Sri Lanka and UNHRC Resolution March 2014

Visvanathan for Salem-News.com-Jan-19-2014

The following is an open letter to the Consulate of the Cuban Embassy in Sri Lanka...

Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka

(MELBOURNE) - Human rights activists are consistently appalled that countries with rich revolutionary histories fail to support modern, similar movements.

Case at hand, Cuba's decision to join countries like Israel in embracing the bloody state terrorism government of Sri Lanka, under the leadership of President Majinda Rajapaksa and his three brothers.

In December, the Permanent People’s Tribunal found Sri Lanka guilty of committing Genocide against minority Tamil Hindus and Christians in the end of the country's long running civil war between the Sri Lankan government, and the Liberation Tigers of the breakaway state, Tamil Eelam.

Sri Lanka and UNHRC Resolution March 2014 by nelvely

Imagine A Citizen Whose Lands Are Occupied By The Military

By  C.V Wigneswaran -January 20, 2014

C.V Wigneswaran

New Year 2014 is starting well for us. The War had got us into a cocoon in which we  managed howsoever we could, not really appreciating the changes taking place locally and globally all around us. We failed to appreciate the nuances of political or administrative terminology too. We are thankful to ICES for coming forward to help us to get out of our niche by introducing to us the processes that are functioning in the field of Governance and Development not forgetting to identify areas of vulnerability.

The term “good governance” is a loaded term. It is viewed in the modem Sri Lankan context as a term used to criticize or stifle or malign a regime even if that regime itself may pay lip service to the term. Espousing “good governance” would be met with a cheer in certain quarters of our society and would be decried as an instrument of Western conspiracy in others. The more restrained may refer to it as a Western philosophic terminology that requires a home grown alternative. These variegated views arise because each person has his or her own conditioned background and agenda whether in espousing good governance or seeking to undermine its significance. Let me be candid and state that my views on good governance are shaped no doubt by the challenges that we face in the Northern Province.

Good governance has many facets and it may be useful to clarify the different ways in which we could understand it. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) defines good governance as “the process of decision making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)”. Put differently, good governance is about how we make decisions. The UNESCAP identifies the following eight characteristics of good governance viz

1. Participatory

2. Consensus oriented

3. Accountable

4. Transparent

5. Responsive

6. Effective and efficient

7. Equitable and inclusive

8. Follows the rule of law

Good governance could also be understood as the successful relationship between the different stakeholders in society. Sam Agere notes in the Commonwealth publication “Promoting Good Governance – Principles, Practices and Perspectives” that good governance could be understood through the following Governance structures:

• the relationship between governments and citizens
• the relationship between governments and markets
• the relationship between governments and the voluntary or private sector
• the relationship between elected (politicians) and appointed (civil servants)
• the relationship between local government institutions and urban and rural dwellers
• the relationship between the legislature and the executive
• the relationship between nation states and international institutions.

In other words, good governance is about the intricate web of interconnection that forms the fabric of society and how well those connections function in relation to and in conjunction with each other.

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Overnment Census Inadequate Or Fallacy?

| by Rajasingham Jayadevan

( January 20, 2014, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The census of human and property damages undertaken by the Government of Sri Lanka has been a downright sham from its birth. The government is determinedly trying to downplay a fair assessment and stubbornly endeavouring to falsify the full extent of the three decades old war through a facade of official process.

The government census is undertaken to cover from 1983 to 2009 (26 years). The time space of engaging in the count is 28 November 2013 to 20 December 2013 (just 23 days). The announcement of the count was only made on the 28 November 2013 when the process had already started. The government is planning to publish the report in March 2014. There was no representative participation of the Tamils to establish a fair process. Clearly, the unmitigating and outright Sinhala extremism is trivialising and ridiculing an important engagement of national importance to deal its ever weakening Geneva compulsions in March 2014.

Ruling autocracy that comprises the hypocrites of politics, military and the overjoyed wider proponents who oxygenate the misdemeanors of this pathetic regime is making Sri Lanka a mockery and projecting it worse than a banana republic.

"It is clear, the aim of the conditioned census is to muddy and down play the real facts. The Diaspora Tamils who also have a major say in the outcome of the census have been deliberately left out. Many families who have left the country lock stock and barrel and have no say when they are indeed part of any meaningful census.”

The violence between the government forces started well before the July 1983 nationwide anti-Tamil violence. It was rooted in the government forces going on the spree against the Tamil civilian population in the north on several occasions. Democratic agitations of the Tamils were violently suppressed and even the well attended public meeting after the International Association of Tamil Research (IATR) conference in Jaffna on 9 January 1974 resulted in the loss of nine lives, the loss of civilian property and more than 50 civilians sustaining severe injuries.

Jaffna town was the looting centre for the army and police in the late 1970’s and thereafter. They went on the spree without check and balance and looted the shops. The saddest of the experience was some of the looted goods were held in government vehicles and parked in the compound of Nagavihara (Buddhist temple) at Stanley Road.

When Tamil militancy started in the mid 1970’s, many police officers and Tamil politicians backing the government were killed. The killings of Inspector Bastianpillai, Inspector Pathmanathan, Inspector Gurusamy and several other police officers like Perambalam are well known assassinations by the Tamil militants in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Political figures like Jaffna Mayor Duraippa and UNP’s Thilagar are noteworthy murders by the Tamil militants.

There was major daring bank, cooperative society and post office robberies to fund the Tamil militant struggle in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. Then the issue of the violence inflicted by the army and police against those arrested and the innocent bystanders cannot be forgotten. Army and police rampages became life threatening experience for the Tamil civilian population.

The July 1977 island-wide anti-Tamil violence strengthened the need for Tamil resistance. The government appointed Sansoni Commission, presided by the Judge Sansoni, went through unprecedented witness accounts and published his report. His report only received pathetic publicity and Sri Lanka faced the worst anti-Tamil violence in 1983 since then. Sansoni’s report did not facilitate any meaningful process to avoid violence against the minority even today.

There were several extra-judicial killings of Tamils. President J R Jayawardene gave a blank cheque to the Jaffna military commander in 1978 with the endorsement to wipe out terrorism by any means. The military was engaged in extra-judicial conduct of unprecedented scale. The mutilated bodies of the 27 year old V Erattinam k/a Inbam and Selvaratnam k/a Selvam were found in the Jaffna lagoon with their finger nails forcefully removed confirming the extent of the torture experienced. They bore gunshot wounds and broken skulls. There were many such extra-judicial killings to espouse a fear psychosis in the Tamil minds but the militancy progressed further.

Beyond 1983, the escalation of the war saw brutality of the government forces extending in an unprecedented scales against the Tamil civilians. Massacres, indiscriminate bombings, extra-judicial killings became a culture and several interviews of Defence Minister Lalith Athulathmudali to the international media admittedly confirmed the excesses of the government forces.

Over a million Tamils sought sanctuary outside Sri Lanka. Almost each and every Tamil family experienced some form of traumatic experience. Some families were completely wiped out in the random actions of the government forces.

The government’s effort to undertake a census within 23 days (leave aside the weekends) is a laughable mission. Both Sinhalese and Tamils have suffered as a result of the war and the Tamils faced the brunt of it. To undertake an undercover count of the damages within such a short space of time is a farce that Sri Lanka can only specialist in.

Such a useless methodology is aimed to prevent a honest and sincere way forward to deal with an issue of a gigantic scale. One wonders whether the heavily constrained census will enable anyone to report the deaths of President Premadasa, Ministers Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamilni Dissanayake and many others on the Sinhala side to be counted in the census.

It is clear, the aim of the conditioned census is to muddy and down play the real facts. The Diaspora Tamils who also have a major say in the outcome of the census have been deliberately left out. Many families who have left the country lock stock and barrel and have no say when they are indeed part of any meaningful census.

As war victims, our family too lost our mother and brother to the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) and there is no exitement within the family members to even discuss about the census. This disinterest is what the government wants to rely on to manipulate the facts to its advantage. The government is desperate indeed.

It is best if President Rajapakse shred the final report outright without even holding it in the archives like the Prof Tissa Vitharane’s APRC report.

Why International Pressure Has Become Necessary

By Jehan Perera -January 20, 2014

Jehan Perera

Shortly after the end of the war in 2009, President Rajapaksa declared that in Sri Lanka there would no longer be an ethnic majority or ethnic minorities but only a majority who loved the nation and a minority who were traitors.  Apart from the warning inherent in this statement to those who were political dissenters, there was also the implication that a political solution based on the notion of ethnicities and majorities and minorities based upon them would be unnecessary after the defeat of the LTTE.  The logic of this position is that a political solution was only discussed because of the pressure of the LTTE, and now with its destruction there was no need to take that discussion forward.

In keeping with the President’s immediate post-war policy statement and despite the passage of nearly five years since the end of the war there has been no fundamental shift in the government’s approach to the ethnic conflict.  The talks with the main Tamil opposition party, the TNA, and the government’s effort to form a Parliamentary Select Committee to discuss a political solution has gone nowhere.  This is not the government’s failure alone.  Nearly all public intellectuals from the Sinhalese community who support the government, which is the politically dominant voice in society, appear to have also taken the cue from the President that there is no ethnic conflict to resolve.  But Tamil minority voters have repeatedly challenged this assumption.

So long as there are unresolved ethnic grievances the electorate will tend to vote along ethnic lines.  The government’s policy of formulating and promising policies of economic development as an alternative to political reform have been repeatedly rebuffed by the ethnic minority electorate.  Not even the personal campaigning by the President himself and the government hierarchy has proven able to turn this vote in the direction of the government.  Although the government’s delivery of economic infrastructure development may be appreciated it too was not able to provide the government with the votes of the ethnic minorities either in the North, East or in Colombo where the ethnic minority vote predominates.

Fresh Elections                                                          Read More

SRI LANKA: Rajapaksa Lies Through His Teeth While Continuing With His Human Rights Violations

Visvanathan for Salem-News.com-Jan-20-2014

While they appear to be worried about the impending UNHRC resolution in March 2014, they were not about to give up the colonisation of the North-east of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan President Majinda Rajapaksa

(MELBOURNE) - Sri Lankan President and Commander-in-Chief of the Sinhala military, Mahinda Rajpaksa, put the figure of the SL soldiers in the North as 12,000 in responding to a plea by Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister CW Wigneswaran, at the same stage in Thellippazhai, where a cancer hospital was declared opened on 19 January 2014. Credible sources put the figure of the occupying military at minimum 136,000. At least 36,000 soldiers are stationed in Jaffna peninsula and the remaining 100,000 are in the Vanni mainland. The SL president thinks that the international Establishments would be buying his figures as they did during the genocidal onslaught on Vanni in May 2009, political observers in Jaffna said.

SRI LANKA Rajapaksa Lies Through His Teeth While Continuing With His Human Rights Violations by nelvely

Animals Aren’t Naked: Rethinking Political Culture

By Ahulasiri Kumara Samarakoon -January 20, 2014

Athula Samarakoon

“The animal, therefore, is not naked because it is naked”. – Jacques Derrida

Acceptably, the purpose of all political and social organization is to achieve a good and just life for the members of the society. A good social life entails both physical and spiritual development resulting in national happiness. Unlike international politics, therefore, domestic politics should be organized a process of minimal power politics.  Democratic politics is the only means through which such secular and cultured life can be guaranteed for the public, for it can engage them in constant discussion and debate. So, it is important that a society is organized around the philosophy of democracy as a life style, rather than assuming democracy is just a numerical game for amassing power. Unarguably, a healthy democratic culture where needs of every member of the society is heard and considered according to the accepted norms of the social organization is a godsend for people.  In absence of such a social milieu, life becomes extremely pathetic and agonizing for the powerless whose interests are least represented in the system.

When the existing political culture becomes nakedly inhumane and animalistic, a newer form of society has to be imagined for the good of larger masses. History shows that revolutions of violent nature took place in societies aiming at the overthrow of such naked political cultures. Nevertheless, violence in the name of social reformation should never be acceptable. As the prevalent political culture has exposed its nudity more brazenly than we used to experience previously, we need to rethink and reset our political culture in manners suitable for achieving the goal of just life. Reasonably, we feel that the politicians of our country whose values have become a major constituent part of our political culture do not feel that they are naked, like animals never think they are naked, because they are animals.

Mainly, political degeneration takes place when politics is used for the comfort of a particular tribe or a few individuals, ignoring the larger social benefit it can bring to the society as a whole. Therefore, politics when considered for self-gain and egoistic comforts is not socially productive and becomes a source of social frustration. A better example in this regard is Sri Lanka, where the political parties in power have made politics such a tribal game for power and wealth endangering the national interest of twenty million people. More than the conditions of globalism, what is more scathingly attacking the very foundation of Srilankan nation state (not the majoritarian version), today, is political tribalism.                         Read More

Compelling need to correct UN's mortal sins against Tamils, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 January 2014, 00:05 GMT]
Commenting on the Genocide Discussion held at the United Nations on the 15th January, where the Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson discussed strategies to heed to early warning of mass atrocities, Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law, said, "[w]hat is needed now is for the United Nations to establish an outside Independent Commission of Investigation of distinguished experts along the lines of the Rwanda Commission with a mandate to investigate the entirety of GOSL atrocities against the Tamils. Only then might the United Nations atone for its Mortal Sins against the Tamils." The U.N., which withheld information on Sri Lanka's killings, and refused to take up Sri Lanka in the Security Council during the Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings, continued to avoid mentioning Sri Lanka, even while it touted "Rights Up Front" doctrine modeled after Sri Lanka massacres. 

Prof. Boyle's comment sent to TamilNet follows:

"The United Nations and its Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon did not lift one finger to prevent and to stop the ongoing genocide against the Tamils by Sri Lanka in Vanni in 1999. Since the United Nations and SG Ban Ki-Moon had an obligation to do so, that renders them all “complicit” in the GOSL genocide against the Tamils in violation of Genocide Convention article 3(e) that prohibits and criminalizes “complicity in genocide.” 

"I have documented these matters in my book The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka (Clarity Press: 2010) and in the subsequent comments I have written for Tamilnet. So I will not bother to repeat any of that analysis here. 

"What is needed now is for the United Nations to establish an outside Independent Commission of Investigation of distinguished experts along the lines of the Rwanda Commission with a mandate to investigate the entirety of GOSL atrocities against the Tamils. Only then might the United Nations atone for its Mortal Sins against the Tamils. Otherwise, the entirety of the United Nations Organization shall always remain Guilty as Sin for what it did not do for the Tamils-- Just like Rwanda and Srebrenica," Prof. Boyle said.

• Rights Up Front, Sri Lanka Report

• UN: Petrie Report

While Deputy UNSG, Jan Eliasson, describes the "profound internal reflection" UN should take following the "systemic failure" in addressing the humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka, but what was conspicuously absent was the description of atrocities of genocidal proportions in Sri Lanka and the condemnation of the State the atrocities demand. 

Press here for the video

However, Eliasson without mentioning the word genocide says, that what happened in Sri Lanka was close to what happened in Rwanda 15 years earlier.

Jan Eliasson, Deputy UNSG

Innercity Press which covered the the UN action during the Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacres points to the hollow rhetoric of the UN officials, and asserts, "[e]ven while admitting "systemic failure," this underplays the degree to which the UN was complicit in what happened: it pulled out of Kilinochchi, an envoy was sent who was perceived [John Holmes or Nambiar] to just want the LTTE Tamil Tigers wiped out, so much that a ceasefire was never even called for," ICP said.

Ananthi, North East Disappearances Committees Seek UN Monitored Investigation Into Enforced Disappearances In Sri Lanka

January 20, 2014

Northern Provincial Councillor and Tamil National Alliance Member Ananthi Sasitharan has written to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressing mistrust in local mechanisms to address enforced disappearances and seeking a UN monitored international inquiry into forced disappearances and abductions.

Tamil National Alliance Member Ananthi Sasitharan

Writing on behalf of the Disappearances Committees of the North and East, Sasitharan says at least four official truth seeking commissions had failed the survivors with some of them even failing to make their findings public. “We  previously had two commissions established by the then Presidents, respectively in 1995 and 1998,  to investigate forced disappearances which received around 30 000 complaints. Today 10,136 of the 30 000 complaints remained un-investigated,” Sasitharan said in her letter to Pillay via the local UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Colombo dated 20 January 2014.

“We also feel that “successive governments continued to use abductions and disappearances of persons as a convenient method of dealing with dissent or with those who become a thorn in their thorn in their sides” The interdicted were reinstated and often reassigned to the same duty stations from which they carried out abuses, thereby causing much distress to former victims,” Sasitharan’s letter said.

Explaining their distrust of the local mechanism, Sasitharan observes that Sri Lanka has no witness protection programme. “The lack of effective protection for witnesses against intimidation has been a very serious obstacle to the prosecution of human rights cases, and obstructs the work of any Commission of Inquiry by inhibiting witnesses and potential whistle-blowers. A bill to establish a rudimentary witness protection system in Sri Lanka has been stalled since June 2006,” her letter to Pillay said.

The current exercise to look into disappearances was just an attempt by the Government to buy time before the UNHRC Sessions in March 2014, Sasitharan notes, adding that the Disappearances Committees of the North and East strongly support an International independent UN working group to investigate enforced disappearances and abductions.

[1] M.C.M. Iqbal, ‘Disappearances Commissions of Sri Lanka: A Commentary on Certain Aspects of Their Reports’ Voice, October, 2002

[2] http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA37/005/2009/en/c41db308-7612-4ca7-946d-03ad209aa900/asa370052009eng.pdf, accessed 14/01/2014

[3] Ilias Bantekas and Lutz Oette, International Human Rights Law and Practice, Cambridge University, 2013, p. 358

[4] M.C.M.Iqbal.

[5] Romesh Silva, Britto Fernando and Vasuki Nesiah, Clarifying the Past and Commemorating Sri Lanka’s Disappeared; A Descriptive Analysis of Enforced Disappearances Documented by Families of the Disappeared, Colombo: Families of the Disappeared/Human Rights Data Analysis Group, Benetech/International Center for Transitional Jusitce, 2007

[6] http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA37/005/2009/en/c41db308-7612-4ca7-946d-03ad209aa900/asa370052009eng.pdf, accessed 14/01/2014

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PC on Disappearances begins sittings 


By Mirudhula Thambiah- January 20, 2014


The Presidential Commission (PC) to Probe Disappearances commenced its sittings on Saturday (18) in Kilinochchi, ahead of the forthcoming UN Human Rights Council sessions, scheduled for March.


The Commission received oral and documentary submissions from 52 Tamils in Vannerikulam and Aanaivilunthan, in the Killinochchi District, yesterday, the second day of the sittings, the Secretary to the Commission, H.W. Gunadasa, told Ceylon Today.
In addition, nine more complaints from the Kilinochchi District were received by the Commission.
On the first day of sittings (Saturday) the Commission reviewed nearly 35 complaints, he said.


Ninety (90) additional complaints were registered from Akkaraiyankulam, Skandhapuram and Kannaikaipuram.
He said that the Commission
had written to the complainants, informing them to be present
at the Commission sittings in order to give oral and documentary submissions. He said the newly-registered complaints would be taken up for review and the complainants called to make submissions at a later date.


The Commission will take up complaints from Ponnagar, Malaiyalapuram and Bharthipuram today and complaints from Konavil will be examined on 21 January (Tuesday).
The Commission to Probe Disappearances has received a total of 13,000 complaints, including 4,500 from the families of Security Forces personnel.


Gunadasa said that after receiving oral and documentary submissions, the commission will appoint a separate investigative team to probe the submission of evidence, and on the recommendation of the Attorney General's Department. The investigation team would include four members who would be entrusted to investigate the allegations raised in the submissions.
The three-member Presidential Commission appointed in August, 2013 comprises Maxwell Paranagama (Chairman), Suranjana Vidyaratne and Mano Ramanathan.


The mandate of the Commission is to inquire into whether any persons, resident in the Northern and Eastern Provinces during the period 10 June 1990 to 19 May 2009, had been abducted or had disappeared from their places of residence, and evidence in proof of the fact that such persons had been abducted or have disappeared.


The Commission is also entrusted to investigate those so abducted or have disappeared and their present whereabouts; convincing factors or evidence that would help form an idea about the person or persons responsible for the said abduction or disappearances; recommend legal action that could be instituted against the person or persons who are found to be responsible; recommend measures that should be taken to ensure that there will be no recurrence of such acts in the future and if there is any reasonable relief to be granted as an obligation on the part of the government to the parents, spouses and dependents of those alleged to have been so abducted or have disappeared.

To Your Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa, A Sincere Plea

By Visakha Tillekeratne - January 20, 2014 

Dear Excellency,

I am an ordinary citizen of Sri Lanka, born in 1965, twenty years younger than you short of six months and 3 days. You were born on 18 November 1945 and I on 15 May 1965. So I am sure you will take this sincere note as an older brother, or even a father or an uncle would. You are also very fond of children, it is said, especially daughters. I could even be a daughter to you with this age gap. The Mahinda Chintanaya also gives top priority to women. So as a female writing to you, I know for sure you will give this note a thought.

This letter is written in the spirit of “the country and our people doing well”.  If you do continue in existence as President for many years, that is not an issue to me personally. I have given up on politics and political parties and have decided not to vote for any of the parties or persons currently in existence, as all have been brutal to the people of this country. We all can remember 1971, 1983, 1989 and 2009. However your continuing to stay for many years could be an issue for good governance, as it is a practice of good governance to rescind power every 5 or 6 years for fresh blood to participate in governing of the country.

In fact if we form a party for animals or the environment, I may vote for them, as the cause is worthy.

Let me begin with the last 5 years. However it was done, you ended the war. I do not support war however trying a situation it is, but you brought the bombs to an end with that able man called Sarath Fonseka. Many people thank you for this, even grudgingly, so do the people of the North and East. I have personally met thousands of these people during the course of my work and this is a fact. There are some post war positive outcomes of your tenure. These are mainly the beautification and cleanup of the capital and some other key cities and we assume that tourism is on the rise. Diaspora are also visiting home, grudgingly admiring the country and coming more frequently. Globally Colombo is beginning to be recognized as some kind of an event hub mainly because of infrastructure development which is considerable. Even though this development may not be pro poor and accomplished not with net foreign investment, but on a number of loans, the result is eye catching and convenient to those who can afford.

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Lies, damned lies and statistics

 January 21, 2014 

The American author Mark Twain popularised this quote in his article ‘Chapters from My Autobiography,’ published in the magazine North American Review in 1906. Twain wrote: Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.’

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics by nelvely

Expose: Media Heads To Bow; Rajapaksa Gives 547 Journos Interest Free Car Loans

January 20, 2014

The Media Minister’s leaked files now in possession of the Colombo Telegraph show that the Rajapaksa regime has granted 547 journalists and media workers a Rs. 1,200,000/- of interest free government loans from a state bank to purchase car or van, where the interest will be paid by the Treasury using tax payer money.

Irida Lankadeepa Editor Ariyananda Dombagahawatte receives papers for the car loan from President Mahinda Rajapaksa at Temple Trees

Journalists from virtually every mainstream media in the country with the exception of the Sunday Times newspaper have accepted laptops and car loans or both from the Rajapaksa regime.

Editors who received both a free laptop and the interest free loan are;  Ariyananda Dombagahawatta, NM Cassim, Gamini Sumanasekara, Narada Nissanka, Thushara Gunaratne , Sisira Paranatanthri, Mohan Lal Piyadasa, Dinesh Weerawansa, Bennet Rupasinghe, Indrani Pieris, Daya Lankapura, Mahinda Abesundara and Sundara Nihathamani De Mel.

Ravaya features editor Wimalanath Weeraratna, Divaina News Keerthi Warnakulasooriya and Neth FM Kulasiri Kariyawasam also received a free laptop and the interest free loan.

Members of the Free Media Movement, CJ Amaratunga, Ariyananda Dombagahawatta, C. Dodawatta, Bennet Rupasinghe and Daya Lankapura  and the president of the Muslim Media Forum NM Ameen also applied and were received the interest free loan.

After a series of exposures by the Colombo Telegraph about the serious conflict of interest issues and violations of standard journalistic ethics, the BBC World Service ruiled that some of its Sinhala Section journalists have breached journalistic ethics and violated BBC’s code of conduct by applying for interest free vehicle loans offered by the Sri Lankan Government. The BBC has also stated that the staff in breach of the code would be sent for retraining.

But the BBC journalists who were granted the loan never withdrew their applications, the Colombo Telegraph learns. “They can go to the recommended bank and get the loan anytime” secretary to the Media Ministry Charitha Herath told Colombo Telegraph.

Last month Colombo Telegraph exposed the full lists of the journalists who received a free laptop from the regime. Today we are able to publish the list of media bosses who applied and were received the interest free loan. We will soon be able to publish all the names of the journalists who received the interest free loan.

Editors                                                           Read More     

VIDEO: TISSA COMPARES RAJAPAKSA REGIME TO THAT OF HITLER

January 20, 2014

The United National Party today accused the government of following in the footsteps of Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler, by amending laws in the country to cover up its defeats and to suppress the people’s right to protest. 

Recently the government has secretly approved amendments to the Local Government Act, UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake said. 

He stated that the reason the government is suddenly amending all local government bills is due to the recent budget defeats it suffered in the many local government bodies it controls.

Twenty-five local government budget proposals presented by the UPFA government were defeated recently while 15 of them were defeated for the second time, Attanayake said.

The government has now obtained Cabinet approval to amend the Local Government Act in order to cover up these budget defeats, he claimed. “Has the government no shame?”

When those within the government itself are taking an anti-government stance by defeating their respective budget proposals, the government is attempting to cover up this defeat by amending existing laws, he said.

Attanayake said the government cannot stop its disasters and defeats with such actions, which he termed as similar to “Hitler’s mafia system.”

“Hitler did the same thing. He showed democracy and came into power and then slowly one by one he not only destroyed the basic principles of democracy but also destroyed the parliament before following a dictatorial path in the end,” the UNP General Secretary said, adding, that the Rajapksa regime is doing the same thing.  

The UPFA government is amending laws to hide its defeats, he said. “Can you stop the people’s objection by changing laws? The government is now preparing to suppress that as well,” Attanayake claimed.

He alleged that in order to stop protests by the public in the recent past the government, by implementing the powers vested in the President under the Public Safety Act, gave police powers to the Army, Navy and Air Force. 

He inquired what was the urgency to provide police powers to the tri-forces at a time when a terrorism threat no longer exists in the country. 

The government itself says there is no threat of terrorism or trouble in the country, he reminded. 

The gazette notification providing police powers to the armed forces was issued by the government on July 03, 2013 for the sole purpose of stopping the protests by people, he said. 

“The Rathupaswala incident is the best example of this,” Attanayake said.