Is this evidence of Sri Lankan 'war crimes'?

By Jonathan Miller - Just three months after the Sri Lankan government declared the country liberated from the Tamil Tigers, video footage has emerged apparently showing government troops summarily executing Tamils.

Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, which obtained the material, said it was filmed in January - when the international media were prevented by the Sri Lankan government from covering the conflict zone.

Tonight, the Sri Lankan High Commission denied the government had carried out atrocities against the Tamil community.

The Sri Lankan government launched a large scale military offensive in January capturing the Tamil Tiger held town of Kilinochchi. The army then steadily pushed the rebels into an small area of the north-east.

Sri Lanka High Commission response

"The High Commission of Sri Lanka categorically deny that the Sri Lankan armed forces engaged in atrocities against Sri Lankan Tamil community. They were only engaged in a military offensive against the LTTE.

"The High Commission has noted that in many instances in the past, various media institutions used doctored videos, photographs and documents to defame the Sri Lankan government and armed forces. Therefore, we request you to verify the authenticity of the video footage before the telecast".

© Channel 4

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Dolphin van scare in Vavuniya camps

Displaced Tamil people are being daily abducted from camps in Vavuniya by people who come in vans, a displaced person told the BBC.

Speaking with BBC Sandeshaya from a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in Vavuniya, the IDP said all the displaced try to hide in their tents as the 'Dolphin vans' arrive in the camps.

"We do not know what exactly happens as everybody hides as soon as they see the vans. But I know that two to three people are disappearing daily," he said.

Some IDPs may also be secretly leaving the camps by paying the authorities, he said.

"Some people have suddenly disappeared. I don't know whether they were abducted or left with the help of the authorities."

Meeting relatives

Those who have been already identified as LTTE operatives are sometimes helping the security officials to recognize those who have earlier supported the LTTE, according to the man.

The Tamil man who did not want to be identified due to fear for his safety said they are only allowed to meet relatives separated by a barbed wire fence.

"There are special tents outside the camps to meet the relatives. They are not allowed to touch anybody as both parties have to stay five metres away from the fence. If they need to hand over something, biscuits, fruits, etc, they have to throw it over the fence."

Three meals are provided in the camps, he said, but as the food is prepared for thousands of people at once, they are unpalatable.

When food is delivered the IDPs have to stay in queues for more than an hour, depending upon the camp, to get their quota of meals or dry food.

As the rainfall continues, he said, it is very difficult to live in the camps due to floodwaters and bad smell from the lavatories that have overflown.

The IDP says that it might even take about three years for the authorities to resettle all the displaced at the current pace.

Nearly 300,000 IDPs are held by the authorities in different camps in Vavuniya.

© www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/

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Bail for Sri Lanka doctors accused of exaggerating

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Sri Lankan court granted bail Monday to three doctors accused of exaggerating the number of civilian deaths in the country’s recently ended civil war, a lawyer said.

The doctors were a rare source of firsthand information on those wounded and killed in the final stage of the military’s 25-year fight against the Tamil Tiger rebels after the government barred journalists from the war zone and threw out most aid workers.

U.N. figures showed more than 7,000 civilians were killed between January and the war’s end in May. Human rights groups accused the government of shelling heavily populated areas and accused the rebels of holding civilians as human shields. Satellite photos showed densely populated civilian areas had been shelled.

Both sides denied the accusations.

Five doctors who worked in the war zone were arrested in May, and authorities accused them of spreading rebel propaganda. They were not charged with any crime, but were held under emergency laws that give the military and police wide-ranging powers to arrest terrorist suspects and detain them indefinitely.

Last month, the doctors appeared at a government-arranged news conference and said the Tamil rebels forced them to exaggerate the damage caused by the shelling and gave them lists of casualty figures to give to the media.

At the time, Amnesty International said there were "very significant grounds to question whether these statements were voluntary."

On Monday, a magistrate in Colombo granted bail to three of the doctors but asked them to report to police once a month, said Ponnaiah Navaraj, a lawyer for two of the doctors.

A fourth doctor was in the hospital and was not given bail as there was no surety available for him, said Navaraj. He said he had no information about the fifth doctor.

A police spokesman could not immediately be reached Monday evening.

The Tamil rebels’ fight for a separate homeland for the Tamil minority started in 1983. The conflict killed between 80,000 and 100,000 people.

© Associated Press

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Monsoon misery for Sri Lanka's weary war refugees

COLOMBO (AFP) – Tamil civilians who lived through the vicious final battle of Sri Lanka's separatist war are now locked in another struggle for survival with heavy rains bringing misery to the camps they call home.

Nearly 300,000 people displaced by the fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels are held in what the government calls "welfare villages" which are off-limits to independent media.

"This is inhuman. This is a living hell," pro-government Tamil politician Dharmalingam Sithadthan said of the camps where recent pre-monsoon rains overwhelmed sewer systems and flooded tents.

"The rains earlier this month were freak showers," said Sithadthan. The heavy monsoon rains "will start in October and the conditions will only get worse. The government must give people the choice to leave the camps."

The United States, which led international criticism over civilian casualties in the final phase of Colombo's offensive against the Tamil Tigers, has also been vocal in its concerns over the plight of the displaced survivors.

The United Nations said more than 7,000 civilians may have perished in the five months before the war ended in May.

"Involuntary confinement is especially a source of concern given the recent rains and given the coming of the monsoon season," said Eric Schwartz, the US assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.

"It makes it all the more important that release from confinement be an issue that friends of Sri Lanka continue to raise," he said in Washington on Wednesday.

Rains last week destroyed nearly 2,000 makeshift shelters at the Manik Farm resettlement complex in northern Sri Lanka.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said there was a danger of disease spreading in the camps with the onset of the monsoon and asked Colombo to end what the group insists is the illegal detention of civilians.

A 30-year-old woman interviewed by the rights watchdog described the impact of the rains on the shelter she shared with her infant son and other refugees.

"Within seconds, the water was pouring into our tents. ... After a couple of minutes, everything was flooded. We lost all of our things. It was terrible. We were already frightened and this made it worse," she said.

"Some of the toilets are completely flooded. It looks like they are floating in water. The pits have collapsed and raw sewage is floating around with the storm water in a green and brown sludge," she said. "It smells disgusting."

Sri Lanka's Resettlement Minister Rishard Bathurdeen blamed UN agencies for poorly constructed drainage systems that had been unable to cope with the rainfall.

Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe denied media reports of disease.

"There are no major health-related issues in the camps and all health centres are functioning at normal capacity," he said.

The bar on the media makes independent verification of the situation impossible.

"With no independent monitors able to freely visit the camps, many people are unprotected and at risk from enforced disappearances, abductions, arbitrary arrest and sexual violence," London-based Amnesty International said.

It noted that the inmates of the camps were not allowed to talk freely to aid workers or the occasional visitor allowed by the military under strict supervision.

Sri Lanka's new army chief Jagath Jayasuriya told reporters last Thursday that the military was working overtime to clear landmines to allow swifter re-settlement of those in the camps.

The government promised UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who visited the island in May, that 80 percent of the internally displaced would be returned home before the end of this year -- a deadline officials privately admit is unrealistic.

© AFP

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No charges against 'Sinhala Tigers'

Police terrorist investigators have failed to find any evidence to charge a group accused of helping Tamil Tigers, their lawyer said.

Manjula Pathiraja, Attorney at Law, told BBC Sandeshaya that the authorities will have to release the whole group soon.

He was commenting on the latest release by the courts of two Sinhala nationals accused of supporting the LTTE.

"These people were detained for over one and half years, without charges, under detention orders," Mr. Pathiraja said.

A group of journalists and trade union activists were abducted and later found in the custody of police Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) in February 2007.

'Abducted'

They were arrested on suspicion of conspiring with the LTTE to overthrow the democratically elected government.

The suspects were accused of forming an organisation called Revolutionary Liberation Army and having close links with the LTTE.

The suspects were never charged in a court of law.

Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe told media days after the arrest that three journalists have confessed to planning and carrying out attacks on behalf of the rebels.

The military found explosives hidden by the suspects after the arrest, he added.

journalists were shown footages of suspects 'confessing' to have worked with the Tamil Tigers to stage attaks in the south of the country.

Media watchdogs, RSF and FMM, protested authorities using alleged confessions taken while in custody.

After considering fundamental rights (FR) petitions, the Supreme Court earlier this year released 11 of them without charge.

Sarath Fernando, one of those recently released by the court, said that he was tortured while in custody after he refused to confess working for the LTTE.

Speaking with BBC Sandeshaya from an unidentified location outside Sri Lanka, he said he filed a formal complaint with the magistrate regarding the torture.

© www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/

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Plan to resettle IDPs in the midst of Army and Sinhala settlements - 'Ravaya'

A source close to the President said that the release of IDPs has been postponed indefinitely with the government focusing on a plan to resettle them along with the new Sinhala and military settlements that are to be set up in the north.

The source further noted that the plan is to resettle people in areas in Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, below Mannar and above Vavuniya , where there are currently no people. The plan is said to remove all the old Tamil villages that existed in the respective areas. Although thousands of displaced persons currently living in camps even after completing the security checks, they cannot be released due to the government's new plan.

According to the Defence Ministry and the Defence Secretary, 10,000 of the 300,000 people living in the displaced camps have been identified to have links with the LTTE. They are currently living in separate camps located within the main IDP camp in Vavuniya.

While former child soldiers of the LTTE are being rehabilitated at the Ambepussa camp, several other LTTE members are held at the Boossa camp.

Half of the government stipulated period of 180 days to resettle the displaced persons has lapsed. The government in order to receive aid from India and other countries said it would resettle the displaced within 180 days.

It is reported that elements opposed to the devolution of power within the government had proposed the above mentioned plan while the others who are supportive of power devolution have objected to it.

Meanwhile, Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told parliament on the 19th that the displaced would be resettled by December 31st.

© Ravaya

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A group of Catholic clergy protest over celebrating Madhu festival

A group of Catholic clergy has protested over celebrating Madhu festival while hundreds of thousands of people are locked in the camps, a senior clergyman said.

The assumption of Virgin Mary was celebrated on 15 August at Madhu shrine in Vavuniya.

However, Fr. Victor Soosai, Vicar General of diocese of Mannar said that up to 10 priests stayed away from the celebration to express solidarity with displaced Tamil people, and priests, in camps.

“On the one side, after very long time, people are allowed to go to Madhu and they were able to worship,” he told BBC Sinhala service, Sandeshaya.

Nearly 300,000 IDPs (internally displaced people) are housed in temporary camps in Vavuniya.

Priests detained

“On the other side, people are sad in the sense, all the adjoining villages are in the IDP camps. They were asking how we can celebrate peace without people in the surrounding area,” he said.

Fr. Soosai said a group of priests stayed either with the parish members or visited the IDP camps while nearly 35 others attended the Madhu feast.

Bishop of Mannar Rayappu Joseph did not protest but was absent due to ill health, according to Fr. Soosai.

The senior clergyman revealed that six Catholic priests and three nuns are also being detained in the IDP camps by the authorities.

He added that almost all priests, those attended and those who were absent, agreed with the call by Jaffna Bishop Thomas Saundranayagam for the speed release of the IDPs.

“That is the wish of all the priests,” he said.

© www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/

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"Sri Lanka : a worst perpetrator of enforced disappearances." - M.C.M.Iqbal

Jo Baker / Aug 21, 2009 - As President Mahinda Rajapaksa speaks of ushering Sri Lankans into a new era of peace, a slight, bespectacled man in his 60s watches him on television from across an ocean, with the weariness of a man who has tried and failed to call his bluff.

M.C.M. Iqbal was secretary to two of Sri Lanka's "truth commissions", presidential inquiry panels into the 30,000 or more forced disappearances that took place in the late 1980s and early '90s in the south, during a dirty war that many believe has yet to run its course. Mr Iqbal knows more than most about the skeletons that are locked away in the government's closet - enough, he says, for him to no longer be safe in his home country.

"I still remember when Rajapaksa was on the way to a UN session with photos of torture victims and was caught going through customs," he recalls during a recent visit to the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. "As a minister he used to be at the front of the struggle against these incidents. Now I would consider his regime as one of the world's worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances."

In Sri Lanka, disappearances seem to accompany armed conflict, Human Rights Watch says. Government security forces are believed to have been responsible for tens of thousands of disappearances during the insurgency by the left-wing Sinhalese nationalist group Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna from 1987 to 1990, and the two decade civil war with the Tamil Tigers.

In 1994, Mr Iqbal was working as a senior government administrator when he was asked to join a truth commission. It was the first body of its kind - the result of an election pledge by the newly elected president, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. It was split up to cover three zones, and Mr Iqbal's role was to set up a system enabling just a handful of officers to document thousands of possible atrocities across four provinces in the centre of the country.

The team was to travel around for open question sessions. They were to compile a report for the president on the number and circumstances of the disappearances; who was responsible and to give opinions on charges; and deliver a final analysis of how things had been allowed to get so bad. Promises to the public had raised expectations that the report would lead to legal action against the alleged killers.

For two years, the small panel spent two-week stretches holding interviews, and at night, away from their families, its members would dictate and record the cases they heard that day.

"I had worked in public service for 40 years, 20 of them in courts, so this procedure of listening to complaints was not new to me, but it was harder in the sense that some of them touched me," Mr Iqbal says. "Sometimes I felt like sobbing."

He remembers many of the stories, but singles out one, which was not the worst, he adds. According to a woman whom the commission heard from in Badulla, the capital of Uva province, local police arrived at her house one night during the '90s and took two of her three sons. At the police station the next morning, the officers denied arresting the boys, but the woman made such a commotion that her sons heard her and they started shouting. She waited all day on the verandah of the station, and when the night-shift officers arrived, they invited her back inside and then they gang-raped her.

Mr Iqbal says the woman said she could hear her sons shouting throughout the ordeal. "She was almost dead from exhaustion, but she went home and she complained to the elders, who couldn't help her, and then finally she came to us."

A few days after her testimony, the same officers picked up her other son, a 17-year-old, over a robbery. Her two older boys were almost certainly dead, but the commission chairman was able to contact a magistrate and help prove the police were framing the 17-year-old. "She came running to the commission with her son, crying, and laying on the floor shouting 'thank you'," he says. "All we could tell her was that she had better take her son and get out of the area."

That was one of the more rewarding outcomes for Mr Iqbal's team. After two years in the central zone and more work with a follow-up commission, Mr Iqbal helped to write the report, and says that although some of the cases were clear-cut, it was not made public. Parts would be published in 2002, but without naming the accused.

"We thought we had enough materials; we thought that this would at least send a signal to prevent this sort of thing happening in the future, that all victims would get compensation and at least some perpetrators would be punished," Mr Iqbal says. "But the compensation paid was a pittance for most ... Hardly any of the perpetrators were punished."

Not yet disheartened, Mr Iqbal took a job with the National Human Rights Commission and the US-based Asia Foundation, logging the same cases in a database and lecturing on human rights. Still, many of those implicated continued to hold high-profile positions.

The biggest blow came when members of the commission, which was considered relatively independent, were replaced. The new members were appointed by the Rajapaksa government, and, Mr Iqbal says, they had different priorities. The move was criticised in the international press.

"It had become a political commission," he says. "I still remember the chairman, the late Justice P. Ramanathan, telling me to abandon [our work]. To use the exact words, he said: `Why are you raking up all the muck?'"

Mr Iqbal resigned, but he would still receive calls from the families of the disappeared, telling him that they saw one of the perpetrators getting into a car, or that another was still the officer in charge of the local police station. It appeared that the files had simply been put aside.

"I believe the president did not implement our recommendations because she would have alienated the military and police on whom she depended - terrorism was at its height then and they protected her," he says, referring to Ms Kumaratunga.

With no legal reforms and very few people held to account, disappearances continued in Sri Lanka. In 2006, 17 locals working for a French non-governmental organisation were massacred in a military zone. Scandinavian monitors pointed the finger at security forces but no one was charged. Mr Iqbal refused an invitation to join another such inquiry.

However, in 2007, when a group of international observers arrived to monitor the new commission's work, the United Nations office in Sri Lanka suggested they take on Mr Iqbal as an adviser.

"I said, 'Look at this list of perpetrators: so-and-so is now commander in chief there, so-and-so is minister of this district and the president [Mr Rajapaksa] knows and he keeps them there. Now he wants you to start making recommendations?'"

Mr Iqbal recalls what he describes as the shock and displeasure of the attorney general and the higher-ups three months later when the observers publicly backed the earlier recommendations. That was when the death threats started again.

"I'd had such calls in the past, but I didn't take them very seriously. But these were too frequent and sounded a little more genuine," Mr Iqbal says. "They were made to me and my wife, and to me, they would say: `You'll be killed if you keep working there'. Finally the observers' security services monitored the calls and told him he needed to leave immediately.

Late in 2007, without a word to anyone, the Iqbals locked up their house and left the country.

And now, from a colder climate, with six months in a refugee camp behind him, a schedule of seminars and workshops ahead and his name kept out of the phone book, this reluctant keeper of grisly secrets watches the latest Sri Lankan leader with a weary, wary eye.

He has no regrets about the path he took, although it essentially led him into exile, but he doubts he can say the same for the president.

"When Rajapaksa came to power, he had the option of doing something," Mr Iqbal says.

"He was a minister at the time of all this, he knew the contents of these reports and that nothing was being done. He knew who was involved in all the killings, and yet he has put all those people around him, given them positions."

Last month the president declared that he only wanted to look to the future now, that the past, essentially, was dead and buried. To Mr Iqbal, this is eerily close to the truth.

© South China Morning Post

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'Death Threat Deals New Blow to Free Expression in Sri Lanka' says Freedom House

The Sri Lankan government is solely responsible for ensuring the safety of prominent human rights activist Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, who received an anonymous death threat at his home yesterday. Freedom House urges that the Sri Lanka government demonstrate that it will not continue to tolerate such vigilantism by carrying out a full and impartial investigation and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, is the latest in a number of high-profile people who have been threatened, assaulted or, in some cases, murdered in recent months in the country. Almost all of the victims—including activists, journalists and lawyers—have been targeted because of their criticism of government policies.

"The fact that prominent individuals such as Mr. Saravanamuttu are now being targeted shatters the myth that the human rights situation is returning to normal in Sri Lanka," said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House executive director. "The government must ensure that human rights activists can carry out their work in documenting the aftermath of Sri Lanka's civil war and ongoing abuses without fear of harassment and intimidation."

The letter Saravanamuttu received said he would be killed because he supplied information that may cause the European Union to suspend preferential trading benefits to Sri Lanka. In reality, his organization has consistently urged that the benefits be renewed and that Sri Lanka use the opportunity to bring its human rights record in line with international standards.

Sri Lankan authorities are largely failing to prosecute the perpetrators of attacks on activists, lawyers and journalists, creating a culture of impunity. In January, gunmen murdered Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga in Colombo just days after he predicted his death in an editorial. Months earlier, human rights lawyer J.C. Weliamuna and his family survived a grenade attack on their Colombo home. Weliamuna is the head of the Sri Lankan branch of Transparency International, an international nongovernmental organization that campaigns against government corruption. Dozens of lesser-known activists and journalists have faced similar threats in recent months.

Freedom of expression has steadily declined in Sri Lanka over the last five years, despite constitutional guarantees. Journalists and activists regularly face verbal and physical attacks, both from official sources and nationalist vigilantes. A number of journalists have fled the country and gone into exile as a result of the threats, while others heavily self-censor. Top-ranking officials, including Defense Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa, are known to openly equate criticism of government policies with treason. In addition, the Defense Ministry website and state-controlled media often engage in smear tactics against journalists and activists.

"This kind of behavior on the part of top-ranking officials is not befitting of the leadership of a democratically-elected government," said Karin Karlekar, Freedom House senior researcher and managing editor of Freedom of the Press.

The ongoing culture of impunity is likely to further erode Sri Lanka's ranking in Freedom in the World, Freedom House's annual survey of political rights and civil liberties. Sri Lanka is ranked Partly Free in the 2009 edition of Freedom in the World and Not Free in the 2009 version of Freedom of the Press.

© www.freedomhouse.org/

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Sri Lanka ranks South Asia’s No.1 human rights violator - Asian Center for Human Rights

A new report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights presents a comparative analysis of human rights situation in South Asia. According to the report, Sri Lanka is the number one violator in the region closely followed by Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) released a comparative assessment of the human rights records of South Asian governments earlier this month.

While Sri Lanka is the worst in the region, the report also underlines that all countries in the region have very poor records.

According to the report, Sri Lanka is South Asia’s worst human rights violator. The country had the worst human rights records for violations of the right to life, the rights of the child, attacks on human rights defenders and violations of the rights of the minorities.

On press freedom, it ranked second worst violator only after Bhutan – which has no independent press. These increased violations are a direct consequence of the war. Civilians in Sri Lanka are deliberately targeted by all sides to the conflict.

“Discrimination lies at the heart of the war with the Tamils and the introduction of restrictions on Tamils travelling to Colombo are a powerful symbol of government intent. The political ramifications of the exclusion - not least in terms of prospects for a peaceful settlement of the conflict - of an entire ethnic group from the nation’s capital are of deep concern,” stated ACHR.

In Sri Lanka, attacks on freedom of expression were of particular concern and led the killing of seven journalists in 2007.

There are no precise figures on the number of civilians killed because reporting on war is banned.

“Not only is Sri Lanka’s conflict resulting in systematic violations of human rights of civilians, but by deliberately oppressing journalists and freedom of expression, this measure closes off any means for the government to have access to independent information and understand the extent of the problem and the negative consequences of its own actions,” said Suhas Chakma, Director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights.

The results are there: disappearances began to rise again: 540 persons disappeared across Sri Lanka from January to August 2007 with ethnic Tamils suffering disproportionately –78.89% compared with 1.85% (Sinhalese) and 3.52% (Muslims) with 50% of the cases being reported from Jaffna district alone.

“In no other South Asian country, so many human rights defenders have been killed. By September 2007, at least 43 aid workers were killed and 14 others were missing in Sri Lanka since the escalation of the conflict,” asserted Chakma.

The South Asia Human Rights Index 2008 finds that under the ACHR’s index scoring system Sri Lanka (with 52 points) is the worst human rights violator in South Asia followed by Bangladesh (45), Bhutan (43), Pakistan (41), Maldives (23), Nepal (24) and India (24).

Apart from strengthening the national mechanism to address such violations, Asian Centre for Human Rights recommends that 15th SAARC Summit establish a working Group of Eminent Persons of South Asia to explore the possibility of drafting a South Asia Human Rights Convention with full and active participation of civil society groups and other stakeholders.

ACHR also urges the National Human Rights Institutions in South Asia to emulate the role of their counterparts in South East Asia to establish a South Asia Sub-Regional human rights mechanism.

© One World South Asia

Read the full report:
South Asia Human Rights Index 2008 - ACHR

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