Questions the public must ask in Sri Lanka
Photo courtesy BBC
Groundviews
Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra-4 Apr, 2013
In the few days following the UNHRC meetings in Geneva, we have witnessed several act of blatant criminality by mobs on people and property- in greater Colombo, Killinochchi and elsewhere.
A common factor has been the passivity of the Police. They have looked the other way (reminiscent of July ’83) and suppressed video evidence of the culprits responsible for such violence.
We have also witnessed, in a single day, the Attorney General interfering in court cases involving politicians and their family members.
The justifiable outrage over groups like Bodu Bala Sena must not distract us from asking fundamental questions such as:
- Whom does the Police come under, and who has the power to silence them?
- Who has the power to use the Attorney General to overturn due process and the rule of law?
- Why does the Bodu Bala Sena only protest about animal slaughter and not about anti-Buddhist practices like casinos and the money-laundering, prostitution and human trafficking that always comes with casinos? Could this be a clue as to who is actually behind them?
The public must keep raising these questions- in the independent media, schools and universities, civil society associations, and- above all- in Parliament through their elected representatives.
I disagree with most Groundviews commentators who have described these acts of mob violence as manifestations of “religious extremism”. They are more plausibly acts of political manipulation. Those who claim to have liberated Tamils from “terrorism” (a terrorism which they had helped inflame) are now waiting to liberate Muslims, Christians and perhaps Buddhists themselves from the forces of “religious extremism”. A grateful public will welcome the liberators with open arms.
Petitions to the President to ban BBS and Sinhala Ravaya not only threaten freedom of speech, they further undermine the institutions such as Parliament and the Judiciary which need to be restored to their proper functioning. All criminal activity, from wherever it stems, has to be summarily punished under due process. That is what the public should be demanding.
The public must also draw the obvious connections between these recent acts of violence and what was debated in Geneva. The rule of law has collapsed in Sri Lanka. So we can never expect any impartial investigation into human rights abuses and war crimes. When even the Chairman of the local Human Rights Commission protests that the UNHRC Resolution violates “national sovereignty”, he shows his ignorance of the idea of human rights. How did such a man ever get into such a position?
Ever since the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials that followed the Second World War, international law has recognized that the plea “I was just following orders” does not protect policemen, civil servants or soldiers from prosecution. They are culpable, along with those politicians and army commanders who issued the orders.
The public must also draw the obvious connections between recent controversial parliamentary resolutions and the rampant lawlessness witnessed today. All those who supported the 18thAmendment, which handed absolute power into the hands of one man, share in the culpable inaction of the Police and will be judged one day for their folly.
Sri Lanka needs foreign help to establish war death toll – military spokesman
April 4, 2013, 10:41 pm
by Shamindra Ferdinando
Ongoing efforts to ascertain the number of persons, including LTTE cadres, killed during eelam war IV (July 2006-May 2009)and deaths caused due to natural causes as well as accidents, had been hampered by the reluctance on the part of countries accommodating those making accusations to share information with the Sri Lanka government, government sources said.
Military spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasuriya told The Island that an accurate assessment of the number of Sri Lankan migrants was prerequisite for a methodical inquiry. He said that some of those categorized as dead and missing since the conclusion of the conflict in May 2009, were now overseas.
The official alleged that some of those who had fled the country included LTTE cadres; though their families continued to insist they were civilians.
During a visit to Colombo last January Canadian Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney revealed that over the past six years 25,000 Sri Lankans had been accepted as permanent residents.
Minister Kenney estimated the number of Sri Lankans domiciled in Canada at over 300,000.
Addressing a seminar in Colombo in August last year Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa revealed that after the conclusion of the conflict some of those accommodated at welfare camps escaped and their whereabouts remained unknown. The Defence Secretary said that 7,185 persons, who had left IDP camps on various grounds hadn’t come back and 1,380 fled from hospitals where they were receiving treatment. Some of them are believed to have fled the country.
Addressing a group of journalists at the Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka on Tuesday, Brigadier Wanigasuriya alleged that the country was under constant attack since the conclusion of the conflict, in May 2009, over accountability issues.
The US moved a second resolution targeting Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions last month over accountability issues.
The military spokesman pointed out that Gordon Weiss, the then UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the final phase of the conflict, accused the military of killing 40,000 persons. The then BBC correspondent in Colombo Frances Harrison, too, alleged mass killings during the final phase of fighting on the Vanni front, Brigadier Wanigasuriya said, recalling the circumstances under which the UN overlooked one of its own reports, which dealt with the number of deaths in the Northern Province. The official alleged that the UN conveniently had forgotten about its own report as it had estimated the number of deaths, including those of the LTTE at over 7,000, hence clashed with various figures quoted by other interested parties.
A section of the Colombo-based international press had been trying to influence the local media over accountability and media issues, the Brigadier alleged. He urged the media not to be a destabilizing factor and engage in actions inimical to national interests, though the military wouldn’t dispute the right of the media to report whatever incidents.
Although the LTTE no longer posed a conventional military threat, some elements still remained committed to creating a separate state in the northern and east provinces of Sri Lanka, Brigadier Wanigasuriya said. While estimating the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora at around one million persons, the military official said that only a minute section of them were pursuing a hostile campaign. In spite of them being small in number, they were influential and extremely powerful, he said.
The Brigadier said that if those organizations representing the Diaspora were genuinely interested in establishing the number of dead and whereabouts of those currently listed missing, they should cooperate with the government.
