Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Modi
Does India’s new prime minister actually have a foreign policy?
Narendra Modi is set to be India's next prime minister after an election won conclusively by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Monday, May 19, 2014
A ‘victory day’ sketch
Sri Lanka celebrated that very first victory day one day later than it has been marked in the four years since.
It was the 19th of May, 2009.
International Stakes Continue To Rise With Changes Next Door
By Jehan Perera -May 19, 2014
Jehan Perera
The election of a new government in India opens up new vistas for Sri Lanka’s relationship with its closest neigbour. With his congratulatory phone call to the Indian Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi,President Mahinda Rajapaksa took the initiative to rebuild ties with India. Relations with India have grown strained due to the Indian stance on issues relating to the country’s Tamil problem and the government’s prevarication regarding promises of devolution of power made to the Indian government. The President’s ability to get a phone call through a very busy Narendra Modi just after his party’s victory at the election was being announced shows the special nature of the relationship that Sri Lanka can enjoy with India. This is an opportunity that comes from both geography and history and needs to be carefully built upon so that it is an asset and not a liability.
The fact that Sri Lanka’s estranged Tamil community is bound by kinship and close cultural ties with the Tamils who inhabit southern India links the two countries together with bonds that are permanent. This is a reality that any Sri Lankan government will have to both acknowledge and cope with. For the past three decades, and coinciding with the period of the war, the major feature of Sri Lanka’s relationship with India has been its ethnic conflict. Since the end of the war, relations with the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu have plunged, with even visitors from Sri Lanka liable on occasion to be subjected to attack on its streets. It has been to the Sri Lankan government’s advantage that the BJP won the election decisively and does not need the support of regional parties, including the dominant party in Tamil Nadu. Read More
SL military ridicules Mu’l’ivaaykkaal observance even in temples
[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 May 2014, 23:13 GMT]The military intelligence operatives of the occupying Sri Lanka Army deployed local goons to confront the elected Tamil representatives of the Tamil National Alliance and Tamil National Peoples Front from observing rituals at temples and churches in the North and East commemorating Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance Day on Sunday. As a way of ridiculing, Sinhala soldiers entered into Nalloor Kanthasaami temple and ‘competed’ with Tamil representatives in making ‘ritual offerings’ at the temple. The Bishop of Jaffna was under pressure to stop lighting commemoration lamps at the churches. SL soldiers were deployed in front of temples and churches. However, Eezham Tamils in the North and East observed Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance at their houses and businesses in an emotional manner, passing a strong message to the world.
Tamil representatives sitting on the ground talking to media as SL military soldiers, without wearing military shirts, are watching them
The entire SL military apparatus in the North was deployed in blocking public events.
Earlier, the SL military was telling the people not to have any remembrance event at public places. The public was told to commemorate their dead at houses and temples.
But, on Sunday the people were told not to have any prayer at the temples or churches in remembrance of those who perished in the genocidal onslaught.
Tamil politicians, condemning the attitude of the occupying Sri Lankan forces, said that the conduct of the SL State and its armed forces on Mu'l'livaaykkaal Remembrance Day was only adding another evidence to the world in depicting the Sinhala exclusivist mind-set that doesn’t tolerate the self-respect of Eezham Tamils in the island.
The Tamil politicians were present at Jaffna Cathedral, Kanthasaami Temple and Veera-maa-kaa’li temple in Nalloor after 6:00 p.m., conducting prayers, lighting of candles and conducting religious rituals paying respect to the dead.
A local squad operated by the SL military verbally abused the Tamil politicians, removing the coconuts from them, when Tamil politicians prepared to break coconuts into sherds at Veera-maa-kaa’li Amman temple in Nalloor. Breaking coconut into sherds (Chitha’ru-theangkaay) in front of temples is a religious ritual of Saivites expressing fulfilment of their commitments.
Political observers in the North say that the present Sinhala commander Major General Udaya Perera, occupying Jaffna, has earlier shown ‘expertise’ in oppressing operations when he was in charge of Ki’linochchi district after the Vanni war followed by getting ‘training’ in the USA.
When the Bishop of Jaffna came under pressure from the SL military, a section of the priests were rushed to Jaffna Cathedral to pass a message to avoid ‘controversies’, but the priests and Tamil representatives had already paid their tribute with lighting the candles, news sources told TamilNet.
SL soldiers deployed in front of worship places were instructed not to allow the tolling of bells in temples and churches.
The SL military intelligence operatives were busy in monitoring and following the journalists, civil activists and Tamil politicians.
A trader and Tamil politician Thuvaarakesvaran, who is the brother of an assassinated Tamil MP Thiyagarasa Maheswaran, had arranged for a special religious ritual for the families that had lost their kith and kin in the Vanni War. But, the SL military completely blocked the public from accessing Nakuleasavaram temple where the ritual was arranged.
NPC councillor Ananthi staged a sit in protest in front of a SL military barrier on the road to the temple.
All the Tamil politicians, except the paramilitary cum political parties, were united in the commemoration event on Sunday.
The ITAK (TNA) office at Martin Road, TNPF office at 3rd Cross Street and the office of a newly formed party known as Tamil National Progressive Party were under continuous surveillance by the SL military. All the by-lanes in the vicinity of these offices were blocked and no one was allowed to enter the offices. All the Tamil representatives came together to observe Mu'l'livaaykkaal Remembrance Day.
However, Tamil parliamentarians Suresh Premachandran, Sivasakthi Ananthan, S. Sritharan proceeded with the observance with public participation at the political offices situated in Vavuniyaa, Ki'linochchi and in Neerveali.
NPC Chairman CVK Sivagnanam at Jaffna Cathedral
Reflections On Post War Five Years
By Sumanasiri Liyanage -May 19, 2014
Sumanasiri Liyanage
Although the way in which it came to an end may not be in congruence with my normative principles on the issue of ending armed conflicts, I am still happy with the fact that war to an end five years ago. Notwithstanding the fact that conventional conflict resolution theory posits that negotiated settlement rather than military victory is more favorable for peace-building or conflict transformation, I believe that war-ending in either way would have created a space for peaceful, just and harmonious Sri Lanka had the post-armed conflict been handled prudently by the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL). Moreover, had the GoSL acted in that manner,
Mahinda Rajapaksawould have emerged as a genuine national leader of post-independent Sri Lanka. However, five years after the ending of the armed conflict, balance sheet is pathetic and the future is gruesome. Instead of Mahinda Rajapaksa emerging as a truly national leader, he has finally ended up being a’ tribal’ leader. A person who won the election in 2010 mainly because of the war victory may be defeated in the presidential election in 2015, if a common candidate acceptable to all communities in Sri Lanka is nominated by the opposition parties and groups. Governmental coalition is in shambles and it may split into three or four factions when the presidential election is announced. Hold on! I must confess that the hopes I had in 2009 went all wrong. Will my predictions for 2015 presidential election also go wrong? May be YES for two obvious reasons.Read More
Tamils say barred from commemorating war dead, Sri Lanka denies
BY SHIHAR ANEEZ AND RANGA SIRILAL-
(Reuters) - Minority ethnic Tamils said on Sunday they had been banned from commemorating the deaths of their relatives five years ago in the final battle of a 26-year war with Sri Lanka's military, a charge denied by the army.
Five Years After The End Of The War: Conflict Worsens And Hopes Fade Away!
By Rev. S.J. Emmanuel -May 19, 2014
Rev. Dr S.J. Emmanuel
Introduction
The fact that you have invited me to write my thoughts on five years after the war, helps me to join at least the few progressive voices, who do not sing with the majority or swim with the stream, but genuinely concerned about promoting a peaceful coexistence of all the peoples and religions within the island.
Though the Government and their media doing their utmost to portray me and my engagement during the last two decades as pro-terrorist and pro-separatist, I wish to say clearly and with utmost sincerity that the truth is far from it. Heaps of lies have been fabricated from internet-gossips and written about me, tarnishing my identity not only as a supporter of terrorism and separatism,but also as a mad Christian comparing LTTE leader Prabaharan to Jesus Christ . I am open, transparent and living not in hiding. Anyone is welcome to see the reality about my life and activities.
Of course, I am consciously guarding and acting on my God-given identity as a born Tamil and a baptized Christian, with Sri Lanka and all its peoples as my home country and co-citizens. I believe and struggle for my conviction that Sri Lanka is a multiethnic and multireligious country, with equal rights for all. In various stages of my life, witnessing what was going on around me, I have spoken and written my views as a Tamil catholic priest explaing the agonies and aspirations of my people and wishing peaceful coexistence for all. I have criticised the government and their politicians. But never have I spoke or written anything against the Sinhalapeople or Buddhism.
No greater sorrow than the loss of one's native land
BY TREVOR GRANT- 18 MAY 2014
It was the poetic genius of Euripides who first recognised and recorded one of the most powerful sources of misery in the human condition.
“There is no greater sorrow on earth than the loss of one’s native land,” wrote one of the most celebrated playwrights of ancient Greece.
Euripides recorded these words 431 years before the birth of Christ. Today, more than 2400 years later, they have as much resonance as ever in a world that for centuries has seen powerless, voiceless people driven from their lands.
Whether the victim is an Australian aborigine or an indigenous survivor in North or South America, or from anywhere on the African continent, there is an implicit understanding of the stark sense of loss so evident in the words of Euripides.
So, too, on an island in South Asia that is no bigger than Tasmania. Here, in Sri Lanka, these same sentiments live in the sorrowful hearts of those people of the Tamil homelands in the north and east of the island, also proudly known as Tamil Eelam.
The loss of man’s most precious resource is not ancient history in Tamil Eelam. In fact, it’s happening today, as an all-powerful military force goes about the business of genocide on a daily basis, rendering tens of thousands of people landless and homeless, and forcing them into abject poverty.
Every day there is a new story about land theft in Tamil Eelam. A town or a village becomes the latest target for the military occupiers, who take over land under the guise of creating a security zone. Often they will use the land for a military commercial enterprise, of which hundreds have been springing up since the end of the war in 2009.
Or, once the Tamil people have been excluded or refused the right of return, having been displaced during the war, the government authorities then bring in Sinhalese settlers from the south who have been given all kinds of inducements to move to the Tamil lands.
This week there have been two such stories in the eastern Tamil homelands, one in Batticaloa and the other in Trincomalee. In the Batticaloa district, Tamil National Alliance parliamentarians have revealed that the government has established a staggering 54 new military camps, seizing 146,000 acres from Tamil villagers and farmers, 120,000 acres of which has been taken by the Ministry of Tourism since the end of the war.
The politicians say that the combination of the military occupation, pro-active Sinhalese settlers and highly-politicised Buddhist monks have formed an impenetrable force, driving Tamils off their lands and into destitution.
Media reports also say that further north, in Champoor, near Trincomalee, more than 9000 acres have been blocked off from displaced farmers and other workers, who have been promised many times by government officials that they could go back to the lands they were forced to leave in 2005 because of the war.
Only 1500 acres of this area has so far been officially gazetted by government authorities as required for military and government purposes, yet they refuse point blank to allow the original owners and occupiers back on the other 6500 acres. Even though the military don’t need this land now, they clearly have plans for it down the track, and those plans exclude the rightful owners, many of whom had to rely on food rations for several years to stay alive. Those rations were also stopped when the government barred the supplier, a non-government organization known as World Watch.
To complete this evil project of Sinhalisation, the government has also wiped out the name of the village. So, it’s not just young Tamil men disappearing into white vans in Tamil Eelam but street and place names and Hindu temples. All of them gone, replaced by Sinhalese names and Buddhist shrines.
Tamil people are now long-term refugees in their own lands, clinging on to life by the barest margins, without their homes, their farms, their places of worship or their schools. They have even been forced to set up do-it-yourself primitive schools, without teachers or even chairs or desks.
As one Tamil man told the media they are now forced to educate their children as they were doing 2000 years ago, on the floor without any facilities.
Whether it’s deliberately starving the Tamil people, stealing their land, bulldozing their cultural icons or denying basic education to their children, there is only one word to describe it all, and that is ‘genocide.’
© JDS
Trevor Grant is a former chief cricket writer at The Age, and now works with the Boycott Sri Lanka Cricket Campaign and the Refugee Action Collective.
© JDS
Dirty Dozen : Names Of The First Lot Of Sri Lankan War Criminals & Genocidaires
( May 19, 2014, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Government of Sri Lanka is in retreat, with its tail well between its legs. The international civil society has acknowledged the extent of the atrocities on the Tamil people leading to genocide. The Human Rights Council has called for an international investigation. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has placed Sri Lanka on a watch list for four years. Instead of pursuing remedial justice, the chauvinist mindset of the Sri Lankan Government has sought to create smokescreens to hide its multitude of sins. Its campaign against the Tamil Diaspora which it brands as consisting of “terrorists” is misplaced. The Diaspora entities, including the TGTE, operate in accordance with the laws of the states in which they function.
TGTE Named Chandrika As A War Criminal With Rajapaksas And Fonseka
May 19, 2014
Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) today released the names of its first lot of Sri Lanka’s War Criminals and those allegedly committed genocide against Tamils. This first lot includes names of current President, a former President, several diplomats and military leaders.
Mahinda and Chandrika
The TGTE’s alleged list of names of war criminals and those who committed genocide against Tamils as follows;
1) PERCY MAHENDRA “MAHINDA” RAJAPAKSA- Current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of Sri Lankan Armed Forces. (Elected 2005, Re-elected 2010)
1) PERCY MAHENDRA “MAHINDA” RAJAPAKSA- Current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of Sri Lankan Armed Forces. (Elected 2005, Re-elected 2010)
2) CHANDRIKA BANDRANAIKE KUMARATUNGE - Former President of Sri Lanka from November 12, 1994 to November 19, 2005.
3) GOTABAYA RAJAPAKSA - Secretary to the Ministry of Defense and Urban Development. Appointed by his brother who was elected President.
4) SARATH FONSEKA - Former Army Chief/Commander of Sri Lanka Army and former Chief of Defense Staff (appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa)(resigned on November 16, 2009).
5) JAGATH DIAS - Major General Commanding 57th Division of the Sri Lankan Army
NOTE: He was the Deputy Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Switzerland, Germany and the Vatican but was stripped of his diplomatic statute due to allegation of having committed war crimes in 2011.
NOTE: He was the Deputy Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Switzerland, Germany and the Vatican but was stripped of his diplomatic statute due to allegation of having committed war crimes in 2011.
6) SHAVENDRA SILVA - TITLE: Brigadier Major General of the 58th Division
CURRENT POSITION: Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York. He was also appointed to be on the Special Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations in January 2012 but was excluded from participating in the committee.
CURRENT POSITION: Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York. He was also appointed to be on the Special Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations in January 2012 but was excluded from participating in the committee.
7) NANDANA UDAWATTA - TITLE: General Officer Commanding 59th Division
CURRENT POSITION: Deputy Chief of Mission of Russia as of January 4, 2012
CURRENT POSITION: Deputy Chief of Mission of Russia as of January 4, 2012
8) KAMAL GUNERATNE - TITLE: Former General Officer Commanding 53rd Division and
Current Position: Deputy Head of Mission of Brazil.
Current Position: Deputy Head of Mission of Brazil.
9) THISARA SAMARASINGHE - TITLE: Former Commander of the Eastern and Northern Naval Area (2007-2009) but during the final month of war he was Navy Chief of Staff
CURRENT POSITION: High Commissioner to Australia
CURRENT POSITION: High Commissioner to Australia
10) G.A. CHANDRASIRI - TITLE: Former Commander 52nd Division (2002-2003) and former Security Forces Commander – Jaffna (December 2005-2009).
CURRENT POSITION: Governor of Northern Province.
CURRENT POSITION: Governor of Northern Province.
11) WASANTHA KARANNAGODA - TITLE: Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy
CURRENT POSITION: Ambassador to Japan
CURRENT POSITION: Ambassador to Japan
12) PALITHA KOHANA - CURRENT POSITION: Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN
Life in the Open-Air Panopticon: Surveillance and the Social Isolation of Ex-LTTE Combatants in Sri Lanka
“You have to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised.” – George Orwell, 1984
SRI LANKA: CHR condemns the arrest, assault and torture of Allied Health Sciences students
May 19, 2014
Center for Human Rights and Research (CHR) and Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) strongly condemn the assault, arrest and the alleged torture on the Allied Health Sciences students by Slave Island police and hopes that the judicial system will do justice to the arrested students. 18 students were arrested on May 16 and four students were admitted to Colombo National Hospital due to injuries after they were inspected by Judicial Medical officer of the National Hospital on Saturday (May 18). These injuries occurred due to police torture according to the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF).
The assault and arrest of university students who held a peaceful demonstration are violations of Sri Lankan constitution. Article 15 of the constitution ensures the 'freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement, & c.' In addition Sri Lanka is a party to several conventions that binds the government to assure the above mentioned rights and the state is bound to ensure that those detained are not tortured. The law enforcement authorities have thus violated the Sri Lankan constitution and several international conventions that the state is a party to.
CHR and CaFFE also believe that the allegations of torture made by students can't be easily discounted because the Sri Lankan police have a notorious reputation of torture to elicit confessions and custodial death. According to an ongoing study by CHR, there have been close to 1800 cases of Police torture since 1995, and the new regulations that have allowed the Police to detain a person for 48 hours without needing to present the detainees before courts of law has led to the increase of frequency in such incidents. One of the main reason for this increase is the belief that there are no dedicated institutions concerned or to take action against such behavior by law enforcement authorities.
More than 400 students were arrested, assaulted and suspended in the last five years and student union activities were suppressed. The demonstration was peaceful and we believe that this issue can be easily resolved through honest discussion.
Therefore CHR and CaFFE request the IGP and other relevant authorities to investigate the unwarranted arrest, attack and torture of the university students. The two organizations also stand with the Allied Health Sciences students and supports their demands. We also ask the government to end the systematic suppression of students and academic freedom.
Rajith Keerthi Tennakoon Ahmed Manas
Executive Director – CaFFE Director – CHR
LTTE Front Organization Wanted Medics To Take Cyanide Instead Of Surrender: Frances Harrison
A LTTE front organization in London wanted rebels medics to take their cyanide capsules instead of surrender to the Sri Lankan government, Frances Harrison reveals.
“I was left wondering if they just wanted to score a propaganda point in the media, rather than actually save lives”, Harrison, a former BBC Correspondent, writes in her book – Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War about the last phase of the conflict.
Frances Harrison
In the chapter “ The Spokesman”, she detailed the story of the LTTE political wing leader, Nadesan, and his deputy, Pulidevan’s surrender negotiations and the role she played on or about 18 May 2009 at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war.
The three paragraphs below are from Pages 66- 67
“On the last week end of the war, Puli and Nadesan telephoned Colvin and asked her to persuade the United Nations to oversee their unconditional surrender, along with a group of forty fighters and family members. Puli made his wife leave the war zone with the exodus of civilians, promising they would meet up again but warning it might take several years.
“There were no more jokes, no pleasantries; they were really waiting for an answer,’ Colvin said. She called the UN Secretary- General’s special envoy, Vijay Nambiar, who was traveling. The first time they spoke, Numbiar told Colvin he thought it would be an uphill struggle to persuade the Sri Lankan government to accept a surrender: They seems to want to go all the way.’ The second time they spoke, Colvin had woken Numbiar up at five in the morning. He said he’d been invited to witness the surrender of group of Tigers but didn’t think it was necessary to go in person.
‘Shouldn’t you go? This is a very, very fraught situation,’ Colvin asked, horrified that he didn’t seem to want to seize the opportunity. Numbiar told her he’d received assurances from President Rajapaksa that the tigers who surrendered would be safe, and he thought that was sufficient.
I too received a call that weekend, from a Tamil doctor in London who wanted to tell the media that rebel medics wished to cross into army territory, bringing with them hundreds of civilians and injured people. He’d already tried UN and the Red Cross, who were unable to help. The doctor was flustered and distraught, unsure when he’d be able to speak to his colleagues on the ground again, aware their lives hung in the balance. I told him it seemed odd to negotiate surrender through the media – direct negotiations with the government might be better given that time was running out so fast. He consulted colleagues in a Tiger front organization in London, who insisted the medics should take their cyanide capsules because surrender was not an option. I was left wondering if they just wanted to score a propaganda point in the media, rather than actually save lives.”
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