Sri Lanka rejects hybrid court at UN Human Rights Council

 20 March 2019

Sri Lanka’s foreign minister spoke out against a hybrid accountability mechanism at the United Nations earlier today, in a statement that also lashed out at the UN human rights chief’s report on the island.

Thilak Marapana said “at the highest political levels” the Sri Lankan government has reiterated there were “constitutional and legal challenges that preclude it from including non-citizens in its judicial processes”.

The inclusion of foreign judges in a criminal justice process for violations committed at the height of the armed conflict is a key operating paragraph of a UN resolution that Sri Lanka co-sponsored in 2015. However, several senior Sri Lankan leaders have repeatedly spoken out against such a process, with Sri Lanka’s president vowing that members of the armed forces will not be taken before a war crimes tribunal.

Marapana said he wished to “make it clear” and that Sri Lanka’s position had been expressed “both publicly and in discussions with the present and former High Commissioner for Human Rights and other interlocutors”.

“It has been explained that if non-citizen judges are to be appointed in such a process, it will not be possible without an amendment to the Constitution by 2/3 of members of the Parliament voting in favour and also the approval of the people at a referendum,” he added.

“Our own path to reconciliation will be primarily driven by the domestic context, in which we function.”

In his statement to the UN Human Rights Council, Marapana went on to criticise several aspects of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ report on Sri Lanka, which raised concerns over the on-going reports of abduction, torture and sexual violence, institutional failures within the criminal justice system, ongoing harassment of human rights defenders since 2015 and the military’s continued occupation of civilian land.

Read more: 'Virtually no progress' in Sri Lanka on war crimes investigations says UN human rights chief's office

In a seeming rebuke to the High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, who had earlier called the  appointment to a senior position in the Sri Lankan Army of Major General Shavendra Silva “a worrying development”, Marapana stated, “it must be asserted that there are no proven allegations against individuals on war crimes or crimes against humanity in the OISL report of 2015 or in any subsequent official document”.

“It is an injustice to deprive any serving or retired officer of the Sri Lankan security forces or the police their due rights,” he added.

Read more: Shavendra Silva - ‘the most wanted man in Sri Lanka’

Marapana went on to defend the Sri Lankan military, stating that “the action by the Sri Lankan security forces during the conflict was against a group designated as a terrorist organisation by many countries, and not against any community”. “All communities in Sri Lanka were united against terrorism, and now that terrorism has been defeated, all communities are working in unison towards reconciliation and economic progress,” he added.

He also rejected reports of state-sponsored colonisation of the North-East, claiming that Colombo does not follow such a policy. Though the minister said “clearly and categorically” that land was not being grabbed under the guise of forestry or archaeological projects, his statement immediately adds, “however, it must be born in mind that the protection of forest land and archaeological projects is an obligation cast on any State”.

Read more: PEARL launches Sinhalization of the North-East info series

The minister also rejected the High Commissioner’s call for the establishment of an OHCHR office on the island, stating that “Sri Lanka does not believe there is justification” for such a presence.

“As a sovereign state, Sri Lanka must set its priorities in addressing the well-being and sustainable peace for her people, as a sovereign state,” the statement concludes. 

See the full text of the statement here.

Related Articles: 

17 March 2019 : UN report is ‘atrocious lie’ claims Sri Lankan delegation member

18 March 2019 : Sri Lanka should not co-sponsor resolution says opposition leader

17 March 2019 : Sinhala leftist party slams government for ‘treachery’ over UN resolution

16 March 2019 : UN resolution on Sri Lanka is same as two years ago, claims foreign minister

16 March 2019 : British Tamils protest against UN resolution extension for Sri Lanka

STRENGTHENED NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS REQUIRED TO FULFILL UNHRC COMMITMENTS – NPC

Image: Sandaya Ekneligoda has been fighting for justice for years , but national institutions has not been able to bring the killers her husband to book.

22/03/2019

The ratification by consensus of Resolution No 40/1 by the UN Human Rights Council has given Sri Lanka another two years in which to implement the commitments it made at this same forum over three and a half years ago in October 2015.  The willingness of the international community to grant this extension is a reflection of its continuing reliance on the country’s commitment to work within the framework of a national reconciliation process in which international standards are met.  The National Peace Council welcomes the extension and calls on the Sri Lankan government to fulfill its commitments within the framework of transitional justice that meets international standards.

 We note that on both sides of Sri Lanka’s ethnic divide, parties have sought to prevent the government getting a further two-year extension to implement UNHRC Resolution 30/1 of October 2015. Tamil parties called upon the international community not to provide Sri Lanka with an extension of the time frame and have called for direct international intervention that bypasses the Sri Lankan government.  On the other hand, the main opposition party called for Sri Lanka to withdraw as a co-sponsor of the resolution. They have been especially critical of the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s report which called upon the government to establish a full-fledged OHCHR country office, establish a hybrid court and for the international community to utilize universal jurisdiction principles to advance accountability in the absence of credible domestic processes.

 The UN High Commissioner also noted “The importance of the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary and other checks and balances in a democratic society was highlighted by a number of situations in 2018. The judiciary and independent commissions, including the Human Rights Commission, continue to play a vital role in strengthening reforms and cementing good governance in Sri Lanka.” We are confident that if the Sri Lankan government performs its duty through strengthened national institutions there will be no need for either universal jurisdiction or hybrid courts to become operational or for further international intervention in the form of a specialized new UN human rights office to be set up in the country.  The present slow implementation of commitments made by the Sri Lankan government needs to be speeded up.  In the run up to elections which will likely be politically and ethnically divisive we also appeal to the international community to practice do-no-harm principles in getting its message across.

-National Peace Council

Don’t Ever Believe It Can’t Happen In Sri Lanka!

By Emil van der Poorten –MARCH 24, 2019

Emil van der Poorten

Ever since the slaughter in Christchurch, we’ve had the usual line of self-righteous clap-trap from the (usual) self-righteous brigade of defenders of our national virtue.

Essentially, their contention is that such terrible events would never take place in a place that they have designated as the cradle (and last bastion) of pristine Theravada “Sinhala-Buddhism.”

The butchery that took place in this country during one of the world’s most brutal internecine conflicts needs to be dredged up and placed, again, on public view, in an effort, probably futile, to expose the humbugs and charlatans of this land.

The population of this nation needs to be reminded of the butchery of Sinhala men, women, children and Buddhist priests by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or “Tigers”) not to mention the eerily-similar to Christchurch massacre in a mosque on the East Coast.

This most tragic of parallels needs to be placed in public view again and placed in appropriate context, particularly because of the irrational racist diatribes that are a feature of “media discourse” in this country. One needs only to publish something, anything, under a name that sounds “foreign” to bring out the cretinous racist “commentators.”

As someone with proven “Sinhala-Buddhist” antecedents I have viewed, in my case, with amusement the idiocies that constitute rejoinders or responses to material I have published over the years, everything from “para-Suddha” to “Jewish intruder!”  In my case such rubbish does not even produce anger, leave alone pain, simply disgust at what alleged humans are capable of regurgitating.

The sinister underbelly of this attitude, though, is the fact that its “ground realities” can be pretty awful.

The attacks on Muslim places of worship in Beruwala, during the Rajapaksa regime, and in the Teldeniya area more recently, both resulting in (Muslim) fatalities are a reminder, if such is needed, that the climate that led to those tragedies is very much alive and well in this country.

If one needs to be reminded of the fact, our local “ethnic/religious cleansers” employ the same rhetoric: “classic Sinhala-Buddhist civilization is at peril created by ‘outsiders’ and those ‘outsiders’ need to be removed, as the old CIA term had it, “with extreme prejudice.”

The constant propounding of a theology of victimhood of the majority population has and will continue to have the effect that is desired by those spouting it: attacks of some kind or other on a “minority” of some description. Those identified as of South Indian origin appear to have (temporarily?) been taken out of the firing line because of a fear that the racist across the Palk Strait, a practitioner very experienced in communal/linguistic conflicts of various kinds himself, wouldn’t hesitate to chop a few heads in our part of the world if it suited his immediate political ends.

Inevitably, our “pundits-by-default,” with and without PhDs, will trot out their baffle-gab to provide us with their self-proclaimed erudite analyses of why our Sinhala-Buddhist culture is so advanced that we would never permit such atrocities on our pristine Sri Lankan soil, adding just in case we miss the point, that it is our pristine, racially- and religiously-pure culture that would make such occurrences impossible.

One does not have to dig too deep to see the eerie resemblance between the culture of “victimhood” that drove the Christchurch massacres and what has become a virtual Sri Lankan tradition: denial accompanied by “enforcement” of a kind of “gospel” by “true believers.”

The reaction to exploitation in parts of the world such as the Middle East led to the birth of organizations such as ISIS that thrive, in all their abhorrent manifestations, in such a climate.  One can but hope that the Mawanella-area desecration of Buddhist statues is not the forerunner of more of this kind of terribly destructive conduct that can have nothing but tragic consequences.  

Have we learned nothing from three decades of the most un-civil of wars?

What has contributed very, very significantly to this terrible state of affairs has been the completely unprincipled conduct of many journalists, who, while they might be without skill, have no shortage of the ability to get their views published, in no matter how garbled syntax and grammar, in the daily and weekly newspapers, on the web and elsewhere.

On closer examination, this horde that has already proved that it can be bought for the price of a free lap-top, a scooter and interest-free loans will publish what can accurately be described as “crap,”  except that that substance has, at least, fertilizer value!

These “guns for hire” need not only to be exposed for what they are but driven out of the public domain, particularly since they are bought and paid for by media conglomerates who themselves, very successfully, increase their bank accounts in a manner that can only be described as “exponential” by stooging to organizations and individuals fattening their purses with what is being taken from the poorest in the land in the form of poorly-hidden consumption taxes.

Read More

Judicial accountability mechanism pivotal

Saturday, March 23, 2019

 

Some Tamil radicals consider Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s proposal to establish a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ is far too premature. In addition to his call to “forgive and forget” is without merit when there has been no admission of guilt of at least for the non-recognition of Tamil nationality and also no expression of remorse for continued disparity and repression. In South Africa, the TRC was established by the oppressed Blacks at the end of the apartheid era when Blacks won the right to govern themselves.

In Sri Lanka even the self-power in Tamil areas is still nominal; not even the 13th Amendment is fully implemented. In spite of Premier Wickremesinghe’s Liberalism, Sinhala Buddhist supremacist policies are powerful in Sri Lanka shown by the notorious 53-day drama. Hence a TRC is neither feasible nor viable unless 13th and 19th Amendments are implemented. As such in the present situation, they press among others, the need for Canada to play a lead role at the UNHRC, as the body prepares to vote on a new resolution.

They further emphasise: “Despite being granted a two year extension in March 2017, Sri Lanka has failed to implement nearly all of the substantial provisions contained in resolutions 30/1 of 2015 and 34/1 of 2017, both of which it co-sponsored – including the failure to establish a judicial accountability mechanism, in a domestic setting with foreign participation, as promised. Sri Lanka continues to show it has neither the will, nor wherewithal, nor the southern consensus needed to create a domestic mechanism with foreign participation as called for in the resolution. This considering President Sirisena has categorically rejected any “foreign participation”, insisting he will not allow even one soldier to be prosecuted, going as far as removing Mangala Samaraweera, from the ‘Foreign Affairs’ portfolio, for agreeing to co-sponsor resolutions 30/1 and 34/1.”

UNHRC - 40th session

Some Tamil leaders plead the UN members to not help Lanka to perpetuate a lie. They say Canada and the ‘Core Group on Sri Lanka’ must stand with victims and lead the call for an international judicial accountability mechanism. However they forget that these UN states were the main supporters of Lanka in the war against, LTTE led Tamil liberation war. On the other hand, it is the world democratic mass movement that pressed; particularly in western powers, to challenge the fascistic Lankan regime of Mahinda. It is now ten years since the Mullivaikkal mass repression. For all Tamils, this is particularly a horrible and painful moment in time. The 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is in progress and another resolution on, “Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka,” is being drafted with the participation of Lankan representatives.

It appears as though there may be more drama coming and there’s no telling how the Core Group and the UNHRC would respond. Although there should not be an unending saga that relies completely on a domestic mechanism; it has to end. In spite of the confusion, in the end, Sri Lanka is to be given another extension. Tamil Canadians, writing to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister, Christie Freeland, urging against any extensions, is not realistic. Canada stood firm on the side of victims massacred in the Mullivaikkal Genocide and lead the call for international action.

International tribunal

The mass murder with a political purpose is genocide and that needs to be investigated and litigated. Realistically, if the UN is accusing Lanka of genocide, the proper action should be taken by the UN, as a majority. UN will not take such action since leading countries in the UN, supported and intervened in the war against Tamil liberation fighters.

UN condemned the LTTE’s violence as terrorism. When UNHRC investigate mass murder, raped, tortured and killed in Sri Lanka, have not only got to be counted and accounted for, but it’s also imperative the perpetrators of these heinous crimes are called to account in an independent international tribunal that will look after the interests of victims and has the trust of the Tamil community. However, the UN itself committed to the Anti-Tamil Tiger war and supported the Mahinda regime and defended fascistic actions and let down the voice of Lankan Tamil nationality. UN failures, the support given to fascistic Mahinda has to be investigated by an independent inquiry. Will Americans, Indians, etc. agree to such an independent inquiry?

While expecting the usual compromises from Sri Lanka, radical Tamils are placing their faith wholly on the rule of law according to international standards and norms, and are looking to the UNHRC and the Core Group to deliver justice and fair play for the victims through an international judicial accountability setup and not through a domestic mechanism, hybrid or not.

It appears most Tamils and Tamil organisations in the diaspora and in the homeland are solidly against giving Lanka any further extensions. While a massive Hartal and shut down by Tamils are taking place in the homeland as the UNHRC opened its sessions, numerous Tamil diaspora organisations were writing to the High Commissioner for Human Rights (High Commissioner) and to the 47 member states of the UNHRC. They are urging against giving Lanka any more additional time. However, they do not propose any alternative either. Are they proposing, trade and help cut down organised by UN against Lanka? Will America, India agree to such an action?

An innocent utopian dream

 Saturday, 23 March 2019

In an article published in the Daily FT on 19 February 2015, I predicted the trajectory of the ‘Yahapalana’ Government.

In that piece of conjecture captioned ‘Maithri’s Mandate and Ranil’s Royalist Regency’ I said that Sri Lanka was witnessing a constitutional experiment that would soon turn out to be elitist and exclusionary. A popular mandate was being dwarfed by an unelected regency. That there was a clear danger of the popular mandate being misread as a partisan power enterprise instead of the reform project as was intended.

The day Ranil decided to make Arjuna Mahendran the Governor of the Central Bank that was deliberately placed under his own ministerial purview, the innocent utopian dream of a nation suffered a still birth – a foetal death.

Instead of a war on privilege, Ranil launched a campaign against the only privilege of the underprivileged – our privilege to hope for change.

A magistrate in Singapore will now rule on the findings of our Bond Commission and the alleged offenses committed by one of its citizens while he was empowered to put his signature on our currency notes.

President Sirisena insists that it was ‘Great Bank Robbery’ – ‘Maha Banku Mangkollaya’.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has convinced himself that he had nothing to do with it. Those   accusing him of complicity or knowledge of the scam are advised to read the report of the Presidential Commission. As far as he is concerned the commission had not faulted him.

Sirisena continues his grandstanding on the issue unabashed and unconcerned. Recently, the President publicly faulted the Government of Singapore for not acceding to a request he personally made to the Prime Minister of the city state to hand over Arjun Mahendran, the Singapore citizen, the preferred choice of his handpicked Prime Minister to be the Governor of the Central Bank in the first 100 days of his presidency.

An overblown frog in a small pond is entitled to its hallucinatory croaking no matter who is around the park. Nobody bothers with a toad. It is different for a head of a state.

The Executive President can deliver his hazy homilies on the universal sanctity of the Tripitaka and the potency of the noose as a deterrent for drug traffickers. He can question the collective wisdom of the Constitutional Council. If he thinks that it will earn him a second term, good luck to him.

When he complains about a state which is mindful of its squeaky-clean global image, he must not expect that sovereign state to remain nimbly numb as the UNP bigwigs did listening to his tirade after reappointing Ranil.

The Government of Singapore has responded. According to AFP news agency, a spokesperson for Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that authorities in the city state have been cooperating with their Sri Lankan counterparts on the case since January.

“To date, Singapore has not received the requested supporting information and documents.” The report adds: “We look forward to receiving the requested information from Sri Lanka, so that we can consider the request further in accordance with our laws.”

The report then adds: “Singapore can extradite fugitives, to declared Commonwealth countries, which include Sri Lanka.”

The media maestros of the Presidential Secretariat have responded with graceless spin or what Orwell called ‘newspeak’!  No reference is made to the international news agency. It targets the local media that reproduced the news report. The report published by the Sri Lankan media “quoting a statement purported to have been made by a spokesperson of the Singapore Foreign Ministry were completely false”.

Then, they construct the truth as they care to make it.

“The Attorney General of Singapore has requested for further details on the charges brought against Arjuna Mahendran. Our Attorney General is now in the process of forwarding the details that have been requested. Therefore, the news item published in the local media quoting a statement purported to have been made by a source in Singapore cannot be accepted as the official statement of the Singaporean Government.”

The Singapore Extradition Act is available in the ADB/OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia Pacific September 2007 http://www.oecd.org/site/adboecdanti-corruptioninitiative/39368700.pdf

I am no lawyer. Laws are drafted, crafted, studied and interpreted by lawyers. That precludes my venturing into space that angels fear to tread.

But it does not prevent me from deriving some common-sense understanding of the process by some assiduous reading of the Singapore Extradition Act.

It contains a schedule of 30 offences and qualifies their applicability as “aiding and abetting, or counselling or procuring the commission of, or being an accessory before or after the fact to, or attempting or conspiring to commit,” any of those offences listed.

“The ‘extradition crime,’ in relation to a declared Commonwealth country, means an offence against the law of, or of a part of, a declared Commonwealth country.”

Here is the rub. “The act or omission constituting the offence, or the equivalent act or omission would, if it took place in or within the jurisdiction of Singapore, constitute an offence against the law in force in Singapore.”

In clause 7 (1) the Singapore Extradition Act defines the restrictions ‘on surrender of persons to foreign states’.

A person shall not be liable to be surrendered to a foreign state if the offence to which the requisition for his surrender relates is or is by reason of the circumstances in which it is alleged to have been committed or was committed, an offence of a political character.

The President who declared the Tripitaka as a national heritage and is now seeking to make it a world heritage while advocating the noose to punish drug dealers seems to have gone down the political avenue on the subject of Mahendran’s extradition.

It must be maddening to hold the weight of an executive presidency.

Singapore is one of the four top financial centres of the world competing with New York, London and Hong Kong. Among global financial centres it is by far the most stable with meticulously-enforced laws governing insider trading, market manipulation in securities and futures, corruption and other financial crimes. When it comes to white collar crimes, Singapore has a matchless track record in prosecuting rogue bankers.

I may be wrong. The way I read it, our Attorney General must convince a magistrate in Singapore that Arjun Mahendran committed an offence punishable under Singaporean laws by agreeing to be made Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka knowing well that his son-in-law was in the business of bond trading and primary dealer of Government bonds licensed by the Central Bank.

Arjun Mahendran when he appeared before the commission insisted that he only carried out the instructions of the Prime Minister. When he appears before the Singapore Magistrate, he will very likely maintain the same explanation, defence, rationalisation and vindication.

The Bond Commission has not faulted the Prime Minister on his pick of a governor of the Central Bank.  Mindful of the enormous burden of the office of Prime Minister, his explanations were in the form of written submissions and he was summoned in person only to seek clarifications.

The Prime Minister told the commission that he advised Arjun Mahendran to insulate his responsibilities from his primary dealer son-in-law. The Prime Minister in appointing Mahendran did not consider the possible conflict of interest.

Singapore is quite comfortable with strong prime ministers. Its laws applaud and protect officials who comply with orders they receive from the prime minster.

I borrowed the caption ‘Innocent Utopian Dream’ from Tariq Ali whose recent book ‘Dilemmas of Lenin’ describes the October revolution as an Innocent Utopian Dream that was strangled in the years of Stalinist terror.

US arrogance and Resolution 40 - 1 on Sri Lanka

How the war-affected Tamils are being used by extremely opportunist Western power bloc to manipulate Governments for their geopolitical agenda

A big joke made rounds about Sri Lanka sending out two opposing but official teams for the ongoing Fortieth UNHRC Session in Geneva; one by President and another by PM. 

22 March 2019

A brief stroke of sanity changed this and Sri Lanka sent one team to Geneva. What they would say about the UNHRC Report on Sri Lanka and the new Resolution 40/1 this time led by Canada, Britain, Germany and a few more countries isn’t clear, except that this Government is broadly in line with it. 
This whole hype about the International Community demanding accountability and good governance from Sri Lanka since the conclusion of the war in 2009 May, does not lead Sri Lanka to any sanity in political life and in its Governing culture. 
This International Community which is basically the Western Power Bloc has never provided any space for accountable and decent governments anytime anywhere in any part of the globe. 

Financially controlled by this Western power bloc, the UN and its agencies have never been able to peacefully settle any conflict in this post WW II history while it lent covert support for change of governments in the poor and developing world.
UN decisions are very much influenced by the US administration. That makes no difference in who sits in the Oval Office. 
It was no different with George Bush Jnr. and with Barak Obama. It was no different during the Cold War period and now after the end of the Cold War from 1991. 
Over the last 77 years since the first declaration in January 1942, or from the formal establishment of the UN in 1945, this world body with 193 Member States by now, has been a colossal failure in spite of its massive growth into a giant bureaucratic organisation in establishing its mandate; Global Peace. 
There are at present nine major armed conflicts amounting to over a hundred deaths per year in each conflict from Afghanistan since 1979, stretching to Northern Mali, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Boko Haram, Nigeria, Iraq and Somalia according to the Swedish Uppsala University’s Conflict Data 
Collection Programme. 

These nine conflicts alone had led to the deaths of more than 98,200 civilians during 2018 only. Sadly, Uppsala have not included the Israeli-Palestinian war that has had 131 Resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council since its first Resolution in November 1947. The Israeli-Palestine conflict has resulted in over 10,000 Palestinian and around 200 Israeli children being killed by year 2012. Maimed, blinded and seriously injured children not counted. 
The UNHRC since its creation in 2006, had adopted more Resolutions condemning Israel than all other Resolutions condemning other countries put together.
The US administration despite who the President was and presently is, gave Israel a free hand to continue with its savage expansionism ignoring Palestinian deaths. UN General Assembly has adopted at least nine Resolutions between December 1981 to December 1984 that said:
“Strategic relationship with the United States encourages Israel to pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices.” 
Beyond adopting Resolutions, the UN member States have not been able to stop Israel from doing what they did. In re-enacting Hitler on a Zionist platform in the same savage Hitlerite form. Difference being the entire Gaza Strip and the West Bank being turned into one massive, open concentration camp, unlike that of Hitler’s 
closed ones.              

• "International Community basically Western Power Bloc never provided any space for decent governments anytime anywhere"
• "Gotabhaya believed his war without witnesses could establish there were no crimes committed"
• "UN decisions are very much influenced by the US administration"

What can we expect from this UN and its UNHRC? Does it have credible authority to dictate terms to sovereign countries, when it does not show that same authority when dealing with Israel and the US? Invasion of Iraq shows how the US with British collaboration had the UN complicit in invading Iraq to destroy Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). While it was later exposed the UN Security Council was provided with fake evidence and there were no WMD, the UN did not even want to accept the blunder they made causing massive damage and destruction to the Iraqi people.
Did not even censure the USA and Britain for consciously misinforming the whole world to invade Iraq for their own geopolitical needs. NATO strikes on Libya followed Iraq. Funding and arming Libyan rebels led to total anarchy on Libyan soil. In Afghanistan, the US created and funded the Taliban. 
Afghanistan is still bleeding and Obama as President was directly responsible for drone attacks on 
Afghan civilians. 

Their geopolitical decisions ignore the UN completely and UN member States don’t think they have a right to condemn and censure the big powers openly violating international law.  
It was on geopolitical needs that the USA kept pressure on the Rajapaksa regime too. 
The China factor with Rajapaksa was all that they focussed on. They thus used actual post war issues to develop a strong campaign against Rajapaksa. Their advantage was in Rajapaksa ignoring the necessity to address post war issues democratically. 
President Rajapaksa’s Sinhala Buddhist politics given crude practical interpretations by his brother Gotabhaya as Defence Ministry Secretary vowed it was a zero casualty war. 
Gotabhaya believed his war without witnesses could establish there were no crimes committed. 
Sadly for them, this modern world had more than enough evidence collected through mobile phones and satellite images backed by survivors of the war. They provided more than a justifiable reason for Human Rights campaigns against Rajapaksa using the UNHRC and the heavily funded Colombo based human rights campaigners. Consistent campaigning for over 04 years, this international community led by the US was able to dislodge Rajapaksa from power in 2015 January. 
Have the US and its allies who moved the Resolution 30/1 in 2014 March for the third consecutive time, achieved anything significant under this government led by PM Wickramasinghe? Untold but plainly evident fact is, the US and its Western allies in fact do not intend going any further with war crimes investigations and accountability issues, now that Rajapaksa had been dislodged from power. 

Four years gone for now under this government, there are only piecemeal legal provisions adopted every time UNHRC Sessions come around and this government is given more time. The war-affected in North and East reject these cosmetic answers. In war devastated Vanni people are on their own, demanding permanent and justifiable answers for their grievances overlooked by both Rajapaksa and Wickramasinghe governments for over nine years and 10 months for now. 
UNHRC Resolution 40/1 would provide this government another year till elections are concluded, expecting the UNP to return.
The war-affected Tamil people are being used by this extremely opportunist Western power bloc to manipulate Governments on their own geopolitical agenda.
This UNP government as the previous UPFA government nor the next government that would be voted in at the next election, will not implement Resolution 40/1. 
Both major parties and their small allies are racially biased and corrupt. They lack the political will and the vision of the New Zealand Prime Minister Ms Jacinda Ardern who after the attacks on 02 Muslim mosques in Christchurch on Friday 15 March, took responsibility for the safety and security of all Muslim people in her country as equals and as New Zealand citizens who have the right to live and practise their religion without hindrance. She as PM rallied New Zealanders in support of the Muslim community.

"This International Community which is basically the Western Power Bloc has never provided any space for accountable and decent governments anytime anywhere in any part of the globe "

Politics in Sri Lanka is not that of Jacinda Ardern. Yet we have Human Rights written into the Constitution, we are signatory to most international conventions and charters that guarantee labour, women and child rights, we stand for ethnic and religious equality and freedom, we have laws for environmental safety. 
 We say yes for everything just, fair and democratic. But respect and honour none. Living with Sinhala Buddhist majority dominance, we don’t believe we want them. Sinhala Buddhist dominance is what PM Wickramasinghe cajoles, when he says it’s he who saved Sri Lanka from direct international probing on war crimes, by refusing to sign the Rome Statute. 
That is precisely what the US stands for. Having rejected the Rome Statute, President Trump refuses to allow any investigations into US military interventions in Afghanistan or elsewhere by the International Criminal Court (ICC). His Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told media last Friday, “The ICC is attacking America’s rule of law.” This was what Rajapaksa said, President Sirisena is saying and the Wickramasinghe government is accepting, with international war crimes investigations rejected. In Sri Lanka it is said in Sinhala to the Sinhala Buddhists whereas the US says it to the whole world in English with arrogance and no shame.
Secretary Pompeo told media:-

“I’m announcing a policy of US visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigation of US personnel” adding the US would not hesitate to impose economic sanctions if the ICC does not change its decision. 
It is also extremely important to note the impunity Israel is provided under US patronage. “These visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursue allied personnel, including Israelis, without allies’ consent,” the Secretary told media.
Now, what does all these mean to Sri Lanka and to the democratic world? There is no necessity to answer those who brutally violate all laws but demand Sri Lanka respect the law. But that does not allow Sri Lanka to go without answers to war-related issues.
We have a moral and a political responsibility to provide justifiable answers to all issues effecting the North and East and they cannot be outsourced. That no doubt needs a decent, respectable leadership much different to Trump and most other international community leaders. They’ve proved they are not the right individuals to follow.    

Challenging a Culture of Secrecy

03/22/2019

While the Sri Lankan State maintains a culture of secrecy cemented through legislation like the Official Secrets Act, the Right to Information Act, operationalised in early 2017, is now used by citizens, journalists and civil society to raise vital questions around transparency, accountability and due process.

But two years since its operationalisation, has RTI legislation succeeded in combating and contesting the culture of secrecy that prevails?

Groundviews hosted a discussion to unpack the experiences of the Act in these two years, and what more can be done in the future to support citizens filing for information, and to support public authorities to respond in a more streamlined manner.

Sankhitha Gunaratne is the Program Manager for RTI at Transparency Sri Lanka. Tharindu Jayawardhana is a journalist at the Lankadeepa – ලංකාදීප newspaper, Malsirini De Silva works on RTI-related reseach at Verité Research where she is the Deputy Head of the Legal Team, and Pasan Jayasinghe works on awareness and public interest RTI requests at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. Their perspectives include insights from awareness raising among citizens, understanding of public authorities gleaned from filing of public interest information requests, monitoring the government’s openness to these requests and how the media can use RTI to enhance their reporting.

Watch the three segments of the event on video, embedded below.

Sri Lanka Keeps Its Domestic Political Rift From Spilling Into UN Rights Meeting

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe rivalry extends to different approaches to UN pressure on transitional justice issues.

Image Credit: UN photo

By Krishan Francis-March 22, 2019

Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena has kept his country’s political rift from spilling over to a United Nations Human Rights Council meeting this week by abandoning plans to oppose the prime minister’s decision to co-sponsor a resolution giving the nation more time to address war crime allegations stemming from its civil war.

On the council’s agenda is a report by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet criticizing Sri Lanka for failing to fulfill its pledge to investigate alleged atrocities by both the military and the Tamil Tiger rebels during the long war, which ended a decade ago. The co-resolution up for adoption on Thursday would give Sri Lanka two more years to prosecute suspects of rights violations.

Sirisena came into power in 2015 promising to help the war-torn country reconcile, including by investigating allegations of crimes under the watch of his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa. But the transitional justice issue has always been controversial and unpopular with many of Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese population, who believe such efforts would unfairly punish “war heroes.” Faced with public resistance, Sirisena has backpedaled on his campaign promises in recent years, adopting a Sinhalese nationalist stance and declaring that he will “not allow war heroes” to be hauled before the courts.

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“There is a strong feeling in the Sinhala society that the government has unduly subjugated itself to the wishes of the international community,” said Jehan Perera, a National Peace Council activist, adding that the president’s opposition “also has an electoral rationale.”

Since Rajapaksa lost his re-election bid, the strongman has built a party and has gained traction with victories in local elections. With an eye toward elections next year, Sirisena’s opposition to the United Nations resolution appears to be his latest attempt to ally himself with Rajapaksa and tap into his majority Sinhalese voter base.

Sirisena abruptly sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in October last year and appointed Rajapaksa to replace him. The political crisis ended after a Supreme Court ruling reinstated Wickremesinghe, but deep tensions remain between Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister. The two leaders have functioned as rivals within one government, positioning themselves to face off in elections that must be scheduled by the end of 2019.

Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war ended in 2009 after government troops crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels, who had fought to create an independent state for the country’s ethnic minority Tamils. According to conservative UN estimates, at least 100,000 people were killed in the war. A UN experts’ panel report later said about 45,000 ethnic Tamil civilians may have been killed in the final months of the fighting alone. What happened at the war’s bloody end remains murky because Rajapaksa’s government expelled international journalists and aid workers.

Sri Lanka promised the UN in its 2015 resolution to try alleged perpetrators in its own courts with international participation and provide information on those reported missing, compensate losses, and devolve extensive political power to majority-Tamil areas.

Bachelet’s report said that even though Sri Lanka has made some progress, it is still lagging behind.

Authorities have returned much of the military-occupied lands to civilians but have not taken steps to investigate and prosecute those accused of rights violations.

Sri Lanka set up an office on missing people, but hasn’t found anyone. A new constitution with adequate powers for the Tamil areas was identified as a key way to avoid the country returning to civil conflict. But its drafting has also been delayed.

“The political crisis at the end of 2018 further obstructed progress owing not only to the temporary paralysis of institutions but also because it generated fears that another government might not embrace the reconciliation agenda,” Bachelet said in the report, adding that stakeholders worried that Rajapaksa’s return to power threatened human rights in general in Sri Lanka.

After Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said it would support a U.K.-led resolution giving Sri Lanka two more years to fulfill its promises, Sirisena told a local newspaper that he was considering pulling out of the UN process altogether. He later said he would send a delegation to Geneva to ask the Human Rights Council to allow Sri Lanka to deal with its problems on its own.

But finally, Sirisena agreed to send Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana, from Wickremesinghe’s party, and three of his nominees to Geneva. Marapana said the delegation would express the country’s reservations over certain sections in Bachelet’s report but would support the resolution as planned.

Sections of Tamil politicians and Tamil expatriates living in Europe and the United States, most of whom fled the country as refugees, want the UN to take immediate action on Sri Lanka and object to any more time being given. Protests have taken place in the Tamil-majority north as well as in other countries.

However, the main political party representing Tamils in Parliament says it supports the proposed resolution.

“Our position is that the international supervision should be extended and if it is not, the Sri Lankan issue will be a finished matter in the human rights council,” M.A. Sumanthiran, spokesman of the Tamil National Alliance, said in a Tamil radio interview.

By Krishan Francis for The Associated Press with additional reporting by The Diplomat.

Sri Lankan Muslims: The Great Betrayal

Soon after the JR Constitution was introduced, when progressive forces within the majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority began agitating to tear up that Constitution, Muslims, instead of joining that movement, took a suicidal path under Ashraf and formed an ethnic party of their own.

 

by Ameer Ali-Saturday, 23 March 2019

 

It appears, according to a news report that the leaders of SLMC, ACMC and DPF during a meeting with President Sirisena to discuss constitutional reforms have “reneged on their promise to back the ongoing efforts to abolish the executive presidency”. Unless these leaders prove the report wrong, their turncoat behaviour tantamount to a betrayal of historic proportion as far as the Muslim community is concerned.

 

Muslim politicians, with rare exceptions, are best known for their opportunistic behaviour. Yet, this act overtakes all previous ones in notoriety. One does not know what personal gains have been promised by the president to these guys. As far as the future of the community is concerned executive presidency will spell disaster when it falls into the hands of a madman or madwoman as warned by Dr. N.M. Perera, one of the most brilliant and farsighted political thinkers the country ever produced.

 

Do these parvenus, masquerading as leaders of Muslims, know why the executive presidency with proportional representation was introduced in the first place by JR, who, after elevating himself to that position, became the ‘midwife’ of not a revolution, as leftists used to predict, but an ethnic pogrom, which plunged the country into a civil war? The country is still reeling under the economic and human disasters ensued from this foolish war. JR disliked two outcomes in particular of the previous Westminster model. Firstly, a virtual stranglehold that left parties like LSSP and CP had in the Parliament because of their balancing power, and secondly, a decisive voting strength Muslims commanded in about 32 electorates, according to a study by Professor A. J. Wilson.

 

Through the executive presidency he wanted get rid of the power of leftists and with them any voice of sanity in the parliament, and with proportional representation he wanted to electorally disenfranchise the Muslims. JR was so audacious with his newly acquired constitutional power that in one instance, even asked the Muslim MPs in his government to resign and get out if they did not support his decision to invite Israel to open its embassy in Colombo.

 

Soon after the JR Constitution was introduced, when progressive forces within the majority Sinhalese and the Tamil minority began agitating to tear up that Constitution, Muslims, instead of joining that movement, took a suicidal path under Ashraf and formed an ethnic party of their own.

 

The tragic consequences of this move, which has worsened inter-ethnic relations between Muslims and Tamils on the one hand and Muslims and Sinhalese on the other, is now public knowledge. How corrupt, nepotistic and dictatorial that the executive presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa operated between 2009 and 2015 in particular, and how economically ruinous and politically scandalous that it became under Sirisena is now history. This is hard evidence strengthening the case for its abolition altogether.

 

At last, with JVP taking a lead, supported by TNA and other progressive elements in other parties there is a fresh move to abolish this presidential system. This should be a relief to the Muslim community and even to upcountry Tamils. SLMC and ACMC having declared earlier that they would support that move has now become turncoats. DPF has also joined these turncoats.

 

What made these opportunists cross fence? Obviously, President Sirisena, dreaming that he would be the joint SLPP-SLFP candidate at the next Presidential Election, must have promised something personally very attractive for the leaders of these two rumps of a political party to change minds.

 

When GR topples Sirisena as the preferred JO nominee and gets elected as the new executive president, it will be too late for these opportunists to change their minds again. I am sure they will be too eager to fall on GR’s feet begging for positions and perks. Why are they mortgaging the community for personal gains?

 

This demonstrates further how acephalous Muslim politics has become. All but one of the Muslim parliamentarians who are now claiming to be members of SLMC and ACMC entered Parliament through the UNP door. They knew then that their rumps would have been wiped out by Muslim voters had they dared to contest under their respective party labels. As ministers they, their families and cronies have done extremely well in terms of amassing economic and financial fortunes, while poverty, unemployment and homelessness keep majority of Muslims excruciatingly depressed. Nepotism and avarice rule SLMC and ACMC.

 

Even earlier generations of Muslim politicians behaved blatantly opportunistic when it came to party affiliation. At least they did it to win more favours to their community under any regime that ruled the nation. Very few of them were as flagrantly corrupt as the bulk of the current crop of Muslim politicians.

 

Can any of these new bunch list out what they have achieved so far to improve the living conditions of the Muslim community? Any improvement thus achieved is not because of these politicians but in spite of them. It is better for the community to be represented by a patriotic, caring and enlightened Sinhalese or Tamil than by unscrupulous and self-seeking Muslim parliamentarians. It is time the community looks for a new generation of patriotic and farsighted Muslim leadership.

 

(The writer is attached to the School of Business and Governance, Murdoch University, Western Australia.)