Thursday, June 12, 2014

Suspected War Criminal Appointed To Eastern Provincial Council

June 12, 2014

K. Pushpakumar alias Iniyapaarathi took oath in front of Governor, Rear Admiral Mohan Wijewickrama as a new Member of Eastern Provincial Council on June 11, 2014 at the Governor’s Secretariat in Trincomalee.

He is a man who has been accused of war crimes by the United Nations for forced arms training to children. And also accused by the public for playing a key role in the abductions and disappearances of several people in Poththuvil, Akkaraippattu, Thirukkovil and Vinaayakapuram in the Ampara district of the Eastern Province.

Iniyapaarathi is a lead operative of the paramilitary group led by Vinayagamoorthy Muralidharan alias Karuna who currently holds a Ministerial post in the Rajapaksa government. He is also the Ampara District Coordinator for President Rajapaksa.

A welcome slap

Editorial-June 11, 2014

The police have got a rap on the knuckles from Puttalam Magistrate and Additional District Court Judge Ranga Dissanayake. Remanding a politician who had been released by the police in spite of his involvement in an attack on a constable, the judge rhetorically asked how the public could expect protection from the guardians of the law who let down their own kind.

The police arrested the politico recently for assaulting the constable who had seized a tractor transporting sand, but later succumbed to pressure from a mob which staged a protest demanding his release. This is in sharp contrast to the manner in which the police deal with other protests. They liberally use tear gas, truncheons, water cannon and rubber bullets—even live ammunition in some cases—to crush university students’ and workers’ protests, but shiver in their boots before powerful politicians and their goons.

Tough-talking police bigwigs should hang their heads in shame. If they do not stand by their subordinates who suffer injuries and indignities at the hands of hoity-toity politicians what moral right do they have to order them to carry out their duties and functions without fear or favour?

The Puttalam Magistrate is to be highly commended for censuring the police most of whom turn tail and run away when confronted by politicians. But, that won’t jolt the police top brass into plucking up the courage to stand up to violent politicians on the wrong side of the law.

Policemen who don’t have anyone to turn to when they get roughed up are left with no alternative but to emulate their superiors and grovel before politicians or even aid and abet their rackets. This may explain why the police have become putty in the hands of powers that be.

Flogging weathermen

Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera has faulted the Meteorological Department for making misleading weather forecasts. On a previous occasion, too, he took the weathermen to task. There may be lapses on the part of the Met Department as the minister argues and, if so, let him look into them and adopt remedial measures. The question, however, is whether weather forecasts are one hundred percent accurate even in technologically advanced countries. The weatherman is said be a person everybody listens to but nobody believes.

The Met Department was held answerable when a large number of fishermen perished in a storm last year. It was asked to explain why no severe weather warnings had been issued. Stock excuses were trotted out. The buck was passed and the issue forgotten. Ironically, it now stands accused of making misleading forecasts which prevent fishermen from setting out to sea!

Weather forecasting has improved significantly over the years thanks to vast strides the world has made in science and technology. But, we still have villagers capable of making more accurate weather forecasts than the Met Department. They will look at the sky, listen to animal sounds and tell you what the weather will be like tomorrow. Prior to the Asian tsunami in 2005, Jarawas of Andaman Islands, it may be recalled, read nature’s early warnings and left the littoral immediately. None of them died in the disaster. In this country, thousands of lives were lost. It looks as if we had a lot to learn from those tribesmen as regards Mother Nature’s disaster warnings.

Unpredictable as the weather may be forecasters should not be allowed to sleep on the job or give the public a false heads up and cause panic when there is no threat of disaster. The government, however, should be fair by the Met Department, which is experiencing a chronic shortage of personnel. Minister Amaraweera, who is hauling the Met Chief over the coals for inaccurate forecasts, ought to urge the government to recruit more meteorologists urgently.

Number plate on Dy. Minister's vehicle a fake

By Gihan Kamalesh Weerasinghe- June 12, 2014

Police investigations have revealed that the number plates on the vehicle in which Deputy Minister Hemal Gunasekera sped along the Southern Expressway on 20 May, was a fake.

A high ranking police officer, conducting investigations, said the garage number C 13/ 1188 that was on the vehicle, was a bogus number.
When using a garage number on a vehicle for travel, special permission must be obtained from the Commissioner of Motor Traffic, he pointed out.

The registration number on the vehicle in which the deputy minister was travelling was not an authorized number, the officer pointed out.

After the Speaker of Parliament grants permission, police will question the deputy minister, and on the advice of the Attorney General, steps will be taken to file legal action against him, the officer said. He added, the police was in possession of the photographs captured by the CCTV cameras installed on the Expressway and in them the number plate of the deputy minister's vehicle is depicted. The spot fine order issued to the deputy minister's driver for over speeding also bears the number of the vehicle, he observed.

'March to Baghdad': Isis spokesman urges Iraq advance

An abandoned uniform and jacket at a checkpoint east of Mosul, Iraq

THURSDAY 12 JUNE 2014

A spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraam (Isis), urges fighters to march on Baghdad, as the group makes rapid advances through Iraq and Kurdish fighters secure the northern city of Kirkuk.

Pics of ISIS fighters inside city of Samarra. #Iraq --> 

11:30 AM - 11 Jun 2014

'March to Baghdad' Isis Spokesman Urges Iraq Advance by nelvely

Wave of crime against women continues in Uttar Pradesh

A girl holds a placard as she takes part in a protest rally in Hyderabad December 29, 2012.

BY SHARAT PRADHAN-Thu Jun 12, 2014

(Reuters) - A woman was hanged from a tree in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday and another allegedly raped in a police station, police said, the latest in a wave of crime against women in the country's most populous region over the past two weeks.

"The sub-inspector accused of committing the rape of the woman has been put under arrest while we have launched a manhunt for the three constables accused of being party to the crime," a spokesman at state police headquarters said.

In total, five rapes were reported in 36 hours in the state.

In two cases, the victims were hanged to death. Police are investigating allegations of rape made by relatives.

Crime against women in India has come under renewed scrutiny since two girls, aged 12 and 14, were gang raped and hanged from a tree in Uttar Pradesh on May 27, the day after Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister.

Uttar Pradesh is one of the world's poorest regions and has largely missed out on the economic boom that swept much of India over the past decade. Its population of 208 million is larger than that of Russia, and it has endured a string of revolving door governments that have pandered to narrow caste interests.

Chief Minister Akilesh Yadav met businessmen in New Delhi on Thursday trying to drum up investment, saying accusations of lawlessness were exaggerated.

"In Uttar Pradesh, not only is the atmosphere good but law and order, compared with many other states, is also better," Yadav told reporters.

Yadav ran his 2012 election campaign on being a modernizer, advocating the use of technology to transform the state. Instead, his term in office has been marred by a spate of riots, gangsterism, and now, sex crimes.

His father, a former chief minister widely seen as the power behind the throne in the state, drew widespread condemnation earlier this year when he said rape laws should be softened and that "boys will be boys" - sometimes committing rape by mistake.

As in many parts of the world, conservative Indian leaders across the political spectrum frequently blame rape on the victims' dress and social behaviour.

Modi broke his silence on the issue in a speech to parliament on Wednesday, saying India needed to protect and respect women and that the government needed to act.

He also asked politicians to refrain from making comments about why rape happened. A senior member of Modi's own party last week said rape was a social issue, and "sometimes right, sometimes wrong."

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Jeremy Laurence)

Iraqi Kurdish forces take Kirkuk as Isis sets its sights on Baghdad

Major oil city is controlled by peshmerga fighters after central government's army abandons posts in a rapid collapse

Kirkuk province's Kurdish governor Najim al-Din Omar Karim with a peshmerga commander

Fazel Hawramy in Kirkuk and Peter Beaumont-

Thursday 12 June 2014

The crisis in Iraq escalated rapidly on Thursday as Iraqi Kurdish forces took control of key military installations in the major oil city of Kirkuk and the Sunni jihadi group Isis revealed its intention to move on Baghdad and cities in the southern Shia heartland.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters entered Kirkuk after the central government's army abandoned its posts in a rapid collapse during which it lost control of much of the country's north.

Iraq has been fragile since the 2003 US-led invasion and the latest developments have raised fears that it is in danger of splintering along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Click here to see a larger version of the map

Iraq has a Shia majority, with a substantial Sunni minority concentrated in Baghdad and the provinces north and west, who have long complained of being disenfranchised. Iraqi Kurds enjoy a large degree of autonomy and self-government in the north-east but have long coveted Kirkuk, a city with huge oil reserves which they regard as their historical capital.

In Kirkuk, truckloads of peshmerga fighters patrolled the streets, but sporadic clashes continued between Kurdish forces and Isis gunmen on the outskirts of the city. A Kurdish minister responsible for regional security forces survived a bomb blast as he drove to the city after visiting peshmerga units in the surrounding region, AFP reported. Since Tuesday, black-clad Isis fighters have seized Iraq's second biggest city, Mosul, and Tikrit, hometown of the former dictator Saddam Hussein, as well as other towns and cities north of Baghdad. They continued their lightning advance on Thursday, moving into towns just an hour's drive from the capital.

About 500,000 people have fled Mosul, home to 2 million, and the surrounding province, many seeking safety in autonomous Kurdistan.

Isis's spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, said on Thursday that the group's fighters intended to take the southern cities of Kerbala and Najaf, which hold two of the holiest shrines for Shia Muslims.

US officials have said they are considering ways to help the Iraqi government even as it emerged that the Obama administration had rebuffed a secret request from the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to bomb Isis positions.

Reports from Iraq have painted a confused picture of a rapidly developing situation with fighting reported in a number of key locations on Wednesday night and on Thursday, including on the outskirts of the city of Samarra, where government officials said Isis fighters had been driven back.

According to Army Staff Lieutenant General Sabah al-Fatlawi, quoted by Agence France-Presse, "elite forces" backed by air strikes pushed back a "fierce attack by Isis fighters who then bypassed the city heading towards Baghdad".

Complicating the picture of the past few days were emerging suggestions that other Sunni insurgent groups, including Ba'ath nationalists, supporters of the executed Saddam, had played a role in the series of stunning setbacks for the Iraqi military.

The sudden collapse of the Iraqi army has raised international concerns about a rapidly widening regional crisis that has implications for Iraq's powerful neighbours, Iran and Turkey.

Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, warned in a televised address on Thursday that Iran would combat the "violence and terrorism" of Sunni extremists in Iraq. The foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, offered Iran's support for Iraq's "fight against terrorism" during a phone call with his Iraqi counterpart, Iranian state TV reported.

In Baghdad residents described panic buying and rising fear.

A meeting of MPs called by Maliki to vote on introducing an emergency law was cancelled after insufficient MPs attended.

The Iraqi leader – a Shia whose authoritarian and sectarian policies have been blamed by many as the root cause of the country's crisis – is trying to hold on to power after indecisive elections in April. The mounting sense of anxiety in the capital followed a statement by a spokesman for Isis who said the group had scores to settle with Maliki's government.

Hundreds of young men crowded in front of the main army recruiting centre in Baghdad on Thursday after authorities urged Iraqis to help battle the insurgents.

The army of the Shia-led government in Baghdad has essentially fled in the face of the onslaught, abandoning buildings and weapons to the fighters who aim to create a strict Sunni caliphate on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.

In Tikrit, militants have set up military councils to run the towns they captured, residents said. "They came in hundreds to my town and said they are not here for blood or revenge but they seek reforms and to impose justice," said a tribal figure from the town of Alam, north of Tikrit. "They picked a retired general to run the town. 'Our final destination will be Baghdad, the decisive battle will be there,' that's what their leader of the militants group kept repeating."

Exclusive: Israel Is Tending to Wounded Syrian Rebels

BY COLUM LYNCH-JUNE 11, 2014

Israel is quietly cultivating ties with moderate Syrian rebel groups operating along the country's U.N.-monitored cease-fire line with Syria, providing medical care and other unidentified supplies to the insurgents while potentially extracting a valuable vein of intelligence on the activities of President Bashar al-Assad's army as well as extremist opposition forces within Syria.

Exclusive Israel is Tending to Wounded Syrian Rebels by nelvely

Video: Voices Against Sri Lankan Rape – Last Night At Canadian High Commissioner’s Residence

June 12, 2014

A number of human rights activist have joined together at an event at the Canadian High Commissioner’s residence last night to give their voices to Sri Lankan rape victims.

The event was organised by the The International Truth and Justice Project. This is a project led by the human rights activist and former UN expert panel member on Sri Lanka Yasmin Sooka. They are the authors of the report “Stop Torture“ which documents the case that sexual violence continues to be used systematically in Sri Lanka as a tool of oppression. It documented the cases of 40 Tamil men and women who had been raped by Sri Lankan security forces between 2010 and 2014.

Watch the videos;

Jenni Murray – Opening

M I A

Catherine Russell Read More

An Egyptian Rapper Is Using Her Music to Fight Back Against Sexual Harassment

By Sara Yasin June 9, 2014
"I realized all the male rappers must have a track in which they talk about girls and their clothes, blaming girls for everything happening around us," said 19-year-old Mayam Mahmoud, an Egyptian rapper. "That wasn't right. So I rapped about girls and the problems they face."

Mahmoud, who rose to fame after competing on Arabs Got Talent, is using her music to hit back at Egypt's troubles with sexual harassment.

An Egyptian Rapper is Using Her Music to Fight Back Against Sexual Harassment by nelvely

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Impunity encourages continuing use of rape as weapon against Tamils - NFZ

Tamil Guardian 11 June 2014

The producers of the acclaimed ‘No Fire Zone’ documentary said in a statement that the horror and condemnation expressed at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, must be translated into into international action.
A short version of the film was released to coincide with the summit, to highlight evidence of sexual violence perpetrated against Tamil women in Sri Lanka.
“Both the Global Summit and the international inquiry being set up by the UN are welcome and vital events. But the appalling crimes of sexual violence which characterized the end of the war in Sri Lanka continue today against the Tamil civilians of the north and east, as well as against returned asylum seekers,” the statement on the NFZ website said.
“Everyone who cares about ending sexual violence in conflict must use these important international events to focus attention on the need to end the climate of impunity in Sri Lanka. Because in Sri Lanka today this climate of impunity has not just allowed the government to deny and cover up the crimes committed by its troops during the war – it effectively encourages the continuing use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of repression and a cultural assault on Tamil society,” the statement further said.

First day of Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict concludes (10 June 2014)

International Inquiry: Putting The Cartwright Before The Horse

By Dayan Jayatilleka -June 11, 2014

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

In her farewell address to the UNHRC, Madam Navi Pillay drew attention to the need for healing the wounds of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which she rightly noted, had yet to be done. To this intent and purpose she commended cooperation by the Government of Sri Lanka with the comprehensive international inquiry that her office has undertaken. What is bitterly ironic is that the healing of wounds cannot take place by means of a lacerating external inquiry or even an overly extensive and premature internal one. The international inquiry will do just the opposite of assisting any process of healing. It will generate resentment and hatred among the overwhelming majority of the people of Sri Lanka.

The appointment of Dame Sylvia Cartwright, former attorney general of New Zealand as head of the international inquiry into Sri Lanka, is hardly likely to have a positive resonance on the island. Her most positive and notable achievement is the best evidence of what is wrong with the international inquiry into Sri Lanka. She was a member of the UN hearing into war crimes in Kampuchea. That inquiry stands in complete contrast to the proposed inquiry into Sri Lanka.

The Kampuchea inquiry was into war crimes committed by the militarily defeated Khmer Rouge. It was instituted decades after the episodes being inquired into (during which I was an undergraduate who published a series in the Lanka Guardian analyzing and denouncing Pol Pot). It was a joint tribunal, established with the blessings of the Kampuchean government.

Obviously if the international inquiry into Sri Lanka were about the war crimes of the defeated Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan government would have welcomed and facilitated it. If the Sri Lanka inquiry such as it is presently crafted, were to take place a few decades down the road, perhaps a different Sri Lankan administration in a different Sri Lanka would cooperate with it having significantly modified its terms of reference. Decades down the road, there could even be a joint commission of inquiry.

Those are not the contours of the international inquiry into Sri Lanka which Dame Cartwright will head. Thus the dynamics and outcome will be different, as will the response of Sri Lankan public opinion and any elected administration (or political party which is strategically serious about being elected to office).

While the Sri Lankan government cannot be faulted for refusal to cooperate with the international inquiry, it can and must be condemned on several other counts. Read More

Time To Act On Sri Lanka

Why has the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, forgotten the Sri Lankan survivors?

| by Bianca Jagger

( June 11, 2014, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict begins today, June 10-13, 2014, on the banks of the Thames here in London. The Summit is organized by Foreign Secretary William Hague and Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie. According to the UK government, it will be the biggest meeting ever held on this subject and the conference will launch an International Protocol to help strengthen prosecutions. Delegations from over 140 countries are here to participate, along with legal experts, academics, religious leaders and many others. There are many survivors present.

Time to Act on Sri Lanka by nelvely

Angels And Demons Of Democracy – In Lanka

By Suren Rāghavan -June 11, 2014

Dr. Suren Rāghavan

In any society that is drawn into a protracted civil war, there are three curtail conditions for the future. 1 ) How to end the war with minimum damages 2) How to make sure such war is not repeated and 3) Fast socio- economic recoveries to fill the years of lost opportunities.

In Sri Lanka, where South Asia’s longest civil war of modern history took place, one is still debating on all three frontiers, perhaps with even deeper disagreements. The regime loyalists and ultra nationalist southerners believe President Mahendra Rajapaksa solved the conflict – the best possible way by destroying world’s most text book terrorist group with the same techniques they thrived on. Tamil nationalists (separatists or otherwise) firmly argue that Mullaivaikaal produced a ‘Rajapaksa Doctrine’ on civil war which is a genocide of minority rights groups. They continue to ask justice from the International Community. The military nature of the conflict has ceased. While peace and social justice are far from realities, one can agree that there are no urban suicide missions blowing off caught up school children. Similarly there are no indiscriminative carpet bombing on targets killing all civilians in between. In the balance of games, southerners may be bit luckier than the Tamils of the North who still painfully live in the most militarized land mass in South Asia[1] That is the reality of war. The victor has more benefits. It is up to the morale conduct of the victor to be magnanimous.

The way the conflict ended is irreversible. Future historians will write the judgment. It is on the other two remaining factors that Sri Lanka, as a collective society could still make a difference however challenging or demanding a transformative moral imagination from all actors.

Risk of Recurrent (armed) Conflict

The GoSL has sold the war theme at every election during the last 25 years. And the southerners have more or less bought such thesis and mandated the parties those promised to bring peace by ‘defeating’ the Tamil demand more at the military front and less at the negotiating table. It is a fact that even PresidentKumaratunga and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe who campaigned on ‘peace’ platforms were equally ready with military options. They maintained that such strategy is fundamental for the balance of power formula. President Rajapaksa had no such doubts. Well supported by his ethno centric political partners, he campaigned on a military solution and delivered a bold – bloody end. Since then he also has successfully used war victory rhetoric to consolidate and recentralize power at all structural and intuitional level. Perhaps this president above everyone knows that peace as much as war is a political decision. William Zartman (2001)[2] assumed that ‘mutually hurting stalemate’ is the ripen conditions to end protracted wars, enabling a genuine desire to address the fundament reasons for the war and its collateral damages.