SRI LANKA: Doctor's negligence results in the death of ayoung girl in Hambantota

ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION – URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME

Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-144-2012

15 August 2012
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SRI LANKA: Doctor's negligence results in the death of a young girl in Hambantota

ISSUES: Right to health; medical negligence; denial of justice; equal access to medicine
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Dear friends,

Ms. K K Neesha Chaturangi (17) of Ambalantota, Baragama, Arawanamulla in Hambantota District was a student of a Ambalantota Kuda Bolana Pajjaseeha Maha Vidyalaya. On 2 June 2012 she ate some cashew nuts after school before taking her lunch. Then she complained of stomach pain. When she was brought to Hambantota General Hospital doctors accused her for eating "Kaneru" (Nerium oleander) which is deadly poisonous. She continuously explained to the doctors that she was well aware of what Kaneru was and she had never eaten it. The doctors gave her medicine and an injection. She vehemently denied that she had consumed Kaneru and did not want the injection. However, the doctors forcefully injected her and forced her to take the medicine. Later her condition worsened and she was transferred to the Teaching Hospital of Matara. At this hospital she was declared dead on arrival.

In order to cover up the truth the doctors at Hambantota General Hospital made a false story and telecast it over the Swarnawahini Television Network that she had committed suicide. The relatives made complaints to the police against these illegalities but the police refused to investigate the crime. Neesha's parents have complained to the relevant authorities about the irresponsible actions of the doctors at the Hambantota General Hospital but justice has been denied. This illustrates how, in similarity with the Sri Lanka Police the medical authorities refuse to take action against their own.

The doctors at Hambantota General Hospital did not take appropriate measures to save Neesha's life.

CASE NARRATIVE:Ms. K K Neesha Chaturangi (17) of Ambalanthota, Baragama, Arawanamulla in Hombantota District was a student of a Ambalanthota Kuda Bolana Pagnaseeha Maha Vidyalaya.

On the 2 June 2012, Neesha was returning from school at about 2.10pm in the afternoon, without taking lunch, she had eaten cashew-nuts with her younger sister. A few minutes after eating cashew Neesha had vomited. At about 4pm she was taken to Udabaragama Government Hospital.

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Indian housing project for Tamils in Sri Lanka on track
R. K. RADHAKRISHNAN-August 15, 2012
Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Ashok K Kantha inspecting a parade at India House on the occasion of the Indian Independence Day, in Colombo on Wednesday. Photo: R. K. Radhakrishnan

After huge delays, the US $ 270 million Indian housing project for displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka is now on track.

“The pilot phase of the project for construction of 1,000 houses has been completed. The next phase of the Indian Housing project for 43,000 housing units under the owner-driven mode in the Northern and Eastern provinces has been launched,” said Ashok K. Kantha, High Commissioner of India in Sri Lanka in an Independence Day message.

After the initial hiccups, the pilot project of building 1000 houses was completed in July this year. Soon after, the High Commission of India signed agreements to award work to four Implementing Agencies - UN-HABITAT, International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies in partnership with Sri Lanka Red Cross, National Housing Development Agency (NHDA) of the Government of Sri Lanka and Habitat for Humanity, Sri Lanka - signalling the launch of the next phase of the Indian Housing Project for 43,000 housing units in Northern and Eastern Provinces.

In the owner-driven model, beneficiaries will be selected through a transparent and norm-based process on the basis of clearly defined and objective criteria. These beneficiaries will undertake the construction/repair of their houses with technical assistance and support provided by the Implementing Agencies. The money will be released directly by the High Commission of India into bank accounts of beneficiaries based on certification of progress of work.

This phase is expected to meet bulk of the housing needs in these areas. In the last phase of the project, which is also expected to commence soon, about 6,000 houses will be directly built by construction agencies for people from most vulnerable sections of IDPs in the Northern and Eastern provinces and for estate sector in the Central and Uva Provinces.

The construction of 43,000 houses for resettlement and rehabilitation of IDPs in Northern and Eastern Provinces is part of the overall commitment to build 50,000 houses announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the State visit of the President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa to India, in June 2010.

The pilot project for the construction of 1,000 houses in the five districts of Northern Province was launched in November 2010. Till July 13, as many as 950 houses were completed under the pilot phase, and most of these were handed over to beneficiaries. The remaining 50 houses were completed by end-July.

These Crimes Are Not In The ” Mahinda Chinthanaya”

By Barbara Seneviratne -August 15, 2012

Barbara Seneviratne

The COPE report was handed over to President which highlighted immense irregularities in all government institutions. The COPE members and the public expected the President to take immediate actions but he is very silent.  His strange silence is nothing to be surprised about.  He had been silence on the report regarding the “Taxation Commission” which was given to the President in 2009.

Well the President may have his reasons to be silent, after all this system is poisoned by collective bad faith and polluted by individual avarice.

Not only ignoring the COPE report but the President has conveniently ignored the necessity to enforce accountability or the necessity to eliminate corruption exposed. What he is doing now is completely different from what he preached to the voters and especially in his much bragged “Mahinda Chinthanaya”.  People from all walks of life wonder if this is the last stages of Sri Lankan democracy.

The World Bank and IMF sponsored economic liberalization policies not only had a negative impact on the health and education in the country but also gave birth to a greedy and corrupt private sector that thrived on giving bribes to the State officials and politicians to get ministerial tenders. The supply of allegedly contaminated fuel which was brought by a company which was removed from the list of suppliers to the CPC is one such example.

The corporate sector too is partly responsible for the collapse of the social and cultural morals and collapse of the economy.  Especially in the last eight years the ethics of the private sector too have vanished and the masses are now cheated by both private and public sectors.

The tragedy of Sri Lanka today is waste of human resources due to warp minds of the rulers. This is clearly seen in the government’s attitude towards the current strike by university academies and students.

The President has conveniently ignored the necessity  to enforce accountability  or the necessity to  eliminate these crimes are not in the ” Mahinda Chinthanaya” hence human nature shows itself so completely depraved nearly approaching brutality as in the last stage of democracy.

The health sector too is highly neglected and many a professionals in this sector are migrating overseas where their skills are recognized and better remunerated.

Nepotism, Impunity and corruption are the norm. The blame must also be shared by the public who elect corrupt politicians to power. The President and his party members and politicians displayed insensitivity to the different kinds of crimes that women, children and public are facing.

Due to impunity laws have had no effect. Although few members of parliament demanded positive changes to the constitutions it all fell on deaf ears because of vote bank politics.

One such example is Kahawatte in the Ratnapura District where people and the public are frozen with fear for some reason or other. A fear psychosis similar to the Grease yaka has being promoted apparently by those who profit by crimes. Police are failing in their duties due to corrupt SLFP politicians who are not allowing the Police to carry out their duties independently.

More recent is the mockery of reinstatement of the former Tangalle Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman W. G. Sampath Chandrapushpa by Minister Susil Premajayantha.  In a letter dated July 25, 2012 notified of his removal and in a second letter dated July 29, 2012, notifies that he has been reinstated as PS chairman and that his party membership has been restored.

No democracy can survive without law and order. Public interest requires for its promotion not its disintegration and destruction. The country has become a rudderless ship, with things worsening by the day.  The time has dawned for the public to protest against all ill regularities, corruption and collapse of the law and order and demand democracy in the country.

Let me quote form Martin Luther King Jr. “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people,”

Chencholai in image and words: A personal account

14 AUGUST 2012

BY R.M.KARTHICK

On August 14, 2006, the Sri Lankan Air Force bombers attacked an orphanage in the northern part of the island, killing dozens of children. 'It's a rebel training facility' said the government spokesman, a claim which was contradicted by the UNICEF as well as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission. A total of 61 children died in the attack, all of them girls. Six years later, R.M.Karthick revisit and reflect upon his own memories.

I never thought writing would become a passion before that fateful night. In fact, I was averse to writing like most of my classmates in my undergrad course. Surrealist writers have contested that words contain magical powers, that they can provide the reader who listens to the heartbeat of the script a plethora of sounds, images and sensations. I didn't attach much meaning to words then.

And like many who can talk but cannot speak, I was immune to the magic of the word, deaf to the music that it contains, blind to the colours it shows. Yet, it was through words that I heard of sufferings of Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka. Through stories, I had heard of past and present horrors committed on an ethnic group - one to which I belonged to but rarely identified with till then. Words spoken by those who fled the island country in the past projected to me a picture of what life under totalitarianism is.

But no words prepared me for the shock of the image that came along with a mail in my inbox the 14th night of August 2006.

Event: Chencholai orphanage bombing.
Place: Mullaitheevu.

The picture was aesthetic. It showed two neat rows of dead children. Sixty-one girls, aged between 16 and 18, who were killed as the orphanage they were staying in was bombed in the course of the Lankan armed forces’ glorious war on terror. There were logs of wood in a corner and people standing like wooden blocks around the dead children, who appeared to be sleeping like logs. I couldn’t figure out where the lifelessness in the picture was - in the wood, in the dead children, or in the standing corpses who knew that this would be their eventual fate - that made the image all the more worse for me. These were orphans.

I eventually would meet the person who captured this image, TamilNet’s wartime correspondent from Vanni, A. Lokeesan. As we conversed, our bonding was instantaneous. After all, it was his image that changed forever the way I see things. His image informed the world the intention of the Sri Lankan state that killed children and called them terrorists. His image spoke to establishments that the Sri Lankan military strategy had the Tamil population as such as its target for assault and not the Tigers alone. “The world knew,” he said “that Chencholai was a prelude to something more horrible. But it didn’t care. Because these were orphans. Like the rest of us.”

Orphans of history.

They cried for themselves. They buried their own dead, burying their innocence and hopes with them. Others rarely cared. After this image, I could no longer read news from mainstream newspapers like before. Words started being interpreted differently. When I encounter disparaging reports on ‘child soldiers’, I ask ‘what do children do when their characteristic trait, innocence, has been brutally snatched away from them?’ When I read ‘suicide bombers’, I wonder ‘what do people do when living is dying and only a self-imposed death gives an iota of meaning to an otherwise senseless existence?’ The worst, then, is not ‘terrorism’ or ‘secession’ as those above, those with power over meaning, want us to believe. “The worst is when people - knowingly or not - carry prison inside themselves” (Nazim Hikmet) A better description of the existential condition of Tamils in unitary Sri Lanka cannot be found.

After Chencholai, words and their meanings started changing.

Words like 'casualty' and 'collateral' gave me images of families killed in air raids. 'Unity', a word loved by the Sri Lankan government, became the image of an army barrack in Jaffna while 'reconciliation' became the image of the soldier who executed naked, bound and blindfolded Tamil prisoners of war.

The antonym of 'death', then, was not 'life', but 'freedom' and 'resistance' was the synonym of 'justice'. ‘Love’ was a flag held high in defiance of a world that seeks to shun it, while ‘faith’ was commitment to the ideals of those who gave their present so that we could inherit the future. And 'Tamil' became not the name of a language or a culture but the political identity of a people seeking their place in the world.

Words gave me ideas in new places, poetry in unexpected corners and prose flowing towards new avenues. Revelations of the higher kind happen, I believe, either with bliss or pain. I found mine in the latter. A revelation that my identity is a weapon and that it fires words.

Words that shall narrate the history of orphans.

Our history.

R.M.Karthick is a research scholar in Political Theory at University of Essex.

Military lingers in Tamil areas years after Sri Lanka's civil war

The war in Sri Lanka is over, but the military still occupies Tamil areas with a heavy hand. Residents say they still live in fear of security forces, and in fear of speaking out.

Every bus traveling north has to stop at the military checkpoint just after Vavuniya. Only men disembark. They know the drill.

Without being asked, they form two orderly columns, present their IDs, spread their legs for a pat-down, and open their bags for soldiers to rifle through. Some field questions about why they are headed toward the territory once controlled by the separatist Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Alternatively heralded as freedom fighters and decried as terrorists, the LTTE fought a 26-year war for Tamil independence against a majority-Sinhalese national government. Three years after the national Army defeated the LTTE in a 2009 offensive that left 40,000 civilians dead, military camps still mark the landscape in the predominantly Tamil north. The Sinhalese-controlled government justifies the militarization by citing national security concerns.

“When you’ve lived under terrorism for 30 years, you’re going to take precautions,” says Malinda Seneviratne, the editor in chief of The Nation, a weekly English newspaper in Sri Lanka.

But many Tamil civilians worry that the increased security is a cover to exert control over the Tamil minority. It’s a claim that, if true, could signal a return to the state-sponsored discrimination that led to war in the first place.

“Given the ethnic divide in Sri Lanka, there is a perception amongst people that the military are there to restrict the rights of the people of the region,” says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo. “There is no chance of violence anytime soon. But if people come out in peaceful protest and violence is used against the population, then the likelihood of the population itself becoming more militant is greater.” 

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The Army tightly controls the region. Civilians have to ask Army permission for everyday activities – from purchasing property to hosting a funeral.

Even nongovernmental organizations must get all projects pre-approved. One man says he can’t go home because the Army is using his family’s land.

“There is no freedom here,” says one Tamil social activist, who asks not to be named for security reasons.

Aid organizations estimate that more than 100,000 are still displaced. And in remote villages where many men are missing or dead, accusations of rape are common.

The military presence also stifles speech. Nobody seems to want to talk to a journalist in public; one man bolts his door before an interview begins, afraid someone will burst in at a sensitive moment. Another man blanches and leaps out of his chair when he sees someone in his front yard twisting to look at his Western guest. The man explains that former LTTE cadres released from government rehabilitation camps are often intimidated into acting as informants.

‘You will be abducted in a white van’

Those who speak out against the Army say they fear reprisal.

Former member of Parliament Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam lists a string of recent assaults and threats against a student leader, two protest organizers, a priest, and the relatives of a dead prisoner.

Will this President fetter the SEC?

Investigations into stock exchange mafia:

August 14, 2012

Public interest activist Nihal Sri Ameresekere has written to the Secretary of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Lalith Weeratunga, joining in the chorus in defence of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka (SEC) and its officials who have come under severe pressure for trying to stamp out illegal market practices in the Colombo Stock Exchange, with the government yet to make public its stance regarding the issue as market manipulators gleefully watch the pendulum swing their way.

Ameresekere’s letter to the President’s Secretary was prompted by attempts made to vilify the SEC and its officials by an influential group of investors who played the stock exchange, as it becomes woefully obvious that the government prefers to pander to the whims and fancies of these investors, which the COPE even called a mafia!, rather than support the SEC.

Ameresekere says the Colombo Stock Exchange is "not of any material significance or a parameter of the country’s economy, since it does not comprise of even a cognizable fraction of the country’s economy and the vast masses. It is more akin to a Casino, patronized by a coterie of affluent, but statutorily regulated".

He also pointed out how a former President did not try to prevent investigations into fraudulent transactions irrespective of who was involved.

"To the credit of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga,..., she did not in any manner, whatsoever, endeavour to stymie the investigations and actions of the PERC (Public Enterprises Reforms Commission) vis-a-vis the privatisations of SLIC (Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation) and the bunkering monopoly LMSL (Lanka Marine Services Ltd), regardless of her associations with the persons involved."

Ameresekere has called on the President’s Secretary to honour the imdependance of the SEC.

The Letter in full:                        Read More...

Sri Lankan American Wins Big In Ann Arbor

Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Sumangala Kailasapathy’s will be one of three new faces soon on the Ann Arbor City Council. A Certified Public Accountant, Kailasapathy ran for the Democratic Party’s nomination against the Democratic Mayor’s big projects (like a proposed railway station and a countywide expansion of public transit services), in favour of services and citizens’ priorities. She received an astounding 57.7% of the vote.
Ann Arbor is home to University of Michigan, a sound example of how state universities can be as good as the private Ivy League universities. It has a Democratic voter-base and winning the nomination is as good as winning a seat in November. Tuesday night saw all her well-wishers including Sri Lankans at a victory party.
Sumi (as she is known) was a student at University of Jaffna representing the best liberal traditions among Tamils and fled terror to transfer to Wellesley College where she earned a degree in economics & political science and to earn a master’s degree thereafter from The New School for Social Research. Kailasapathy has her roots in Sri Lanka’s academe, as the daughter of the late Prof. K. Kailasapathy (Tamil scholar and first President, University of Jaffna) and Sarvam Kailasapathy (formerly Development and Gender Advisor, Canadian International Development Agency). Sumi is also the daughter-in-law of Prof. T. Jogaratnam (Peradeniya Agriculture) and the wife of Giri Jogaratnam, Professor of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Eastern Michigan University. Sumi’s sister Dr. Pavithra Kailasapathy is Head, Department of Human Resources Management of the University of Colombo.

Tamil political prisoners live in -Rajapaksa regime is responsible: Mano Ganesan

danger of getting killed: 

MP Suresh

Holding the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa responsible for the killing of two Tamil political prisoners, Jaffna District Parliamentarian of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Suresh K. Premachandran said that thousands of Tamil political prisoners are increasingly “living in danger of getting killed at any moment”.

“Although it is visibly written in all the prison walls that the prison inmates are also human beings, the Tamil prison inmates are not at all considered human beings. They are sadly living in danger of getting killed at any moment,” MP Premachandran has said in Colombo on the eve of the funeral of the second Tamil prisoner, Dilrukshan Mariyadas of Jaffna.

Dilrukshan’s funeral was held in his home town of Pasaiyoor in Jaffna on Saturday (11) amid tight security. Several political leaders, parliamentarians and human rights activists attended the funeral service held at St. Antony’s Church in Jaffna while the state intelligence operatives kept close watch.

He said that the brutal attack on the group of 30 Tamil political prisoners in Vavuniya and the subsequent death of two of them demonstrate well the plight of thousands of Tamil fellow prison inmates held indefinitely without charges in prisons elsewhere in the country.

Dilrukshan was arrested by the military in October 2009 and held in custody without charges. His elderly parents heard of his whereabouts only after he was admitted to the hospital following the attack on the Vavuniya prison inmates late June this year.

Tight security for the funeral

After being brutally attacked by Sri Lankan Security Force personnel and prison guards, thirty six year old Dilrukshan was lying in coma over a month and succumbed to his injuries on Tuesday, August 7 (August 7).

According to legal sources, efforts by the Jaffna police to secure a court order aiming to prevent the large gathering of public and politicians have been rejected by the Jaffna High Court on Friday.

It was barely a month ago that Dilrukshan’s fellow prison inmate Ganeshan Nimalaruban of Nelukulam in Vavuniya succumbed to his injuries sustained in the same attack on the Tamil prisoners in Vavuniya.

“Nimalaruban and Dilrukshan have been killed while few other fellow inmates are still undergoing treatments with their limbs broken in the attack. It is very unfortunate that the government, the judiciary or the relevant ministry have failed in instituting a free and fair investigation into the attack and subsequent death of these Tamil prisoners,” MP Premachandran said.

Cult of impunity will lead to full-scale dictatorship

He said when he took up the issue of the attack on Tamil prisoners in Vavuniya and Anuradhapura at the Consultative Committee Meeting of the relevant ministry in Parliament on Wednesday (11), “a prison official claiming to carry out investigation into the incident has completely denied the fact that the prisoners were attacked repeatedly in Anuradhapura”.

“These were some of the responses given to us when we took up the issue at the Consultative Committee Meeting. They promised to come up with a report in a week or two and we cannot obviously rely on them,” MP Premachandran told the JDS, adding that these issues should be brought to the attention of the international community and human rights organisations such as Amnesty International.

“Under the prevailing culture of impunity, the military, the government, the President and the Defence Secretary can do anything at their will and get away without being questioned. Allowing such a dangerous situation to prolong further will lead to a full-scale dictatorship in this country,” he said.

Highlighting the need for a sustainable campaign “not only to get the remaining Tamil prison inmates released but also to bring the perpetrators of these murders and crimes before justice”, the Jaffna District MP said that his party is working together with other human rights activists and political leaders such as Mano Ganesan and Dr. Wickramabahu Karunaratne in this regard.

Speaking at the burial site of Dilrukshan on Saturday, several parliamentarians, political party leaders and rights activists have also expressed the similar sentiments and called for mass protest campaigns for the speedy release of the remaining thousands of Tamil prisoners.

Rajapaksa regime is responsible: Mano Ganesan

Commenting on the death of another Tamil prisoner, a leading Colombo-based politician and human rights activist, Mano Ganesan said that Tamil political prisoners Nimalaruban and Dilrukshan faced his death “by way of murder”.

“We hold the government of Sri Lanka responsible for this murder. I state this with all the responsibilities as the leader of the Democratic People’s Front and also as the Convenor of the Civil Monitoring Commission,” he told the JDS in an interview.

He said Dilrukshan was lying in a state of coma and was undergoing treatment at the Ragama hospital with his legs chained to the hospital bed.

“This portrays well how cruel this government is and how cruel this system is against the Tamil political prisoners…..We have seen many white van abductions and extra-judicial killings everywhere in this country, including in Colombo and the government kept saying that the police is conducting investigations. But these murders have taken place within the well-protected prison complex, which is a government entity, and the government cannot come out with such excuses,” he said.

Making a startling revelation, Mano Ganeshan said that a special team was sent from the capital city of Colombo to the northern Vavuniya town with a mission “to mercilessly attack these prisoners engaged in agitation campaign, so that it would be a lesson to all the other Tamil prisoners who are agitating for their early release”.

International community's silence, complicity in crimes  

He said that the members of the international community are equally “responsible for these murders, because the international community during the war unconditionally supported the Sri Lanka’s war machine, against all our requests”.

“They were of the view that peace would return to Sri Lanka once the war is over. Now it has come to light that the government of Sri Lanka has dishonoured the assurances given to the Tamil people while taking the advantage of the international community's reluctance to act”.

“The war victory has given the sense of hope to the government that it can get away with any murder. Even three years after the end of the war, the government still continues killing and murdering Tamil people in this country,” Mano Ganesan said.

© JDS

Heard of a Sinhala Buddhist ‘Khomeini’?

Kusal Perera-13 Aug, 2012

Groundviews

Photo courtesy ahfesl.free.fr
“Our future society will be a free society, and all the elements of oppression, cruelty, and force will be destroyed.” – Ayatollah Khomeini (in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Paris, November 7, 1978)

A few days ago, I received an invitation to be in the audience at the unveiling of a set of policies by the “National Movement for Social Justice” (NMSJ) on 15 August, at the Colombo Public Library, auditorium. The invitation letter began saying, the foremost responsibility today is to work towards social justice, law and order, in a dutiful country. None would disagree. All should agree. Even President Mahinda Rajapaksa says, his government is doing just that.

Here is where the political confusion lies. What social forces would be brought around this “Movement” to back such promises ? The present Rajapaksa regime proves, extremist forces consisting of Sinhala Buddhist political elements and the Sinhala business and trader community that helped prop this government, do not allow such rule of law, social justice and democracy for all. During the past few years, during the war and post war years, this regime has basically numbed social structures that could take dissenting positions and established an authoritarian State, entrenching the Sinhala armed forces in civil life, in satisfying the Sinhala politics that back the regime. The all powerful Executive President has been given the Constitutional right to continue through any number of terms, provided he or she could nudge voters to do what he or she wishes. This whole process was justified by war based Sinhala sentiment and was backed by extremist forces in the regime, the remnant “Left” within the government also adding their two pennies worth, into it.

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Rajapakses yet to learn losing is more honorable than cheating and winning
Tuesday 14 of August 2012
(Lanka-e-News -13.Aug.2012, 11.55PM) Because the Navy rugby team of which Yoshitha Rajapakse , the son of the President is a player lost the match to Kandy sports society rugby team played at Ninthawala playground on the 12th evening , the spectators were fiercely assaulted, as Yoshitha’s team could not accept the defeat honorably.

In fact , the navy police and soldiers of the Navy were dispatched from Colombo to witness the match in order to create pandemonium and attack the players of the Kandy sports team . The Kandy sports society team won by 25 to 20 .

After the victory , the spectators began cheering and applauding the Kandy sports team . The official licensed hooligans of Yoshitha and Namal who could not bear this , had begun intruding into the areas and brutally attacked the spectators who were celebrating the victory of the Kandy sports society team. Consequently three navy soldiers had sustained injuries, reports say.

As usual the police were idle spectators to all this violence inflicted by Yoshitha’s violent prone group.

Earlier on , Yoshitha had described the Kandy rugby players as traitors. Players of Fiji Islands were got down to play for the Navy team after spending colossal amounts of money by the Navy. One such player was, Stefano Kogguniwalu .
Despite such waste of funds and fuss , the Navy team lost in the game played on the 12th.
The son who is also infected by the Medamulana ‘ Maharaja’ megalomania is also characterized by the evil inability to accept defeat in a contest . It is very unfortunate that the Medamulana chief , his brothers and his sons do not know that it is more honorable to lose in a contest than to cheat and win. ( How the Chief wins elections) . It is best in the their own interests and the country if they take a lesson from the participants in the Commonwealth games now in progress in UK telecast by our TV channels, where the sportsmen accept defeat in the same cheerful vein as in victory.

It is well to recall a rugby player died under mysterious circumstances , since this game took a change for the worse after the advent of players who cannot accept defeat honorably .

(Here in pictures one attacker with Namal Rajapaksha and then he attacks the people)

Burning Of Effigies Should Be Banned

By Laksiri Fernando -August 14, 2012

Dr Laksiri Fernando

Another act of extremist ‘political voodoo’ was performed in Colombo on 12 August 2012 by burning the effigies of TNA leader R Sampanthan and ex-Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK leader M Karunanidhi with impunity. No one was so far arrested. The act was performed by an organization called the National Solidarity Organization (NSO) which is supposed to be a collective of Sinhala nationalist organizations, the Patriotic National Movement (PNM) linked to the Rajapaksa government through the National Freedom Front (NFF) of Wimal Weerawansa MP taking a leading role.

There is no question that the NSO or the PNM or the NFF has every right to protest against the Tamil Eealm Solidarity Organization (TESO) or its Conference in Tamil Nadu, peacefully, whatever the objectives of that protest, as they did in front of the Indian High Commission at Thurstan Road, Colombo. What is questionable is the burning of effigies of two living political leaders, one Sri Lankan and the other Indian, belonging to a different ethnic community with drastic implications on relations between the two communities and the two countries. The photo of the event posted on The Island newspaper (13 August 2012) online front page was simply gruesome, the burning of two persons. It was simply not freedom of expression or protest.

This is not the first time that burning of effigy of a political leader or any other has taken place in Sri Lanka or elsewhere. In June this year, the Tamil protesters in London burned several of effigies of President Rajapaksa, again with impunity, when he was attending the Commonwealth Heads of State meetings. In fact, he was prevented from attending some of the events as consequence of these protests. All the burnings of effigies of President were gruesome. That was London or Britain!

In India, however, whenever there were clear attempts to burn effigies of Sri Lankan political leaders either they were prevented and/or the attempters were arrested. Only few incidents escaped the attention of law and order in remote places. The latest event was in June this year when Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) activists attempted to burn an effigy of the Sri Lankan Minister, Champika Ranawaka, protesting against his alleged warning of a backlash against the Tamils in Sri Lanka. As the Indian Express reported, nine VCK activists were arrested and the attempt was foiled in Coimbatore. A previous event was in March when the VCK and the Dalit Panthers of India (DPI) tried to burn the effigies of President Rajapaksa, along with the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where over 125 persons were arrested.

There are countries in the West and in the East where burning of effigies of personages of the past are performed as a religious ritual or in remembrance of historical events, yet all these are mixed with hatred and vengeance. In orthodox Christian countries like Greece or some Catholic countries in Latin America, the effigy of Judas Iscariot is burned on the Easter eve as revenge of Judas and respect for Christ. The protestant communities in England burn the effigy of Guy Fawkes as revenge for his attempt to burn the English Parliament and destroy the protestant kingdom in 1605. Likewise in India, during the Hindu festival of Dussehra, the effigy of Ravana is burned to mark the victory of Lord Rama over Ravana.

The burning of effigies of living people however could be considered differently. For example, in March this year, an effigy of Barak Obama was burned in a local bar in West Alice, Wisconsin, in front of a cheering crowd. Many commentators considered it as a racist act and severely condemned. America has a history of Ku Klux Klan cross burning as a way of intimidation and even threat of death to the minorities or non-whites in society. The burning of effigies of living persons could be equated to witchcraft or voodoo. All these are pre-modern vicious practices that are reinvented even in modern circumstances for revenge taking. People turn to voodoo practices to get even, gain control, torture or even kill their enemies by maiming, dismembering or burning a ‘doll’ as a symbol of the enemy. But in ‘political voodoo,’ an effigy is created in the image of the enemy and similar treatment is performed.

Whether there is an immediate threat or not for a person whose effigy is burnt in ‘political voodoo,’ there can be a clear incitement provoking others to do similar or worse against the enemy or enemies. That is one reason why the burning of the effigy of particularly R Sampanthan should not be taken lightly. If the protests were against the TESO Conference in Tamil Nadu, then Sampanthan or any other TNA leader had not participated. If the act was against Sampanthan’s Batticaloa speech, then it is much worse. The Sinhala extremists must be considering Sampanthan as a permanent enemy like the Tamil extremists in Diaspora considering Mahinda Rajapaksa as a permanent enemy. These are two sides of the same coin and the tensions arising need to be effectively countered.

Whatever the government says about reconciliation, there is obvious ambiguity and clear incitement by certain government aligned sections against minority communities, both Tamils and Muslims. This is what prompted even a government Minister on the Muslim side, Rauff Hakeem, to call the President to defeat ‘Yellow Robe Terrorism.’ Now he has apologised to the Buddhist clergy, after making his point loud and clear. The Dambulla Mosque attack in April was a clear pointer. As this author pointed out previously, the main culprit of this violent attack Inamaluwe Sumangala Thera was a close supporter of the President who accompanied him to Myanmar in July 2009, in the very first overseas visit after winning the war against the LTTE.

Even before four months of this controversial event of Dambulla Mosque attack, early this month the President visited the Rangiri Dambullu Vihara where Sumangala Thera is the chief prelate and had discussions with him. On this issue of communal violence, the President has clearly been on the side of the perpetrators and not with the victims. Dambulla is not the only incident in recent times against particularly Muslim religious sites. There had been over a dozen of incidents this year in the South and the East. Simmering Tamil hatred is portrayed very clearly by the protest conducted by the NSO on 12 August.

It is in this context that at least the burning of effigies should be banned in Sri Lanka. Otherwise not only the trend might escalate but also they could lead to major assaults on the minorities in the country as these events incite people into action. Now it is only effigies, but next it would be real ‘enemies’ like what happened in 1958 and 1983. I still remember as a child the horror story of burning alive the Priest at Panadura Hindu Kovil, next to my village, in 1958.

There is an emerging understanding in many countries that burning of effigies should be banned to prevent violence, and incitement to violence. In July this year, there was a public interest petition filed in the Kerala High Court calling for a state wide banning of the burning of effigies. According to the petitioner, Ajimon Gangadharan from Mulavukad, ‘burning of effigies is an act against humanity and is a barbaric act and reflects the lack of culture of the persons engaging in it.’ A similar public interest petition might be in order in Sri Lanka before the Supreme Court, to arrest the emerging trends of communal violence and to warn the potential perpetrators that incitement of communal violence will not be tolerated.

MONKS MARCH FOR EDUCATION...

August 14, 2012
The Inter University Bhikkhu Federation (IUBF) today held a protest march from near Lake House Roundabout to Colombo Fort Railway Station today (Aug 14). The protestors demands the government to allocate 6% funds from the budget for the education sector, find a solution to the lecturers issue and speedup university students’ enrollment among others. (Pic by Sanjeewa Lasantha)

Largest Customs raid disbanded on a Presidential order

Tuesday, 14 August 2012

The largest raid carried out by the Customs Revenue Task Force (RTF) on the 9th morning at the Katunayake International Airport has been disbanded on a Presidential directive, Customs sources said.

A load of luggage that had arrived in the country in two airplanes from India had been subjected to a check and the persons who have brought down the luggage have vehemently objected to the inspection. A group of persons in a bus had arrived at the airport to assist these people.

It is normal procedure to take the luggage by the RTF to the relevant terminals to carry out a complete check. However, the luggage that had been seized in this instance had not been checked due to pressure from a higher office.

The RTF had carried out the inspection under the supervision of the Customs Director General on a tip off received by the Customs.

The Airport Security, police and air force personnel have intervened to take under control the objections raised against the inspection. In this backdrop, the Civil Aviation Authority head had also intervened and had released the luggage and goods to the businessmen on a Presidential directive.

The Customs officials say that a large haul of narcotics would have been among the luggage that was prevented from being inspected.

There had also been a large amount of goods that should have been taxed among the released goods. Customs officials say that the bus load of people who arrived at the airport from Colombo indicated the political influence in getting a haul of narcotics released.