subject of heavy criticism by those who believe it should have played a much more active role than it has. More than anybody else the suffering Tamils have been crying silently for justice for those killed in the bloody massacre in the early months of 2009.
United Nations and the International Community
There has also been some activity on Sri Lanka within UN human rights mechanisms. Since late 2007, international human rights groups and their local allies have been lobbying for a UN human rights monitoring mission to be established in Sri Lanka, supported by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour and her successor, Navi Pillay. These calls have been consistently rejected by the Sri Lankan Government but remain ‘on the table’ internationally, at least in theory.
Efforts at the 10th session of the HRC in March 2009 to win agreement to hold a special session on Sri Lanka were unsuccessful, despite support from some European countries. However, attempts to secure such a session continued and a special session eventually took place on 26-27 May. The Sri Lankan Government marshalled support from China, Russia, India, Pakistan and other countries to prevent a critical resolution being passed. Despite the efforts of a range of western governments, there was no call in the resolution that was eventually passed for an international war crimes investigation like the one it had mandated earlier in the year with regard to the conflict in Gaza.
Sri Lanka will also continue to be faced in the future by challenges of justice and reconciliation arising from the grave human rights abuses that have been committed by all armed groups in the course of the conflict, as documented over the years by international human rights groups and UN bodies, which have long declared that impunity reigns increasingly unchallenged in the country.
At an event in the IVTY courtroom, marking the Srebrenica massacre in July 2010, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon stressed the need to ensure accountability for those involved in the Muslim men by Bosnian Serb forces after they took over Srebrenica. He said “Until all those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes face those charges and are judged, our quest for justice, and the path towards healing, will remain incomplete.” Further, he said, “ We recognize the burden of families and loved ones who carry the memories and pain with each step,” and noted “And, we vow, together, never again to allow such an atrocity to happen at any time...in any place.” The Secretary General observed that the emergence of respect and trust after conflict depends heavily on bringing the perpetrators to account.
Sri Lankan Government
The Sri Lankan Government has said that its own courts will look into any war crimes allegations, although it has already stated that it believes such allegations to be unfounded. It seems highly unlikely, given the past record of the Government and the judiciary, that there will be a credible domestic judicial investigation into allegations that genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in the course of the conflict, with the possible exception of the former LTTE cadres now in custody.
However, in that event an international investigation of some kind remains possible. The US and EU have now endorsed the idea. The Security Council or the Human Rights Council could initiate such an investigation. However, Sri Lanka probably has enough allies on both bodies to prevent such an outcome.
For its part, the ICC could take up the issue either through referral by the Security Council (extremely unlikely) or under the independent authority of the Prosecutor. The latter would be highly controversial. The Prosecutor has not yet used this power and Sri Lanka is not a State Party to the Rome Statute. However, there have been calls by advocates of the Tamil cause for him to take up the issue of war crimes committed by four senior officials. He has not yet officially responded. Efforts to establish some kind of international war crimes investigation look set to continue, but the odds are strongly against a role for the ICC.
However, the mounting humanitarian crisis has compelled the UN Secretary General to name a panel of experts to advise him, on the way forward on accountability issues related to Sri Lanka. There recommendations have been handed over to the Secretary General. At present there is a tussle going on behind the scenes. Meanwhile, portions of the documents have been leaked to the press. Will these recommendations answer the prayers of the victims of this massacre? The Truth must be told and Justice must be done.
© SAAG
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UN heads for rights confrontation with Sri Lanka
By Tim Witcher | AFP
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Rejecting a Sri Lankan demand to keep a report by a panel of experts secret, the United Nations on Friday said the report would soon be published in full without changes, and accompanied by recommendations on the next steps to be taken.
The United Nations said it was in talks with Sri Lankan authorities on an offer to add their comments to the report into the alleged deaths of tens of thousands of people when government forces launched a final offensive against Tamil separatists in 2009.
Diplomats noted, however, that Sri Lanka had sought the help of international allies to try and get the recommendations of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suppressed.
"With Russia and China already trying to intimidate him (Ban), other Security Council members and countries attached to the idea of justice should come to his support," said Human Rights Watch's UN director Philippe Bolopion.
"It remains our intention to publish the report of the panel of experts on Sri Lanka in full and without amendment," said deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq.
Ban returns to New York from a trip to Europe on Saturday and the report could be released on Monday, according to diplomats.
"The secretary-general believes that the panel has done a good and conscientious job and that the results of the report will speak for themselves," Haq said, noting Ban would have recommendations on how to proceed.
Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris had earlier urged Ban to refrain from releasing the report he called "preposterous."
"The publication of this report will cause irreparable damage to the reconciliation efforts of Sri Lanka. It will damage the UN system too," Peiris said in Colombo.
According to parts of the report leaked to the Sri Lankan media, the UN panel recommends an inquiry into "credible allegations" of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the government and the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
The United Nations has said the leaked parts are accurate but incomplete.
It says "tens of thousands" of people died between January and May 2009 in the final government offensive that crushed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, ending a decades-old conflict.
The Sri Lankan government has said no civilians were killed during the offensive. President Mahinda Rajapakse has called on supporters to turn this year's May Day rally into a demonstration against any UN investigation.
The UN spokesman said the report had played a key role in fulfilling part of an agreement on accountability reached when Ban traveled to Sri Lanka in 2009.
"After giving some time for the government of Sri Lanka to pursue the issue of accountability on its own, the secretary-general believed last year that he needed to form an independent panel to look at the issues of accountability," said Haq, insisting the United Nations acted "in good faith" with Sri Lanka.
"This is a very serious issue and it is very important that this report comes out."
Rights groups backed the tough UN stance.
"The government's aggressive efforts to suppress the report and deny any wrongdoing only confirm that justice won't come from a domestic process," said Human Rights Watch's Bolopion.
"Ban has done the right thing by creating the advisory panel and announcing that he would make its report public. He should now follow up his panel's advice by creating an international commission of inquiry."
© Yahoo! News
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Sri Lanka: War Crimes
Al Jazeera
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What exactly happened during the last days of the battle is still the subject of fierce debate, but it is clear that as the rebel perimeter shrank, around a third of a million civilians were trapped between the two armies and tens of thousands were killed.
The government says the LTTE were using civilians as human shields, Tamil exiles say the deaths were the result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan army. The LTTE was crushed in the offensive, most of its leaders killed and thousands were captured and imprisoned but the Sri Lankan government has so far refused to agree to an independent, international war crimes investigation.
Now a UN panel has found that the allegations against both sides are credible saying they may have committed serious violations of humanitarian law.
As Juliana Ruhfus and Dom Rotheroe have been finding out, unless and until the truth is established, a final reconciliation in Sri Lanka may prove impossible.
Some of the images in their film are deeply disturbing.
© Al Jazeera
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