A cartoon by Carlos Latuff
By Lutz Oette | Open Democracy
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The Report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka relating to the final stages of the war in 2008/2009 was finally published on 25 April 2011. It is the first time that the country has received the attention at UN level that its record of conflict and violations merits.
Unsurprisingly, the Report reads as a major indictment of both parties to the conflict that ended with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in May 2009: “…the Panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law was committed [by both parties], some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indeed, the conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace.” The Panel went further and identified patterns of discrimination, impunity, repressive legislation and the steady erosion of the rule of law as major factors that have facilitated violations over the years. It roundly dismissed the measures taken by the Government of Sri Lanka following the war that focused almost exclusively on the LTTE’s role.
The UN: Time to abandon its bystander role
The Report would have missed an important dimension had it not pointed out the UN’s failure to provide protection of civilians during the war. If anything, the expert’s analysis of the international role is too narrow. Sri Lanka is one of the countries where most international actors have been bystanders for years. This was not for want of knowledge. Yet, despite tens of thousands of deaths and countless well-documented violations, the UN Security Council or others did not take effective measures to address root causes. The UN Security Council only acted in May 2009 on the conflict in Sri Lanka, without, however, adopting any resolution.
The role played by regional actors in Asia, support for its ‘fight against terrorism’ and a lack of appetite to get involved must have convinced Sri Lanka that it could use ‘all means necessary’ to finish the war against the LTTE without facing adverse consequences. As the Panel found, this included widespread shelling of civilians and numerous other violations, such as extrajudicial killings and torture. (The LTTE was held responsible for a series of violations, including killing civilians and forced recruitment of children)
Coming 15 years after the Rwanda genocide and four years after it endorsed the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ populations from international crimes, the UN’s ineffective responses in Sri Lanka raised anew the question whether the UN and other international actors are able to move beyond rhetoric when dealing with such crimes. This failure was compounded, adding insult to injury, by the UN Human Rights Council’s 2009 special session. Acting as the main UN human rights body, it effectively endorsed the sanitised version of the war put forward by the Government of Sri Lanka, which simply blamed the LTTE and offered basic humanitarian assistance and reconstruction for the future.
The Report provides an opportunity for the UN system to play a leading role in seeking accountability for international crimes committed during the war, offering a means to partly make good its earlier failures. The experts recommend as much when requesting the UN Secretary-General to “immediately proceed to establish an independent international mechanism …,” which also has the power to “conduct investigations independently into the alleged violations.” The Secretary- General responded saying that “[i]n regard to the recommendation that he establish an international investigation mechanism, the Secretary-General is advised that this will require host country consent or a decision from Member States through an appropriate intergovernmental forum.”
However, the Panel’s recommendations suggest that the UN Secretary-General has the power to establish commissions of inquiry (under its UN Charter mandate). He has already established such commissions to investigate violations in Guinea (2009) and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan (2010). While both Governments consented to these inquiries, there is no reason why an inquiry cannot go ahead without such agreement and be conducted outside the country if need be.
The UN Secretary-General’s position may come to haunt the UN as it raises questions about its ability to respond to violations and promote accountability. The Government of Sri Lanka has not shown any willingness to take measures, as highlighted in the Panel’s Report. The UN Human Rights Council may not be willing to revisit the matter although this would be an opportunity to erase the stain on its reputation caused by the 2009 session. The UN Security Council, for its part, is also unlikely to act. The position of some of its members on Sri Lanka, its reluctance to endorse commissions of inquiry (other than against weak or isolated states) and its focus on events elsewhere would suggest little appetite to act on the Panel’s recommendations any time soon.
The looming inaction following the Report threatens to turn into a stalemate, which would reinforce views about the selectiveness of international responses to international crimes. The consequences and messages inherent in such outcome for the country are painful to fathom. The victims of violations would be denied justice, yet again. The UN’s wait-and-see response may be seen as indirect vindication of the Government’s position. Meanwhile, human rights defenders, journalists and others may not be able to raise domestic awareness given the lack of political space. This is a recipe for cycles of violations to continue, ignoring the causes identified in the expert’s Report.
Competing notions of accountability and justice
Failure to act would constitute a missed opportunity to respond to skeptics who point out the growing gulf between what they may portray as aspirational talk about accountability and contrasting realities on the ground. This would be a pity. The Report is an excellent example of work by a group of experts who have cared to listen, taking a context-sensitive approach to do justice to a complex post-conflict situation.
The Report provides an opportunity to tackle two worrying developments in the field of post-conflict justice. States find it increasingly difficult to ignore or even refuse outright to acknowledge international standards, which require them to investigate violations and provide reparation for violations. Instead, states are all too eager to embrace a notion of reconciliation that excludes accountability. These developments are basically modelled on South Africa’s responses to Apartheid, which are frequently taken out of their context and stripped of their victim-centred, truth-seeking approach. In this perverted top-down version of “transitional justice” by those still in power, reconciliation effectively means blaming former enemies or performing officially endorsed rituals. Reparation becomes a repackaging exercise of measures that authorities would have had to take in any case, such as development and reconstruction.
The Report did not mince its words to dismiss the Government of Sri Lanka’s approach to a ‘state-sponsored’ transition, which by its very nature appears a contradiction in terms. The Panel criticised Sri Lanka’s ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’, stating that “the suggestion that there is a choice between ‘restorative’ and ‘retributive’ justice is based upon a false dichotomy” and that it “… is simply not accurate [to equate criminal justice with retributive justice].”
In addition, “[t]he Sri Lankan Government should use reparations as a demonstration of genuine acknowledgement of violations and as redress for victims, not as a cover-up for accountability.” And, finally, “[u]nless the Government of Sri Lanka takes significant steps to open greater political spaces, allow for free debate and permit independent efforts to document the truth of what happened during the final stages of the war, not even the best-conceived transitional justice approach will be able to make an effective contribution to accountability and respect for the rights of victims.”
The Panel’s recommendations provide a good starting point if not blueprint for what should be done to free Sri Lanka from its cycle of violence – it is very clear that a peace at the expense of accountability, coupled with what the Report identifies as “triumphalism…on-going exclusionary politics… [and] the continuation of wartime measures” is the very opposite of what is needed.
One of the first casualties of the war was the truth. Journalist were not allowed to enter the war zone and Sri Lankan journalists were targeted for speaking out – the killing of Lasantha Wickramatunga in January 2009 who had predicted his own assassination a few days earlier, was the most poignant illustration of the nature of this assault. Truth about violations is not an abstract notion in Sri Lanka. Rather, it is a suppressed memory of harm done and pain and suffering caused.
Acknowledgment and truth, including a frank discussion of the root causes of conflict and violations, are imperative not only for the victims of the final stages of the conflict: it is also vital for many other victims of violations committed over the last decades and for Sri Lankan society as a whole, if there is any hope of overcoming deeply entrenched collective trauma. Indeed, the history of shared suffering may, if acknowledged and acted upon, be a unifying force that generates the impetus for doing things differently.
© Open Democracy
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Accountability and justice in Sri Lanka: a new chapter at last?
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Foreigners barred from travelling North
By Janith Aranze | The Sunday Leader
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The early morning sun was relentless; however the thought of finally arriving in Jaffna was enough to make it bearable. As the bus stopped at the checkpoint and the army officer boarded to check ID cards, perhaps naively, it had never occurred to me that holding a British passport would signal the end of my journey. After all, the war was over, Sri Lanka had been ‘liberated,’ when going on trips to Kandy, Trincomalee and Sigiriya my British passport had never caused a problem, so why should it now?
Ominously the female officer told me to get down from the bus and wait while she went to discuss with her peers what do with my passport, which was beginning to be looked at with some disdain by other army personnel at the checkpoint. Again naively, I presumed they would simply ask me the reasons and objectives for my journey and grant me permission to continue on. However I was mistaken, after a lot of phone calls and gesticulating from army personnel at the checkpoint, I was informed that foreign passport holders cannot go beyond the Omanthai checkpoint without Ministry of Defence clearance.
A number of questions were buzzing around my head but the over-riding ones were why shouldn’t a foreigner be allowed to go to Jaffna? What’s the need for MOD clearance? I clearly wasn’t a threat so what’s the problem? These were all questions I had plenty of time to ponder whilst on the eight hour long bus ride back from Vavuniya to Colombo.
Since the civil war ended in 2009, the government has made it as difficult as possible for tourists and foreign media to go up North and visit the conflict areas. Those hoping to go up to Jaffna and other parts of the North will find that if they are in possession of a foreign passport, it will be a decidedly arduous process for them to advance any further than Vavuniya. Since the war is said to be finished now, what does the government have to hide from the rest of the world?
Speaking to a journalist who has gone through the process and gained access to areas such as Mannar and Kilinochchi, he said that it is indeed a painstaking task. “It did take a long time, a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls and at the end a lot of unnecessary meetings,” Ben Doherty of the Sydney Morning Herald, told The Sunday Leader. Doherty explained that the whole process took him several weeks to finalise, and when he eventually got to Mannar and Kilinochchi, he was monitored very closely. “I had to write a letter pre-warning them of what I wanted to do, who I was and where I was from. The whole thing took about six weeks to process. When I eventually travelled up there, I was always accompanied by a high ranking officer. I was looking at de-mining, but I wasn’t stopped from talking to anyone,” he explained. “If you’re looking to go up there, you’re going to have to bring them a pretty specific pitch and one that isn’t going to ring any alarm bells for them. Then it’s a case of finding the right person in the Ministry to speak to, and keep on the case. Like any bureaucracy, it’s all process, you’ve got to keep on it and keep pushing.”
The Sunday Leader also spoke to a Spanish tourist who had also tried to go up North by car and he said it was near ‘impossible.’ “We went by car, hoping to go up to Jaffna, but they said we couldn’t enter as we had foreign passports, I’ve heard it’s different by plane, so we might try that avenue,” the tourist said, speaking to The Sunday Leader on grounds of anonymity. However when The Sunday Leader contacted the Sri Lanka Air Force, they too stated that passengers wishing to travel by plane, who hold a foreign passport need MOD clearance first. “You need MOD clearance first, you have to go to their offices, fill in a form and wait for them to process it,” Sudeera Kulatunge of the SLAF told The Sunday Leader. When asked why foreigners need to do this he replied, “These are the rules in this country, foreigners must do this.”
When The Sunday Leader tried to speak to Defence Spokesman, Keheliya Rambukwella on the matter, he abruptly claimed that “anyone can go to Jaffna” before hanging up the phone. Rambukwella clearly has not read his own rules, but when speaking to Military Spokesman, Major General Medawala, he said, “Go and look on the website, there it stipulates what the procedure is for foreign passport holders.” When asked what the reason is for foreign passport holders to be put through this process, he simply replied, “Everything is stipulated on the website.” Indeed on the MOD website it outlines what those who wish to travel by plane must do. “Civilians who wish to use SLAF aircraft are to write/fax a detailed description of the journey with the identity card numbers of the passengers who wish to travel, to the Secretary of Defence prior to seven days of the intended date of travel,” the website says. However it fails to address the issue of those travelling by car and more importantly the reasons why foreigners are put through this process.
It seems even the Ministry of Defence cannot give a reason as to why foreigners are put through such an arbitrary process to go up North. Perhaps one day Sri Lanka will be a country where people can travel freely from city to city, without having to go through army checkpoints or gain MOD clearance. For now though, this day seems like a long way off.
© The Sunday Leader
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sri Lanka: Relatives remember war victims
ucanews.com
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Relatives of those who died are went missing attended special Masses and prayer services in churches including St Mary’s Cathedral in Jaffna, St Anthony’s Church in Vavuniya and St Theresa’s Church in Kilinochchi. These three towns were hit hard by the country’s 26-year civil war which according to the UN killed between 80,000 and 100,000 people.
The war officially ended on May 19 with the defeat by the Sri Lankan army of the Tamil Tigers who were fighting for a separate homeland in the north and east of the country.
“The end of war brings relief. But it is unbearable that we have lost a generation,” said Selvam Adaikalanathan, a Catholic parliamentarian from Vanni district.
Also to mark the end of the war, Bishop Thomas Savundaranayagam of Jaffna ordained five priests at the cathedral on May 18.
The bishop at that Mass remembered priests, nuns and other civilians killed during the war and also the number of families whose members were killed or maimed.
“The most disturbing thing is people see no graves here to observe religious rites,” said an elderly priest at the church of our Lady of Refuge in Jaffna, a former Tamil Tiger stronghold.
Although the end to the fighting is welcome, Tamil people in the area still suffer great trauma, he added.
© UCA News
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sri Lanka: International diplomacy is not about the truth
By Stephen Keim | ABC Net
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It is sometimes about who speaks the truth. If someone of sufficient importance states that the emperor is naked, the rest of us are forced to acknowledge what we already knew, namely, that the old fool had been parading in the nude for some time.
So it is with Sri Lanka and war crimes during the closing months of the civil war which formally concluded in May 2009. The evidence that the both the Sri Lankan government and its civil war opponents, the Liberation Tigers of Tiger Eelam (LTTE), engaged in war crimes has been known for some time. Britain’s Channel Four released on 25 August 2009 mobile phone footage (apparently taken by Sri Lanka soldiers) of extra-judicial killings of bound and naked captives by government soldiers and broadcast more footage of the same incident on 30 November 2010.
The following week, one of the bound victims of the execution was identified as a young female LTTE news broadcaster whom government sources had identified as having been killed on 18 May 2009. This fact linked the footage to government actions in the very final days of the civil war.
The highly respected International Crisis Group (ICG) published a report on 17 May 2010 calling for a full investigation into war crimes committed in the closing months of the civil war. The report concentrated on detailing evidence available to ICG in relation to a limited number of incidents (although the authors indicated that evidence was held with regard to numerous other such incidents).
One incident discussed in the report involved deliberate government shelling an area in a newly established No Fire Zone to which the United Nations and other aid agencies had relocated at the direction of the government. Government officials were fully aware of UN position and the fact that large numbers of civilians had camped nearby for safety. The location was just off the A35 highway near Suthanthirapuram Junction.
The ICJ report is very graphic, obviously based on eye-witness reports. In part, it reads as follows:
“At around 3:00am on 24 January the security forces shelled in and around the distribution centre. A shell landed between five metres and eight metres from the UN bunkers, in the middle of some IDP shelters. At least 11 civilians were killed and more wounded in this attack, including women and children. A WFP driver was hit in the back of the head with shrapnel. The decapitated body of a young woman landed in front of the UN bunker. A UN vehicle was damaged by shell fragments and covered with pieces of flesh and other debris from the explosion.”
In any domestic context, either the UK television station Channel 4's footage or the ICG eye witness accounts would have been sufficient for a proper investigation to be demanded by all and sundry.
Not in the world of international diplomacy.
Certainly not if one needs Sri Lanka’s support on any other issue. Certainly not if you want Sri Lanka to prevent its war victims from climbing into boats to travel to Australia claiming refugee status.
Australia’s response to the actions of the Sri Lankan government has been very muted as the 2009-10 DFAT annual report records. When Australia’s then foreign minister, Stephen Smith, visited Sri Lanka in December 2009, he had nothing to say about war crimes investigations. His mission was to seek Sri Lanka’s assistance to stem the flow of asylum seekers. Australia may have changed its foreign minister but its focus remains unchanged.
Now a new voice has drawn attention to the evidence of war crimes by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. The combined voice belongs to a panel of experts appointed by the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, to advise him. The panel consisted of Marzuki Darusman (a former Attorney-General of Indonesia) as Chair, Steven Ratner (an academic international lawyer based at University of Michigan Law School) and Yasmin Sooka, a distinguished South African human rights worker.
The experts have used the phrase “credible allegations” of breaches of international humanitarian law; of war crimes; and of crimes against humanity. The panel has called for a genuine accountability process to be carried out by the Sri Lankan government and for a similar process to be conducted by the international community to monitor the government’s effort; to conduct its own independent investigations; and to collect and safeguard evidence.
The panel found five core categories of potential serious violations committed by the forces under the control of the government of Sri Lanka. The first such category is the killing of civilians by wide spread shelling of civilian areas. This included the use of heavy weapons to shell civilians in three consecutive no fire zones in which the Government had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate.
The forces shelled these areas despite knowledge gained from surveillance by unmanned aircraft that these were civilian areas and despite being told by NGOs, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The panel found that the majority of civilian casualties were caused by government shelling and that the government excluded international organisations from the conflict zone to limit external pressure and observations by those organisations.
The panel found that the government systematically shelled hospitals in the frontline area despite the location of such hospitals being well known to the government.
The government systematically deprived civilians in the conflict zone of food and basic medical supplies including supplies to treat wounds by deliberately underestimating the number of people behind the front lines and by preventing sufficient supplies from being delivered by humanitarian groups.
The panel found that the civilian survivors of the conflict were subjected to further human rights violations after the war ended. This included placing survivors in overcrowded camps; by screening for LTTE cadres in a non-transparent way by excluding the ICRC from such processes; and by executing and disappearing some suspects. Women survivors in particular have been exposed to various forms of sexual harassment and violation.
The panel also found that, outside the conflict zone, the government continued to attempt to silence media and other critics through a variety of actions including the use of white vans to make people disappear.
The panel also found six core categories of potential violations by the LTTE. These included using civilians as a human buffer; killing civilians who tried to flee LTTE control; using military equipment in the proximity of civilians; forced recruitment of children; use of forced labour to dig trenches; and killing civilians through suicide attacks.
The panel conducted a legal analysis of the conduct which comprised the credible allegations and found that such conduct if proven to occur was likely to amount to war crimes (breaches of international humanitarian law) and breaches of international human rights law.
It is not surprising that the panel found sufficient evidence to come the conclusions that it did. It is a little surprising that it was not waylaid by diplomatic pressure and prevented from being as forthright as it has been. One might well think that such strong findings by a group carrying the secretary-general’s authority might well change the selfish dynamics of denial by many in the international community and even of some within the Sri Lankan government.
The question remains, however, whether the panel’s conclusions will be acted upon. Will the international community realise that the game is up and everyone knows what it has been trying to ignore. Or will it sit on its hands and hope that the illusion of the emperor’s new clothes again get to cover the nakedness of those who committed serious crimes during the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war.
Meanwhile Australia’s focus is on possibly reintroducing some form of temporary visa for refugees and finding off shore processing sites for asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea and Malaysia. There seems little interest in pressing for accountability for the crimes that led many people to seek asylum in Australia.
Stephen Keim has been a lawyer for over three decades and is a senior counsel for the state of Queensland. He is president of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights. Stephen won the Australian Human Rights Commission 2009 Human Rights Medal.
© ABC Net
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Will Sri Lanka Tamils get justice from the UN?
By Ron Ridenour | Dissident Voice
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The “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” was delivered to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on March 31 concerning: 1) alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the last phases of the 26-year old civil war, September 2008 to May 19, 2009; 2) consequences for approximately 300,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) and, by extension, for 2.7 million Sri Lankan Tamils, 13% of the 21 million population.
After receiving the report, which calls for investigations into these allegations, Ban Ki-moon stated that he did not have the power alone but one of three UN bodies had to request such action, either the General Assembly or the Security Council or the Human Rights Council.
The panel—chairman Marzuki Darusman (Indonesia), Steven Ratner (US), and Yasmin Sooka (South Africa)—was commissioned by the Secretary General, June 22, 2010, after Sri Lanka’s government had failed to rehabilitate or reconcile with the Tamils affected by the brutal war, which, according to the Panel, caused up to 40,000 civilian deaths in those eight months, plus several thousand combatants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government soldiers.
The Panel began work in September 2010 but had to conduct its research outside Sri Lanka as the government refused this United Nations body permission to enter its country. The Panel could interview many eye witnesses, however, who were eventually released from military camps after months of detention—many of whom bribed their way out—or who were able to escape the war zone towards the end on boats provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Several ICRC workers and other humanitarian employees were killed by government military shelling.
Of the dozens of recommendations proposed by the panel, the last two concern the United Nations.
“A. The Human Rights Council should be invited to reconsider its May 2009 Special Session Resolution (A/HRC/8-11/L. 1/Rev. 2) regarding Sri Lanka, in light of this report.”
The above cited resolution had been proposed by the Sri Lankan government to praise its behavior in the war and condemn only the LTTE for war crimes and terrorism. Not a member of the HRC, Sri Lanka got Cuba, then the Non-Aligned Movement president, to introduce it. It passed with 29 voting in favor and 12 against with six abstentions.
The Panel determined that, “the Human Rights Council may have been acting on incomplete information”.
“B. The Secretary-General should conduct a comprehensive review of actions by the United Nations system during the war in Sri Lanka and the aftermath, regarding the implementation of its humanitarian and protection mandates.”
The Panel criticized the UN’s role in this conflict. “During the final stages of the war, the United Nations political organs and bodies failed to take actions that might have protected civilians.”
The Panel recommended that the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) should “commence genuine investigations”, and an independent international mechanism established by the UN Secretary-General should also investigate what did occur.
The Panel recommended that GOSL should also “issue a public, formal acknowledgement of its role in and responsibility for extensive civilian casualties.”
In its summary, the Panel wrote:
The Panel’s determination of credible allegations reveals a very different version of the final stages of the war than that maintained to this day by the Government of Sri Lanka. The Government says it pursued a ‘humanitarian rescue operation’ with a policy of ‘zero civilian casualties’. In stark contrast, the Panel found credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity (author emphasis). Indeed, the conduct of the war represented a grave assault on the entire regime of international law designed to protect individual dignity during both war and peace.
Especially the Panel found credible allegations associated with the final stages of the war. Between September 2008 and 19 May 2009, the Sri Lanka Army advanced its military campaign into the Vanni using 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 Government shelled on a large scale in three consecutive No Fire Zones, where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate, even after indicating that it would cease the use of heavy weapons. It 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. It shelled in spite of its knowledge of the impact, provided by its own intelligence systems and through notification by the United Nations, the ICRC and others. Most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by Government shelling.
The Government systematically shelled hospitals on the frontlines. All hospitals in the Vanni were hit by mortars and artillery, some of them were hit repeatedly, despite the fact that their locations were well-known to the Government. The Government also 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 Panel’s full text of 214 pages lists details of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity on both sides in paragraphs 246-252:
The government is accused of: murder, extermination, mutilation, arbitrary imprisonment, rape, torture, persecution founded on race, religion or politics, and disappearances.
The LTTE is accused of: violence to life and person, torture, mutilation, forced labor and forced recruitment of children, and shooting civilians trying to flee the war zone.
The IDP Tamils were brutally confined and treated. Tamils in their traditional Northern and Eastern “High Security Zones” are militarized, denied normal rights, intimidated and made victims of violence.
The Panel therefore recommended that GOSL end all state violence, release all displaced persons and facilitate their return to their homes or provide for resettlement. [Thousands of Tamil homes have been taken over by soldiers and other Sinhalese.] It should also repeal the Emergency Laws that deny democratic and civil rights.
The Mahinda Rajapaksa family regime continues to deny any wrong-doing, contending that NO civilians were killed and were later well treated in IDP camps. It claims it only attacked the LTTE. If there were civilians killed, according to government logic, it is their own fault for being there. The Panel cites international law that “an attack remains unlawful if it is conducted simultaneously at a lawful military object and an unlawfully-targeted civilian population” (paragraph 199).
The GOSL says it has established a transparency process to address the past from the 2002 ceasefire agreement to the end of the conflict, the so-called Lessens Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).
While the Panel views this as a “potentially useful opportunity to begin a national dialogue”, the “LLRC fails to satisfy key international standards of independence and impartiality, as it is compromised by its composition and deep-seated conflicts of interests of some of its members.”— Three were government officials; one an Attorney-General.
The Panel also points to the history of conflict between the government and Tamils seeking full rights. For decades the Tamils used Gandhian civil disobedience, non-violent tactics before many took up arms in several groups. The Tamils have suffered half-a-dozen pogroms, with government backing, in which thousands were brutally murdered, including mutilation and being burned alive.
In the few instances in which governments have set up commissions of inquiry to examine human rights abuses, they have “failed to produce a public report and recommendations have rarely been implemented”.
The fact is, states the report (paragraph 28):
After independence [from Great Britain in 1948], political elites tended to prioritize short-term political gains, appealing to communal and ethnic sentiments, over long-term policies, which could have built an inclusive state that adequately represented the multicultural nature of the citizenry. Because of these dynamics and divisions, the formation of a unifying national identity has been greatly hampered. Meanwhile, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism gained traction, asserting a privileged place for the Sinhalese as protectors of Sri Lanka, as the sacred home of Buddhism. These factors resulted in devastating and enduring consequences for the nature of the state, governance and inter-ethnic relations in Sri Lanka.
The first pogrom took place in June 1956 as the new Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike (Sri Lanka Freedom Party/SLFP—the same party to which the Rajapaksas belong) backed the “Sinhala Only” bill, one of several discriminatory measures against the Tamil people. Because some Tamils conducted sit-ins, Buddhist monk-led mobs rampaged for ten days, murdering 150 Tamils and burning their homes and businesses. Ironically, because Bandaranaike was willing to engage in dialogue with Tamil leaders he was murdered by a “pacifist” Buddhist monk, September 29, 1959.
Bandaranaike’s widow, Sirimavo, became PM in July 1960 and continued discriminatory policies against Tamils. She sat as PM or President four terms spread over 40 years, for a total of 13 years. She was the world’s first female PM and brought Sri Lanka into the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as a founding member, in 1961. NAM, now with118 state member, stands against imperialism, interference from foreign nations, bloc politics, and against racism. Cuba and other progressive governments, as well as reactionary ones in the “Third World”- based NAM have, therefore, backed Sri Lanka in international issues.
In 2004, Cuba and Venezuela launched ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America) as an alternative to capitalist economic and political coalitions. Today there are eight Latin American government members, including Ecuador, which is now on the HRC along with Cuba. In 2009, Bolivia and Nicaragua, both in ALBA, were members of the HRW supporting Sri Lanka.
These socialist leaning governments have better human rights records than the previous capitalist governments of their countries, which were for many decades under the dictates of US imperialism and before that under European colonialism. ALBA partners now have a chance whether on the Council or not to help the Tamil people in some way, also by calling for an investigation.
This is the challenge that the countries of NAM on the HRC now face with the Panel’s recommendations for an international investigation into alleged war crimes. Will they resist criticizing a member for its racist and terrorist actions against an entire people, or will they take sides with a clearly oppressed people? The latter choice might place them voting alongside the rich, Western nations that will probably call for some sort of an investigation. (See my piece on this dilemma.)
As I view the possible thinking of socialist Cuba and other NAM countries, the dilemma is between supporting sovereignty for Third World countries confronted with interference from imperialist and former colonialist states, a legitimate issue, and conducting national policies in such a way that no section of the population is systematically discriminated against or subject to genocide.
Since the 2009 HRC resolution, there are 15 new countries on it, among them the US. One must ask: just what is the game plan of the US and its European allies, who make sounds of protest against Sri Lanka’s abuse of human rights while they are the worst offenders, constantly engaging in aggressive wars against NAM members and others: now warring against the sovereign government of Libya, the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine.
One can also ask why one of the Panel members, Ratner, participated in such an elaborate, comprehensive and just report. As a legal expert of international law he advised the US State Department (1998-2008), which is the major political aggressor in the world and has backed Sinhalese nationalist governments against Tamil’s liberation efforts, providing armaments, intelligence, finances, military training, propaganda. (See my article.)
But then most governments of both “blocs” have done the same: China, Russia, India, the UK and other European states, even Iran and also and especially Israel.
Clearly victims of US permanent war aggression, such as Cuba, react against its hypocritical “support” for “human rights”, and side with the “victim” Sri Lanka. Not in all cases, however, is the “victim” innocent. There are more offenders of human lives and civil rights than the imperialists. And the Sinhalese majority has been whipped up by Buddhist supremacist clergy and Sinhalese nationalist chauvinism by all the governments in Sri Lanka since 1948.
Unfortunately, and without comprehension from my viewpoint, most of the Sinhalese-led Communist, Trotskyist, and Maoist parties have immorally allied themselves with the two major parties to keep the Tamils down.
The United Nations is comprised of 192 nations, only three in the world are not in it: Kosovo—a separatist state creation of the US-EU; Taiwan, a separated part of China; and 771 people in the state of the Vatican City. The member states of the HRC, with China and Russia and other large countries represent more than one-half the world’s citizens.
Third World countries comprise the majority on the HRC. They have many ethnic peoples long oppressed and brutalized by others. Let us remember Rwanda and how the UN failed to intervene and prevent genocide of one million people. The UN again failed in a similar debacle in Sri Lanka. Let us hope that the Human Rights Council will redeem these tragedies regardless of motives.
Ron Ridenour is an activist who has written many books on Cuba, including Cuba: Beyond the Crossroads (2006) and Cuba at Sea (2008).
© Dissident Voice
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sri Lanka: The denial syndrome
Dr.Kumar David | South Asia Analysis Group
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"Society is in denial because the army is a microcosm of society. It is not that Americans don’t or can’t know about carpet bombing, a million dead in Vietnam and Laos, an ecology incinerated and war crimes. No, pardon the grammar, the syndrome is deeper; the collective American psyche can’t want to know. Similarly, Sri Lanka’s can’t want to know denial syndrome exemplifies an ubiquitous madness of all crowds."
The Panel and GoSL version of events are diametrically opposed, as schizophrenic as black and white, hence the prima face truthfulness is paramount. Sri Lankans ask: “Is this true? Did these things happen? Or is the Panel falsifying and fabricating with squalid motives?” In Colombo’s supra-charged streets and media frenzy, calls for an international investigation are beyond people’s mental preparedness till the unvarnished truth is made stark.
Whether the findings of the Panel are factual but the Lankan State had no choice but to resort to brutality to root out a “ruthless enemy”, or conversely, whether the LTTE did behave as said but in the course of a “liberation war” it was pushed to terrorism, these are judgements after the facts; logically consequent to elucidation of prima face veracity. mordant
Veracity, bias, conspiracy
The government says the Panel’s findings of bombing and shelling civilian encampments, safe zones and hospitals, are false. It denies shooting combatants after surrender and withholding humanitarian assistance from civilians. If the report is flawed a credible item by item rebuttal has to be produced by GoSL (or the LTTE-remnant if it rebuts anything). This was a “war without witnesses” at GoSL’s insistence; hence the onus for dispelling a flurry of charges and disproving a mass of evidence falls squarely on its shoulders. The sheer volume of material the Panel has accessed is staggering. The technical content show-cases the prowess of modern analytical methods and image processing. The submissions are, in part, an outcome of the exertions of the Tamil diaspora. It is up to the diaspora to press its case with an information overkill if it so wishes. The crucial issue for the Panel is: “Are the submissions true or false?”
The enquiry also accessed other sources including UN ground teams, NGOs, religious and medical personnel in the Vannie, and satellite images from UNOSAT and other satellite services. The Chanel-4 videos had previously been authenticated by two laboratories in the US. A full reading of the report engenders confidence that the panellists have not been taken for a ride. A striking feature is clarity of content and unambiguous confidence of tenor. GoSL has made no detailed or itemised refutation of the report’s principal assertions. A rebuttal that is subsequently falsified will be disastrous, so any rebuttal has to be watertight.
Videos, photographs and aerial reconnaissance images were used as supports. Satellite imagery was reviewed by the UN Office for Military Affairs and the UN Institute for Training and Research. In respect of video and photographic evidence the Panel says it relied on “authenticated” evidence. Presumably it had access to UN funds to purchase expert and scientific services, so the use of the word ‘authenticated’ is significant. Authentication is also important since some written and oral evidence, for understandable reasons, was made available under conditions of strict confidentiality and therefore warranted cross-checking. Sections 49 to 52 explain the methodology of verification and I accept due diligence was exercised. It is implausible to suggest that the panellists were tricked or arrived at conclusions without attention to detail and method. The report makes 196 pages of dense reading and I am satisfied the panellists approached their task conscientiously. The prima face findings and the recommendations for a formal inquiry are compelling.
Another safeguard is the international standing of the Panel members. The call by the Global Elders - Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu and Sung San Suu Kyi - for follow up action is a vote of confidence in the personal integrity of Darusman, Ratner and Sooka.
A feature, obscured by universally hostile comment in Sri Lanka, is that the report includes detailed and credible indictment of the LTTE in addition to its findings against GoSL. These accounts can be found in paragraphs 97 to 99 and 112 to 114 and elsewhere. The LTTE forced civilians to move out of their homes and villages, used civilians as human shields, forcibly recruited children, and cold bloodedly murdered people attempting to flee captivity. The criticisms of the LTTE for war crimes and crimes against humanity are so devastating that the charge made in some quarters in Sri Lanka and the Singhalese diaspora that the panellists were bribed and worked in cahoots with rump LTTE elements has to be dismissed as cranky.
Having dismissed these risible allegation of conspiracy, what about systematic bias? The underlying rationale for considering the possibility of bias is that most LTTE leaders are dead, while those now accountable are leaders of Sri Lanka’s state and military and surviving LTTE leaders now aligned with the regime. Therefore findings against the LTTE have little practical consequence while holding the government responsible for war crimes panics the leaders. I mulled the possibility of bias but eventually dropped it because of the weight and volume of evidence. Given the mass of written, oral, electronic and satellite data, it would not have been possible to reject it all and arrive at a different set of conclusions.
The LSSP’s telling slip
The statement of the Communist Party of Sri Lanka is no surprise; it is a restatement of GoSL positions. ‘The Report is false, a fabrication; the Panel is conspiring with an LTTE rump and global imperialism to scuttle Mahinda Rajapakse’s the anti-imperialist policies’. This summary is not a caricature. Indian Communists have taken an opposite position; CPI(M) State Secretary G. Ramakrishanan has demanded: “The party will demonstrate in the first week of May demanding a detailed enquiry into these human rights violations, punishment of war criminals, rehabilitation of the affected and provincial autonomy for the Tamils in the island nation”.
Still, the climax comes in the fascinating Lanka Sama Samaja Party analysis. Why this had to be so I can only guess; maybe the presence of a left-tendency in the LSSP made the leadership wary of making itself grotesquely silly. The significant bit consists of a few lines buried in repeats of GoSL positions.
QUOTE: “The Panel appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been presented with a large body of information, some of which may be accurate. However much of what has been included are clearly exaggerations, distortions or even complete fabrications by those wishing to discredit the Government. Unfortunately the sources include people who are expected to be neutral, such as members of United Nations and other international organizations, but over the years it has become evident that many of them are blatantly biased. Even if the three members preparing this report had been neutral, they were probably unaware of this and have taken the statements given to them to be factual.” END QUOTE.
This reluctant confession can be magnified several fold; the LSSP could not with impunity rubbish the force of evidence. The “may be” in the first sentence is a reluctant concession that the material is accurate. If only “much” is exaggeration, distortion and fabrication, then much else is truthful and accurate. The LSSP concedes that panel members are upright in their intentions, just taken for a ride! To say of the panellists, “they were probably unaware” of their primary responsibility, factual veracity, is gratuitous in the extreme. Grudgingly, the LSSP has endorsed my conclusion; by and large, and taken as a whole, the Darusman Report is credible.
It is not the Lankan left but India that will be decisive. The Indian left was decimated in West Bengal and lost narrowly in Kerala in state elections, but did quite well by clinging to Jayalalitha’s sari string (won 18 of the 22 seats it contested) in Tamil Nadu. The TN State CPI and CPI(M) have Lankan war crimes in their cross hairs, so how much longer can Delhi ignore TN? Jayalalitha in her first interview after winning the elections demand: “The Indian government must ensure Sri Lanka’s athipar (president) stands trial in international courts.” Internationally, Delhi has compromised itself in world HR forums to protect Colombo, so can it backtrack now, or has it painted itself too far into a corner? If you tell one lie, they say, you soon have to tell two more to conceal the first!
The ubiquity of denial
Japanese textbooks to this day conceal the unspeakable atrocities of its occupying forces in China in the 1930s and 1940s; society is in denial because the army is a microcosm of society. It is not that Americans don’t or can’t know about carpet bombing, a million dead in Vietnam and Laos, an ecology incinerated and war crimes. No, pardon the grammar, the syndrome is deeper; the collective American psyche can’t want to know.
Croatia was in shock when the International Criminal Court convicted two of its generals for war crimes in hostilities with Serbia in 1995. True it was a national liberation war, but crimes are crimes, irrespective of the greater national, class or political context. It is not easy for any community to digest such truths. Croats and Serbs are bitter about the other’s atrocities, but an impenetrable can’t-want-to-know blurs the collective psyche when faced with evidence that their side was no better. Sri Lanka’s can’t want to know denial syndrome exemplifies an ubiquitous madness of all crowds. I am not making excuses, perish the thought; just being hardnosed.
© SAAG
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Military to provide "Leadership Training" for Sri Lankan university students
Colombo Page
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The Higher Education Ministry has said that at least 10,000 students would participate in the programme.
Higher Education Ministry Secretary Dr. Sunil Jayantha Navaratne has told the media that the 10,000 students who had obtained the highest marks at this year's GCE Advanced Level examination have been called for the leadership programme.
The programme is to be held at 28 army camps around the country. The training programme would be conducted by the military under the supervision of university authorities.
According to Dr. Navaratne, 10,000 more students would join the programme once the university cut-off marks are released.
© Colombo Page
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Over hundred thousand IDPs waiting to return
BBC Sinhala
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"Between 1 April and 13 May 2011, 1,139 persons (366 families) departed the Menik Farm and Kodikamam Ramavil camps for their areas of origin in Mullaitivu (Maritimepattu and Odusuddan) and Kilinochchi (Pachchilaipallai and Karachchi) Districts, increasing the total population returned to the Northern Province to 373,593 persons (114,561 families).
Out of camps but not home
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), many war displaced who had left the camps have not reached their homes.
"The resettlement of Menik Farm IDPs of Kilinochchi origin is complete, and the vast majority of the remaining 16,401 persons (4,981 families) hail from Mullaitivu District. Apart from areas with ongoing mine clearance operations in this district, there are several Grama Niladhari Divisions (GNDs) still to be released for mine action interventions to pave the way for IDP returns".
With host families
It says that several families are still stranded in Transit.
"By 13 May 2011, a total of 1,758 persons (467 families) are stranded in transit locations in Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Vavuniya Districts".
According to the report, many of the families had left the camps but are living with host families or welfare centres away from their homes and farmlands.
"By 13 May 2011, there was an approximate total of 117,888 IDPs, including from the protracted caseload, living with host families in Vavuniya (18,589 persons), Mannar (4,928 persons) and Jaffna (94,371 persons) Districts".
Released combatants
The report quotes the Commissioner-General for Rehabilitation (CGR) on the numbers detainees released by the government.
"Around 206 alleged former LTTE combatants on 1 April and an additional 480 cadre on 23 April to relatives, following rehabilitation. Moreover authorities have announced plans to release a further group of alleged LTTE fighters to mark the Vesak Poya Day".
The CGR states that so far approximately 6,500 former LTTE cadre have been released, with 4,380 remaining in 'protective custody and rehabilitation centres', where they receive vocational training and education to support their reintegration into the social mainstream.
© BBC Sinhala
Monday, May 16, 2011
Lasantha, the President and Sarath Fonseka
By Frederica Jansz | The Sunday Leader
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He added for good measure, “the two at the Nation and Lal.”
Referring to the incident in which The Nation’s defence correspondent Keith Noyahr was abducted and brutally attacked, Rajapaksa’s comments referred to former CEO of The Nation newspaper Krishantha Prasad Cooray and its former Editor-in-Chief Lalith Alahakoon.
Cooray, despite having publicly accused Sarath Fonseka of ordering the assault on Keith Noyahr nevertheless at the last presidential election was an active member of Fonseka’s media contingent. The President’s reference also included Chairman of this newspaper Lal Wickrematunge and the latter’s decision to also support Sarath Fonseka at the last presidential election. This despite the fact, according to the President, that it was Sarath Fonseka who murdered Wickrematunge’s brother and Founder Editor of this newspaper, Lasantha Wickrematunge.
A serious investigation into the attacks on journalists began only after General Fonseka contested the presidential election as the common opposition candidate. In the immediate aftermath of Wickrematunge’s murder, opposition leaders accused General Fonseka of responsibility. The government initially simply stymied any investigation into the killing while the police remained impotent.
Following the presidential election in January 2010, I was told that investigators were inquiring into the possible involvement of General Fonseka into the murder of Lasantha after a very senior official at the Defence Ministry revealed that the former Army Commander told him, “I did not intend to kill Lasantha – I only wanted him hurt – but they killed him”. This is according to senior police officers conducting the investigation.
If the government is convinced that it was Sarath Fonseka who was behind the murder of Lasantha, why is it that he has not been charged with murder? Why has the government waited for so long to name him? It is also reported that the President had said that Sarath Fonseka was behind Lasantha’s killing to a senior editor of a Sinhala weekly, over a year ago. He had said that he was the army commander who was prosecuting the war and so nothing could be done. This places the government in a pretty tight corner.
Is justice based on time or circumstances depending on who sits favourably with the powers? Do the investigating arms of the nation respond positively only when the politician gives the nod as and when it is politically opportune? Lasantha was murdered on January 8, 2009. Sarath Fonseka was taken into custody on February 8, last year on a vague charge of planning a military coup and later tried before a military court marshal for indulging in politics whilst being in the army and sentenced. The cries for the release of Sarath Fonseka being a political prisoner would not have been even a whimper, if he was charged with the more serious offences of the murder of Lasantha, and assaults on senior journalists.
This then is the question President Mahinda Rajapaksa must grapple with and answer before he pontificates and accuses his former army chief of carrying out a murder most foul.
On Thursday last week, May 12, a former army intelligence officer told the Mount Lavinia Magistrate Court that he was told by the Officer in Charge (OIC) of the Terrorist Investigations Department (TID) to claim that a top army official was involved in the killing of former Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunge.
The intelligence officer, Kandegedera Priyawansa, who is now in remand told open court that he was told to say that a top army official, whose name he did not mention in court, was involved in the killing of Wickrematunge, as well as in the assault of two senior journalists, in return for a chance to go overseas and security for his house in Sri Lanka. Why Priyawansa chose not take the offer is not clear since he was not asked the question before being hurriedly led away. Will this revelation be investigated thoroughly or not, would be watched carefully.
Police have also arrested and remanded one Jesudason from Nuwara Eliya who apparently owns a garage.
All of the five telephones which according to sleuths were used in the attack on Lasantha were registered in the name of Jesudason. When quizzed by detectives Jesudason claimed he lost his Identity Card – which would have been required to purchase the SIM cards for the five mobile phones. Jesudason however never made a formal complaint to the police regarding the loss of his ID. He has however confessed to sharing a drink now and then with a soldier who he says identified himself as being a member of the Sinha Regiment of the Army. This soldier, Kandegedera Priyawansa at the time of his arrest was a member of the army’s Military Intelligence Directorate headed at the time by Major General Amal Karunasekera.
Last year, both Lal Wickrematunge and I met with SSP Chandra Wakishta, Director of the TID, when 17 army officers had been taken in and remanded for the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge. Seventeen army soldiers attached to the Army Military Intelligence Unit and also identified as having worked ‘closely’ with former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka were remanded and held by the TID/CID.
At this meeting Wakishta was confident they had narrowed the suspects down to six soldiers who he told us had carried out the chilling murder on Wickrematunge.
Showing us pictures of the 17 army men, he asked us if we could identify any. He did this on the hunch that one or more of the killers may have been present at a candle lit ceremony held at Lasantha’s graveside one month after the killing on February 8, 2009. But none of the 17 images were even vaguely familiar to either Lal or me. They have all since been released.
At this discussion, Lal told Wakishta of a strange meeting that took place in his office at Ratmalana. “It was mid February 2009 and barely over a month since Lasantha was killed, a small-made, dishevelled man turned up in office and said he wished to speak with me. He went on to relate an amazing story explaining how Lasantha was killed and who was behind it.”
“Mr. X as I would call him had been released from Welikada Prison on an amnesty granted to prisoners on Independence Day in 2009. He was sentenced for embezzlement of state funds. Whilst in prison he was sharing a cell with a few others. Amongst those incarcerated with him were convicted murderers. He heard an inmate convicted for murder talking to another about a contract undertaken by him to kill someone and that the job was done on that day and had bragged as to how the operation was conducted. He said that this murderer had organised a ‘hit’ on someone called Lasantha and a sharp instrument was used to carry out the task. At that point he did not know who this ‘Lasantha’ was, but learnt later when he was watching Sirasa news on TV that night. He said that he had met Lasantha together with Frederica once when he had a problem with higher authorities at the Buddha Sasana Ministry when he gave an interview to The Leader.”
Lal went on to recount that this man had said a politician had given the contract to underworld figures in the prison to carry out the murder of Lasantha.
A similar sentiment echoed by Sarath Fonseka when in an initial telephone interview I asked him who had killed Lasantha he replied, “kudu karayas working for a politician cum drug lord.” Pressed to identify the politician he said it was a politician from Kelaniya.
He once more articulated similar words when Lal and I met with Fonseka at his former Reid Avenue office on December 8, 2009, and Lal asked him the same question.
Lal brought Mr. ‘X’ to my office too since he had said he had met me together with Lasantha but I could not recall such a meeting nor having ever seen the man before.
I cautioned Lal against having any further dialogue or contact with the man, advising him to hand the man over to police officers investigating Lasantha’s murder. Which Lal did do, informing a police officer handling the murder investigation, but the man disappeared as a result.
Even as Wickrematunge related this story to Wakishta, the top cop was dismissive, displaying no enthusiasm to consider that this could be another possible lead, instead indicating that this was merely a red herring. Wickrematunge even handed over to Wakishta a letter written by this man to him together with a stamped envelope and gave him a mobile telephone number from which the man had subsequently made more than one telephone call to Lal.
Wakishta went through the motions and a statement was duly recorded from Lal. And there the matter ended. He now no longer takes our calls.
At The Sunday Leader, both myself and other senior staff including Lasantha’s wife and co-editor at the newspaper Sonali Samarasinghe were more than convinced that similarly as in the case of Keith Noyahr of The Nation newspaper, Namal Perera from the Sri Lanka Press Institute and Upali Tennakoon, former Editor of the Rivira Newspaper (all three senior journalists were attacked by goons believed to be soldiers working closely with Sarath Fonseka) Lasantha too, had been murdered by this same hit squad. Which is why when asked by the management to lend editorial support to Sarath Fonseka and his political campaign senior staff and editors loudly and vehemently protested finally falling in line only because we were compelled to accept that the government too had pushed us against the wall by bringing one debilitating court case after another in an attempt to cripple the The Sunday Leader, despite the newspaper having paid the ultimate price of Lasantha’s murder.
The issue is this — if President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself is so certain that it was indeed Sarath Fonseka that murdered Lasantha Wickrematunge as well as ordered the attacks on journalists Keith Noyahr, Upali Tennakoon and Namal Perera, why does he then not use his executive powers and literally kick butt to ensure investigators do their job. Over to you Mr. President.
© The Sunday Leader
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sri Lanka: Peace a battle
By Ben Doherty | The Sydney Morning Herald
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Aani Manuelpillai* lives with reminders every day. For a year, the Sri Lankan army fought over her village in the Mannar district as it pursued to extinction the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the separatist rebels known to the world as Tamil Tigers.
Aani fled the shelling of her home and gunfights in her street. Her life became one of being hounded from camp to camp, finding brief sanctuary in no-fire zones that became killing fields, then fleeing again. She has been back in her house for a year, but the anniversary is no cause for celebration. Her roof is a UN-supplied tarpaulin. The walls yawn with holes from government shells. Aani cooks and washes outside. With no money and ''too many family'' - almost all the men - lost in the fighting, she has little hope of rebuilding.
Village life generally is returning to normal. Mothers, babies strapped to their backs with old saris, walk along the red-dirt road between houses and children fill buckets at water pumps. But much has to be done. Barely a building hasn't been bombed and most people are living under canvas.
The Tigers landmined this area heavily. The village is now clear but the fields on which most families rely for a living are still dangerous. ''Life is hard here. We are much poorer now. The fighting is gone, but we don't have our lives back. We cannot work in our fields and many people cannot come back to their lands.''
The land Aani wants back for her people is Sri Lanka's northern mainland, known as the Vanni and regarded as the homeland of the country's Tamil ethnic minority, who make up about 17 per cent of the population. The Sinhalese majority, about three-quarters of Sri Lanka's 20 million, live predominantly in the south.
Many origins are claimed for the Tamil Tigers separatist movement. Some say Tamils came to the island from southern India and it is there their homeland should be; others that after independence, the new ruling Sinhalese began systematically discriminating against the Tamils. The watershed act of violence is generally accepted to have been in 1983, when Tigers killed 13 soldiers, and Sinhalese turned on Tamils in revenge. Up to 3000 Tamils were killed, many hacked and burned to death, and Tamil businesses were torched and looted. Tamils fled to the north-east, many to Tiger training camps. The war, which would cripple the country for a quarter of a century, had begun.
The Vanni isn't pretty country. The land is dry and scrubby and has always been sparsely populated, but in the aftermath of a war in which the UN estimates 40,000 civilians were killed and more than 300,000 displaced - out of a population of about 700,000 - a lack of people is now a very real problem.
Across much of the devastated Sri Lankan north, few people are left to rebuild, or to rebuild for. In some parts, there is progress but how much is hard to know. Sri Lanka's UN representative, Palitha Kohona, told the Security Council this week: ''Sri Lanka has succeeded in returning over 95 per cent of the internally displaced to their villages and towns in a short period of 18 months.'' But much of the Vanni remains in ruins.
Nearly 18,000 people still live in government-run camps for ''internally displaced persons'', as they wait for the land where they once lived to be cleared of mines or released from army control, or for promised houses to be built. The government says 300,000 people have been resettled since the end of the war. ''A lot needs to be done, [but] we believe by the end of 2011, we can complete the process,'' Resettlement Ministry secretary Uthpala Basnayakaye said in February.
More than 4000 suspected Tamil Tiger fighters remain locked up, incommunicado, in army ''rehabilitation'' camps. Their names have not been released. Thousands of parents and wives and children still don't know if their sons and husbands and fathers are alive. This secret detention has been brought back to world attention by a recent UN report into alleged atrocities committed by both sides during the conflict. At war's end, some 11,600 Tamil Tiger cadres who surrendered to the Sri Lanka's army were taken to army-run camps for ''rehabilitation''. More than 6000 have been released, but the government still runs 24 camps, housing 4343 suspected Tigers.
''These youth had gone through a horrific period in their lives and have lost the best days,'' the commissioner-general of rehabilitation, Brigadier Sudantha Ranasinghe, said recently. ''It is a great task for us to convert their negative thoughts into positive thinking but we have achieved this through various methods.''
Others make a less glowing assessment. Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian M. A. Sumanthiran says the brigadier has ''done very good work'' in helping rehabilitate some fighters but ongoing detention is dangerous and illegal. ''There is no detention order, nothing. Two years on, our request is for basic human decency. Parents must know whether their children are alive or not.'' Sumanthiran believes many of those still in detention were not Tamil Tiger fighters, or were teenagers forced to pick up weapons in the panicked final days of the war. He thinks the secrecy suggests some may have been killed, and the UN report is similarly condemnatory of the government's ''deliberate lack of transparency''.
''The fact that interrogations and investigations as well as 'rehabilitation' activities have been ongoing, without any external scrutiny for almost two years, rendered alleged LTTE cadres highly vulnerable to violations such as rape, torture or disappearance, which could be committed with impunity,'' says the report, prepared by a panel of experts for the UN Security Council. This 200-page report has exposed the deep divisions that still blight the country. There has been a savage backlash against it in the Sinhalese majority south, where it is seen as a Western plot to discredit the army, and the populist and popular President, Mahinda Rajapaksa.
''We will present the world with our achievements on bringing normalcy and peace to Sri Lanka, bring to light the factual position about this country and thereby expose the falsity of the controversial … report,'' Rajapaksa said this week.
The report condemns both sides of the conflict, finding ''credible allegations'' of war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers. The army, it says, bombed hospitals, deliberately shelled civilians sheltering in no-fire zones, and attacked the UN and Red Cross. It says the President, his brother and other senior government officials were party to negotiations over the surrender of Tiger cadres and civilians who were later found shot dead.
But the report also recognises that the army was fighting a brutal, ruthless opposition. Fanatical yet disciplined, proscribed as terrorists in most countries, the Tamil Tigers pioneered suicide bombers, and for generations waged a campaign of terror. As their resistance disintegrated in 2009, the report said, Tigers forcibly recruited children, used civilians as human shields and shot anyone who tried to flee. Even as the battle was being inexorably lost, the Tigers launched suicide attacks outside the war zone.
Little is likely to come of the report internationally. A spokesman for the UN Secretary-General urged member states to take it ''seriously and act accordingly'', but China and Russia have indicated they would block any move for an international war-crimes investigation.
The war is over. The Tigers, rumours of tiny cells of still-committed cadres notwithstanding, are finished as a fighting force. But the army remains omnipresent in the north. The Vanni is heavily controlled by the military. Army checkpoints block all traffic. Every 200 or so metres, on almost every road, stands a fortified army post, manned by bored soldiers seemingly uncertain of what threat they are supposed to be guarding against. And every few kilometres stands a massive army cantonment, where those soldiers live. Almost all the building activity since the war has been the army's.
Less than 50 kilometres from Aani's bombed-out home sits a very different village, the City of War Heroes. In Ranajayapura, the government has built 1500 three-roomed homes for soldiers and their families, along with schools, hospitals, gyms and supermarkets. It is a gift, the government says, ''to show our gratitude and appreciation to the brave men and women of our armed forces''. These are the first of 50,000 homes the government has planned for soldiers, and those charged with securing the north will live there permanently.
Tamil leaders say this ''militarisation'' of the Vanni is less about security than it is about a non-violent, if less-than-subtle, overwhelming of the minority Tamils. Sumanthiran says the government plans will irrevocably change the Tamil homeland. ''There are about 100,000 soldiers in the north, and if their families also go with them, it will be close to half a million people. You will have a radical alteration of the demography overnight. We … do not say this is the exclusive domain of the Tamils. But it must happen naturally; it cannot be a state-sponsored program to marginalise the people already here.''
In the Mullaitivu district, in the north-east, the final and fiercest fighting took place. The army pushed the rebels and the civilians they held hostage into an increasingly narrow sliver of coastal land, between a lagoon and the sea, until there was nowhere left to run. The death toll in those final few days will probably never be known.
Huge areas in Mullaitivu are still under army control. Rumours of more mass graves persist. But some villages in the district are being resettled.
Nesamani Sukumar, 73, stands barefoot outside his lean-to shop. He was a farmer before the war. His land is ''gone'' and he is resigned to never getting it back. The plastic toys and bottles of soft drink he offers for sale grow dusty hanging from the shop's awning. Business is slow, for few people have come back, and fewer still have money to spend. His son and daughter were killed in the war he says, tapping his finger on his heart. His neighbours are missing; he doesn't know what happened to them. ''Before the war, I had a lot of money, I had a nice house, I had my family, everything I could need. But I lost everything and everyone too.''
*Some names have been changed to protect identities.
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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