Allegations On War Crimes And How To Investigate Them?

By Laksiri Fernando -February 27, 2013

Dr Laksiri Fernando

It is normal that those diehard ‘patriots’ who are not willing to be self-critical of one’s own country or government or even some sections of the armed forces would dismiss any allegations on war crimes or anything similar with various credible, partly credible and mostly incredible arguments. But there can be others who look at the issues and allegations from a longer term perspective and see the value of independent investigations to strengthen the already won over (relative) peace, democratization and reconciliation in the country.

Perhaps I was the first to question the reliability of the revelations of the ‘White Flag’ incident by the former Army Commander immediately after the Sunday Leader article in a Rupavahini interview. I called the accusations irresponsible for his former position since he said he heard it from a third party which he did not reveal. All appeared politically motivated at that time and he himself retracted some of the statements later. By then the first round of Channel 4 footages were out, but the authenticity of the sources were questionable and therefore I didn’t make any comment. I was simply disturbed. But things have changed since then.

Credible Allegations

When the Darusman report came out, I made a critical assessment of the report disputing some aspects but said the government should take the report seriously and the allegations should be investigated. After all it was a UN sponsored report and the allegations were both on the armed forces and the LTTE. There cannot be any doubt that Sri Lanka is duty bound to investigate alleged ‘war crimes’ on its own or in coordination with the UN under the prevailing international laws. Any country’s sovereignty is subject to the international laws and in practice to what can be called the ‘international reality.’ If Sri Lanka does not conduct investigations, there is a possibility that the UN or the International Criminal Court (ICC) imposing such an investigation on Sri Lanka. Whether such an imposition is hypocritical or not is a different question.

Since the Darusman report and until recently my position has been that Sri Lanka can and should investigate the allegations. The LLRC did not investigate the allegations and its main mandate was to come up with proposals for reconciliation which they did in an admirable and an independent manner. Likewise an independent national commission on war crime allegations could have alleviated the concerns; and the reconciliation strengthened. But no commission was appointed for the reasons best known to the government. Now the ball has been almost put to the international court.

Let me briefly explain why the allegations should be investigated. The reasons are both moral and legal; and both national and international. The alleged crimes are something happened on the Sri Lankan soil. Even our regular judiciary has a mandate to investigate at least some of them. Extra judicial killings directly contravene the fundamental rights in the constitution and war or emergency is not an excuse. On the international side, Sri Lanka is party to the main international covenants and the international humanitarian law. Therefore, if the government had initiated credible investigations nationally then no one needed to shout about ‘international interference.’

Moral Obligations

The matter is not only legal but also moral. There are victims and their relatives. They should be appeased and assured of justice. One way of assuring ‘justice’ is punishing the perpetrators and compensating the victims. There is a possibility of forgiveness if they genuinely repent. There is a victim community and they may feel the victimization collectively. This is not a matter that can be discarded through obnoxious arguments. This is a matter quite central to a genuine reconciliation.

Not only justice but the truth should be known as a lesson for the future. Sri Lanka has suffered so much of violence since 1970s. It is only recently that we uncovered a mass grave in Matale that possibly belongs to the late 1980s. Sri Lanka has experienced too much of brutal killings and it appears from what people write and say that our supposed to be sane minds are also completely brutalized. We need some ‘therapy’ in the form of knowing the truth and realizing the ‘brutality.’

There are countries which are beset with even more violence than Sri Lanka. But I have not seen a country like ours that justifies violence directly and indirectly and trivialize the killings. We need a new determination to make a complete stop to this insane behaviour both indulging and defending violence. What is the point in having a ‘miracle of Asia’ if it is based on injustice, killings and brutality?

Don’t get me wrong that I am only condemning the atrocities of the army or terrorism of the state. The organizations like the LTTE and the JVP are also responsible (equally or more) for the atrocities in the past. The Tamil community should realise that the LTTE was a terrorist menace in the country and defeating it militarily was a must to bring a situation like today at least for us to debate these matters in relative peace. We should also appreciate the good soldiers and the commanders in the armed forces for doing the right thing without violating human rights or the humanitarian laws. But obviously there had been some culprits. Our effort should be to make a complete break to violence in the future. The JVP has come around now to a large extent and the LTTE or their remaining supporters should do the same.

For all these purposes the truth should be known. There are allegations on both sides. The allegations of thekilling of Prabhakaran’s son, interrogation and killing of Ramesh and the two eye witnesses revealed by Frances Harrison on the ‘White Flag’ incident are credible to investigate. Equally credible are the allegations on the LTTE loading the injured cadres and civilians into buses and blowing them up to blame the government troops. Shootings of those who attempted to flee the war zone are also numerous.

Investigations  

One may ask the question ‘what is the point in investigating’ these matters since the perpetrators on the LTTE side might not be found any longer and therefore any investigation might be imbalanced. That may or may not be the case. Some perpetrators must be hiding among the diaspora, in the country or in the prisons or within the government itself. The truth should be known not in a religious fashion but in a sociological manner. The investigative procedure should not only be judicial but also sociological.

A commission should look into the questions of not only who killed x and y and on whose orders, but what were the individual and political motives behind them if any? What were the social, structural and institutional contexts within which gross violations took place on both sides and what are the remedies proposed to avoid them in the future? What are the general lessons for the country not only looking at the last stages of the war but also the previous cycles of violence (1971, 1978-9, 1983 and four rounds of Eelam Wars) and their underlying causes?

If the investigation is purely international it would only look into the accountability issues. If the investigation is purely national it might lack credibility and try to side step accountability issues while focusing on some pseudo-sociological issues. Therefore, the best way to go about the truth, justice and also accountability might be a commission on the lines of what was set up in Cambodia, both national and international.

Tamil activists urge India to co-sponsor anti-Lanka resolution 

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

New Delhi: Tamil rights activists on Tuesday urged India to co-sponsor a US resolution against Sri Lanka in the forthcoming session of United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and make it stronger. 

UK-based British Tamil Forum (BTF)and Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based Tamil advocacy group, today said that they hope India will not only co-sponsor the US based resolution but also bring out a stronger resolution. 

"We urge India to not just support but also co-sponsor the US based resolution against Sri Lanka and also push to make it stronger. We also hope that India brings out a stronger resolution," Kana Nirmalan, Human Rights Coordinator, BTF said. 

Calling for independent international inquiry into the allegations of war crimes committed by Sri Lanka, the groups said that they want creation of an International Commission of Investigation. 

"We have no faith in the local judicial system in Sri Lanka. It has failed. We urge India to advocate the creation of an International Commission of Investigation to bring justice to the victims," Nirmalan said. 

Henrietta Briscoe of TAG said that India should push to make the US based resolution more stronger. "India should take leadership and push for a stronger resolution. Co-sponsoring the resolution is needed," Briscoe said. 

She also emphasised the need for an independent international investigation into the alleged human right violation by Sri Lanka. 

"An independent international inquiry is important. We also want that any investigation should not limit itself to just the last few months of the war but should look at the context and the atrocities committed on Tamils since decades," Briscoe said. 

PTI - See more at: http://zeenews.india.com/news/tamil-nadu/tamil-activists-urge-india-to-co-sponsor-anti-lanka-resolution_831726.html#sthash.1G8PxD1p.dpuf

See here for statement. Reproduced in full below

Only Upheaval Can Stem Flow From Sri Lanka

By Gordon Weiss -February 27, 2013 

Gordon Weiss

The federal Coalition’s account of its recent mission to Sri Lanka is jarring when contrasted with a new report from the International Crisis Group, and with recent UN reports. With the boat people bogeyman running amok over Australia’s electoral landscape, and Australia due to scrutinise Sri Lanka’s record on postwar reconciliation and allegations of war crimes next month at the UN Human Rights Council, a fuller account is necessary.

Where the Coalition saw orderly transition from war, yesterday’s ICG report,Sri Lanka’s Authoritarian Turn: The Need for International Action, describes a country where the dismantling of the rule of law threatens peace. While the Coalition thought a boat voyage a greater danger to life than any factor in Sri Lanka, the ICG confirms a steady drumbeat of extrajudicial killings, abductions and enforced disappearances.

The Coalition group concluded that Sri Lankan refugees were overwhelmingly economic migrants. Yet just two months ago the UN Refugee Agency, which sets the bar for refugee status, listed those who might qualify. These include those connected with former Tamil Tiger fighters, opposition politicians and supporters, journalists, human rights activists, witnesses to crimes, those seeking legal redress or, possibly, women, children and gays.

So what is going on in Sri Lanka?

Most observers thought the Tamil Tigers, an ultra-violent guerilla organisation, were indestructible. When crushed in May 2009 after almost three decades of fighting, the world applauded. The popularly-elected President Mahinda Rajapaksa promised reconciliation between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils.

After all, according to the UN, perhaps 40,000 Tamil civilians had been killed in the final few months, mostly by government forces, and overwhelming evidence of war crimes has since emerged. Reconciliation in the form of a political settlement was urgent to cement a lasting peace.

But the contrary has happened. ICG says that the concentration of power in the hands of the President’s family and the military, and the obstruction of a political deal for minorities, could destabilise Sri Lanka again. So were opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop and immigration spokesman Scott Morrison prudently pursuing Australia’s core interests when they reported being heartened by what they saw?

The detailed picture painted by the ICG and reflected in a report two weeks ago from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is relentlessly grim. Sri Lanka is gripped by creeping despotism. The ruling family franchises out economic spoils. The island is imbued with an ethno-nationalist ideology that repudiates the place of Tamils and Muslims, who comprise a quarter of all Sri Lankans, and intimidates the many Sinhalese who oppose an authoritarian security state.

Police and proxy thugs bust up and fire on student and citizen demonstrations, and ransack opposition offices. Rajapaksa’s brother Gotabhaya controls the army and police (and analysts contend he controls the flow of refugee boats too). Anti-government websites are blocked, China-style. The targeting of journalists has cowed the press into submission. According to former regime stalwart and now dissenter, the diplomat Dayan Jayatilleka, the army is effectively an occupation force. Equipped with police powers, the huge Sri Lankan military has despoiled its legitimate security role. It squats on Tamil land, stifles their participation in their local economy, and menaces the population.

Meanwhile, according to the ICG, the Rajapaksa government is systematically dismantling Sri Lanka’s democratic institutions. A 2010 constitutional amendment, ushered through a supine parliament presided over by another Rajapaksa brother, neutered independent oversight bodies. The President now manages the checks and balances himself.

Last month, in a ploy he characterised as “devolutionary”, the President signalled his intention to weaken local government, the one forum where minorities have a measure of say over daily regional life. When Sri Lanka’sChief Justice brought down a ruling this year that impeded headlong regime efforts to centralise control the President replaced her. Empowered by the overt ethno-nationalism of the Rajapaksa clan, attacks on churches, mosques and minority businesses have spiked. Last month a group called the Buddhist Power Force burned effigies of Allah.

Sri Lanka’s treatment of minorities enrages India’s 60 million Tamils. Exasperated by the Rajapaksa government, India will almost certainly vote against Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council this March.

Boat people flee from adversity. Sri Lanka has endured three deadly 20th-century revolts – two of them undertaken by Sinhalese, one by the Tamils – that probably killed well over 200,000 citizens since 1971. These revolts arose from precisely the same anti-democratic, bloody and unjust policies now being rolled out in Sri Lanka. On this Morrison was right: Only a change of government will stop Sri Lankan boat arrivals.

To protect our long-term interests, as well as stability, Australia should support a Sri Lankan government intent on restoring Sri Lanka’s democratic traditions. For if another bloody civil conflict erupts – the fourth in 40 years — how will Australians handle the boat people who will surely follow?

This article appeared on February 22nd in the The Australian

Remarks on U.S. Priorities at Opening of UN Human Rights Council 22

Remarks

Esther Brimmer
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of International Organization Affairs

Geneva, Switzerland

February 26, 2013

Mr. President, fellow delegates, distinguished guests,

It is an honor for me to once again represent the United States before the UN Human Rights Council, to present our first intervention since being elected to a second term. In September 2009, I delivered the first U.S. intervention as a member of this esteemed body, in which the United States pledged to pursue broad international cooperation, both with traditional partners and across longstanding divides, to advance universal human rights and strengthen the Human Rights Council’s ability to achieve its essential mandate. I set out four aspirations that this Council must work to attain: universality, dialogue, principle, and truth. And in the three and a half years since the United States first joined the Human Rights Council, we have seen much progress toward these aspirations, and have reached a number of impressive achievements, principally through broad cooperation and collaboration by this Council’s diverse membership.

First among these achievements has been the Human Rights Council’s heightened willingness and capacity to address heinous human rights violations. Over the past three years, the Council has taken concrete measures, often in real-time, that shine the spotlight on abuses, and muster international political will toward ending them. It is not a coincidence that violence can imperil human rights, and the Human Rights Council has not shied away from acting amidst ongoing instability and violence. Faced with crises in Libya and Cote d’Ivoire, the Council quickly established new mechanisms for documenting human rights abuses and violations, which have built a strong foundation for future accountability processes and helped maintain international pressure on human rights violators. This Council spoke the truth about human rights violations and abuses in some of the world’s most difficult crises, and we must continue to do so.

Another remarkable advance was Resolution 16/18, through which the Council – after years of chronic division – came together to combat religious intolerance, including discrimination and violence. We applaud the leadership that Turkey, Pakistan, and other countries have shown on this resolution, and appreciate as well the support of the OIC Secretary-General. The international consensus on this issue offers a practical and effective means to fight intolerance, while avoiding the false choice of restricting the complementary and mutually-dependent freedoms of religion and expression. In today’s networked world, hateful, insulting, and intolerant speech can be marginalized and defeated, not by less speech, but by more, only by encouraging positive and respectful expression. Countless examples have taught us that attempting to outlaw free expression is as dangerous as it is ineffective. That is why Resolution 16/18’s catalogue of positive tools to fight intolerance – including education, nondiscrimination laws, and protecting places of worship – is so important, and why we must all continue our joint efforts to translate this consensus into concrete implementation of those policies. This pursuit of honest, open dialogue among member states was one of the themes I pledged the United States would pursue during our first term on the Council, and we will continue to do so during the coming three years.

The Council also has demonstrated its commitment to another benchmark I underscored in 2009, namely the universality of human rights obligations. In establishing the first ever special rapporteur on freedom of peaceable assembly and freedom of association, the Council took an important step towards helping to protect and realize these crucial rights. The Council’s creation of a working group on discriminatory impediments to women’s human rights demonstrated our commitment to combat continuing gender bias in all its forms. By formally recognizing that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender men and women enjoy the same human rights as everyone else, the Council helped advance true universality of human rights worldwide. And completion of the first round of Universal Periodic Reviews, in which the human rights record of every single UN member state was subject to scrutiny before the Human Rights Council, has demonstrated that no country is exempt from the universality of its human rights obligations.

But as I speak here today for the first time since the United States was elected to a second term on the Human Rights Council, I must say that for all these achievements, the work of the Council remains unfinished, so long as any of us cannot exercise those fundamental rights that we all share by virtue of our common humanity. It is toward those unfinished tasks that we must devote ourselves in this twenty-second session, and beyond.

The Council’s work remains unfinished so long as the Assad regime continues its outrageous attacks on innocent civilians, and disregards its international human rights obligations. The Human Rights Council acted quickly and courageously as one of the earliest voices to condemn these heinous depredations, and through multiple regular and special sessions has continued to call for an end to the violence. Given the essential role the independent commission of inquiry has played, the United States will strongly support at this session the extension of the commission’s mandate for another year.

The Council’s work remains unfinished so long as millions of North Koreans face untold human rights abuses amidst a daily struggle for survival. Principle demands that the countless human rights violations exacted by the Pyongyang government merit international condemnation and accountability. That is why the United States will support the call by High Commissioner Pillay and Special Rapporteur Marzuki for a mechanism of inquiry to document the D.P.R.K.’s wanton human rights violations.

The Council’s work remains unfinished so long as Sri Lanka continues to fall short in implementing even the recommendations of its own Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission, or in addressing the underlying sources of its longstanding ethnic conflict. Last year’s HRC resolution encouraged brave civil society groups on the ground to continue their efforts, and the United States will introduce another resolution at this session to ensure that the international community continues to monitor progress, and to again offer assistance on outstanding reconciliation and accountability issues. The United States hopes this resolution will be a cooperative effort with the Sri Lankan government.

And the Council’s work remains unfinished so long as it continues to unfairly single out Israel, the only country with a stand-alone agenda item. Until this Council ceases to subject Israel to an unfair and unacceptable bias, its unprincipled and unjust approach will continue to tarnish the reputation of this body, while doing nothing to support progress toward the peace among Israelis and Palestinians that we all desire so deeply.

Mr. President, fellow delegates, distinguished guests,

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said that though “we may have all come on different ships, we’re in the same boat now.” The diversity of national delegations seated in this chamber today, working together to forge solutions to so many of humanity’s most inhuman acts, is itself a testament to the power and progress that comes from the cooperation at the root of the United Nations and of the Human Rights Council.

If we are to live up to the lofty ambition that the Human Rights Council by its nature represents, all our nations – working together, despite our different histories – must harness that same potential for progress, that same drive to ensure for all the universal human rights that are their birthrights. That is the standard by which we all must be judged, not just in this twenty-second Council session, but in future sessions and in the years to come.

Revisiting The Horror In Sri Lanka

By Manu Joseph -February 27, 2013 

Manu Joseph

In the series of photographs shot in 2009, the bare-chested boy is first shown seated on a bench watching something outside the frame. Then he is seen having a snack. In the third image he is lying on the ground with bullet holes in his chest. The photographs, which were released last week by the British broadcaster Channel 4, appear to document the final moments in the life of 12-year-old Balachandran Prabhakaran, the youngest son of the slain founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The images are from the documentary film “No Fire Zone,” which tells the story of Sri Lanka’s violent suppression of Mr. Prabhakaran’s equally violent revolution, which had come very close to securing a separate state for the Tamil minority of Sri Lanka. After 26 years of civil war between the Tamils, who are chiefly Hindus, and the Sinhalese majority, who are chiefly Buddhists, the Sri Lankan state won decisively in 2009. Human rights activists say that hundreds of Tamil fighters, political leaders and their families, including Mr. Prabhakaran and his family, did not die in action but were executed. They estimate that more than 40,000 Tamil civilians died in the final months of the war.

Within its borders, the Sri Lankan government appears to wink at its Sinhalese population to accept their congratulations for ending the war, but it maintains a righteous indignation when the world accuses its army of planned genocide.

“No Fire Zone” includes video footage and photographs shot on mobile phones by Tamil survivors and Sinhalese soldiers that were somehow leaked. The film’s director, Callum Macrae, told me that it will be screened at the 22nd session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, now under way in Geneva, where the United States plans to introduce a resolution asking Sri Lanka to investigate the allegations of war crimes by its army.

It is not clear what such a resolution will achieve because Sri Lanka’s powerful president,Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has a rustic swagger about him and a manly black mustache, is the triumphant face of Sri Lanka’s victory in the war. The Sri Lankan Army is unambiguously under his control. Whatever the worth of the resolution, India is expected to support it more enthusiastically than it did a similar resolution last March.

Over the years, the shape and location of Sri Lanka have inspired several Indian cartoonists to portray the island nation as a tear drop beneath India’s peninsular chin. This is an illogical depiction of Sri Lanka’s trauma because a tear drop is not sorrowful; it is a consequence of someone’s sorrow. Some caricatures that appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, showed the Indian peninsula weeping and Sri Lanka as the consequent tear drop. This imagery had a stronger logic. India’s history with Sri Lanka is, in a way, about a bumbling giant being hurt by a cunning dwarf.

Under the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the type of strategists who imagine they are great Machiavellian characters, and love to add the prefix “geo” to “politics” to feel good about their advisory jobs, ensured that India armed and financed the Tamil rebels. In 1984, when she was assassinated and her son Rajiv Gandhi took over as prime minister, Sri Lanka was engaged in a full-fledged civil war. Now, India wanted to play gracious giant in the region and bring peace to Sri Lanka. In 1987, it sent troops to achieve that end. It was a disastrous move, and resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,200 Indian soldiers and thousands of Tamil fighters. In an act of vengeance, Mr. Prabhakaran made his greatest strategic blunder: ordering the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

On the early morning of May 22, 1991, as the news spread through Madras (now Chennai) by phone and radio, I saw people run out of their homes in some kind of delirium to pick up the newspapers from their porches. The city had just woken up to the improbable fact that a suicide bomber had killed Mr. Gandhi the previous night in a small town not far from Chennai. Until then, the southern state of Tamil Nadu, whose capital is Chennai, was a haven for the Tamil Tigers. Bound by a common language, the masses of Tamil Nadu felt a deep compassion for the struggle of Sri Lankan Tamils. But Mr. Gandhi’s assassination was seen by them as an act of war against India. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu at the time, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who was accused of being a friend of the Tigers, went around Chennai in an open-roof van, standing with his palms joined in apology. That was not good enough. In the 1991 Tamil Nadu assembly elections, his party won only two seats.

But now, the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils has returned as a passionate political issue in Tamil Nadu. Mr. Karunanidhi is too old to stand anymore but even as a patriarch who uses a wheelchair, he is a useful ally of the Indian National Congress party, which heads the national government. He has often demanded that the accomplices of Mr. Gandhi’s assassin now on death row in India be pardoned, and that President Rajapaksa be tried on war crimes charges. Last year, when the United States introduced a resolution against Sri Lanka, India was reluctant to back it for strategic reasons, including that it has commercial interests in Sri Lanka, which China is fast grabbing. But Mr. Karunanidhi and public sentiment in Tamil Nadu finally persuaded the Indian government to support it.

In a few days, when the United States introduces its new resolution against Sri Lanka, the brute forces of politics and practicality will ensure that the Indian government led by the Congress party, whose leader is Sonia Gandhi, will join other nations in asking Sri Lanka to explain how exactly it eliminated the organization that made her a widow.

*Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.” This article appeared on February 22th in the New York Times

Sri Lanka security forces rape, torture Tamil detainees: group

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI | Tue Feb 26, 2013 4:36am EST

(Reuters) - Sri Lanka's security forces have used rape to torture and extract confessions from suspected Tamil separatists almost four years after the country's civil war ended, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Tuesday.

The rights group documented 75 cases of predominately Tamil men and women who said they were held in Sri Lankan detention centres and repeatedly raped and sexually abused by the military, police and intelligence officials.

The victims - now living as asylum seekers, most of them in Britain - said once they confessed to being a member of the Tamil Tiger rebel group, the abuse generally stopped and they were allowed to escape by paying a bribe, before fleeing abroad.

"We found that rape was used to secure some sort of confession, but also as a political tool to punish people," Meenakshi Ganguly, the rights group's South Asia director, told a news conference in New Delhi.

"These were people who had some connection with the Tigers ... who were forced to sign confessions, and only then would the rapes stop."

Ganguly said sexual abuse was only one form of torture that the people suffered: "They were also severely tortured, burnt by cigarettes and hung upside down."

Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to New Delhi said he had no evidence to suggest the allegations of abuse, which the rights group said occurred from 2006 to 2012, were true.

The ambassador, Prasad Kariyawasam, said the testimonies of 41 women, 31 men and 3 boys were likely made by "economic refugees" who "need a good story" to get asylum.

"Until we do a proper inquiry, we have to believe that these are all sob stories for the sake of obtaining asylum or refugee status in a developed country," Kariyawasam told Reuters.

"Until there is a proper examination ... in the Sri Lankan court system, we will not be able to accept these allegations."

He said the report was "a well-timed effort" to discredit Sri Lanka ahead of a vote on a U.S.-backed resolution criticizing it at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva this week.

CIGARETTE BURNS, BITE MARKS

Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in 2009, in the final months of a war that began in 1983, a U.N. panel said, as government troops advanced on the last stronghold of the rebels fighting for an independent homeland.

The U.N. panel said it had "credible allegations" that Sri Lankan troops and the Tamil Tigers both carried out atrocities and war crimes, and singled out the government for most of the responsibility for the deaths.

Sri Lanka has come under international pressure to bring to book those accused of war crimes and boost efforts to reconcile a polarised country.

It has rejected allegations of rights abuse and resisted pressure to allow an independent commission to investigate war crimes committed by its army, saying that it is has its own plan to deal with the issue.

But Human Rights Watch said, despite the end of the war, no one had been prosecuted and human rights violations of Tamil Tiger supporters continued. Thirty-one cases of rape and torture in the report had been documented since 2009.

"Many of the medical reports examined by HRW show evidence of sexual violence such as bites on the buttocks and breasts, and cigarette burns on sensitive areas like inner thighs and breasts," the group said.

At the Geneva meeting, the United States is expected to sponsor a resolution for the second time censuring Colombo and urging it to prosecute soldiers suspected of killing civilians.

Britain, Canada and the European Union, where there is a large presence of Tamil refugees and asylum seekers, are expected to support the resolution.

But Kariyawasam said the New York-based rights group was working with the Washington to "bring Sri Lanka down".

"Sri Lanka is not a very big country. We cannot fight with the most powerful country in the world and their NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who have a large amount of funds, but we still have the right to say what we want to say."

(Editing by John Chalmers and Robert Birsel)

We Need Time And Space, Mr President

By Mahinda Samarasinghe -February 27, 2013 

Mahinda Samarasinghe

Mr President,

It is an honour and a pleasure to address this august Council today. On behalf of my delegation, let me felicitate you upon your assumption of the Presidency and offer our support to you in the discharge of your office during your tenure. As with your distinguished predecessors, we are confident of working together in ensuring that the objectives of the Council are met.

At the conclusion of Sri Lanka’s universal periodic review (UPR) last November, I informed the Working Group that we would continue our practice of sharing with the Council our ongoing progress towards peace and normality. We are present here today to share that progress. Though faced with skepticism and even hostile criticism from some quarters, Sri Lanka has continued to engage its interlocutors in a spirit of openness, candour and constructive dialogue.

Let me now briefly address some of the highlights of our achievements.

Three and a quarter years ago Sri Lanka emerged from a long-drawn out conflict to eliminate terrorism, successfully conducting a humanitarian operation to free a captive population, with a view to bringing about lasting stability, peace and prosperity that had eluded our nation’s people for nearly three decades.  In the aftermath of this operation it was established, beyond doubt that the Sri Lankan Government was doing its utmost to continue promoting and protecting human rights of all citizens. The Reconstruction, Resettlement, Rehabilitation, Reintegration, and Reconciliation programme (known as 5R), demonstrates that Sri Lanka today is well on the path to usher in an era of sustainable development, social progress and a durable peace.

Reconstruction includes restoration of physical and social infrastructure, strengthening of civil administration, provision of livelihood support and housing. As a result, a 27% growth rate has been recorded in the Northern Province the former theatre of conflict, while Sri Lanka’s overall GDP recorded around 8% growth in 2011.

The reconstruction of the Northern railway line which was totally destroyed by the LTTE is currently under way. This involves re-laying of the entire railway line stretching 110 miles (177 Km) from Vavuniya to Kankasanthurai. It is expected that this will be completed by the end of 2015 thus restoring a main artery of transport, commerce, ease of movement and communication between the previously sundered people of the north and their southern brethren.

Unparalleled progress has been made in areas such as the resettlement of internally displaced persons, facilitated by demining. By the time the LTTE was finally defeated in May 2009, over 295,000 IDPs displaced after April 2008 were in the care of the Government. A Presidential Task Force for Reconstruction and Resettlement was appointed to expedite IDP resettlement and reconstruction in parallel with the demining efforts in the North. While every effort was being made to resettle persons in their original habitat, in instances in which this is not possible, they were given alternate land.

The last batch of the IDPs was resettled in their villages in Mullaitivu on 24 September 2012. 1,186 persons from 361 families were thus resettled. With this last batch of IDPs, the Government has resettled a total of 242,449 IDPs. A further 28,398 have chosen to live with host families in various parts of the country. A batch of about 200 families living with host families has been resettled with their consent in their original habitat in Mullaithivu in September 2012.  At the conclusion of resettlement, 7,264 IDPs had left the camps on various grounds and did not return while a further 1,380 sought admission to hospitals. The resettlement of the final batch of IDPs marks a day of historic significance as the resettlement is now complete and there are no more IDPs or IDP camps in the island. This makes the achievement reached within the short period of three years, remarkable when compared with similar situations in other parts of the world.

Mr President,                                                     Read More

'Sri Lanka should be encouraged in its reconciliation process, rather than being singled out for any disproportionate attention in the HRC' 
Sri Lanka Permanent Mission, Geneva
 Feb 27, 2013

Exercising a ‘right of Reply’ to a statement made by Ms Esther Brimmer, US Assistant Secretary of State for international organisations during the High Level Segment of the 22nd Human Rights Council today ( 26 February 2013), Ms. Priyanga Wicremasinghe, Counsellor of the Sri Lanka Permanent Mission in Geneva said, “Sri Lanka should be encouraged in its reconciliation process, rather than being singled out for any disproportionate attention in this Council”. She said, “it is especially so, at a time when having overcome a 30-year long terrorist conflict, as well as having averted what many feared would be a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’, Sri Lanka is implementing a comprehensive process of reconciliation involving all communities based on the National Action Plan on the implementation of the recommendations of the LLRC”.

Full intervention made by Counsellor Wicremasinghe is below:
Right of Reply of Sri Lanka to the Statement made by the US, 26th February 2013

Mr President, My delegation wishes to exercise its right of reply with regard to the reference to Sri Lanka contained in the statement made today, by Ms Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State for international organisations, of the USA.

We strongly reject any unfair, biased, unprincipled and unjust approach that may be adopted by this Council towards the protection and promotion of Human Rights of Sri Lanka.

We reiterate our consistent position that any action taken in the promotion and protection of human rights of a country must have the consent of that country, and be based on the principles cooperation and genuine dialogue, and the founding principles of universality, impartiality, non-selectivity which govern the mandate of the Council, as stipulated in GA resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006, and provisions in Council Resolutions 5/1 and 5/2 of 18 June 2007, and 16/21 of 25 March 2011.

Sri Lanka is therefore firmly of the view that this Council should not embark upon or encourage either debate or any country-specific resolution by virtue of a singled out process which would run counter to the founding principles as elaborated above. Doing so will clearly reflects an application of double standards.

Mr. President, It is in such context that my delegation is surprised by the statement made by the US delegate drawing disproportionate attention towards Sri Lanka. It is especially so, at a time when having overcome a 30-year long terrorist conflict, as well as having averted what many feared would be a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’, Sri Lanka is implementing a comprehensive process of reconciliation involving all communities based on the National Action Plan on the implementation of the recommendations of the LLRC.

Mr. President, Sri Lanka should be encouraged in its endeavour in this reconciliation process, rather than being singled out for any disproportionate attention in this Council.

The Left As Political Actor – Part 1

By Dayan Jayatilleka -February 27, 2013 

Dr Dayan Jayatilleka

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Virginia (founded by Thomas Jefferson), HL Seneviratne, writing in the Colombo Telegraph some weeks ago, raised the question ‘Is There a Role for the Left?’ and answered in the affirmative. I agree, though I suspect he is addressing a different tradition and generation of the Left than I am.

In order to make any headway whatsoever, all streams of the Lankan Left cannot avoid and must adopt a correct stance (note that I do not say thecorrect stance) on the interrelated issues of the war, the Tamil question, the minorities in general, and human rights/humanitarian law. With a single huge exception, nowhere on the planet has the Left made gains while going against patriotism. That exception was the Russian Revolution but as George Lichtheim noted, that was in a society where the bulk of the population, consisting of the peasantry, were not yet franchised and did not feel themselves stakeholders in the state. He went on to point out that by contrast, in those societies that had universal suffrage, the Left could not but support their national states during the war. Thus Russia was the exception that proved the rule—and in any case, the Russian state (unlike the Sri Lankan) lost WW1.

Sri Lanka’s war has dominated the second half of the island’s post-independence history and the lives of more than one generation of its inhabitants. This is truest of the Last War, 2006-2009. As a war of reunification against a secessionist movement, it was and will always be defined by the vast majority of citizenry as a patriotic war. Since the secessionist movement was also notoriously totalitarian and a consistent practitioner of large scale terrorism (including suicide terrorism), the war – and the victory of May 2009, was also experienced and will be viewed as liberation. That this was a victorious war of national liberation will probably remain the verdict of history over the long term. The Lankan Left cannot stand on the wrong side of this historical verdict. In philosophical terms, it cannot evade the Event, May 2009, and the encounter with the Real.

While it is a grotesque travesty to argue as Nalin de Silva and Gunadasa Amarasekara have done, that the failure of the Lankan Left was its refusal to unite with and bow before the ‘national’– actually, chauvinist–movement and ideology of Anagarika Dharmapala, it would be correct to argue, as they do not, that the failure of the Lankan Left was to unite radical modernity with the militantly anti-imperialist heritage of the 1848 insurrection of Puran Appu. This ‘mix’ was the secret of the wave of national liberationist revolution that swept the world, from China to Vietnam and Cuba. It is this failure that permitted 1956 and all that followed.

Wijeweera’s JVP thought that it was rectifying that error, and linking up with the patriotic heritage but it did not succeed in so doing because it avoided taking a crucial step. Ironically, that step is still being avoided by the far Left FSP, which criticises the JVP as ultranationalist. This critical move is the dialogue and alliance—hopefully leading to fusion—with the Left tendency within Tamil society, as the basis of a truly national and patriotic project, in the broadest, most radically enlightened sense.

Despite a strong militant Maoist presence among the northern Tamil youth, Wijeweera’s JVP avoided from its inception, all contact with Tamil politics (except for an evening’s flirtation with the hill-country’s Ilancheliyan in ’71). Radical elements that have broken with the JVP over time, ranging from Lionel Bopage through the ‘Hiru’ Kandayama (of Rohitha Bhashana), overreacted to Wijeweera’s social chauvinism by indiscriminate embrace of Tamil activism, occasionally going so far as to endorse the LTTE as a national liberation movement and its war as a national liberation struggle. Instead of being influenced by Anton Balasingham and ‘Taraki’ Sivaram, (as is true of the ‘Hiru’ group but not so much of Bopage) they should have clearly delimited their interaction to the Tamil Left while standing alongside the latter, against the Tigers.

Today’s JVP is less sectarian and has an outreach to the Tamil people, though, sadly, no real political discussion or debate with the Tamil political spectrum. The FSP has made two classic mistakes: one is its lack of clarity over the character of the war– which it occasionally describes as a racist war—and its silence over whether or not the outcome was on balance, historically positive. The second mistake, which is not unconnected with the first, is of ‘skipping stages’ in that it has attempted a dialogue with Tamil activists or former activists, irrespective of whether or not they have made a criticism/self criticism and decisively and irrevocably broken with their erstwhile secessionist ideology. In so doing the FSP has skipped over the necessary stage of alliance with the like-minded element in Tamil politics, including in the Diaspora: the thousands of anti-LTTE activists belonging to, or who once belonged to, the Eelam Left.

This confusion and ‘abstract internationalism’ has many deleterious consequences, some of them potentially deadly.  It permits the infiltration and utilisation of the Lankan radical left by the far tougher–minded, disciplined and experienced pro-secessionist activists, especially ‘intelligence wing’ cadres. Even if that were not the case, it permits the ideologically confused Tamil activists to propose immature and imprudent slogans and programmes of agitation, which can objectively serve the same purpose as would proposals of agents-provocateurs. In short, it can walk some of the best elements of the Lankan radical Left into the waiting trap of the repressive apparatus.

I suspect that this is a major factor – together with the obvious, illegitimate one of sectarian bitterness–that prevents the imperative united front of the JVP and FSP. Both formations have to avoid agents-provocateursfrom two top-notch, ruthless intelligence apparatuses, one of them being the LTTE in exile—as well as fromdouble agents. The JVP would not want the FSP’s naïve, confused outreach to and interaction with Tamil activists here and in the Diaspora to be the conduit and constitute the excuse for a crackdown by the state. Yet another factor is that the JVP has also to take into consideration not only the split to the far left (FSP/JAV) but also to ultra-nationalist radical populism, as evidenced by the election of Weerawansa’s candidate in the East.

Part of the problem faced by the Left is the role played by the radical and progressive intelligentsia during the war. While intellectuals throughout the world were in the vanguard of struggles for national reunification and against fascism, and therefore accrued the moral capital that stood them in good stead for decades ( the French resistance is a classic example), by stark contrast in Sri Lanka, the left intelligentsia utterly discredited itself by being part of the CBK package for federalisation, the Sudu Nelum movement against recruitment to the military in the face of Tiger aggression, the CFA which brought the state to its knees, the ISGA and PTOMS proposals which would have ceded part of the country to the Tigers. Thus there is a limit to the success of even legitimate social movements and civic struggles led by those who remain identifiable by the general public as, at the very least, not having said a word against the fascist Tigers and at worst, being active opponents of a war of liberation-cum-national salvation and active proponents of appeasement and capitulation to fascist-terrorist secessionism. When such elements attempt to take on Mahinda Rajapaksafrontally, they fail to recognise the massive deficit of national and social legitimacy and their negative standing in the national-popular narrative. One can only hope that the FSP can immunise itself from identification with and influence by such elements.

No element of the Lankan Left, be it JVP, FSP or the dissidents of the LSSP-CPSL, should be seen to consort with those segments of the Tamil political spectrum here and in the Diaspora, which are perceived by the majority of citizens as anti-Sri Lanka, not merely anti-regime. For an organic Left reflective of ‘the collective will of the people-nation’ (Gramsci), any component of the Tamil polity campaigning against Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and the country’s armed forces as part of the push for an Eelam endgame (e.g. the TGTE, GTF, BTF, TESO), must be regarded as outside the parameters of political partnership. The legitimate partner in a South-North project to build a Sri Lankan nation is surely what’s left of the Tamil Left, martyred by Tiger fascism and ignored by the State.

(To be concluded next week)