Sri Lanka: The Conquerors of the Tigers Now Battle for the Spoils

By Amantha Perera and Jyoti Thottam - Who will get the credit for ending Sri Lanka's 26-year war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam: the tough Army commander or the President who appointed him? That's the question at the heart of island's Jan. 26 elections that will pit President Mahinda Rajapaksa against retired Lieut. Gen. Sarath Fonseka. A political novice, Fonseka may not have the organizational strength to beat Rajapaksa, but he has proven to be a sharp thorn in the side of a president who recently seemed unbeatable.

Fonseka has spent nearly 40 years as a soldier. He joined the Army at the age of 19, and he will turn 59 on Dec. 18, the day his campaign officially begins. The same year that Fonseka joined the Army, Rajapaksa won his first election to Parliament. A shrewd, brash career politician, Rajapaksa made eliminating the LTTE, an armed separatist group, the all-consuming mission of his four years in office. Since the collapse of the Tigers, Colombo has been full of enormous cut-outs of the president, congratulating him on his victory. Rajapaksa called early elections to capitalize on the post-war euphoria.

Without any other compelling candidate, the opposition parties have rallied around Fonseka as their war hero. "He was someone who could prove to be an effective counter to the popularity and the credibility that President Mahinda Rajapaksa enjoys," says Jehan Perera, Executive Director of the National Peace Council, a research and advocacy group in Colombo.

Fonseka's own reasons for entering politics are much more personal. In an interview with TIME on Dec. 13 in Colombo, Fonseka explained that just two months after the war ended in May, President Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, sidelined him. He says he was given a prestigious new post — Chief of Defense Staff — without any operational authority. "Even to get a corporal to the CDS office I had to get the Defense Secretary's approval," Fonseka says. "So then I was not happy with the job there. Then I also realised that they were not trusting me."

Sri Lanka has never had a coup or a military president, and some political observers fear the end of that proud civilian tradition if the general is elected. Fonseka dismisses that concern, taking as his models Eisenhower and De Gaulle. If he really wanted to seize power, he asks, why give up the uniform now and "go around asking for the vote?" He says the high-handed treatment by the Rajapaksa government forced him into politics. "The government was responsible for pushing me into that," Fonseka says. "Now they have to face the music."

Fonseka's base of support cuts right into Rajapaksa's. Both are from the increasingly vocal bourgeoisie of the rural south, the heartland of Sri Lanka's Sinhala Buddhist majority. The LTTE's Tamil nationalism and its dream of a separate homeland for the Tamil minority were a challenge to Sinhala Buddhist dominance. Fonseka has the reputation of being an even more strident Sinhala nationalist than Rajapaksa but is now trying to soften that image. "I am a very good Sinhalese, a very good Buddhist, there is no question about it," he says. "But towards minorities I never had any discriminating attitude." He insists that his comments in a 2008 interview with Canada's National Post, in which he called Sri Lanka a Sinhala Buddhist nation, were taken out of context. "I said historically the country belongs to the Sinhalese," Fonseka says. "the next sentence I mentioned was that the majority Sinhalese must treat the other communities like their own people."

Sri Lanka's treatment of the Tamil minority is a central issue in the election. During the last months of war, the government had restricted nearly 300,000 Tamils who fled the fighting to detention camps. Under intense domestic and international pressure, Rajapaksa announced on Dec. 1 that the 130,000 people still in the camps would have limited freedom to leave. The opposition parties have taken up the cause of these internally displaced people, or IDPs, and Fonseka says the government should give them complete freedom of movement: "If they handled the situation properly, we would have been in a position to give them freedom, even send them back to the areas after improving the infrastructure." He criticized the government for failing to improve roads and water lines in the areas where IDPs are returning, and for preventing opposition MPs from visiting them. "That is worse than keeping them in the camps."

The detention of these civilians has become an international human rights issue. On Dec. 16, the European Union proposed suspending a major trade agreement with Sri Lanka, mainly due to the continued detention of IDPs. But Sri Lankan authorities have justified the camps as a security measure, allowing them to screen out suspected LTTE fighters hiding among the civilian population. Fonseka says he would have handled the process more effectively and warns of the consequences of failing to identify lurking LTTE cadres. "If there is a single terrorist act, the army will have to again start searching these people, putting up roadblocks, checkpoints, raiding houses in the night, cordon and searches," Fonseka says. "The harassment of the people will begin again."

He still considers the LTTE a threat. "Even in Colombo there are [still] about 20 LTTE suicide cadres," he says. "They are waiting for the leadership, the guidance, the orders from top." But burnishing his security acumen and resting on his military accomplishments might not be enough to assure Fonseka an electoral victory. Many Sri Lankan voters have moved on to more immediate concern — steeply rising inflation and jobs threatened by a deep global recession and a downturn in major export earners including tea and the garment industry. Fonseka had little to say about economic policy other than to promise "development."

Fonseka wins praise for leading the final ground campaign against the Tigers, and for setting aside seniority to promote talented, effective junior commanders. But military analysts say the last push on land would not have been effective without the Navy, who cut off the Tigers’ vital supply line and escape route by sea. "Sarath Fonseka could not have won the war, if not for the crucial support he received from Secretary Defense Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the other service chiefs, especially the navy and air chiefs and the intelligence agencies," says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Politics have unraveled the Fonseka-Rajapaksa alliance. In his interview with TIME, Fonseka repeated charges, first published in a Sri Lankan newspaper, the Sunday Leader, that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had given orders that top LTTE commanders not be allowed to surrender. "This is well known to all those who were there in the field," Fonseka said. "[The Defenwe Secretary] was supposed to have said, 'Whether anybody comes with white flags or no, finish off everybody.' I was the Army Commander, they never passed that message to me, never even consulted me. I only came to know this after two days after everything was over. And I never gave any instructions about the white flags." Fonseka told TIME that, during a recent visit to the U.S., immigration authorities had attempted to interview him about alleged war crimes committed by the Defense Secretary but he declined because he was still a government officer.

The government has denied giving orders not to allow surrender, and in subsequent comments to the press, Fonseka appeared to backtrack. The Sri Lankan press have been full of charges and counter-charges between the general and the Rajapaksa brothers, as the country gears up for a month of furious campaigning. This election won't be as long or as brutal as the fight against the Tigers, but it will be a battle just the same.

© TIME

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No heroes, only suspects of war crimes!

Vickramabahu Karanarathna - ‘The Island’, reported on December 15: “Fonseka said, he had told a weekend newspaper that a journalist had told him that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had ordered Maj. Gen Shavindra Silva (then Brigadier) to kill the LTTE leaders who offered to surrender but, what he said had been misreported. Certain opposition politicians were trying to gain political mileage by making use of that erroneous report, he said. “I don’t believe that the journalist who wrote the story had any intention of slinging mud at me,” he said.”

Wriggle out

Thus he was trying to wriggle out of the problem he himself had created by exploding a political bombshell about war crimes. Fortunately, for the public, the government took his exposé seriously and claimed that he has betrayed the country by divulging military secrets. Wimal Weerawansa the leader of Jathika Nidahas Peramuna (JNP) told a news conference on the same day that this matter had already been discussed with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and it had been decided to seek the attorney general’s views with the objective of taking legal action against Gen. Fonseka . Weerawansa said further, that the statement which the former Army Commander had said had breached the ethics of his profession. He explained that even a professional who works for a biscuit factory is not supposed to reveal its recipes if he joins a competitor’s company. “Gen. Fonseka had, therefore, seriously violated the ethics associated with the army,” he said.

It is clear that the government has indirectly confirmed that, what appeared in the ‘Sunday Leader’ is the truth and the general should be penalized for exposing this highly guarded truth. There were reports in various websites about the killing of the LTTE leadership around 17 of May 2009. The most wide spread story was that, with international agreement the LTTE leadership was requested to come forward to surrender which they accepted. They came in batches with white flags and all were taken into one room. Then instead of treating them as prisoners of war they were all clubbed to death. Even children, including young girls, were murdered. Though there were confirmations of this event it did not have any credibility as no confirmation came from the side of the Sinhala army. Now, not only the general who led the war but also the very government has indirectly confirmed the development, though not the details. Now both parties have got into a tangle from which neither can get out easily. The general has to explain why he kept his mouth shut all this time, and why he did not check the media story with Major general Shavindra Silva before going public. On the other hand, if the army was so professional and apolitical under his leadership how did Shavindra implement any order given by Gotabaya, without his knowledge. In the case of Lasantha’s murder General Sarath vouched, that the army men could not have been used for a political purpose as they were strictly professional. But in this case he suspects that Shavindra has been used for a political end by Gotabaya. General Fonseka cannot have it both ways; either the army was professional and could not be used for political murders or it was possible for some higher up to have used the army to kill Lasantha and attack other media men.

Outcome

Whatever maybe the outcome of the investigation promised by the parties involved, the war has not indeed created heroes but only suspects of war crimes. Modern Dutugemunus have behaved like barbarians. In the case of the ancient war in 3rd century BC, narrated in the Mahawansa, the old Elara had invited the young Gemunu for a duel in order to avoid the mass killing. For the old man it was a sacrifice and after his death Gemunu gave the utmost respect and even today the Sinhala people pay homage to the statue of Elara.

This Sinhala story stands in contrast to that of the ancient Greeks. In the latter, the Greek hero Achilles drags the dead body of vanquished Trojan leader Hector, which was tied to his chariot, disregarding the cries of Hectors family. But according to this new story Mahinda has surpassed the ancient myths by the brutality shown to the surrendered LTTE leaders. Whatever may be the result of the proposed investigation on this matter the damage done to our country and the people is irreparable. The political bankruptcy of both parties is shown in debates and abuses that are going on. To gain respect and dignity for all, both these camps should be rejected.

© Lakbima News

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On Lasantha, media freedom and human rights: Interview with Journalist Dilrukshi Handunnetti

Interview with Dilrukshi Handunnetti from Centre for Policy Alternatives on Vimeo.

“Governments usually don’t take notice of silent majorities” says well known investigative and environmental journalism Dilrukshi Handunnetti in this video interview with Groundviews.

To commemorate Human Rights Day 2009 (falling on 10 December) Groundviews interviewed a number of leading activists in Sri Lanka to find out their perspectives on current challenges facing human rights in post-war Sri Lanka. In general, activists featured were asked to comment on the Sri Lankan State’s protection of human rights, the nexus between human rights and human dignity and opportunities for greater human rights protection over the coming years.

Dilrukshi is a lawyer by training having specialized in international law. A journalist for over 17 years, she has extensively covered the areas of politics, conflict, environment, culture, and history and gender issues.

The interview focussed on media freedom and the freedom of expression in Sri Lanka. Dilrukshi flagged the use of the reprehensible Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) post-war and against independent media through the sentencing of Tamil journalism J.S. Tissainayagam. The severe deterioration in media freedom and the freedom of expression since 2005 was flagged, as well as the assassination of senior journalist and Editor of the Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickremetunge. Dilrukshi more generally expressed concern over the deterioration of human rights in South Asia, and that citizens in Sri Lanka were today denied basic freedoms and rights enshrined in the constitution with complete impunity.

© www.groundviews.org

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Sri Lankan guards 'sexually abused girls' in Tamil refugee camp

A British medic held for months in an internment camp for Tamil civilians has revealed how military guards dealt out cruel punishments, while many suspected of links to Tiger rebels were taken away and have not been seen since.

Gethin Chamberlain - Tamil women interned after escaping the horrors of the civil war in Sri Lanka were sexually abused by their guards who traded sex for food, a British medic has revealed.

Vany Kumar, who was locked up behind barbed wire in the Menik Farm refugee camp for four months, also claims prisoners were punished by being made to kneel for hours in the hot sun, and those suspected of links to the defeated Tamil Tigers were taken away and not seen again by their families.

Kumar, 25, from Essex, was released from internment in September, but has waited until now to reveal the full scale of her ordeal in the hope of avoiding reprisals against friends and family held with her. They have now been released after the Sri Lankan government bowed to international pressure this month and opened the camps.

The Sri Lankan government confirmed to the Observer that it had received reports from United Nations agencies of physical and sexual abuse within the camps, but maintained that it had not been possible to substantiate the allegations. It denied that prisoners had disappeared. In response, a UN spokesman accused Colombo of "doing everything it could" to obstruct attempts to monitor the welfare of the hundreds of thousands interned in the camps.

Kumar, a biomedical graduate, was incarcerated in May in what she describes as a "concentration camp", along with nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians who managed to escape the slaughter which accompanied the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels, who had been fighting for 25 years for a separate state on the island. Working amid heavy shelling in an improvised field hospital, she had spent months helping save the lives of hundreds of civilians wounded as they were caught between advancing government soldiers and the cornered Tigers.

Sri Lanka has consistently denied mistreating the detainees, but Kumar's damning new evidence will bolster the claims of human rights organisations which have repeatedly criticised the government in Colombo.

Speaking at the family home in Chingford, she accused the Sri Lankan government of persecuting Tamils as it sought to round up rebels who had escaped the fighting. "It was a concentration camp, where people were not even allowed to talk, not even allowed to go near the fences," she said. "They were kept from the outside world. The government didn't want people to tell what happened to them, about the missing or the disappearances or the sexual abuse. They didn't want anyone to know.

"Sexual abuse is something that was a common thing, that I personally saw. In the visitor area relatives would be the other side of the fence and we would be in the camp. Girls came to wait for their relatives and military officers would come and touch them, and that's something I saw.

"The girls usually didn't talk back to them, because they knew that in the camp if they talked anything could happen to them. It was quite open, everyone could see the military officers touching the girls," she said.

"Tamil girls usually don't talk about sexual abuse, they won't open their mouths about it, but I heard the officers were giving the women money or food in return for sex. These people were desperate for everything."

She said prisoners who complained about their treatment were singled out by the guards. "One time I saw an old man was waiting to visit the next camp and this military officer hit the old man. I don't know what the argument was, but the officer just hit him in the back.

"In the same area people were made to kneel down in the hot weather for arguing with the officers. Sometimes it lasted for hours."

Sometimes white vans appeared in the camp and took people away. White vans hold a particular terror in Sri Lanka, where they are associated with the abduction of thousands of people by death squads. "They were asking people to come in and take their names down if they had any sort of contact [with the Tamil Tigers]. They did an investigation and then a van would come in and they would take them away and nobody would know after that. I know people still searching for family members."

Kumar said that on arrival at the camp, near the northern town of Vavuniya, she was put in a large tent with several people she did not know. The camp was guarded by armed soldiers and ringed with high fences and rolls of razor wire. "The first two or three days I was alone there still scare me. When I arrived at the camp I put my bag down and just cried. That feeling still won't go. I just don't want to think about those two or three days in the camp, the fear about what was going to happen to me.

"For the first few days I didn't eat anything. We didn't know where to go to get food. I thought, 'Am I dreaming or is this really happening?' I never thought I would end up in a camp." Tens of thousands of people were crammed into flimsy tents which provided little respite from the intense heat. Toilets and washing facilities could not cope with the demands and food and water were in short supply.

"You have to bathe in an open area in front of others, which I find very uneasy. I stayed next to the police station, so every day I had a bath with the police officers looking at me, men and women. Everyone can see you when you are having a bath. So I would get up early in the morning about 3.30am, so it was dark," she said.

Kumar was held in the best-equipped part of the camp, but even there conditions were dire. "It is not a standard a human being can live in. The basic needs like water and food [were] always a problem. Most of the time you were queuing for water.

"The toilets were terrible, and there was not enough water, so we could not clean them. There were insects and flies everywhere. After two or three days of continuous rain, the sewage was floating on the water and going into the tents and everyone [was] walking through it, up to knee height." She was finally released into the custody of the British High Commission in early September.

The Sri Lankan government says it is aware of allegations of sexual abuse and punishment of prisoners, but denied large-scale abuse. Rajiva Wijesinha, the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said "there was a lot of sex going on" inside the camp, but he claimed that most reports involved abuse by fellow detainees. "I can't tell you nothing happened, because I wasn't there," he said. "Individual aberrations could have happened, but our position is 'Please tell us and they will be looked into'."

He said he was aware of one report from a UN agency, but claimed that establishing the facts was very difficult. "We received a report that a soldier went into a tent at 11pm and came out at 3am. It could have been sex for pleasure, it could have been sex for favours, or it could have been a discussion on Ancient Greek philosophy, we don't know."

As many as 100,000 people are believed to have died in Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war.

© Guardian

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For Sri Lanka refugees, a rough return

By Erika Kinetz - Three years ago, Vairamuttu Bavani left her home in eastern Sri Lanka to attend her cousin’s wedding in the north.

She did not make it back until September.

Trapped by the civil war, Bavani, a Tamil, lost six members of her family and both her legs to a bomb. She spent months detained in an overcrowded refugee camp. And she remains under tight scrutiny by local authorities, who have visited her almost every day since her return from the northern Vanni region, she said.

“They ask me where I went in the Vanni and what I was doing there,’’ said Bavani, 25, who spends her days seated on the floor of her sister’s house, fighting boredom.

Bavani is one of tens of thousands of refugees who are struggling to rebuild their lives in postwar Sri Lanka, often under tight control from the government. During the final months of the war, nearly 300,000 mostly Tamil civilians were trapped between rebels and advancing government troops, and these refugees are now in various stages of limbo.

The quarter-century war cost 80,000 to 100,000 their lives, as the Tamil Tiger rebels fought for a separate state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority. After the rebels lost in May, the government herded the remaining civilians, along with straggling rebel fighters, to overcrowded camps.

Rights groups and Western governments decried conditions in the camps, saying they amounted to an illegal form of collective punishment.

Faced with mounting international pressure and advancing monsoon rains that would have caused havoc at the low-lying camps, the government recently unlocked the camps, saying most of the remaining 127,000 refugees are free to go home once they register with authorities. The government has vowed to close the camps by the end of January.

Even those who have returned from the camps say they have been told not to travel without police permission, and security officers visit their homes to question them regularly. Many wait, painfully, for news of loved ones who vanished or were taken by the military for questioning.

Rights groups worry that the government’s surveillance of refugees and its failure to provide them with better livelihoods will exacerbate the ethnic tensions that fueled the conflict.

“It’s alienating the 300,000 displaced and their relatives,’’ said Meenakshi Ganguly, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They’re all going to feel like they’re living in a state where they are not trusted and don’t belong. That’s a highly dangerous situation.’’

Sri Lanka’s Hindu Tamil community, 18 percent of the country’s 20 million people, has complained of decades of discrimination at the hands of the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, promised to address the lingering tensions after the war ended. Now he says he will address them after elections, scheduled for Jan. 26.

Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman, said refugees are not under surveillance, and that police only bring returnees in for questioning if there is reason for suspicion.

“If they have been harassed, they should have informed the authorities there,’’ he said.

Rishard Badurdeen, Sri Lanka’s resettlement minister, said refugees do get support from the government and charities.

Refugees being resettled in the north, swathes of which were flattened during the final battles, get tin sheets from India to help rebuild their homes, $219 in cash from UNHCR, and six months of dry rations from the World Food Program, said Badurdeen. Farmers get additional agriculture grants, he said.

Those sent home to the east are eligible for food rations.

Many refugees bear deep hatred for the Tamil Tigers. They say rebels shot civilians who tried to flee the war zone and stole their children to replenish the ranks of dying fighters. UNICEF has accused the rebels of forcibly conscripting more than 6,000 children.

“Raising children in that area was like raising cattle and sending them to slaughter,’’ said Sugadas Rajvathani, 34, who returned to her sister’s house in Trincomalee, a port town in northeastern Sri Lanka, on Oct. 30.

She and her three children had spent months in flight. There was no food.

One man sold his motorized three-wheeled rickshaw for two coconuts, she said.

When rebels came, she hid her children in ditches, placing a metal sheet and a cooking pot on top for camouflage.

The children say it was hot and hard to breathe inside.

One night, rebels came to a tent next to theirs and shot dead a man who tried to keep them from taking his son, she said.

The boy, enraged, began to shout: “Let’s teach them a lesson!’’ Rajvathani recalled.

The villagers gathered sticks and hoes to fight.

In the commotion, Rajvathani and her family fled across a lagoon to government territory.

“We had to ignore bodies falling in front of us and walk on,’’ she said.

“Everyone had to save themselves.’’

© boston.com

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Sri Lanka’s war heroes battle for a clean image

A presidential election in Sri Lanka next month will see two former allies from the country’s bitter civil war slugging it out, but their record on corruption, not the battlefield, might swing the final vote.

President Mahinda Rajapakse and his former army chief Sarath Fonseka are set to face each other at the ballot box on January 26 in the first national elections since the end of Sri Lanka’s 37-year-long ethnic conflict in May.

Official campaigning opened on Friday in what promises to be a bitter and highly personal battle between the two architects of the victory over Tamil Tiger rebels that ended a war the United Nations estimates cost up to 100,000 lives.

Rajapakse, 64, told his first campaign rally on Friday evening that he will “wage war” against corruption and triumph in the same way as he finished off the Tigers, who were fighting for a Tamil homeland in the north of the island.

In a similar vein, Fonseka has promised to stamp out the pervasive graft that both candidates agree is stalling post-war economic recovery.

For Fonseka, the root of corruption is the president’s family. The former general and his backers have made much of a pledge to oust what they call the “family oligarchy” of Rajapakse.

This “oligarchy” sees one of the president’s brothers as the ports and aviation minister, another handling post-war reconstruction and the third being the all-powerful defence secretary. Rajapakse’s eldest son controls a national youth movement.

“The corruption stems from the family rule of the Rajapakses,” Fonseka said while launching his campaign on Friday evening. “I will end the culture of corruption and jail those responsible.”

Rajapakse, who refutes corruption allegations, called the election two years ahead of schedule, hoping to benefit from his popularity after the end of Asia’s longest running ethnic conflict.

He has since sought to shift his popular image, ordering posters of himself on the battlefield with military top brass and army commandos to be replaced by larger-than-life cut-outs of him dressed in squeaky clean white national dress.

The recently-won war has caused international problems for Rajapakse, who has resisted demands from Western nations for a war crimes probe into the final stages of the conflict with the Tigers following UN reports that 7,000 Tamil civilians died in the first few months of this year alone.

He has since turned to China, Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Pakistan for support.

In contrast, Fonseka, who says he would glady submit his wartime behaviour to scrutiny, has the backing of Sri Lanka’s right-wing United National Party, which in turn has close ties with the West and Japan.

He is also strongly supported by a Marxist party which has connections with China.

Both men are seen as nationalists drawing support from the majority Sinhalese community. It is unknown how the minority Tamil population, which makes up 12.5 percent of the country, will vote in January.

The Berlin-based Transparency International’s (TI) Sri Lanka branch said graft had emerged as a major campaign issue because of the unprecedented level of abuse of state resources by those in power.

“Both sides will talk about stamping out corruption because they know it is a major campaign issue, but what we need is guarantees that they will deliver,” said TI’s chief in Colombo, J. C. Weliamuna.

TI reported last week that Sri Lanka’s economic recovery has been slowed by graft, violence and a culture of lawlessness.

“The opposition is attacking the incumbent and capitalising on corruption,” said Sumanasiri Liyanage, senior lecturer of economics and politics at the Peradeniya University in central Sri Lanka.

“The president will have to explain why corruption flourished and democracy declined during the war.”

© Khaleej Times Online

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Minister's Sri Lanka holiday outrages rights campaigners

By Jane Merrick - Ben Bradshaw, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has raised eyebrows by taking a Christmas holiday in Sri Lanka days after the British government condemned the Colombo administration for its poor human rights record.

Gordon Brown last month blocked Sri Lanka's attempt to host the next Commonwealth summit, and last week David Miliband told the Commons that there remained ongoing concerns about the island's government after a crackdown on the Tamil population earlier this year.

Despite this, Mr Bradshaw, wearing a straw hat, checked shirt and jeans, arrived at Colombo airport on Friday morning for a Christmas break in the country.

Human rights campaigners questioned why Mr Bradshaw, whose ministerial responsibilities include tourism, was supporting Sri Lanka's travel industry by holidaying there. Human Rights Watch called on him to make a public statement disapproving of President Mahinda Rajapaksa's clampdown on Tamils. A spokesman for the organisation said that, while the cabinet minister is free to travel around Sri Lanka, tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) still face restrictions on their movement – despite some relaxation in the rules this month.

Mr Bradshaw paid around £1,600 for a business-class ticket for the 10-hour flight. He left Heathrow on Thursday just before snowstorms hit – causing delays and cancellations – and arrived in Colombo on Friday, to be met by temperatures of around 31C.

The minister's choice of a far-flung destination and long-haul flight, with its sizeable carbon footprint, just as the Copenhagen climate talks were peaking, will earn him no points with environmental campaigners.

The 25-year on-off civil war between Tamil separatists and government forces ended in May, with victory for President Rajapaksa. But his hardline military crackdown led to 280,000 displaced people being held in camps in the north of the country.

At the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Trinidad last month, the Prime Minister had a showdown with Mr Rajapaksa over Sri Lanka's wish to hold the next meeting in 2011, forcing him to withdraw in favour of Australia.

The Foreign Secretary, in a written statement to the Commons last week, said that, according to the UN, after the Sri Lankan government lifted restrictions on those in camps, more than 158,000 IDPs had been released, but more than 100,000 were still detained.

Mr Miliband said there were "serious concerns" over the human rights situation in Sri Lanka and urged Colombo to agree an inclusive political settlement with the Tamils.

Referring to the blocking of Sri Lanka's summit bid, Mr Miliband added: "The most important thing for the UK was that the host for each Commonwealth summit demonstrably embodies our shared values – including respect for human rights and democracy."

James Ross, legal and policy director of Human Rights Watch, said last night: "[Mr Bradshaw] should travel around, all over the country, and then publicly express his disapproval of the fact that there are still tens of thousands of Sri Lankans who cannot do the same thing because they are being held in detention centres.

"If he is going to go to Sri Lanka he should speak out and publicly honour the British government's concerns about the situation there."

A spokesman for Mr Bradshaw declined to comment last night.

© The Independent

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Sri Lanka still waiting for its peace dividend

By Erika Kinetz - Inside, there are no victims, no killers, and no questions. There are only bright white lights and the click-clack of sewing machines in this new garment factory in war-torn eastern Sri Lanka.

Outside, the land is littered with memories from the island's quarter-century civil war: Five farmers shot dead in March. Fifteen buried in a ditch. A massacre in a nearby mosque.

"I have people who were in border villages and people who were combatants. They basically killed each other," said Theodore Gunasekara, general manager of Brandix's factory in Punani, which lies on an empty stretch of road 13 miles (22 kilometers) northwest of the coastal city of Batticaloa. "There is a lot of bad blood. When you come into Brandix, you leave the past behind."

Hostilities ended in eastern Sri Lanka nearly two years before the war reached its brutal conclusion in May, making the region the front line of Sri Lanka's postwar revival.

There have been signs of progress. Hotels are expanding as Sri Lankans from the south flock to an area they haven't been able to safely visit in nearly three decades. Rice and dairy production are rising. Bridges, built with Saudi, Chinese and Japanese money, are being inaugurated. Locals say they can watch tarmac roads grow by hundreds of yards (meters) a day. At night, the lights of small boats flicker in the dark sea: People are fishing again.

Yet growth has not eased the ethnic tensions that fueled the conflict. Nor has prosperity filtered down to the streets, where Sri Lanka's peace will ultimately be won -- or lost.

Hope that Sri Lanka will enjoy a quick peace dividend has helped send Colombo's main stock index up nearly 50 percent since the end of the war. But peace alone won't guarantee lasting growth, critics say. Also needed: more foreign investment and tourism revenue, companies getting access to larger markets, and the government shifting spending from the military to development and tax cuts.

By these measures, Sri Lanka's prospects look less promising.

Last year, Sri Lanka got $889 million in foreign direct investment. During the first half of this year, it got just $252 million, according to the Board of Investment. Officials say the decline was largely caused by the global financial crisis, which dried up financing for risky markets. They expect investment to rebound in 2010.

But a frustrating tangle of permits and licenses, persistent corruption, and a quiet sense that anti-Western feeling is rising haven't helped either, foreign diplomats and businesspeople say.

The government's brutal conduct at the end of the war may end up costing Sri Lanka market access. Europe is expected to decide in January whether to revoke Sri Lanka's duty free access because of alleged human rights violations, which would hit the nation's $3.3 billion garment industry hard.

Sri Lanka is also not in any hurry to dismantle its war economy. The military now employs about 250,000 young people who would have a hard time finding jobs elsewhere. The government said in October it wants to raise military spending by 20 percent, a move it justified to the IMF by saying many troops are needed for nonmilitary activities, like mine clearance.

The government has made a special effort to develop the east -- long claimed by the Tamil minority as part of their historical homeland -- in an attempt to turn the province into a model for the nation's postwar development.

Last year, provincial elections were held and now officials are trying to lure investors with hefty tax breaks and cheap land. The Ministry of Investment has signed nine deals in the east under a special incentive program and 18 more are in the works. Donors have poured in at least $500 million in international aid.

Since May, kidnappings and extortion have also decreased. Last year, 137 people -- mostly businessmen targeted for ransom money -- were kidnapped in Batticaloa district, 19 of whom were later found dead. So far this year, 31 have been abducted for ransom, and most have been released, according to the Foundation for a Peaceful Co-Existence, a local NGO that tracks violence.

But more than two years after the conflict ended in the east, many still say they are little better off economically -- or politically -- than they were during the war, which pitted the aggrieved ethnic Tamil minority against majority Sinhalese.

Shopkeepers say people still don't have money to spend. In some cases business has actually gone down because of Sri Lankans overseas sending less money home, the rising price of gold and increased competition.

"There is not much difference between wartime and now," said Mohammed Fatullah, 40, who runs a dress shop in the port town of Trincomalee. "People need jobs and money for my sales to increase."

The region is awash in land disputes, which are exacerbating ethnic suspicions and slowing development.

Local Tamil politicians and business people also complain the Sinhalese-run central government wields too much control over economic development. Many fear the government will use its influence to further dilute Tamil regional power, by favoring Sinhalese business owners and bringing in Sinhalese employees.

"Yes roads and bridges are being made, but who is doing it?" said R. Rajarammohan, head of Trincomalee's Chamber of Commerce. "Even the employees come from outside. If we are going to improve the economy, there must be a sure method where the existing business community is given a chance to participate."

Brandix, Sri Lanka's largest garment exporter, was the first to open a garment factory in the east after hostilities ended. Today, the $2 million factory is a hopeful outpost for the young women in the area, who say they have no other job options, and for officials eager for prosperity to put to rest decades of ethnic and religious strife.

But the 16-month-old factory is propped up by hefty subsidies and has yet to turn a profit.

It gets cheap land from the government and a five year tax holiday on 70 percent of Brandix's overall revenues. USAID helps pay for training.

Monthly expenses are about $70,000, and in good months, revenues are close to $30,000.

Executives hope that will change soon, as the global economy recovers and employees get faster and more experienced.

They say the Punani factory is a testing ground to see if they can make the business work in former conflict zones in the East and North, which offer untapped labor pools to an industry that has struggled to find workers.

Like Sri Lanka itself, the factory must negotiate complex ethnic, religious, caste and linguistic divisions.

It employs 200 Tamils, 112 Sinhalese and a few dozen Muslims. The managers are Sinhalese and must speak to Tamil staffers through a translator.

At first, the girls stuck with their own. Months of team-building exercises -- think volleyball games and dance parties -- and a zero-tolerance policy for ethnic slurs have helped blur those lines. Two young women who made racial comments were fired.

Outside the factory on a recent Wednesday, 41 young women sat at long metal tables. Most had traveled one to two hours to get here. War ended their education and killed their loved ones. Some were kidnapped by rebels to serve as soldiers and lost their childhoods too.

Now they want jobs.

"There are no job options for the young people in my village," said Kumarasamy Thanapriya, 19, whose father doesn't earn enough to support the family of 5. "I haven't learned any skills. There's no way I can do anything. We came here to learn."

She, like the others, badly wants to come inside.

Associated Press writer Krishan Francis contributed to this report.

© AP

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IFJ Mission Identifies Key Challenges for Sri Lanka's Media after War's End

Read the IFJ Sri Lanka Mission Report - 2009 December

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today released the report of a press freedom mission to Sri Lanka, identifying key challenges for the country's journalists and media at the end of 25 years of internal conflict and the inauguration of a new phase of political contests.

Media stakeholders who met with the mission during its visit to Sri Lanka in November identified the current political circumstances as embodying numerous threats and opportunities.

The entry of a former army commander into the race for the Presidency next year has thrown the contest open and provided an opportunity for local media to create more space for itself. At the same time, the heightened intensity of the political contest may also engender threats.

Certain new flashpoints have emerged in the always fraught relationship between the media and political power-holders. Any form of reckoning with the tactical decisions made during the final stages of the war earlier this year and the humanitarian consequences is actively discouraged. Despite this element of coercion on the media, this issue has been coming up in the campaign debates between rival candidates for the presidency.

The opposition's common candidate for the presidency, General Sarath Fonseka, has made special mention about the abuses suffered by the media during the years of war, especially in its final stages. If elected, he has committed himself to addressing these abuses in a spirit of candour and reconciliation. The media community is encouraged by these commitments, though certain among them recall his own far from spotless record, especially when it involved media criticism of his war-time role as Sri Lanka's army commander.

The actual record of addressing past abuses has been dismal, with little progress recorded in the investigation of the most conspicuous cases, including the murder of Lasantha Wickramatunge in January 2009.

The report documents the current stage of the investigations into this and other cases. It inquires into the conviction of J.S. Tissainayagam on terrorism charges and examines the credibility of the prosecution case, especially in view of the unconditional discharge of two of his co-accused.

In a climate of intolerance, several journalists are being induced to give up efforts to obtain redress for violations of their rights. The mission observed that journalists are being required to withdraw applications under the fundamental rights provisions of the Constitution merely to be set at liberty after prolonged periods in wrongful detention. In the judgment of the mission, this is a grossly unequal exchange.

Recent moves by the Government to revive a coercive form of media regulation, embodied in a 1973 legislation, have been opposed by journalists and publishers, who have renewed their commitment to a code of self-regulation.

The mission report concludes with recommendations that would set the relationship between the media and the Sri Lankan state on a different course. These include the return of all exiled Sri Lankan journalists, the unfettering of state media institutions so that they are able freely and fairly to report on the ongoing election campaign, the conversion of these institutions into a public service trust, the enactment of right to information legislation, and the addressing of all past abuses in a spirit of truth and reconciliation.

The mission report will soon be released in Sinhala and Tamil.

Apart from the IFJ, the mission team included representatives of the International Press Institute, Vienna (IPI) and International Media Support, Copenhagen (IMS).

© International Federation of Journalists

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EU to suspend trade concessions to Sri Lanka

The European Commission has decided to suspend Sri Lanka's preferential trade status following a probe criticising the island's human rights record, an official said Thursday.

Bernard Savage, the head of the European Union delegation to Colombo said the decision would be formally ratified within the next two months, with the suspension coming into effect six months later.

"The European Union will continue its dialogue with Sri Lanka during this period to try and iron out issues, so that the tariff concessions can be restored," Savage said.

The suspension follows a year-long European Commission probe that concluded that the Sri Lankan government was in breach of commitments on human rights and good governance that come with the preferential trade status.

The EU probe identified shortcomings in respect of three UN human rights conventions -- the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Sri Lanka, which ended a decades-old internal conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels in May, is one of 16 countries benefiting from an EU deal giving its exporters easier access to the EU market.

Sri Lanka gains about 150 million dollars annually due to preferential tariffs, according to trade estimates. The island's clothing industry is the main beneficiary, using the tax breaks to sell to high street retailers in Europe.

During the final months of the war with the Tigers, the United States and the EU voiced alarm at Sri Lanka's treatment of non-combatants, along with its internment afterwards of up to 280,000 people, mostly minority Tamils, under military surveillance.

© AFP

Related Links:
Trade concessions to Sri Lanka at risk - BBC Sinhala
EC proposal to suspend GSP to Lanka is biased: SL Minister - Daily Mirror

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