Tamils demand international probe after Sri Lanka war report

Tamils demand international probe after Sri Lanka war report (file photo)

Saturday, 17 Nov, 2012 

A major Tamil opposition party in Sri Lanka called on Thursday for an international investigation after a U.N. report criticized the international body's own failure to protect civilians in the final phase of a brutal war in 2009.

 The moderate Tamil National Alliance said the report published by the UN secretary general's office confirmed its longstanding allegations of widespread killing and incarceration of civilians.

"Now that the UN has come (out) with this report we want action," party spokesman M. A. Sumanthiran told ."There should be an international inquiry. The government as the main accused party cannot be involved in the investigation."

Sri Lanka has resisted previous calls for an independent probe and instead appointed a domestic commission to recommend measures to prevent the country slipping back into ethnic war.

"We would like to see reparations, restitution and justice for the people who suffered," Sumanthiran said. "No one can say that these allegations should not be investigated."

Ban acknowledges failure of UN system
 

UN chief Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the failure of the UN system in meeting its responsibilities to respond to the human rights violations in Sri Lanka's bloody civil war after a panel set up by him criticised the world body for its "grave failure" in handling
the situation during the final stages of the conflict.

"The United Nations system failed to meet its responsibilities," Ban said after he released a United Nations report on accountability issues stemming from the final months of the 2009 war in Sri Lanka.
   

The report was produced by a panel of experts,established by the UN chief in 2010 to advise him on measures to advance accountability following the war's conclusion, and after an agreement with Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In completing its eight-month study, the panel reviewed about 7,000 documents, including internal UN exchanges with the government of Sri Lanka.Sri Lankan government forces declared victory over the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009,after a conflict that had raged on and off for nearly three decades and killed thousands of people.

The final months of the conflict had generated concerns about alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. The report by UN official Charles Petrie was particularly critical of the Security Council's inaction in responding to the crisis.

"In particular, the Security Council was deeply ambivalent about even placing on its agenda a situation that was not already the subject of a UN peacekeeping or political mandate; while at the same time no other UN Member State mechanism had the prerogative to provide the political response needed, leaving Sri Lanka in a vacuum of  inaction,"it said.
  

The report added that UN action in Sri Lanka was not framed by member state political support."In the absence of clear Security Council backing, the UN's actions lacked adequate purpose and direction. Member States failed to provide the Secretariat and UN Country Team with the support required to fully implement the responsibilities for protection of civilians that Member States had themselves set for such situations."

At UN, Staff Complain of Malcorra Banning Speaking with Member States

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, November 16 -- While the UN of late has claimed to trump its failures such as in Sri Lanka with a burst of transparency, behind the scene it is ordering its staff members not to talk with member states, much less the media.

   Inner City Press has received multiple copies of and complaints about an October 22, 2012 letter from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's chef de cabinet Susana Malcorra to staff, stating

"with reference to your statement that you will bring certain internal issues to the attention of Member States, I would draw your attention to staff regulation 1.2 (i) and staff rule 1.2 (i), which address relevant obligations which apply to all staff members."

  Staff took -- not twisted -- this as a threat that they could not raise concerns the the member states which ultimately "own" the United Nations.

  Would such silencing extend as far as to killings staff witnessed in the field, but higher-ups in the UN did not want to report, as the recent Sri Lanka report, especially as unredacted, reflects?

  Inner City Press has obtained, and is publishing, staff's response to Ms. Malcorra "threat," here. The staff also reference a request for investigation that they have filed, the first two pages of which Inner City Press is exclusively putting online here.

  In fairness, Ms. Malcorra is hardworking administrator, and defender of the Ban Ki-moon administration. But this can go too far. In the course of supposedly championing the report into the UN's failures in Sri Lanka, Malcorra on November 15 when asked by the Press about the redactions to the Sri Lanka report said

"The Secretary-General felt, and I fully share his view, that there was nothing that will change the transparency to show the report if we took out those aspects that have a clear relation to documents of internal use that were fully available to the Panel, which only indicate how open and available every single person and every single document was, but didn’t necessarily add any value, but also put the Organization at risk by sharing publicly in such a short term internal documents."

But the redactions include blacking out not only then USG John Holmes urging that the term "war crimes" not be used, but also Ban Ki-moon's own quote that "Government should be given the political space to develop a domestic mechanism" of accountability. 

   It seems strange to argue that Ban blacked out his own comments in order to not chill his own future deliberation.

   When Inner City Press questioned this redaction, even under the rationale Ms. Malcorra has presented, she responded, "So why do you always twist things in a manner that doesn’t recognize the huge, huge attempt to make sure that all the available information was ready to be reviewed by the panel, and you just twist that in a manner that only makes the point that we are trying to protect ourselves. It’s just really something that disturbs me profoundly."

   Asking why information is being withheld, or staff is being told not to speak to member states, is a journalist's job. It can be done without rancor on either side. Watch this site.

China to Launch Satellite for Sri Lanka: India’s Missed Opportunity?

IDSA COMMENT

Ajey Lele

November 16, 2012

Sri Lanka's first communication satellite is expected to be launched on November 22, 2012 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in China. This geostationary satellite would get operational by mid-2013 for commercial purposes. The satellite is partly owned by a private company, Sri Lanka's first Satellite Company called SupremeSAT. The cost of the project is expected to be around US$ 360 million. According to the Chairman of the company, the project is a joint venture with two Chinese companies, China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC) and Sino Satellite Communications Company Ltd. The project also includes the construction of a satellite Content Management Station and a Space Academy at Kandy.

CGWIC is China's State-owned company and is assisting SupremeSAT (Pvt) Ltd with regard to design, manufacturing and launching of the satellite. The Sri Lankan company also has plans to launch a fully owned satellite in December 2015. In August 2012 the foundation stone for the proposed Space Academy of SupremeSAT was laid at Kandy by China’s Vice Minister of Industries and Information Technology. The academy is expected to promote space science within Sri Lanka. A Satellite Ground Station would also be part of this Academy, which would train scientists to handle communication satellite operations. It appears that Sri Lanka has a great space vision for the future and even proposes to undertake training astronauts in its academy.

With the launch of the communication satellite, SupremeSAT would become the 27th private company in the world to own a satellite. Interestingly, the company has already started negotiating with the Maldives and Afghanistan to build satellites for them.

Sri Lanka has been toying with an idea of launching a satellite for the last few years. In 2009, the Sri Lanka Space Agency (SLASA) had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), a British company. As per this MoU, SSTL would launch an Earth Observation satellite for Sri Lanka and is also expected to help in designing Sri Lanka’s communications satellite. However, not much is known about this project presently, and may be the agreement no longer holds good. Is the British company’s loss China’s state-owned CGWIC’s gain?

China’s engagement with Sri Lanka in the area of space technology is along expected lines. It is obvious that the deal is actually a result of their strong bilateral relationship. At the same time it is also important to note that space technologies have acquired a special status in China’s geopolitical stratagem. China is not only using this expertise to cement existing bilateral associations but also as a tool for fresh engagements. China has been found using its expertise in space technologies as a tool of diplomacy both for economic and strategic gains. It is also keen to expand its market share while at the same not making commerce the sole purpose of its external investments. China is choosing its partners in the space arena very carefully, fully mindful of the geostrategic advantages such investments offer. It is helping states in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia to develop their space programmes. The oil and mineral resources factor is also obvious in such investments. Moreover, some states are being engaged with the hidden motive of winning over the supporters of Taiwan to the Chinese side.

China’s engagement with Sri Lankan signifies the inroads it is making into the South Asian region via space diplomacy. The region is home to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka—a group of mainly poor but strategically important states from China’s point of view. It is an irony that the only ‘developed state’ in this grouping, India, which is also a credible space power, has allowed China to use space diplomacy in the region effectively. Sri Lanka is not the first country in the region that China is assisting in the space arena. In August 2011, China had launched a communications satellite for Pakistan as well. Now, using the Sri Lankan example, China is reaching out to Afghanistan and Maldives too.

Why are various countries looking towards China for assistance in building and launching satellites? In general, China has been using its global position, economic strength and technological attainments astutely including in the space arena to attract developing states. In certain cases China has been found funding the space programmes of some states or providing them with long term loans along with technical assistance. Communication satellites appear to be the key requirement of developing states and China is able to help them in this regard.

India still does not possess the expertise to launch satellites in the category of three tons or more and hence is unable to help developing countries launch communication satellites. However, there are very many other areas where India could offer assistance to its South Asian neighbours as well as other countries, such as developing the ground infrastructure, training, designing and launching small satellites and remote sensing satellites, etc. Bangladesh has also signed an agreement with a US-based company to launch its first satellite and this satellite is expected to be launched by 2015.

Till date India has launched 29 satellites for other countries either under commercial terms or otherwise. What is required is for India to become more proactive in this field and exploit its space proficiency to gain diplomatic advantage. Probably, hitherto, India had never thought of using space as an instrument of ‘influence’, but this needs to change. However, this is not likely to happen swiftly. India faces one major technological limitation and also probably lacks policy initiatives. There is a requirement to change the current mindset. The technological challenge is that India is yet to master the art of developing cryogenic engines which, in turn, would allow it to launch heavy satellites into geostationary orbits. For launch of satellites in other categories, even though India has a reliable launcher in the form of the PSLV, it still lacks the required infrastructure to undertake quick launches. While China can manage more than 20 rocket launches in one year, India manages hardly one or two launches per year; this needs to change. Growth in the private sector is a must for any budding space programme and this is one critical area where India needs to cover much ground.

India has much to learn from China with regard to using space as an ‘instrument of influence’ and also needs to expand the global footprint of its expertise. It is important to appreciate that the business model of space should involve policy initiatives that extend benefits beyond the commercial arena. Space technology is akin to nuclear technology and allows state to use it for the purpose of diplomatic advantage. Technology in general and space technology in particular could be viewed as one of the important drivers for maintaining the global strategic balance. It is therefore important that India begins to use its space proficiency shrewdly to raise its international stature instead of getting trapped into academic arguments such as a space race with China!

References

1. http://www.colombopage.com/archive_12A/Oct18_1350536099CH.php, accessed on October 25, 2012.
2. http://www.supremesat.com/news_events.php, accessed on November 14, 2012.
3. Nalaka Gunawardene, “Sri Lanka's satellite: Lost in space?”, June 13, 2010,http://www.sundaytimes.lk/100613/BusinessTimes/bt10.html, accessed on November 14, 2012.

UN Has A Second Chance To Right Wrongs On Sri Lanka

By Gordon Weiss -November 16, 2012

Gordon Weiss

There is little doubt that in 2009 the government of Sri Lanka pulled off one of the nastiest episodes of mass killing since the Rwandan genocide – and got away with it. Tens of thousands of civilians were massacred, with barely a trickle of Syria-like imagery emerging from the battle zone.

In a new report released in New York, the UN has shouldered its portion of responsibility for this bloody catastrophe. It is a heavy burden indeed.

The Petrie Report predicates its scouring of the UN’s role on a vast and intricate web of evidence pointing to crimes committed by both government and Tamil Tiger forces. Of the two, government forces bear the greater culpability.

Despite a clear advantage over the near-vanquished rebels, the army bombed packed hospitals, used starvation tactics, executed civilian captives, raped and killed female guerillas and corralled women and children into “safe zones” before shelling them. When that was done, it interrogated and then killed the Tamil Tiger political and military leadership, along with their families.

The UN’s investigators conclude that the UN system faltered just when it was most needed, from the field level up to the powerful Security Council, where Australia is now taking a seat.

While many UN staff acted bravely and dutifully, other key staff forgot their first responsibility, the protection of life. Instead, according to the report, they favoured bureaucratic stratagems, trading off civilian lives against misconceived priorities. While the Sri Lankan government successfully shrouded the kill zone from the prying eyes of the international press, UN dissembling obscured it further.

For its part, the UN Security Council studiously ignored the warning signs so obvious in a civil war. Syria, now in the glare of international scrutiny as a result of media coverage, is a useful direct comparison.

In Sri Lanka in 2009, with a battlefield blacked out by the government, the gathering massacres were out of sight, and thus more easily kept out of mind. While the council has met dozens of times over the Syria crisis, and has sent in observers, in 2009 it failed to officially meet even once on Sri Lanka. It refused to consider the issue despite solid indications from UN personnel, diplomatic missions, satellite images and individual member states that something awful was unfolding. Did Sri Lanka read this as a nod to go ahead, whatever the cost?

For its part, the UN Secretariat failed on two fronts. First, as the Petrie report tells it, the Secretary-General’s team recoiled from telling the Security Council in stark terms what it didn’t want to hear. Then, as UN staff buckled under intimidation and threats from Sri Lanka’s government, the UN Secretariat withheld the kind of support its staff needed to push back.

When Australian UN humanitarian worker James Elder warned that children were being killed, a government official accused him of supporting terrorists. The government expelled Elder. That government official, Palitha Kohona, is now Sri Lanka’s representative at the UN. His deputy is a former general accused of mass killing.

For UN loyalists, the report pulls no punches, and is uncomfortable reading. It will almost certainly lead to reform, despite the cynics who believe that the UN is merely a talk-fest.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is making good on his commitment to full accountability in his realm. The fact that the report was written by insiders (Charles Petrie, a former UN diplomat, was supported by a team of brilliant UN staff), means its criticisms and recommendations are founded on a solid and largely disinterested familiarity with how the UN functions in a crisis, and how it ought to function better next time.

“Never again” might seem cynical, if it were not for the many who continue to work for the UN and who believe in that phrase, despite Rwanda, Srebrenica and now Sri Lanka.

But it is vital to remember that the UN’s mea culpa moment pales alongside the culpability of the government of Sri Lanka, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers. Theirs is a sovereign government, democratically elected, which chose a deliberate path that led to the commissioning of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In a post-9/11 world, the mere mention of the word “terrorist” apparently provided a licence to kill large numbers of Sri Lanka’s citizens. Given that the current government controls the crime scene, and has excluded all outsiders, the dead will remain uncounted for many years.

Yet the government of Sri Lanka gave a written guarantee to the Secretary-General that it would provide a true account of what happened at the end of the war. Indeed, next March, Sri Lanka is due to front the Human Rights Council in Geneva. There, the government will describe just how it has complied (or not) with its guarantee. And here, oddly, Australia has an additional if little-known role.

Some years ago, under the auspices of the Australian chapter of the International Commission of Jurists, Australian lawyers began listening to the stories of Tamil refugees arriving on our shores.

They deposed witnesses to the war and opened files. In time, these efforts morphed into the International Crimes Evidence Project, which is now led by the Sydney-based Public Interest Advocacy Centre. ICEP is probably now the single largest repository of evidence related to war crimes in Sri Lanka in the world. ICEP’s personnel includes veterans from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Next month, ICEP will hand a brief of evidence to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, with evidence gathered and attested using the highest standards of international criminal law. While Sri Lanka is certain to argue next March that it has given a true account of the end of the war, ICEP’s brief will demonstrate otherwise.

The UN has a second chance at righting the wrongs committed in Sri Lanka, and Australia has a role, both through ICEP and our presence in the UN Security Council chamber.

*Gordon Weiss was the UN’s spokesman in Sri Lanka. He is the author of The Cage and a founding adviser to ICEP.

Call for Cameron to boycott Sri Lanka summit over human rights

14 November 2012

David Cameron should take a "forthright" stand on Sri Lanka, MPs say

David Cameron is being urged by MPs to consider boycotting next year's Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka in protest at its human rights record.

The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said it was wrong for Colombo to host the heads of government meeting amid reports of continuing "serious abuses".

The PM should not attend unless he had clear evidence of progress, it added.

UK officials said it was too early to decide on the matter but it expected Sri Lanka to honour its commitments.

In a report on the UK's relationship with the 54-member organisation, the cross-party committee said there were "serious questions" about whether the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) should be taking place in Sri Lanka.

'Frequent violations'

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already said he will boycott the biennial event in November 2013 unless Sri Lanka's human rights record improves. MPs applauded his "clear and forthright stance" and urged Mr Cameron to follow suit.

"We conclude that continuing evidence of serious human rights abuses in Sri Lanka shows that the Commonwealth's decision to hold the 2013 CHOGM meeting in Colombo was wrong," they said.

"The UK prime minister should publicly state his unwillingness to attend the meeting unless he receives convincing and independently verified evidence of substantial and sustainable improvements in human and political rights."

A 2011 report by the Foreign Office cited "frequent" human rights violations - including terrorist suspects being held without charge for long periods, reports of torture in custody, restrictions on freedom of expression and little progress in investigating disappearances of political activists.

Earlier this month, 27 prisoners were killed during clashes at a prison in Colombo. Opposition parties claim it was a massacre but the government says the deaths happened in exchanges of fire during a riot after prisoners obtained and used weapons.

At least 100,000 people died in the 26-year war between government authorities and Tamil separatists which ended in 2009.

There are still no confirmed figures for the number of civilian deaths in the final stages of the conflict but UN investigations said it was possible up to 40,000 people had been killed in the final five months.

A United Nations report leaked to the BBC on Tuesday suggested that the Sri Lankan government had intimidated UN staff at the end of the conflict - claims it denies - and that the UN failed the civilian Tamil population in the final stages of the conflict.

'More visible'

Giving evidence to the committee earlier this year, Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma said there was little prospect of it reconsidering the summit venue.

During a visit to the country in September, Mr Sharma offered Commonwealth support to help Sri Lanka strengthen its institutions to focus on upholding human rights and press for reconciliation and economic development throughout the country.

The Foreign Office said it was "too early" to talk about what presence the UK would have at the meeting.

"We will look to Sri Lanka to demonstrate its commitment to upholding the Commonwealth values of good governance and respect for human rights," a spokesman said.

"A key part of this will be to address longstanding issues around accountability and reconciliation after the war."

In their report, the MPs said the Commonwealth's commitment to protect and enhance its values had given it a "distinctive role" in the international community but its moral authority had too often been "undermined by the repressive actions of its member states".

In principle, the MPs said they backed the creation of a commissioner for human rights, democracy and the rule of law but stressed the Commonwealth Secretariat - its executive body - must be more visible and increase its global influence.

They praised the attention given by UK ministers to raising the profile of the Commonwealth in the UK but said the government's rhetoric about the economic and political value of the organisation was "not being matched by its actions".

What if the UN Had Spoken Out on Sri Lanka?

-16 November 2012

If today the United Nations announced that it had received unconfirmed reports of 50,000 casualties in a war off limits to journalists - wouldn't the world take notice and try and stop the killings? We now know the UN system had this information in 2009 about Sri Lanka and suppressed it. We know this because of an internal review, commissioned by the UN Secretary General, Ban ki Moon.

It's a report that concludes that the UN's conduct at the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka marked a "grave failure" that "should not happen again". The document cites the UN's role in Rwanda, saying some lessons there were not learned and proved relevant to Sri Lanka. Let's hope they're learned for Syria, but as the author of a book of survivors' stories from that war in Sri Lanka I am haunted by the thought of what might have been there.

The document concludes that, "in Colombo many senior staff simply did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility. That's damning criticism but it's the nature of how and why they did this that's very hard to accept.

The UN removed the executive summary that was present in the draft version prepared by Charles Petrie. This said, "Some have argued many deaths could have been averted had the Security Council and the Secretariat, backed by the UN country team, spoken out loudly early on, notably by publicizing casualty numbers".

Petrie's report meticulously documents how senior UN officials continuously tried to blame the Tamil Tiger rebels - a proscribed terrorist group - for the killings even while their own international staff told them the Sri Lankan government was responsible for the majority of deaths. It was a bias that has slanted all coverage of the conflict since because it came from such an influential and reliable source - the UN no less.

On 9 March 2009 the UN did not share with a diplomatic briefing a casualty sheet their staff had prepared, "which showed that almost all the civilians casualties recorded by the UN had reportedly been killed by Government fire". They also failed to mention that two thirds of the killings were taking place inside "safe zones" unilaterally declared by the government, purportedly to protect civilians. Three days later the UN Resident Coordinator in Colombo, Neil Buhne, and several under-secretary generals refused to stand by their own casualty data, claiming thei were not verified. Charles Petrie puts the best gloss on the suppressing of vital casualty information, saying rather euphemistically that the briefings "fail to address the reality" on the ground.

Then when the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, struggled to speak out about potential war crimes by the Sri Lankan government, internal communications in the annexes reveal Ban Ki Moon's then chef de cabinet, Vijay Nambiar, strongly imploring her to tone down and dilute her statement. He even complained that her statement put the Tamil Tiger rebels and the government on the same footing. At this point Navi Pillay's statement is quoting figures the UN knew were low - the draft version of this report mentions much higher unconfirmed reports at the time of 5,687 killed and 10,067 injured.

These were figures coming out of the war zone collected by Tamil doctors, priests, NGO workers and the UN's local employees held hostage by the Tigers. The conflict was off limits to all independent observers so a few brave UN staff decided to set up a long distance data team in Colombo to try and corroborate the reports. They compiled casualty lists but only verified a death if there were three independent sources. The Petrie report says it was a rigorous methodology following best practice. In this way the UN confirmed nearly eight thousand civilian deaths before it became impossible in late April for people under heavy fire to get out of their bunkers and actually verify information.

Senior UN diplomats, still working in posts where they deal with conflict related issues, are cited in the report constantly trying to wriggle out of accepting the casualty data their own staff prepared, undermining it by questioning its reliability. Never mind that these figures were much more carefully checked than death tolls cited for Syria or Afghanistan. Or for that matter, the general death toll the UN always cites in official documents of 100,000 killed in Sri Lanka during the whole course of the war.

Buried in the end of the annexes of the Petrie report is startlingly new casualty information that UN staff received from informants in the field: unconfirmed reports of 17,810 killed and 36,905 injured during 2009. The UN team verified about half of these cases but knew their figure was an undercount.

Surely if the world had been told the scale of the killing at the time, international condemnation might have averted some of the deaths and abuses after the war. Subsequently a UN report has said reports of up to 40,000 civilians killed were credible. The Petrie report increases this to say 70,000 people could possibly have died in those final five months of hell.

That's little comfort to the shattered broken survivors who watched friends and relatives die in agony, abandoned and betrayed by the international community. Starving, dirty and exhausted, they lived in ditches being pounded by multi barreled rocket fire, only getting out of flimsy shelters in the lulls in fire to bury the human body parts they found lying strewn around their tents to prevent the dogs eating them. Families were so desperate they prayed that if they were to die it would be quickly and all together; loving parents contemplated suicide with their children because they couldn't see any chance of survival. By May 2009 people were forced to abandon their dead and injured just to save themselves, literally walking over corpses and dodging bullets. They emerged only to be detained in sub-standard internment camps, paid for and built by the United Nations and its donors.

The only way for the UN to set the record straight on Sri Lanka now is for Ban ki Moon to set up an international investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka. It was the recommendation of a panel of experts he commissioned to write a report last year but the Secretary General hesitated to take such a step without strong international backing. We now know from this internal review that his own legal department advised him he had the power to do it, but backed off. After the revelations of this inquiry it's an essential step to restore the UN's tattered credibility on Sri Lanka. And it's the very least Ban ki Moon owes the families of the tens of thousands of Tamil victims.

See this infographic chart showing what the UN knew in 2009 about casualty data and what it actually said in public. Download file

Frances Harrison is a former BBC Correspondent in Sri Lanka and the author of Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka's Hidden War, published by Portobello Books (UK), House of Anansi (Canada) and Penguin ( India).

Frances Harrison

Ex-BBC Correspondent, Ex-Amnesty International, Journalist & Author of 'Still Counting the Dead' - book on Tamils who survived Sri Lanka's 2009 war

Sarath Silva again day dreaming to be Prime Minister

Friday, 16 November 2012 

The notorious, shrewd, infamous, disgraced underworld figure known as "Aluthkade Sara " alias Sarath Nanda Silva has once again befriended with his former pal, Percy Mahendra Rajapaksha.

This time to advice Percy to appoint an acting Chief Justice while Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake holds office!

Those who are familiar with Sarath Silva’s notorious past as an Appeals Court judge, Attorney General and Chief Justice are not surprised at all about this disgraced man’s latest U-turn.

As he himself recently admitted, it is this man who in fact made the underworld gang leader from Beliatta known as Mahinda Rajapaksha the executive president of the country. Rewriting judicial history in Sri Lanka, Sarath Nanda Silva not only swiftly acquitted Mahinda Rajapaksha from serious charges of swindling funds donated by foreigners for tsunami victims, but also threatened to imprison the petitioner, UNP MP Kabir Hasheem!

It should also be recalled how this notorious man took part in an alleged ceremony to take oaths for the second time by President Chandrika Kumarathunga. But when he realised that CBK’s time is over, the man who allegedly took oaths himself ruled that it was unconstitutional just to pave the way for his partner in crime, Mahinda to contest elections an year earlier.

But when he realised Mahinda will not honour the pledge to make him the Prime Minister, the ever ambitious Sarath Silva turned to war hero, General Sarath Fonseka.

Sri Lankan campaigners as well as respected international groups such as IBA and ICJ have properly documented the serious abuses committed during Sarath Silva’s ten-year tenure as Sri Lanka’s chief justice.

It is this man who virtually made it impossible for opposition political parties to sack their MPs crossing over to the government. From Keheliya Rambukwella to disgraced legal professor G. L . Peiris, Silva ruled that UNP did not have a right to sack them from the parliament, completely misinterpreting the constitution.

Sexual misconduct

During his disastrous ten-year tenure, Sarath Silva not only interfered with the case involving his own wife’s divorce petition, he openly protected judges accused of serious sexual abuses such as seeking sexual bribes to settle cases.

Furthermore, when Sarath Silva himself was arrested near Diyawanna Oya having oral sex with a junior lawyer, his first line of contact was none other than his close buddy, then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. It is a well-known fact in media circles that Mahinda himself telephoned many media organisations to stop them reporting about the arrest of Chief Justice Sarath Silva while having sex in a car parked in a public place.

Having close links with criminals such as "Wewa Rohana", using criminal to brutally assault human rights campaigner Tony Fernando in jail, protecting sex offenders in the judiciary, personally seeking sexual favours from woman judges and lawyers,…the list goes on. But Percy Mahendra Rajapaksha now so concerned about the independence of the judiciary was nowhere to be seen collecting signatures from fellow MPs to impeach Sarath Silva! Instead, he was secretaly campaigning to protect this maniac!

It is this Sarath Nanda Silva now campaigning to sack his former rival Shirani Bandaranayake for yet unfounded bizarre allegations. It is this Sarath Silva now day dreaming again to be the Prime Minister under his former buddy in crime, Mahinda Rajapaksha.

WikiLeaks:‘Nobody Else Could Do The Norwegian Job’, ‘If I Say That, I Will Lose The Elections’ MR To US

By Colombo Telegraph -

“The Ambassador demurred and told Rajapakse that, for example, the call to renegotiate the CFA and the disavowal of the P-TOMS both could be seen as indications of a lack of faith in the peace process and could, therefore, be used to stir up trouble by those opposed to a lasting peace agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Of course the PM wanted peace but it was also important to avoid the possibility of an ‘accidental return to war,’ fueled by incendiary campaign rhetoric. The international community, especially the co-chairs scheduled to meet in New York on September 19, would parse every word of the agreement. ‘Words matter,’ the Ambassador counseled.” the US Embassy Colombo informed Washington.

A Leaked “CONFIDENTIAL” US diplomatic cable, dated September 12, 2005, updated the Secretary of State on Sri Lanka’s presidential election 2005. The Colombo Telegraph found the related leaked cable from the WikiLeaks database. The cable was signed by the US Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead. The cable details a US meeting with Prime Minister and the Presidential candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa.

“The Ambassador asked Rajapakse if, by signing the agreement, he wanted to see the Norwegian facilitators replaced. ‘No,’ replied Rajapakse. ‘Nobody else could do the job.’ The Ambassador suggested, in that case, that the PM issue a statement saying he thought the Norwegians and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) are doing a good job. ‘If I say that, I will lose the elections,’ Rajapakse replied, noting that ‘98 percent’ of Southern voters believe the Norwegians are biased in favor of the LTTE. The PM told the Ambassador ‘I can one hundred percent guarantee you the peace process will continue’ and cited as an example his public declaration that he will meet LTTE supremo Prabhakaran face-to-face if he wins. The Ambassador said that was a significant gesture but it is important to continue ‘step by step’ progress on the ground and that the contents of the PM’s pact with the JVP could easily complicate that task.” Under the subheading “Ambassador: ‘Words Matter’” Jeffrey Lunstead further wrote.

Related post to this cable;

WikiLeaks: Pact With JVP Is ‘Just Words’, I Know How To Handle And Use Them – Mahinda Assured US

WikiLeaks: Anti-Conversion Bill Is ‘Dead’, I Told JHU ‘To Forget About It’ – Mahinda Assured US

SRI LANKA: Commonwealth Secretary-General concerned about parliamentary move to impeach Sri Lankan chief justice

the Commonwealth Secretariat-November 16, 2012

Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma today expressed concern about the recent move by the Parliament of Sri Lanka to impeach the country's Chief Justice, Dr Shirani Bandaranayake.

Speaking in London, the Secretary-General said: "The Commonwealth's principal consideration is that the provisions of Sri Lanka's constitution are upheld with regards to the removal of judges, respecting the independence of the judiciary."

The Secretary-General stressed that the Commonwealth believes the preservation of the rule of law and independence of the judiciary are vital to the healthy functioning of a democracy. He noted: "The Commonwealth's Latimer House Principles, which govern the relationship between the three branches of government, are a cornerstone of our association's values. All our member states have committed themselves to upholding the Latimer House Principles so that citizens' faith and confidence in democratic culture is assured and the rule of law is maintained."

Contact
Richard Uku
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Commonwealth Secretariat
Tel. +44 (0) 7747 6380
Email: r.uku@commonwealth.int

Global Tamil Forum response to UN internal review report and UN Universal Periodic Review of Sri Lanka

Friday, 16 November 2012

GTF spokesperson Suren Surendiran has commented on UN failure in Sri Lanka. Please go to 6.40 on the timeline. The comments were televised live in India yesterday as part of their News Night Programme anchored by Headlines Today Executive Editor Rahul Shivshankar. Earlier in the hourly news bulletins, Rt. Hon. Joan Ryan also spoke on behalf of GTF.

GTF spokesperson Suren Surendiran has commented on UN failure in Sri Lanka. The comments were televised live in India yesterday as part of their News Night Programme anchored by Headlines Today Executive Editor Rahul Shivshankar.

See the program here

Following on from the analysis of Sri Lanka at the 14th Session of the UN's Universal Periodic Review on 1stNovember, please find attached a briefing detailing Global Tamil Forum's concerns regarding both the Government of Sri Lanka's approach to the process and the key, current human rights issues in the country.

See the report here