India, Sri Lanka Ties Hurt by Violence

September 5, 2012

Shown, Sri Lankan tourists visiting India arrived at the Katunayake airport in Colombo, Wednesday.

Tamil nationalists attacked a bus late Tuesday carrying ethnic Sinhalese Sri Lankans who were visiting India, the latest sign of ethnic tensions that could imperil New Delhi’s relationship with Colombo.

About two hundred Sri Lankan tourists were on their way to an airport in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state late Tuesday when a mob led by the regional Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party hurled stones at their buses and smashed several windows, say police authorities. There were no injuries and police escorted the tourists to the airport, from where they returned to Sri Lanka.

The incident comes amid sharp rhetoric in Tamil Nadu against the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka.

Tamil Nadu’s population is mainly ethnic Tamil, a largely Hindu religious group. The mainly Buddhist Sinhalese dominate Sri Lanka, a country that is separated from Tamil Nadu by the narrow Palk Strait.

Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated army fought a brutal 26-year war against the country’s Tamil minority that killed tens of thousands, largely Tamil civilians, before its conclusion in 2009. During that conflict, the Tamil Tiger insurgents often sheltered in Tamil Nadu.

Recent anti-Sinhalese developments in Tamil Nadu show the wounds of the war have not yet healed.

On Sunday, the state’s chief minister, Minister J. Jayalalithaa, who heads a large Tamil nationalist party, caused waves when she cancelled a local soccer tournament involving a visiting Sri Lankan team, claiming that such interactions “humiliated the people of Tamil Nadu.”

Last month, Ms. Jayalalithaa wrote Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to demand the immediate end of Indian military training for Sri Lankan officers.

Mr. Singh’s administration rebuffed that call. But rising anti-Sri Lankan sentiment in Tamil Nadu has caused a headache for the government.

Back in March, New Delhi voted in favor of a U.S.-sponsored resolution at the United Nations that demanded Sri Lanka investigate human rights abuses carried out by its forces at the end of the civil war.

India’s government, which had previously resisted censuring Sri Lanka on its rights record, was forced to back the U.N. resolution due to pressure from a Tamil Nadu-based party that is part of the national governing coalition.

Still, India, which is a large aid donor to Sri Lanka and South Asia’s regional power, does not want to see its relations slide further with Colombo.

On Tuesday, India’s foreign ministry attempted to rein in potential damage from the attacks on the Sri Lankan tourists.

“The government of India, in close consultation with the State governments concerned, has taken and will continue to take all measures to ensure the safety, security and well-being of Sri Lankan dignitaries and visitors to India, including to Tamil Nadu,” foreign ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said in a statement.

Sri Lankan politicians have called on India to stop the violence against its citizens.  The country’s foreign ministry advised Sri Lankans visiting the Indian state to return home “in the interest of their security” and requested others to defer any “visits to Tamil Nadu until further notice.”

Sri Lanka-based political author M.R. Narayan Swamy slammed Ms. Jayalalithaa’s recent actions regarding the visiting soccer team.

“It is one thing for the chief minister to rant against India’s military relations with Sri Lanka. It is insane to tell ordinary Sri Lankans – whatever the ethnicity – that they are not welcome to Tamil Nadu,” Mr. Swamy noted in an IBN 7 opinion column Tuesday.

Indian commentators, too, have taken the chief minister to task for her stance.

A Tuesday editorial in The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, said she had “tarnished the reputation of India as an open and tolerant society,” adding that this could sour diplomatic ties between the neighboring countries

Some political analysts, though, argued in favor of limiting visits by Sri Lankans to Tamil Nadu.

“It’s just been three years since the civil war ended,” noted S. Chandrasekharan, the director of the South Asia Analysis Group, a New Delhi-based think-tank. “Wounds from the war are still fresh and that’s evident from recent cases of violence in the state,” he added.

“It’s better to limit interactions than fuel violent attacks and put at risk the lives of innocent Sri Lankans,” he opined.

Follow India Real Time on Twitter @indiarealtime.

Dinesh Gunawardena becomes Thiru Nadesan’s puppet on strings

Wednesday, 05 September 2012

MEP Leader, Minister Dinesh Gunawardena who portrays himself as a great Sinhala Buddhist leader has become a puppet of well known racketeer businessman Thirukumar Nadesan.

Although Gunawardena is the Minister for Water Resources and Drainage, all tenders related to the National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) is decided by Thiru Nadesan.

Unlike the normal budgetary allocations received by ministries, this respective institution receives millions of dollars of foreign aid for various projects. It is Nadesan who unofficially makes the final decision about the water projects.

Nadesan is a close relative of the Rajapaksa family and is married to the President’s cousin, Deputy Water Resources and Drainage Minister, Nirupama Rajapaksa.

Also, the Deputy Chairman of NWSDB is Nadesan’s lackey, former Provincial Councilor Gamini Gunaratne alias Batta. He is a key stakeholder in Nadesan’s rackets. Batta has been provided with a massive house in Flower Road owned by Nadesan’s mother in-law, Lalitha Rajapaksa to reside and carry out his work with convenience.

Renuka Shanmuganathan also serves as an intermediary in affairs related to the NWSDB. She is Nadesan’s sister. Shanmuganathan hosts parties for senior officials involved in tender transactions, clients and coordinating officials from ministries to push for tenders. Her Rosemead Place residence is used to host these parties and exchange monies related to transactions.

Nadesan is also a close confidante of Minister Basil Rajapaksa. It is Nadesan who carried out Basil’s diplomatic links with the Indian government.

Let’s hope That The South Africa of Nelson Mandela Will ‘Assist’ Us

By Jayadeva Uyangoda -September 4, 2012

Prof.Jayadeva Uyangoda

If we were to count on the repeated denials issued by the Ministry of External Affairs during recent weeks, there would be no South African mediation effort in Sri Lanka to bring about a political settlement to the ethnic conflict. The official statements however suggest that the Sri Lankan government has responded with some caution to the suggestion made by the South African delegation, in the words of the External Affairs Ministry, “to render all assistance to Sri Lanka, drawing upon their own experience and insights” in finding a “durable solution.”

If mediation is not the third-party role that the South Africans can conceivably play in Sri Lanka, what can they actually do by means of peace diplomacy?  Looking at the current context of Sri Lankan politics, one can make the following preliminary points: (a) South Africa would be more acceptable to the Sri Lankan government to play a ‘third party’ role than any country which has previously gotten involved in Sri Lanka’s conflict; (b) If at all, South Africa’s ‘third party role’ would be an exceedingly minimalist one. Words such as ‘mediation,’ ‘facilitation,’ ‘devolution,’ and ‘thirteenth amendment’ would be suspended from the vocabulary of engagement. Such innocuous formulations as “providing assistance” or “helping the parties,” reflects the language acceptable to the government leaders.

What minimalist, and yet productive, role is there for South Africa to play in Sri Lanka, in the form of ‘providing assistance’? In the current conjuncture of Sri Lanka’s politics, assisting both the government and the TNA to review their present stance of positional bargaining and to return to the negotiation table would be a huge contribution a ‘third’ party’ can make. Their return to dialogue is necessary, because the positional polarization between the UPFA government and the TNA has prevented the activation of the proposedParliamentary Select Committee (PSC). Even if the TNA joins the PSC, all indications are that the two sides will enter into a zero-sum fight and discover only deep differences and points of discord, not joint solutions that can be shared. Thus, returning to dialogue after revising the commitment to positional bargaining is the best thing the two sides should be persuaded to accomplish in the short-run.

Positional Polarization                             Read More

Tamils pay the cost of political expediency

September 5, 2012

Damien Kingsbury

Amnesty International has highlighted human rights abuses in Sri Lanka under the regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Photo: Claire Martin

The treatment of Sri Lankan asylum seekers shows that further punishing victims is deemed acceptable if it can score domestic political points.

At a time of bipartisan support for renewing the Pacific Solution, it is deeply disturbing to see the asylum seeker issue taking a turn for the more extreme. In a world of dog-whistle politics, it appears that further punishing victims is acceptable if it can score domestic political points.

Despite the opposition’s success in the government adopting its Pacific Solution, Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop’s call to return Sri Lankan asylum seekers to Sri Lanka without processing their claims reduces policy debate to moral abandonment. Backing her, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has displayed either ignorance or denial of the facts on the ground in Sri Lanka and Australia’s legal obligations.

Ms Bishop’s claims that most Sri Lankan asylum seekers are economic refugees and many pose a security risk are untested. Her claims also assume it is possible to divorce material need from fears for personal safety, while adopting the ‘‘security’’ view from one side of a conflict in which all parties behaved viciously.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/tamils-pay-the-cost-of-political-expediency-20120904-25c0j.html#ixzz25awbIJ8c

Two Hungry Nations Collide Over Fishing

By JIM YARDLEY-September 4, 2012
Embarking from Vellapallam, India. “This is risky work,” one fisherman said. “But we don’t have any other skills. We are illiterate. We are poor.”
VELLAPALLAM, India — Drifting on the strait between India and Sri Lanka, an Indian fisherman named Sakthivel cowered in his boat. A Sri Lankan naval officer, who took the man’s photograph, delivered a warning: If we find you in Sri Lankan waters again, you will never leave.

Returning to this Indian fishing village, Sakthivel quickly sold his boat and swore off fishing. He told friends that he was too frightened to return to the sea. But, uneducated and jobless, he knew only fishing. Then his first child was born. So he borrowed money, bought a new boat and again set out toward Sri Lanka, and never returned. He has been missing for almost a year.

“Now my husband is gone,” said his wife, Maheshwari, 21, who like most people in this village uses a single name. “How can I manage?”

At the bottom of the Indian subcontinent, a fishing war is straining relations between India and Sri Lanka as Indian fishermen, often poor and desperate, regularly cross into Sri Lankan waters and run afoul of the Sri Lankan Navy. Figures differ, but according to one report at least 100 Indian fishermen have been killed and 350 seriously injured in recent years — another example of the volatility of maritime issues in Asia.

The dispute is rooted in a complicated blend of local factors: the steady depletion of fish stocks, partly because of overfishing by Indian trawlers; the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, which saw relief funds partly used to expand the Indian fishing fleet even as fish populations declined; and the end of the long Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, which has meant the return of the nation’s fishing boats to waters once plied almost exclusively by Indians.

Full Story>>>

Janitha taken to Rivira on a Presidential directive

Wednesday, 05 September 2012

The President has ordered the head of the Presidential Staff, Gamini Senarath to employ journalist Janitha Seneviratne to the Rivira Media Corporation.

The President has issued the directive to Senarath in front of several senior journalists at a ceremony at the Mount Lavinia Hotel on Sunday (2).

Pandith Dr. Amaradeva was invited as the Chief Guest at the event, Ape Kema, organized by internationally renowned Chef, Dr. Pubilis at the Mt. Lavinia Hotel. The President who was attending another function at the hotel had visited the Ape Kema event to congratulate Amaradeva and Pubilis.

A large number of journalists had also attended this event. The President had inquired about the Rivira and Mawbima newspapers from the journalists and had asked about journalist Janitha Seneviratne, who was sacked by the Mawbima newspaper.

Senarath had told the President that a senior official at Rivira had objected to take Janitha to the newspaper.

The President however has firmly ordered that the CEO of Rivira Media Corporation, Gairuka Perusinghe be asked to employ Janitha regardless of objections raised by others.

UN Corruption Files Sri Lanka: Can The UN Getaway With A Fraud Of Over US $ 1.5 Million?

By Colombo Telegraph -

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general

In July 2012, Colombo Telegraph exposed how a leaked UN email suggests that UN money went to LTTE. Another leaked UN email suggests that the FAO Representative, Patrick Evans and the Assistant FAO Representative (Administration), Dihan Hettige was fully aware of the LTTE connections in this US $ 1.5 million fraud.

The FAO in Sri Lanka purchased project deliveries for the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka to a value exceeding US$ 1.5 million from three ‘Ghost’ companies Dev Traders, A. F. Associates and YCO Farm. These ‘Ghost’ companies could not be found at their given registered addresses. Two FAO staff members Niranjala Gunaraj, Finance Assistant and Thevarajah Vaigunthan, National Project Officer both attached to the FAO Emergency Unit collected the payments on behalf of these three companies.

Read More

Whither Education?

September 4, 2012 

By Sanjana Hattotuwa - September 4, 2012

Sanjana Hattotuwa

The Economist has already run two key stories on the on-going FUTAagitation – a sign of how much the world is focussing in on Sri Lanka’s unprecedented debacle of education.

Lest we forget, Universities in Sri Lanka remain closed, the entry of students to tertiary education is in an unholy mess, we have done away with basic IT literacy and English training for undergraduate entrants, the conduct of 5^th year scholarship exam is mired in controversy and the subject of an active CID investigation. This invariably means that results of the exam will also be contested. The marking of recently conducted Advanced Level answer scripts has been indefinitely postponed. Down the line, this will add to the existing maelstrom over University admission. Media reports suggest the questions in the Advanced Level Buddhist Culture paper had leaked out before the exam commenced and that several question papers in the school term tests for Grade 10 and 11 in the Gampaha Education Zone were leaked in July. In addition to all this, Transparency International and other civil society groups have repeatedly flagged with damning islandwide research significant corruption around Year One school admissions. Around the time when parents hunt for schools to enrol their children, there is invariably a flurry of media reports around the frustration, favouritism, fraud and fear that governs the process, and how even in comparison to the year before, it’s got significantly worse.

At five critical junctures in Sri Lanka’s current education system – primary school admission, the Grade Five scholarship, Ordinary Level exam, Advanced Level exam and University Admission – the system has completely imploded, with no immediate relief or remedy in sight. And all the government literally has to say is that all this is a vast conspiracy to tarnish its name.

The immediate chaos around this madness is evident – there are water canons blasted on students in Colombo, there are thousands of teachers on the streets and there are parents protesting outside theUniversity Grants Commission. The lasting, longer-term effects of all this is harder to accurately predict. At a time when our President in Iran is touting Sri Lanka as a model for others to emulate, the irony is that within the country, this imagined model is unravelling apace. The government has repeatedly said it is working towards making Sri Lanka a ‘Knowledge Hub’ for the region. This is quite simply not going to happen. Given the scale of the crisis, what we are looking at is an unprecedented challenge of civil unrest fuelled by disadvantaged and demoralised youth. Youth who have nothing to lose. One disturbing future scenario is a return to the violence of the late-80’s. While this could be convenient over the short-term for those interested in regime change, with FUTA’s struggle supported not only for its own significant merits, but as a powerful vehicle for a larger political change in the near term, the greater danger is that this unrest and systemic breakdown is already a foundation for the violence collapse of democratic governance and the rule of law years hence. Use a flawed, failing system for parochial gain, and one risks enduring political, economic and social chaos no matter who is in power. Address the flaws within the system, which will take a longer time, greater investment and sustained agitation, and those in power will be utterly powerless to stop change.

Towards this, and in addition to the core issues driving FUTA’s on-going agitation, perhaps we need to revisit and revise Kannangara’s submissions for educational reform in ’43. He stressed the value of addressing the emotional well-being of students and the importance of teaching English, in addition to Tamil and Sinhala. There is enduring value in these tenets. Today we can add to his central vision the value of teaching (new) media literacy from secondary school upwards, and for those currently eligible for or enrolled in tertiary education and vocational training, basic ICT skills.

Yet the government seems to think what is essentially a total breakdown in our education system is a temporary glitch in Sri Lanka’s pristine post-war perfection that it can tide over with liberal servings of water cannon and empty promises.

It is wrong. It is very wrong.

Sajanana’s blog ; http://sanjanah.wordpress.com/

In conversation with Chandraguptha Thenuwara: Art, politics and education in Sri Lanka

In conversation with Chandraguptha Thenuwara: Art, politics and education in Sri Lanka

Groundviews

Chandragupta Thenuwara is one of Sri Lanka’s best known artists. As noted online, he is the director of the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts in Colombo, a not-for-profit art school which he founded in 1993 as an independent alternative to state-run art institutions, with the aim of teaching young and marginalied artists the basic tenets of fine art practice under the instruction of practicing artists.

In this programme we start by discussing the enduring ethnic divides and identity politics in Sri Lanka through the frame of Thenuwara’s son, and his naming. We use this as an entry point a discussion about the artist’s own identity and how it developed, growing up as he did in the East of Sri Lanka, having being born in the South and after his studies, returning to live in Colombo.

Thenuwara’s speaks about his father’s early influence in becoming an artist, and how even from a very modest household, he always had the opportunity to draw and paint as a child. He also makes the point that his father was, as a government servant and teacher, involved in politics, a trait which we half-jokingly note was clearly passed down to son.

Interview – Chandraguptha Thenuwara from Young Asia Television on Vimeo.

Looking at Thenuwara’s work in the 90s, and juxtaposing his iconic Barrelism with the barbed wire that features so prominently in his art today, we discuss whether to him as an artist, barbed wire is to Sri Lanka today, what barrels symbolised in the 90s. Thenuwara talks about a society framed today by barbed wire, how space today is demarcated and defined with the use of barbed wire and the violence embedded into this.

We then talk about the politics of remembering, and why for Thenuwara the anti-Tamil pogrom and violence of July 1983 as well as the violence inherent in beautifying Colombo by erasing all markers of a violent past is so important, when government and country writ large may want to forget, and move on. Thenuwara speaks about the importance of memory, and of recording for posterity the violence that is part of Colombo’s, and Sri Lanka’s socio-political fabric. In this context, we also talk about the recent obliteration of Road Painting Commemorating Neelan Tiruchelvam on Kynsey Road, which in fact, Thenuwara painted.

We talk about Thenuwara’s association with, and by extension, approach to art as part of the No Order group, which when it released its manifesto in August 1999 suggested that art was rooted in a specific context, and that it was both a felt experience as well as an intellectual experience. Thenuwara explains this further, and also how he approaches the creation of art. We use this to explore whether as an artist, Thenuwara has sensed, since 1999, any shift in the way audiences perceive his art, and art as a political construct.

This then leads to a discussion about Thenuwara’s politics, and how it is inextricably entwined with his art, and his life as an artist. In particular, we talk about the issue the t-shirt he sports during the interview clearly flags – the on-going struggle by FUTA around increasing Sri Lanka’s spending on public, and in particular, tertiary education. We talk about whether FUTA’s struggle, and his support towards it as an artist, really has any wider social and political traction, and why the issue is so fundamentally important for the future of education in our country.

We end by talking about how difficult it is to be an activist, teacher and artist combined, and why Thenuwara – who is in fact all three – thinks it is his duty to do and say what he does.

Bishop Desmond Tutu Wants George Bush Prosecuted for the Iraq War

Tutu has been a fighter for human rights for decades and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Bishop Desmond Tutu

(WASHINGTON DC) - The Bishop Desmond Tutu made international headlines this week by stating in no uncertain terms that former President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be held legally accountable for what they did during the war in Iraq.

In an Op-Ed for “The Observer” newspaper, Tutu says that both men and several high-ranking commanders should be brought before an International Court for their war crimes.

Tutu says that the men behaved like “playground bullies,” and that they falsified information to justify their invasion of the country.

“The immorality of the United States and Great Britain’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history,” wrote Tutu.

“In a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.”

Tutu talked about the immense damage that was done during the war, financial and otherwise. He mentioned that 110,000 Iraqis died, and millions lost their homes.

He also recognized 4,500 US soldiers who died, and another 32,000 wounded.

“But even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world,” he wrote.

“If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?”

Tony Blair responded to Tutu’s remarks on his website:

“I have a great respect for Archbishop Tutu’s fight against apartheid — where we were on the same side of the argument — but to repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown,” said Blair.

Blair then goes on to say that Iraq is better off since the war, with a lower infant mortality rate and stronger economy. He also calls for the two to “agree to disagree.”

Activist groups have been calling for a citizen’s arrest of Blair for his actions during the war. Tutu has been a fighter for human rights for decades and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Ironically, President Barack Obama won the prize in 2009, but has refused to press for charges against former President Bush.

Special thanks to Kulture Kritic and Your Black World

First published here: http://www.kulturekritic.com/2012/09/news/bishop-desmond-tutu-wants-george-bush-prosecuted-for-the-iraq-war/#

Response To Nimalka: Can A Monk Be Secular And Non Sinhala?” Of Course He Can

By Kumar David -

Abolishing the Executive Presidency

“Single-Issue” challenge and challengers

Prof. Kumar David

The debate on a single-issue challenge to incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse at the next opportunity and identifying the most suitable challenger has picked up steam in recent weeks. I mooted the idea in Colombo Telegraph (“Can Sobitha pull off victory where Fonseka flunked?”) on 26 August.

There has been a plethora of comment and criticism, but unfortunately much that appeared on the web has been personal abuse, however a few are worth consideration. The best response has been from Nimalka Fernando who has made a reasoned and sustained rejection of my proposal. See Response To Kumar David: Can A Buddhist Monk Be Secular And Non Sinhala?

I think Nimalka is quite wrong on all the major points, nevertheless I am grateful she raised so many and provided me with an opportunity for rebuttal. Indeed people are mulling over issues in these early days and it is right to take up and debate every aspect. This is a response to Nimalka and note to a “Loka Vikalavaye” who commented on the web below Nimalka’s piece. Let me first dispose of LV who accepts the single-issue concept but proposes that correcting the foreign policy stance from excessive alignment with China to a friendly orientation to the West should be the issue. Foreign policy course correction is desirable, but it will not mobilise as broad a base as a call to abolish the Executive Presidency (EP). The horrible consequences of the EP and the degeneration it has brought into society are a far more serious concern than foreign policy.

The fundamental issue                                                               Read More

Now, Sri Lankan pilgrims under pressure to leave

S. VIJAY KUMAR-September 4, 2012
Sri Lankan school students who had come to play football matches left the country with the assistance of the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission, Chennai police sources said on Monday. File photo

A day after two batches of Sri Lankan students who were here on invitation to play football matches left India in three different flights on Sunday, tension prevailed in Thanjavur district where 200 Sri Lankans arrived to participate in a religious event.

Members of the Naam Tamizhar Iyakkam raised slogans protesting the visit of the Sri Lankan nationals and demanded that they be sent back immediately, police sources said.

Worried about the development, one of the pilgrims made frantic calls to officials, including the Foreign Secretary of India.

Top police and revenue officials intervened and held talks with both groups. “No decision has been taken yet on sending them (the Sri Lankan nationals) back to their country. As of now, adequate security arrangements have been made to ensure their safety. They had come to participate in a church festival,” a senior police official said.

Meanwhile, Chennai police sources said Sri Lankan school students who had come to play football matches advanced their return tickets and left the country with the assistance of the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission authorities.

Hours after Chief Minister Jayalalithaa ordered that the Sri Lankan students be sent back, police got in touch with the teams and persuaded them to leave, the sources said.

The first team of 11 students arrived in Chennai on August 30 and played a friendly match with a Customs team. While they waited to play the next match, another team of 19 students landed early on Sunday. They were scheduled to play a match with a private school team here.

“In order to ensure their safety, we escorted them to the airport. In the last one week, there were two incidents of protests against the visit of Sri Lankan students. Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam workers staged a demonstration against the visit of a Sri Lankan school cricket team to a school in Yercaud. Similarly, a protest was organised to oppose another group participating in a cultural programme in a Tiruchi college,” a police officer said.

INCIDENTS UNFORTUNATE

The Deputy High Commissioner for Sri Lanka in Southern India R.K.M.A. Rajakaruna termed the incidents unfortunate. “The students were here on invitation…it was a goodwill visit and they had their return tickets. The visit was not in connection with any Government programme but based on people-to-people contact. It is very unfortunate that these incidents are happening here,” he told The Hindu.

Mr. Rajakaruna said a special request was made to Sri Lankan Airlines to fly the players to Colombo.

We’re One Crucial Step Closer To Seeing Tony Blair At The Hague

By George Monbiot -September 4, 2012 

George Monbiot

Desmond Tutu has helped us see the true nature of what the former prime minister did to Iraq and increased pressure for a prosecution

For years it seems impregnable, then suddenly the citadel collapses. An ideology, a fact, a regime appears fixed, unshakeable, almost geological. Then an inch of mortar falls, and the stonework begins to slide. Something of this kind happened over the weekend.

When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to The Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done. Tutu broke the protocol of power – the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another – and named his crime. I expect that Blair will never recover from it.

The offence is known by two names in international law: the crime of aggression and a crime against peace. It is defined by the Nuremberg principles as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. This means a war fought for a purpose other than self-defence: in other words outwith articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter.

That the invasion of Iraq falls into this category looks indisputable. Blair’s cabinet ministers knew it, and told him so. His attorney general warned that there were just three ways in which it could be legally justified: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UN security council authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.” Blair tried and failed to obtain the third.

His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that for the war to be legal, “i) there must be an armed attack upon a state or such an attack must be imminent; ii) the use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) the acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack.” None of these conditions were met. The Cabinet Office told him: “A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers’ advice, none currently exists.”

Without legal justification, the attack on Iraq was an act of mass murder. It caused the deaths of between 100,000 and a million people, and ranks among the greatest crimes the world has ever seen. That Blair and his ministers still saunter among us, gathering money wherever they go, is a withering indictment of a one-sided system of international justice: a system whose hypocrisies Tutu has exposed.

Blair’s diminishing band of apologists cling to two desperate justifications. The first is that the war was automatically authorised by a prior UN resolution, 1441. But when it was discussed in the security council, both the American and British ambassadors insisted that 1441 did not authorise the use of force. The UK representative stated that “there is no ‘automaticity’ in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the council for discussion as required in paragraph 12.” Two months later, in January 2003, the attorney general reminded Blair that “resolution 1441 does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council“.

Yet when Blair ran out of options, he and his lieutenants began arguing that 1441 authorised their war. They are still at it: on Sunday, Lord Falconer tried it out on Radio 4. Perhaps he had forgotten that it has been thoroughly discredited.

The second justification, attempted again by Blair this weekend, is that there was a moral case for invading Iraq. Yes, there was one. There was also a moral case for not invading Iraq, and this case was stronger.

But a moral case (and who has launched an aggressive war in modern times without claiming to possess one?) does not provide a legal basis. Nor was it the motivation for the attack. In September 2000, before they took office, a project run by future members of the Bush administration – including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – produced a report which said the following: “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” Their purpose, they revealed, was “maintaining American military pre-eminence”. The motivation for deposing Saddam Hussein was no more moral than the motivation for arming and funding him, two decades before.

But while the case against Blair is strong, the means are weak. Twenty-nine people have been indicted in the international criminal court, and all of them are African. (Suspects in the Balkans have been indicted by a different tribunal). There’s a reason for this. Until 2018 at the earliest, the court can prosecute crimes committed during the course of an illegal war, but not the crime of launching that war.

Should we be surprised? Though the Nuremberg tribunal described aggression as “the supreme international crime”, several powerful states guiltily resisted its adoption. At length, in 2010, they agreed that the court would have jurisdiction over aggression, but not until 2018 or thereafter. Though the offence has been recognised in international law for 67 years, the international criminal court (unlike the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals, which hear cases from before they were established) will be able to try only crimes of aggression committed beyond that date.

The other possibility is a prosecution in one of the states (there are at least 25) which have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws. Perhaps Blair’s lawyers are now working through the list and cancelling a few speaking gigs.

That the prospect of prosecution currently looks remote makes it all the more important that the crime is not forgotten. To this end, in 2010 I set up a bounty fund – www.arrestblair.org – to promote peaceful citizens’ arrests of the former prime minister. People contribute to the fund, a quarter of which is paid out to anyone who makes an attempt which meets the rules. With our fourth payment last week, we’ve now disbursed more than £10,000. Our aim is the same as Tutu’s: to de-normalise an act of mass murder, to keep it in the public mind and to maintain the pressure for a prosecution.

That looked, until this weekend, like an almost impossible prospect. But when the masonry begins to crack, impossible hopes can become first plausible, then inexorable. Blair will now find himself shut out of places where he was once welcome. One day he may find himself shut in.

Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot

A fully referenced version of this article is available at www.monbiot.com Courtesy the Guardian.

Bounty Paid for Blair Arrest Attempt