Permanent Peoples Tribunal Verdict: Sri Lanka Commits Genocide against Tamils

People of Conscience Must Respond

by Ron Ridenour / January 5th, 2014

The fact that a month ago the Permanent People’s Tribunal found Sri Lanka guilty of committing genocide against the Tamil people and so few non-Tamil media has informed us of such is unjust oversight at best. I didn’t find out about this important decision until today (January 4). The western media, including left-wing web sights, has been silent or ignorant of this.

The Rome-based Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) is an outgrowth of the original war crimes tribunal created during the war against Southeast Asia by Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre.

Its panel of 11 judges, experts in international law, former UN officials, and peace and human rights activists, found Sri Lanka guilty of genocide at its December 7-10, 2013 hearings in Berman, Germany. The unanimous decision was taken after hearing over 30 witnesses, including Tamil victims, and experts.

It also found that the US and UK were guilty of complicity. A decision on whether India, and other states, had also acted in complicity was withheld for lack of time, and pending further examination.

In January 2010, a PPT panel of other international law experts, meeting in Dublin, found Sri Lanka guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. These are the same charges that a United Nations panel of experts later recommended be explored by an independent international investigation.

These are excerpts from PPT news release:

The genocidal coordinated plan of actions reached its climax on May 2009 (upon the defeat of the Tamil armed resistance, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam)… The genocidal strategy changed once the perpetrators gained control of the territory. The killings are being transformed into other forms of conduct, but the intention to destroy the group and its identity remains and continues, through causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the Eelam Tamil group.

The Tribunal considers that the proofs established, beyond any reasonable doubt that the following acts were committed by the Government of Sri Lanka.

(a) Killing members of the group, which includes massacres, indiscriminate shelling, the strategy of herding civilians into so‐called “No Fire Zones” for the purpose of massive killings, targeted assassinations of outspoken Eelam Tamil civil leaders who were capable of articulating the Sri Lankan genocide project to the outside world.

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, including acts of torture, inhumane or degrading treatment, sexual violence including rape, interrogations combined with beatings, threats of death, and harm that damages health or causes disfigurement or injury.

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, including: expulsions of the victims from their homes; seizures of private lands; declaring vast areas as military High Security Zone (HSZ) to facilitate the military acquisition of Tamil land.

Further, the Tribunal considered evidence related to:

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group including forced sterilization and coerced contraception of Eelam Tamil women. Further investigation is required on the extent of this practice in other regions before a determination is made on whether these could be considered genocidal acts.

The UK and USA guilt of complicity in the crime of genocide, includes:

– complicity by procuring means, such as weapons, instruments or any other means, used to commit genocide, with the accomplice knowing that such means would be used for such a purpose;

– complicity by knowingly aiding or abetting a perpetrator of a genocide in the planning or enabling acts thereof;

The PPT decision is most important not only for Tamils but also for left-oriented individuals, groups, political parties and governments. There can be no denial by leftists and progressive governments of the credentials of the Permanent People’s Tribunal. And as the PPT decision includes the governments of the US and UK as accomplices makes it ridiculous for those progressive governments to claim that those powers are critics or opponents of genocidal Sri Lanka. All that is lacking is for the next PPT session to amend the tally of other state accomplices to genocide, which should contain the names of India, as proposed, as well as Israel, China, Pakistan, Iran, at the very least, and perhaps Australia and other states. 

I highly recommend that leftist-progressive organizations and websites, and especially solidarity groups with Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua (ALBA countries make these governments aware that they need to return to their original principle as internationalists who support the oppressed everywhere on earth, and cease supporting unquestionably the genocidal government of Sri Lanka.

Ron Ridenour is a veteran journalist and author of nine books, the latest is Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka. Read other articles by Ron, or visit Ron's website.

Security Forces Involved In High Profile Human Rights Violations – Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission’s Unpublished Report

January 6, 2014 |

Colombo Telegraph has obtained an unpublished report commissioned by the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission in 2006 which had explicitly concluded that security forces personnel were involved in several high profile human rights violations including the killing of five students in Trincomalee in January 2006 and the abduction on 31 January 2006.

Dr Radhika Coomaraswamy

The report was commissioned by Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy when she was the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Hunan Rights Commission in 2006. Mr. T Suntheralingam, retired High Court and member of the Constitutional Council was appointed as Special Rapporteur by the HRC to look into several high profile violations. The report which was produced within a matter of months after a fact finding mission and an intensive interview process was never released by the HRC.

Soon afterwards, Dr.  Coomaraswamy took up a UN posting as the Under secretary General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

The Special Rapporteur investigated the following incidents; Abduction of TRO Staff, Killing of five students at Trincomalee, Rape and murder of Elayathamby Tharshini, Killing of the Kattankudy Divisional Secretary  and Killing at the Mosque in Akkaraipattu.

With regard to the killing of five students in Trincomalee on January 2, 2006, the Special Rapporteur concluded that as per the testimonies gathered, including from Police personnel involved in the incident, that evidence strongly suggests that the STF carried out the atrocity. An unknown person had thrown a grenade where seven boys were gathered in the evening at the beach injuring several of the students. Immediately afterwards several STF personnel had arrived at the scene and taken the injured boys.  Moments later witnesses say they heard gunfire to discover that the five students had been killed, execution style, while two others had suffered gunshot injuries.  The Special Rapporteur concludes that the STF team, which had arrived in Trincomalee just a few days before the incident, had carried out this crime. The report cites how the government media claimed that five terrorists were killed while handling a grenade.  This claim was immediately dispelled by the Judicial Medical Officer who concluded that the boys had been killed due to gunshot injuries. A journalist who had taken photographs of the incident and published them immediately afterwards had also been killed within a matter of weeks, the HRC Special Rapporteur concludes.

The Colombo Telegraph inquired from Dr.  Coomaraswamy as to why this report was never published and whether she was under any pressure not to release the findings..

“I had only one term as the Chair of the HRC 2003-2006 and joined the UN in early 2006. I commissioned the report because it was clearly a situation that required an inquiry and we tried to be proactive. But I do not think I was there when the report was finalized or it was finalized as I was leaving. There was no pressure brought on me to either commission the report or not to release the report. As you know my Commission was appointed under the seventeenth amendment and was quite independent- including people like Dr. Deepika Udugama. But after us the President bypassed the procedure and appointed commissioners directly and the Commission lost its international status as a result,” Dr. Coomaraswamy told Colombo Telegraph.

However one investigator familiar with the commissioned report told Colombo Telegraph that it had been finalised prior to Dr. Coomaraswamy’s departure for the UN.

However both Dr. Coomaraswamy and her HRC colleague Dr. Deepika Udugama deny the allegation.

Dr. Coomaraswamy clarified later to Colombo Telegraph that Dr. Deepika (Udugama) had also confirmed that the report was not finalized when they left the HRC.

“Neither she nor I can remember the contents and if it had been finalized we would surely have remembered,” Dr. Coomaraswamy said.

Following is the full report by the HRC appointed Special Rapporteur

MR, Wignes must orchestrate peace waltz

Sunday, January 05, 2014

The life of Nelson Mandela demonstrated, as did the life of Mohandas Gandhi illustrate, that a people’s legitimate aspirations cannot be snuffed out but will triumph in the end. A people’s spirit that finds incarnation in a determined soul to give it life, flesh and blood cannot be extinguished. It cannot be incarcerated. It cannot be stifled or stilled. It cannot be killed.

Building up a working relationship: Rajapaksa and C.V. Wigneswaran exchanging views soon after the latter took oaths as the Chief Minister of the Northern Province.

The use of raw force can overpower it. Military might can flay it. The entire state apparatus of a despotic government can bulldoze it and raze it to the ground. But in its ashes the embers will still burn, glowing brightest when the night is at its darkest to spurt forth anew a raging inferno beyond control.

Mandela was jailed for more than 27 years. His voice silenced behind prison walls. His soul barred from the light of life beyond his celibate cell, denied intercourse with the outside world. But his spirit, which no moat or fort could bar, moved a nation to breakdown the tyranny of apartheid. Gandhi was imprisoned many a time; his Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa, nonviolence, even when met with violence, tested many a time and oft tinged with despair, doubts and defeats, succeeded at the end in the overthrow of the colonial yoke, leading to the dismantling of an empire the world had never seen before. What Hitler attempted to do with violence and disastrously failed, one man, in a loin cloth and a spinning wheel, a one-time Inner Temple Barrister ridiculed as a half-naked fakir, triumphed with his home spun doctrine of nonviolence.

MR, Wignes Must Orchestrate Peace Waltz by nelvely

Genocidal population control victim’s father commits ‘suicide’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 January 2014, 09:41 GMT]
58-year-old Chinnasamy Rajaratnam from Ki’linochchi district was pronounced dead on Thursday after he was found dead hanging on an electricity wire on January 01. He was the father of 26-year-old Manjula Satheeskumar, who lost her life after the widely reported population control experiment carried out on three coastal villages in Vanni. Mr Rajaratnam was a key witness in an ongoing case on the death of his daughter and his statement was crucial to prove how the occupying SL authorities coerced the cooperation of the victims for what has been alleged as population control with genocidal intent. Manjula had received the injection of subdermal implant while she was pregnant. 

Although some sources claim that Mr Rajaratnam has committed suicide as he was psychologically affected since the demise of her daughter, other sources claim that he was being subjected to psychological pressure from the Sri Lankan authorities, which were insisting him to give evidence against his conscience on the controversial contraceptive treatment to his 26-year-old daughter. 

More than 50 women in the coastal villages of Valaip-paadu, Vearaavil and Kiraagnchi, were coerced into to taking Progestogen-only subdermal implants (POSDIs) on 31st August.

Later, the implant was removed from Manjula’s body, but after suffering from an infection, she lost her life on 30th November. 

Mr Rajaratnam was highly disturbed by what had happened to his daughter. In the meantime, he has also been subjected to systematic harassment by the intelligence operatives of the occupying SL military. 

The circumstances of his death need proper investigation. But, such scrutiny is not possible under the Sri Lankan State system, Tamil legal sources further said.

Alarm bells in Geneva: Govt. in hyperactive mode

Indications of tough new resolution on accountability and related issues, Pillay to submit 10,000-word report US war crimes ambassador coming here, followed by new Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Desai Biswal New Gazette notification to stop internal revolts within local councils; Ravi lashes out at cry-babies and spineless leaders in the UNP

Sunday, January 05, 2014

The Government has gone into hyperactive mode after signals through its own channels indicated that the United Nations Human Rights Council’s March sessions may take a serious turn over alleged war crimes and other issues.

Alarm Bells in Geneva Govt in Hyperactive Mode by nelvely

 Indian government will not show any sympathy towards Sri Lanka- union minister
Thu, Dec 5, 2013, 09:35 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

Dec 05, Colombo: India's central government will not show any sympathy towards Sri Lanka and it will continue to pressure the Sri Lankan government on India's concerns, an Indian government minister has said.

Speaking at a public event in Chennai on Thursday, India's Union Shipping Minister G.K. Vasan said the Union government would not certainly show any sympathy towards Sri Lanka.

"Instead, it will continue to exert pressure on the Sri Lankan government to implement 13th Amendment so as to ensure that Tamils in Sri Lanka get equal rights on par with local Sinhalese. There is no compromise in this stand," he said.

Referring to the Chief of Indian Navy offering training opportunities to Sri Lankan Navy, the minister said the Union Government should not take a policy decision to impart training to Sri Lankan Forces.

"The Centre should avoid from taking such policy decision. I think," he said.

Vasan said he has conveyed his opposition to the Defence Minister A. K. Antony on giving military training to Sri Lankan security forces.

Vasan pointed out that the Union government in the interest of the Sri Lankan Tamils has taken several policy decisions against the island nation.

Recalling that India voted against Sri Lanka for the UN resolution and the Indian Prime Minister skipped the Commonwealth meeting last month respecting the sentiments of the Tamils and voices of Tamil political parties, Vasan said the Union government is not in a position to compromise with Sri Lanka on its stand.
The Chief Minister of India's southern state of Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalithaa and her rival, DMK leader M. Karunanidhi, both vehemently opposed the center government for its offer to train Sri Lankan naval officers.

India's Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral D.K. Joshi conveyed the offer to the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa when he met with the President in Colombo last month.

Sanity prevails

Editorial-January 5, 2014, 8:33 pm 

The Grade Five Scholarship Examination (GFSE) will not be scrapped, the Cabinet spokesman has said. But for immense pressure the media, the Opposition and opinion leaders jointly brought to bear on the government it would have gone ahead with its harebrained project and done away with the only avenue available for hundreds of thousands of children to secure admission to leading schools. The government has done itself a big favour with weeks to go for provincial elections.

The Education Ministry has said its controversial proposal that the GFSE be reduced to a mere term test of sorts is based on recommendations by the National Education Commission (NEC), among other things. True, the general consensus is that the GFSE is a savagely grueling test, as it were, and amounts to torturing children at a very tender age. Ideally, it should be abolished. Parents force their little children to cram for that exam and score high marks even at the risk of becoming nervous wrecks in the process because the state has, under successive governments, failed to develop the education sector and many children are left without good schools. Therefore, before abolishing the GFSE the government ought to ensure that all schools are developed so that children don’t have to kill themselves to score very high marks at that examination, as we have argued in these columns ad nauseam.

The government tells us it has already launched a programme to develop 1,000 schools on a priority basis. It deserves praise. But, what about other schools where children lack even sanitary facilities?

Most of the arguments including those by the NEC against the GFSE are valid. But, the fact remains that it has become a necessary evil for tens of thousands of parents in that it provides their children with an opportunity to try to gain admission to schools of their choice. Depriving them of this opportunity is tantamount to violating one of their basic rights, we reckon.

When the children of ordinary parents sans political connections and/or the wherewithal to grease palms are treated in this manner frustration naturally wells up in them. In the late 1980s, it may be recalled, the JPV mobilised schoolchildren in its terrorist activities by effectively tapping the pent-up anger of the marginalised sections of society. Many schoolchildren perished at the hand of vigilantes and the rogue members of the armed forces and the police. The Suriyakanda mass grave where the skeletal remains of a group of children who had been tortured to death were unearthed is a case in point. The southern terrorists invented an attractive slogan to highlight the glaring urban bias in the allocation of state resources and attract the rural youth and schoolchildren to their macabre cause: Kolombata kiri gamata kekiri—milk for Colombo (read urban Sri Lanka) and melon for villages.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has consistently carried rural electorates with ease at successive elections and floored the JVP repeatedly at the grassroots level as evident from the results of past electoral contests. But, it will be a mistake for him to be lulled into a false sense of complacency. Retrograde moves like the abortive attempt to scrap the GFSE before disadvantaged schools are developed are likely to cost him dear at future elections.

The issue of the state’s failure to develop schools boils down to lack of resources. Funds allocated for schools and universities have been woefully inadequate all these years. What needs to be done urgently is for the government to develop the education sector as a national priority. The abolition of the GFSE can wait. Let it be made less difficult immediately.

Countdown To Geneva

By Easwaran Rutnam-Sunday, January 05, 2014

US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal , and TNA MP Suresh Premachandran

The year 2014 will without a doubt be a decisive year for Sri Lanka particularly on the human rights issue with the UN Human Rights Council set to discuss Sri Lanka when it meets in Geneva in March.

Countdown to Geneva by nelvely

Sampanthan meets CPI(M) leaders

 Sunday, 05 January 2014 

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R Sampanthan on Saturday held discussions with CPI(M) state unit leaders, Indian media reported.

Mr. Sampanthan discussed the “situation after elections to Northern provincial council in September” in Sri Lanka, problems faced by ethnic minorities and TNA’s stand on solutions to those problems, a CPI(M) statement said.

Senior leaders of the state unit, including its secretary G Ramakrishnan, were present, it added.

Mr. Sampanthan had earlier met state BJP leaders in October, urging India to press for the 13th Amendment to empower Tamils in the island nation.

A Sri Lankan Truth And Reconciliation Commission?

By S. I. Keethaponcalan -January 6, 2014 |

Dr S.I. Keethaponcalan

One of the completely unexpected outcomes of the recently concluded Colombo Commonwealth Summit was the ignition of a dialogue on the setting up of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Sri Lanka. The source of this idea is the visit of South African President Jacob Zuma to Sri Lanka to attend the Commonwealth Summit in November 2013. Some suggest President Zuma mooted the idea. This is possible, because South Africa has been trying to get involved in the conflict resolution and/or reconciliation process in Sri Lanka for a while. Others believe that it was President Rajapaksa who wanted to “learn” more about the South African experience of the TRC. Either way, it seems that both presidents have discussed the idea of a TRC in Sri Lanka and currently, the Sri Lankan media suggests what could easily be termed the Sri Lankan Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC), may be instituted in the near future.

Not Ready

Given the prevailing socio-political realities of the country, one could argue that a South African style TRC could be problematic and most probably will fail, if reconciliation is the true objective of the proposed mechanism. Sri Lanka has been grappling with the idea of reconciliation for almost half a decade since the end of the war in May 2009, with no noticeable result. In fact Sri Lanka has already become a failed case of reconciliation.

Unfortunately, it seems, ethnic communities are further polarized now than before. The primary reason for the failure so far, is that the country is not ready for reconciliation.

Reconciliation essentially is a post-conflict concern. Once basic issues of a conflict are resolved, the parties can focus on repairing the broken relationship, which is crucial to securing the peace achieved through conflict resolution. This is exactly what happened in South Africa, which was a true post-conflict society where the fundamental issues were resolved through peaceful means and the peace agreement produced a win-win situation for both major communities.

Sri Lankan Reality                                                       Read More

Duty cast on us to ‘respect’ our systems first

Sunday, January 05, 2014

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s admonition during the 2013 November Commonwealth heads of Government (CHOGM) meet, aimed primarily at United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron, that other countries should ‘respect Sri Lanka’s systems’ raises several interesting questions.

Balancing systemic independence no longer possible
Do Sri Lankan politicians respect Sri Lanka’s systems? Indeed, does the common man or woman demonstrate such respect? Fundamentally, what is meant by our ‘systems’ in the context of the Rajapaksa administration post 2009?

For example, a decade and a half ago, these questions would have been relatively easy to answer. ‘Systems’ would have meant a functioning judiciary, bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission, the National Police Commission, the Public Service Commission, prosecutorial and police departments, all of which certainly struggled with the politicization of ‘systems.’ Yet, at that time, these institutions had not been undermined to the extent of negating their own constitutional and statutory roles.

But such careful balancing acts are no longer possible. Instead we are beset with curious happenings which, in a different era, would have made many decent Sri Lankans squirm. Thus, the Prime Minister and his son (who incidentally did spectacularly well in the Central provincial polls) remain embroiled in allegations of assisting as well as benefiting through drug -dealers. However they continue merrily in their political lives.

Should we be surprised at this? Not really, considering the fact that a drug-dealer cum parliamentarian was charged with the murder of a senior in his own party and still retains his parliamentary seat. Examples of such nefarious behavior on the part of ruling party politicians are legion in recent years. So where exactly does the respect for ‘our systems’ come into play on the part of this government?

Being reduced to veritable mockeries
When a sitting Chief Justice is crudely insulted by government parliamentarians, impeached in a parody of justice in the face of contrary judgments of the Supreme Court as well as the Court of Appeal and when the state media ceaselessly taunts her, is this the ‘respect’ that is shown for ‘systems’?

The fate of the constitutional commissions is no better. At least one member of the Human Rights Commission (HRCSL) is apparently confused about his statutory role which mandates him to be independent. Rather, he is an unashamed advocate for the government. The HRCSL’s authority has been negligible when serious abuses of rights occur. An HRCSL Commissioner, unable to resign himself to this profound loss of integrity, resigned a few years ago.

And as much as the Bribery and Corruption Commission delights in prosecuting grama niladharis and Chief Justices who have fallen from favour while ignoring massive political corruption, the HRCSL excels in going after hapless mid-level public servants while turning coyly away from the arbitrary operation of anti-terrorism laws.

One wonders as to what happened to its inquiry into the Weliweriya incident where three innocent bystanders were killed when the army shot with live ammunition into a crowd of villagers asking for clean water? In such a context, its loudly touted proposed amendments to the HRCSL parent law (1996) to make its recommendations more efficacious can only be met with skepticism.

Protected by powerful political influences
On its own part, Sri Lanka’s Bribery and Corruption Commission has been crowned with the ultimate ignominy of its Chairman being accused of corruption. Meanwhile, the National Police Commission expends colossal public funds but frankly admits that it has no actual supervisory powers over the police subsequent to the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Indeed, what is the credibility of this government, one may ask, when a Director of the Accounts Division of the Department of Census and Statistics went on record recently alleging that he had been put under pressure by his superiors to ‘massage’ or change Sri Lanka’s economic growth rate from 5.4% to 6.0%?

And what of the formerly war displaced Tamil people of the North and East who are not given any relief when their lands are taken away from them and when they are subjected to intimidation and harassment post-war? In the past seven years, the percentage of cases on human rights abuses investigated and prosecuted under the Penal Code or other statutes such as the Convention Against Torture Act (1994) is close to non-existent. Further, women of all ethnicities are seriously at risk with exponentially increased incidents of rape and sexual harassment even as a clownish politician continues to hold the portfolio of Womens’ Affairs while exposing his distasteful sexism to all in full view.

Even in cases as horrendously clear-cut as the Trincomalee killings of Tamil students and the murder of a British humanitarian worker together with the rape of his girlfriend on Christmas Day at a resort in the deep South, perpetrators were protected by powerful political influence. It was only the pressure of outside intervention which prompted some indictments. Meanwhile extremist Buddhist groups continue to attacks mosques, churches and kovils with the law being rendered irrelevant.

Sound and fury signifying nothing
So when President Rajapaksa and his faithful parroting minion, the Minister of External Affairs keep protesting quite unconvincingly that we have our ‘institutions’ in place to handle problems of our people, this is mere sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing to the Sri Lankan people.
Perhaps it is time that this government learns to respect Sri Lanka’s ‘systems’ first before calling upon foreigners to do so. We can then wag our fingers at others.

British Tamil Conservatives lobby for travel bans & assets seizure

January 4, 2014, 6:47 pm 

British Tamil Conservatives (BTC) are urging the UK government to adopt a policy mix including travel bans and foreign asset seizures of Sri Lankans alleged to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, Arujuna Sivananthan of BTC said last week.

He said they are fully affiliated to the Conservatives and claimed to be ``the driving force behind Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Jaffna’’ during CHOGM meeting.

Tamils were recognized by the Conservative Party as being a separate group and it is the first time in its history (that an) ethnic group has been granted affiliation, Sivananthan said. "All other groups are associated countries."

He said they are focusing attention that must follow the UNHRC session in March this year as it is apparent that Sri Lanka Government will not have a credible independent inquiry of its own ahead of the Geneva meeting. Nor is it likely to comply with any resolution passed there.

"This is why BTC is lobbying for travel bans and asset seizures of those alleged to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity," he said.

BTC rejected the idea of a Trust and Reconciliation Commission "in its entirety."

"It is an attempt to circumvent future war crime prosecutions in the International Criminal Court," it said.

Re-Defining “Outlandish”

By Emil van der Poorten -

Emil van der Poorten

When last I looked in my rather moth-eaten dictionary the word “outlandish” had, beside it, “adj. looking or sounding very strange.”

While it is the word that comes to mind most readily when one views the goings-on in the Debacle of Asia, in the context of Sri Lankan “reality” is much of what we see on a day-to-day basis “strange?”  After all, as someone once said, “Everything is relative, though one sometimes wishes that one’s extended family wasn’t!”

Where in any nation wearing the garments of democracy would you have the daughter of a man riddled with bullets, gangland-style, expressing an interest in running under the banner of the party in which one of his alleged murderers continues to be a leading light, with patronage from the very top?  Of course, one has, again, to place this behaviour in the context of the widow of the murdered one (the young wannabe candidate’s mother) accepting a post of “Advisor” to the man who heads the party in which the alleged killer is a Minister.

Of course, another dictionary entry also presents itself as alternative terminology for this kind of behaviour: it is “bizarre,” the legend besides which reads “adj.odd, strange.”  “Outlandish” though seems to be the better alternative because it suggests “bizarre” carried to its extreme!

Adding to this little tidbit in the news is that of the ongoing saga of the Prime Minister who did/did not have responsibility/accountability in the matter of one of his major minions issuing a “release” of some sort that enabled a huge quantity of heroin to pass out of our (at least for now) primary port without hindrance of any sort.

That bit of “theatre of the absurd” if one is particularly given to black humour was somewhat enhanced by the shrinkage of the product of the poppy that was experienced very soon after it was taken into custody.  If memory serves me right, the material seized shrank by something like 100 Kgs.  I know Sri Lanka is sometimes referred to as the “Miracle of Asia” but isn’t this feat pushing the bounds of credulity somewhat, particularly when it is followed by a cockamamie “explanation” that some of the product was contaminated and, therefore, “removed” from the presumably “good” part of the shipment? I do not pretend to any particular expertise in the matter of narcotics, but short of some very sophisticated methods being applied, the existence of which no one I have spoken with is aware of, how was this “separation” accomplished And what happened to the 100 kilograms plus which was “separated?”                                                               Read More

The Bubble

 by Tisaranee Gunasekara

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…”.

Marx and Engles (The Communist Manifesto)

( January 5, 2014 – Colombo – Sri Lanka Guardian) Once upon a nearly-forgotten-time, there was a corporate colossus in America called Enron. Courted by politicians and feted by the Wall Street, Enron was named ‘America’s most innovative company’ by the Fortune magazine for 6 consecutive years.

But Enron’s greatest feat of innovation was also its most closely guarded secret: creative book-keeping. Enron habitually fudged accounts to grossly exaggerate its profits . When the elaborate hoax began unravelling, Enron’s high-flying Chairman, Kenneth Lay and other top executives bailed out, selling their stocks at huge profits . Enron’s blue and white collar workers were banned from selling their shares in time; they lost their life savings and pensions in consequence.

In February 1987, two officers from Enron’s internal-audit department presented Chairman Kenneth Lay with evidence that “two of his underlings had cheated his company” . The auditors did not know that fraudulence was Enron’s ethos, fudging books was literally a company policy and Chairman Lay was both a perpetrator and a beneficiary .

In Sri Lanka too no remedial measures will follow Mr. Wanasinghe’s revelations just as no remedial measures followed the AG’s warnings because books are being cooked to make reality confirm with Rajapaksa developmental boasts (Just as the crass lie about zero-civilian casualties was maintained for years to buttress the ‘Humanitarian Operation’ myth).

In 2007, the Supreme Court faulted the Rajapaksa government for excluding Rs. 722billion in debt service payments in the budget and for misusing funds earmarked for development: “….nearly Rs 21billion have been transferred by the Treasury officials … The transfers reveal that that many of them have been for foreign travel, purchase of vehicles and other miscellaneous items of expenditure far removed from ‘Development Activities’” . In 2012, the Auditor General warned about serious accounting deficiencies and management inefficiencies in the EPF: “The AG had found that more than Rs. 62million recovered during the period 2005-2008 as EPF members’ contributions and surcharges recovered by courts had been credited to the government revenue in 2010 without being credited to the members’ personal accounts” .

The Rajapaksas will continue their financially homicidal-suicidal way by imposing more burdens on people and incurring new debt. Prices of essentials are set to rise steeply this year, due to tax increases in the 2014 Budget. Inflation, of course, will remain stable or perhaps even decrease.

Already Sri Lanka’s debt is at Rs. 5.63trillion. The regime is planning to raise US$ 1000million from sovereign bonds with a 10 year maturity period. So far 5 such bonds have been issued totalling US$ 4000million; the first bond of US$ 500million was paid in 2013 by issuing a new bond for US$ 1,000million; the next bond is to mature in 2015.

In 2013, the total cost of debt servicing was US$ 1,500million (Rs. 1070billion).

In 2004, the US government began prosecuting Chairman Lay and other top Enron executives .

So long as the Rajapaksas rule, the frauds perpetrated on their orders/in their interests will go unpunished. As the financial/economic conditions turn increasingly sour, and the development-con begins to unravel even faster, more frauds will have to be perpetrated to fool the populace. Until someday, objective realities reassert themselves with overwhelming destructive force.

The Siblings know that eventually the bubble will burst. That is why they are strengthening and Rajapaksaising the military. If Sinhala-Buddhists cannot be hoodwinked into attacking the minorities, the military can be ordered to shoot Sinhala-Buddhists.

References;

1. Enron overstated its profit by US$ 600 million in 2000, the year before it collapsed.
2. A close friend of the Bush family and a major donor to the Republican Party; President George W Bush reportedly wrote notes and cards to his friend, ‘Kenny Boy’.
3. Mr. Lay made US $ 37,683,887; he and others were successfully prosecuted subsequently.
4. The Economist – 22.6.2002
5. This statement was subsequently included in his Fundamental Rights petition and was read out in parliament by MP Dissanayake during the recently concluded budget debate.
6. http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/40662-official-alleges-growth-rate-massaged.html
7. Daily Mirror – 24.12.2013
8. LBO – 6.6.2007 – emphasis mine
9. Financial Times – 3.1.2014
10. Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story – Kurt Eichenwald
11. http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-94.htm
12. http://www.tisrilanka.org/pub/li/pdf/SC%20Determination%202008.pdf
13. The Sunday Times – 15.7.2012
14. Daily Mirror – 20.12.2013
15. Mr. Lay was convicted of six counts of fraud and conspiracy and four counts of bank fraud, but died before he could be sentenced. Several of his colleagues are serving jail terms.