Twin bombing rocks Boston

* At least 3 slain, 140+ hurt in attack * Wounded Saudi being questioned

• Last Updated: 7:56 AM, April 16, 2013
• By LARRY CELONA in NY and REUVEN FENTON & LORENA MONGELLI in Boston
• Posted: 2:29 AM, April 16, 2013

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Child victim Martin Richard, 8, was killed in yesterday's terror attack.

Terrorists detonated two shrapnel-packed bombs at the Boston Marathon yesterday, leaving bodies and shredded limbs littering the finish line.

Many victims suffered amputated legs and were pierced with ball bearings and nails — indicating the bombs had been designed to inflict maximum human damage.

The official death toll was three, but a law-enforcement source told The Post it could be as high as 12.

One witness told The New York Times there appeared to be 10 to 12 fatalities, including “women, children, finishers.” The wounds appeared to be “lower torso — the type of stuff you see from someone exploding out,” he said.

The dead included an 8-year-old boy, Martin Richard, whose mom and sister were hurt as they waited for his dad to finish running. Richard's father, Bill, is a community leader in Dorchester.

PHOTOS: EXPLOSIONS ROCK BOSTON MARATHON

FBI GRILLS SAUDI MAN IN BOSTON BOMBINGS

AFTER BOSTON BOMBINGS, 1,000 COPS DEPLOYED TO LANDMARKS AND TRANSIT SITES

John Tlumacki/The Boston Glob

A wounded spectator sits dazed amid the bloodshed near the finish line yesterday after twin terrorist explosions hit the Boston Marathon.

More than 140 injured people were being treated at eight hospitals, with at least 17 in critical condition.

A state trooper at the scene reported more than 25 people with at least one leg missing.

Dan Lampariello/Barcroft Media

As dozens of unsuspecting marathoners press on toward the finish line, a second blast erupts.

A woman visiting her brother at Brigham Woman’s Hospital in Boston said doctors removed 37 nails that were lodged in the man’s legs from the blast.

A surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital said the most common serious injury was to the bone and tissue of the leg. “Obviously, it’s upsetting to see people coming in so quickly,” Dr. Peter Fagenholz said.

'I HEARD THIS BANG — THEN CHAOS'

'BLOOD EVERYWHERE': WITNESS RECOUNTS CHAOS, BRAVERY

Among the developments in the hours after the attack:

* Federal sources said a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian national, who was injured by shrapnel, was being questioned by authorities and under heavy guard at a Boston hospital. An apartment in Revere, Mass. — where sources say the suspect lives — was raided by feds yesterday.

* “Make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this,” President Obama said. “Any responsible individual, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice.” Later, a White House official said the incident was being treated as an act of terrorism.

* The attacks sent the Dow Jones industrial average plunging 265 points, the worst day on Wall Street in five months.

AP

Wearing a foil to keep warm, a marathoner breaks down in tears after yesterday's madness near Copley Square.

The two bombs exploded 13 seconds apart and left hundreds of people in tears, some searching for loved ones and trying to comfort the dying.

Boston police initially said a third incident — a fire or explosion — occurred at the JFK Presidential Library at around 4:30 p.m., about an hour and a half after and four miles away from the marathon blasts. But they later indicated that incident was unrelated to the attack.

Police found at least two unexploded bombs near the finish line, and they detonated one safely.

AP

A first responder in protective suit investigates the exact spot on Boylston Street where one of the two devices detonated.

It was reported that the two bombs had been left in trash cans. Such receptacles are normally removed from parade routes and other events as an anti-terror precaution, and law-enforcement sources told The Post it wasn’t clear whether the report indicated a security failing — or if, perhaps, the terrorists had set up their own cans.

Investigators were looking into whether a battery and timers were used on the explosive devices.

Witnesses described a horrific scene of a blood-spattered Boylston Street and dozens of rescue workers rushing injured runners and spectators from the scene.

Boston resident Tony Wrubio was watching from the sidelines when one blast knocked him and his friend to the ground.

“We saw debris flying everywhere. It was just a mad rush of people,” Wrubio told The Post. “I saw people with limbs missing. People just lying in the street, missing limbs.

“There was a kid separated from his mom and I picked up the kid, threw him over my shoulder, and brought him out and gave him to his mom.”

AFP/Getty Images

GRIM NEWS: President Obama gets an update yesterday as he's joined by Lisa Monaco — his assistant for homeland security and terrorism — and Chjef of Staff Denis McDonough at the Oval Office.

Runner Tim Hare was just a quarter-mile from the finish line when the first blast erupted. He continued to run but stopped after the second went off 10 feet to his left.

“I saw a trash can go up, I saw fire, I saw smoke. I saw what looked like someone hitting the ground,” he said. “I just turned around and ran for my life.”

Monica Pearson, who was being treated in the medical tent after finishing the race but before the blasts, saw mangled spectators being rushed in.

“It was a life-changing experience to see a man come in with no legs,” she said.

Runners walked around with nowhere to go. All nearby hotels were evacuated, and no one was allowed into the Lenox Hotel, the Copley Square Hotel, the Westin, the Copley Fairmont or the Mandarin.

Marathoners were shuttled to Boston Common to look for relatives.

AFP/Getty Images

Marathon runner John Ounao (center) weeps as his fear gives way to relief yesterday after he's reunited with friends amid the mayhem.

Within hours, Google had set up a page that allowed viewers to seek information about victims or to offer information.

As the race ended in chaos, some of the 26,000 runners were stopped about a mile from the finish line.

Some continued, changed direction to nearby Massachusetts General Hospital to donate blood.

Medics set up an emergency morgue at the finish line.

Many of the injured were taken to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where Dean Smith, 52, was treated for shrapnel wounds.

“I was there to watch my son run,” Smith said. “The first bomb went off and I said, ‘That’s a bomb,’ and then, all of a sudden, boom! Another one went off.

“My eardrums burst. My wife said I flew five feet.”

The attack came on Patriots Day, a popular holiday in Boston. It was four days before the anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168.

Organizers of the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon, set for Friday, said they planned to go ahead with the race.

In New York City, police deployed anti-terror forces to major landmarks, transportation hubs and other potential targets.

Gov. Cuomo has directed state agencies to be on heightened alert and said the New York National Guard already had three vehicles and six soldiers in Boston.

One law-enforcement source suggested New York might have been the preferred target — and Boston was the alternative.

“Our marathon was canceled in November [by Hurricane Sandy]. This could have been a second choice,” the source said. “

Another source said federal authorities view the bombing as “a more successful version” of the 2010 Times Square attack in which a car bomb failed to detonate.

Obama was cautious in his remarks from the White House three hours after the attack, saying investigators “still do not know who did this or why.”

Adding to the heartbreak, the last mile of the marathon was dedicated to the victims of the Newtown school massacre, and some of their relatives were seated in a VIP section near the finish line.

Additional reporting by Fred Milgrim in Boston and Pedro Oliveira Jr., Josh Margolin, Jamie Schram and Kirstan Conley in NY

FBI grills Saudi man in Boston bombings

‘Smells of gunpowder’

• Last Updated: 5:42 AM, April 16, 2013
• By LARRY CELONA
• Posted: 2:35 AM, April 16, 2013

William Farrington

An FBI investigator examines a bag inside an apartment in Revere, in a building on the street where a man being questioned in the bomb attack lives.

Police took a 20-year-old Saudi national into custody near the scene of yesterday’s horrific Boston Marathon bomb attack, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

The potential suspect was questioned by the FBI and local police yesterday at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was under heavy guard while being treated for shrapnel injuries to his leg sustained in the blast.

In late afternoon, a large group of federal and state law enforcement agents raided an apartment in a building in the Saudi man’s hometown of Revere, Mass.

FBI agents could be seen through one window. It was not clear what, if anything, they found. But Revere fire officials said they were called out to support bomb-squad officers as part of an investigation of a “person of interest” in the marathon attack.

At the hospital, investigators seized the man’s clothes to examine whether they held any evidence that he was behind the attack. The law-enforcement sources also told The Post that the man was not free to leave the medical center.

He had suffered shrapnel wounds to the back of a leg but was not likely to die, a source said.

As of last night, investigators had not yet directly asked the man whether he had set off the bombs. But they had asked him general questions, such as what he was doing in the area.

The potential suspect told police he had dinner Sunday night near Boston’s Prudential Center, about half a mile from the blast site, the sources said.

He also said that he went to the Copley Square area yesterday to witness the finish of the race.

The sources said that, after the man was grabbed by police, he smelled of gunpowder and declared, “I thought there would be a second bomb.”

He also asked: “Did anyone die?”

Officials showed up at the Revere apartment at about 5:30 p.m. in unmarked vehicles, a resident of the building said. It’s on a street where the man had lived, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

About an hour later, more vehicles, carrying agents of the FBI, Homeland Security and ATF also descended on the site, along with firefighters and a bomb squad. They searched an apartment on the fifth floor.

By midnight, most of the authorities had left the complex, which sits on a piece of ocean-front property in the seaside city.

Investigators were looking for anything that might have been used set to off the devices, including a remote control.

According to a report by CBS News, the man was initially tackled by a bystander while running from the scene of the explosions.

The bystander told police he grabbed the Saudi because he thought he was acting suspiciously.

Additional reporting by Kate Kowsh in Revere, Mass.

larry.celona@nypost.com

USA: Boston Marathon Explosions

By Colombo Telegraph -April 16, 2013

A large explosion has  been detonated near the finish line of the Boston marathon in USA a short while ago.

AP said there was a loud explosion on the north side of Boylston Street, just before the bridge that marks the finish line. Another loud explosion could be heard a few seconds later.

Smoke rose from the blasts, fluttering through the national flags lining the route of the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathon. TV helicopter footage showed blood staining the pavement in the popular shopping and tourist area known as the Back Bay.

The Guardian said; At least two reported explosions at the finish line,runners were still finishing the race when blasts hit, participant: ‘There are a lot of people down’, surrounding buildings were being evacuated .

CNN says; Two large explosions rocked an area near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, injuring at least six people and spewing wreckage in its wake. The explosions occurred at about 2:45 p.m., more than two hours after the first of the race’s nearly 27,000 runners had crossed the finish line, CNN Producer Matt Frucci reported.

In New York City, authorities stepped up security as well “until more about the explosion is learned,” Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said, the CNN reports.

Rare footage:Person walks on roof til explosion

Time for action on Colombo Commonwealth summit
JAKE LYNCH

15 APRIL 2013
Diplomacy should send a clear signal to Sri Lanka that it is on the wrong track. This year’s CHOGM in Colombo should be cancelled, writes Jake Lynch.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr will head to London shortly for the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, amid growing calls for the cancellation of this year’s Heads of Government Meeting in the Sri Lankan capital.

It comes as the United Nations is finally preparing for more decisive intervention following the country’s civil war, in which government forces are accused of killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.

Australian diplomacy risks sending the wrong signals. Carr visited Colombo in December and pronounced it safe for the return of Tamil asylum seekers - flatly contradicting every independent assessment. The UN Human Rights Council recently voted to send its own investigators after hearing ‘serious allegations of violations of international human rights law’, along with ‘continuing reports of violations… including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as intimidation of and reprisals against human rights defenders, members of civil society and journalists, threats to judicial independence and the rule of law, and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief’.

Sri Lanka was supposed to be tackling such issues through its self-proclaimed ‘Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission’, but this was a cynical exercise to buy time until international attention moved on.

The final offensive against the Tamil Tigers was planned as a ‘war without witnesses’, but investigative journalism led by the UK’s Channel Four, in collaboration with brave Sri Lankan reporters both in country and in exile, has kept the issue in the public eye.

The Commonwealth summit would be hosted by president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has been removing political and judicial constraints on his ability to wield despotic power. Two of his brothers also hold cabinet posts. The constitutional limit restricting presidents to two terms in office was removed, and the High Court chief justice was dismissed, after she stood up to him.

The last Heads of Government Meeting, in Perth, strengthened the Ministerial Action Group’s mandate. Empowered to intervene when the Commonwealth’s ‘values and principles’ are threatened, its grounds for engagement now include ‘the systematic denial of political space, such as through detention of political leaders or restrictions on freedom of association, assembly or expression’, particularly in conditions such as ‘systematic violation of human rights of the population, or of any communities or groups, by the member government concerned’ and ‘significant restrictions on the media or civil society’.

Human rights monitors and the UN’s own expert panel, which reported two years ago, show this is an accurate description of Sri Lanka today. Canada has already said it will not attend CHOGM if it is held there, and cites recent developments to support its argument.

So why has Canberra never backed demands for an independent international investigation of the alleged killing of civilians? Why has it not added its voice to calls for CHOGM to be moved? The answer may lie not in Sri Lanka at all but in one of the grimmest places in Australia: the MITA Detention Centre in Melbourne.

There, a group of 30 asylum seekers, most Sri Lankan Tamils, are on hunger strikebecause, they say in a statement by the Tamil Refugee Council:

We left Sri Lanka because we fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be better than the life we have.

Their refugee claims have been granted, but they cannot leave detention - after three or four years in most cases - because of adverse security assessments by ASIO. The implication is that they are associated with the Tamil Tigers.

Not only is it fanciful to suppose that - even if they were - they would pose any threat to Australians, it is also difficult to imagine how such assessments could be made without collaboration with the Sri Lankan authorities: a source that is inevitably biased, because party to an unresolved conflict, and tainted by credible allegations of torture and abuse.

Is Australian diplomacy being distorted to avoid upsetting Colombo, for fear of an increase in the passage of boats carrying desperate people to our shores?

ASIO assessments cannot be challenged in court, which makes them a convenient tool for a government wishing to send signals to other would-be asylum seekers, without appearing to fall foul of international obligations. It’s a case cited by the NSW Council for Civil Liberties in its campaign to phase out ‘emergency’ powers granted to the security agency following the 9/11 attacks.

Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka will have genuine asylum claims for as long as the country’s government attempts to suppress their political aspirations rather than engaging with them. Diplomacy should send a clear signal that Colombo is on the wrong track. Withholding its showpiece summit is among the only meaningful gestures the Commonwealth can make. The Ministerial Action Group, if it is not to belie its name, must now recommend that step.

Associate Professor Jake Lynch, PhD is director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. View his full profile here.

Warnings over ongoing political repression in Sri Lanka | Connect Asia | ABC Radio Australia

Warnings over ongoing political repression in Sri Lanka

ABC Radio Australia

Updated 15 April 2013, 13:59 AEST

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Warnings over ongoing political repression in Sri Lanka | Connect Asia | ABC Radio Australia

The United States has warned that Sri Lanka risks sliding back into conflict unless the political repression of its Tamil community ends.

There have been fresh attacks on media outlets across the country.

Arsonists struck a newspaper office in the northern city of Jaffna over the weekend - the fifth attack on the media since January.

The situation has implications for Australia. Senior Tamils warn that asylum seekers will keep leaving Sri Lanka unless the security situation improves at home.

Correspondent: Michael Edwards

Speakers: Siva Kumaran, senior editor, Uthayan; Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director for Human Rights Watch

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Uthayan is the leading newspaper in the Jaffna Peninsular, the northern part of Sri Lanka where Tamils make up the majority of the population. The newspaper has long been critical of President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government, and the military.

Over the weekend a group of armed men forcibly entered its offices.

Siva Kumaran is one of the newspaper's senior editors.

SIVA KUMARAN: They entered through the machine room and so fired to the our web machine and machine fully damaged, and they burnt some paper reels and the machine.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Last week, a group of people attacked another Uthayan office, leaving five workers injured. Siva Kumaran says the newspaper is a target because of its opposition to the Sri Lankan government.

SIVA KUMARAN: We can't say who is that, but the suspects maybe, they paramilitary forces, some paramilitary forces, they are, maybe it's done by them.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: It's the fifth attack on a newspaper in northern Sri Lanka this year. And reports of abductions, surveillance and harassment of Tamils continue despite the country's civil war ending four years ago.

The United Nations passed a resolution on March the 21st, calling on the Sri Lankan government to address human rights violations. And the United States warns that ethnic conflict could flare again unless the repression stops.

Meenakshi Ganguly is the South Asia Director for Human Rights Watch.

MEENAKSHI GANGULY: There seems to be a sense that the government is not serious about addressing these serious allegations of human rights violations. And what that means is that there's... there's a Tamil community both in Sri Lanka and outside, is getting increasingly unhappy about this, and about the government's repeated denials.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: Tamils say this political oppression is making many of them seek asylum in Australia.

A boat full of Tamils arrived on the coast of Western Australia last week. The boats come despite efforts by both countries to stop them.

Meenakshi Ganguly says the only way asylum seekers will stop trying to get to Australia is if the situation in Sri Lanka improves.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: The Australian Government has to put pressure on Sri Lanka to not,,, instead of trying to stop these people leaving, to make the situation such that people do not wish to leave.

They're looking at the symptoms and as actually they should be looking at the disease because unless the disease is cured, unless life becomes better for like in Sri Lanka, these symptoms will continue.

MICHAEL EDWARDS: The Sri Lankan government denies it's involved in any human rights abuses or attacks on media outlets.

Army of Ministers in Sri Lanka

by N.S.Venkataraman-Sunday, April 14, 2013

( April 14, 2013, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) By inducting more ministers , the efficiency of the government would not improve. On the other hand, only its credibility would suffer. Unfortunately, President of Sri Lanka gives an impression that he has not realised this, while expanding the number of ministers in his cabinet to a whopping level of 97. One wonders as to what he hopes to gain by this. Probably he thinks that this would be one way of keeping his supporters in good humour. Can one think that while expanding his cabinet to jumbo size, he has shown no concern for administrative expenses involved in maintaining so many ministers and the likely nepotism that would happen , with “job less ministers”, spending their time in abusing power and authority and thus keeping themselves occupied.

The cabinet of ministers in Sri Lanka is now 67 strong including the President, Prime Minister and senior ministers. Another 28 are deputy ministers and 2 have been named under a new category “project ministers”. This takes the total number of ministers in the 225 members of parliament to 97. President Rajapakse and his think tank should have spent considerable time in inventing new portfolios . For example, now there is a minister for sugar industries though Sri Lanka is hardly a sugar producing nation. Perhaps, President Rajapakse thinks that this minister would discover more areas for sugar cane production in Sri Lanka, which would only embarass the new minister.

Sri Lanka is a small country by size and it is unfair to burden the nation with so many number of ministers. The fact is that even so many secretaries are not required.

One only gets the impression after seeing such big expansion of the cabinet , that President of Sri Lanka should be more concerned about providing quality administration to the country and building infra structure facilities and production centres rather than building his cabinet !

The fact is that in the case of appointing politicians as ministers, no particular qualification is required and anyone who has the capability of upsetting the apple cart has the chance of becoming the minister. Obviously, there are so many persons in Sri Lankan Parliament who are capable of upsetting the apple cart ! It is the indication of weakness of Sri Lankan President that he has to recognise such persons and accommodate them.

If Sri Lankan President were to order a scientific study of the functioning of the Sri Lankan government, he would be advised by the management experts that not more than ten to fifteen cabinet ministers are required. Perhaps, many others could be accommodated as members of various advisory committees to give them a role in governance.

One cannot think that an experienced person like President Rajapakse would not know all this. Obviously, he thinks that expediency is more important than providing quality administration. This is a short sighted approach and would not stand in the long run.

The jumbo cabinet in Sri Lanka is an eye sore on the image of the Sri Lankan government.

Skeletons In The Closet

By M A Sumanthiran -April 15, 2013 

M.A. Sumanthiran MP

The discovery of skeletal remains of what is reported to be more than a hundred people has dominated the press for some time. It is now clear that the mass graves were of victims of summary executions during the second JVPinsurrection. It is also clear that the appointment of a Presidential Commission of Inquiry to probe these crimes – which are demonstrable crimes against humanity – is to protect those responsible for these crimes to begin with.

Presidential Commissions of Inquiry have often been cynically utilized to satisfy public and international demands for action, whilst sabotaging the prospect of justice. The President who has complete control over a Commission’s mandate, composition, funding, tenure and staff effectively dominates Presidential Commissions. The President may choose not to release Commission reports to the public at all. The long list of Presidential Commissions that have yielded no tangible results are matched by an equally long list of Commission reports that have never been made public. The Udalagama Commission into seventeen serious human rights abuses was discontinued in June 2009, while the Commission’s report has never been made public. The Mahanama Tillekeratne Commission’s report on enforced disappearances has also disappeared. Even where the President releases a report, he is not bound to take any action on the Commission’s recommendations. One may justifiably ask, what then is the purpose of a Commission? In the seminal Indian Supreme Court judgment of Sanjiv Kumar vs. Haryana, the Court expressed its view on Commissions of Inquiry. It said:

“The flaw with the commissions of Inquiry, as revealed by experience, is that they do not have enough teeth and for their functioning they have to depend on the State’s assistance. Commissions of Inquiry remain pending for unreasonable length of time. The reports submitted do not bind the State and in spite of transparency and public hearings which the commissions often hold, at times with fanfare, the reports hardly serve any purpose….We feel, Commissions of India are more suited for Inquiring into such matters of public importance where the purpose is to find out truth so as to learn lessons for future and devise policies or frame legislation to avoid recurrence of lapses. Such Commissions do not suitably serve the object of punishing the guilty.”[emphasis added]

What then are the lessons from Matale? The first is that the culture of impunity in Sri Lanka needs to broken, and unless it is broken, the atrocities of the past will recur. These atrocities will not and cannot victimize one ethnic group and not the other. Matale and Mullivaikkal are inextricable linked, just as Black July andPepiliyana are linked. They are all characterized by the unwillingness and inability of the state’s institutions to protect its own citizens. That simple reality – that the state cannot protect its own – is a staggering attack on the mindless invocation of ‘sovereignty’ by the government as a substitute for argument, when it faces criticism of its human rights record.  The breakdown of the rule of law may victimize Tamils disproportionately, but other communities cannot escape its effects. I have often said that if we are one, then we will also suffer as one. To break this culture of impunity, we must ensure truth, justice and reparation for victims. That is why the Tamil people’s movement for truth and justice in the aftermath of 2009 will benefit people of all communities, and must be supported by those who envision a different future for this country. That is also why we must all unhesitatingly call for truth and justice for the victims for Matale.

Secondly, Matale reminds us why we simply cannot tell victims of atrocities to forget the past and move on. To expect mothers and wives to forget their sons and husbands who never came home is to perpetuate the cruel apathy that enabled those atrocities in the first place. To deal genuinely with the past, victims and their relatives must be given a space to discover closure. That space is both private and public. It is private because grief that stems from loss, is an intense personal struggle, ranging from shock and denial to anger and acceptance. But it is also public because victims of state and institutionalized violence can never achieve closure until the institutions responsible for their loss are transformed and called to account. The oppressive militarization of the North and East – where relatives are denied the right to mourn their dead at kovils and churches – will not bring closure. It will merely delay the date of reckoning. That is why it is important the institutions of state – particularly the police and the military – be reformed.

Thirdly, Matale teaches us that atrocity crimes will never remain hidden. We have all witnessed the shocking videos and pictures that have emerged from the last stages of the war. Those images were not captured with the intention of public dissemination, but millions have now seen them. In the era of worldwide connectivity and new media, the rules of the game have changed. Today, we are witnessing international and domestic trials for atrocity crimes on a scale that was unimaginable two decades ago. From the military dictators of Latin America to Charles Taylor of Liberia and Khieu Samphan of Cambodia; and from Milosevic to the Chadian dictator Hissene Habre and former President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire, formerly invincible leaders of countries have been forced to stand trial for their crimes. Going forward, if Sri Lanka is to avert the present danger of international isolation, it must not be seen to provide safe-harbour for wanted criminals.

Thus, there are many reasons – institutional, moral, economic and geostrategic – for Sri Lanka to begin pursuing accountability for atrocity crimes committed in the past. Most importantly, however, in dealing with the past, we will discover who we really are. For those of us who believe that a common Sri Lankan identity which recognizes the unique national identities of the island’s people groups is a good idea, constructing that identity in a meaningful way should also mean that we understand ourselves. Understanding the evil and brutality that have punctuated our disputes over political power is a good place to start.

*The author, M A Sumanthiran(B.Sc, LL.M) is a senior practicing lawyer, Constitutional and Public Law expert and a Member of Parliament through the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).

Sri Lanka's Troubles. Niromi de Soyza and Frances Harrison

Frances Harrison, journalist and author of Still Counting the Dead, and Niromi de Soyza, former child soldier and author of Tamil Tigress, talk to David Corlett about Sri Lanka's civil strife, then and now. Adelaide Writers Week, March 2013

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Sri Lanka's Troubles. Niromi de Soyza and Frances Harrison

Seeding resistance

Editorial Tamil Guardian 14 April 2013

Four years ago on the 6th April, hundreds of British Tamils burst onto the streets of Westminster, outraged at the massacre of Tamils in the North-East. An unprecedented, global, mass mobilisation of the Tamils followed. The protesters' demands were encapsulated within the slogan: “Stop Genocide. Free Tamil Eelam”. Four years on however, with the decimation of the Vanni, the military defeat of the Tamil armed resistance movement, and the on-going persecution of the Tamil people in the North-East, the absolute objective of the protesters evidently failed. Yet nonetheless the 2009 protests remain a milestone in the long Tamil struggle - a defining moment that seeded the next generation of Tamil activists. The significance is not merely in the sheer numbers of those who came out onto the streets or that they returned day after day – many losing jobs and failing exams as a result – but that the protests dispelled long-standing attempts to negate the Eelam Tamil nation's political identity, by arguing it was antithetically divided along age, class, caste, village, gender or homeland versus diaspora lines. The row of Tamil mothers blockading Westminster bridge with a line of pushchairs, the grandfather participating in a sit down protest, and the female university students shouting through loudspeakers, could no longer be dismissed as 'radicalised' angry young men. The theory of a great crevice dividing the homeland and the diaspora also proved untenable. The diaspora displayed itself to be an ever-evolving transnational extension of the homeland that is defined by the oppression of the Sri Lankan state, be it through the entrenched state discrimination that resulted in the economic migrants of the 60s-70s or the violence that results in refugees right to the current day. Whilst economic stability, social foothold and the security of a non-Sri Lankan passport empowered the second generation Tamil youth to take a lead, the protests included a new first generation of Tamils, who had more recently sought asylum or come abroad in search of educational and employment opportunities not available in Sri Lanka. The case reports of torture in returned asylum seekers and Tamil students stand as distressing evidence of this. It is also often forgotten that as the days went by, many Tamils in the diaspora were protesting whilst mourning for the loss of immediate loved ones back home. Indeed, it is a macabre irony that as the violence escalated in 2009, it was the 'disconnected' diaspora that provided one of the most accurate reflections of life on the ground, and warnings of what was yet to come. The 2009 protests broke out in the context of the proscription of the LTTE and associated arrests, and thus fighting the 'terrorist' slur became a pre-requisite to the right to protest. For years the majority's political aspirations had been marginalised as 'extremist' by a cohort of international actors and vocal handful of Tamil ones. A palpable sense of fear prevailed, as the diaspora found itself criminalised as 'terrorist sympathisers and fund-raisers'. Whilst the protesters' demands were ignored, their unprecedented defiance, could not be. Despite persistent attempts by the police to arrest protesters with 'terrorist paraphernalia', 'Stop Genocide' placards, t-shirts of the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, and a red-yellow sea of Tamil Eelam flags became the iconic images of the 2009 protests, and by extension, an uncensored illustration of Tamil political aspirations. It is a cogent point that for all the allegations of LTTE coercion and intimidation of the diaspora, the largest and most uninhibited display of Tamil nationalism came at a time when arguably the LTTE's focus on diaspora activity was at its least. What was long dismissed or vilified as 'extremist ideology', proved to be not only irrefutably ubiquitous but a rationale response to legitimate grievances. The nation had come together and its voice was clear: resistance in the face of genocide and the Eelam Tamil nation's right to self determination – the same two threads that formed and remain the basis of the Tamil struggle today. As the anti-Tamil policies and the civil disobedience movement defined one generation, and the anti-Tamil pogroms and the emergence of armed resistance movements defined another, the new generation of activists - an increasingly well connected blend of Tamil youth living in the North-East, as well as first, second and third generation youth living abroad - is defined by 2009. As this generation comes to the fore, it is looking to the international community for justice, accountability, and a political solution that will ensure Tamils' security. Four years on however, as Sri Lanka runs amok on the global stage and the structural genocide of the homeland continues, that new generation has seen little progress on either front, and their struggle continues.