Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Time Has Certainly Come For All Necessary Appropriate Action

By R Sampanthan -March 7, 2013

R Sampanthan

By Lanka’s immediate post independent history was marked by discriminatory policies on vital issues such as citizenship, language, alienation of state land, employment, education and economic opportunity. These features characterised the inception of majoritarian rule and the denial of the legitimate aspirations of minority peoples.

The abrogation of the Soulbury Constitution of 1947, under which the country attained independence, removing the minimum safeguards for minority peoples contained therein, the abrogation of the BANDARANAIKE – CHELVANAYAGAM pact (1957), the DUDLEY SENANAYAKE – CHELVANAYAGAM pact (1965), entered into between successive Prime Ministers, and the democratically elected Tamil Leader particularly to terminate State aided land settlement of majority Sinhala people in the North and East, the enactment of the1972 Republican Constitution giving the majority religion and language, privileged positions, and the installation of a majoritarian structure of governance, perpetrated majoritarian hegemony which was further entrenched under the 1978 Constitution. These new features contributed towards ensuring that majoritarianism became the vehicle to political power.

This situation resulted in the demand of the Tamil people, for political autonomy through constitutional arrangements. This demand of the Tamil people rested on two pillars; the Tamil People are a distinct people, with their own identity, own history, own culture, own language, from time immemorial, and have historically inhabited the North Eastern part of the country with the Tamil speaking Muslim people. The Tamil speaking people are yet in a majority in every one of the districts in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, despite concerted efforts on the part of Governments through State aided land settlement popularly referred to asColonisation, and other avenues such aspreferential employment to the majority people in both the public and private sectors, so as to convert the said areas into ethnically majoritarian areas. The extent of the demographic change in the Eastern Province can be seen from the fact that while the natural increase of the majority Sinhala population in the whole country since Independence has been in the region of 250 to 300% , the increase of the majority Sinhala population in the Eastern Province has been between 850 to 900%.

The demand for political autonomy for the Tamil People and their resistance to majoritarian inroads, through peaceful non -violent campaigns based on the Gandhian principles of “Ahimsa” led to repeated anti Tamil racial pogroms commencing from the 1950s which resulted in around 50% of the Sri Lankan Tamil population fleeing from the countryand seeking refugein several countries the world over. This segment, today, substantially constitutes the Tamil Diaspora.

A retaliatory armed conflict that commenced in the 1980 s and lasted more than twenty five years has come to an end around four years ago. It must be stated that this armed conflict which assumed very fierce dimensions on both sides, resulted in the occurrence of very unfortunate and regrettable incidentscausing much suffering and pain to all peoples in the country particularly the Tamil People. The end of the conflict presented an opportunity to the Country and to all its peoples to chart a new future premised upon the ascertainment of the truth and genuine reconciliation based upon justice, discarding military triumphalism and majoritarian hegemony. It is such a course that provides all the peoples of Sri Lanka with equal opportunities to build a new Sri Lanka based on peace progress and prosperity. It is in this background that I propose to analyse the events that have occurred since the conclusion of the armed conflict and what needs to be done to achieve the desired objective.

The War and its aftermath had several unacceptable consequences. The War was conducted by the Sri Lankan State on the premise that it could be completed without any witnesses and without adherence to Humanitarian or Human Rights Laws. In September 2008, all non-governmental organisations were directed to leave the “VANNI” – the area of conflict, both the domestic and international media were kept out, the United Nations personnel were required on grounds of their own security to leave, access to the ICRC was severely limited, and no one else, not even Members of Parliament were permitted to enter the area. The Sri Lankan Government claimed that there were only around 60,000 people in the conflict zone when there were in fact around 400,000 people in that area. Food and medicines were provided only as per government estimates. The expulsion of international agencies placed an unbearable burden on the people. Despite these rigid restrictions clear evidence has been forthcoming in regard to the nature of the attacks to which civilians were subjected, the extent of their suffering and deprivation, a realistic appraisal of the number of casualties and the atrocities committed by both sides. Eventually despite the Government’s claims, over 290,000 people came out of the conflict zone, conclusively establishing that the Government’s initial claim of only 60,000 remaining in the conflict zone was a gross distortion of the truth.

The visit of the Secretary General of the United Nations to Sri Lanka on 23^rd May, 2009, almost immediately after the war came to an end and the joint communique issued by the President of Sri Lanka and theSecretary General identified three issues as of fundamental importance.

Political empowerment and Political solution
Resettlement of internally displaced persons together with providing them with means of livelihood so as to enable the resumption of lives at the earliest
The Government’s commitment to take measures to address its strongest commitment to the promotion and protection of Human Rights in keeping with International Human Rights standards and Sri Lanka’s international obligations, and the importance of an accountability process for addressing violations of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Laws.

Since then we have had the benefit of

The report of the Committee of Experts, appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations to advise him on issues of accountability.
The report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission appointed by the Sri Lankan Government, and the constructive recommendations contained therein to bring about genuine reconciliation.
The resolution adopted at the Human Rights Council in March 2012, outlining the obligations of the Sri Lankan Government and the further steps relating thereto.

We now have the report of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights to the Human Rights Council in regard to the manner of implementation by the Sri Lankan Government of the Resolution of the Human Rights Council of March 2012 and the new resolution to be introduced by the United States of America at the current session of the UN Human Rights Council.

It’s in this background and the background of the current situation on the ground in the North East that we have to consider what the future needs to be.

What has happened in the North East since the end of the conflict, instead of bringing about genuine reconciliation has only resulted in further alienation.

The Sri Lankan Government has not made tangible progress on any of the constructive recommendations identified by the L.L.R.C and incorporated in the U.N.H.R.C resolution of March 2012 – viz – credible investigations of wide spread allegations of extra judicial killings and enforced disappearances – several thousands yet remain unaccounted for; amongst the more egregious of these killings was the murder of five students in Trincomalee and seventeen aid workers in Muthur, despite Government’s commitments no action has been taken to conclude the investigations and prosecute the offenders; not even the report of a Commission of Inquiry appointed to inquire into these, amongst other grave violations of Human Rights has been published; An Independent group of eminent persons appointed to oversee the working of the Commission and to ensure that its performance was in keeping with International standards, terminated its mandate stating that the Sri Lankan state did not have the political will or commitment to investigate grave human rights violations in keeping with International norms and standards;this clearly demonstrates the attitude of the Sri Lankan State towards extra judicial killings and enforced disappearance of Tamils; demilitarisation of the North of Sri Lanka, particularly the dismantling of High Security Zones and restoring such lands to the civilians entitled thereto both for residence and occupation;

The Government has made commitments to the Supreme Court that the people evicted from the Vallikamam High Security Zone and the Sampur High Security Zone would be resettled, the Government has also given an assurance in Parliament that the people evicted from the Sampur High Security Zone would be resettled; while in Vallikamam there has been part settlement and there is more to be done, no settlement has taken place in Sampur and steps are afoot in both areas to use the land for other purposes; implement impartial land dispute resolution mechanisms – that would enable restoration of lands presently occupied by the Armed Forces and Para Military groups to civilians entitled thereto; re-evaluate detention policies, – large numbers yet continue to languish in detention,; strengthen formerly independent civil institutions, – these institutions are being further weakened; reach a political settlement involving devolution of power, – the Government has moved backwards despite the best efforts of the Tamil People and the Tamil National Alliance; protect the right of freedom of expression for all; and enact rule of law reforms. In every one of these areas the steps taken by the Government have been retrogressive. The Government has even chosen to blatantly deny credible evidence that has been placed in the public domain by credible International Agencies with adequate expertise in such fields. The Government acts with a sense of impunity and seems to believe that through such repeated blatant denials it can lay to rest any credible investigations in regard to such issues.An impartial credible International investigation remains the only avenue available in the context of the Government’s failure to conduct an impartial credible domestic investigation and merely engaging in bald denials. The Sri Lankan State which has continuously failed to keep it’s domestic commitments which have brought Sri Lanka to its present crisis seems to think that it can conceal itself behind the cloak of Sovereignty to avoid fulfilment of its International commitments and obligations. No one wants Sri Lankan Sovereignty which belongs to all its peoples to be usurped; at the same time one cannot permit the Sri Lankan State to use Sovereignty as an excuse not to fulfil the State’s International commitments and obligations. Such a situation can only lead to instability within Sri Lanka harmful to its own Sovereignty, and become a threat to both Regional and International Peace. It is therefore imperative that the Sri Lankan State must be made to conform to its International commitments and obligations. A State which has continuously failed to comply with it’s domestic commitments surely cannot be absolved from fulfilling its International commitments and obligations.

Since the repeal of the 17^th amendment to the Constitution which ensured the independent appointment to and the independent functioning of important civil institutions such as the Elections Commission, the Judicial Services Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Public Services Commission, the National Police Commission, the Bribery Commission, the Members of the Higher Judiciary, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, and other important appointments such as the Attorney General, the Auditor General, the Secretary General of Parliament and since the removal of the restriction on the term of the Presidency under the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution, and all such appointments now being solely at the discretion of the President, the Country is inexorably moving towards Authoritarian Rule. The impeachment of the Chief Justice because the Government found the interpretation of the Supreme Court on certain Constitutional provisions, a duty vested exclusively in the Supreme Court unpalatable, on the basis of charges which were of a highly dubious nature and through an investigative process which was rushed through in one sitting in a single day, in violation of all principles of Natural Justice and disregarding competent judicial verdicts pertaining to the said process, is not merely tantamount to the undermining of the independence of the judiciary but is also strongly indicative of very unhealthy trends which portend a future pregnant with the most undesirable consequences. Physical assault on members of the Judiciary is a clear indication of the breakdown of the rule of law. The oppressive presence of the Military, particularly in the North, continued steps to changethe demographic composition of the North and East and to alter the linguistic and cultural identity of the North and the East through State sponsored actions are clearly indicative of the Government implementing an agenda, the aims of which are to destroy multi ethnicity, multi-culturalism, pluralism and diversity and thereby suppress and subjugate the Tamil People who remain, and compel them to accept the status of inferior citizens which inevitably will have serious consequences.

Democracy, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law are clearly in jeopardy in Sri Lanka. Political expediency takes precedence over all values and principles. In the interests of Sri Lanka and all the peoples who live in Sri Lanka this situation should not continue. The time has certainly come for all necessary appropriate action so as to ensure that Sri Lanka complies with its International commitments and obligations.

*STATEMENT MADE BY MR. R SAMPANTHAN M.P., LEADER TAMIL NATIONAL ALLIANCE AT THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE, 2013, LONDON, OF THE GLOBAL TAMIL FORUM IN COMMITTEE ROOM 14 AT THE UK PARLIAMENT ON WEDNESDAY, 27^TH FEBRUARY 2013

War Crimes and Curry

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

Publishing a book about a highly charged ethnic conflict in which tens of thousands have died is no path to a peaceful life. You only need to look at the racial abuse and filthy language in the comments sections of online sites frequented by Sri Lankans to see how intense the emotions still are.

Like anyone who writes on Sri Lanka I've had my share of abuse from both sides. I've been told I am covered in the blood of the babies who perished in the killing fields, that I've been making money out of the dead, and am a terrorist or "white Tiger" not to mention, a hysterical liar.

But what the public doesn't see are the private messages from readers around the world. Every few days I receive a message of thanks from a Sri Lankan - mostly Tamils but a few Sinhalese too. Some just wish me a long life, say I will always be in their hearts or bless me. When I meet them at book events there are men and women who envelope me in a bear hug. A few confide that they've bought the book but are too scared to read it because they themselves are so traumatised as refugees from earlier phases of the war.

I sometimes pass on the messages to the characters in the book, who are the ones who deserve the credit, not me. They have taken huge risks to speak out, feeling it's their duty to bear witness to the carnage. Many readers write commending the doctor in Still Counting the Dead for his extraordinary bravery. In Canada a Tamil group gave him a "living hero award" which was the first public recognition of how much he'd contributed, literally saving thousands of lives with no thought for his own. Because the doctor has to remain anonymous for his own safety, the award plaque was hand delivered to me in London so I could post it on to him. Unfortunately it was made of glass, but luckily survived the journey intact.

Last week a grey haired Tamil gentleman came up to tell me how he'd read the book in two days flat, gripped but appalled. "I am a seventy years old man but I cried at several points while reading" he announced proudly. Another man from Melbourne sent me a message on Facebook saying:

"I cried when I read that it wasn't a palmyrah fruit but a head of an infant child. I was in the train. People were surprised and one kind lady offered me a tissue. It wasn't embarrassing. The same thing happened too when I read about the dead mom breastfeeding her baby. I wonder how you managed to pull it off without breaking down".

It's not just Sri Lankans. Tamils from neighbouring India write to say how ashamed that they didn't take more notice of what was going on in Sri Lanka. One graduate student in southern India told me he arranged discussions on the book at his university and then organised students to do outreach work. This involved taking the Tamil version of the book into the Sri Lankan refugee camps to show them someone had written about the war. He said, "Once a refugee saw the original work with the map, his face lit up. He began to explain it to his wife the details of the nation; the fertile northern part etc".

A Tamil in London, himself once a refugee, donated a hundred copies of the Tamil version of the book to libraries throughout the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He's now roped in his cousin and friend and they're sending ninety copies to diplomats at the UN. Others in Canada and the UK tell me they've posted the book to government ministers and MPs, urging them to read it.

Three days after Still Counting the Dead was published I encountered a Tamil man after an event in London who went up to the bookseller and in broken English demanded fifty signed copies. Misunderstanding ensued; she thought he wanted them on a sale or return basis and was being rather cheeky. Someone had to intervene in Tamil to straighten things out. Soon the man had whisked out his credit card and carried off the bookseller's entire stock in his backpack. It turned out he was going door to door selling my book to Tamil households and community centres - not for profit - but as a public service.

Although the English version of the book has been openly on sale in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, I'm told Tamils in the north are scared to be seen carrying it into Jaffna because their belongings are searched by the army. Nevertheless it has been read there and discussion groups held on it. At the launch in the UK people were buying up five or ten copies to send to their aunt or cousin in Jaffna. Sri Lankans - including some Sinhalese - have come to thank me in person, saying how important it is that someone has told the story of the final phase of the war.

More used to literary fiction, my British publishers have been astonished by the level of engagement. They were open mouthed that tickets for the launch event in London sold out well in advance and two hundred and fifty people packed the hall. Now they are less surprised when I demand a hundred copies of the book at the author's discount for someone who's buying in bulk.

Writing and talking about war crimes every day is corrosive and soul destroying and yes it takes it out of you slowly. Of course it's nothing to experiencing a war first hand. But there are some perks - the warmth of ordinary people. Now in Australia for the Adelaide Book Festival I got chatting to some Sri Lankans after an event and in no time they'd decided to hold an impromptu dinner party for me. The Australian publicist couldn't believe it. I tried to explain how normal this was but she said it simply never happens to their authors.

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Sowing Fear; Breeding Discord: Politics In Rajapaksa-Wonderland

By Tisaranee Gunasekara -March 7, 2013

“Only hate was happy….” Auden (In Memory of Sigmund Freud)

On Tuesday, around 700 Tamils – mostly elderly women – set off from Jaffna. As Lankan citizens, they were exercising their constitutional rights; as family members of the war-disappeared, they intended to participate in a demonstration against extra-judicial killings, outside the UN office in Colombo.

They never made it out of Vavuniya. “The military said the protesters were stopped for their own safety after reports their vehicles were been attacked…… In the end, the mainly elderly women protested in Vavuniya, where they had been halted…..holding pictures of their relatives….” (Colombo Page – 6.3.2013).

The demonstration, organised by Mano Ganesan, was aimed at drawing the attention of the UNHRC, currently in session in Geneva, to the very real problem of the war-disappeared. Since the regime allowed the protest in Colomboto go ahead, its real problem was not with the demonstration per se but with the participation of Jaffna Tamils in it.

Post-war, a new wall is dividing the North and the South, a wall kept up in the name of national security by the Rajapaksa regime. Economic, cultural and personal contacts between the North and the South are permitted, in general. But political contacts between the North and the South, outside the Rajapaksa-fold, are regarded with zero-tolerance.

So UPFA leaders can have political rallies in the North; and pro-government Tamil politicians can bus innumerable Tamils for political events inColombo(no stone-thrower problem there!). But any Sinhala-Tamil contact within the oppositional fold is perceived as a threat and treated with anti-democratic and illegal severity.

An oppositional unity which cuts across ethno-religious-class lines is the ultimate Rajapaksa nightmare. The regime becomes jittery whenever a Southern political party tries to reach out to the North. The JVP, several smaller left formations and even Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP have experienced the violent effects of this absolutist-intolerance.

Preventing any anti-Rajapaksa political awakening in the North or any anti-Rajapaksa political unity between the North and the South is thus a top priority for the Siblings.Sri Lanka would not been in hot-water in Geneva today, had it not been for this Rajapaksa obsession. Had the regime permitted normalcy and democracy to return to the North, post-war, the war-crimes charges would not have taken wing. If the Tamils were allowed to enjoy at least the limited freedom permitted to their Sinhala brethren, that would have sufficed to neutralise the West and keep India on the Rajapaksa-side. The world was tired of Mr. Pirapaharan’s murderous maximalism, and all the Rajapaksas had to do was to make minimal political concessions to the Tamils. Instead they imposed an anti-democratic Sinhala Peace on the Tamils, thereby giving the ‘war crime’ charge a new life.

Had the regime allowed the Northern Tamils to come to Colombo and take part in the demonstration, it could have used that fact to bolster its own claims and attack its opponents in Geneva, with some credibility. Instead the regime opted to provide its opponents in Geneva with one more weapon. In the power-besotted Rajapaksa eyes, permitting a majority-minority alliance within the opposition-fold is a far greater evil than tarnishing Sri Lanka’s international reputation.

When Lankan-interests conflict with Rajapaksa-interests, the latter wins, always.

Tiger Eelam and Rajapaksa Sri Lanka

Vellupillai Pirapaharan wanted not an Eelam for Tamil speaking people or even a Tamil Eelam. The only Eelam he was interested in was an Eelam under his total control.

Up to a certain point, the contradictions between Tamil-interests and Pirapaharan-interests remained minor and non-antagonistic. But when they diverged, sharply, and turned inimical and mutually exclusive, it was his interests Mr. Pirapaharan prioritised, over and above Tamil-interests, every time. This obsessive vision not only pushed the Tamils towards a historic defeat; it also blinded Mr. Pirapaharan to his own long-term interests. He decided to abandon reality altogether and chase his dystopian mirage. An un-heroic death on the shores ofNandikadal was the appointed end of that journey.

The Rajapaksas do not want a pluralistSri Lankaor even a Sinhala-supremacist Sri Lanka. Their Sinhala supremacism is as instrumental and opportunistic as Vellupillai Pirapaharan’s Tamil supremacism. It is a useful – and a necessary – handle. What the Siblings really want is a Rajapaksa-supremacist Sri Lanka, a country under their total control, a land ruled by their family for evermore, their own ‘Thousand Year Reich’.

Rajapaksa-interests and Lankan-interests are already divergent and headed in opposite directions. The contradictions between Rajapaksa-interests and Sinhala-interests too are slowly turning antagonistic, especially in the economic sphere. The irrational Family-first economics of the Rajapaksas is seriously undermining Sinhala wellbeing. A genuinely Sinhala supremacist regime, for instance, would have prioritised improving the lot of Sinhala farmers over the building of an unnecessary airport in Mattala. But for the Siblings, the pride and joy of having a Rajapaksa Airport far outweigh all the needs of all the Sinhalese. Eventually Sri Lanka will become a graveyard of infrastructural white-woolly mammoths, all named after the Rajapaksas, while most Sinhalese wallow in poverty.

Sinhala supremacism is a weapon to promote and a mantle to cover Rajapaksa supremacism; no less, no more. The Siblings will conjure into being crucibles of hate from time to time, to assist in its agenda of keeping ordinary Lankan too divided and afraid to realise the ill-effects of Rajapaksa-rule.

Like the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS)

Last week, a BBS delegation powwowed with the Army Commander and the IGP. The meeting with Gen. Jayasuriya was “also attended by Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Major General Shavendra Silva…” (The Sunday Leader – 3.3.2012). Its purpose was to discuss the BBS claim that ‘Islamic terrorist groups’ (including Al Shabaab) are here. “The Venerable Embilipitiye Vijitha Theor said the monks handed over some documents to the army to back their claims and called for an in-depth investigation” (ibid).

The BBS came into being, organisationally, in July 2012. Today it is a major political player. Such a meteoric rise is not possible in Rajapaksa Sri Lanka, without Rajapaksa patronage. The BBS is obviously a Rajapaksa-pawn, used by the Siblings to further their own dynastic project.

Pawns are expendable, and replaceable; infinitely.

According to the Sunday Times website, there is a plan to incarcerate BBS activists until the UNHRC sessions are over[i]. Whether this faux ‘show-and-tell’ crackdown happens or not is immaterial. The BBS will perform its allotted role and evaporate from the polity and public memory. But the venom they spewed will continue to fester, impeding unity and promoting discord/fragmentation.

That is precisely what the Rajapaksas want. If Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus suspect, fear and hate each other, if they build walls against each other, if they maintain a climate of cold war across these psychological ramparts (interspersed occasionally by real conflicts), they will never be able to unite, politically. And the Rajapaksa future is secured.

Hatred breeds hatred; violence begets violence. That is precisely the Siblings’ purpose. Countries which are normal and peaceful do not need heroes or saviours. SoSri Lanka must always be awash with suspicion, fear and hatred. How else can the minorities be cowed into inaction and the majority made to cling to the Kurakkan-shawl for protection?

[i] http://www.sundaytimes.lk/latest/30994-top-bodu-bala-sena-member-goes-into-hiding-.html

Mannar Fort under the control of military

Thursday , 07 March 2013
It is aware that the Mannar's ancient Ollanthar Fort will be taken over by military. An activity for the maintenance and the administration assignments of the said fort is processed to handover to the military was said by Vanni Region Commanding Chief General Boniface Perera.

After this fort get handed over to the military, in view of tourist attraction, a hotel would be constructed was said by him.

He further said, the military will renovate the Olanthan fort preventing from harming to the character of its ancients values.

Immediately commence impartial investigation into war crimes against Sri Lanka. Missing person�s relatives write to UN

Thursday , 07 March 2013

“We want our children and relatives. Immediately commence war crime unbiased investigation against Sri Lanka government was a claim including eleven demands consisting a supplication was forwarded to the membership countries of UN Human Rights Council including Sri lanka government.

Finding the missing persons by the families’ federation of north and east forwarded an entreaty through Vavuniya District Additional Government Agent.

The above appeal was handed over at the conclusion of protest rally conducted in Vavuniya by the relatives of missing persons yesterday.

The petition mentioned, since the initiative of ethnic conflict until now thousands of our beloved have been abducted by military, police, state intelligence personnel unit and armed masked men.

Forcibly dragged and taken while they were in homes by military, abductions in white vans while walking on roads, were the many kinds of ways, our relatives went missing.

At the final war, in front of our eyes our beloveds were separated from us and others got disappeared after surrendering to the forces.

One lack of persons and more got disappeared at the final war. We do not know about their whereabouts.

We have made many complaints to the police, human rights movements, volunteer organizations, International Red Cross Society and all the relevant movements.

We have visited the prisons and detention camps.

We have exhausted millions of rupees to the deceivers who were greedy for money that they would bring back our children ultimately we have lost our possessions.

We have lost our husbands and children and are facing a variety of torture and are subject to rape and sexual harassments.

We have lost our bread winner and are facing hardships for even for one meal.

We are doing laborer’s jobs to fulfill our children hunger.

We are with longing expectations expecting each day for our beloveds to return back, but days are moving without any use.

We the affected people together are submitting a variety of demands to the Sri Lanka government, international countries and to the countries attending the UN Human Rights Council sessions.

· Provide us to live in this country with the right to self-determination, making way for people to live with equal rights

· Government should find and handover our missing relatives. If they are detained, investigations should be expedited and released.

· Sri Lanka government should be pressurized by the world countries and UN Council.

· Military and intelligence forces observing daily with suspicion at us should get withdrawn.

· Should cease in arresting and harassing our children in the name of investigation after getting released from detention camps.

· Making no longer go missing, illegal arrests, detention must be stopped.

· Facilities for a general cemetery for the dead or facilities provided to erect memorial tombs remembering our demised beloveds.

· Relief granted to females bearing the responsibilities of families for their livelihoods.

· Western world should immediately commence the war crime impartial probe against Sri Lanka government.

· India and western world should affirm the safety, freedom and rights for us, we being the Tamil people. Finally we want back our children and our beloveds who have gone missing.

Exclusive Guardian Report: Pentagon’s Link To Iraqi Torture Centres

By Colombo Telegraph -

“The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country’s descent into full-scale civil war.” the Guardian reports.

This exclusive report is based on an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic.

This Is The Gist Of What I Had To Say In Westminster

By Gordon Weiss -March 7, 2013

Gordon Weiss

In the past few years, I’ve largely avoided junkets from Sri Lankan diaspora groups, for fear of being tarred with various brushes. The two exceptions (not junkets of course) were from Toronto’s Sri Lankans Without Borders , a group dedicated to building common ground between all of Lanka’s communities, and now the Global Tamil Forum, who persuaded me to travel to London for their third annual conference. Sunday I was laying in the sun in Australia, trying to heal a herniated disk in my back. That evening, I decided to catch a plane the next morning.

I was convinced by the line-up of speakers: the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg; current and former UK foreign secretaries Douglas Alexander and David Milliband; current opposition leader Ed Milliband; Conservative leader in the Lords, Baroness Warsi; former Norwegian government minister Erik Solheim; leading international lawyer and academic, Professor Bill Schabas; the redoubtable Judge Yasmin Sooka, one of the three panellists on the UN’s Panel of Experts report, and Commissioner on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission;Callum Macrae, the producer and director of all three Channel 4 films, including his latest No Fire Zone which will be shown for the first time this Friday at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva; and representatives from the African National Congress; International Crisis group, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and Civicus.

This is quite apart from the other remarkable people I’ve met while here. Sri Lankan academic and writer, the wry Kumar David; the courageous M.M. Rajani Iqbal who, along with her husband, has done so much to document disappearances; the eloquent M.A. Sumanthiran, MP in the Sri Lankan parliament, and reputedly one of the best practising lawyers on the island; the doughty and irrepressible MP Rajavarothiam Sampanthan; and Father Emmanuelle, a theologian and scholar much disliked by the island’s regime.

This is the gist of what I had to say in the ten minutes I was given… Incidentally, my journey was funded by a European government.

“Thanks to the Tamil Global Forum for persuading me to be here. I’m grateful, considering the very persuasive group of Britain’s leading decision-makers who have fronted up today to lend their heft to this subject, turning their minds to reconciliation in Sri Lanka, supporting an end to the string of violent conflicts that has dominated this beautiful country’s last four decades.

I have said elsewhere that in the war in Sri Lanka, I had no dog in the fight. No Tamil wife, or cousin, no Sinhalese brother-in-law, or best friend. So I have always fancied that I am very much an outsider, an ordinary man if you will, with ordinary responses, and an impartial observer.

On Sunday I was lounging on the beach in Australia, trying to recover from a herniated disk, and it was very much a last minute decision to be here. I drove from my home to the airport on Monday, and flew via Beijing, thinking once again of my daughters…

I am not a human rights professional, and I have emphasized before that my response to the final page of Sri Lanka’s war was very much that of an ordinary person, despite my professional role and responsibilities as the UN’s spokesperson in Colombo at that time.

When I set out to write my book, The Cage, it was because as an ordinary man I simply felt the unfairness, the indecency of what had happened.

When in 2009, during the war, I returned from work at night time in Colombo to see my daughters comfortably sleeping, I would think of the thousands of children in the north, living through the terror of a siege, and of their parents who were unable to medicate them when they were suffering from from common illnesses, or to save then when they were injured by shrapnel, or when their limbs were torn by high-powered bullets.

I have repeated many times that I went to Sri Lanka as a supporter of the government’s right to reclaim its sovereign territory. The LTTE, a revolutionary organization whose brand of ruthless ultra-violence had effectively subverted the justice of its cause, had to be taken on. The government military campaign was a relatively disciplined fight, up until the end. And it is that end with which I have taken exception, and for which I have worked to explain. In dealing with extra-state groups, sovereign states have a standard of responsibility that must be adhered to. As we have learned from the years of emerging evidence of war crimes, the so-called “Sri Lanka model” is no model at all to be followed.

The understanding, or full comprehension of what happened in Sri Lanka has come a long way since 2009. I ought to say that British leaders such as David Milliband, then Foreign Secretary and who has spoken today, already knew full well that the version propagated by the government of Sri Lanka was not the truth. But for the broader public, the lines of the Sri Lankan government, things such as “not a drop of civilian blood was spilled,” rang somehow true.

There had been no bombing of hospitals or schools. No bombardment of civilian concentrations and bread lines. No withholding of precious medicines and food. No battlefield executions, and no rape and killing of captured Tamil Tiger female fighters, or of children.

The commonly accepted coin was that India would never shift from the rock-solid support that it had shown for Sri Lanka, so obvious in the Human Rights Council resolution of 2009. So too it has always been the common coin that China will never shift its support from Sri Lanka, an analysis that I dispute.

At the time, there had been no International Crisis group report of the final stages of the war, there was no UN Panel of Experts report, no Channel 4 documentaries, and nor was there the flurry of news reports wherein it is now accepted that a great many people died while the world’s press was so successfully excluded from the battlefield by the government of Sri Lanka.

Today it is generally accepted, as irrefutable evidence has gradually emerged and accumulated, that a great many civilians died, that their deaths were probably needless and egregious even given the circumstances of this terrible final chapter, and that war crimes were committed by both sides.

So here, while we sit in the Gladstone room, off the ancient Westminster Hall, we are surrounded by the portraits and statues of the great, those who constructed and presided over the Courts of Justice for 500 years. But I also find a neat metaphor in the marks of the stonemasons who built this great hall, ordinary men who left their marks in the chips and scrapes on these walls.

For fairness, and a sense of common decency, is an ordinary quality common to all people. It is this innate sense of fairness that builds systems of justice, and which inspires just outcomes. It is this decency that was once written about by Vaclav Havel, the former dissident and President of the Czech Republic, a sense of decency that is ultimately, I believe, bound to prevail over those who would shroud the truth, compel us to forget, and whose interests do not lie with justice for all. It is this sense of decency which results in organizations like the ANC or CIVICUS, and which I believe will result in a truth process in Sri Lanka that will support reconciliation and a lasting peace.

I’d like to refer to three words raised by Father Emmanuelle:

The first is sincerity. The Tamil community needs to work to actively dispel the murky past that characterized the Tamil struggle for equal rights. That is not to say that it didn’t have its place, or that it was not part of a legitimate struggle. It was. When faced with an unbending violence, sometimes the answer will be violence. But at some stage, that answer became an anachronism, and no longer suited to a post-9/11 world.

The second is consistency. Tamils need to build a common platform, based on shared political and social aims, to replace the confusing proliferation of Tamil groups that have flourished since the demise of the LTTE. Tamils need to have unity of purpose expressed in a common voice, if policy-makers are to be able to act on their behalf.

Thirdly, Tamils need to understand what will work and what won’t today, in 2013, and to recognize what will achieve a listening from political leaders and broader publics throughout the world.

Finally, Father Emmanuelle mentioned “freedom based on truth and justice,” and it is here that I want to raise the prospect of an historic opportunity for the Tamil diaspora.

The Tamil diaspora, linked with the leadership of Tamils who live in Sri Lanka today, and who must find an accommodation with the current government, have an historic opportunity. You must recognize and seize this chance. To resort to some Australian-isms for a moment: the cloth-eared, kack-handed, woolly-headed approach of the current Sri Lankan government has presented the Tamil community with a golden opportunity. The government of Sri Lanka has squandered so much goodwill, and has proven itself so untrustworthy, that they have opened a wide void for an opposition, which is not being effectively occupied.

But the Tamil diaspora, this incredibly well-organized group – professional, well-educated, and well-connected in politics and finance – has the opportunity to speak not only on behalf of Tamils, but also on behalf of all those who are excluded from meaningful participation in Sri Lankan political life today. That includes the Muslims, Sinhalese oppositionists, the media, lawyers, Budddhist priests who do not share the extremities of their brethren, and dare I say other minorities such as homosexuals.

In the words of a famous Czech artist whose name I have forgotten but whose words have stayed with me, “In supporting the freedom of others, I find my own.” At a time of growing oppression in Sri Lanka, there has perhaps never been a better moment for the Tamil Diaspora to support the freedom of others, thereby finding their own.

Thank you for your kind attention.”

*This article was first published by the gordonweissauthor.com