Despotic and desperate MaRa orders shooting to suppress impending protests: kill even 10 or 20
(Lanka-e-News -11.May.2013, 11.30PM) Leader of the Rajapakse regime, despot Mahinda Rajapakse prior to his departure to Uganda yesterday night , has had a meeting with his younger brother defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse after summoning the security chiefs, and had instructed in typically barbaric and dictatorial style, that at the public protests that are to take place shortly , all measures even the most brutal be employed to suppress unrest and opposition that are expected to be mounted by the public - even by gunning down the people. The trade union leader Vasantha Samarasinghe also should be taught an unforgettable lesson, MaRa the Ad wolf Hitler has added.

At yesterday’s discussions (10) , at Temple Trees , Gotabaya Rajapakse, the security chiefs of the three Forces, Ministers , Dallas Alahaperuma , Keheliya Rambukwella, the IGP, the Director of the army intelligence and operations unit, senior DIGs of the CID , TID and police administrative division , the President, Prime Minister , DIG S.M. Wickremesinghe in charge of security of Ministry of justice, Prisons Commissioner and additional DIG Western province- north Vaas Gunawardena participated.

Despot MaRa who spoke first had said he summoned those present , because in the coming days there are going to be Island wide protests against the government which can turn riotous . Hence every measure must be taken to stifle them.

The police must use its full powers and immediately suppress them. ‘The police must not come and tell me they used minimum powers. I don’t want explanations. In future people may even lay siege to the police. At that moment no need of going for discussions. Just use the maximum powers (police maximum power means shooting). Whether it is ten or twenty dying don’t matter to me. All what I should hear is within an hour the situation was brought under control. If there is a policeman who cannot shoot tell him to poke that into his rear side. Those who run serve me no purpose. If there are such officers I shall oust them. No need to go for discussions under any circumstance.’ These were the words of despotic and desperate MaRa who is riding roughshod on the laws of the country and the rights of the people.

MaRa who then turned in the direction of the army chief said , you must give your officers to assist the police. Mix and work. Don’t deploy the police for firing without mixing. The 432 police must be given training in arms. When MaRa brutally looked at the IGP and inquired , are there police officers who cannot shoot ? The IGP assured orders will be carried out and referred to ll trained them at Katukurunda police camp. MaRa then said , Vaas Gunawardena had been summoned here to request him to give training to the police officers who cannot shoot .

Next, addressing Gotabaya , MaRa had told , since the people can cut trees and put across the roads , to provide sawing machines to the police. When the IGP stated ,these machines are available only at some police stations, MaRa had instructed Gota to supply these machines to all police stations within a fortnight. He has also ordered that every police station shall be provided with tear gas bullets and canisters. 

Thereafter ,Gotabaya inquired from the army commander about the situation in the Boosa camp regarding the 3 detention camps that are being constructed there . Replying , the Army commander said, the work in the two new buildings are complete, and work on the building that was being refurbished for use is being completed .

The task to brutally suppress the impending people’s protest was allocated as follows :

S M Wickremesinghe in charge of western province; Army and senior DIG Pujitha Jayasundara in charge of north , north central and Sabaragamuwa provinces. Senior DIG R. B. Ambanwela in charge of southern province and Senior DIG Jagath Abeysiri Gunawardena in charge of Uva province .

Army intelligence and operations Director submitting a report at the discussions said on the 21 st , the day of the protest there is a conspiracy to disconnect electricity supply Island wide, and information has been received that the CEB is going to stage a strike, and it is Vasantha Samarasinghe who is spearheading it. Keheliya Rambukwella became jittery and panicked hearing Samarasinghe’s name like a serpent on which kerosene is poured , barged into the discussion and exclaimed , it is Vasantha Samarasinge who is doing all this. It is that fellow who is inciting the public and creating all the problems. He is the one who forcibly enters Institutions and talks, and distributes leaflets. If he is not there the campaign would fizzle out.

MaRa at that juncture turning to Gota had said ‘ do the utmost in regard to that fellow within a fortnight. Teach him the most deadly lesson’.

Dallas Alahaperuma said , a wide media publicity shall be given to the detention order (D .O.) that anyone can be detained for 3 months to frighten the people.

The discussions that began at 12.30 p.m. lasted until after 3.30 p.m. As the discussions were just concluding a high rung security officer had been heard telling another ‘these people will some day go away. By shooting the people , it will be us who will be next to be hauled up before the war criminal courts for shooting the public. Even a child of ours will not be able to go abroad.’

After these discussions , MaRa had held discussions with the Ministers later in the evening . We shall bring that report shortly.

A People Without a Story

Kamal Kishore/Reuters — Corbis

A Tamil man sweeping at a mass cemetery of Tamil Tigers.

By AATISH TASEER

Published: May 11, 2013

FOUR years ago this week, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelamannounced that their struggle for an independent homeland in northern Sri Lanka had “reached its bitter end.” The group had been fighting on behalf of the Tamil people for more than a quarter-century, and its defeat was absolute.

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Sri Lanka Ends 26 Years of Civil War

Today, great sections of Tamil country are still a scene of devastation. The houses are either destroyed or brand-new; the land is uncultivated and overgrown; there are forests of decapitated Palmyra palms, damaged by heavy shelling. And then there are the relics of war — graveyards of L.T.T.E. vehicles rotting in the open air; the remains of a ship, its superstructure blown to pieces and in whose rusting starboard a gaping hole gives on to blue sea.

When I first arrived there last March, I saw the loss in primarily military terms. But the feeling of defeat among the Tamils of Sri Lanka goes far deeper than the material defeat of the rebels. It is a moral and psychological defeat.

In that forested country of red earth and lagoons, it is possible to visit the bunker of the leader of the Tigers, a torture chamber of a place that sinks three levels into the ground. There, in the fetid air, infused with the smell of urine and bat excrement, one senses the full futility and wretchedness of what the rebel movement became in the end.

For the truth is that the Tamil defeat has less to do with the vanquishing of the L.T.T.E. by the Sri Lankan Army and much more to do with the self-wounding (“suicidal” would not be too strong a word) character of the movement itself. The Tigers were for so long the custodians of the Tamil people’s hope of self-realization. But theirs was a deeply flawed organization. Under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tigers pioneered and perfected the use of the suicide bomber. This was not simply a mode of warfare, but almost a symbol, an expression of a self-annihilating spirit. And it was to self-annihilation that Mr. Prabhakaran committed the Tamils. He was a man who, like a modern-day Coriolanus, seemed to lack the imagination for peace. He took the Tamils on a journey of war without end, where no offer of compromise was ever enough, and where all forms of moderation were seen as betrayal.

One evening, soon after I arrived in Jaffna, the capital of the northern province, I had dinner at the house of a woman whose sister had been part of a circle of academics who had published a book in 1990 called “The Broken Palmyra.” The book was, by no means, a simple polemic against the Tigers; it was an academic work that, in trying to be evenhanded, had taken account of both government and L.T.T.E. atrocities. But this was too treasonous for Mr. Prabhakaran, and my host’s sister was killed even before the book went to print.

The room that night was filled with people whose lives the tyranny of the L.T.T.E. had left forever scarred. There was the Muslim woman who, along with all the other Muslim families of Jaffna, had, one morning in 1990, been summoned to a school compound and given two hours to leave the city of her birth. They were told to leave behind their valuables and the deeds to their houses. When they asked why they were being expelled, they were told that they were lucky not to be killed. Then they were loaded into lorries and escorted to the border of the district. (Like most, this woman returned only after the end of the war in 2009.)

A middle-aged woman, working as a maid in the house, had more recent traumas. Her son had gone to work with his uncle, a carpenter, in the northern district of Kilinochchi, which would become the scene of an infamous battle. When war came, it was Mr. Prabhakaran’s express strategy to retreat with an enormous civilian population — 300,000 people, some say — and to use them as a human shield against the advancing army. It was his intention to let so many Tamils die that the international community (read, the West) would be forced to intervene, and the Tamils would be granted their homeland.

But here he made a grave mistake: he either overestimated his own importance; or else, the West’s sense of decency. For the West, occupied with problems more pressing, let as many Tamils die as had to die for the war to be won.

This was an added layer of shame in the Tamil defeat. It was not just that they had lost the war. It was also that the grass-roots movement they originated, and for which they had paid taxes and sacrificed able-bodied men and women, had, in the end, been more vicious to them than to anyone else.

When I asked what became of the woman’s son, she replied that he had not come home. “He’s dead,” my hostess clarified, “but she doesn’t like to hear that.”

THE north of Sri Lanka today is a spectacle of Sinhalese triumphalism. A victorious army is rebuilding new roads, grabbing land for itself (6,000 acres, rumor has it), and displaying the spoils of war before tourists from the south.

Even when the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa acts magnanimously toward the Tamil people, by building new infrastructure projects, for instance, the Tamils seem to feel that their defeat is being rubbed in their faces. And they are not wrong. It is simply one of those intractable situations where nothing will feel right. For the loss the Tamils feel is really the loss of a story. They are now a people without a story, a traumatized people, devastated by decades of war and migration, whose dream of self-determination was hijacked by the nihilistic vision of their leader and turned to nightmare.

“We lost something,” a Tamil artist in Jaffna, T. Shanaathanan, told me, “but we do not know what. The war is over, but there is a kind of psychological warfare now. Before, people looked at us with suspicion, with the feeling that you’re Tamil, you might be a terrorist. But now they look at us as if we’re nothing.”

Aatish Taseer is the author of the memoir “Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands” and the novel “Noon.”

A new weapon for the chief arms agent of the Tigers

LOOKING BACK: Kumaran Pathmanathan, popularly known as KP, at a home he runs for war-affected children in Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka on Friday. Photo: Meera Srinivasa

KILINOCHCHI, May 12, 2013

If there is one weapon that Kumaran Pathmanathan now says he has faith in, it is education. “If only I had taken education more seriously, I would have acquired the ability to think and analyse issues independently,” he says, leaning back on his chair, at his office in Senchcholai Children Care Home –Kilinochchi.

Arms procurement wing

This is the man who headed the arms procurement wing and ‘international secretariat’ of the LTTE. KP travelled all over the world to buy guns and other military hardware for the Tigers.

He moved from one sea port to another undetected and was responsible for ensuring that the weapons reached the LTTE.

Popularly known as KP, he was, for long, on Interpol’s wanted list, charged with arms smuggling and criminal conspiracy and was also wanted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

After the war ended, KP was arrested in Malaysia in August 2009. He was detained in a ministerial bungalow in Colombo and released in late 2012.

At that time, however, the Sri Lankan government said: “Kumaran Pathmanathan, who is under special protection, was permitted to engage in his NGO work and not released as claimed by media.”

Now, four years after the war, says KP, the arms struggle was a mistake.

Running this home for war-affected children, he talks only about education. The home is located near an army camp now, fuelling speculation about his proximity to the government. It has a few rooms, dormitories and an assembly hall.

Funding, says KP, comes from the Tamil diaspora.

Attired in a white cotton shirt and grey trousers, KP (nearly 60) looks back at his country’s past with what seems like regret.

Attributing the violence — spurred by the arms struggle — to the lack of adequate education in the country, he says: “The last 30 years of war have pushed us educationally further behind.”

Pausing for a few seconds, he fixes his gaze on a group of children playing about five metres away from where we are seated.

“Many of them lost their parents during the war, and some of them are injured or disabled. If they have to come out of this trauma, education is the only means and that is my vision now.”

As many as 300 children stay at the home and go to a nearby school.The home offers additional tuitions in the evening to help children who had dropped out of school during the war.

‘Instilling confidence’

“This is a community that had given up all hope over the years. Reviving that hope and instilling confidence is the greatest challenge at the moment,” he says. Observing that, in the 1970s, Tamil politicians brainwashed youngsters like him into joining the Tamil cause, he says the recent student protests in Tamil Nadu brought back those memories.

Emotional issue

“Students should be left to study. Politicians there [TN] make it an emotional issue. They cannot do anything on their own for us, so they have to work with the Centre in India and help Sri Lanka.” Terming the attack on Buddhists monks in India “uncivil” and “inhuman”, he says such responses will only do more damage than good to the Sri Lankan Tamils.KP is not short of suggestions on the means to achieve peace and reconciliation: “The army’s presence enhances safety at one level, but also intimidates people.”In KP’s opinion, reducing the army presence in the area and introducing civil administration would help improve the living conditions of the people there. “Tamil politicians are obsessed with Jaffna and hardly engage with the people of the Vanni who are the real victims.”

Conviction of Efraín Ríos Montt and the need for accountability

Conviction of Efraín Ríos Montt and the need for accountability

Image courtesy The Guardian

Savitri Hensman-12 May, 2013

Groundviews

On 10 May 2013, former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 80 years in prison. It was the first time that an ex-head of state had been convicted for genocide by a court in his or her own country. The case is of international importance, including in Sri Lanka.

President Ríos Montt had ordered the deaths of 1,771 people of the Ixil Maya ethnic group in 1982 and 1983. He was in power during the bloodiest phase of a civil war that lasted from 1960-1996, during which an estimated 200,000 were killed and 45,000 more “disappeared”. Others were raped, tortured in other ways or driven from their homes.

While mass murder and ethnic cleansing took place in the countryside, in the cities trade unionists and student leaders were seized by the security forces. The military were supposedly battling left-wing guerrillas but civilians suffered in huge numbers, sometimes at the hands of brutal paramilitary groups working alongside the armed forces.

Some Guatemalans, especially in the ruling elite, would rather have avoided the trial and glossed over past human rights abuses. But there were cheers in the courtroom in Guatemala City when Judge Jazmín Barrios read out the sentence. As 42-year-old Elena de Paz Santiago, one of those who testified, had said of the dictator, “He gave the order.” She was just 12 when she and her mother were taken to an army base and raped. The soldiers released her but she never saw her mother again.

The dead cannot be brought back to life nor can all the mental and physical scars of survivors be healed. However they have received some justice, and the message has been sent out that everyone, of whatever ethnic group or social class, deserves to be protected and treated with respect.

In South Africa, the quest for justice after apartheid ended took a different form. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up which heard from the victims of human rights abuses. Some of those guilty were spared punishment if they confessed what they had done. However there too those guilty of terrible crimes, even if supposedly carried out in defence of the state, were finally held to account, and families were able to find out what had happened to their loved ones. It was an opportunity for both the violent and victims of violence to tell, and hear, the truth.

In other countries too, past abuses which have gone uncorrected still cast a shadow over the present. In Sri Lanka, between the late 1970s and early 1990s, numerous people died or had their lives shattered. The security forces and their paramilitary allies slaughtered huge numbers and abused others or drove them from their homes and livelihoods. Others suffered and sometimes died at the hands of the Tigers, other Tamil nationalist groups and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), who used their power to violate the safety, dignity and freedom of others.

Many Sri Lankans remain in denial about the horror of those years and resist calls to unearth (sometimes literally) the evidence. Some, obviously, are fearful that what they – or those close to them – did, or failed to do, will be exposed, while others may prefer to shy away from confronting the scale of suffering. The fact that certain leading figures in the government and opposition may be implicated has added to the pressure to let the past stay buried.

However this refusal to get to grips with what happened is not only unjust to the dead, the bereaved and the traumatised but may be largely to blame for the massive violence that has taken place in twenty-first century Sri Lanka and ongoing ethnic, religious and social divisions. What is more, all civilians are at risk when the state is regarded as unaccountable to anyone, able to torture, burn and kill with impunity.

In Guatemala and beyond, the process of unearthing the past and acknowledging former wrongs is sometimes painful. But unless this is done, there is little chance of healing wounds and building a truly just and peaceful society.

Northern PC Elections, The May 21 Token Strike And More

By Kusal Perera -May 11, 2013 |

Kusal Perara

It is certainly historic to have a broad trade union front in Colombo, meeting with the TNA leaders to appeal for the support of the Tamil voter in making their May 21^st Token Strike a success. More so, when that trade union front includes the two major affiliates from the UNP and the JVP apart from other major trade unions like the FTZ&GSEU, LJEWU, UPTO and theFUTA playing lead roles. It is also historic and politically a new shift, when the TNA leadership made no bones about their opinion about especially the JVP and the UNP led trade unions in noting that the Tamil people especially in the North were in the dark without electricity for many years while the trade unions were not even bothered about their plight and that electricity for the Northerner is a luxury. But, the TNA pledged their support to this campaign and the token strike on 21 May with no conditions laid, for removal of tariff hike in electricity as a common man’s issue.

Meanwhile there is also much speculation in local media as to who would run as the CM for the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) Elections on the government side, the Rajapaksa regime says it would hold in early September this year. Accepting this announcement for NPC elections as one that would not be defaulted upon after the CHOGM gets all set after mid year, this is an attempt to draw attention to some issues the opposition parties should start working on, from this day.

The customary, alienated scavenging for election law violations and weeping over them during and after elections, will not be any answer for the NPC elections. Media briefings and heavy report writing had never been answers in curbing pre and post election violence and violation of laws during elections, even in the past. Change of social status in relation to ruling party politics does not necessarily start from the day of nominations for elections. That would certainly not be the case in the North and not how this regime would work in the North. Therefore, the government and the Elections Commissioner have to be held wholly responsible in maintaining a status quo on everything that is “North” and from now on.

Any change in land alienation, settlement and resettlement of persons what ever their numbers are, subtle changes of the voters registry if a tab is not kept from now on, are all values that would change the equation in any election. So would the role of State officials who would be called upon to perform the way, ruling party politicians in the province would want them to. Thus the political necessity to keep all State intrusions and interferences in the North under observation.

The electoral registry, the demography, military presence, police and their transfers, role of State officials right down to Grama Seva Niladharies (GSN), allocations for numerous State and semi State funded projects, details of land ownership, micro and small enterprises owned or managed by the security forces and by different ethnicities and anything else that could or would be thought of as factors that may infringe on a fair election, if not a free and fair election needs to have very close monitoring. All of these factors can and would impact on the Northern society if the Rajapaksa regime is allowed to tamper with them, from now on. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the opposition political parties to help maintain an environment that could give the people a fair and a reasonable opportunity in deciding the outcome of the election. That is one aspect of democracy and life begins there, at least for the Northern society.

1. The call for international election monitors by the TNA is thus a necessary call, but not one that should stop where all election monitoring had stopped in the past. This call for election monitoring should be for a South Asian Election Monitoring Team, the Rajapaksa regime will not be able to label as “imperialist manipulations or as Western interference”. It should consist of men and women from human rights and democratic fora in South Asia. A recognised, reputed team of men and women from People’s SAARC forum, to start monitoring all State and political activities in the North, from now on.

2. Election monitoring per se is no complete answer, but only an important imperative in the election for NPC. Politically, the more important factor is the alliance the Opposition could present to the Tamil people of North to vote for at the elections. It is here the role of Wickramasinghe‘s UNP count, in how they propose to position themselves in the North. It is positive and good, the UNP and Wickramasinghe has taken up issues of land grab and disappearances in the North, lately. That also has an agenda of creating a political base for the UNP. It is their political right to be there and work there. But it is also the responsibility of the UNP to ensure they don’t play too far in breaking up the anti Rajapaksa vote at the elections to the NPC. Therefore the best the UNP can offer the Tamil people in the North at this point of time, is to help boost the voter strength of the TNA. There is no space for now in the North for two separate slates against the Rajapaksa campaign. It has to be accepted, the best slate is that put forward by the TNA with the UNP providing its political support. If the UNP can assure the Tamil voter in the North from now on, they would go with the TNA at the NPC elections, that would be a winning move, to have a clear majority for the TNA governed NPC.

This would also help bridge the North-South gap, a necessary political requisite. For now the broadest alliance is being facilitated within the trade union movement although the May Day saw a scattered trade union and political party presence. The Rajapaksa regime has played catalyst in creating a broad trade union front that for the first time in recent history includes the JVP and UNP trade unions in alliance with other independent trade unions. The recent price hike on electricity tariff, despite the presidential compassion, has left the urban workers and the middle class uncompromisingly hurt and annoyed. The grand trade union alliance that was in the making forged themselves strong against the electricity tariff hike even before the May Day. They have now declared a “Token Strike” on 21 May against the electricity tariff hike and have politically gained the support of the UNP, the JVP and even the TNA.

This is a new political direction that once again paves opportunities for a participatory factory floor-ground level alliance against the Rajapaksa regime on issues that cut across ethnic and religious identities. One that has garnered support for and pledges for participation at the May 21^st Token Strike from independent and respected trade unions like Bala Tampoe‘s CMU (Ceylon Mercantile, Industrial and General Workers Union) and the LSSP affiliate, the CFL, leaving a very sectarian Vikramabahu and his starved and lean collection of trade unions standing as “blacklegs” against the workers’ strike action and supporting this Rajapaksa regime by default as “Left” scabs in the TU movement.

That blacklegging by Vikramabahu has not been able to have any decisive impact on the working class campaign taking an anti Rajapaksa projection. The May 21^st Token Strike if successful would therefore have a politically invigorating social psyche that would also provide another boost against the Rajapaksa regime at the NPC elections. Thus the Token Strike on 21^st May and the impact it would have on a common political platform that comes as a decisive factor in the next few months. It is this political change the UNP would have to capitalise on with an alternate programme, if Wickramasinghe is, as he says, out to topple the regime in another year.

Mass demonstration for justice to the 147000 people who disappeared in the genocidal war against Tamils by the Sinhala Sri Lankan Racist state.

Saturday, 11 May 2013 

It will be four years on the 18th May 2013 since the war on the Tamil people ended. Having ended the war, massacring more than 40,000 people in just the last few weeks, the Sri Lankan state had continued its agenda of ethnically cleansing the Homeland of the Tamil people, in the North and East of the island.

The Tamil people’s homeland is currently occupied by the all Sinhala military at the ratio of 1 military personnel for every 5 civilians. Rape, murder, abduction and torture by the Sri Lankan military are carried out with absolute impunity in the occupied Tamil homeland. The notorious “White van” death squads of the military continue to abduct and murder the Tamil people, terrorising them into leaving the island. As recently as April 2013, the only Tamil newspaper published in the Tamil people’s homeland was set ablaze by the military. This was the third attack on this newspaper in the first four months in 2013.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/office-of-outspoken-tamil-newspaper-uthayan-attacked-in-sri-lanka-8570776.html

A Tamil man who had returned from Australia to attend to his seriously ill uncle was picked up by the white van and tortured.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-24/sri-lankan-details-claims-of-rape-and-torture-by-army/4649954?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=gplus

Tamil farmers have been chased away from their farmlands which are now occupied by Sinhala farmers. Tamil fishermen have been driven out of their coastal villages which are now taken over by Sinhala fishermen. The Tamil people’s lands are forcefully taken away for building Sinhala military camps and to house the families of the Sinhala servicemen.

The continuing persecution of the Tamil people have resulted in mass exodus of Tamil people and have deterred many who wanted to return to their ancestral homeland at the end of the war. In 2012 alone 6000 Tamil people fled the island to escape persecution by the Sri Lankan state. They sought refuge in far-away places including Britain.

The British people have the right to know of the continuing genocide that is taking place in Sri Lanka and the consequent influx of Tamil immigrants

The Sri Lankan state having committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, continues to defy calls for an international independent inquiry into its conduct of the war. The UN panel of experts reported that it had evidence indicating the Sri Lankan military shelling hospitals and its own declared no fire zones, killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians who had sought refuge in them.

The soft diplomacy practiced by the international community including Britain is having no effect on the Sri Lankan state which is continuing with its structural genocide of the Tamil nation in the island.

We the Tamil people in Britain seek the help of the British press to inform the British people of the injustices meted out to our kith and kin in our ancestral homeland.

Your reporting of this mass demonstration on 18th May 2013 will help us to get our message across to a wider British population so that the British people demand of the British government to act decisively and effectively to halt the on-going genocide of Tamils in the Island of Sri Lanka

Details of 18th May event:

Start ,1 ,Pm ,North Carriage Park, Hyde Park (Closest station:Marble Arch)

End ,05,Pm ,Waterloo Place (Closest station: Piccadilly Circus)

shan sutha

People, Politics and the Constitution: Reading ‘The Sri Lankan Republic at 40′ (edited by Asanga Welikala)

People, Politics and the Constitution: Reading ‘The Sri Lankan Republic at 40′ (edited by Asanga Welikala)

Photo courtesy Vikalpa, taken at the launch of the book in Colombo.

Kalana Senaratne-11 May, 2013

Groundviews

Reading a tome on constitutional history, theory and practice – like Asanga Welikala’s edited collection titled The Sri Lankan Republic at 40 – can be a daunting task. For a start, such books have too much to say about constitutions. The more you read about constitutional documents, the more they begin to appear God-like. For a constitutional-skeptic, this is a horrible prospect. Also, the broader discipline of constitutional law often comes across as an esoteric one. In examining the Table of Contents, one senses that much of what is contained in Asanga’s collection (which runs into two large volumes) is for the specialist. With 1166 pages divided into four parts – namely ‘constitutional history’, ‘constitutional theory’, ‘constitutional practice’ and ‘interviews and recollections’ – one feels (and the feeling comes slowly) that it might just not get read during this life-time.

Therefore, one is tempted to skip the academic and expert-analysis, and get to the ‘real’ and ‘interesting’ stuff: interviews and recollections, words from the heart (as they say). But on further inspection, skipping becomes difficult, unnecessary: the chapters on history and theory appear like reminiscences and recollections of the respective authors, while those who were interviewed seem to have engaged in historical and theoretical exegesis. Thankfully, the collection becomes interesting; and reading it, not too bad for your health after all.

So, the purpose here is rather simple. In undertaking a brief reading of this impressive collection of essays, my attempt will be to examine some common themes it captures, some of the problems concerning Sri Lanka’s republican constitutions and constitution-making projects, its institutions and political culture, and the different perspectives offered about these matters. And also, it is to examine whether there are any lessons to be learned from this experience. My focus is selective, and the examination of the many chapters is brief, and follows no clear structure or pattern.

A Republic and its Doomed Project(s) of Constitution Making

NO FIRE ZONE: CH4’s 3rd Documentary Preview Screening

By Dushy Ranetunge @ LSE -May 11, 2013

Dushy Ranetunge

The third instalment of Chanel 4’s documentary, titled NO FIRE ZONE, the killing fields of Sri Lanka is being preview screened at various locations in London. It is yet to be scheduled to be broadcast by Ch4 itself.

It was screened at the Frontline club in London a few weeks ago and on Tuesday at the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science).

At the LSE, it was presented by a panel consisting of award winning journalistCallum Macrae (NoFireZone Director),
Shivani Jegarajah (a LSE trained barrister from Renaissance Chambers) and 
Janani Jananayagam (Independent politician who secured over 50,000 votes at the European Elections and founding Director of Tamils Against Genocide). It was a free event and held in Tower 1 at the LSE.

It was chaired by
Dr. Devika Hovell, from the LSE Department of Law. Her areas of expertise are listed as international courts, international humanitarian law, United Nations, public law, use of force, international law, public international law, domestic law, international tribunals.

Callum Macrae introduced his documentary by stating that the Sri Lankan government dismisses everything in it as lies and fabrications, but that everything in his documentary has been evidenced and authenticated by independent specialists and forensic pathologists and that the documentary is a catalogue evidencing war crimes.

The documentary, the third one on the subject seems a more focused presentation of facts contained in the two previous ones, with some new footage showing the incidents leading to the alleged execution ofPrabakaran’s 12-year-old son.

What was interesting was the discussion that took place and the questions and answer session, which exposed the train of thought and process as perceived by those carrying forward the campaign for justice.

During the introduction Dr Devika Hovell emphasized that what is in the documentary are historical events and focused relevance on the present and not the past, as to what can be done now and in the future. This provided the framework for the productive discussion, which emerged.

The points of interest to emerge from the discussion are as follows.

(1) The evolving patterns of international law especially in respect of the concept of universal jurisdiction. Dr Hovell mentioned that a Nepalese Colonel is being tried in London for torture during the civil conflict in that country, under the concept of universal Jurisdiction.  This was considered a significant development. Nepalese Colonel Kumar Lama has been charged in the UK in 2013 with two counts of torture during his countries civil war in 2005.

(2) Jananayagam spoke of state actors shutting out non-state actors and the long campaign by Diasporaactivists, their many legal challenges in the US and British courts against President Rajapakse and those of his entourage. She spoke of their long struggle for justice and success in the courts in Britain earlier this year. In February, High court Justice Wilkie sitting with Judge Gleeson said it would be wrong to allow the removal of Tamil asylum seekers by charter flight “at the very time that the upper tribunal [immigration and asylum chamber] is actively seized with considering new country guidance, at a time when it is clear from the agenda that the UTIAC is considering the matter virtually afresh and where it is accepted by the SSHD [home secretary] through the preliminary closing submissions that the existing country guidance case will have to change”.

(3) Although Diaspora groups are trying to engage governments to take up their cause for justice in relation to Sri Lanka, Jananayagam stated that most western governments take the view that Sri Lanka fought a necessary war, which went wrong. She suggested that this is also the view of the British Foreign Office.

(4) She seemed encouraged by the awareness that several foreign governments are collecting evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka. She said she is aware of at least one such government. The Belgian intervention and request for the ICC for the extradition of Chad’s ex-President Hissene Habre for trial for alleged atrocities was discussed. This was a Belgian government request in 2012 for crimes committed between 1982 and 1990.

(5) She acknowledged that the process of justice for war crimes committed in Sri Lanka might take decades, as in cases in relation to the holocaust, but that the Diaspora will work towards that goal, to fight for justice for the Tamils who felt so helpless.

(6) She said that after Rajapakse leaves office he will lose immunity and will be exposed to prosecution, but that they are less interested in Rajapakse the private citizen and more interested in Rajapakse the President as they consider atrocities as state crimes.

(7) They welcomed the policy of some countries to deny visas, employment or asylum applications to Sri Lankan military personnel.

(8) It was highlighted that Sri Lanka is trying to convince non Western countries that it is a small country falling victim to Western bullying, but that they intend to counter this by travelling to all these countries and showing them the CH4 documentary and convincing them that a vote for Sri Lanka is a vote for these crimes. In this regard a fund raising campaign had been initiated to raise several hundred thousand pounds and a recent trip the United States had already raised Stg. 40,000.

(9) Commercial interests of Western countries in Sri Lanka, its geopolitical value and specifically British commercial interests including recent order for Rolls Royce engines for Sri Lankan airlines was discussed with the conflict of interest and lack of political will in Britain to push the war crimes agenda.

(10)      The 25% increase of Sri Lankan defense budget during peacetime, the compromising of the judiciary in Sri Lanka and hence its impact on the credibility of any independent investigation in Sri Lanka was mentioned. Some content in the UN expert report was also discussed.

(11)      Jananayagam stated that the UN report had mentioned that Sri Lankans will not accept an international investigation, but suggested that the emphasis should not be Sri Lankans as a whole, but those Sri Lankans who were victims of war crimes.

(12)      In response to a question to Callum Macrae if he was a journalist or a campaigner, he responded that when a journalist researches a story and finds that it’s a truth that has been hidden, then it’s the duty of any journalist to expose it repeatedly so that it is taken notice of and acted upon.

The latest CH4 documentary is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the Diaspora groups in their quest for justice.  Although Sri Lanka dismisses it as lies and fabrications, Sri Lankan diplomats are very aware of its potential and unsuccessfully tried to scuttle it’s screening at the UNHRC in Geneva, earlier this year.

From an outside perspective, these issues continue to expose the ethnic divisions in the island nation. As large sections of the Tamil population overlooked, denied and even justified alleged LTTE atrocities as they perceived it as a necessity to secure their peace, today, large sections of the Sinhalese population overlooks, denies and even justifies alleged Sri Lankan military atrocities as they perceive it as a necessity to secure their peace. The middle path of reconciliation seem quite in the distance in Sri Lanka, to any objective observer.

FUTA ready to blow the whistle on backdoor entrants 

by Dasun Edirisinghe-May 10, 2013

The Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) yesterday said that they were ready to announce a list of political appointees in universities and the University Grants Commission (UGC).

FUTA President Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri told The Island that the university system had been highly politicized during the past four years.

Dr. Dewasiri alleged that appointments of Peradeniya Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor served as examples.

The senior academic said that the FUTA would launch a struggle against the politicisation of universities and expose those political appointees.

"This is one reason for the brain drain," Dr. Dewasiri said, adding that those who went abroad did not come back as they were frustrated due to what was happening in national universities where the deserving academics were denied promotions."

The FUTA chief said that however they asked the UGC to announce the names of those who were overstaying abroad after going for higher studies on government scholarships. He said they had to be dealt with according to the law.

Dr. Dewasiri said that the UGC should recover the funds expended on them for violating the bond between the university and the academics entered prior to going abroad.