The outline of a sustainable development system to empower villagers.
The process of evolution of human beings has been greatly accelerated by the application of science and technology in several fields. With the expansion of ideas, the geopolitical situation changed and many new independent nations were born in the era of the Second World War. Most of the nations had a great civilisational heritage, but suffered under colonial rule for centuries. After the end of colonial rule, independent nations formed governments of their own, often propelled by democratic aspirations. The process continues, and the 21st century is going to see an evolved world. We are all destined to realise happiness, dignity of life, freedom and creativity — but only if nations become noble.
How do we define a nation's nobility? It is not merely in terms of economic indicators, human development indicators, or any other form of numerical indicators. It is more of a qualitative than a quantitative measure. Naturally, a noble nation has to be populated by people who are noble — not just at the individual level but in a collective sense as well. And nobility has to begin from the top, from the leader, and percolate to various levels of society, down to the artisans and peasants.
Do we have a good example? Is there an ideal description of such nobility?
For Tamils, the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war has brought no peace dividend; for Tamil women, peace has brought with it a continuation – and in some cases an intensification – of violence and insecurity. In the country’s predominantly Tamil-speaking north and east – a region half the size of Nova Scotia – tens of thousands of “war widows” have been living under the control of the central government and Sinhalese security forces since 2009 and the end of the civil war, whose last few months saw as many as 40,000 civilians killed.
MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY
To date, the government’s response has been to deny the existence of threats to women’s security – past or present. Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the U.S. recently claimed that there is “no discrimination for women in Sri Lanka” and reduced the existence of rapes to a “couple of cases,” while a military spokesman said there was no “insecurity issue” for women in the north and east. This would come as a surprise not only to the women and girls from that region who have been victimized over the last three years, but also to women across Sri Lanka who have seen increasing gender disparities in income and higher education, as well as many recent cases of murder, rape and sexual harassment in the south by current and former security force members.There has been an alarming increase in gender-based violence, including domestic violence, within the Tamil community, as well as forced prostitution and trafficking. All of this is against a backdrop of credible evidence of wartime sexual violence by government forces, including video footage showing soldiers making sexual comments while handling dead, naked bodies of female suspected Tamil Tiger fighters, some with their hands bound. At the UN Human Rights Council session opening late next month, there is a chance to finally ensure accountability and to address the current state of insecurity; Sri Lanka and the international community, including Canada, should take it.
These government denials should also be a red flag to anyone wanting to believe that Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission – whose long-awaited report to President Percy Mahendra Rajapaksa was made public in December – represents a change in the regime’s approach to accountability and reconciliation. The government has already shown no compunction in ignoring the LLRC’s finding that women in the north and east “feel unsafe in the presence of the armed forces,” and, given past performance, there is every likelihood it will disregard the LLRC’s sensible recommendations on governance, land issues and a political solution.
Indeed, any positive outcomes that could flow from the LLRC report will likely remain theoretical, given that the report failed to provide a thorough and independent investigation of alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in the final stages of the war, as demanded by the UN and others, including Canada. From the beginning, the government hamstrung the LLRC by giving it a feeble mandate, choosing pro-government commissioners with clear conflicts of interest, and failing to provide any witness protection.
The LLRC’s report accepts at face value the largely unexamined claims of senior government and military officials who planned and executed the war, fails to adequately address the many credible allegations detailed in last April’s report of the UN Secretary-General’s panel of experts on accountability in Sri Lanka, and rolls back well-established principles of international law. In the end, the LLRC works to exonerate the government and, in so doing, undermines its own limited calls for further inquiry, including a call for yet another government investigation of the above-mentioned video footage, which officials repeatedly have described as “faked.”
There is, however, an opportunity to address Sri Lanka’s entrenched culture of denial and impunity – including for crimes against women – at the upcoming session at the UN Human Rights Council. Canada has already played an important role in recent months by reminding the world about the need for accountability and justice in Sri Lanka. Now is the time to put their principles into action in Geneva. Canada should take a firm stand at the HRC and work closely with the United States, Britain, other members of the European Union and, critically, African and Asian states – especially India – to make sure this marks the beginning and not the end of a real accountability process.
At a minimum, there should be a formal dialogue at the council to discuss both the LLRC and UN reports, to ensure that the full range of credible allegations of war crimes, and the deficiencies in domestic accountability processes, are addressed openly and in detail. It is essential that the council remain seized of this matter and mandate a high office – such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights – to monitor and assess the Sri Lankan government’s implementation of the LLRC’s recommendations and any further accountability efforts. Finally, Canada and other HRC members should be prepared at this June’s session to endorse an international inquiry, absent a truly credible domestic accountability process – an all but inevitable result.
As the international community seeks, laudably, to recommit itself to the protection of civilians in armed conflict, it needs to reflect seriously on what happened in Sri Lanka: arguably one of its greatest single failures to provide even a modicum of safety to hundreds of thousands innocent victims of war. If the opportunity is again missed to provide some form of accounting, the sustainable peace that all Sri Lankans deserve after so many decades of civil war and political violence will be only further out of reach.
- Pro LTTE Diaspora do not give up using foreign media to bash Sri Lanka.
Response to an article appearing in the Washington Post of January 12, 2012 in the Style Section pages C1 and C4 titled “Unpeaceful Coexistence”with a reference to Sri Lanka among other countries. The link to the original article appears below.
by A Sri Lankan American in the Washington
File Photo
( January 30, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) This response is being submitted to the Washington Post one of the largest newspapers in the nation’s capital. However, Washington Post and particularly the journalist Emily Wax has a history of relying only on one side with flawed information about Sri Lanka as narrated by the supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) a proscribed organization in the USA and 32 countries throughout the world. The word of a group on the side of terrorism is hardly credible considering the struggle in many countries of the world including the USA to whose doorstep it has found its way. The tone of this article encourages a reversal of the hard fought peace from terrorism that Sri Lanka is trying to enjoy. We continue to have trouble setting the record straight. Submitting this article to the Washington Post may also suffer the same fate.
Those who express views as stated in this article are contributors to the separatist war in Sri Lanka that has caused suffering to the powerless Tamil people living in Sri Lanka. They were used as bait for a cause not for their benefit but for political brutal power over the innocent, helpless and low caste ordinary peace loving citizens of the north of Sri Lanka. Some members of the diaspora financed the supply of lethal weapons to the LTTE for the destruction of their own people. Today, two years after the end of the war, reconciliation and reconstruction both in the physical development of the devastated areas and relationships between people have progressed in a positive direction to a visible level of harmony among the Sinhalese and Tamils who have put peace before separation for their future lives in Sri Lanka. The views of those on Sri Lankan soil should be the focus in determining the aspirations of all communities in Sri Lanka and not that of a group of supporters bent on separating a peaceful country with guaranteed border disputes and unsolved issues for chaos in the longer term.
Cabinet Minister of Transnational Government, Mrs Balambihai Murugadas Minister for Women, Children and Elderly Affairs of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, lodged the maiden question to the visiting Foreign Minister of Canada Hon John Baird at the Royal Commonwealth Society lecture on 23 Jan 2012 which took the Government contingent by surprise.
(January 30, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The government is despatching emissaries to the four corners of the world in its last ditch efforts to ward off war crimes. External Affairs Minister, Prof. G.L. Peiris, is earning frequent-flyer miles what with shuttling across the continents trying to undo the horribly expensive advertising firm, Bell Pottinger's, abysmal campaigning for the government in thwarting war crimes allegations.
How does one compare the LLRC report to the Darusman report?
Now the government is trying its level best to accuse INGOs (international non-governmental organisations ), exiled journalists and Tamils abroad of conspiring to overthrow the regime which stands accused of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity which escalated in the final stages of the war in early 2009. The lame-duck of a commission set up in the aftermath of leaked media reports that it ruthlessly killed thousands of civilians in the name of wiping out LTTE terrorism remains just that. A lame-duck. Read More »
Sri Lanka now finds itself between two empires; Britain and China.
For nearly 150 years, Sri Lanka (then known as "Ceylon") was part of the British Empire. Before that, both Dutch and Portuguese settlers exerted control over parts of the country for years.
Sri Lanka is now considered to be one of China's "String of Pearls"; each pearl refers to a point of strategic interest for China along its sea-lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea.More
In December 1984, the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) expelled Tamil farmers from three villages in the Ma’nalaa’ru region in the northeast of the island of Sri Lanka and seized 1500 acres of land.
The land has been occupied by the SLA ever since. The displaced farmers told two Tamil National Alliance members of the Sri Lankan parliament who recently visited the area that the army still bans them from returning. They are not even allowed to look at their land.
The pretext given by the SLA for preventing the return of the farmers is the alleged presence of land mines. But the farmers deny this, pointing out that the SLA has controlled the area since 1984.
The farmers believe their land may be targeted for settlement by Sinhalese from the south of Sri Lanka, as has happened with other nearby areas.
The situation at Ma’nalaa’ru is typical of what is happening in many parts of northeastern Sri Lanka. Sinhalese settlements are being established in traditional Tamil areas, with the goal of breaking up the contiguity of the Tamil homeland and rendering a Tamil state impossible.
This is similar to the Israeli policy of using Jewish settlements to break up the contiguity of Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Even though the war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ended with the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, the SLA continues to occupy large areas of the northeast.
For example, 30% of the Jaffna district remains under military control. Military bases are being expanded. There is one member of the SLA for every 10 civilians in the Jaffna peninsula.
Tamils are subject to repression and harassment by the army and Sinhalese settlers.
Hindu temples have been demolished or damaged. Buddhist temples have been built for the settlers. Most Tamils are Hindus and most Sinhalese Buddhist.
Economic discontent is growing in the predominantly Sinhalese south of Sri Lanka. Students have protested against the privatisation of education, leading to violent clashes with the police. Workers have protested against the failure of their pay to keep up with inflation, and against attacks on their pension schemes.
In June last year, a worker was shot dead and many others injured during a protest against a new pension law.
One reason for poverty in the south is the huge government spending on the military occupation of the Tamil areas. New Socialist Party leader Vickramabhu Karunaratne said there was a possibility of building links between the economic stuggle in the south and the Tamil struggle.
He says: “Agitation for justice to the Tamil people should be tied to the anger of the people at the economic misery.
“It is time a powerful democratic movement is formed to bring out the power of all oppressed communities.”
2012-01-30 COLOMBO, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) — Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said Monday that he had not promised India to implement a political solution which will see land and police powers being given to the provinces in Sri Lanka.
Meeting with local media executives in Colombo, Rajapaksa said that he will meet with political party representatives in Sri Lanka soon to discuss a political solution after talks with a key minority Tamil political party aimed at formulating a solution failed to see any progress.
Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, who visited Sri Lanka recently, had told reporters that President Rajapaksa had assured the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the constitution.
But Rajapaksa denied making such a promise, and said he only agreed to look at the proposals to implement a solution and also ruled out giving land and police powers to the provinces.
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has held talks with the Sri Lankan government for over a year on a political solution and was pushing for land and police powers to be given to the provincial administration.
However talks between the TNA and the Sri Lankan government broke down this month after the TNA rejected a demand by the government for the TNA to be part of a committee involving all political parties in parliament to discuss a political solution.
The president said that with a parliament committee unable to meet to discuss the political solution as a result of the TNA boycott, he will now convene a meeting with all other political parties in parliament to discuss the solution.
The Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009 after 30 years of war and since then the country has been urged by the international community to reach a political settlement with the Tamils.
The process of evolution of human beings has been greatly accelerated by the application of science and technology in several fields. With the expansion of ideas, the geopolitical situation changed and many new independent nations were born in the era of the Second World War. Most of the nations had a great civilisational heritage, but suffered under colonial rule for centuries. After the end of colonial rule, independent nations formed governments of their own, often propelled by democratic aspirations. The process continues, and the 21st century is going to see an evolved world. We are all destined to realise happiness, dignity of life, freedom and creativity — but only if nations become noble.
by Pearl Thevanayagam
