Kilinochchi hit by floods again
10 December 2015
Thousands have been affected by ongoing heavy rainfall in Kilinochchi in a new round of floods.

Sri Lanka’s met department found that the highest amount of rainfall during the monsoon period had occurred in Kilinochchi.
The Kilinochchi Secretariat estimated that over 7000 people may have been affected by the most recent floods. 

The North-East of Sri Lanka was hit by severe flooding last month. 

Over 100k affected by severe floods in North-East Sri Lanka (16 Nov 2015)

GSP Plus requires Sri Lanka’s sustained 

progress on human rights 

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By David Daly-Thursday, 10 December 2015

The EU is based on the principles of democracy, the rule of law and human rights and it strives to respect the highest standards. The EU not only has a principled incentive to uphold human rights through its policies, but it also has a legal obligation to do so. Therefore, as we mark Human Rights Day, it is useful to look at the GSP Plus trade concession as an incentive for developing countries to effectively implement the core international conventions on human and labour rights, environmental protection and good governance.

Globally, human rights violations are pervasive. On 10 December 1948, the international community agreed to protect the inalienable rights of human beings as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The EU is committed to upholding these same rights, adopting its landmark Strategic Framework and corresponding Action Plan for Human Rights and Democracy as the roadmap to mainstream human rights into all areas of its bilateral cooperation. We have formal dialogues with over 40 countries around the world, in which we advocate respect for human rights. We also engage with regional and multilateral organisations, including the UN.

Sri Lanka today already benefits from the GSP reduced tariff preferences and under GSP Plus these tariffs would be reduced to zero. Any successful application for GSP Plus requires compliance with 27 International Conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Sri Lanka has signed and ratified all these conventions, and their effective implementation would also dovetail with the government’s political projects of reconciliation and good governance.

Compliance with these Conventions is about concrete situations on the ground, and not only about sincere commitments from the Government. When police react violently to student protestors it raises questions, including to what degree is a culture of violence embedded within the police and other branches of the security services. I know that the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has censured the police and I am interested to see the follow up on the part of the authorities.

When the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances met families of those who have disappeared, the WG reported that some of these people were subsequently questioned in relation to their visit. If this is true, why is this still happening?

The conversation on GSP Plus is not only about securing an important trade concession: it is also about advancing governance and human rights protection. In the years since the war’s end, there have been significant improvements in peoples’ lives and Sri Lanka has made impressive gains, particularly in economic and infrastructural development. The EU, together with its Member States, has supported Sri Lanka’s post-war recovery by funding projects throughout the island, and is ready and willing to continue to do so. But sustainable development must go hand-in-hand with the protection and promotion of human rights.  

Last month, the 28 EU Foreign Ministers issued a very important statement on Sri Lanka, welcoming the progress achieved and encouraging Sri Lanka to undertake all remaining preparatory work for a renewed GSP Plus application. When people ask me if Sri Lanka can rise to this challenge, my answer is straightforward: Sri Lanka can certainly do it, but only if it wants to, and only if it makes the necessary and sustained effort.

In the words of the very highly respected Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, “the cake was baked at home.” In other words, GSP Plus can only be earned by the progress made here in Sri Lanka. This is in your hands as citizens. Lobby your government by asking the tough questions about how well Sri Lanka is upholding democratic values and protecting the rights of all its citizens. 

(The writer is the EU Ambassador in 

Sri Lanka.) 

The Future of US-Sri Lanka Relations

As Washington continues to embrace Sri Lanka’s new government, it’s important to remember that America’s next president is unlikely to shake up ties.

By Taylor Dibbert-December 08, 2015

Sri Lanka’s President, Maithripala Sirisena, will soon complete his first year in office and many promises remain unfulfilled. More recently, we’re now hearing talk about the creation of a special court to handle alleged wartime abuses and the drafting of a new constitution.

Would expecting genuine progress on either of the aforementioned fronts be realistic? After all, there remain other, less complicated aspects of reform that the Sirisena administration has yet to address, such as the matter of Tamil political prisoners. Given Colombo’s unwillingness to address some of the more straightforward matters, is it reasonable to believe that more complex changes are viable at this time?

Regrettably, the United States continues to make platitudinous remarks about further reform, accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. It’s time to think about Washington’s remarks in a different way. Is the Obama administration willing to do anything substantial if Sirisena’s reform agenda continues to flounder? Has the United States already decided that the progress thus far is sufficient? If that decision hasn’t already been made, what actions could Obama’s team conceivably take over the next 12 months to further pressure Colombo?

Let’s get real. Under Obama’s watch, the United States played a major role in pressuring Sri Lanka to respect human dignity and deal with the past. And, while Mahinda Rajapaksa (the previous president) responded to international pressure, his regime was always focused on doing the bare minimum to placate the international community.

Now we’ve got Sirisena and, somewhat incredibly, a coalition government where the country’s two principal political parties – the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP) –  have entered into a power-sharing arrangement.

A few lines of thinking are permeating Washington’s corridors of power at the moment. Obama’s team has been promoting Sri Lanka’s new government while concurrently assessing its own role in a self-congratulatory fashion. Indeed, it appears that the administration is reliving Myanmar’s “democratic opening” from a few years ago and concomitantly ignoring the lessons that we can and should learn from Myanmar – starting with the fact that deeper, lasting reform is always more complicated and difficult than it at first appears.

The Obama administration will be out of power in about a year’s time. Even if the Sirisena administration makes more significant strides in the right direction over the next 12 months, Sri Lanka’s complicated reform agenda, including transitional justice, will be far from finished in January 2017. And, frankly, there’s no guarantee that an incoming U.S. administration, Republican or Democrat, would want to elevate human rights or accountability in Sri Lanka the way that the Obama administration did from 2012-2014.

Aside from Obama’s obvious legacy concerns, Colombo’s political leadership likely understands that an upcoming transfer of power in Washington would probably not change the current trajectory of bilateral ties. Given the way that U.S.-Sri Lanka relations have been shifting, would a Hillary Clinton administration really want to intensify pressure on Colombo? And most of the leading Republican contenders have little knowledge of foreign affairs anyway. Would any of them want to prioritize justice and accountability vis-a-vis a small island nation in the Indian Ocean?

Irrespective of who wins the White House in 2016, Sri Lanka’s human rights and accountability issues are unlikely to receive the amount of attention that the Obama administration has devoted to them – which makes Obama’s swift resetting of U.S.-Sri Lanka ties that much more unfortunate.

SL to sign Convention against Enforced 

Disappearances 


2015-12-10
Sri Lanka has signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, the Foreign Ministry said.

The document was signed on Thursday at the United Nations Headquarters in New York by Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN, A. Rohan Perera.

The Act in relation to the Convention, which will hold the government accountable for enforced disappearances, is being drafted and expected to be passed in parliament next month.

Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera said enforced disappearances, even those not connected to the conflict, had plagued Sri Lanka.

“Ratifying the convention demonstrates the government’s stance. It is not a matter of partisanship and we hope it is not seen as such when it is tabled in Parliament,” he said and added that the Act would be of no help to the families of those who disappeared during the conflict, but would ensure that future governments would be held accountable for any such disappearances.

“This will ensure that governments won’t shirk their responsibilities in such situations and will be answerable not only to Sri Lankan citizens but also to the international community,” the minister said.

Discussions are also underway with the International Committee of the Red Cross about setting up a domestic mechanism to look into disappearances which occurred prior to the convention being ratified.

“We hope to set up a permanent office in Sri Lanka to look into these matters. “It was not the time to defend the past human rights record of this country but to retrieve Sri Lanka’s lost voice in human rights. Enabling a good record at home will allow the country to be a global voice for human rights,” the minister said. (Nabeela Hussain and Lahiru Pothmulla)

Sri Lanka’s HR Challenge; not enough of the 

right skills and skilled people 

Friday, 11 December 2015

Education and skills attainment in Sri Lanka, which in the early 60s was better than that of countries like Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea, has in the last 20 years fallen behind, undermining the country’s growth prospects. Undoubtedly, talent needs to be a strategic driver for inclusive economic growth to help Sri Lanka become competitive as a middle-income country. Sri Lanka, however, faces two big challenges that we need to solve if we are to achieve a growth rate of over 8%. The two issues that need to be addressed are:

Today out of most of our young people coming out of secondary education:

• Only 20%-25% attend higher education,  of which a large share of students are in humanities and arts relative to sciences/engineering (50% vs. 17%); where there is variation in quality, in addition, very poor-quality External Degree Programs (40% of total enrollment)
•     Another 20%-30% enroll in technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector with low quality and relevance to market needs
•     The remaining 45% have limited opportunity to acquire further job-specific skills other than joining a company to acquire skills. That too is limited and centered in the three to four main cities.

Most employers see skills shortage as a major constraint and question the quality and relevance of general education, vocational and skills attainment as well as higher education.

Improvement

In the past five years, the country has made great strides on many fronts, especially in education. However, Sri Lankan universities, due to limited intake capacity, by default, only open their doors to the top 5% that sit for the Advance Level exams. The majority joins the work force. Also around 10% pursue their higher education in foreign universities or their satellite branches in Sri Lanka and enroll into professional qualifications in accounting, finance, management and marketing. These are mainly professional British qualifications like Chartered Institute of Management Accounting, Chartered Institute of Marketing and Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Therefore, as a country we need a strategy to successfully move our young people from education to employment and we need to scale up our interventions for maximum impact because there are many different views among the stakeholders on how our young people should be made ready to succeed in entry level positions. As a result of this mismatch, the education to employment highway has become very messy. Therefore, education reforms must find ways to prevent our youth from becoming mere certificate collectors and refocus them to acquire skills and competencies that are needed to deliver on the current job and also acquire skills that can be built on for the future.

Vocational training

In most successful export economies, the training provided by Vocational Training Institutes (VTIs) jointly with the companies to upgrade the skills of their workforce has been crucial, since high-level skills are essential for manufacturing-related activities. But while vocational training is widely recognised as important, such training is rarely cost efficient when provided by the state systems. Most firms, therefore, prefer to do their own training, partly because many skills are company specific. There is ample research to show that the return on the training investment is higher in industries that engage well-educated workers and also in environments where there is rapid technological change.

Singapore’s use of training to promote the information technology sector through a concerted program that involved educational institutions, providing training subsidies to schools and office workers, and the digitising of the civil service, helped the country to achieve leadership in technology-related services. This success illustrates the importance of a government’s ability to foresee a major opportunity and then promote public-private partnership to invest in human capital formation.

However, to make it a success, businesses must also stand ready to take advantages of the support the government is willing to provide to promote human capital formation. In addition, the state must ensure that they maintain the per student share, in real terms, of government funding education. Since the country’s university education is only limited to the brightest students in the country, the universities need to work very closely with industry to improve syllabi and the facilities to ensure that the country’s brightest students are instilled with the skills and knowledge the country needs, not what the universities want, so that they can make a meaningful contribution.

In the final analysis, Sri Lanka has the potential to become a high-income economy through a strategic focus on improving its talent pool. A package of financial investments, policy and governance reforms will make the existing system more efficient, equitable and effective. However, before we pour more and more money into education and skills training, Sri Lanka needs a vision, a clear strategy backed by solid funding, realistic targets and effective implementation and monitoring to ensure we realise that vision of having a future ready workforce.

(The writer is a leading HR thought leader)

Tamils protest in Mannar on Human Rights Day

10 December 2015
Families of the disappeared demonstrated in Mannar on Thursday, marking Human Rights Day. 

Calling for their loved ones who are missing or forcibly disappeared to be returned to them, protesters wept as they marched through the town, holding photographs of those who they were searching for. 

No Life For Sri Lankan Woman To Be Stoned To 

Death

by Latheef Farook : Friday, 10 December 2015

As the birthplace of Islam and the site of Islam’s two holiest cities, Makka and Madina, Saudi Arabia have been dear to the hearts of a billion and half Muslims worldwide. However the autocratic tribal racist family regime there was installed by Britain, France and Zionist Jews, in the aftermath of World War 1. The concept of tribalism, monarch, royal family and family rule are contrary to Islamic teachings which

uphold equality of men and women and the entire humanity without any barrier such as caste, race or colour.

No Life for Sri Lankan Woman to Be Stoned to Death by Thavam Ratna

Red Lines documentary screening & discussion

• by Groundviews 
• - on 12/10/2015 

Groundviews invites you to a screening of the award winning documentary ‘Red Lines’ on Tuesday, 15th December 2015, from 5 – 7.30pm at the LKIRRSS auditorium, 24, Horton Place, Colombo 7.

The screening will be followed by a discussion around the issues raised in the film, moderated by Sanjana Hattotuwa with Nimalka Fernando as a confirmed discussant.

Entrance free. Limited seating and strictly by invitation. Please visitbit.ly/redlinesfilm on your mobile, tablet or computer to register.

###

The news from the Middle East worsens daily into a nightmare scenario—one eerily foretold in 2012 as two young, unlikely Syrian activists launch a radical plan for bringing democracy to their country, besieged by the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime. Under threat of death and armed only with the Internet, they organize when no one else will.
University student Razan uses her laptop to coordinate a smuggling network for bringing humanitarian aid and journalists into Syria.

Damascus-born Mouaz works his contacts in the West, becoming a primary source for intel carrying dire implications: without external support for the moderate opposition, Syria’s struggle will draw in opportunist hardliners such as ISIS, spread to neighboring countries such as Iraq and dangerously destabilize an entire region.

Razan and Mouaz navigate a minefield, facing agonizing decisions of who to aid and who to trust, all while hatching a Trojan-horse plan for a democratically run Syria starting with one free, empowered village and spreading from there.

Red Lines provides cinematic boots on the ground, offering a rare window into the Syrian conflict taking us from the trenches to geopolitical jockeying and becoming, along the way, a searing exposé of an ongoing inhumane crisis.

Clarification on stoning to death 

December 8, 2015, 7:13 pm

An increase in Islamophobia has to be expected after the Paris bombings by the IS, and a further increase in Sri Lanka because of the condemnation to death by stoning of a Sri Lankan female convicted of adultery. In this situation there is a need for the Sri Lankan public, including the Muslims, to get their minds clear on the correct Islamic position on the punishment for adultery.

There is no sanction in the Koran, none whatever, for death by stoning for adultery. Adultery is covered in the Koran in verse 32 of Sura 17 and in verses 2-10 of Sura 24. The punishment prescribed is one hundred lashes each for the man and the woman. There is no mention of stoning to death. An important point is that for conviction for adultery there has to be four witnesses. For anyone bearing false witness the punishment prescribed is eighty lashes. It is interesting that even to sustain charges of murder just two witnesses suffice whereas for adultery it is double that number. I must emphasize the point that providing proof of adultery is made extremely difficult, almost impossible, and that the punishment for making unsubstantiated charges of adultery is almost as severe as for adultery.

How then does the question of stoning to death for adultery arise at all? There are two primary sources of Islamic law, one of which is the Koran and the other is the Hadiths, the Traditions of the Prophet meaning what he said and what he did. It is claimed that Omar the second Caliph of Islam started the practice of stoning to death for adultery because a hadith had enjoined it. However, today no more than just four Islamic countries out of over fifty resort to that form of punishment. The explanation, I believe, is that according to Islam the Koran is the word of God and therefore no hadith can supersede it. A hadith to be acceptable as a basis for Islamic law should be consistent with what the Koran says and consonant with the spirit of what it says. Therefore to impose the inhuman and horrifying form of death by stoning when the Koran says nothing about it is, I hold, unIslamic.

Wahabism is the official form of Islam in Saudi Arabia. The historical record shows that it has never had mass appeal and is still regarded as an aberrant form of Islam by orthodox Muslims despite all the petro-dollars spent to propagate it. Therefore the horrors perpetrated in the name of Islam in Saudi Arabia don’t justify any increase in Islamophobia in Sri Lanka. But the Sri Lankan Muslims must declare unequivocally – to whatever extent might be possible – that stoning to death for adultery is an anti-Islamic practice.

Izeth Hussain

GMOA’s Tax-Free Demand Is Unethical & Manifestly Wrong 

By Nagananda Kodituwakku –December 10, 2015

Nagananda Kodituwakku

Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA), threatened trade union action to restore the tax-free permit facility for the doctors and tried to paralyze the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Administration. The government capitulated under pressure restoring the tax-free permits for doctors.

Permit holders had openly abused this tax-free permit scheme, since its inception for unjust enrichment by defrauding the government revenue

As a lawyer and a public interest litigation activist I believe in the people’s ‘right to know’ the inside untold story behind this fraudulent act.

In the first place I should say that I have no business with the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration or deposed Rajapaksa regime.

Just last November 2015 the Customs Department seized over 100 Toyota Prados vehicles at the Hambantota port imported on tax-free permits. Most of these permits had been issued to Doctors, which has been purchased by the Car importers for a substantial ‘price-tag’, ranging into 1 to 2 million rupees. These vehicles were seized for committing an allege revenue fraud. The permit holders (mostly doctors) were summoned to face a customs investigation where they admitted selling their permits, which was initially prohibited by allowed later by the former Rajapaksa regime.

These permits are issued under the Customs law (Section 19A) in the ‘Public Interest’, that granting of such a facility would enable the recipient of the permit to discharge the office effectively.

Doctors are not the only swindlers who abuse this permit scheme for unjust enrichment, but all other professionals, Parliamentarians and Cabinet of Ministers do the same with a scant respect to the Rule of Law.

When the Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake announced in his 2015 budge proposals to discontinue with this wrongful practice all right thinking people overwhelmingly approved it. Then as the Parliamentarians raised a strong protest, the so-called policy was withdrawn, accommodating the politicians. And further to protests made by other professionals, including doctors, the policy was further relaxed to accommodate all of them.

Wrong is wrong, regardless of the office held by the persons concerned. This country has suffered enough in the hands of the cheats for decades and should not afford this form of blatant abuses to continue unchecked.

                                                               Read More

An investigation against the police officer who hid the truth

Dec 10, 2015

The Colombo magistrate has ordered the Criminal Investigation Department to start an investigation against the police officers who was involved in hiding the truth of the mysterious death of the rugby player Wasim Thajudeen.

When the case was called today Thajudeen’s family lawyer told the magistrate the then DIG Anura Senanayake has told Thajudeen’s father that since Thajudeen was killed in a car accident it is unable to continue investigations.

 

However since the new judicial medical report confirms that Wasim Tajudeen’s death was not caused by an accident the lawyer urged the courts to order CID to start investigating against the police officers who deliberately tried to hide the facts.

 

The respondents lawyer Mohamed Mishbaq said the courts has imposed an order to the CID.

 

The CID reporting to the magistrate said it is necessary to conduct an investigation of the former judicial medical officer Dr. Ananda Samarasekara and his group who conducted the first post mortem for giving a false medical report. Accepting the fact the magistrate ordered the CID and the Sri Lanka medical council to immediately start an investigation.

 

The CID further said that they are conducting investigations with the help of the CCTV which was fixed at the Kirulopona and the Narahenpita intersections. The police said they have given the CCTV footage to the IT section of the University of Colombo to identify the people and the vehicles travelling.

 

The magistrate ordered the Colombo University to submit the reports to the courts within 14 days. The case was postponed for January 7th.

Basil Rajapaksa Indicted on Multiple Criminal Charges

10/12/2015 

Basil Rajapaksa, the former Minister of Economic Development and powerful brother of ex President Mahinda Rajapaksa was indicted  on 9th multiple criminal charges ranging from bribery and corruption to misappropriation of public funds.

Mr Rajapaksa who left the country immediately after the defeat of his brother at the January 8 Presidential election was arrested on his return several months later but was released on bail after spending time in remand prison.

He has now been formally indicted by the Attorney General in the Colombo High Court for publishing thousands of almanacs on the eve of the presidential election under the ‘Divi Naguma’ village upliftment programme that came under his ministry.

While Mr Rajapaksa is the first accused the ex Director General of the programme is the second accused.

They are charged under the Penal Code, the country’s criminal law and the Public Property Act as well as under the Presidential Elections Act for inducing the voter through bribery and corruption.

If found guilty, the charges carry jail sentences.

Sunday Times

Corruption: Where is Sri Lanka Now

• by Groundviews 
• - on 12/10/2015 

December 9 is global Anti-Corruption Day. To mark the occasion,Groundviews used Twitter’s new poll feature in order to gauge what our followers felt about corruption.

Since the option to add short polls is still relatively new and under-used, only a few who had the latest version of the mobile app or cast their vote through the web version of Twitter were able to participate. By the end of the day, 89% of those who took the poll said that corruption was an important issue.

On December 9, we also asked our readers over Twitter whether they thought the situation regarding corruption had improved or deteriorated after January 8th.

Interestingly, the majority of respondents on Twitter (49%) felt that there was no real difference with regards to the situation since January 8. This perhaps reflects frustrations with the current Government, that even with an ambitious 100 day plan and stance on good governance has erred, including President Sirisena appointing his brother Kumarasinghe Sirisena to head Sri Lanka Telecom. The appointment of Arjuna Mahendran as Central Bank Governor also raised eyebrows following some controversy over Government bond sales.

Clearly, with the prevalence of social media, people especially amongst a younger demographic, are less tolerant of what they perceive as corruption. Bulk text messages sent out to raise awareness about the Anti Corruption walk organized by the Director General of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption was met by ire by many on social media:

                                      Continue Reading →

Retired police Inspector, actress and lawyer in the net over LTTE treasure mining !

(Lanka-e-News -10.Dec.2015, 8.30PM) Based on  the information elicited from the four suspects arrested by the police in connection with an illicit  treasure mining incident  at Manalkadu in the Peduruduwa police division , Jaffna,  the magistrate K, Ganesharaja on 9 th December  issued notice on a lawyer , retired police officer and an actress , who are also allegedly involved in this illegal activity. 

The police revealed that the charges have been filed under the Archeological ordinance , and this treasure mining was carried out with the hope of digging out the gold  supposed to be buried by the LTTE organization.

Four suspects have already been taken into custody , while on the other three suspects summons have been issued to appear in court on 17th December . They are  retired chief inspector Nimal Ratnayake , Gamini Dharmadasa , a lawyer, and Samanmali Kalyanaratne alias Amali , an actress.

Nelliady police  Jaffna are conducting further investigations.

By Dinasena Rathugamage -Translated by Jeff
 

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by     (2015-12-10 15:07:50)

Lyca team in Colombo for Hutch deal!

Dec 08, 2015

A team of officials from Lyca Mobile, a notorious telephone service provider in England, has come to Sri Lanka to buy Hutchison, which is up for sale, on behalf of Sri Lanka Telecom, reports say.

They include Lyca owner Subhashkaran Allirajah, Raj Shankar and a white man serving in the company. All of them are presently staying at Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo.

SLT’s bid to buy Hutchison for 150 million dollars, which is much more than it is worth, has been on halt due to opposition, and Lyca is going to make the purchase on behalf of SLT, the sources say.

Lyca’s business strategy is to lure top persons of any government coming to power by way of supplying them with money, alcohol and women. The UK’s governing Conservative Party too, had obtained funding from Lyca and is now in trouble over it.

Second edition

Our correspondent in Katunayake reported a short while ago that Allirajah, Shankar and the white man had left from Bandaranaike international airport.

They had made a hasty return after coming to know that the Scotland Yard and the CID are investigating Lyca and its owners over money laundering charges.

They had left before the CID moved to arrest them.

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Secret of Lyca Mobile owner suddenly becoming anti-Rajapaksa!