In Haiti, UN's Sri Lankan Peacekeepers Shoot Live Ammo at Crowd

In Haiti on November 10, UN peacekeepers fired live ammunition resulting in injuries to civilians. Inner City Press asked spokesperson Michele Montas about the incident, and about UN peacekeepers using live ammunition instead of rubber bullets.

Ms. Montas replied that after an emergency landing, "some Haitians entered the helicopter." She said a person in the helicopter fired and a cartridge hit a civilian. She also said that "a person in the plane.. shot in the air." (This is reminiscent of the incident in 2008 during the Security Council's visit to Goma in the Congo, where a UN security official shot his weapon in the plane to try to show that it was empty, triggering an all night bus ride by Ambassador to Kigali, Rwanda.)

Inner City Press asked if it is UN protocol to shoot live ammunition in the air. Shooting in the air is the protocol, Ms. Montas answered.

Later on November 20, Inner City Press spoke with a senior UN peacekeeping official, who explained that UN Formed Police Units have rubber bullets, but that in this case is was "military people."

Reportedly, these were Sri Lankan soldiers, in all probability previously involved in the conflict in norther Sri Lanka in which the U.S. and others have found presumptive war crimes.
Meanwhile the UN has still refused to disclose the outcome of its repatriation from Haiti of over 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers on allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation. It's said that in the future, aggregate data will be reported, either by Peacekeeping Mission or Troop Contributing Country, but not both.

© Inner City Press

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka Tamil refugee camps 'to be opened next month'

Sri Lanka says people held in special camps since the end of the conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels will be allowed out for short periods from next month.

An aide to the president also confirmed a pledge to close the facilities, which house more than 130,000 people.

They were set up in the country's north for Tamils fleeing the final stages of the civil war, which ended in May.

Sri Lanka has drawn strong international criticism for holding people in the camps against their will.

The latest government announcement was made by the special adviser to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his brother Basil, on a visit to the largest camp, Menik Farm.

On Thursday UN humanitarian chief John Holmes urged Sri Lanka to allow them to leave, following a visit to the camp.

Denied access

Addressing a group of displaced people, Mr Rajapaksa said that from 1 December the camps would no longer be closed sites. People will now be free to leave them for a day or two at a time, to visit friends and relatives, for example.

Although they will not be able to leave permanently, he reiterated the government's pledge to resettle those displaced by the end of January.

About 300,000 Tamils fled the war zone during the government's final offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) earlier this year.

Those displaced - many of whom had been held as human shields by the rebels - were forced into hastily built camps.

Criticised for keeping them there against their will, the government insisted that incarceration was necessary while the refugees were being screened for possible links with the rebels.

It has also said that more than 1.5m mines must be cleared and basic infrastructure needs to be in place to allow people to return home.

The UN, diplomats and charities have criticised the screening process, saying it is not transparent.

'Not transparent'

The barbed-wire enclosures are run by the military, and many of those displaced had complained about poor food and sanitary conditions.

Opposition parliamentarians in Sri Lanka have also protested about not being allowed access to the camps.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says the government had been sensitive to the criticism, and within the past month has markedly stepped up the pace of releases.

Many people are returning to devastated villages in depopulated countryside, much of it mined, our correspondent adds.

In May the Sri Lankan army defeated the Tamil Tigers, who had been fighting since the mid-1970s to carve out a separate nation in the Sinhalese-majority island.

© BBC News

Related Links:
Sri Lanka to free war-displaced civilians - AFP
Sri Lanka to release 136,000 war-displaced Tamils - AP

Read More

Summary only

Amnesty International Chief Blasts Australia's 'Panic' Over Asylum Seekers

The head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, says the Australian government should close its immigration detention center on Christmas Island. On a visit to Australia, Khan accuses the conservative opposition of exploiting voters' fears about asylum seekers for political gain.

Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan says that holding asylum seekers at the Christmas Island processing center will not deter the flow of boat people heading to Australia.

On a visit to Canberra this week, Khan urged the government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to close the camp in the Indian Ocean, about 2,600 kilometers northwest of Perth.

The facility opened last year and houses asylum seekers recently picked up by the Australian navy.

A surge of unauthorized arrivals by boat has put the issue of immigration back in the public spotlight in Australia. Khan says the debate here has often been xenophobic.

The Amnesty International chief blames conservative politicians for whipping up public hysteria.

"I think it is unscrupulous politicians and populist media," Khan said. "There has been a lot of fuss being made about the boat arrivals when actually the numbers arriving by air are much higher. There seems to be a sense of panic when what is really needed here is to handle a humanitarian problem with regard to international standards."

She says the number of boat arrivals in Australia is small compared those arriving in Europe.

Khan, however, calls the Rudd government's immigration policies an improvement on those of the previous conservative administration. She points out Mr. Rudd's decision to grant permanent residency rather than temporary protection visas to those deemed to be genuine refugees and the closure of the outback Woomera detention center and offshore processing facilities in the South Pacific.

Amnesty International says a multilateral approach is needed to deal with the asylum problem.

The Australian government says the surge of migrants arriving by boat is the result of conflicts in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan as well as the global economic crisis.

Australia accepts more than 10,000 refugees a year who are processed through non-governmental agencies in other countries.

© Voice of America

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka slips in corruption index

Sri Lanka has slipped five places to 97 in the annual corruption perceptions index in an annual perception survey conducted among 180 countries, by Transparency International, a corruption watchdog.

"What we see is a clear indictment on Sri Lanka and the urgent need for major systemic changes to wipe out corruption," J C Weliamuna, executive director of Transparency International's Sri Lanka chapter said.

"The lesson to learn from the CPI reading this year is that anti corruption should be nothing less than a national priority."

Though the index is based on perceptions, Weliamuna says it is widely watched and quoted.

It ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians.

Sri Lanka's score of the corruption perceptions index (CPI) fell to 3.1 (from 3.2 last year) which "a serious corruption problem in the public sector in the country," Transparency International Sri Lanka said.

The CPI places the least corrupt countries on a score of 0 and the most highly corrupt on a scale of 10.

India had a score of 3.4 while Maldives 2.5, Bangladesh 2.4, Pakistan 2.4, Nepal 2.3 and Bhutan 5.0.

Transparency International cheifl Hugette Labelle says that corruption requires oversight by parliaments, a well performing judiciary, independent and properly resourced audit and anti-corruption agencies, vigorous law enforcement, transparency in public budgets, revenue and aid flows, as well as space for independent media and a vibrant civil society.

© Lanka Business Online

Read More

Summary only

Q+A-: Sri Lanka's top general signals bid for presidency

Sarath Fonseka, who quit as Sri Lanka's top general after the end of a 25-year war, has said he plans now to fight for democracy and human rights, fuelling speculation he will soon announce his candidacy for the presidency.

He said on Monday he would announce his decision on entering politics this week.

Here are some questions and answers on Fonseka:

WHO IS SARATH FONSEKA?

A soldier from 1970, Fonseka was the army commander who spearheaded victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels. Known for his volatile temper and win-at-all-costs attitude on the battlefield, Fonseka was nearly killed in April 2006 by a Tiger suicide bomber, but returned three months later to launch a 34-month campaign that defeated the rebels.

WHY DID HE RESIGN?

Fonseka in his resignation letter accused President Mahinda Rajapaksa of sidelining him despite his contribution to the victory, and of sullying the army's reputation by falsely alerting India that a coup plot was afoot in October.

WHY THE SPECULATION HE WILL CHALLENGE RAJAPAKSA?

He has recently spoken out on democracy, human rights, and media freedom, areas in which the opposition and Western nations say the administration of Rajapaksa has done too little. Both the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna and pro-business United National Party have said they have spoken to him and are ready to adopt him as their common candidate to defeat Rajapaksa. Fonseka has not responded to this yet.

WHY IS HE DELAYING HIS ANNOUNCEMENT?

Analysts say Fonseka wants Rajapaksa first to announce the date of a presidential poll which the government has said is due by April. The president on Sunday dodged the date announcement, in what analysts saw as a tactic to buy time until the Fonseka flap settles down.

CAN FONSEKA TAKE VOTES FROM RAJAPAKSA?

Fonseka has at least as much claim as Rajapaksa to credit for victory in the war, a key factor in the incumbent's popularity.

WHAT ABOUT THE ECONOMY?

If Fonseka enters the presidential race, economists expect Rajapaksa to spend more to woo voters with public-sector wage hikes, subsidies and new state jobs. Rajapaksa has already promised public sector pay increases from January. But implementing this will be very difficult due to strings attached to a $2.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). If Rajapaksa decides to cancel the IMF loan, investor confidence in the $40 billion economy will be badly dented.

© Reuters

Read More

Summary only

Bambalapitiya tragedy: Court to see video

By Lakmal Sooriyagoda - A Colombo Court yesterday allowed the Police to screen on December 3 a video footage of the controversial case where a mentally deranged man was beaten and driven to the sea where he drowned off the Bambalapitiya beach.

Crimes DIG Anura Senanayake told Fort Magistrate Gihan Pilapitiya that the repeated telecast of the man being beaten had given the impression that he had been beaten several times and this had damaged the image of the police department.

He asked that he be permitted to screen the video footage in open court.

On behalf of the TNL TV, Counsel Upul Jayasuriya with Shiraz Noordeen submitted that during the news presentation, the video footage was telecast parallel to the news reading and therefore it had been telecast several times.

On behalf of MTV channels, Counsel Udaya Rohan de Silva with Shiraz Noordeen submitted that MTV channels had not telecast the video in a distorted manner.

Meanwhile, the identification parade to identify the four suspects was postponed to November 20.

© Daily Mirror

Read More

Summary only

Tissa Honoured: CPJ introduces 2009 International Press Freedom Awardees

Naziha Réjiba, editor of the Tunisian online news journal Kalima, said she knows what to expect when she returns home—surveillance, harassment, and threats conducted by one the world’s most repressive governments.

“While I’m speaking, many homes of Tunisian journalists are completely surrounded,” Réjiba, one of four recipients of the 2009 International Press Freedom Awards, told reporters at the National Press Club today, describing state surveillance. The Committee to Protect Journalists gives the awards each year to courageous journalists working in dangerous and repressive circumstances.

At today’s press conference, CPJ also introduced awardee Mustafa Haji Abdinur, an Agence France-Presse correspondent and editor-in-chief of Radio Simba in Somalia. Two other CPJ awardees, J.S. Tissainayagam of Sri Lanka and Eynulla Fatullayev of Azerbaijan, were recognized but not present: They are imprisoned in their home countries in retaliation for their work.

The awards be officially bestowed on Tuesday in New York; the awardees are in Washington to meet with elected officials, diplomats, and news media.

Abdinur noted the dangers facing the press in Somali, where 18 journalists have died on duty since 2005. “If a journalist is killed, the news is also killed,” he said, noting that foreign journalists are no longer stationed in the country and domestic reporters are being attacked, killed, or forced into exile. Few reporters are left, and the world knows ever less about the grave crisis there.

CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon called for the release of the imprisoned journalists Tissainayagam and Fatullayev. “We will make sure their respective governments are aware of our outrage,” he said.

Fatullayev is an investigative journalist whose colleague, editor Elmar Huseynov, was assassinated in 2005. Fatullayev is serving more than eight years on fabricated charges after his reporting on the unsolved Huseynov slaying raised questions about government obstruction.

“His only crime is his journalism,” said Nina Ognianova, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “He is being punished for doing a job that the government has not done: investigating the murder of his editor.”

Tissainayagam, or Tissa as he is known in Sri Lanka, is serving 20 years in prison on terrorism charges based on his journalism. Tissainayagam had written columns documenting human rights and other abuses by Sri Lankan military authorities. The government called it inciting “communal disharmony.

Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, called on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to intervene in the case, rectify a miscarriage of justice, and set Tissainayagam free.

© Committee to Protect Journalists

Read More

Summary only

Global investors target Sri Lanka

Sanjeevi JAYASURIYA - The global investor community is keen on exploring opportunities in Sri Lanka as there is a peaceful environment that facilitates growing investor confidence. The next decade would be prosperous for the country as there will be growth potential in its financial market, said Leopard Capital Asia CEO, Douglas Clayton.

Leopard Capital Sri Lanka is a joint venture between Orion Capital Partners in Sri Lanka and Leopard Capital of Hong Kong. It launched a private equity fund to raise US $ 100 million by early next year.

The Fund would nurture the Management Buy Out (MBO) market in Sri Lanka. “There are many companies where the management does not get an opportunity to make the relevant changes to capture growth and enhance shareholders’ value due to lack of capital or shareholder disagreements.

Worldwide, the MBO becomes a solution for such problems and assists good management teams to continue to grow businesses navigating around shareholder issues. In the long term it ensures that companies have longer lifecycles than shareholder groups. MBOs also allow long standing family businesses to avoid decline and demise”, he said.

Leopard Sri Lanka Chairman, Ranjit Fernando said that with the advent of peace in the country it is anticipated that there will be unprecedented growth in the economy.

Many private companies which have traditionally depended on bank funding and retained earnings will be faced with either having to surrender growth opportunities to foreign companies with capital or to conglomerates with capital or else seek capital for expansion.

Leopard Sri Lanka will also assist in supporting this growth capital requirement among mid-sized Sri Lankan companies.

Sri Lanka has a conducive regulatory environment to attract investors. With the introduction of an equity fund of this nature it would help change the corporate landscape.

The Fund will focus on development impact, good governance, scalability of business, quality of management team and transparency in the potential investing companies.

It would invest in tourism, IT, financial services and the retail sectors and would provide capital to enhance business, he said.

Leopard Capital Sri Lanka works in collaboration with international experts in the field of investment management and capital mobilization and a team of Sri Lankan managers who have built a reasonable network in Sri Lanka with insights in to Sri Lankan business. Leopard Capital plans to bring a great deal of international business linkages that will assist Sri Lankan companies to access global markets.

A two-day investor forum will be held from today to showcase the country’s potential growth sectors and entrepreneurship skills to coincide with the launch of Leopard Capital Sri Lanka.

© Ceylon Daily News

Related Links:
Japanese investors show confidence in Sri Lanka - Ceylon Daily News
Sri Lanka can be the “Dubai of South Asia” : SL Minister - Daily Mirror
Sri Lanka market watchdog hosts Singapore investor forum - Lanka Business Online

Read More

Summary only

UN presses for freedom for Sri Lanka war-displaced

The United Nations on Thursday stepped up pressure on Sri Lanka to free thousands of war-displaced civilians held in state-run internment camps.

"Months after the conflict ended, our main concerns haven't changed. People are still not given free access to leave these camps on their own free will," UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told AFP after a visit to the camps.

Holmes, who ended a three-day visit on Thursday, said some 130,000 men, women and children remained inside the tightly-guarded camps.

More needs to be done to improve their living conditions, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs added.

"We are very much encouraged by the government's progress to resettle people. There were about 288,000 people in May (when the conflict ended) and now its much less," Holmes said.

He asked the government to allow those returning to their villages a greater say in their resettlement.

"People need to be consulted as much as possible on where they are going, the status of their homes, their livelihoods."

"But I must say that those who have been allowed to return are quite relieved to get out of the camps and rebuild their lives with what little they have."

He inspected demining efforts and visited the Manik Farm area in the island's north where most of the displaced civilians are being held.

He said the government appears to be on track to resettle displaced people by January 2009.

"But we have some doubts. There are bound to be areas where demining is not finished. Our concern is what's going to happen to these people who cant go back to their villages. Where will they stay once the camps are emptied?"

He said some may opt to live in the state-run makeshift shelters until their villagers were cleared of mines.

"In that case, freedom of movement becomes more crucial. People should be free to leave the site for jobs or visit friends and relatives until its safe to return."

During a news conference with Holmes, Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama repeated Colombo's promise to allow war-displaced people leave the camps at their will.

The foreign minister did not elaborate, but sought more assistance from the UN to clear mines.

Sri Lanka's military in October estimated that there could be up to 1.5 million mines scattered across the island's north.

In May, Sri Lankan troops defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels who were fighting for a separate homeland since 1972.

© AFP

Related Links:
UN confirms Tamil camps exodus - BBC News
Sri Lanka Seeks UN Aid as Envoy Visits War Refugees - Bloomberg
Resettlement quickened for Sri Lanka war displaced - eTaiwan News

Read More

Summary only

Sri Lanka approves $891 mln China loan for coal power

Sri Lanka has approved $891 million loan from China's Export-Import bank to fund a coal power plant, an official said on Thursday, as the island nation focuses on infrastructure after the end of 25 years of war.

China along with India are now increasingly competing to win lucrative and strategic investments in Sri Lanka since the fighting stopped in May.

Both India and China provided military assistance, including ammunition in the final phase of the war, while they also helped President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government to face Western-led criticism of rights abuses.

Anura Priyadharshana Yapa, the cabinet spokesman said the government approved China's offer of the 20-year loan with a 2 percent interest rate and five-year grace period to build the second phases coal-fired power plant in northwestern province.

Sri Lanka and China signed an over $350 million worth deals to build a highway and an oil bunkering facility in August .

© Reuters

Read More

Summary only