Respect the Right of the Tamil People to Exercise their Franchise in a Free and Fair Election

13.04.13 MEDIA RELEASE

The burning of the printing press of the Uthayan newspaper in Jaffna comes shortly after an attack on its distribution point in Kilinochchi.  These targeted acts of violence perpetrated on the largest circulation newspaper in the Northern Province have taken place despite the very large presence of security forces.  They also follow another violent attack on a meeting of the largest opposition Tamil party, the Tamil National Alliance, in Kilinochchi where the security forces present on the scene remained inactive. The TNA, as well as the Leader of the Opposition, have alleged that these attacks are carried out by soldiers in civil but the government denies them.  A government spokesperson has said the latest attack is an inside job to discredit the government.  The National Peace Council condemns these attacks regardless of who is behind them.

The NPC notes that these attacks are occurring in the context of anticipated provincial council elections for the Northern Province. The government has promised to hold these elections in September and the international community is monitoring this promise.  The issue of the Northern Provincial election was referred to in the resolution on reconciliation in Sri Lanka of the UN Human Rights Council last month.  We believe that the democratically elected government has the responsibility to stop these types of attacks, find the culprits and bring them to justice.  If not, the credibility of the government as one that follows democratic norms will collapse.  It is therefore important that these elections be held according to internationally acceptable standards.

The government should show to the International community that the elections are being held to give the Tamil minority an opportunity to enjoy the devolution of power already provided for in the Constitution.  In the past all governments used to co-opt individual Tamil politicians to show the world that the Tamil minority accepts the Sri Lankan State except for the LTTE.  The government now has an opportunity to show the world that the Tamil people have accepted allegiance to the Sri Lankan State by ensuring their participation in free and fair provincial elections.  But preventing a free and fair election will only nullify this option and strengthen the demands emanating from extremist groups in Tamil Nadu and other places in the world.

There is a growing danger that the international community will begin to see that the government’s conduct of the Northern Provincial Council elections as being a deceptive  exercise in which the worst unfair and undemocratic tactics are used for the purpose of winning or undermining the Tamil National Alliance’s vote base.   The government needs to ensure the rule of law and provide security to all its citizens in the North.  The failure of the government to protect its citizens will give rise to heightened international scrutiny and to strengthened demands for international intervention to determine the future of the Tamils within Sri Lanka.  In view of conflicting versions regarding the responsibility for the violence that is occurring , the National Peace Council calls for an independent investigation be carried out with the participation of representatives of political parties and experienced and retired police officers known for their independence and investigative capacity.

Governing Council

The National Peace Council is an independent and non partisan organization that works towards a negotiated political solution to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. It has a vision of a peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka in which the freedom, human rights and democratic rights of all the communities are respected. The policy of the National Peace Council is determined by its Governing Council of 20 members who are drawn from diverse walks of life and belong to all the main ethnic and religious communities in the country.

Poojahs Should Be Held In All The Temples, No Temple Should Be Allowed To Be Destroyed

By Kandiah Neelakandan -April 13, 2013

Kandiah Neelakandan

Regular poojahs should be held in all the temples in the new year to bring prosperity and happiness to all the people

Tamil people welcome this New Year with various expectations and hopes. We submit at the feet of His Almighty Sivakamiambal Samedha Shri Nadarajaperuman our prayer that all the sufferings of our people should disappear and he prosperity should usher in the New Year.

For more than three decades our brothers and sisters have not only suffered hardships and difficulties but also lost lives and properties and remain as destitutes. They are hurt and their feelings not healed but in fact the same have not been healed. Their expectation is that normalcy should be restored again, so that they can again peacefully live on their own soil.

Our brothers and sisters whose hopes still remain unsatisfied expect that they should at least now be allowed to live with freedom and self respect in this New Year. That is the dream of Tamil people. We pray that that dream should be fulfilled at least the New Year which dawns this weekend.

Whenever the various calamities and displacements occurred due to various factors we, All Ceylon Hindu Congress ( The Federation of Hindu Associations and Temple Trusts in Sri Lanka), have been assisting the affected Tamil people most 0f whom are the Hindus by providing various forms of relief to them. We are continuing that service. When our brothers and sisters suffered as a result of the floods in December 2012 we readily rendered relief assistance by way of dry rations clothes etc., to them through our Member Associations. Whenever the calamities like that occur, our prayer to His Almighty is that there have been too many challenges to our people and those are enough and that let there be a cessation therof.

The sufferings experienced by Tamil people most of whom are Hindus should come to a11 end and they must be able to resettle in heir own homes and peacefully live in this new “Vijaya” New Year. There should be a political solution wihout delay to satisfy their aspirations.

We take this opportunity of making an appeal on the eve of this New Year to our brothers and sisters who are living here and abroad and also to Hindu Institutions all over the world to come forward and help our brothers and sisters and in particular the younger generation in he Universities and other Educational Institutions to improve their Educational standards and at the same time it is our duty to take them forward on the spiritual path.

We are arranging to give laptops to the need University students and livelihood assistance to needy mothers of Mulliyavalai and rendering other humanitarian services.

We are also engaged in development of knowledge by the continuing the publications of our quarterly ”Hindu Oli” for the 17th consecutive year handbook for Hindus prayers and other religious books and conducting educational seminars.

All Ceylon Hindu Congress has already taken steps to organize “Siva Thondar Ani” (Siva Volunteer Service Organisations ) in Schools and train then in our Jaffina Regional office in order to serve the humanity. Needless to say that he service to the mankind is the real prayer to His Almighty. This is the motto of the “Sivathondar Ani”. We are conducting Sivathondar conferences from time to time and appeal to all school students to join us in our efforts in his.

In one of the songs of the Thirumantharan Thirumooler, said

DANGERS OF PUJA CEASING

When in Siva’s temple worship ceases,
Harm befalls the ruler;
Scanty become the rains;
Theft and robbery abound in the land,
Thus did my Holy Nandi declare.

The said Reverend Saint has pointed out that in hat song the regular poojahs (prayers) in all the Temples should not cease and the consequences thiereof are disastrous. We brought this to the notice of the then President of Sri Lanka on 2nd August 2005. No appropriate action was taken thereon. We have now brought the same Thirumanrhurarn to the notice of the Present Head of the Government also.

Regular prayers should be ensured to be held in all the Temples in the country. No Temple should be allowed to be damaged or destroyed. That will be a sin. We are prepared to assist the Government to restore poojahs even in he temples in he weas designated as security zones.

We pray to His Almighty to pave way for regular poojahs to be held in all the temples in the New Year

*Kandiah Neelakandan – President – All Ceylon Hindu Congress. 

Read the original message here

Unruly elements pandemonium at the main office of 'Udayan' press.

Unruly elements pandemonium at the main office of 'Udayan' press.

Saturday , 13 April 2013

Early morning incident – printing machine scorched, press set on fire by unknown group this morning.

An attack is again executed against the "Udayan" daily newspaper published from Jaffna today in the early morning hours.

Unidentified armed group stormed into the printing press point blankly carried out shooting.  Shooting was executed towards the print machine, doused the printing machines with petrol and set fire to them. 

This incident caused the printing machine not usable for operation and a large quantity of printing rolls was set on fire was said.

This attack was carried out in the motive of hampering the daily circulation of  "Udayan" newspaper, and this caused the printing work to get affected severely.

Three persons clad with helmets came to the entrance of "Udayan" office today 13th April,  in the early morning hours at about 4.30 a.m and one of them  scolded the security guards in bad language, threatened and chased them from the spot. They shot on air.

The other two accompanied him, entered the main printing machine room and ordered the employees to leave and fired on air. 9 millimeter Pistol was utilized for the shooting  against the printing workers was said. 

Reports states, the gang initially shot on air threatened the security guard and later opened fire at the computers as well as the printing machines, before set on fire them.

Information said, staff narrowly escaped from the shooting incident.

The attackers had shot the printing machine and the main power supply and  threw stacks of paper rolls burnt by pouring petrol to the main areas of the print machine room.

Efforts of throttling “Udayan”, the voice of Tamil people are day by day getting increased. In the aim of “Udayan” reaching the people’s hands, hampering the distribution task are carried out from  this year beginning.

On last January 10th, at the time “Udayan” newspaper was engaged in distribution assignments, a distributing staff from the Vadamaratchi locality was assaulted and his motorcycle and the newspapers taken by him for distribution was scorched in the middle of the road. 

On last January 15th, an  “Udayan” Reporter was severely assaulted at the Jaffna bus halt. Subsequent to this incident a “Udayan” reporter was given death threat by a military officer attired in uniform at the Jaffna bus halt.

On last 3rd of April, the “Udayan” regional office at Kilinochchi, was under attack, by a gang intruding the office, attacked the staff severely and properties worth of many millions were damaged.

“Udayan” faced many challenges in the past period. In year 2006 May 2nd, on the day world media day was celebrated, some thugs intruded the “Udayan” office premises on May 1st, carried out shooting. Due to the shooting executed by the hooligans, the Distribution Manager of  “Udayan” and a  staff of “Udayan” were killed instantaneously.

Gunmen entered the “Udayan” Editors desk destroyed the office computers and the equipment connected.

In year 2010, February month, granite attack was against “Udayan” office. “Udayan” Chief Editor's residence narrowly escaped from this attack.

Subsequent to the attack against the “Udayan” office located in Kilinochchi last April 3rd, additional security was appealed from Inspector of Police but so far activities to this was not carried out by the  Inspector General of Police.

Meanwhile after today early morning incident, police was contacted on the emergency telephone number 119, and calls were given to the Jaffna police station from the “Udayan” office telephone, but police did not respond the calls.

Due to this failure, our Colombo branch office contacted Police Officer Saman Chickara officer in charge of the Jaffna Police station over the mobile phone, informed the incident, and concurrently the police came to “Udayan” office to carry out investigation.

  

The Sun Rises on Human Rights

By KENNETH ROTH and KANAE DOI

Published: April 12, 2013

TOKYO — As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is making waves. Known for his aggressive efforts to revive Japan’s economy, his nationalist rhetoric and his openness to military strength, he is also pushing Japan toward a new assertiveness on human rights.

Despite a vibrant democracy at home, the diplomats who guide Japan’s foreign policy are famous for their caution on human rights. To avoid interrupting friendly relations with other countries, harming Japan’s economic interests or risking criticism of Japan’s war record, they discuss human rights, if at all, only quietly, behind closed doors. Tokyo generally votes with its Western allies on human rights matters at the United Nations, but almost never takes the initiative, fearful of sticking its neck out.

Abe may be changing that. Soon after coming to power, he ordered Japanese diplomats to take the lead on an effort at the U.N. Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry to collect evidence of North Korea’s crimes against humanity.

Japanese governments have long faced domestic pressure to resolve the cases of its citizens whom Pyongyang abducted decades ago, apparently to teach Japanese language skills to Korean spies. But to back the U.N. initiative, Abe effectively had to accept that the abductees’ fate reflected the systematic denial of the rights of everyone in North Korea. That’s a reasonable conclusion, but no prior Japanese government had been willing to reach it.

Many other governments were lukewarm about a commission of inquiry for North Korea. Some disliked the (modest) expense. Others questioned its utility. Others may have feared diverting attention from the North’s nuclear program.

Working with South Korea, Japan confronted this skepticism. And it succeeded. Last month, the Human Rights Council unanimously launched a commission of inquiry. North Korean leaders are now on notice that evidence of their criminality will be officially collected, meaning possible international trials if they do not change their ways.

This new assertiveness on human rights was foreshadowed in a speech that Abe gave in January. He embraced a foreign policy built around “the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law.” A Japanese leader has rarely made such a call, let alone acted on it.

But Abe has his work cut out for him in implementing his vision. Last month, Japan’s powerful foreign-policy bureaucracy resisted a parallel U.N. resolution on Sri Lanka’s failure to seriously investigate indiscriminate attacks by its military that caused up to 40,000 civilian deaths in the final months of its conflict with the rebel Tamil Tigers four years ago.

The resolution passed overwhelmingly. But Japan, acting with its traditional caution, abstained.

We asked Japan’s leading diplomat on Sri Lanka how Japan could be so out of step with its peers. He offered various excuses, but the main factor seemed to be a desire to maintain good relations with Sri Lanka, despite the lack of evidence that Japan’s quiet diplomacy has more influence than the U.N.’s visible pressure.

Perhaps Japan’s greatest human-rights challenge is China. Given Japan’s war record, it has had a particularly difficult time raising human rights concerns in China, but after nearly 70 years, it is time for a strong leader to overcome this obstacle.

Like many others, Japan limits the topic to a roughly once-a-year “human rights dialogue.” It typically involves bureaucrats meeting with no outsiders present and little revelation of what was said. For the rest of the year, senior officials can cite this charade to avoid addressing China’s repression themselves.

The result does no good for the rights of the Chinese people — or Japan’s reputation. The Chinese people are left to think of Japan as preoccupied with allegedly trying to steal “their islands” but indifferent to their rights. In an age of Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, and government-permitted attacks on the Japanese Embassy, Chinese public opinion matters.

For decades, Japan’s foreign policy has been built around the country as a donor nation, with few strings attached. Japan has been extraordinarily generous, but China can now play that game as well, with even deeper pockets.

Abe seems to recognize that Japan has been squandering its greatest foreign-policy asset — its democracy. Building a foreign policy around promoting democracy — and the rights essential to it — will require overcoming the sclerotic perspective of the foreign ministry mandarins. The response to Japan’s North Korea initiative shows that much of the world will welcome Tokyo assuming such a leadership role. John Kerry should encourage that.

Kenneth Roth is executive director and Kanae Doi is the Japan director of Human Rights Watch.

Forget Marx: What Does Smart Bourgeois Money Say?

By Kumar David -April 13, 2013 |

Kumar David

Forget Marx: What does smart bourgeois money say? The cognoscenti discuss their predicament

This piece is different from the usual stuff I write; I have locked-up Marx in the attic. Today I summarise what well respected bourgeois commentators say of prospects for the American and global (capitalist) economy. Of course I am pleased that these folk, through empiricist groping, reach the same conclusions the man in the attic did, methodologically, 150 years ago. This piece summarise the evaluation of US economic prospects by five significant bourgeois intellectuals. The sources are: A March 2013 New York Times op-ed, a 2013 book, a web piece by the President of a financial firm, and a report in the leading US Commodities agency. Hence I can reasonably claim to summarise what the brighter lot in the bourgeois world is saying, about its own prospects.

The theme that threads all five (David Stockman, Paul Craig Roberts, Peter Schiff, Chris Martenson and Philip Gotthelf) is undisguised pessimism about the medium and long term economic future. They contend that loose money policy has led to a liquidity trap and is preparing the ground for a collapse more massive than Q4-2008. They agree are that off-shoring has triggered a massive irreversible distortion in the US economy, that a collapse in the bond and asset markets is where the shipwreck will start, and that serious commodity price inflation is in progress.

It is gratifying that this is consonant with the thesis I have been pushing in this column for nearly five years. Readers may recall that I was the first to term the 2008 financial crisis a New Depression, and propose a diagrammatic representation, a prolonged Wobble-U. This is a shape that sputters along the bottom, jerking up for a while, and falling back again. It supplements familiar U, V, L and W shapes associated with conventional recessions and recoveries.

The nadir of capitalism

David Stockman, a former Republican congressman, Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985, authored “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.” These quotes are abbreviated from his New York Times piece of 31 March 2013.

 “Sooner or later this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phoney money from the Federal Reserve (Fed) rather than real economic gains, will explode. Since March 2000, the mad money printers at the Fed have expanded their balance sheet six fold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year; real business investment has crawled forward at 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans”.

“So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. The Fed has resorted to an uncharted spree of money printing, but the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble”.

“When it bursts, there will be no new round of bailouts like the ones the banks got in 2008. Instead, America will descend into an era of zero-sum austerity and virulent political conflict, extinguishing even today’s feeble remnants of economic growth”.

Stockman sees the crisis as a failure of policy, not an inevitable unfolding of the normal life cycle of capitalism. Be that as it may, he sharpens his barbs as follows. (For ease of reading I have not used dots to separate phrases selected from different sections of his piece).

“Mr. Greenspan’s loose monetary policies didn’t set off inflation only because domestic prices for goods and labour were crushed by the huge flow of imports from the factories of Asia. By off-shoring America’s tradable-goods sector, the Fed kept the Consumer Price Index contained, but also permitted the excess liquidity to foster roaring inflation in financial assets. Soon Americans stopped saving and consumed everything they earned and all they could borrow. Within weeks of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, Washington, with Wall Street’s gun to its head, propped up the remnants of this financial mess in a panic-stricken melee of bailouts and money-printing that is the single most shameful chapter in American financial history. Without any changes, over the next decade or so, the gross federal debt, now nearly $17 trillion will hurtle toward $30 trillion and soar to 150 percent of gross domestic product from around 105 percent today. The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war”.

“Without any changes” Mr Stockman says, but he concedes elsewhere, that there is no power that can force change. The captains of finance capital (Wall Street, banks, hedge funds and derivatives supervisors) are supreme; they cannot be subordinated by Fed, treasury or President. They are the system; the real power that lives out there in the objective world.

Outsourcing and the irreversibility of decline

Paul Craig Roberts argues in “The Failure of Laissez-Faire capitalism and the Dissolution of the West” that technology and labour costs motivate American corporations, to produce off-shore, goods and services for consumption in the US domestic market. First low level jobs, soon design, research and middle class professional employment moved out.

“For most Americans, income has stagnated and declined for the past two decades. Much of what Americans lost in wages and salaries as their jobs were moved offshore came back to shareholders and executives in the form of capital gains and performance bonuses from the higher profits that flowed from lower foreign labour costs. The distribution of income worsened dramatically with the mega-rich capturing the gains, while the middle class ladders of upward mobility were dismantled”.

Robert’s dwells on how expansion of credit, low interest rates and an unrealistically low taxation regimen became an opiate US sustaining consumption. Growth of consumer debt substituted for missing growth in consumer income. Low interest rates fuelled a real estate boom. House prices rose dramatically, permitting owners to monetize the rising home equity by refinancing mortgages. Consumers kept the economy alive by assuming larger mortgages, spending more, and accumulating large credit card balances. The explosion of debt was securitized, given fraudulent investment grade ratings, and sold to unsuspecting investors at home and abroad. Though the real income of 90% of Americans was falling, or static, for two decades, consumption was sustained by deepening debt.

Robert’s then makes a seminal point that deserves to be underlined: The reason why policy intervention is having no success in reducing unemployment, this time, is because millions of jobs have moved offshore. After ordinary recessions, laid-off workers return when demand recovers, but this time it is different. Jobs once moved abroad, no longer exist latently. Workers cannot be called back to factories and to professional jobs that have moved abroad; economic dislocation is irreversible and structural. RIP American capitalism.

Liquidity traps and a soon to collapse bond market

Peter Schiff, President of Euro Pacific Capital is at pains to explain why America is unable to climb out of a liquidity trap, in ‘The Stimulus Trap’, which appeared on his personal blog-site on 27 March. A liquidity trap is when, fearful of the future, or averse to risk, consumers do not increase consumption and producers hold back from investing. In this climate, even if a central bank holds down interest rates and injects large amounts of money into the economy, consumers and producers remain immobile, the economy does not get a move on. Central banks (Fed) can inject money into the economy by purchasing corporate and treasury bonds, and pushing mortgages for house purchases. Furthermore the Fed, Bank of England and ECB benchmark lending rates are so low that real rates are negative. (Bank of Japan’s nominal interest rate is near zero, so oddly, the real rate positive thanks to deflation!) Nevertheless, production and employment in all these countries, sputter momentarily when a stimulus package is announced, but soon, settle back to somnambulance – a liquidity trap.

“Beginning in 2001, the Bank of Japan unveiled a series of unconventional policies, “quantitative easing,” which pushed interest rates to zero, flooded commercial banks with liquidity, and bought unprecedented quantities of government bonds, asset-backed securities, and corporate debt. Conditions in Japan have deteriorated further and the underlying imbalances have gotten progressively worse. The United States is following Japan into the mire. After the crash of 2008, we implemented nearly the same set of policies. In the past two years, despite the surging stock market and apparently declining unemployment rate, the size and scope of these efforts have increased. But as is the case in Japan, we can clearly witness how the stimulus has perpetuated stagnation”.

Where then is all the ‘quantitatively eased’ money going? Chris Martenson says in ‘The Risk of Cascading Corrections in Bond Markets’, in Business Insider, that the excess liquidity is chasing the bonds, equities and mortgages, not investment in real production. It’s almost like arbitrage? Banks borrow from the Fed at zero interest; investors help themselves to this liquidity to bubble up excessive leverage, and channel into a bond and equity bubble and mounting house prices. The global bond market (sovereign and corporate) is enormous, about $100 trillion Martenson estimates; so when the bubble bursts, every 1% loss in bond values is a trillion dollars up in smoke.

Philip Gottheif in “Commodity Prices Still to High”, in Commodity Futures Forecast, (21 March), argues that despite slow economic growth, commodity prices are about three times higher than they were in 1994, and again the culprit is the printing presses at the world’s central banks which are burning the midnight oil. He argues that the future of oil is hard to predict, given the instability in the Middle East on one side, and the shale oil and gas bonanza in North America, on the other. He opines that the Obama Gamble (endeavouring to politically influence MENA) is still in play and should be watched for the remainder of his term.

I must thank my old friend Professor Harsha Sirisena in New Zealand, who sent me these pieces with unfailing, “There, didn’t I tell you so, years ago”, annotations all over them

Tamil TV presenter begs: 'Don't send me to Sri Lanka'

JEROME TAYLOR 

 

 

FRIDAY 12 APRIL 2013

Refugee detained in Dubai tells Jerome Taylor she faces torture and death if she is deported

A former high-profile newsreader on a Tamil Tiger television channel has pleaded with the international community to save her from being sent back to Sri Lanka where she fears she could be tortured or killed.

Rathimohan Lokini is one of 19 Tamil refugees languishing in an aluminium factory in Dubai and facing the threat of imminent deportation to a country with a known track record of persecuting those with a perceived or real link to the Tamil Tigers.

Speaking exclusively to The Independent by telephone she described her horror of being returned to Colombo. “I am terrified,” she said. “I am in a situation where I could be sent back and killed. My colleagues who worked with me have been persecuted and one person, Isaipriya, was raped and killed during the war.”

Isaipriya was the nom de guerre used by one of Ms Lokini’s colleagues at National Television of Tamil Eelam (NTT), the main broadcaster in the areas that were once controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) before their military destruction in early 2009.

The exact circumstances of her death are not known but evidence has emerged indicating that the 27-year-old was probably executed by Sri Lankan troops on 18 or 19 May 2009.

Multiple photographs emerged after the war of Isaipriya’s naked body with her hands tied behind her back and significant trauma to her face and head. Her body was also identified at the end of a separate video shot by Sri Lankan troops showing the summary execution of naked, blindfolded and bound Tamil men and women.

Ms Lokini, who used the noms de guerre Harini and Kani during her broadcasts for NTT, fears she would suffer a similar fate if she returned because she was such a visible face of the Tamil Tigers’ propaganda wing. 

“I was mainly a newsreader on NTT,” she told The Independent. “When the programme was finished they would include my voice and face. But I had no direct relationship with LTTE commanders. My responsibility was to communicate with my direct managers who co-ordinated with others.”

Reporters Without Borders and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka have called on the international community to protect the 28-year-old. “Her visibility exposed her to a considerable risk of reprisals by government security forces and pro- government militia,” they said in a joint statement.

The LTTE was a popular but brutal separatist movement which fought a 30-year campaign for a Tamil homeland in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The fight was sparked by decades of discrimination against Tamils by the country’s Buddhist Sinhalese majority, but the Tigers became increasingly discredited through their use of suicide bombings, child soldiers, extortion and attacks against rival Tamil nationalist groups.

Proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Europe and the United States in its latter years, it presided over a functioning civil state in the areas it held until its comprehensive defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan military. In the final stages of the war, tens of thousands of stranded civilians were killed in a three-month onslaught, in which allegations emerged of war crimes being committed by both sides. The Sri Lankan government, which denies war crimes were committed, has refused any international investigation of those allegations.

Ms Lokini escaped Isaipriya’s fate only because she made a daring flight into the government controlled area of Sri Lanka just weeks before the remaining Tamil Tigers were surrounded by government troops.

She told how, in December 2008, she was smuggled from the Tiger-held city of Kilinochchi to Vavuniya to seek medical attention after discovering a lump in her breast. She changed her appearance but lived in constant fear of being discovered. “I knew the consequence of being arrested,” she said. “I was a beautician originally, so I changed my face, hairstyle, my eyebrows.”

After staying in a relative’s house for a further month she was able to fly to India using her own passport. She was later joined by her husband and they decided to seek sanctuary in Australia. “After surviving the war, we were scared to go back to Sri Lanka,” she said, “Anything could have happened.”

She became one of 46 Tamil refugees picked up by a Singaporean vessel in October 2012. They had been trying to reach Australia when the boat they were travelling in was stricken following a storm and started taking on water. The Tamils were eventually dropped off in Dubai where they have remained incarcerated inside an aluminium factory within the country’s Jebel Ali port complex.

The UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, believes all but seven of the Tamils had legitimate refugee claims and has been working to find them sanctuary in third-party nations. The Independent understands that Sweden has accepted eight of them, and the United States is considering the applications of a further 12. However, 19 Tamils – including Ms Lokini – have yet to find any country willing to take them in, despite their refugee status.

Ms Lokini claims that the remaining refugees have been told by the authorities in the United Arab Emirates that they are at risk of deportation. However, the UNHCR told The Independent that it did not believe there was an imminent danger. Such assurances have done little to calm the fears of Ms Lokini and her fellow refugees. “I love my country, I want to return to my country,” she said. “But the risk is too great at the moment. We don’t have any choice other than trying to find safety elsewhere.”

Shan Sutha, from the British Tamil Forum, called on the authorities in Dubai to lift the threat of deportation: “If the United Arab Emirates authorities return the 19 Tamil refugees held in detention in Dubai, they are not only failing to protect these refugees from torture and other inhumane treatment, but also showing utter disregard to the UNHCR which, after assessing each individual case, granted refugee status to them.”

New Year Prospects For Political House Cleaning And Economic Harvesting

By Rajan Philips -April 13, 2013 

Rajan Philips

The April New Year is when most Sri Lankans take a break from the dreary routines of life. Colombo looks dead on New Year’s day in April as people in large numbers retreat to their rural roots from the hurly-burly of the city. Quite different from Colombo’s hangover demeanor on First January following the New Year’s eve revelry. Although January First is now the global new year, Sri Lanka’s April New Year is much longer in tradition and carries deeper meanings and symbols not only for Buddhists and Hindus but also for others. The new year rituals start with the cleaning of the house while the timing of the new year in April coincides with the harvest season. Their political symbolism is the cue for my article today as political change and economic growth could be seen as house cleaning and harvesting writ large and together.

The New Year is the occasion for platitudinous statements of wishes from the state and government leaders to the people. The people may want to have more than wishes from their leaders, and instead may have a wish list of what the government could do for them. How much they would like the government to make available electricity and quality fuel at affordable prices. How much they would like the government to spend the nation’s money wisely without too much borrowing and with tangible returns. How much they would wish that the government did not get into such a situation building roads, ports and airports and spending on defence even after the war that its annual debt service payment now exceeds its annual income. How much they would wish that the government spends even a portion of the defence budget on education rather than using the lack of money as an excuse for making education a market good.

Politically, national political discourse is becoming boisterously divisive and internet exchanges are degenerating from healthy musings to abusive diarrhea. The New Year is an appropriate occasion to remind us of the common threads that wrap around all Sri Lankans. Religious and literary evidences among both Sinhalese and Tamils show that the April New Year goes much farther back in time than the global January New Year that began only in 1582 with the Gregorian calendar started by Pope Gregory XIII. In the Western tradition, the New Year has been identified after the midpoint of winter which is the shortest day of the year. In the East, the April New Year is around the time when day and night are of equal duration. In Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu it is also associated with the harvest season. The April New Year is observed in a number of states in India, while Buddhist itinerants and Tamil traders would seem to have taken it across Southeast Asia. It is a common holiday in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu, and it is hugely celebrated by the Bengalis, both the Hindu and Communist Bengalis of West Bengal and the Muslims of Bangladesh.

Despite their antiquity, traditions and cultural affinities, Sri Lankans have had serious difficulties in adjusting to one another in the modern political arena of the last one hundred years. Two years from now, the island will be marking its first riot between its coexistences. There have been a dozen riots after that but all of them packed in after 1956 and the biggest of them came in 1983. The thirty year war after 1983 sucked the oxygen out of riotous miscreants and spared the country of periodical rioting. The end of the long war raised at least faint hopes of a new a beginning and new directions in politics and economics. Four New Years have come and gone after the war ended but no one has seen any new beginning or new directions. And this New Year, Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu are at verbal loggerheads while the Muslims in Sri Lanka are facing new threats. These controversies have become the biggest impediment to national housecleaning and bountiful harvesting. In fact, they are adding to the pile of dirt in politics and diverting attention from tending to the needs of the economy.

From Fashion Bug to Sethu Samudram

For almost an year many Sri Lankans have been worrying whether the country was drifting to another July 1983, this time targeting Muslims. The government was taken to task by its usual critics including yours truly for seemingly sitting on its hands and doing nothing about the spread of anti-Muslim sentiments. Now it seems that the Rajapakse government will not allow a repeat of 1983, simply because it will not be in the government’s interest to allow one. But in a clever and cynical ploy, the government is not at all stopping the spread of anti-Muslim as well as anti-Tamil campaigns and hit-and-runs in the country. Put another way, it will not allow a wholesale disaster like 1983 but it will let retail attacks go on, against the minorities and against anyone who is out of favour with the government.

The ‘mini-mob’ attack on the Muslim-owned Fashion Bug business in Pepiliyana and the reported ‘private settlement’ between the attackers and the victims facilitated by law enforcement agencies has exposed the government’s clever-by-half and consummately crooked modus operandi. Politically, the government wants to hunt with the hound and appear to run with the hare. As for law and order, the due process on a criminal matter has been turned upside down. No more law enforcement, but ‘shape it up’ between the sponsored perpetrators of crimes and their petrified victims.

There is no less cynicism in the government’s dealing with Tamil Nadu, India and the Western sponsors of theUNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka. It has often been said that India’s priority in Sri Lanka is the political solution centered on 13A, while the Western countries are more concerned about the investigation of and accountability for excesses during the war. Sri Lanka’s finessing and foot dragging to avoid commitment to and fulfillment of either has drawn India and the US together against Sri Lanka. And Tamil Nadu has jumped into the fray clamouring for political solution and international investigation as a minimum, and ‘resolving’ for Eelam as an ultimatum.

The responses of the Sri Lankan government have been characteristically multi-voiced and contradictory. Minister GL Peiris has said in parliament that the UNHRC resolutions in Geneva are not binding on Sri Lanka, thereby belittling the seriousness and effectiveness of American efforts at the UNHRC and bilaterally with Sri Lanka. At the same time, the Sri Lankan Ambassador in Washington and the Central Bank are reportedly making efforts to soft-sell Sri Lanka in the US and open a new window of co-operation between the US and Sri Lanka in Asia. On the Indian front, Defence Secretary G Rajapaksa is the man on a mission to have 13A repealed as soon as possible. He has also criticized those calling for investigating “alleged atrocities committed during the last 100 days of the conflict” for being “silent on the origin of terrorism in Sri Lanka” and challenged them to “consider a comprehensive investigation into the issue beginning with the Indian investigation.” The outspoken Secretary should be cautious about his wishes: someone may take him on his offer to let the “last 100 days” be investigated along with the first five years and everything in between of the last thirty years.
The government appears to have pulled another weapon against India and Tamil Nadu, by deciding to go public with the report on the environmental impacts of the controversial Sethu Samudram project prepared by Sri Lankan experts comprising marine scientists, environmentalists, geologists and marine engineers. It is known that this report was printed and was ready for release as far back as 2007. The government allegedly ordered the report to be shelved and not released to avoid making an issue of it with India. A week ago a Sri Lankan government source has told an Indian Newspaper that India “can expect a strongly worded statement by the Sri Lankan government any time now. The Sethu Samudram Project in all likelihood will end up in the United Nations.”

The government of Sri Lanka should have expressed concern about the Sethu Samudram project from the beginning because the project has serious environmental implications for the island. Stopping that project would be a blessing in disguise even for Tamil Nadu. But the Sri Lankan government’s motivations are not at all altruistic or environmental. All this while the government chose not to raise the Sethu matter as quid pro quo for India’s support for the war. Now that India is asking questions and Tamil Nadu is passing resolutions, opposition to the Sethu project has become tit for tat.

Sri Lanka trip exposes MPs to complexities of Tamil issue

By P K Balachandran | ENS - COLOMBO

13th April 2013 09:39 AM

The five-member team of Indian MPs, which interacted with a cross section of political leaders, civil society personalities and government functionaries both in Colombo and Jaffna over the last four days, returned to India on Friday, fully sensitised to the complexities of the Lankan Tamil question.

Given the complexity of the issue, the MPs decided not to speak to the media in Lanka, including resident Indian correspondents. They said that they would rather mull over the issues and speak up only on return to New Delhi.

One of the MPs, who did not want to be identified, said the diversity of inputs and varying orientations of political parties to which the MPs belonged, combined to make the task of speaking with one voice very challenging. There was also a need to avoid discussing Indian issues while being on foreign soil, he pointed out.

Although the tour was organised by the Parliamentary Forum of FICCI, the focus of the visit was political and not business.

In Colombo the MPs met Foreign Minister G L Peiris, Economic Development Minister, Basil Rajapaksa; Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa; Leader of the Opposition Ranil Wickremesinghe; and leaders of  TNA and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress. In Jaffna, they met the local TNA MPs; leaders of the Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF); and civil society groups, including the Bishop of Mannar. The only dignitary the team did not meet was President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Informal interactions with the MPs revealed they had grasped the key facets of the Tamil problem.

One MP thought that the sincerity of the Rajapaksa government about solving the Tamil question was under test. Another felt that India should look at the issue from a national perspective and not just from the Tamil Nadu point of view.

Another wondered why the Sri Lankan human rights issue had come up in Tamil Nadu in such a big way now, almost four years after the war, and whether the phenomenon was the result of the sudden appearance of the picture of 12 year old Balachandran or some other unknown factor.

The BBS ‘Buddhists’, ‘Nightclub Buddhists’ And The ‘Vigil’ That I Saw

By Malinda Seneviratne -April 12, 2013 

Malinda Seneviratne

‘Buddhist Questioning Bodu Bala Sena’

Those who participated or wanted to participate in the candle-light vigil organized by a set of people calling themselves ‘Buddhists Questioning Bodu Bala Sena’, those who witnessed what happened or part of what happened, those who saw images and footage, and others who generally comment on issues such as religious tolerance, democracy, human rights etc, will no doubt articulate their respective versions.  This is mine, but to illustrate the point of multiple narrative/interpretation, I will weave into my narrative some narrative comments of a friend.

This person, a Muslim, I have never met.  I have communicated with him for several years though and I would not hesitate to claim that a more patriotic Sri Lankan is hard to find.  In his writings I’ve noticed a humanity that is congruent with the best sentiments on the subject in any religious doctrine.  He is strong in his faith but is respectful of other faiths and has the wisdom to note the commonalities and learn the differences if only to understand his fellow-creatures of different religious persuasion.

He stated on Facebook, ‘On my way to the vigil’.  It was just after 7.00pm when I left my office.  I was disappointed that I would get late [I was planning to hold a lit candle, which is why I ‘shared’ more than once on Facebook the notice regarding the event].  Just as I left, the person who informed me about the event, a Muslim who knows as much or more about Buddhism as I do called me.  He informed me that the Police had moved in to stop the vigil.  I thought I would go home, but a minute later, another friend called to say, ‘they are arresting people’.  I was upset and a tad angry, and decided I would go there anyway.  Another colleague called and said he had called a mutual friend who was planning to attend the vigil and that she had quickly said ‘they are coming to arrest us’.  I called her and found that those who had turned up for the vigil were not outside the Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Mandiraya (the venue) but opposite the Police Park. I parked my car on Keppetipola Mawatha and ran all the way to where two clearly identifiable groups (event attendees and members/supporters of the Bodu Bala Sena) with half a dozen or more police officers.

Dilantha Vithanage, spokesperson for the BBS did a lot of talking –with the police, to the cameras and to his political opponents

Among those who were opposed to the vigil, I recognized two, a young man who was associated with the Sihala Urumaya way back in 2000 and another young man whom I’ve had on occasion associated with professionally.  I also found out that Dilantha Vithanage, spokesperson for the BBS was also present (he did a lot of talking –with the police, to the cameras and to his political opponents).  There were also several bikkhus who did a lot of talking. They were agitated, but not more and not less than their opposites were agitated. If I were to caricature, I would say the only difference was that the former spoke in Sinhala and the latter in English (I heard the F-word, several times).

I was more surprised, I must admit, when I took in the ‘attendees’.  I had expected the crowd, even if it was small, to be made up of a majority of Buddhists from all walks of life.  I can’t be blamed for expecting this because this was supposed to be an event organized by ‘Buddhists’.  There must have been Buddhists. Some claimed they were and I have no reason to doubt them.  But there were non-Buddhists in proportions that were a fair distance away from national ratios. There is nothing wrong in non-Buddhists taking part in such a vigil. In fact, even if one counted out legitimate fears of and opposition to the BBS as reason to attend, it is certainly legitimate (and laudable) that non-Buddhists decided to stand with Buddhists on an issue like this.

I was disappointed that there was little to tell me that the group was made up of people outside of the ‘facebooking’, English-speaking middle and upper-middle class.  I was less disappointed than perturbed when I noticed that in that group there were individuals who have been violently anti-Buddhist and anti-Sinhala, including those who have cheered the LTTE at times or white-washed that outfit as ‘logical’ necessity of being against the party/leadership they did not support in various elections since 2004. There were identifiable NGO activists and others who regularly put their names on political petitions and attend political rallies of a particular political persuasion.  Nothing wrong there, but this is not the picture I expected to see and it is not a picture I would have enjoyed being part of.

What’s the ugliest thing in uniform? – a biased cop

All that mattered, from this point on, was to do what I could (precious little, I know) to stop things from getting worse.  I spoke to the two young men I knew, who were not ‘talkers’.  I said something to the following effect: ‘Look, I recognize that these people (pointing to the event-attendees) have their ideological and political agenda, that some of them are not as innocent as they claim to be. I do recognize that among them are people who knew that organizing this at the Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Mandiraya was provocative and bound to elicit a response (I had believed, when noting the venue, that all necessary sanctions had been obtained), but regardless of all this, they just came to light a candle.  It was not violence.  Tell the haamuduruwo to let it go.  This is not helping anyone.’

I was accosted at one point by a person who had come to hold a candle.  I recognized her as a former employee at the Peace Secretariate in the good old CFA days, an individual who has cosy relations with the notorious National Peace Council.  She wanted to know why the Police had stopped a peaceful vigil.  I told her that she should ask that from the Police, but told her also to look around the ‘crowd’. I told her that I believed that it was an event organized deliberately to provoke (even if some or even most of the participants were unaware of the fact or did not or did not want to believe it). She said, ‘If the Bodu Bala Sena can attackFashion Bug, what’s wrong with us protesting peacefully outside the Sambuddha Jayanthi Mandiraya?’  The BBS did not attack Fashion Bug, but the BBS did actively incite, true.  What is important here is that she certainly wasn’t there to be a ‘Better Buddhist’, but had a political agenda that had little to do with peace, reconciliation and tolerance.

The BBS goons were screaming NGO kaarayo!

In that crowd of people I recognized individuals whom I have never associated with the pernicious politics of the NGO Mafia; decent, good-hearted, law-abiding individuals of different faiths, who were probably as dismayed and agitated by recent developments, individuals who probably shared by antipathies towards the BBS, with whom I would never feel ashamed to stand.  It was my error to assume that they were the people I was planning to stand with.  Just as I will not stand with the BBS, neither will I stand with some of the operators who, in hindsight, orchestrated the whole event.

Several persons had been arrested just before I got there and I later found out that they had been quickly released. There was no reason to arrest anyone.  I believe that the Police acted in a highhanded manner and although there is relief that they were released, the act of arrest was wrong and is unreservedly condemned.

My Muslim friend wrote, ‘What’s the ugliest thing in uniform? – a biased cop. I saw one today declaring pompously that everyone gathered at the vigil was either Muslim, Catholic or Tamil. My foot ached to give him a well-directed kick in that sweet spot right in the groove!’ I heard that too.  The Police Officer can’t be faulted if he wondered how a ‘Buddhists against BBS’ event had so many non-Buddhists.  It was a sweeping generalization nevertheless and the ethno-religious composition is anyway not relevant to the matter of peaceful, democratic action, even if there was nothing innocent in intent and design.

Police at the scene disallowing peaceful protest. A new one for our democracy

He also commented, ‘The BBS goons were screaming NGO kaarayo!’  I heard that too.  Correct description (in part at least), but that does not de-legitimize action.  He also observed, wryly, ‘Police at the scene disallowing peaceful protest. A new one for our democracy.’   It could have got worse, though, not because of him and others like him, but because ‘making it worse’ would have suited a lot of people. On both sides.  A point I made to one of the Police Officers.

He may have not heard this, but someone referred to the anti-BBS ‘Buddhists’ as ‘Nightclub Buddhists’. Strange juxtaposition and descriptive, yes, but it also raised questions of social status, class, lifestyle etc.  A Buddhist is a Buddhist, whether he/she wears white or black, a sil redda or jeans, but clothes mark and they mark well.  This was no Buddhist Cross-section, that much was apparent to me.

Then he said, ‘Never felt so much about a cause. Never participated in something like this. Outrage of decent people was vented against those who were trying to demonize and degrade their religion.’  I identify with the cause. I do not agree with the description of those he stood with, though.

There were good people there. There were people who were angry.  There were people talking past each other. There were people who refused to see the make-up of who they stood with.  I came to stand with a certain group against the BBS.  Had I come earlier, I am pretty sure I would not have lit a candle, because people make the cause and that too is something I take into account.  I would have gone away.

As it turned out, I got there late and stayed until the two groups went their separate ways. I didn’t see and hear everything, but I’ve reported what I did see and hear and have shared my observations.  That’s all.

My Muslim friend concluded, ‘One unused candle: for another day and another time.’  That is the saddest and yet most empowering line I heard tonight.

*Pix by Lakna Paranamanna

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of ‘The Nation’ and his articles can be found at www.malindawords.blogspot.com

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Video: Police And BBS Block Anti-BBS Vigil In Colombo