Fr. Yogeswaran Harassed After Pillay Meeting
September 3, 2013
Officials from the Centre for Promotion and Protection of Human Rights working in Trincomalee said they had been harassed by military personnel, two days after UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay complained of reprisals against persons and organisations in the North and East who held discussions with her during her week long mission to Sri Lanka.
Five or six policemen had visited Fr. Veerasan Yogeswaran who runs the Centre at midnight and early morning a few hours after he met with the UN Envoy, AFP said.
The priest said his concern was that security forces personnel were going to homes at midnight and questioning people, AFP reported.
Centre for Policy Alternatives Chief Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu told AFP he had travelled to the north where several persons had reported being visited by security forces personnel after their discussions with Pillay.
At her press briefing Pillay called the visitations by security forces personnel upon those who spoke with her, including two priests and journalists and civilians the most ‘disturbing aspects” of her visit. “The UN takes reprisals against those who speak with UN officials very seriously,” Pillay warned, saying she would be reporting the incidents to the UN Human Rights Council.
Pillay told journalists at her briefing that the Sri Lankan Government had denied the allegations of reprisals against those who spoke with her. “If I am met with flat denial, I have to believe what the community tells me,” the UN Envoy told journalists, asked how she authenticates such complaints.Read More
By the wayside: This wreath/ with no name attached /is for you/who has no grave/ As the place of earth/ which embraced you/ could not be found/this wreath was placed by the wayside/Forgive me/ for placing a memorial for you/ by the roadside
The Unknown Fate Of Thousands In Sri Lanka
By Leena Manimekalai -September 3, 2013
Leena Manimekalai
By the wayside: This wreath/ with no name attached /is for you/who has no grave/ As the place of earth/ which embraced you/ could not be found/this wreath was placed by the wayside/Forgive me/ for placing a memorial for you/ by the roadside
writes Basil Fernando about the memorial constructed by families of disappeared at Radoluwa Junction in Seeduwa, a town near the city of Negombo, Srilanka. When I visited the memorial with lingering faces of the disappeared, it signified an important attempt to keep the memories alive, a yearning to prevent recurrence of mass disappearances and seek justice on behalf of the victims of disappearances and their families. Sri Lanka which has a deep and complex history of political violence is struggling to redeem the past with a frozen present and a black hole future. Communal riots, political assassinations and ethnic conflict have been an element of the socio political landscape of this tear nation for more than a century. Two heads of State, dozen national political leaders and numerous regional and local politicians, journalists, activists and artists have been assassinated by groups representing virtually every shade of political spectrum. Srilankan State deploys disappearances and extra judicial killings as an instrument of public policy in the name of State Emergencies, Prevention of Terrorism Act, Dubbing of persons as terrorists, unpatriotic, enemies of state. Brutal suppressions of two armed insurrections in the Sinhala South in 1971-72, 1987-89 led by Peoples Liberation Front (JVP) and an armed Tamil Separatist Movement since 1970s led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) in the Tamil North and East of the island had spotted Srilankan State guilty of horrific human rights abuses. Now the Nation is the world leader in number of disappeared crossing tens of thousands who have no date of death, no place of death, no body, and no grave or funeral rites. Obviously there is no shelling, no bombing in the island since 2009 and the State wants the world to believe that war is over but who will bring peace to the families who continue to lose their members to State Terror and also been denied their basic right to even open their mouth about the injustice