By Masood Haider | Dawn
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Responding to questions on the controversy generated by the report in Sri Lanka, spokesman Farhan Haq said: “As wev`e repeated from the outset it is our intention to release it as soon as possible.”
Mr Haq also said that the UN was awaiting a response from the government of Sri Lanka on the report saying “we would like to publish it simultaneously with a response from the Sri Lankan government”.
At a press conference in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka`s Foreign Minister G.L. Perisis urged UN not to publish the report as it would stall the reconciliation process and damage relations between Sri Lanka and the world body.
The UN panel found “credible allegations” of civilian deaths, which it blamed mostly on the government, and urged the prosecution of those responsible for violations in the last stage of a quarter-century war with ethnic Tamil separatists.
Besides, excerpts of the findings of an advisory panel appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have been leaked to Sri Lankan newspapers.
“Everybody knew what happened, so what`s the point of punishing now?”, asked Prithika Shanmugam, a 27-year-old Tamil, according to an agency report.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris again rejected the report as flawed.
“The charges are unsubstantiated,” he said at the news conference also attended by his Bangladesh counterpart Dipu Moni. “The evidences are weak and not appropriate.”
© Dawn.com
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UN rejects Sri Lanka`s call to hold back war crimes report
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UN report verifies Sri Lankan government war crimes
By Sarath Kumara | World Socialist Web Site
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The three-member panel was belatedly appointed in March 2010, after widespread accounts of atrocities carried out by the Sri Lankan military in the final months of its long-running war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in May 2009.
The full 196-page report is yet to be officially released, but the executive summary was leaked to the media last Saturday. It rebuts the claims made by President Mahinda Rajapakse and other Sri Lankan politicians that the military was engaged in a “humanitarian rescue operation” with a policy of “zero civilian casualties.”
The report, which covers the period from September 2008 to May 2009, concludes that the military campaign into the LTTE-held Vanni region used “large-scale and widespread shelling causing large numbers of civilian deaths. This campaign constituted persecution of the population of the Vanni. Around 330,000 civilians were trapped into an ever-decreasing area, fleeing the shelling but kept hostage by the LTTE. The government sought to intimidate and silence the media and other critics of the war through a variety of threats and actions, including the use of white vans to abduct and to make people disappear.”
The persecution of the Tamil population underlines the communal character of the civil war. Successive Colombo governments fought the war to entrench the dominance of the Sinhala elite that has used communal violence and systematic discrimination against the Tamil minority for decades to divide working people to maintain its rule.
The executive summary also accuses the LTTE of refusing to allow civilians to leave its territory—in the final months shooting those who attempted to leave—and forcibly recruiting children as young as 14. Such practices make clear that the LTTE’s defeat was primarily political, not military. Confronted with a concerted government offensive, the LTTE was unable to mobilise any significant active political support from the Tamil population, let alone more broadly from the working class in Sri Lanka and internationally.
However, as the report stated, “most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling.” The military bombarded its own “no-fire zones” where it had encouraged civilians to congregate and assured them of protection. Despite being informed of their locations, the government shelled the “United Nations hub, food distribution lines and near the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ships that were coming to pick up the wounded and their relatives from the beaches.”
The government also shelled designated hospitals, some repeatedly, and “systematically deprived people in the conflict zone of humanitarian aid, in the form of food and medical supplies, particularly surgical supplies, adding to their suffering”.
The government and military deliberately underestimated the number of civilians trapped in the LTTE-held zone in order to cover up the number of dead and wounded that resulted from its shelling. The UN report estimated that “tens of thousands lost their lives from January to May 2009, many of whom died anonymously in the carnage of the final few days.” The figure is significantly higher than the previous UN estimate of 7,000.
Following the LTTE’s military collapse, around 280,000 civilians—men, women and children—were forcibly and illegally detained in so-called welfare camps run by the military. “Massive overcrowding led to terrible conditions, breaching the basic social and economic rights of the detainees, and many lives were lost unnecessarily,” the report stated. Some of those singled out as “LTTE suspects” were tortured and summarily executed and the remainder sent to secret prisons.
Nearly two years after the LTTE’s defeat, the pervasive role of the military and the government’s anti-democratic measures continue. As well as the ongoing use of emergency powers and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the report drew attention to “the continued militarisation of the former conflict zone and the use of paramilitary proxies, all of which perpetuate a climate of fear, intimidation and violence.”
Despite the seriousness of these crimes, the Expert Panel’s recommendations effectively let those responsible off the hook. The report was scathing on the lack of accountability through the Sri Lankan court system and described the government’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) as lacking “independence and impartiality” and compromised by the “deep-seated conflicts of interests of some of its members.”
However, the report’s main recommendation leaves the investigation of the war crimes to the Sri Lankan government—that is, in the hands of the criminals themselves. It calls for the Rajapakse regime to immediately commence “genuine investigations” into the “credible allegations” of international law identified by the panel. A separate international mechanism is proposed to monitor and assist the Sri Lankan government.
The Rajapakse administration immediately dismissed the UN report with contempt. In a brief statement, the External Affairs Ministry declared that “the UN report is fundamentally flawed in many respects.” It went on: “Among other deficiencies, the report is based on patently biased material which is presented without any verification.”
The response is hardly surprising. President Rajapakse was hostile to the UN Panel from the outset and refused to allow its members to visit the country or interview civilian or military officials. In other words, the government actively blocked evidence gathering, in the same way that it prevented the media and most aid organisations from the war zone in the final months of the war. It continues to deny responsibility for any civilian deaths.
At the same time, the government is mounting a crude anti-Western propaganda campaign, claiming that the country faces a vast international conspiracy. Rajapakse has called on his Sri Lankan Freedom Party to organise a May Day rally as a “show of strength” against the UN Panel report and any calls for war crimes investigations.
Rajapakse accused Western countries of conducting a campaign to punish Sri Lanka for defeating the LTTE. The claim is ludicrous. Right up until the final months of the war, the US and European powers had quietly backed Rajapakse’s renewed war against the LTTE, the military’s open breaches of the 2002 ceasefire and its shelling of civilians, abductions and extrajudicial killings.
The US and its European allies only began to raise concerns about the Sri Lankan military’s actions in the final months of the war when the scale of the savagery became apparent and was generating international outrage. Even then, the main purpose of the limited criticisms of Western powers was not to prevent the slaughter under way, but rather to boost their political influence in Colombo.
The US in particular was deeply concerned that rival China had exploited the conflict to forge close ties with the Rajapakse government by providing military, financial and political support. China had already been granted the contract to build a sophisticated modern port at Hambantota in the south of the island. The port is part of a broader Chinese plan to build harbours adjacent to key shipping routes from Africa and the Middle East to North East Asia.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, underscored Washington’s vital interests in Sri Lanka in comments on April 5 to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Positioned directly on the shipping routes that carry petroleum products and other trade from the Gulf to East Asia, Sri Lanka remains of strategic interest to the US,” he explained.
While the government’s record on human rights and the weakening of democratic institutions was “worrisome,” Blake declared, “Sri Lanka stands poised to be a capable and willing partner to effectively combat violent extremism, trafficking and piracy, and thereby help to ensure the maritime security of the region.” Since late 2009, Washington has further played down “human rights”, as it has sought other means to establish the Rajapakse government as a reliable US partner.
Even the UN report was compelled to acknowledge that the UN Security Council and other UN bodies “failed to take actions,” including in the final months of the war, to protect civilians. The “failure” simply demonstrates that lack of any real interest in the plight of hundreds of thousands of civilians on the part of all the major powers as each sought to exploit the issue for its own political ends. The same considerations will determine the fate of the Expert Panel report itself.
© WSWS
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Sri Lanka: Cry from the Graves?
By Sivanendran | South Asia Analysis Group
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Fifty years of ethnic cleansing have wiped out whole generations who knew any sort of peace, and have made cohabitation between the Tamils and the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka virtually impossible. The Sinhala politicians have transformed the country into a counter-insurgency state like Columbia, in which repression, torture, imprisonment without trial and disappeared people are institutionally embedded. It appears that it is an extremely difficult task for the Sri Lankans to reverse this process.
Violation of Human Rights in Sri Lanka
With the end of the civil war, there was a glimmer of hope in resolving the longstanding crisis. However, this is unlikely. The current regime having come back to power appears to block meaningful efforts at accountability of individuals for past violations of human rights.
Sri Lanka will continue to be faced in the future by challenges of justice and reconciliation arising from the grave human rights abuses that have been committed by all armed groups in the course of the conflict, as documented over the years by international human rights groups and UN bodies, which have long declared that impunity reigns increasingly unchallenged in the country.
When the Sri Lankan Government formally terminated the ceasefire agreement in January 2008, the previous UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, warned that violations of human rights and humanitarian law could entail individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law, including by those in positions of command. She and her successor, Navi Pillay, have had cause to repeat this warning on several occasions since.
In the course of fighting, both sides violated humanitarian law. The LTTE forcibly conscripted adults and children, and forced civilians to travel with its retreating forces and to serve as a buffer against the approaching Sri Lankan army. Thousands of these civilians died when government forces fired artillery into areas densely populated with civilians, who were forced to remain at risk in the conflict zone. The LTTE reportedly opened fire on and killed civilians who attempted to escape.
The Culture of Violence continues
The demand of the Tamil people for a separate state started only after the repeated pogroms suffered by the Tamil people at the hands of the Sinhalese. Inaction by successive governments in Sri Lanka to provide security to the Tamils resulted in their alienation from the Sri Lankan state as it progressively identified with the Sinhala thugs in the streets. Instead of providing protection to its citizens the Sri Lankan state became more tolerant of the inciters to violence on the Tamils. This resulted in the demand for Ealam, a separate state by the Tamil people.
Nothing has changed for the Tamils since the end of the war. In the North the Tamil people are terrorised by an occupied Sinhala army and kept virtually in an open prison. The Tamils in the East are condemned to live in terror of being killed under the joint patronage of the government and the feuding para-militaries. And in the Vanni, where a battle was waged between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan State - where the Government indiscriminately bombed and maimed the Tamils who they claim to be their own citizens – the whole area is evacuated since the war and the government is cleaning up the land and removing all evidence of its atrocities. And in the remainder of Sri Lanka, where any Tamil is viewed with suspicion and treated more as an outsider than as a citizen of Sri Lanka, subjected to arbitrary arrests, killings, kidnappings, extortion all carried out with impunity from apprehension or justice. In short, the Tamil people are still languishing in all corners of the Sri Lankan state and find themselves as exiles in their own land.
The government removed all international NGO’s, UN organisations and all media from the war zone and continued with a war described as a War without Witness. The civil war thus created more than 500,000 Internally Displaced People (IDP), most of them still dispersed and still living outside their homes. The IDP’s have been generated by the expulsion of the Tamil population from their land so that the security forces could establish secure areas. Hence the entire Tamil population along the coastal line of the Northeast have been expelled. Further the people who inhabited the Vanni areas are now dispersed.
Further, it is estimated that more than 100,000 Tamils must have perished during the civil war over the past 25 years and at least a further 100,000 maimed and injured. It is estimated that another 50,000 – 100,000 were killed during the last weeks of the war. It suggests a determination by the State to simply wipe out as many people as possible and not to follow the rules of international humanitarian law. Some of those who came to surrender to the security forces holding a white flag were shot. There is video footage of troops killing surrendered people that is published and verified for its accuracy.
There have been reports of abductions of children from the camps and the ‘disappearance’ or murder, possibly by paramilitary groups operating within the camps, of LTTE cadres who are currently being held in them. Once they have been identified, the authorities are sending LTTE cadres to separate camps where they will undergo “rehabilitation”. There have been accusations that the authorities are treating every civilian in the camps as a possible LTTE suspect and sent to special camps.
4.1 Cry for Justice
In the circumstances, accounting for the conduct of soldiers, their commanding officers, and civilian superiors during the fighting is crucial. However, it is only part of the challenge Sri Lanka faces in repairing its battered human rights record and restoring public faith in its government, justice system and the rule of law. Today Sri Lanka has a chance to rebuild its institutions so that they can protect efficiently and without discrimination the human rights of every woman, man and child. Accountability for violations of human rights and humanitarian law is an important precondition to bind up the nations wounds and rebuild the country and achieve a lasting peace.
The conflict in Sri Lanka has not yet been put on the formal agenda of the UN Security Council as a country situation. While in general there was little appetite for doing so until late 2008, in recent months it is Russia and China that have blocked more concerted efforts by other members of the Security Council. The apparent inaction of the Security Council has been the subject of heavy criticism by those who believe it should have played a much more active role than it has. More than anybody else the suffering Tamils have been crying silently for justice for those killed in the bloody massacre in the early months of 2009.
United Nations and the International Community
There has also been some activity on Sri Lanka within UN human rights mechanisms. Since late 2007, international human rights groups and their local allies have been lobbying for a UN human rights monitoring mission to be established in Sri Lanka, supported by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour and her successor, Navi Pillay. These calls have been consistently rejected by the Sri Lankan Government but remain ‘on the table’ internationally, at least in theory.
Efforts at the 10th session of the HRC in March 2009 to win agreement to hold a special session on Sri Lanka were unsuccessful, despite support from some European countries. However, attempts to secure such a session continued and a special session eventually took place on 26-27 May. The Sri Lankan Government marshalled support from China, Russia, India, Pakistan and other countries to prevent a critical resolution being passed. Despite the efforts of a range of western governments, there was no call in the resolution that was eventually passed for an international war crimes investigation like the one it had mandated earlier in the year with regard to the conflict in Gaza.
Sri Lanka will also continue to be faced in the future by challenges of justice and reconciliation arising from the grave human rights abuses that have been committed by all armed groups in the course of the conflict, as documented over the years by international human rights groups and UN bodies, which have long declared that impunity reigns increasingly unchallenged in the country.
At an event in the IVTY courtroom, marking the Srebrenica massacre in July 2010, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon stressed the need to ensure accountability for those involved in the Muslim men by Bosnian Serb forces after they took over Srebrenica. He said “Until all those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes face those charges and are judged, our quest for justice, and the path towards healing, will remain incomplete.” Further, he said, “ We recognize the burden of families and loved ones who carry the memories and pain with each step,” and noted “And, we vow, together, never again to allow such an atrocity to happen at any time...in any place.” The Secretary General observed that the emergence of respect and trust after conflict depends heavily on bringing the perpetrators to account.
Sri Lankan Government
The Sri Lankan Government has said that its own courts will look into any war crimes allegations, although it has already stated that it believes such allegations to be unfounded. It seems highly unlikely, given the past record of the Government and the judiciary, that there will be a credible domestic judicial investigation into allegations that genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in the course of the conflict, with the possible exception of the former LTTE cadres now in custody.
However, in that event an international investigation of some kind remains possible. The US and EU have now endorsed the idea. The Security Council or the Human Rights Council could initiate such an investigation. However, Sri Lanka probably has enough allies on both bodies to prevent such an outcome.
For its part, the ICC could take up the issue either through referral by the Security Council (extremely unlikely) or under the independent authority of the Prosecutor. The latter would be highly controversial. The Prosecutor has not yet used this power and Sri Lanka is not a State Party to the Rome Statute. However, there have been calls by advocates of the Tamil cause for him to take up the issue of war crimes committed by four senior officials. He has not yet officially responded. Efforts to establish some kind of international war crimes investigation look set to continue, but the odds are strongly against a role for the ICC.
However, the mounting humanitarian crisis has compelled the UN Secretary General to name a panel of experts to advise him, on the way forward on accountability issues related to Sri Lanka. There recommendations have been handed over to the Secretary General. At present there is a tussle going on behind the scenes. Meanwhile, portions of the documents have been leaked to the press. Will these recommendations answer the prayers of the victims of this massacre? The Truth must be told and Justice must be done.
© SAAG
Saturday, April 23, 2011
UN heads for rights confrontation with Sri Lanka
By Tim Witcher | AFP
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Rejecting a Sri Lankan demand to keep a report by a panel of experts secret, the United Nations on Friday said the report would soon be published in full without changes, and accompanied by recommendations on the next steps to be taken.
The United Nations said it was in talks with Sri Lankan authorities on an offer to add their comments to the report into the alleged deaths of tens of thousands of people when government forces launched a final offensive against Tamil separatists in 2009.
Diplomats noted, however, that Sri Lanka had sought the help of international allies to try and get the recommendations of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suppressed.
"With Russia and China already trying to intimidate him (Ban), other Security Council members and countries attached to the idea of justice should come to his support," said Human Rights Watch's UN director Philippe Bolopion.
"It remains our intention to publish the report of the panel of experts on Sri Lanka in full and without amendment," said deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq.
Ban returns to New York from a trip to Europe on Saturday and the report could be released on Monday, according to diplomats.
"The secretary-general believes that the panel has done a good and conscientious job and that the results of the report will speak for themselves," Haq said, noting Ban would have recommendations on how to proceed.
Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris had earlier urged Ban to refrain from releasing the report he called "preposterous."
"The publication of this report will cause irreparable damage to the reconciliation efforts of Sri Lanka. It will damage the UN system too," Peiris said in Colombo.
According to parts of the report leaked to the Sri Lankan media, the UN panel recommends an inquiry into "credible allegations" of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the government and the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
The United Nations has said the leaked parts are accurate but incomplete.
It says "tens of thousands" of people died between January and May 2009 in the final government offensive that crushed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, ending a decades-old conflict.
The Sri Lankan government has said no civilians were killed during the offensive. President Mahinda Rajapakse has called on supporters to turn this year's May Day rally into a demonstration against any UN investigation.
The UN spokesman said the report had played a key role in fulfilling part of an agreement on accountability reached when Ban traveled to Sri Lanka in 2009.
"After giving some time for the government of Sri Lanka to pursue the issue of accountability on its own, the secretary-general believed last year that he needed to form an independent panel to look at the issues of accountability," said Haq, insisting the United Nations acted "in good faith" with Sri Lanka.
"This is a very serious issue and it is very important that this report comes out."
Rights groups backed the tough UN stance.
"The government's aggressive efforts to suppress the report and deny any wrongdoing only confirm that justice won't come from a domestic process," said Human Rights Watch's Bolopion.
"Ban has done the right thing by creating the advisory panel and announcing that he would make its report public. He should now follow up his panel's advice by creating an international commission of inquiry."
© Yahoo! News
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Sri Lanka: War Crimes
Al Jazeera
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What exactly happened during the last days of the battle is still the subject of fierce debate, but it is clear that as the rebel perimeter shrank, around a third of a million civilians were trapped between the two armies and tens of thousands were killed.
The government says the LTTE were using civilians as human shields, Tamil exiles say the deaths were the result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan army. The LTTE was crushed in the offensive, most of its leaders killed and thousands were captured and imprisoned but the Sri Lankan government has so far refused to agree to an independent, international war crimes investigation.
Now a UN panel has found that the allegations against both sides are credible saying they may have committed serious violations of humanitarian law.
As Juliana Ruhfus and Dom Rotheroe have been finding out, unless and until the truth is established, a final reconciliation in Sri Lanka may prove impossible.
Some of the images in their film are deeply disturbing.
© Al Jazeera
Friday, April 22, 2011
UN: Sri Lanka’s crushing of Tamil Tigers may have killed 40,000 civilians
By Colum Lynch | The Washington Post
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The panel recommended that Ban set up an “independent international mechanism” to carry out a more thorough probe into “credible” allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which held more than 300,000 civilians “hostage” to enforce a “strategic human buffer between themselves and the advancing Sri Lankan army.”
ri Lanka’s decisive 2008-09 military offensive against the country’s separatist Tamil Tigers may have resulted in the deaths of as many as 40,000 civilians, most of them victims of indiscriminate shelling by Sri Lankan forces, according to a U.N. panel established by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The panel recommended that Ban set up an “independent international mechanism” to carry out a more thorough probe into “credible” allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which held more than 300,000 civilians “hostage” to enforce a “strategic human buffer between themselves and the advancing Sri Lankan army.”
The Sri Lankan commission is “deeply flawed, does not meet international standards for an effective accountability mechanism and, therefore, does not and cannot satisfy the joint commitment of the President of Sri Lanka and the [U.N.] secretary general to an accountability process,” according to the report.
The report offers an implicit criticism of Ban’s attempts to use quiet diplomacy to persuade Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, a longtime friend, to bring a halt to the worst excesses in the conflict. It also faulted the U.N. reluctance to publish casualty estimates to rally international pressure against Sri Lanka.
At the time, the United Nations had informed diplomatic missions that more than 7,000 civilians may have been killed during the final stages of the conflict but was reluctant to make those figures public. Some U.N. officials in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital, thought that the toll was far higher.
“Although senior international officials advocated in public and in private with the government that it protect civilians and stop the shelling of hospital and United Nations or [International Committee of the Red Cross] locations, in the panel’s view, the public use of casualty figures would have strengthened the call for the protection of civilians while those events in the Vanni were unfolding.”
Still, human rights groups praised Ban for authorizing the panel’s examination of excesses in the Sri Lankan war and pressed the United Nations, the United States and other key governments to establish an international investigation into the alleged crimes.
“The Sri Lankan government has thus far gotten away with doing the very thing the Security Council stopped [Moammar] Gaddafi from doing in Libya,” said Tom Malinowski, Human Rights Watch’s advocacy director in Washington. “The least the council can do is to pursue the truth about these tens of thousands of civilians who died.”
Malinowski said it would be reckless for the United States and other key powers to turn a blind eye to Sri Lankan excesses, saying it would encourage others to ignore the rules of war in prosecuting wars on their own insurgencies.
© The Washington Post
Friday, April 22, 2011
Sri Lanka UN report delayed as Government hits back
Channel 4
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The report on atrocities committed at the end of the 26-year Sri Lanka war, which has already been leaked, was compiled by a UN panel advising the Secretary General on accountability, and accuses both the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers) of "crimes against humanity".
It focuses in the main on the Government's responsibility for the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in the final bloody months of the civil war in 2009, which ended with Government victory.
Overstepped
Ahead of the expected publication, the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister said the report had overstepped its mandate.
Foreign Minister GL Peiris said: "So how can this panel transform itself into an investigative panel? They must confine themselves to the limit of their mandate."
He said Sri Lanka had strongly urged UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon not to formally publish the report, and declined to comment on the detail until it was published. Sri Lanka banned the panel from entering the country during its investigations.
"We are very much conscious of the fact that the need of the hour is reconciliation," Mr Peiris said. "What needs to be emphasised is oneness and solidarity...we have to consider whether it is useful to have a report of this nature."
'Vulgar'
Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, a Sri Lankan MP who was central to the Government's reconciliation efforts towards the end of the war, told Channel 4 News the report was "vulgar".
Professor Wijesinha, the former Secretary-General of the Sri Lankan Government Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP), and former Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, said: "The bulk of the Sri Lankans will find this report a very vulgar exercise.
"I don't think anyone's got particularly excited about it at the moment, I think it is important that members of the Security Council have made it very very clear that this is not an official document and I think this whole exercise has been rather regrettable.
"As I told the British, if you want us to hark back to terrorism, we are not playing at all. If you want to encourage us to work with the Tamil population of Sri Lanka, well that's what we want to do."
Criticism
The report will suggest there are "credible allegations" of war crimes which - if proven - suggest a "grave assault on the entire regime of international law". It will indicate that actions by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
These alleged crimes include executions, rape and torture by Government forces. The leaked report also lists the shelling of civilians inside "no-fire zones", the "systematic shelling" of hospitals and attacks on the UN and Red Cross.
The LTTE stands accused of refusing civilians permission to leave the conflict zone and "using them as hostages" in a "buffer zone". The report also took into account a Channel 4 News video, which appeared to show executions and raised new questions over war crimes.
The Sri Lankan Government maintains it should be allowed to look into its own affairs through its Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.
But many human rights organisations, as well as civilians, who are still searching for their family members or grieving for those they lost in the war, feel that someone must be held to account and international pressure could be the only way.
Dr Manoharan, whose son was killed by security forces in 2006, told Channel 4 News he has been searching for justice for his son, and all the other victims in Sri Lanka, ever since.
© Channel 4
Friday, April 22, 2011
UN experts’ report makes the case for genocide
By Jan Jananayagam | Tamil Guardian
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Crucially, although the word does not appear in the extracts, the report’s contents well supports the charge that Sri Lanka engaged in genocide of the Tamils. The report lays out in detail the calculated, deliberate and systematic targeting of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces, operating under the direct command of the country’s top political leadership.
The former UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss, has aptly termed the publishing of the UN experts’ report as a ‘Srebrenica’ moment for Sri Lanka and indeed for the world.
The analogy is correct on many counts. Firstly, it was in relation to Srebrenica that the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) most clearly formulated the principle that part destruction – specifically, a geographically contained (i.e a small territory) destruction - of an ethnic or national group constituted genocide.
Deaths and more
The ICTY held to be genocide the systematic executions of an estimated 8,000 Bosnian men and boys -or 1 in 5 - out of a population of 40,000 (the target group) in Srebrenica, and a total population of 2 million. However, the now well substantiated allegations against Sri Lankan state and the Rajapakse regime are an order of magnitude greater.
The UN expert panel finds that a credible estimate of civilian deaths in the Vanni would be 75,000 (or nearly ten times Srebrenica’s grim total) from an estimated population of 330,000 Tamils (or 1 in 4 of the target group), out of a total population of 3 million Tamils in Sri Lanka.
The report also estimates the ratio of physically injured to dead as 1:2 or 1:3, and says the number killed could be much higher. It notes that approximately 40,000 surgical procedures and 5,000 amputations were carried out on the wounded, under horrific conditions.
The genocide convention, of course, covers not just killing but serious physical or mental harm. And the UN experts’ report goes on to provide harrowing details of the subhuman medical and humanitarian conditions the Sri Lankan state created for the Vanni population, surrounded by its armed forces, by withholding food and medical supplies and relentless bombardment for months on end.
Deliberate, systematic, widespread
The UN experts’ report makes clear the deliberate, widespread and systematic nature of the physical harm and destruction that the Sri Lankan state inflicted on the Tamils. This not only meets the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) definition of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ (as the expert panel makes clear), it also demonstrates, crucially, the strategic logic - i.e. the intent to destroy – that makes this genocide.
As genocide experts recognize, it is not necessary to have explicit or recorded statements of intent to destroy or indeed explicit orders to this end. For example, not even the Nazis left a traceable trail of explicit orders for the various forms of destruction of their target groups. Intent can be inferred, often where no other plausible explanation is possible.
To return to Srebrenica, it is not the numbers that make the comparison valid. Indeed, the Rajapaksa regime seems to have adopted the modalities of the Serbian genocide.
Srebrenica was also a designated a safe haven (by the UN), encouraging civilians to concentrate there, and thereby making the mass killings possible. As the UN experts’ report notes, in Vanni, the Sri Lankan state three consecutively times declared ‘No fire Zones’, thereby encouraging civilians to concentrate there, before unleashing its mass bombardments.
The charge of genocide against the Rajapakse regime is simply this: that from the outset, it intended to substantially destroy the target group, namely the Tamils in the Vanni, and to ethnically cleanse the region in such a way that the community living there would not be able to be ever reconstituted in its original form.
Selected site
The ICTY found that the Srebrenica was chosen for its cataclysmic destruction because of the location’s strategic significance for the viability of the Bosnian state. As the ICTY’s 2004 report (p6) found, “capture and ethnic purification of Srebrenica would therefore severely undermine the military efforts of the Bosnian Muslim state to ensure its viability.”
Similarly, Sri Lanka marked the Vanni for a hammer blow because of its symbolism as a Tamil heartland and its strategic significance for the viability of a Tamil state. In a continuation of this logic, two years after the war ended, the vast majority of returning Tamils live under tarpaulins and corrugated sheets, while the Sri Lankan military sets up increasing numbers of bases and camps and, in parts, settles Sinhalese.
Crucially, the ICTY found that Serbian forces decided that “the elimination of the Muslim population of Srebrenica, despite the assurances given by the international community, would serve as a potent example to all Bosnian Muslims of their vulnerability and defenselessness in the face of Serb military forces.”
Similarly, the Sri Lankan state sought to deal the Tamil people such a traumatizing blow that they would no longer challenge Sinhala dominance of the entire island. As President Rajapaksa declared afterwards, the idea (of an independent Tamil Eelam) that began at Vaddukoddai in 1976 had been ended at Mulliyavikal in 2009.
Realisation dawning
While the UN experts’ report has not labeled what it oulines as genocide, it is clearly cognizant of the presence of the necessary indicators; the report is unequivocal that “[Sri Lanka’s] campaign constituted persecution of the population of the Vanni.”
Genocides do not occur outside of historical context and a prevailing racism. As many historians note, the Nazis’ extermination of Jews occurred amid the latent anti-Semitism in Europe of that period, and prior centuries of persecution.
The UN experts’ account of the events of 2009 have to be located, therefor, in their proper historic and contemporary trajectory. In successfully killing1 in 4 of the people of Vanni, the Rajapakse regime was continuing long-running trends of ethnic cleansing and annihilitary persecution undertaken by earlier governments.
As such, it is not the recognition of Vanni as Sri Lanka’s Srebrenica moment that is so surprising but the fact that this took so long to happen.
© Tamil Guardian
Friday, April 22, 2011
Sri Lanka: UN reneges on releasing report “this week”
Photo courtesy: UN News & Media
By Matthew Russell Lee | Inner City Press
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The expectation had been that the long delayed report, on which Sri Lanka's Rajapaksa government has already called protests and begun to solicit signatures for a petition of opposition, would finally be released at the April 21 noon briefing.
But Farhan Haq remained on the phone half an hour into the briefing. When he arrived, Inner City Press asked:
Inner City Press: Yesterday you said, 'We’re expecting a response from the Government of Sri Lanka. That doesn’t need to tie our hands. As I have said repeatedly, we will put it out this week.' So what changed?
Acting Deputy Spokesperson Haq: That hasn’t changed; the week is still happening.
Inner City Press: Yeah, but tomorrow is Easter. It’s Easter holiday.
Acting Deputy Spokesperson: Tomorrow is not Easter. Tomorrow is Good Friday.
Inner City Press: I understand; the UN is closed tomorrow. So why would you put out a report when the UN is closed?
Acting Deputy Spokesperson: We’ll put out a report as soon as we can. We are also, like I said, in discussions and we’re trying to give the fair opportunity — which is a reasonable thing — to allow for people the right of response. At the same time, that doesn’t bind our hands. I have made it clear: we will put out the report and we will put it out in full, and without amendment.
Inner City Press: Does this week mean tomorrow? Or are you counting the weekend?
Acting Deputy Spokesperson: I can’t… It could mean later today. We’ll keep you posted on when we put this out.
Again Haq said “this week,” that nothing had changed, that the UN hadn't allowed Sri Lanka to bind the UN's hand. Then six hours later he announced that the report would not be released on Thursday, and not at least for the three days after that.
Inner City Press asked,
Inner City Press: Can you confirm that yesterday there was a meeting in the North Lawn Building by the secretariat of the Panel and UN agencies, very much anticipating that it would be released today? And if you do confirm, that’s one. And two is, sort of, what changed? On 12 April or 13, was it Mr. [Vijay] Nambiar who handed in to Shavendra, General Shavendra Silva? And did he say, “you have a chance to respond?” Why would you allow them at the last second to sort of… has something changed between then and now that you would now put this off today?
Acting Deputy Spokesperson Haq: The discussions have been going on for some time, and they continue to be going on. Like I said, we are working in good faith to accord to the Member State involved the rights to which they reasonably can be seen to exercise. At the same time, this is a very serious issue. It is very important that the report comes out, and we do intend to put this out. Yes, we have briefed the relevant agencies about some of what they can expect. At the same time, we have made it… we’ve been very clear about not putting out bits of the report. We haven’t leaked the report. We’ve been basically working, like I said, in good faith to put this out at the appropriate time. And we will put this out at the appropriate time.
Haq turned on to other questions. Finally Inner City Press noted it had “more questions on Sri Lanka, including the ones I e-mailed you.” These questions, posed in the morning of April 21, have not been acknowledged or answered
“please state the role of Mr. Nambiar in reviewing the report, please disclose how much was spent by the UN in preparing the report, please state whether the Panel or any member traveled to Sri Lanka and if not, why not, and please deny or confirm and describe any meeting by any Sri Lanka government official since the Panel's work began.”
© Inner City Press
Friday, April 22, 2011
Sri Lanka: Government adopts time-tested strategy to thwart UN report
By Amantha Perera | Inter Press Service
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The impending release of a report by the advisory panel set up by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sri Lanka has set off an international firestorm. Part of the report that was handed over by the secretary-general’s office to Sri Lanka during the third week of April has already leaked to the press. The full executive summary appeared in a local English newspaper ‘The Island’ over the weekend - detailing recommendations for an international probe into the last stages of the war that ended in May 2009.
The report is expected to be made public this week by the Secretary General’s office.
The report, its contents and recommendations are not new. Rights groups made similar charges even before the war ended. The only difference this time is that it has at least the stamp of the U.N. Secretary General’s office on it.
The Rajapaksa government too is not in unchartered waters, on the contrary, it is very much used to facing off international scrutiny, both nimbly and not so subtly.
The government is once again lobbying friendly nations like India, China and Russia to counter balance pressure brought in international fora from western powers like the U.S. and European Union members.
Russia has already indicated that it was backing the Sri Lankan government. On Apr. 19, Russia objected to any discussions on the report at the Security Council. The report had been listed as a topic of discussion before the Russian opposition was indicated.
A day later, the Russian ambassador in Sri Lanka criticised the report, the first time such a reaction has come from a high profile diplomat. "We speak not about a ‘U.N. report’, since it was prepared neither by a U.N. body or nor even by its request. It was just a personal initiative of the U.N. Secretary General," Ambassador Valdimir Mikhaylov said, following a meeting with Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the defence ministry.
The Russian diplomat also hinted that the report and its contents could be disruptive to reconciliation efforts after decades of war. "When Sri Lanka [is] healing its wounds after [a] long armed conflict, the U.N. may render its assistance, if needed, and not complicate the process of reconciliation," Mikhaylov said.
Observers here say that the government was expected to lobby hard for support from other nations like China, neighbour India and members of the non-aligned group. Foreign Minister G. L. Peiris had lined up series of meetings with Colombo based diplomats to detail the government’s reaction as the release of the report was imminent this week.
"This policy [of lobbying friendly nations] is something that has worked for them in the past. They are pretty confident that it will work this time as well," retired Additional Foreign Secretary Nanda Godage told IPS.
Russia and China have consistently blocked any resolution against Sri Lanka at the U.N. Security Council. In May 2009 as the war was heading for a decisive victory for the government, Russia, India and China were pivotal when an EU sponsored resolution to investigate rights violations here was defeated at the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council.
Godage is also of the view that internal U.N. politics may have played a part in the report. "It is a name and shame report. It looks as if it was done with the re-election of the Secretary General very much in mind," he said, describing the report as an effort to please three permanent members of the U.N. Security Council critical of Sri Lanka - U.S., UK and France.
The Sri Lankan government is very likely to thwart any new efforts to bring a resolution to the Security Council based on the new report. But one observer here cautioned that the report could be a long-term headache for the government.
"It can be stalled at the Security Council, but then there is nothing stopping it from being on the agenda of the next Human Rights Council sessions," said Jehan Perera, the executive director of the National Peace Council, a national advocacy body. "How long can the stalling go on, and what happens if one of the big guns supporting Sri Lanka changes its stance."
Godage told IPS that Sri Lanka made a terrible mistake in initially refusing to recognise the panel’s legitimacy, but then changing track with officials meeting panel members. "The government should have kept up its aggressive stance."
He believes that the government now has to come up with its own credible report on the conduct of the war. "Not a report that is just from the ministry of defence or the ministry of foreign affairs, but a national report using expertise of those with international recognition."
Perera also agreed that if the government wanted to make a clean break, a credible internal mechanism was a must.
A national commission appointed by President Rajapaksa to look into the conduct of the war is expected to hand in its report by May 15, but has been criticised by international rights bodies as falling short of international standards.
© IPS
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