Indian girls arrested on Namal’s directive
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
The Colpetty Police has arrested last night three Indian girls and nine pretty Nepalese girls from a karaoke restaurant called Lush in Colpetty. Lush is owned by a person named Wasantha who also owns the Sun Hill hotel complex in Nuwara Eliya.
Some of MP Namal Rajapaksa’s friends have visited the karaoke bar last week and had tried to take some of the girls out. The management had then informed them that the young girls were not prostitutes.
The young boys have tried to forcibly take some of the young girls saying, “We don’t care about that. It is MP Namal Rajapaksa who asked us to bring them.” However, the security personnel have not allowed them to take the girls. The young boys had then walked away with the threat saying, “Wait and see what will happen.”
One of the Indian girls had gone missing the following day. The management of the venue had even lodged a complaint with the Colpetty Police about the matter. The missing Indian girl had later gone before the Colpetty Police and said that the foreign girls are being forcibly held at the karaoke bar. She had told the police that they were not been paid a proper salary. A special police team had raided the karaoke bar last night claiming to investigate into the complaint and arrested all the young girls employed at the karaoke bar.
The young girls were not released by the police even by this evening.
Wasantha from Nuwara Eliya who owns Lush is also the owner of Pier 3, which was earlier raided on a directive by the Defence Secretary. The girls arrested from Pier 3 were later released.
It was former Minister Mahinda Wijesekera who had brought this Wasantha to Colombo and introduced him to karaoke bars and night clubs. Wijesekera had invested his ill gotten monies in these ventures.
The other partner in these karaoke bars and night clubs is parliamentarian Thilanga Sumathipala. We reported last year that the Defence Secretary had ordered the raid on Pier 3 to intimidate Sumathipala when he was engaged in an internal conspiracy against the President. All karaoke bars and night clubs operating in Colombo are presently operating under Namal Rajapaksa’s directives.
Ex-army chief: Sri Lanka should not fear inquiry
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - (AP) -- The ex-army chief who led the military campaign to defeat Tamil Tiger rebels says Sri Lanka should not fear an inquiry into its conduct during the civil war after a U.N. report alleged the government may be to blame for thousands of civilian deaths.
Former commander-turned-politician Sarath Fonseka spoke as international pressure has been growing for an independent investigation into possible war crimes. The U.N. Human Rights Council is discussing a draft resolution, and rights groups and foreign governments have called for a probe of the civil war that ended in 2009, after the government troops crushed the separatist rebels.
The Tamil Tigers fought for a separate state for the ethnic minority Tamils for more than a quarter century. A U.N. investigation indicated the ethnic Sinhalese-dominated government might have killed as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians in the war's final months.
"Accountability is something that you can't ignore basically," Fonseka told Colombo-based foreign correspondents Tuesday evening.
He added that he was ready to answer if someone questioned him. He said the battles were fought according to international rules and conventions but there still could be questions.
The government and military leaders "should be able to answer the questions if any queries are made about the conduct of the soldiers and the manner the operations were conducted," he said. "Those are things you can't just try to ignore. ...
"We don't have to shy (away), we can answer. But they (the government) are not doing that," he continued. "I have no problem. I am confident and I know how the battle was conducted."
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government initially denied any civilian deaths occurred but later agreed to investigate instances of alleged abuses identified by its own war inquiry.
Fonseka was a close ally of Rajapaksa during the war, and they were both considered war heroes by the Sinhalese majority. They fell out while Fonseka contested the 2010 presidential election, which Rajapaksa won. After the elections, Fonseka was charged and convicted of fraud and other crimes in what he and his supporters called a political vendetta by Rajapaksa's administration.
He was pardoned and released last year after much international pressure.
The U.N. draft resolution released late Monday calls on Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its own war commission and take act on to ensure justice and reconciliation.
It also calls for the implementation of recommendations issued last month by the U.N.'s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, who accused the government of failing to investigate reports of widespread killings and other war-time atrocities.
Pillay's report said opposition leaders were being killed or abducted in Sri Lanka. It also questioned the government's commitment to postwar justice and urged Sri Lankan authorities to allow international experts to investigate allegations of human rights violations.
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