Sri Lanka's dark horse candidate in papal race

Sri Lanka's Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith heads the Catholic Church in a predominantly Buddhist nation, but a stint in the Vatican has made him a long-shot candidate to be the next pope. A stern traditionalist, Ranjith was appointed by the outgoing Benedict XVI to oversee the church's liturgical practices in 2005, having previously served as papal nuncio, or ambassador, to Indonesia and East Timor. With Forbes magazine last month including him among possible papal contenders, the international spotlight has fallen on Sri Lanka's second-ever cardinal. The charismatic Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines is the name most often mentioned by Vatican observers as a possible first Asian pope. But at 65, Ranjith is a decade older than the Filipino, a factor which, together with his ideological leanings, could work in his favour. Ranjith received his early education at boys' schools in Colombo, before undertaking biblical studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has also studied in Rome and speaks fluent Italian, a must for a pope. In 2005, he took up the Vatican post as the Secretary General of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, gaining access to the inner workings of the Holy See. Soon after becoming the Archbishop of Colombo in 2009, Ranjith banned lay preachers and banished cultural practices borrowed from other religions from Sri Lanka's Roman Catholic church -- moves which critics called backward-looking. "You have to look at his actions in the right context," Benedict Joseph, his spokesman told AFP. "Things were getting out of hand and sometimes even the Good Friday service clashed with sermons of laymen.That is why he issued the guidelines in 2009 to ensure that Catholic religious traditions were maintained without any dilution." He was named as a cardinal in 2010, only the second in a country with a large Buddhist majority and where Christians account for fewer than 1.5 million out of a population of 20 million. But he soon emerged as a strong personality among Sri Lanka's religious leaders. He led an inter-faith group to campaign for the restoration of European Union trade concessions which had been withdrawn because of Sri Lanka's failure to improve its human rights record. However, the clerics failed to convince the EU which insisted on Colombo delivering on promises to clean up its act after decades of ethnic bloodshed which claimed up to 100,000 lives, according to UN estimates. Despite his closeness to Sri Lanka's political establishment, he announced a surprise boycott of all state functions in 2011 to protest against a police raid of an orphanage run by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity nuns. The state dropped the case and the authorities issued an apology as Ranjith won the admiration of many for standing up for the charity which had been wrongfully accused of selling babies born to unwed mothers. He also used his influence to attempt ethnic reconciliation in the country. A minority of Sinhalese and ethnic Tamils are Catholics, giving the church access to both communities in the ethnically divided nation. Being of the majority Sinhalese ethnic group, he worked with minority Tamil bishops to arrange brief ceasefires at the height of fighting between troops and Tamil rebels -- attracting criticism in some quarters. Ranjith told an interviewer after the end of the war in 2009 that the church was misunderstood over its role in the conflict, with Sinhalese thinking the church sided with the Tamils while Tamils thought it was soft on the government. "Our role has attracted criticism from extremists who have begun to consider us almost as traitors," Ranjith had said in an interview conducted by a Vatican priest. "But people of goodwill have appreciated and still appreciate our work. And that is the most important thing." (AFP)

2013-03-11

Infographics: The Killings In Sri Lanka With Several Recent Wars

Here is the Sri Lanka Campaign‘s infographic which demonstrates the intensity of several recent wars to show the extraordinary intensity of the killings in Sri Lanka.

March 11, 2013  

Geneva Lies: Infographics The Militarisation Of Sri Lanka

By Colombo Telegraph -March 6, 2013 

Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Sri Lankan envoy on Human rights said last week;

“The Government is in the process of devising measures to pay compensation to the owners of properties within such areas or provide them with alternate land. I must re-emphasize that the military is in no way engaged in civil administration which is the sole responsibility of civilian officials. There are absolutely no restrictions on travel today in the North and civilians enjoy complete freedom of movement.”

On 5th March 2013 the family members, who were travelling to Colombo to participate in a protest campaign and to hand over a petition to UN regarding their disappeared relatives, were blocked in Vavuniya by a joint operation of the police and the military.

The infographics below are created by the Sri Lanka Campaign. The militarisation of Sri Lanka – infographics to highlight the current situation in Sri Lanka.

Britain must stand up for human rights in Sri Lanka

Our government should back UN calls for justice by urging the Commonwealth to move its summit elsewhere

The Queen shakes hands with Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting last year. Photograph: Wpa Pool/Getty Images

David Miliband-Monday 11 March 2013

In early 2009, as foreign secretary, I travelled to Sri Lanka with Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, so that we could see for ourselves the situation at the end of the brutal 26-year civil war. We met the president and his ministers in Colombo, and then travelled to refugee camps further north. I will never forget what I saw, and in particular the pleading of Tamil women carrying slips of paper with the names of their husbands and sons who had been taken away for "screening".

The last phase of the government offensive involved squeezing anything up to 330,000 people into the Vanni region, south of the Jaffna peninsula. A report in March 2011 by a special UN panel laid bare the scale of human suffering. Tens of thousands had been killed by government shelling, which had targeted no-fire zones, UN food distribution lines and hospitals. The report also detailed appalling behaviour by the LTTE, the "Tamil Tigers", alleging that civilians were prevented from escaping and used as hostages. The UN report found credible allegations of serious violations of international law by the Sri Lanka government and the LTTE, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

An internal UN review reported last November that the government obstructed the provision of aid and assistance to civilians, did not protect humanitarian workers, and was largely to blame for the shelling of heavily populated areas and the deaths of civilians. And a further report last month, by the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, criticises the progress made on accountability and reconciliation and, significantly, the commissioner, Navi Pillay, reaffirmed her "long-standing call for an independent and credible international investigation" into alleged human rights violations "which could also monitor any domestic accountability process".

A film, No Fire Zone, using personal testimony from civilians caught up in the latter stages of the conflict, is putting the Sri Lankan government on the spot. And this month Sri Lanka is being called to account in the UN human rights council by the United States.

The Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) is due to take place in Sri Lanka in the autumn. Canada, which is Conservative-led, has robustly called for the meeting – which the Queen would normally open – to be moved from the country. The Labour government took this course when we were planning for the 2011 meeting. It is time for the British government, which has trumpeted its priority of making the Commonwealth a model of good governance and democratic values, to make its voice heard.

The insistence on justice and accountability is not legalistic nitpicking. It's about the message that is sent to those who violate human rights. Just think about the insouciance of President Assad and his supporters.

Nor are concerns about the actions of the Sri Lanka government merely historic. The leading opposition candidate in the 2010 presidential election was jailed soon afterwards. The chief justice of Sri Lanka has been impeached and dismissed, neutering the independence of the judiciary. The president has reneged on his pledge to expand local autonomy – a key element in post-war reconciliation.

Faraz Shaukelty, a Sri Lankan/British journalist who writes for the outspoken Sunday Leader newspaper, was shot in the neck by three gunmen last month. Human Rights Watch says that several thousand people are locked up without charge, and that state-sponsored abuse of Tamil activists is widespread. Other UN investigations record over 5,000 outstanding cases of enforced and involuntary disappearances; and nearly 100,000 internally displaced people remain without proper protection. This is not the path of reconciliation promised by the Government after the civil war.

In 2005 the whole of the UN endorsed the idea of a "responsibility to protect" – the notion that governments and the international system should take active measures to protect civilian life. That doctrine is breached by authoritarian governments, but it is no excuse for the rest of us to stay silent.

This is a moment to show that calls for justice and democracy have teeth. Britain needs to back the call for Chogm to be moved. For it to go ahead in Sri Lanka would be a mockery of Commonwealth values and UN authority, and a further invitation for its government to ignore international pleas for decency and accountability. And it would be a nail in the coffin of the vision of a pluralistic Sri Lanka, respectful of the place of all its peoples.

Sri Lanka is not being victimised or picked on. UN conventions are the civilising product of the wars – and unstopped slaughters – of the 20th century. They are a universal badge of humanity. Our government should be standing up for them.

UNHRC In Geneva And After

By Kumar David -March 11, 2013 

Prof Kumar David

Sri Lanka has become the centrepiece of action in Geneva this March at the 22-nd UN Human Rights Commission sessions now in progress. The betting at the moment is that the US resolution critical of the Lankan government will secure about 33 votes and the remaining 14 will split between pro-Rajapakse votes and abstentions. What is curious is how the Delhi government is playing ducks and drakes; at one moment leaking news that it intends to support the resolution and at another PM Manmohan Singh declaring that it all depends on the wording. Juliet declared that “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” but for Delhi it appears that commas, semi-columns and adjectives are the stuff of great political decisions. I never heard of a great power whose policies on matters of global and regional import depended on grammar! In all seriousness, what’s wrong with this Indian government, why so vacant of mind, why no stand on the grave turn of events in Lanka?

This is not me, an irate Lankan alone; here are two quotes form an Indian web site: “The most disturbing aspect of the entire development at the UNHRC is India’s continuing dubious role”. “A US-sponsored resolution will come up for voting at the 22nd session of the UN Human Rights Council later this month. And it’s so embarrassing that India, which claims to be the world’s biggest democracy, is still sitting on the fence and doesn’t say a thing on the resolution till the 59-th minute”. Indian oddity is becoming “curioser and curioser” as Alice would have said, and what kind of a mad-hatter’s tea party is going on in Delhi is difficult to decipher; parliament and press are in turmoil, Tamil Nadu on the boil and Delhi dumb! Let me ask, in all sobriety, can anyone suggest a rational explanation for the sloppiness of the Manmohan Singh government; surely it is not reducible to the congenital indecisiveness of an individual, what other miasmic causation may be at work?

The breaking news in Colombo last week was that Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe  had travelled to Delhi and come back hot with an offer. He was thereafter asked by the President to lead the delegation to Geneva. The deal, it was said, was that given the size of the votes stacked against the Rajapakse Government (please don’t say Sri Lanka), Delhi had connived to make the following offer: “Accept the resolution; then no vote need be taken. Afterwards you can game things as you wish and claim to be implementing its terms”. Smart move eh; if you can’t beat ‘em, then join ‘em! The Indian public, familiar with Colombo’s shenanigans, will recall that such hoaxes lie scattered all along on both sides of Rajapakse Street. This time however the game fell apart for two reasons.

Extremists have rallied all over the island condemning the US resolution, burning effigies and calling upon the government to “defy imperialism”. These demonstrators are from Rajapakse’s core constituency, he dare not “betray” them; if he does his support base will fall apart. Hence accepting the resolution’s conditions, especially the presence of UN rapporteurs in Lanka, has become a no-go nightmare. Secondly, having got wind of the plot, the sponsors upped the ante; they toughened the terms of the draft to make it unacceptable to Rajapakse and also embarrassing to Delhi. So the choice before Delhi is stark; support a tougher resolution and abandon illusions that it can influence the draft or the vote, or fall flat on its face. The resolution will be carried with or without Delhi’s vote and at that point its bluff will be called. I do not know for sure whether Delhi still has space for manoeuvre to pull a rabbit out of its hat; we will have to wait and see.

Why the US decided to short-circuit Delhi’s game plan I do not know; perhaps it is just fed up with hypocrisy and prevarication on the Lankan issue; perhaps the wheeling and dealing along the Colombo-Delhi axis is just too much for anyone to swallow. On February 4 (Independence Day) Rajapakse buried devolution and the Thirteenth Amendment and recanted on eight years of assurances and negotiations with the highest Indian leaders and its most stuffed mandarins. Delhi has remained mute and tongue tied; it has not puked or even mewed.

Speculations galore

Since the Indian Government remains dumb and inscrutable it is open season for speculators. What are its motives? I speculated in my last piece (Paper 5393, 14 Feb 2013: “Colombo spits in Delhi’s face”) that perhaps India had (unrelated) concerns about its new security relationship with the US and was using this issue to get leverage elsewhere. This hypothesis seems invalid since it is India, not the US, that is tying itself in knots and the Geneva Resolution will be carried with or without India’s vote. A second possibility, whose truth will not be known until there is a change of administration in Delhi, is that Colombo has plenty of dirt on Delhi, exposing informed restraint, if not assistance, in Colombo’s human rights violations and war-crimes in the civil-war. If Colombo is going down, it can take the erstwhile Indian Government down with it.

A third line of speculation is wooing Colombo away from a dangerous suitor in the shape of the Chinese bear; the so-called Indian Ocean strategic contest and the String of Pearls theses. I think these threats are much overblown, if not downright miscalculations as I have often written before.

A fourth line of speculation that has been aired more recently relates to the anti-Muslim hate campaign, fanning across the country, with the not all that concealed encouragement of  the UPFA government and the visible participation of certain extremist Cabinet Ministers. Speculators suggest that India, with its own concerns about extremism, would not mind the Muslims of Lanka being taught a small lesson and put in their places before anything smacking of jihadism takes root. Hence Lanka’s political leaders are not to be antagonised too much. Such speculation aside, the instigation of anti-Muslims sentiments has taken serious proportions in Lanka and it merits the attention of readers in its own right. I will close with a few paragraphs on this topic.

The anti-Muslim hate campaign in Sri Lanka

The chauvinist campaign directed at Muslim business establishments and mosques is alarming and though clashes have not erupted, nor lives lost as yet, matters are approaching a flash point. Writing on behalf of the National Peace council Jehan Perera had this to say:

“Over the past several years, the government used the war against the LTTE as its primary mode of unifying the Sinhalese majority behind it and obtained its vote at successive elections. Now with the fourth year of the end of the war approaching there may be a need for new issues to keep Sinhalese solidarity (as) perceived by sections within the government. . . Those who view the government’s actions as being directed towards its political advantage would notice that the Halal issue can be used to unify the Sinhalese majority in a common cause. However, keeping religious sentiments on the boil without creating a conflagration is likely to be impossible”.

A strongly worded statement issued by the Friday Forum, a liberal think tank of several highly connected or respected signatories, can be found here.

I reproduce below the opening paragraph of the statement to give overseas readers a feel for the dangerous situation that is developing.

“The Friday Forum urges you to act immediately and decisively to counter the increasingly venomous and strident anti-Muslim hate campaign launched by a few extremist groups claiming to represent the majority Sinhala community. As you are aware, this campaign has intensified over the past several months. The country has witnessed attacks against mosques, and the circulation, on social media, public posters and web-sites, of obscene and vituperative messages that are offensive to religious beliefs. It has witnessed anti-Muslim public rallies and processions, including a call to boycott Muslim business establishments”.

The Friday Forum finds the governments inaction inexplicable (Jehan Perera does not) and says later in the same statement.

“Yet, the government headed by you has not up to now taken decisive and concrete measures to stem the current hate campaign or to reassure the Muslim community of its rightful place in our society. This is difficult to understand in light of your own assurances and that of the government on the urgent need to forge a lasting peace after ending the destruction and suffering of thirty years of fratricidal war. The silence of the government and a mute response in the face of the hate campaign against the Muslim community, particularly though the misuse of media is a violation of both national and international law.”

I am taking web extracts for this piece from www.colombotelegraph.com, which is the best Sri Lanka focussed website at the present time, and a far more alarming piece is by Lathif Farouk here.

More things than just the Sinhala-Tamil ethnic imbroglio, pervasive corruption and rising authoritarianism are rotten in the state of Sri Lanka.

*This article is first published in southasiaanalysis.org

Fasting Loyola students arrested by police, protests to continue

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 06:18 GMT]
In a sudden operation conducted around midnight, the Tamil Nadu police swooped on the eight Loyola College students who were on an indefinite hunger-strike against the pro-LLRC US resolution and have forcibly removed them from the venue of their protest at Koyambedu, Chennai, on Monday. The students, who had begun their fast on Friday, have been taken to the Royapettah General Hospital. Also, around 200 supporters of the students were detained in a community hall near the protest venue. While this move is seen as a draconian curbing of rising sentiments among Tamil Nadu students against those who extend legitimacy to the genocidal Sri Lankan state, sources in Chennai also told TamilNet that the eight students were firm that even if they were arrested they would not give up their protest. 

Around 300 policemen arrived at the protest venue in Koyambedu at around 1.30 AM, Monday. Despite activists stating that this was a legal protest, the police broke down the gates, threw away the chairs, and forcibly removed the protesting students from the spot.

Mr. Umar, an activist from the May 17 Movement, told TamilNet that this arrest was probably made because this hunger-strike was a first of its kind protest against a resolution that was hoodwinking the Tamils world over. 

He further said that college students across Chennai were expected to join in mass protests tomorrow. 

The students of Madras Christian College and SRM College had already taken a mass bike rally on Sunday to convey their solidarity with the protesting Loyola College students.

New arrest wave hits East: Long retired Tigers also detained

New arrest wave hits East: Long retired Tigers also detained

MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2013

The exercise of sending ex-militants to rehabilitation again was begun by the Defense Ministry in Batticaloa at the beginning of this month (February 13th 2013). And under this so far six people have been arrested from Mandur, Kathiraveli, Mangkeni and Naasiventhivu and sent to the Boosa Detention Camp.
When their relatives were thus arrested, family members immediately reported to the Human Rights Commission and parliamentary members.

Speaking on the issue of the arrests of former LTTE cadres, Military Spokesperson, Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya said recently to the media that, it was not only in the Eastern Province but in any place in the country where there are former members of the LTTE who had not been sent to rehabilitation, they will be subjected to formal rehabilitation processes. Particularly those who had been identified as a security threat to the society by other former LTTE cadres, will be subjected to rehabilitation, Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya said.

Family members have complained to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Member of Parliament Seenithanby Yogeswaran on the 14th of February 2013, that some who had been suspected to be former LTTE members from Vaharai Batticaloa, had been taken in for questioning by the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID), on the 13th of February 2013.

The relatives told the Parliamentarian that the people were arrested and taken away by some men who came in civilian clothes, who also produced the necessary identification and warrant for arrest.

A mother of two children who spoke  said:

“My husband joined the LTTE in 2002 and had left the organization by 2004. And in 2008 he married me and we have lived together since then. He is a labourer. Over the last year (2012), men in plainclothes, claiming to be part of the Criminal Investigation Department, came over to the house regularly to take his picture and to question him. They also told us not to be alarmed at this time.”

“On the 13th of February 2013 when my husband was having his lunch, two men in plainclothes arrived in motorcycles and asked him to come to the Police Investigative Department to give his signature. After finishing his meal my husband went there. Then over the telephone he told me that he was asked to deliver his bicycle home and he was not released that day. The following day, on Thursday, when my husband spoke to me, he asked me to bring his clothes to the main street. Since my house is situated in a by lane, by the time I reached there I found that his sister who lived on the main street had been seen crying next to a vehicle that had brought him. The vehicle had subsequently left. When I asked those who had arrested him why my husband had been arrested I was informed that he was a former member of the Sea Tigers unit and that he must be investigated and that I could see him in the Boosa camp. I related to them that I was very poor and had no ability to get help other than from my husband.”

But this is the state of many of the families where family members have been arrested.

Parliamentarian Seenithamby  Yogeswaran says:

“It cannot be considered justice to arrest those who have long ago returned to normal civilian life. It is because of these pressures that they are forced to try to illegally travel to countries like Australia. Two weeks ago, 6 people from Muthur were taken away for the same reason. Our party leader R. Sampanthan has asked for the details from our members of Parliament. And at the same time if those involved are ready to come forward, we are willing to file a court case for them.”
Receipt in respect of persons arrested under the ER or the PTA on the 13th of February

Receipt in respect of persons arrested under the ER or the PTA on the 13th of February

Those former militants who had earlier been part of the LTTE and left it a while ago, and had been over the past years involved in civilian life,  such as Vijayaratnam Nesaraja from Mandur, Nalathamby Navarajan from Valaichennai, Nalathamby Mahendran from Nasiven Theevu and Pathakutti Ganesh & Mahendran Sri dharan  from Mangeni and Thavaraja Uthayan from Kayonkenni, were recently arrested in Batticaloa.

The arrest of people who are now married and settled, who had been previously part of the LTTE many years ago, has created a lot of confusion in Batticaloa.

The revival of arrests of ex- cadres based on information given by other LTTE cadres have created a lot of fear among the people. There are approximately 3000 former combatants in both Batticaloa and Ampara districts who had not been sent for rehabilitation previously. And since the Army has announced recently that all cadres will be arrested and sent to the detention centre, people now live in great fear. And at the same time, since some of the cadres who had just returned home to Ampara from their rehabilitatio had also been re-arrested this has created even greater confusion.

Parents of former militants say that their children who had been rehabilitated in the Batticaloa and Ampara districts and released are still harassed many times by those in military uniform. And this causes them a great deal of worry as they do not know how to protect their children.
The relatives state that a special group from Colombo had come to investigate these people and had questioned them over many days and taken information. And on  Tuesday the 12th of February, they had been all assembled at the Muthur Police station and had been taken away in a bus. At the same time, the Batticaloa District officer of Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission, E. Manokaran, in an interview with me stated that former LTTE members in Vaharai had been arrested as well. When speaking on this issue he said, “These detainees had been given receipts from the Terrorism Investigation Department (TID). Even then, it is written in Sinhala and the relatives continue to face many difficulties. We have received news that one person from Vaharai and one person from Mankulam have been arrested. They have been arrested with the assistance of the Police in those areas. The forms claim that the arrests have been made by the TID and there is an address from Colombo provided. All the receipts are in Sinhala. And so the family members of those arrested have found it very difficult.”

The TID has announced that those in Batticaloa district who were former LTTE cadres who had not been subjected to rehabilitation will be sent for rehabilitation. Following the arrests in Batticaloa district and the confusion that resulted from this, no further arrests have been made at the time of reporting.
(Original in Tamil)

Vimarsanam

Toned down US resolution on Lanka setback for Tamil leaders, NGOs

THE PIONEER MONDAY, 11 MARCH 2013 

Politicians in Tamil Nadu and the LTTE-funded NGOs campaigning against the Sri Lankan Government of Mahinda Rajapaksa suffered a major setback with the USA presenting a toned down resolution to the United Nations Human Rights Council at Geneva making it impossible for any international body to interfere in the island nation without the concurrence of the Sri Lankan Government.

This comes at a time when the Dravida politicians and activists in Tamil Nadu calling for international blockade against Sri Lanka for “atrocities and genocide” allegedly perpetrated by the Sri Lankan Army on Tamils during the last phase of the war in May 2009.

A TV documentary produced by Channel Four, an independent TV station in the UK and the photographs of 12-year-old Balachandran, the son of slain LTTE leader V Prabhakaran, reportedly killed by the Sri Lankan Army in captivity, had set the tone for the present round of outcry against the Rajapaksa Government.

The US resolution demands that the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) take the island Government into confidence while probing cases of atrocities. It has also called for an independent and credible international investigation into alleged violations of international human rights law during the last phase of the Eelam war which culminated in the wiping out of the top LTTE leadership including Prabhakaran and his family.

Politicians in Tamil Nadu, including DMK chief M Karunanidhi, have been pressurising India to take severe action against the Rajapaksa Government for its ‘failure’ to transfer power in the North and North-East regions of the island nation, where the ethnic Tamils are in a majority. The  Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation (TESO), an umbrella organisation revived by Karunanidhi in 2011 following the battering he suffered in the hands of Jayalalithaa in the Assembly election, has called for a State-wide general strike on Tuesday to highlight the woes of the Lankan Tamils.

The Dravida politicians are calling for Tamils in the island nation to get dignity, equality and same opportunities as received by their Sinhala brethren. The other day saw the DMK, the most trusted ally of the Congress and the second largest constituent of the UPA Government, walking out of the Rajya Sabha in the company of the AIADMK, its political nemesis, over the ‘failure of the Union Government’ to give a concrete reply on what it plans to do during the United Nations Human Rights Council Meeting to be held in Geneva.

All of a sudden, the USA had become the most sought after country even by the Leftists. The CPI and the CPI(M) which see red when someone mentions the name USA, wanted India to support the US resolution.

But observers in Tamil Nadu pointed out that the high-decibel demands shown by the DMK during the debate in both Houses of Parliament are missing when it comes to solve the burning issues in the State. Tamil Nadu is reeling under severe power shortage with most districts going without power for nearly 18 hours a day. The DMK is silent on the issue, which is a remnant of the 2006 to 2011 Karunanidhi regime.

“The ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka has been propped up by parties in Tamil Nadu because they do not have any other issues right now. They are under the notion that this high voltage campaign for Tamils in Sri Lanka will bring them rich dividends during the next Lok Sabha elections. The ruling AIADMK has hijacked the issue from Karunanidhi,” said NK Kalyanasundaram, veteran political commentator. The DMK which laments over the poor conditions of the roads in northern Sri Lanka forget the quality of roads they built during their tenures, he pointed out.

According to Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, who was in Washington last week to discuss the Sri Lankan issue with the State department, it was not possible for the US to bring in a resolution not acceptable to Sri Lanka. “China and Russia will definitely veto any move to set up an internationally-appointed intrusive probe which Sri Lanka will be compelled to comply,” said Swamy.

“I had urged the US leadership to undertake bilateral consultations with Sri Lanka to work out a consensus resolution based on the submissions of Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs recently, rather than to repeat the divisive resolution of last year, which has remained sterile and a dead letter, except for enthusing the financial legatees of the LTTE to continue to finance disinformation in the media,” Swamy told The Pioneer after his meeting with the US officials. The Janata Party chief had discussions with President Rajapaksa and  Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa before visiting the USA.

The Eelam War of May 2009 which claimed thousands of lives could have been avoided had DMK chief Karunanidhi used his clout with the Union Government. Though he launched an indefinite fast in May 2009 at the Mareena Beach, he called it off when it was time for lunch making the whole issue a comedy of errors. He claims that the Union Government gave him wrong information that the war has ended.

Matale, human burial grave investigation. Not decided about assistance from UN. Anurakumara Tissanayake MP notify

JVP parliament member Anurakumara Tissanayake said, regarding the assistance from United Nation Organization, to carry out investigation concerning the Matale human burial grave is not decided so far.

 

A volunteer organization notified to probe this incident and towards this the United Nation Organization's coordination will be obtained.

 

However, the said volunteer organization did not make a request officially. Hence concerning this, cannot be decided was said by Anurakumara.

 

 Hundreds of human skeletons and skulls were seized recently from the Matale hospital compound. 

Monday , 11 March 2013

Sri Lanka appoints committee to study UNHRC draft resolution

COLOMBO, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Under pressure from the international community, Sri Lanka has appointed a committee to study the draft resolution presented by the U.S. at the ongoing UN Human Rights Council sessions (UNHRC), local report said here on Monday.

Local media reports quoted External Affairs Secretary Karunathilaka Amunugama as saying that the Sri Lankan government had appointed a committee to study the draft resolution presented by the U.S. last Friday.

"We will make a response once the committee has presented the government with their report," he was quoted as saying.

The Sri Lankan government vehemently rejected the new resolution saying that the resolution is "intrusive and political in nature," and far from a procedural resolution as the U.S. said earlier.

Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN Ravinatha Aryasinha attending the informal meeting arranged by the U.S. to present the draft resolution said the resolution is unfair, biased and unjust.

Aryasinha has conveyed the government's position on the resolution to the U.S. Ambassador for Human Rights, Eileen Donahoe during a meeting with her Friday that Sri Lanka does not intend to negotiate with the U.S. on the text of the draft resolution.

The Sri Lankan delegation to Geneva headed by President's special human rights envoy and Plantations Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe has consistently maintained that the island is being unfairly penalized for its reconciliation measures.

Sri Lanka ended a three decade war in 2009 but international organizations including a UN report estimate that thousands of civilians died during the last phase of the conflict and have called for credible investigations.

The Sri Lankan government has vehemently denied such deaths and resisted international probes.

Academics criticize R2P, emphasize inapplicability to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 March 2013, 20:12 GMT]
Even as certain groups of the establishments are suggesting the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine to the Eezham Tamils, the concept has come under severe criticism by academics who attended the “Conference on Tamil People’s Rights” at Geneva on 02 March. While British academic Dr. Andy Higginbottom argued that R2P was “a humanitarian face to further US interests”, Ireland based Sinhala academic Dr. Jude Lal Fernando stated that “At a time when the powers are giving economic diplomatic and military support to the Sri Lankan state, talking about R2P is nonsensical”, in their opinions conveyed to TamilNet. Dr. Fernando also stressed the need for “the application of remedial sovereignty by means of an UN referendum conducted by powers who were not involved in the genocide.” 

Dr Andy Higginbottom

The Conference at Geneva, organized by the Country Councils across the West, and participated by politicians from the TNPF and the TNA, several diaspora organizations, political activists from Tamil Nadu, solidarity activists, academics and politicians, had three sessions namely on independent international investigation, genocide and UN monitored referendum. 

Dr. Higginbottom, principal lecturer of Politics and Human Rights at Kingston University, who had chaired the second session on genocide, expressed his opinion to TamilNet that R2P was unfeasible in the case of the Eezham Tamils and that it was only “a humanitarian face to further US interests”.

Dr Jude Lal Fernando

“The genocide was planned by the intervention of the major powers. The last place from where the Tamils will get support is from the US and Britain considering the history of their state policies,” he said.

In his presentation at the conference, he had given a brief context of the usage of the R2P and its inapplicability to the Eezham Tamils, urging them to “create our own process and on that basis seek international allies who are prepared to stand up to imperialist power to uncover the truth and also to defend Tamil rights, including the right to self-determination as Tamil Eelam.”

Sinhala academic Dr. Fernando, lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, who had chaired the other two sessions, told TamilNet “At a time when the powers are giving economic diplomatic and military support to the Sri Lankan state, talking about R2P is nonsensical.”

He further said that in the case of Sri Lanka, R2P had already been applied by the internationally backed genocide-accused Sri Lankan military to protect the Sri Lankan state.
“It is not lack of information that led to deaths of Tamils. It was a lack of political will. It was a political will to protect Sri Lankan state structure. Even now, the West wants the Sri Lankan state to have full power over the North and East, so that there wouldn’t be a Tamil identity over a geographically contiguous arena,” he said. 

At the conference, he had expressed the opinion that more than the Tamil diaspora needing the West, the West needed the diaspora as a tool to pressurize Mahinda to bring him closer to western interests and that their interest was not to bring a halt to the structural genocide or to bring political justice to the Tamils. 

“In order to remedy what has happened and to stop what is going on, that is, structural genocide, there should be a political solution by the application of remedial sovereignty by means of an UN referendum conducted by powers who were not involved in the genocide,” he told TamilNet. 

The conference at Geneva had passed a resolution that criticized attempts to address the injustices meted out to the Tamils through internal mechanisms of the genocide-accused Sri Lankan state, calling for an independent international investigation into the charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. 

The resolution further pushed for an international decision to conduct and monitor a referendum among the Eezham Tamils to enable them to ascertain their political future. 

There was however a criticism that this resolution, which had reference to historical and earned sovereignty of the Eezham Tamil nation, had omitted a crucial mention of remedial sovereignty. 

Informed circles told TamilNet that the original draft prepared by a committee and that included remedial sovereignty was later modified by some individuals, before it was tabled at the conference. 

• Resolutions passed in the confrerence held in Geneva on 03 March 2013

The 1983 `Black-July' Pogrom And Police Inaction

 by Sebastian Rasalingam

( March 8, 2013, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) A number of commentators, including Mr. Dayan Jayatilleke (ex-Sri Lankan ambassador to France), Mr. Mahawatte (a technical officer who worked in the North in 1983), Ann Abesekera, and perhaps others have written about the Black July pogrom in the Island Newspaper published in Colombo (see the Island, 6th March, for the latest comment by Mr. Dhanapala). Such topics always get re-examined when the `Human Rights' record of Sri Lanka gets reviewed.

What actually happened is less important than the emotional truth of the pain. Anyone who contravenes this icon of angst would be instantly outcast by most Tamils expatriates. Since my family has always been outcasts, this matters little to me, and we mutually keep apart.

Sri Lanka has had Tamil-Sinhala communal riots starting from 1939 when Ponnambalam attacked the Sinhalese at a Nawalapitiya meeting, calling the Sinhalese `racial half breeds'. That riot was put down rapidly by the British. The World War II provided a respite, while D. S. Senanayake's rule was an attempt to construct a Ceylonese nation that was supported by Ponnambalam, but rejected by Chelvanayagam in his 1949 Thamil Arasu (i.e., soveriegn) Kadchi (ITAK) declaration. However, it was the Sinhala official Languages act as well as the legislation against caste discrimination introduced after 1956 that irritated the Tamil leaders when Bandaranaike came into power. The ITAK began a program of civil disobedience, tarring of Sinhala street signs and the `Sri' symbol on vehicules. This led to a new wave of riots that occurred sporadically from 1958 onwards. The Vaddukkoddei resolution of 1976 called for the creation of a separate Tamil state (Eelam) by civil or military means. An invigorated Tamil Nationalism began to nurture a militant youth wing which spawned the LTTE.

The backdrop to the 1983 pogrom, now know as `Black July', was the assassination of 13 soldiers by the nascent LTTE using time-controled explosives stolen from the cement factory, as recounted by Mr. Mahawatte. This was the first time that the army had been given such a severe, pre-meditated blow, leading to great anger in the Sinhala south. The bodies of the soldiers were brought to the Kanatte cemetery, and the funeral turned into a riot of vengence which spread uncontrolled, where innocent Tamils were burned, butchered and their property was pillaged with the police and the politicians remaining impassive.

I was in Sri Lanka at the time, and our family escaped harm. Since I had married an estate-Tamil woman, and since I myself came from a `very low caste', I was essentially excluded from most Tamil circles who regarded our very presence as `polluting'. As such I was living in a poor Sinhalese area where the people were friendly and protective. We were not in any Tamil `lists'.

However, we continue to ask `who were responsible for the horror and violence suffered by so many innocent people' ? The government of the day acted in the most ignoble manner. Mr. Dhanapala asks, why didn't the police, with a Tamil IGP and five or six DIGs in the Colombo area, the accredited guardian of law and order not act? How is it that no Tamil police officer of the era has so far failed to come forward to explain their criminal negligence of duty?

It has often been pointed out that goons who had lists of Tamil addresses went around causing mayhem. LTTE sympathizers had been doing the rounds of Tamil houses for many months prior to the pogrom, collecting money for their cause. The IGP, six of his deputies (DIGs) and many police, being Tamils, would have been in those lists. So the existence of lists, and the money collection would (or should) have been well known to them. Mr. Nadesan (later Prabhakaran's police chief) was a senior officer in the Colombo-Nugegoda area; he surely knew about the collections for Prabhakaran.

Prabhakaran's dissatisfaction with the disengaged Colombo Tamils was well known. Many Tamils simply refused to contribute or be intimidate while strongly supporting the TULF.

In my belief, the 1983 pogrom started as a spontaneous Sinhala reaction to the killing of the 13 soldiers by the LTTE. However, the uprising was immediately hijacked by parties (most probably of the LTTE) who had the Tamil-household lists, to intimidate those non-conforming Tamil homes who did not contribute to their Eelam cause. However, they in turn were out-numbed and hijacked by even more horrendous goons, jingoists, sadists etc., who moved in to profit from pure pillage and plunder.

If a senior Tamil officer (or any Tamil) who knew of these matters had come forwards with the facts, he would have been targeted as a traitor and not lasted a day. Even today, none would dare, because `Black July' is a hallowed moment of anti-Sinhalese-angst among the Tamil Diaspora and some righteous `liberals' of Colombo. The president of the time, Mr. J. R. Jayawardena, who usually tries to blame the `Naxalites' for everything, found it very convenient to put the blame on Mr. Cyril Mathew and the Sinhala groups that Mathew represented, there by clipping their growing power that JR felt was threatening him.

What actually happened is less important than the emotional truth of the pain. Anyone who contravenes this icon of angst would be instantly outcast by most Tamils expatriates. Since my family has always been outcasts, this matters little to me, and we mutually keep apart.

A panel of historians and social scientists should investigate the actual facts of `Black July', even if such a research may reveal little. However, such an exercise should be purely to put history right, and NOT to `punish' anyone. The country has been punished enough for many decades of horror since 1983. It is time to forget, forgive and move forward, rather than continue to use July 1983, or May 2009 as `beggar's wounds' to attack and criminalize Sri Lanka.