UNHCR to release a report on SL .jpg) FRIDAY, 18 JANUARY 2013
While expressing concern about the removal of Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake from the post of Chief Justice, the UN Human Rights body said High Commissioner Navi Pillay will be issuing a report on Sri Lanka at the February-March session of the HR Council, focusing on the engagement of UN mechanisms in support of the accountability and reconciliation processes.
“We are also concerned that the impeachment process has caused bitter divisions within Sri Lanka, and that it sends an ominous signal about the Government’s commitment to accountability and reconciliation,” the UNHRC said in a statement today. The full statement The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay is deeply concerned that the impeachment and removal of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice has further eroded the rule of law in the country and could also set back efforts for accountability and reconciliation. The removal of the Chief Justice through a flawed process — which has been deemed unconstitutional by the highest courts of the land — is, in the High Commissioner’s view, gross interference in the independence of the judiciary and a calamitous setback for the rule of law in Sri Lanka. Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake was served notice of her dismissal and removed from her chambers and official residence on Tuesday (15 January), in spite of a Supreme Court ruling that the parliamentary procedure to remove her violated the Constitution. Sri Lanka has a long history of abuse of executive power, and this latest step appears to strip away one of the last and most fundamental of the independent checks and balances, and should ring alarm bells for all Sri Lankans. The jurist sworn in by the President as the new Chief Justice on 15 January, the former Attorney-General and Legal Advisor to the Cabinet, Mr. Mohan Peiris, has been at the forefront of a number of government delegations to Geneva in recent years to vigorously defend the Sri Lankan government’s position before the Human Rights Council and other human rights mechanisms. This raises obvious concerns about his independence and impartiality, especially when handling allegations of serious human rights violations by the authorities. We are also concerned that the impeachment process has caused bitter divisions within Sri Lanka, and that it sends an ominous signal about the Government’s commitment to accountability and reconciliation. It flies in the face of the strong calls by the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission, and by leaders of Sri Lanka’s civil society and legal profession, to rebuild the rule of law which has been badly eroded by decades of conflict and human rights violations. Just this morning we have received alarming reports from the Independent Bar of Sri Lanka of a series of death threats, acts of intimidation and even a couple of reported murder attempts against lawyers who have been supporting Chief Justice Bandaranayake, and the rulings of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal on her case. The High Commissioner will be issuing a report on Sri Lanka at the February-March session of the Human Rights Council, focusing on the engagement of UN mechanisms in support of the accountability and reconciliation processes. |
Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Thursday, January 31, 2013
(Lanka-e-News-30.Jan.2013, 11.45PM) A copy of the report pertaining to SL human rights prepared by the UN human rights High Commissioner’s office to be presented to the HR Council sessions to be held in March 2013 had been forwarded to the SL MaRa Govt. to keep the latter informed , according to the Geneva High Commission sources.
Govt. thanks New Delhi for assistance in crushing LTTE
January 29, 2013, 7:52 amby Zacki Jabbar
Amidst some western countries curtailing training opportunities for Sri Lankan security forces personnel, India says that it has offered Colombo maximum exposure.
Indian High Commissioner Ashok K. Kantha responding to a query by The Island said that around 1,400 Lankan armed forces personnel were trained annually by his country which was bigger than what any one provided.
When asked if India would similarly consider increasing the supply of arms and ammunition to its closest neighbour across the Palk Strait, he smiled and replied "We provide a small quantity of equipment. But what is significant is that security exchanges are developing steadily in keeping with our inter-linked interests."
Addressing a reception to mark India’s 64th Republic Day in Colombo on Saturday, Kantha described his country’s relationship with Sri Lanka as "Special" adding "As the Indian nation moves forward, we want our neighbours to be part of a collective growth story. We are ready to extend our fullest support to Sri Lanka in fulfilling its aspirations of peace, harmony, national reconciliation and development in the post war era."
Senior Minister of Good Governance and Infrastructure Ratnasiri Wickremenayake said that his government was extremely grateful for the unconditional support that India provided in helping to defeat the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
"We look back with gratitude for the assistance provided by New Delhi at a crucial stage of our history," he said adding that Sri Lanka wished to strengthen the long standing bonds of friendship and cooperation for the mutual benefit of its people and regional peace.
The High Commissioner noted that with bilateral trade turnover crossing the US$ 5 billion mark, India was Sri Lanka’s largest trading partner globally, while Colombo occupied top place in South Asia when it came to trade exchanges with India.
"We have agreed to double bilateral trade to US$ 10 billion by 2015 and move towards an enhanced framework for a special economic partnership," he said while noting that India also led in terms of tourist arrivals and foreign direct investment into Sri Lanka. With over 250,000 Sri Lankans visiting India last year the partnership could be described as mutually beneficial, the High Commissioner observed.
Tamil groups convene for discussions in Berlin, Germany
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Tamil political and civil society representatives, and Diaspora groups have convened in Berlin on the 26th & 27th January 2013 for progressive discussions on how to end the Sri Lankan State's continued agenda of destruction of Tamil people’s identity (genocidal), the heightened oppressive conditions, the threat to Tamil's claim of the North and East of the island being their area of historic habitation (homeland) and to achieve consensus on addressing the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil people through a negotiated political solution.
This is a continuation of on-going discussions between Tamil groups that first began in November 2012. Representatives from Tamil political parties, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Tamil National People's Front (TNPF) and Tamil Civil Society from Sri Lanka, joined representatives from Diaspora groups International Councils of Eelam Tamils (ICET), Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) and Global Tamil Forum (GTF) in the two rounds of dialogue.
These discussions will continue and progress with wider participation to bring together more Tamil and Tamil speaking people’s organisations in the months to come.
-Press Release on behalf of all participating organisations –
Kepoli graveyard belonging to Land Reform Commission is confiscated by forces, hence the Land Reform Commission Chairman had sanctioned according to land recovery law to transfer to the forces.
This information was given by Land Reform Commission Jaffna Vanni regional Coordination officer N.Vimalraj.
Many lands in the Jaffna district are requested to construct camps for the army. In some areas, the lands which are already occupying by the forces, requests are made to provide lands from other areas too.
They made a request to provide them some lands belonging to Land Reform Commission. Hence in granting such lands, the final decision maker is the Chairman of the Land Reform Commission; hence the request letters had been forwarded to Colombo.
In this manner, the Kepoli graveyard which was utilized by the people for the past 35 years had been taken over by the army and has constructed an army camp. They forwarded a request to the Land Reform Commission to grant the said land.
Accordingly the said land which was already occupied by the forces, is transferred to the forces according to land recovery law and the Chairman of the Commission had sanctioned the transfer of the property is according to reports.
Thursday , 31 January 2013
Govt. urged to reveal observations of indep. panel
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Midweek Politics: Geneva 2.0; Lessons Unlearnt
By Dharisha Bastians -January 30, 2013
Dharisha Bastians
“I received information from a third party. Either myself or the Government does not know anything about Eknaligoda – it is only God who knows” – Former Attorney General Mohan Peiris, in a statement before the Homagama Magistrate on 5 June 2012
On Tuesday, 29 January 2013, three years and five days since her husband disappeared without a trace, Sandhya Ekneligoda tied a black cloth over her mouth and took her place at the front row of the Black January protest in Town Hall.
Tireless and unyielding in her quest to discover what became of her husband, Sandhya Ekneligoda has become a crusader for Sri Lanka’s ‘disappeared’ and the face of a small but vocal campaign against impunity and media suppression in the island that media rights watchdogs say has seen nine journalists murdered and one disappeared since President Mahinda Rajapaksa came to power in 2005.
For Sri Lanka’s media, January is a very black month indeed. A host of atrocities against media personnel both during and after the war have occurred in the first month of the year. Lasantha Wickrematunge, founding Editor of The Sunday Leader was assassinated on his way to work in January 2009.
Days before his murder, a claymore mine exploded inside the studios of the Sirasa Media Network. In January 2011, Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan, an editor of the Jaffna based newspaper Uthayan was brutally assaulted.
And on 24 January 2010, Prageeth Ekneligoda vanished without a trace on his way to work, in the heat of a tight presidential race between incumbent President Rajapaksa and his former Army Chief, Sarath Fonseka. He has not been heard from since.
And on 24 January 2010, Prageeth Ekneligoda vanished without a trace on his way to work, in the heat of a tight presidential race between incumbent President Rajapaksa and his former Army Chief, Sarath Fonseka. He has not been heard from since.
In November 2011, former Attorney General and Legal Advisor to the Cabinet of Ministers Mohan Pieris told the UN’s Committee Against Torture (CAT) that the Government of Sri Lanka possessed information that Ekneligoda was alive and well in a foreign country. He claimed that the campaign to secure the cartoonist’s release was a farce.
Seven months later, Pieris informed the Homagama Magistrate’s Court, where he was answering summons in a Habeaus Corpus application filed by Sandhya Ekneligoda, that his pronouncement before the UN CAT was based on information received by a third party. The now infamous proclamation soon followed, as the former state prosecutor stood in the same courtroom with the woman who had been seeking the whereabouts of her husband unceasingly for over two years, that “only God knows” Prageeth’s whereabouts.
The same man now heads Sri Lanka’s Judiciary, where Sandhya is seeking redress by obtaining a Court of Appeal Writ that will force the authorities to release Prageeth from detention and bring him before a court of law.
The ‘disappeared’
But at least the Ekneligoda disappearance remains alive, partly because of Sandhya’s indomitable spirit and partly buoyed by the efforts of media rights organisations in Sri Lanka and around the world to keep his case alive, Prageeth remains a focal point of international concern. There are the families of hundreds that have disappeared in the north and east, highlighted by the Government’s own commission of inquiry on the final phase of the war, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that are seeking answers.
Far from abating post-war, abductions and disappearances have continued, and a lack of progress in any official line of inquiry and the even stranger phenomenon of abduction victims turning up when the appropriate amount of international pressure is exerted upon the highest echelons of the Government – in the case ofKumar Gunaratnam for instance – points to some degree of state collusion, human rights activists say.
Some of the abductions took place even after the Human Rights Council of the UN flagged Sri Lanka for its appalling human rights record and adopted a resolution in March last year urging the Government in Colombo to effectively ‘get a move on’ regarding post-war reconciliation and accountability concerns, by implementing the recommendations of the LLRC report and finding a mechanism to investigate and prosecute the allegations of human rights abuses and excesses during the final phase of the conflict with the LTTE.
To coincide with the UNHRC sessions in Geneva last March, the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa orchestrated massive demonstrations against the US sponsored resolution, railed against Western conspiracies and denounced them as being LTTE plots to tarnish Sri Lanka’s image.
Two months later, the Sri Lankan Government agreed in theory to meet its international obligations as set out in the UNHRC resolution. A national action plan on reconciliation was drafted and the military began its own ‘inquiry’ into allegations of excesses and violations of international humanitarian law.
Those inquiries continue, the military says, even though the international community continues to be dubious about whether Sri Lanka’s military, in an increasingly militarised state is capable of investigating itself against such serious allegations of atrocities.
For the better part of the year 2012, any progress the Government has touted has been limited mostly to words, especially in terms of genuine reconciliation that would build trust between the communities and genuine will to understand and hold to account those that may be guilty of excess in war time.
Resolution – take two
Predictably then, Sri Lanka finds itself where it is today, if anything having exacerbated international concerns by a cavalier attitude to the principles of democracy, rule of law and civil liberties, often dismissing them as ‘Western notions’ of just and fair societies.
If it was not already clear when the question of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake’s (then proposed) impeachment came up during Sri Lanka’s Universal Periodic Review in Geneva in November, the three-member US Delegation visiting Sri Lanka this week made sure the writing was on the wall.
“The United States has decided to sponsor a procedural resolution at the March 2013 session of the UN Human Rights Council along with international partners. The resolution will be straightforward, it will be a procedural resolution, and it will build on the 2012 resolution which called on Sri Lanka to do more to promote reconciliation and accountability,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James R. Moore told journalists in Colombo earlier this week.
Just to clear up any doubts, his counterpart for Defence for South and Southeast Asia, Vikram Singh also made the following observation about how much the concerns of the international community have grown because of the Government’s decision to impeach Bandaranayake in breach of an order by the two highest courts in the country and despite the outcry both within and outside the country that the process was deeply flawed.
“I think it’s safe to say that the impeachment of the Chief Justice which was mentioned before as a concern has also contributed to a desire to ensure that the record stays fresh in Geneva,” Deputy Assistant Secretary Singh said. Interestingly, upon landing in Colombo last Saturday (26), the first meeting the US State Department delegation held was with representatives of the Tamil National Alliance.
For two hours, TNA Leader R. Sampanthan and MPs M.A. Sumanthiran and S. Sridharan discussed issues pertaining to the Tamil community in the north and east and accused the Government of dragging its feet on meeting the political aspirations of the Northern Tamils.
The next day, the delegation toured Jaffna where they met with the military command and interestingly, Jaffna Bishop Thomas Soundaranayagam, another vocal critic of the Government’s snail’s pace on reconciliation and building normalcy in the post-war phase.
The delegation returned to Colombo and acknowledged that there had been ‘some’ progress but a lot more work left to do, especially in terms of providing answers to the families of the disappeared. This was a central theme of the LLRC’s report too, leading the incumbent regime to believe that the Commission Report had ironically become its own worst enemy.
Déjà vu
There is a strange sense of déjà vu building as the weeks inch closer to the opening of the 20th Session of the Human Rights Council on 25 February this year. The sessions will continue for nearly a month and the second US-sponsored resolution is likely to be tabled in early March.
Already, the Government’s most vociferous mouthpiece on Western conspiracies, Wimal Weerawansa has condemned the visiting State Department delegation as US spies. Weerawansa is a Government Minister, but continues to voice these opinions publicly and without censure from the regime, and is likely to lead the campaign against the second resolution and its proponents in the weeks ahead.
External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris meanwhile, denounced the international efforts to make Sri Lanka live up to its post-war obligations as an ‘economic revolution’ by the LTTE rump at a political event in Hambantotarecently.
The Government says it is ready to face its next major challenge in Geneva and hectic preparations are underway to present Sri Lanka’s case before the Human Rights Council, led for the most part by Presidential Special Envoy on Human Rights, Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe.
The Government says it is ready to face its next major challenge in Geneva and hectic preparations are underway to present Sri Lanka’s case before the Human Rights Council, led for the most part by Presidential Special Envoy on Human Rights, Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe.
Samarasinghe is reportedly appalled at the decision of the External Affairs Ministry to issue a strong letter to UN Human Rights Commissioner Navinetham Pillay following her remarks on the impeachment of Chief Justice Bandaranayake, believing it would hurt rather than help Sri Lanka’s cause when the High Commissioner tables her report before the member states of the Council a few weeks from now.
The irony attached to the rule regime is that while it comprises those handful of individuals that could insert a degree of sanity to the bull-in-a-china-shop approach Sri Lanka has taken in her engagement with the UN and the Western world, few of them remain willing to make their case before the powers that be.
As the Government tightens its grip on power domestically, it appears to have increasingly taken the view that it can conduct its foreign affairs in much the same, boisterous and domineering way it deals with the local electorate.
If the Rajapaksa regime seemed petulant and belligerent in the run up to Geneva in 2012, it promises only to get worse as Sri Lanka enters the Geneva 2.0 phase, where it is likely to find many friends that stood stoically beside them in 2012 are scrambling to abandon ship.
If the Rajapaksa regime seemed petulant and belligerent in the run up to Geneva in 2012, it promises only to get worse as Sri Lanka enters the Geneva 2.0 phase, where it is likely to find many friends that stood stoically beside them in 2012 are scrambling to abandon ship.
In fact, this is a point repeatedly driven home in the last few months by Sri Lanka’s ‘friends’ in the world, such as Japan. The country is not currently a member state of the UNHRC, but unbeknownst to most, Tokyo played a part in tempering the support for the US backed move in Geneva last year.
When progress was slow on the issues raised at the UNHRC in 2012, the Japanese Government offered a few words of wisdom to Sri Lankan officials, including the fact that it was necessary that Colombo ensured that its friends had something to work with by the time UNHRC rolled around again in March 2013.
New Delhi saves the day
The message has also been echoed repeatedly by New Delhi, which intervened at the eleventh hour in March 2012 to dilute the language of what was previously a stronger resolution drafted by the US. Yet still peeved by New Delhi’s decision – partly motivated by pressure in its emotive South – to vote in support of the US backed resolution, Sri Lanka has done little to assuage India’s fears that the current administration in Colombo has no real desire to offer a permanent political solution to the island’s Tamil minority.
Conversely in fact, Sri Lanka is preparing to slap New Delhi in the face in the coming months by proposing to repeal the India-designed 13th Amendment that offers some autonomy to the provinces over some governance subjects. The move is particularly irksome from New Delhi’s perspective because since the end of the conflict in 2009, the Sri Lankan Government, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa no less, has vowed to base a final political power sharing solution to the island’s ethnic issue, by building on the 13th Amendment.
But as far as the regime is concerned, the 13th Amendment is no longer viable, especially following the fracas of the Divi Neguma bill when the Supreme Court ruled that each Province in the country had to endorse the legislation before it could be considered constitutional and then ruled further that the Northern Governor could not endorse it in the place of a democratically constituted Northern Provincial Council.
The rulings not only sealed the fate of Chief Justice Bandaranayake who led the bench that delivered the determinations, but also underscored for the Government that even one Provincial Council that would be controlled by the TNA and within the Tamil’s Party’s political ambit, would be too great a liability from the point of view of consolidating power.
Under the circumstances, with the Government preparing to bring a 19th and 20th amendment to the Constitution, the first to shorten the tenure of a Chief Justice and the second – possibly – to repeal 13th Amendment, it is unclear whether there will exist provision by September 2013 to conduct a poll in the north to constitute a Northern Provincial Council. This is despite repeated promises by the Government to Washington and New Delhi – promises that were reiterated to the visiting US delegation – that a poll will be held by September this year.
Under the circumstances, with the Government preparing to bring a 19th and 20th amendment to the Constitution, the first to shorten the tenure of a Chief Justice and the second – possibly – to repeal 13th Amendment, it is unclear whether there will exist provision by September 2013 to conduct a poll in the north to constitute a Northern Provincial Council. This is despite repeated promises by the Government to Washington and New Delhi – promises that were reiterated to the visiting US delegation – that a poll will be held by September this year.
Under the circumstances, if it becomes a little too hot to handle in Geneva this March, the way it did in the preceding year, there is no longer a guarantee that New Delhi will be the ungrudging saviour it proved to be in the last minute in 2012. As it did in the run up to March last year, pressure from India’s south has also begun to build, with the Karunanidhi-led DMK party from Tamil Nadu calling on the Central Government to support the resolution in Geneva.
India vs. Ranawaka?
It is in this backdrop that the main Opposition UNP charged on Tuesday that the primary motivation behind the reshuffle of the cabinet earlier this week was the removal of Minister Champika Ranawaka. Ranawaka was previously heading the Ministry of Power and Energy which was transferred to Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi in the reshuffle.
According to the UNP, Ranawaka’s removal was due to pressure from India, which continues to insist on the commissioning of the Sampur coal power project. Ranawaka, partly due to his nationalist positions and also because he had actual reservations regarding the project’s feasibility and efficiency was opposed to the project being driven by New Delhi.
The UNP claims that during Minister Peiris’ visit to New Delhi last week, for the Sri Lanka-India Joint Commission, he pledged to move on the power project and informed Indian officials that Ranawaka had been dragging his feet. The Opposition Party claims that Ranawaka was sacrificed in exchange for India’s limited support at the UNHRC, should another resolution from Washington materialise there.
Neither the Government nor the Indian High Commission have denied or confirmed the claim, but political analysts are unanimously convinced that Monday’s reshuffle of the cabinet was motivated primarily by the need to shift Ranawaka from the Power and Energy Ministry.
Secondary to that reason was the apparent system of rewards that was obvious in the appointments and promotions, to those members of the Government that had played a key role in the impeachment. All of the Deputy Ministers who were promoted for instance, were signatories to the impeachment motion against Bandaranayake. Some sources say that the motivation behind Ranawaka’s removal from the Power and Energy Ministry was also the fact that the JHU strongman had refused on principle to sign the impeachment motion, although he and his party voted for the resolution to oust Bandaranayake in Parliament on 11 January.
The much-anticipated appointment of a new Prime Minister, given D.M. Jayaratne’s failing health, did not occur in the reshuffle. According to Government sources, the new appointment may come with a little less fanfare in the coming months. But the regime has consistently allowed senior SLFP members to hold the premiership, in part to silence the party’s old guard that continues to have serious concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of the ruling family.
International concerns are also building about a growing divide between Buddhist and Muslim communities, with the monk-led Bodhu Bala Sena leading a campaign of agitation against Halal food products and Muslim enterprises. The movement, whose members also led a violent protest against the Bangladesh High Commission in Colombo late last year, recently attempted to storm a clothing store in Maharagama and barged into a tourist hotel down south a few days later, because it allegedly had a Buddha Bar in its premises.
Other more disturbing expressions of religious hatred came from Kuliyapitiya, where an organisation calling itself Hela Sihila Hiru held an ugly demonstration last week, sporting symbols and expressions deeply offensive to Muslims. Eyewitnesses say policeman merely observed, while the demonstrators paraded the images in front of Muslim business establishments.
Audience with the President
The regime’s response to the blatant incitement of communal violence was ludicrous. Instead of instructing its law enforcement arm to arrest and prosecute the persons attempting to create communal tension, it provided the Bodhu Bala Sena priests an audience with the President at Temple Trees on Sunday morning. The meeting included a coterie of senior ministers and Government officials.
They were asked, nicely, to refrain from creating religious tension, a claim they vehemently denied. The Bodhu Bala Sena representatives reportedly denied being part of the attacks on the Bangladeshi High Commission and disassociated itself from the Maharagama and Kuliyapitiya incidents. The denials were despite widely available video footage of their obvious involvement in many of the ugly incidents.
It defies reasoning that the Government, that has little trouble with enforcing the law on dissenting groups, pavement hawkers and shanty-dwellers, with an iron hand when necessary, believes that the answer to the problems the Bodhu Bala Sena and its affiliated groups pose is to invite them to tea and ask them politely to desist. But there are more sinister reasons to believe that there is a covert hand in the intolerance of this ‘new enemy’ of the Sinhala Buddhists.
At a recent meeting with a Muslim delegation of politicians and civil society activists, a high ranking regime official admitted to having supported the vigilante cause of the Bodhu Bala Sena and groups like the Sinhala Ravaya in the past. The official admitted that it appeared now that the movement was taking on a form and life of its own. Whether this new life is something the Government will remain passive about, remains to be seen.
In the short term, the silence is deeply damaging to its purported claims of being committed to reconciliation and trust-building between the majority and minority communities. It is if anything, irrefutable proof that it lacks the will to address minority concerns and ensure minorities are safeguarded in post-war Sri Lanka.
Like the damaging impeachment of Shirani Bandaranayake and the continued climate of impunity that allow disappearances, abductions and suppression to go unchecked, the Government’s attitude to a growing problem of religious disharmony will do Colombo no favours in Geneva 2013 or all the UNHRC sessions and censures to come in the foreseeable future.
In the long term, the deafening silence of the rulers in the face of something that if left to metastasize could lead to decades of violence and bloodletting may well be the country’s next great tragedy.
Courtesy Daily FT
UK Minister Alistair Burt Visits Northern Sri Lanka
31 January 2013
Ahead of this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM), Mr Burt was able to see developments that have occurred in the region since his last visit two years ago, and the work that remains to be done, following thirty years of conflict. He was able to talk to people who had suffered the brutality of the LTTE, which remains a banned organisation in the UK.
During a visit to the Keppapilavu relocation site, Mr Burt saw the continuing challenges faced daily by those who were displaced by the conflict. He expressed his hope that they would soon be able to return to their homes, or to other suitable areas. As Guest of Honour at the opening of Sri Lanka Unites’ reconciliation centre at Mulliayawelai, the Minister saw how the UK is helping to support sustainable peace in Sri Lanka. Speaking at the event, Mr Burt said:
“I have been pleased to see progress in some areas since the end of the conflict. The destructive force of war – tearing lives, families, societies and countries apart – is only too evident in this part of the country. It is great to see young Sri Lankans leading efforts to heal wounds and to unite Sri Lankans of all backgrounds in the task of reconciliation and recovery.
This Sri Lanka Unites reconciliation centre, together with others due to be established in other parts of the country, will help to bridge the divide between the North and the South. Such centres will foster communication and understanding across the island. Sri Lanka Unites is helping to empower young people to build a strong, stable, prosperous and united future. I am delighted to be able to support their efforts.”
In the North, the Minister also met the Mullaitivu Government Agent, Mr N Vethanayakam, and NGOs working in the area. These included the HALO Trust, a British organisation which is conducting de-mining in the North with £3 million of UK Government support.
| Govt. to hire PR team |
 By Sulochana Ramiah Mohan
2013-01-31
The government is planning to spend whopping millions to hire reputed Public Relations agencies, to counter the charges levelled against Sri Lanka by the Western powers, at the upcoming sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. A team of professionals and several reputed overseas PR agencies, backed by Sri Lanka's missions abroad, will face the challenges posed by the resolution to be brought against Sri Lanka by the United States at the UNHRC sessions, Ceylon Today learns. "Sri Lanka is pretty much on track to face outside challenges having prepared the groundwork, come what may be the situation in Geneva," said Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs, K. Amunugama.
He said, "The US resolution on Sri Lanka would be as tough as last year, but we have done the groundwork, however challenging it would be. A smaller team of professionals, compared to last year, will be present in Geneva. Also, several reputed overseas PR agencies will be present there to campaign for Sri Lanka, backed by our foreign missions. "We are working on the recommendations made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) constantly and have made substantial progress with the support of the committee chief, President's Secretary Lalith Weeratunga and we are set for a strong argument in Geneva," he said.
"We knew something would come up in Geneva, but what we did not know was what sort of thing it would be.
"The last review was about the implementation of the LLRC recommendations and High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay wanted us to report back on the LLRC progress, which we did. We were expecting a reply from her and we do not know what is in there. But we sensed that anyhow it would be negative and nothing positive in it," he added.
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30 army camps constructed at A9 road.
30 army camps are constructed at A9 road, from Vavuniya to Jaffna. Out of this massive military camps too consist.
Thursday , 31 January 2013
30 army camps are constructed at A9 road, from Vavuniya to Jaffna. Out of this massive military camps too consist.
30 thousand forces are positioned only at Poonagari region. With much discontent such information was said by Tamil National Alliance Jaffna district parliament member C.Siritharan.
He said 10 army camps are constructed only in 806 acres of lands at Poonagari region. Out of this 30 thousand forces have positioned. Other than this, in A9 route, from Vavuniya to Jaffna 30 army camps are constructed.
St.Joseph army camp is located at Vavuniya, Manthai army camp, 56th regiment camp at Thandikulam, Special Task force division camp at Puliyankulam, Special Task force unit camp at Kurusidam Kulam, 19th Gajabahu regiment at Kanagarayan kulam, 561 regiment at Kanagarayan kulam, 19th unit of Sri Lanka Army division at Kanagarayan kulam, Special Task force division camp at Periyakulam.
574th unit Regiment at Maangulam, 53rd Regiment at Maangulam, 632nd Regiment at Kokavil, Special Task Force unit camp at Ariviyaltown, Inforamtion force division at Iranaimadu, 571th Regiment at Kilinochchi,army camps at Elephant Pass, Manchcholai, Pulopalai, Palai, Mugamalai, Eluthumattuwaal, Varani, Noonavil, Noonavil center, Mirusuvil Gemunu army camp, 3rd regiment camp at Kaithadi, 52nd army unit at Kaithadi and the army headquarters of 523rd unit is also constructed was mentioned by him.
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Minister of Health Maithripala Sirisena says that a cabinet paper has been prepared to seek approval to spray the B.T.I Bacteria by air in several areas within the Colombo Municipal Council city limits.
Strategy For Democratic Resistance, Manifesto For Change
Dr Dayan Jayatilleka
However bad things are in Sri Lanka today and however bad things may get, there is almost nothing that cannot be reversed in three years when elections come around. That election may however be the last chance at reversal of the negative aspects, preventing their cumulative growth from embryonic structureto stable system. Sri Lanka is not under a dictatorship today, though there may be a dictatorial project or latent tendency towards dictatorship. If dictatorship is ever erected in this country it will be as much by default as by design. It will be because the Opposition didn’t get its act together in order to prevent it at the next – and last–available electoral opportunity. How is this to be done? A pre-requisite is to abandon errors of thinking and strategizing, the most crucial of which have recently been pointed out by an astute observer of Sri Lankan politics.
Kath Noble, an Oxford trained mathematician with a postgraduate degree in economics from the JNU (Delhi) has more political lucidity and therefore, useful counsel, than all our local political critics, commentators and pundits put together. In her latest column she writes:
“…Worse, by focusing our attention on the Commonwealth and the sanctions that it may impose on Sri Lanka as a result of the impeachment, the UNP leader is pushing us into the same old trap of ‘internationalizing’ what must be a national struggle…The international community doesn’t get to vote in elections in Sri Lanka! It is the opinions of Sri Lankans that matter to Mahinda Rajapaksa. So long as they aren’t bothered about the mass grave in Matale, he won’t be either. Likewise, so long as they don’t want an investigation into the anti-LTTE campaign, even Ranil Wickremesinghe wouldn’t do it…If the international community tried to use its economic or other power to force prosecutions in Sri Lanka, the public would rally behind the Government, and Mahinda Rajapaksa is very good at encouraging such a response. There really is no short cut…It is a national struggle…” (‘Calling in the Marines’)
Though it may have to be preceded as in November-December 1976, by peaceful mass action which ensures a level electoral playing field, the endgame is always electoral. In a Presidential system this reduces itself to a viable Presidential candidate. However bad the crisis in its economic and external dimensions, the people will not vote for a candidate whose patriotic credentials have always been deeply suspect. This is all the more certain if the prime sources of external pressure are Tamil Nadu and the West-based Tamil Diaspora, and the main slogan is accountability for the conduct in the closing stages of the war, of the military—drawn from rural peasant families, as are most voters. In such a context, voters are likely to hold their collective nose and opt either for continuity or change within continuity (as they did in 1988 when they voted for UNP candidatePremadasa). In the latter case, the pro-western Opposition liberal-conservatives will realize that there are worse options within the System than the incumbent.
Pro-Opposition and/or anti-regime ideologues, strategists and commentators fail to understand at least four major points, and so long as they fail to do so they will be unable to halt the Machine.
Firstly, the sources of legitimacy: while the regime is losing democratic legitimacy and legitimacy in general due to its flouting of democratic values and norms, it continues to retain national legitimacy deriving from its historic military victory over a hated enemy. The regime wins every political battle, from the FUTAstrike to the impeachment, because of those vast ‘reserves’ of nationalist – and national- legitimacy, which the present Opposition, or the Opposition presently, lacks. National legitimacy will almost always trump democratic legitimacy, especially in a context of victory. In the context of military defeat, nationalist legitimacy remains as powerful but acts against the regime, as in the case of JR Jayewardene after the ’87 airdrop, the Argentinean junta after the Falklands/Malvinas defeat and the Serbia’s nationalists and Socialists after losing Kosovo. Crudely put, any election which pits the present leader of the Opposition and the UNP against Mahinda Rajapaksa is akin to Marshal Petain running against de Gaulle or Neville Chamberlain contesting against Churchill. Even if the military victory over the Tigers fades in the public memory, it will be instantly revived if the alternative remains one who is indelibly perceived as a great appeaser and collaborator during a titanic, historically nodal contestation. The memory of that appeasement will not fade. The memory of shortages under the Bandaranaike regime of ’70-’77 was instantly triggered for 20 years, by the question “do you remember how bad it was and do you really dare risk going back?”. With anti-Sri Lankan separatist sentiment in Tamil Nadu on the rise, the existentially threatened and insecure Sri Lankan citizenry will always consider Ranil Wickremesinghe (and his wing of the UNP) far too risky an option.
Secondly, the vital importance of shifting to and occupying the centre: Democratic politics the world over shows that whoever occupies the centre-space, wins. The Republicans were too far out in right field and lost to Barack Obama who carved out a progressive centre. For years the Democrats were perceived to be too far out in left field, and continued to lose, until Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama shifted the party to the centre. This is even more pronounced in Sri Lanka where the Buddhist cultural heritage privileges the Middle Path. It was the political genius of SWRD Bandaranaike to explicitly project himself as carving out a middle path between the Marxist Left and the pro-western Right. Be it the Aristotelian Golden Mean or the Buddha’s Middle Path, the middle ground is the moral high ground, and the strategic space to occupy. If the regime has abandoned the middle ground, it is all the more compelling and easier for the forces of resistance to occupy it. The regime cannot be opposed from an extreme position, and even if someday, a determined and apparently extreme position has to be taken in order to administer a final push and secure a decisive breakthrough, it must be preceded by the broadest accumulation of social and national forces which is feasible only by the secure occupation of the middle ground.
Thirdly, a grasp of Gramsci, and the importance of triangulating the factors of the ‘national’, the ‘democratic’ and the ‘popular’ or pro-people: Though the regime and its ideologues define the national in an ethno-religious and hierarchical manner, this is not an argument for abandoning the national, but one for defining it in the broadest and most inclusionary terms, as did DS Senanayake and Ranasinghe Premadasa of the UNP, and Dr SA Wickramasinghe (Southern) founder of the Communist movement. The defence of the national has to be fused with the defence of democratic rights, liberties and values. The freedom of our nation from unfair external encroachment on our sovereignty must be combined with the freedom of the individual. Both these dimensions of freedom and liberty must be conjoined with a strong sense of social justice and socioeconomic policies which place the interests of the people as the driver of policy and practice.
As long as the defence of democracy remains purely individualist or institutional, legalist and liberal, rather than rooted in the social; so long as the call for the defence of democracy remains insensitive to the material and everyday concerns of the vast majority, it will remain a greenhouse plant. That which I propose is not an impossible synthesis. The French political consciousness and culture for instance, takes as axiomatic the hyphenated slogans of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, combined with a strong sense of the Nation (and a national destiny). More pertinently, so too does the political discourse of the left and social democrats in Latin America—a discourse most successfully articulated by Brazil’s Lula, which accords important recognition to national sovereignty, which is brushed aside by the ideologues of Sri Lanka’s Opposition and therefore monopolised by default, by the regime.
Fourthly, political content must not be sacrificed for organizational forms: The most significant political enterprises in the politics of this island have taken the form of ruptures with pre-existing organisations. DS Senanayaka broke away from the decades old Ceylon National Congress to found the UNP on the eve of Independence. SWRD broke from the UNP in 1951. SJV Chelvanayagam ruptured the Tamil Congress to form the Federal party. Wijeweera left the Maoist party to found the JVP. Chandrika and Vijaya formed the Mahajana Party, splitting from the SLFP, which enabled her to return to the leadership of the SLFP giving it a new profile and taking it to victory. Ranasinghe Premadasa formed a pressure group the Puravesi Peramuna in the early ’70s, and had planned to break away from the UNP in 1988 as an independent presidential candidate if he were deprived of the party’s candidacy. As the Bible says, one cannot put new wine in old wineskins.
The four points made above, constitute the parametric outlines of a project that can counter the dominant project of the regime. The objective of democratic change is to be free citizens in a free country; in a country that is free from domination from without and within.
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