Detained Myanmar journalist Nayi Min leaves after a court pre-trial hearing in Yangon on October 17, 2018. Rights groups criticised the detention of the three journalists from Eleven Media, which comes as the latest in a long series of cases brought against the media under vague and outdated laws. Source: Ye Aung Thu/AFP
BURMA’S president Win Myint on Wednesday intervened in the case of three detained journalists by issuing a directive to the Yangon regional government insisting they cooperate with the country’s media council to resolve the case before taking it to court.
The government’s request comes amid mounting international concern over freedom of the press in the nascent democracy.
The letter directed Yangon officials to file an official complaint with the Myanmar Press Council (MPC) in accordance with the country’s media law, and work with the MPC to find a resolution. Only if this is unsuccessful should they then take the matter to the courts, the directive said.
Regional government director Aung Kyaw Khine filed the lawsuit on Oct 9 claiming an article written by reporter Phyo Wai Win damaged the dignity of the Yangon government, according to RFA.
Two executive editors from Eleven Media, Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nayi Min, were arrested alongside the reporter who wrote the article.
The three journalists were remanded in custody the following day after handing themselves in to police.
The article in question that criticised the financial management of the Yangon’s administration, specifically the funding behind the city’s bus network, which is overseen by a protege of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
over 400 journalists showed their support for colleagues Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo at the investigative journalism conference in Seoul, October 6, 2018. Source: Twitter
Uncovered in the article is a suspect transaction of US$100 million for a contract awarded without a tender to import buses from China.
Government officials claim the article is false and have denied any wrongdoing. The journalists, however, stand by their story.
Their arrest follows the high-profile convictions of two Reuters journalists, Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone, for possessing secret documents under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The pair were arrested in December while working on a report that uncovered the mass killings of ten Rohingya men at the hands of the Burmese military.
They were sentenced to seven years in prison in September despite a witness testifying they were the victims of a police set-up.
The case drew international attention and heaped pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi to intervene and issue a pardon for the pair. Once a strong advocate of press freedom, the Nobel laureate has refused to support the journalists, insisting their imprisonment was justified and had “nothing to do with freedom of expression.”
According to RFA, Aung Kyaw Khine visited MPC seeking to take action against the three journalists but was told “the Yangon regional government must withdraw the case from the court first if it wants the MPC to mediate or to take action.”
Government officials are meeting with MPC today to confirm whether they will drop the court case.
You might have seen this tweet from Jeremy Corbyn yesterday.
By Georgina Lee-17 Oct 2018
It seems to tell a compelling story of the dramatic rise in hate crime in recent years.
But more reliable data suggests exactly the opposite could be true.
Where are the figures from?
A Labour spokesperson confirmed to FactCheck that the data in Mr Corbyn’s graph comes from a Home Office report released yesterday.
We assume he’s used figures from Table 2 of that report, which show a rise in the number of hate crimes recorded by the police in the last few years — from about 42,000 in 2012-13 to just over 94,000 in 2017-18.
In the last year alone, the number of hate crimes recorded by the police has risen by 17 per cent. The report also notes that there have been “spikes in hate crime following certain events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017.”
We shouldn’t rely on police records in this case
But there’s a big catch. The very same report that Mr Corbyn is citing warns readers: “data from the police are not suitable for longer-term trends in hate crime.”
That’s because “it is known that police recorded crime data have been heavily affected by improvements in crime recording by the police over recent years.”
In other words, these statistics do not tell us anything about the actualincrease in the number of hate crimes. They only tell us that the police are getting better at recording hate crimes properly.
The Home Office report notes that “The College of Policing provided operational guidance in 2014 to police forces around hate crime, including information on what can be covered by race hate crime.”
Is there a more reliable measure?
There is another way to track this type of offence: the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which is run annually by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
They interview a random sample of 50,000 people across England and Wales and ask whether they have been a victim of crime in the previous 12 months.
When it comes to measuring crimes like sexual offences and hate crimes, statisticians often prefer the Crime Survey to police records.
This is partly because, as we’ve seen already, it often takes a cultural or institutional shift for the police to start recording these crimes properly.
And there’s the added benefit that the Crime Survey helps record offences that are never reported to the police. Comparison between the Crime Survey and police records suggests that only half of hate crime incidents between 2015 and 2018 came to the attention of the police.
The Office for National Statistics says hate crime has fallen in the last decade
So what does the Crime Survey show? Well, it appears to show a significant fall in the number of hate crimes in England and Wales in the last ten years.
But before we get into the details, let’s make one thing absolutely clear: the Crime Survey data on hate crimes is far from perfect.
It is primarily a measure of the number of people who experience crime. So it doesn’t capture crimes that are “victimless”, for example public order offences like rioting. This is particularly problematic for hate crimes, where half of those recorded by the police are public order offences.
The Office for National Statistics and the Home Office acknowledge that “as the [Crime Survey] is a general household population survey, the number of hate crime incidents and victims estimated in a single survey year is too unreliable to report on.”
In other words, the sample size of hate crime victims in a given year is too small to be statistically robust (just 0.3 per cent of adults were the victim of a hate crime in the 12 months prior to the Crime Survey interview).
To get round this, the ONS only releases hate crime data every three years, combining the results of three annual surveys and thereby tripling their sample size. For this reason, we can’t really use the Crime Survey to measure short term changes in hate crimes.
But even with these caveats in mind, in the view of the ONS and the Home Office, the Crime Survey remains the best available measure of long term changes in the number of hate crimes. Which is the very thing Jeremy Corbyn was talking about in his tweet.
So let’s take a look at what this more reliable measure tells us.
Crime Survey data shows that the number of hate crimes has fallen by 40 per cent in the last decade.
In the period 2007-2009, Crime Survey data shows there were about 307,000 hate crimes in England and Wales each year. In the latest reporting period — 2015 to 2018 — that figure was 184,000.
Some final thoughts on the graph…
It’s just worth pointing out a couple of things about Mr Corbyn’s graph.
First up, the title refers to the UK, but he’s using figures for England and Wales only.
Second, the vertical (y) axis begins at 40,000, rather than zero. There are times where it is reasonable to use a compressed y-axis. We don’t think this is one of them. It exaggerates the effect that Mr Corbyn is trying to demonstrate: at first glance, the viewer might reasonably think that we’ve gone from almost no hate crimes in 2013 to nearly 100,000, which is not correct.
FactCheck verdict
Jeremy Corbyn tweeted a graph that purports to show a significant rise in the number of hate crimes in the UK over five years.
The data he’s using is from a Home Office report on crime in England and Wales (not the whole UK), which does chart a rise in hate crimes recorded by the police.
But the very same report that Mr Corbyn is citing warns readers: “data from the police are not suitable for longer-term trends in hate crime.”
That’s because “it is known that police recorded crime data have been heavily affected by improvements in crime recording by the police over recent years.” So all this data tells us is that the police have got better at recording hate crimes.
The Office for National Statistics compiles its own data on hate crimes through the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The ONS figures are far from perfect (they don’t tell us about short-term changes, and they don’t always capture public order offences, which are particularly relevant for hate crimes).
But even with these caveats in mind, the ONS and the Home Office consider the Crime Survey to be the best available measure of long term changes in the number of hate crimes. Which is the very thing Jeremy Corbyn was talking about in his tweet.
This more reliable ONS data shows a 40 per cent decline in the number of hate crimes in England and Wales over the last decade – exactly the opposite trend to the one shown in Jeremy Corbyn’s tweet.
On Oct. 28, Brazilians go to the polls for second-round presidential vote, to decide whether the anti-establishment wave impacting elections and plebiscites around the world should also crash on Brazil, Latin America’s largest democracy and regional powerhouse. In first-round presidential elections on Oct. 7, a Brazilian congressman and former army captain campaigning on a law-and-order platform decimated expectations by falling just short of a majority, which would have handed him the presidency outright without need for a runoff.
The fiery right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro—whom some commentators have called the “Trump of the Tropics”—has roiled Brazil’s politics with caustic, inflammatory, and at times hateful statements while denouncing corrupt politics as usual and feckless law enforcement policies that have allowed street criminals almost free rein in too many Brazilian cities.
Nearly 50 million voters—46 percent of the electorate—almost delivered a first-round victory to Bolsonaro, a feat no Brazilian presidential candidate has achieved in the last 20 years. Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party finished a distant second at 29 percent and qualified for the runoff. The Workers’ Party leader, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was disqualified from running due to his imprisonment on corruption charges. Virtually no one expects Haddad to overcome Bolsonaro’s huge lead in the interim.
Candidates riding Bolsonaro’s coattails did equally well in the election. His small Social Liberal Party gained 44 seats, from eight to 52, to become the second-largest party in the 513-member lower house, meaning he will have plenty of allies throughout the government if elected.
As one Brazilian academic told the Washington Post, “Brazil is now surfing the wave of global conservatism, an anti-globalist movement all across the world.”
While more anti-establishment than traditionally conservative, the Bolsonaro phenomenon is a clear part of a global pattern that began with Brexit and saw a surprising defeat of a peace agreement in Colombia, the rise of nationalist movements in Europe, and the election of outsider candidates in the United States, the Philippines, and Mexico, where voters are expressing a rejection of traditional politics and what they perceive as detached elitism.
Brazil’s transition from a country that typically elected moderate and mainstream leaders since the establishment of democracy in 1985 to one that welcomes a candidate who professes nostalgia for military rule is a story of the sad decline of the existing political establishment. Only a few years ago, Brazil was announcing its arrival on the world stage as a country of consequence after rising to economic heights off the global commodity boom and hosting both the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016.
But two events dashed the country’s economic prospects and popular confidence in its political system. First, Chinese demand for primary products such as soybeans ebbed, exposing unaddressed systemic dysfunctions in the economy, and second, a massive corruption scandal involving the state oil company Petrobras and resulting in the looting of billions of dollars from the public treasury was revealed, which tainted nearly the entire political class.
More than 200 Brazilian politicians, business leaders, and corporations, including Lula, have been convicted in the high-level corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash. The effect on public opinion has been devastating: According to Gallup, just 17 percent of Brazilians have confidence in their national government, a decline from 51 percent just a decade ago. During the first round, 47 politicians charged with corruption or who were currently under investigation were defeated in re-election bids.
Meanwhile, inattention to public security has turned many Brazilian urban centers into shooting galleries. Seven cities in Brazil are among the world’s 20 most violent, and in 2017, the country saw a record 63,880 homicides, up 2.9 percent from 2016. It’s no wonder democracy in Brazil has become a “synonym for weakness and chaos and leniency with criminals,” according to Brian Winter, the editor in chief of Americas Quarterly.
Into this vortex stepped the 63-year-old congressional backbencher and former paratrooper Bolsonaro, untarnished by corruption and skillfully capitalizing on popular anger at the status quo. Eschewing the traditional means of campaigning—massive financing, relying on the machinery of traditional parties, and free airtime on television—he has relied mainly on social media to connect with his supporters.
Although he has offered few detailed policies, he has been unafraid to speak bluntly about the ills of Brazilian society (and much else). His themes have been fighting crime, adopting a zero-tolerance approach to corruption, and releasing Brazil’s $2 trillion economy from its regulatory straitjacket. He has been merciless in attacking criminals and venal, disconnected Brazilian politicians.
To those who accuse him of an authoritarian streak, he says, “My administration will have authority, not authoritarianism.” He also points to his 27 years in Brazil’s National Congress to demonstrate his respect for democratic institutions. Still, his many critics accuse him of posing an existential threat to Brazilian democracy. But this underestimates the Brazilian people and the resilience of their institutions, as damaged as they are. Brazil is a country of more than 200 million people, with an array of entrenched interests across the spectrum that mitigate against political extremism. Even if Bolsonaro harbored some secret agenda to supplant Brazilian democracy with a personalist dictatorship, it is not clear that he would get very far.
Despite fears about what a Bolsonaro presidency might mean for Brazil, his rhetoric is unlikely to change, and he has been very clear about what he doesn’t want Brazil to look like: Venezuela.
Shortly after his first-round victory, he said, “The good people of Brazil want to rid themselves of socialism—they don’t want Venezuela’s regime. They want a liberal economy, and they want to defend family values.”
He also has recognized the importance of the Brazilian private sector, hiring an orthodox University of Chicago-trained economic advisor and being careful not to roil the markets with his offhand remarks. He has provided little detail about his economic agenda but insists his focus will be reining in spending and privatizing state enterprises. He will need a lot of help with the economy: Brazil’s budget deficit is creeping up to 8 percent of GDP, and the national debt is spiraling. (According the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which evaluates the degree to which countries pursue free market economics, Brazil ranks a poor 153 out of 180 countries.)
Brazil is but the latest country in which voters are manifesting their profound unhappiness with the status quo: the indifference and unresponsiveness of their elected representatives even as they line their pockets with public funds. Millions of voters who placed their faith in the system only to see their needs and interests unaddressed while politicians feathered their nests are embracing populism of various varieties. Facing such challenges, no one should fault voters for their expectations—or their desperate search for solutions.
José R. Cárdenas was acting assistant administrator for Latin America at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the George W. Bush administration.
Thousands of migrants from Central America walk toward Tapachula from Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, en route to the United States, on Oct. 21, 2018. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — As the caravan of Central American migrants left the Mexico-Guatemala border, walking north in the heat, it became clear that the group had swelled in number.
“We believe there are at least 5,600 now, and we expect more to join us” in the nearby city of Tapachula, said Rodrigo Aveja, one of the group’s organizers.
The group appears to be at least double the size of the caravan that wound through Central America and Mexico this spring, prompting outrage from President Trump ahead of the administration’s policy of family separation.
Through Sunday morning, officials in Mexico had done little to stop the group from crossing into the country from Guatemala. Most members of the caravan crossed the border illegally by raft.
Mexican authorities watched the migrants arrive Saturday, occasionally patting them down but allowing them to proceed to Ciudad Hidalgo’s central plaza, where the Central Americans held an informal assembly, cheering “Si, se puede,” each time more migrants arrived.
Hundreds of Central American migrants arrive in southern Mexico, some taking small rafts across the narrow Suchiate river from Guatemala.(Luc Forsyth for The Washington Post)
The border between Mexico and Guatemala has long been famously porous. On most days, goods are traded by raft, while authorities from both countries stamp passports on the official bridge above. It has never been particularly hard for migrants to cross the border here, and the caravan’s arrival has made law enforcement even more difficult, despite Mexico’s recent deployment of additional federal police.
But on Sunday afternoon, police set up two checkpoints and appeared prepared to block the migrants.
“We are here to enforce our country’s laws,” said one senior police officer, who declined to give his name.
Other police said they planned to offer migrants a chance to secure legal paperwork in a local shelter but would not detain or deter them if they refused.
Trump seems to hope that the migrant caravan will galvanize his base ahead of next month’s midterm elections. He played up the threat as he stumped for GOP candidates this past week.
“These are some bad people coming through. These aren’t babies, these aren’t little angels coming into our country,” he said Friday at the White House.
Radiotherapy could increase the chances of survival for thousands of men with prostate cancer that has already spread by the time they are diagnosed, new research suggests.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer to affect men in the UK. About 47,000 are diagnosed every year and around 11,500 die. Significant numbers of men are not diagnosed until the cancer has spread, which reduces their chances of survival.
The standard treatment for advanced or metastatic prostate cancer is hormone therapy drugs. “Until now, it was thought that there was no point in treating the prostate itself if the cancer had already spread because it would be like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,” said the lead researcher of the study, Dr Chris Parker of the Royal Marsden hospital in Surrey.
he trial, called Stampede and based at the Medical Research Council’s clinical trials unit at University College London, investigated what would happen among about 2,000 men with advanced cancer if they were given radiotherapy as well as drugs. Half were given standard treatment and half the standard treatment plus radiotherapy to the prostate.
Not everyone benefited. The radiotherapy did not help those whose cancers had spread more widely, but it did make a difference for those whose cancers had spread only locally into the nearby lymph nodes or bones. Of those men, 81% survived for three years, compared with 73% who did not get radiotherapy. The results were announced at the European Society for Medical Oncology conference in Munich and published online by the Lancet medical journal.
The improvement in survival may not seem large, but experts say it could benefit around 3,000 men in England and very many more worldwide. Radiotherapy also has the advantage of being a low-cost addition to their treatment.
“Our results show a powerful effect for certain men with advanced prostate cancer. These findings could and should change standard of care worldwide,” Parker said. “Unlike many new drugs for cancer, radiotherapy is a simple, relatively cheap treatment that is readily available in most parts of the world.”
Prof Charles Swanton, the chief clinician of Cancer Research UK, which funded the trial, said: “This is a monumental finding that could help thousands of men worldwide. Stampede is making great strides in finding new ways to treat prostate cancer with previous results from the trial already changing clinical practice. Data released previously has led to docetaxel chemotherapy now being part of the standard of care for many men with prostate cancer.
“Adding radiotherapy to current treatment shows clear benefit for this subgroup of men with prostate cancer. We now need to investigate whether this could also work for other types of cancer. If we can understand exactly why these men benefit from the additional radiotherapy treatment, we could hopefully use this approach to benefit even more patients.”
The Tamil journalist, Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, was remembered today in Jaffna on the 18th anniversary of his assassination.
Nimalarajan, a senior journalist who contributed to the BBC Tamil and Sinhala services, the Tamil daily Virakesari and Sinhala weekly Ravaya, was murdered on October 19th 2000.
The Committee to Protect Journalists stated shortly after his death:
“The assailants shot the journalist through the window of his study, where he was working on an article, and threw a grenade into the home before fleeing the premises. The attack occurred during curfew hours in a high-security zone in central Jaffna town.”
“Local journalists suspect that Nimalarajan's reporting on vote-rigging and intimidation in Jaffna during the recent parliamentary elections may have led to his murder.”
The government aligned paramilitary group the EPDP are suspected of carrying out the killing.
Six months after the killing Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expressed deep concern regarding "the serious shortcomings of the police investigation and the Sri Lankan government's apparent unwillingness to shed light".
In 2004 RSF wrote an open letter to then Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunge criticising “the failure of the Sri Lankan government to reopen the murder investigation and regretted that the killers have not been tried or punished”. It called on the president to ensure justice in the case, as she herself demanded at the time of the murder,” the statement said.
Speaking ten years after the murder, Nimalarajan’s father told RSF:
“This has been 10 years of suffering for our family. But my son’s memory is still alive. I would like people to remember him as a courageous journalist who served his community. The government could relaunch the investigation into my son’s murder if it wanted to. It is a question of political will. We want justice to be done.”
Nimalarajan was remembered in Jaffna on Friday in commemorations by the University of Jaffna and by the Jaffna Press Club.
Colombo Fort Magistrate Lanka Jayarathne yesterday ordered the CID to arrest those who were involved in aiding and abetting Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi alias Navy Sampath to flee the country.
He was arrested over the abduction and disappearance of 11 youths.Attorney Achala Senevirathne appearing on behalf of the aggrieved party informed court that there is sufficient evidence to arrest Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne regarding this incident.
The CID said they expect to record a statement from Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne.
The CID said they had found that one Laksiri Amarasinghe had aided Navy Sampath to prepare a fake passport.Amarasinghe is the manager of an agency that prepared fake passports, the CID said.CID had arrested Amarasinghe and produced him before court on October 10.
The CID told court that they have recorded two statements from two officials, who aided Navy Sampath to prepare his fake passport.The Magistrate ordered to remand Laksiri Amarasinghe till November 2.
RUKI FERNANDO- Editor’s Note:The following are excerpts from a speech made at the Human Rights Education Award ceremony at the Law & Human Rights Centre in Jaffna, on 19th Oct. 2018
Dear friends,
I want to congratulate the Law and Human Rights Centre for organising this course. It is difficult but very important to do this in Jaffna, a place that sees continuing rights violations, impunity for serious violations in the past and courageous dissent and resistance, be it through protests, the arts, writing, or filing court cases.
Rights violations and struggles for justice
Today, after this event, I will be going to the Jaffna Press Club – for a commemorative event to remember life and work of Nimalarajan, a Tamil journalist killed on 19th October 2000. He is among many Tamil journalists killed, disappeared, assaulted, threatened, and intimidated during and after the war. No one has been held accountable. For many, justice for Tamil journalists appear to be less important than justice for Sinhalese journalists. Even now, Tamil journalists continue to face threats, intimidation, surveillance, interrogation. Not just them, but also families and friends.
This year and last year has been a year of protests in Sri Lanka – especially in the North and East. This includes continuous protests for more than one and half years by families of disappeared and by communities whose lands are occupied by the military. In addition to long drawn out roadside protests, families of the disappeared in Mannar and Vavuniya have published books documenting their stories. Some have met the President, others have made representations to international community representatives in Sri Lanka and Geneva. Some have filed court cases. Some of the leaders have been assaulted, threatened, intimidated and subjected to interrogation and surveillance. Even those inside prisons have been protesting – such as female detainees and political prisoners engaging in hunger strikes.
There have been a few significant victories emerging from these struggles. For example, last year, month long overnight roadside protests by communities in Pilakudiyiruppu and Puthukudiyiruppu led to the release of Army and Air Force-occupied lands. This year, the people of Iranaitheevu made a daring landing on their Navy-occupied island and reclaimed their traditional lands. Hunger strikes by political prisoners have led to reversal of unjust transfer of cases from Tamil areas to Sinhalese areas, and release on bail of some. Sandya Ekneligoda, whose husband disappeared, was threatened by a rough Buddhist Monk Gnanasara while inside court in 2016 – she refused mediation, insisted and courageously pursed justice in courts and finally, Gnanasara was convicted and put behind bars. These are exceptions to the rule, but it’s good to recall these struggles, and see what we can learn from those that were leading and involved in these.
We also need to be conscious of rights abuses, injustice and repression from non-state parties. Last month, a film looking at Tamil militancy, including the LTTE, in a critical way, was removed from the Jaffna film festival due to pressure from some people in Jaffna. Earlier this week, a photo exhibition, a substantial part of which included photos about rights violations in the North and East including disappearances and land, was not allowed to be held in the Peradeniya University by a student group. Last year, several months long protest was held against caste based oppression in Jaffna.
Protests have been held across the North and East against unjust schemes by microfinancecompanies that pushes people into debt and even suicide. The Catholic Archbishop of Colombo preached that human rights are not so important, that it’s a Western concept, that it’s only for people without religions, despite strong views supporting international human rights framework by successive Popes including Pope Francis. Most Muslim men and clergy resist reform of the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) which legalises blatant discrimination of women and child marriage of girls. Some Buddhist clergy and their followers have been at forefront of violence against Christians and Muslims. Even as we try hold the state accountable, we must also expose and challenge armed groups, business enterprises, religious groups and in general oppressive social – cultural practices that facilitates, justifies and promotes rights abuses and undermines struggles for justice.
It is also a challenge to critically engage with new laws and institutions that we are faced with. These often fall short of legitimate expectations of survivors, victim families and affected communities. They are often compromised, or seek to whitewash old and existing violations and paint a rosy picture of the present situation. The Office on Missing Persons (OMP) established earlier this year and the Act on Reparations approved in Parliament last month are examples. But they also offer tiny rays of hope for a minimal degree of redress to at least a few survivors, victim families and affected communities and thus, we should be careful about rejecting them totally or boycotting them. The Right to Information Act and the Commission is an example of a recent development that have provided answers to some citizens who proactively sought answers about what’s hidden – such as military occupied land and military run businesses, entitlements in terms of flood relief etc.
I want to spend some time to talk about another draft law that’s before parliament now. The Counter Terrorism Bill. We must all stand for immediate and long overdue repeal of the PTA – the Prevention of Terrorism Act. But we must resist the temptation to compare the Counter Terrorism Act with the draconian PTA, and instead, focus on looking at extremely problematic clauses of the CTA which have the potential to restrict our rights and takes away essential lifesaving checks and balances in face of arrest and detention. It is not even compulsory to have a female officer question a female. It is not compulsory to serve acknowledgement of arrest and detention to family of the detainee. The draft restricts roles of the judiciary and confers extraordinary powers to the police, military, the Minister and the President. But we must also ask the more fundamental question of why we need a CTA, especially when we have a Public Security Ordinance, which gives enormous discretionary powers to the President to declare emergency regulations? Why do we need a CTA when our constitution allows restrictions on fundamental rights in special circumstances including for national security? When we have around 15 other laws, including those dealing with terrorism, hate speech that may cause communal disharmony, and money laundering? Laws such as the PTA, have served as license for enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and prolonged periods of detention, torture and sexual violence, and crackdowns on freedom of expression, assembly, association and movement. This is true for Sri Lanka and across the world. In Sri Lanka, it is Tamils who have been disproportionately affected by PTA and it is crucial that the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which is the major political alliance representing Tamils in parliament, and also the opposition party, stands for the full repeal of the PTA, highlights the problematic clauses of the new counter terror law and oppose it’s enactment. And I believe all of us, especially Tamils in the North and East, must demand this from the TNA.
Human Rights Education and certificates
We cannot talk about human rights education, human rights courses and diplomas isolated from the above context. I would like to mention three elements I consider to be important in human rights education. One is the need to study philosophy, history, laws, institutions, gaining skills to research, theorise, analyse. Secondly, to learn about rights violations and abuses. Thirdly, to learn about struggles for justice. I have not followed any course or diploma in human rights, and learned the first in the process of the being involved in the second and the third. Unlike the first, the last two cannot be studied from the comfort of meeting rooms, or in hotels, classrooms, libraries or research online. We have to learn about violations and struggles against them from survivors of violations, families of victims and affected communities. By meeting them where they are – such as in their homes, in hospitals, prisons, IDP camps, or by joining them in their struggles – at a roadside protest, a hunger strike, an overnight vigil, in court battles, or negotiating with authorities.
I’m aware that some of you in the class, your friends, and your family members may also be survivors of violations. Some of you maybe already be involved in struggles for justice. I was impressed when most of you following the course agreed to visit the families of disappeared at the overnight roadside protest. And I’m happy to hear that some who participated are involved in LHRC work as volunteers.
Today, you will get a certificate. Receiving a certificate can be a nice feeling, give a sense of achievement, and practically, they can help you advance in your education and career. The certificate is a small indicator of you completing the course on human rights. But the real indicator of learning about human rights will be from what you do to prevent violations, fight against them, and support the struggles of survivors, victim families and affected communities. You may not get certificates when you do this, but instead, face persecution and reprisals from state, from your own community, colleagues, friends and families. I have faced and still face such challenges and often ask myself whether it was worth it. I hope you will rise to this challenge. I hope the course will support the emergence of a new generation of activists and strengthen ongoing struggles for justice.
The UN has asked the Sri Lankan government to repatriate a military officer who is functioning as a peacekeeper in Mali due to alleged involvement in war crimes.
A UN spokesman announced on Friday that the request for Lt. Col. Kalana P.L. Amunupure’s repatriation made “based on recently received information”.
This was the first time the UN has asked the Government of Sri Lanka to repatriate a peacekeeper because of his participation in alleged war crimes during the country’s civil war. “We are delighted to see the dossier we submitted on Amunupure to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in June this year has now resulted in this step,” said the International Truth and Justice Project’s executive director, Yasmin Sooka.
“We still don’t know how many tens of thousands of Tamils died in the 2009 war and not one person has been held accountable – maybe this small step can give survivors a little hope that one day they will get justice. There is no doubt this action sends a very strong message to Sri Lanka that alleged war criminals can no longer be rewarded with prestigious UN jobs and in future will not escape stringent vetting,” added Sooka.
A statement issued by the International Truth and Justice Project said; “During the final phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009 Amunupure was second in command of the 11th Sri Lanka Light Infantry which operated under the 58th Division. A UN Investigation in 2015 found reasonable grounds to say the 58th Division was involved in the repeated shelling of UN sites and hospitals as well as the killing of surrendees and torture. Amunupure’s unit is named in contemporaneous sources, including governemnt reports, as having been involved in the assaults on Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) town in February 2009 and Putumattalan in March 2009, both of which involved extensive civilian casualties. The UN report described doctors in Putumattalan being unable to reach the dead and dying because of intense shelling and gunfire. At the time the ICRC, which rarely makes public statements, called the impact of the military’s attacks on densely populated civilian areas near Putumattalan’s makeshift hospital “nothing short of catastrophic”.
Amunupure was despatched as commander of the Sri Lankan contingent in Mali in December 2017. At his departure ceremony, the Sri Lankan army commander described the UN assignment as an international endorsement of the military’s record.
“Sri Lanka must not be allowed to keep on using peacekeeping to pretend it has got away with its conduct in 2009. Three years ago the country co-sponsored a resolution at the Human Rights Council in Geneva promising, among other things, to establish a Hybrid Court and to vet public and security officials. These commitments have not been honoured,” said Sooka.
“It is also totally unacceptable that Amunupure’s commanding officer in 2009, Major General Shavendra Silva, is now the Adjutant General of the Sri Lankan Army. This means one of the most notorious alleged war criminals actually oversees the Army’s human rights directorate and also is the officer who would investigate any violations abroad by peacekeepers. In addition, the commanders of the 2009 war have been training the younger generation of officers, including in the Institute of Peace Support Operations Training Sri Lanka (IPSOTSL), which does not send the right message of reform.”
In February this year, all deployment of Sri Lankan peacekeepers was suspended after the Sri Lanka Army tried to send peacekeepers to Lebanon whose human rights vetting had not been completed. The Army has announced deployments will resume in December 2018.
Image: Fallen “LTTE war heroes ” cemetery in 2004.
20/10/2018
The Sri Lankan State’s erasure of the complex history and experiences of the war manifest in varying ways across the country; military monuments that showcase a single victory narrative, the construction of Buddhist statues in Tamil-majority areas and the blatantly incorrect signboards at several of these locations. Then, there is the desecration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE) ‘maaveerar thuyilum illam’, which loosely translates to ‘great heroes’ resting places’.
Here lie bodies of LTTE cadres killed in combat. In the several cases where bodies could not be recovered, memorial headstones are erected. The people who remember them in their original state are quick to say that they were graveyards as much as they were gardens, or even temples,
meticulously designed and maintained by the LTTE and their families. Now, some of them are cement fragments piled in the centre of a vast field, while others now form the foundation of a few of the many army camps that cover the peninsula.
On November 27, the thuyilum illams across the Northern and Eastern provinces would become the sites of community mourning and celebration of ‘Maaveerar Naal’, the LTTE’s ‘Great Heroes Day’ celebration. Held on the anniversary of the death of Shankar, considered to be the first ‘maaveerar’, a symbolic lamp is lit and the LTTE flag raised at 6.05pm, allegedly his precise time of death. It was the day Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the LTTE, would make his annual speech. These observances are said to provide the community with the feeling that by sacrificing their lives, the dead cadres would grasp eternity.
Commemorations are no longer carried out at the scale they were during the conflict, however they remain problematic due to the explicit promotion of the flag and symbols of a proscribed organisation. There are also questions around the heroic remembrance of those who, by giving their lives to their cause, orchestrated the death of civilians. This is so in the case of the Black Tigers, who dedicated themselves to specialised suicide missions at specific targets, many of which were civilian spaces. Survivors and families of victims of the LTTE’s atrocities, including Tamils, question why the cadres should be remembered and celebrated as heroes in public collectively, in events that often have a political dimension. However, those interviewed in this piece say the former cadres’ families only want the right to remember and grieve.
Though many in the North and East had family members who joined the LTTE and many Tamils are sympathetic towards the LTTE even today, not all Tamils have connections to the LTTE. There are those who have suffered under the LTTE; surviving assassination attempts, forcibly recruited, recruited as children, shot at when attempting to flee LTTE-controlled areas in May 2009, and more. These survivors, as well as families of Tamils who fell victim to LTTE’s violence, do not regard the LTTE as their representatives or as heroes.
There is also controversy as to why the JVP, who also took up arms against the state, and engaged in abuses against civilians, are allowed to mourn their dead publicly in heroes remembrances (viru samaruma) when the thuyilum illams have been destroyed by successive governments. It is interesting too to note that the JVP and the LTTE were described differently during the JVP insurgencies – the English and Sinhala media often referring to the former as ‘subversives’ and the latter as terrorists.
The destruction
The army would destroy the thuyilum illams in its path as it gained ground during the war, reducing the headstones and graves to rubble and in a few instances, we were told had even dug bodies out of the ground.
The State’s efforts to clamp down on post-war memorialisation meant that families of the fallen cadres had no opportunity to mark Maaveerar Naal. But there were also restorations and reconstructions as the LTTE gained access to and varying degrees of control of areas the Army had earlier captured. For example, in Kopay, in the Jaffna district the thuyilum illamwas destroyed once the Army gained control of the area in 1995. But after the ceasefire of 2002, the LTTE regained access, rebuilt and memorials began again. They even had placed a plaque at the entrance, with remnants of the destruction. As the ceasefire collapsed, the Army again destroyed it and built a camp over it, which still stands. Around 2012, some Tamils in the North and East defied government’s crackdowns and organized remembrance events, but these were not held in thuyilum illam sites. In 2012, when Maaveerar Naal fell on the same day as Karthiaai Vilakeeduu, the Hindu festival of lights, residents lighting lamps at the University of Jaffna came under attack from the security forces.
From 2016, families and communities, supported by some Tamil politicians, clergy and diaspora, started to publicly but mutedly markMaaveerar Naal. Some did this by arranging remaining fragments of headstones, clearing the overgrown fields, and restoring some order to what had been destroyed. Surveillance and the presence of intelligence personnel was recorded in many locations, and some thereby resorted to a single lamp lit near where the resting place used to be.
The Right to Remember and Mourn
The right of all communities, and families, to remember their dead who were lost in combat is laid out in international humanitarian law. Government-appointed bodies such as the LLRC and the Office on Missing Persons have also made recommendations on remembrance and memorialisation in general while the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation mechanisms (CTF) has explicit reference to remembrance of dead LTTE cadres. One submission, quoted in the report, said ‘20 LTTE graveyards from across the North and East of Sri Lanka, comprising thousands of graves and commemorative plaques for LTTE fighters were bulldozed after the war’ and acknowledged that “the destruction of LTTE cemeteries, the grief it had caused and the need to preserve the sanctity of the dead’ was raised frequently during its hearings. The CTF then recommended the restoration of burial plots to family members and the removal of all buildings subsequently erected on them. The CTF also made a general recommendation noting that the ‘sanctity of all sites, where those who perished or disappeared in armed conflicts are buried, interred or symbolically remembered is respected.’
A possible reason for the destruction of the thuyilum illams could be that the military who carried out these acts were motivated by a wish to ‘deny the defeated LTTE any focal points for resurgence’ . These actions, however, only serve to deepen divide between the ‘conquering’ and the ‘conquered’, hindering possibilities of understanding and reconciliation between groups.
As Sri Lanka nears ten years since the end of the conflict, many of the initiatives intended to address wartime abuses and post-war issues are yet to come to fruition. The families of the disappeared still wait for answers, and some have been engaged in protests for around 600 days at the time of writing. Land release is slow, and militarisation in the North and East remains an ever-present issue. These issues are compounded by the denial of their right to mourn their loved ones. The desecration of the thuyilam illam, in this light, acts not as a deterrent but as a ‘focal point for enhanced embitterment towards the government’.
Note: For a map of 14 locations, photos, description of each site with history, statistics, quotes from local people including family members of Maarveerar, see the full story at https://cpasl.atavist.com/nopeaceinrest
(Summary / overview of an article Ruki Fenando with Amalini .)
Far-right Brazilian presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro on Oct 11. (Mauro Pimentel/AFP/Getty Images)
