Samantha Power, Director of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights of the National Security Council in the Obama administration, David Pressman, Director for war crimes atrocities and civilian protection of the US National Security Council, and Ms. Patricia A Butenis, Ambassador of the US in Sri Lanka, met with Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse on June 15.

Dr. Power won a Pulitzer for "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," her book about America's response to genocide. In the book she argues that American foreign policy in this area has failed; we promised "never again" after the Holocaust but wilfully ignored genocides in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda. She was a key player in starting the Save Darfur movement.

Dr. Power, an academic with expertise in genocide, has been conspicuously silent until now on foreign policy matters. Observers attribute the silence to her marriage and the onset of pregnancy during the critical period when mass slaughter is alleged to have taken place in Sri Lanka in early 2009.

However, a spokesperson for the US-based activist group Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) told TamilNet last month, “the visit of Samantha Power and Mr Pressman to Sri Lanka amidst increasing calls by international community for war crimes investigations in Sri Lanka is very significant.”

Dr. Power has been an outspoken critic of the western institutions and the past US Governments for inaction and empty rhetoric against rights violations and crimes amounting to genocide, crimes very similar to what Sri Lanka has allegedly committed against Tamil civilians, TAG said.

“Unlike politically motivated visits taken by UN Officials, this visit [by Dr. Power] should be seen as a serious development inside the US administration on its internal war-crimes investigations. Also, Tamil expatriates are waiting to see if Power lives by her words in Problem from Hell, or has herself succumbed to the force of political expediency.”

Dr. Power’s book, titled "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide” was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction, and the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Prize for the best book in U.S. foreign policy.

The US Embassy in Colombo issued a short statement, titled “Senior White House Officials Visiting Sri Lanka.” It stated:

“Two senior foreign policy advisors to President Obama are visiting Sri Lanka from June 14-18. Samantha Power, Special Assistant to the President on Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights and David Pressman, National Security Council Director for War Crimes and Atrocities, will meet with senior government officials and members of civil society in Colombo, Jaffna, and Batticaloa. The visit aims to continue last month’s productive dialogue between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris, in which both leaders discussed Sri Lanka’s path through economic renewal, accountability, and reconciliation to greater peace, prosperity, and a stronger partnership with the United States.”

President Rajapakse’s office meanwhile claimed of the US officials meeting: “The meeting was cordial and friendly and both sides discussed matters of mutual interest.”

The redevelopment of the North is a major focus of all international efforts to rebuild Sri Lanka now that the war has been deemed over, but the Sri Lankan approach to development has been the also termed exploitation.

The resources of the North are being exported to enrich the south, at the expense of the Tamils, reports of activities from the region said.

The Manniththalai sandbar is being demolished as sand from the region is exported, to the benefit of Sinhalese operators from the South.

Manniththalai, a roughly 25 km long sandbar, extends towards the Jaffna Peninsula from Poonakari in the main island.It was a major route of communication between the Peninsula and the main island since ancient times until early 19th century and is dotted with archaeological remains ranging from microlithic / megalithic times to the times of the Dutch, covered by huge sand dunes.

As sand deposits in the Jaffna peninsula in places such as Mankumpaan, Ariyaalai, Manatkaadu are depleted the Manniththalai sandbar is targeted now, reports suggested.

Each lorry load of sand costing 11,000 rupees is sold for 44,000 in the black market. As an average, 40 lorries are engaged each day in the business in the Manatkaadu in Vadamaraadchi.

In early June, Namal Rajapaksa, son of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, along with a Hindi film actor Vivek Oberoi and Minister Douglas Devananda, visited the sandbar, and announced the opening of a communication route through the sandbar.

Namal Rajapaksa is keen in generating income through ferry services to the sandbar, earlier news reports said. He is also now deligated to receive all illegal income locally generated in Vanni.

The sand trade in Jaffna is dominated by a leading businessman associated with Douglas Devananda.

In addition to sand, pre-historic layers of gravel deposits in the Vanni region are also scooped out indiscriminately. The natural resources indiscriminately exploited are also used in the 'construction' works of the Sri Lankan military in Vanni and in Vavuniya, TamilNet reported.

Meanwhile, limestone quarried in the Jaffna peninsula, seriously threatening the groundwater and environment, is sent to the cement factory in Galle in the South.

Threatening the entire groundwater and fragile ecology of Jaffna peninsula, a private Sinhalese company is engaged in the illegal excavation of limestone in the High Security Zone (HSZ) in Valikaamam North while the Rajapaksa government refuses to reveal details of this enterprise.

This is occurring in the area from Maaviddapuram to Keerimalai where the uprooted residents have not been allowed to resettle for the past twenty years.

The indiscriminate excavation of limestone in a 4 sq km area at depths of nearly 40 feet has already caused seepage of sea water and it is feared the area is becoming submerged, press reports said.

The Jaffna Peninsula depends largely on the limestone bed for the preservation of rainwater into groundwater.

The underground channels that bring in freshwater to the innumerable aquifers of the peninsula, have an underneath entry into sea adjacent to the locality of the quarries and indiscriminate quarrying and the possibility of seawater coming inside can affect the potable water of the masses.

Reports suggest that 30 percent of the groundwater in the peninsula has become saline in recent times due to various reasons.

A private company, ‘V. V. Karunaratne’ from the South, has installed heavy machinery including crushers in the above militarised HSZ where limestone is dug out, crushed and sent to a cement factory in Galle in South.

Hundreds of Southern Sinhalese labourers are engaged in excavating lime stone in Valikaamam North where its residents had been evicted by SLA, Jaffna MP, Appathurai Vinayagamoorthy who visited the place said in a press meet held in Jaffna 27 May 2010.

The excavated limestone is taken to the cement factories in Galle in ships and via A9 road.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing Sri Lanka with financial assistance to rehabilitate roads in the conflict-affected northern region, which will help spur inclusive growth and new economic opportunities in one of the poorest regions in the country.

In mid June, the ADB Board of Directors approved loans of $154.4 million from ADB's ordinary capital resources and concessionary Asian Development Fund for the Northern Road Connectivity Project. It will also provide a technical assistance grant of $500,000 to support agencies that manage and maintain the roads.

During nearly three decades of civil conflict, Northern Province was one of the worst affected regions, with its road network falling into total disrepair as a result of damage and neglect. People were unable to get goods to market, or access basic social services, and long travel times have seen the region become increasingly isolated from the south of the country.

The project will carry out civil works on 140 kilometers of provincial roads in Mannar and Vavuniya districts, including those linking settlements to markets, as well as major feeder roads connecting towns and villages. Another 170 kilometers of national roads will be rehabilitated, helping link the north to city centers in the south. The improved surfacing and widening will help cut travel time and costs, revitalizing travel between the north and south.

“The project is targeted to meet one of the most urgent needs of the conflict-affected population in the north – connectivity and mobility. It will facilitate access to essential social services, help resume livelihood activities, and revitalize transport of goods and peoples between the country's northern and southern regions,” said Dong-Kyu Lee, Transport Specialist in ADB’s South Asia Department.

Of the two loans, ADB will provide $130 million from its ordinary capital resources with a 25-year term, five-year grace period, and interest determined in accordance with its LIBOR-based lending facility. The Asian Development Fund loan of $24.4 million equivalent has a 32-year term, including a grace period of eight years, with interest charged at 1% per annum during the grace period and 1.5% for the rest of the term. The government will provide assistance of $18.6 million, for a total project cost of $173 million.

The grant of $500,000 from ADB’s Technical Assistance Special Fund will be used to strengthen the capacity of the Northern Provincial Council-Northern Provincial Road Development Department to manage and maintain the road network. Additional technical assistance support of $60,000 equivalent will come from the two provincial agencies.

The Ministry of Highways for the national roads component and the Ministry of Local Government and Provincial Councils for the provincial roads component, respectively, are the executing agencies, for the project which is due for completion around June 2015.

With thousands of war affected civilians still without livelihood and an economy still reeling from the aftermath of a decades-long conflict in Sri Lanka’s northern region, plans should be in place to revive local economies and jobs, says a top United Nations official.

"There needs to be a strategic plan to bring in industries, infrastructure development, investments and jobs into these areas devastated by war," Kandeh Yumkella, director general of the U.N. Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), told IPS during his visit to the South Asian country in early June.

UNIDO is a specialised agency of the U.N. mandated to promote sustainable industrial development.

"All the agencies and government bodies involved in developing and assisting the war affected region have understood how important this is. I am confident that it will be in place. We don’t have much time – this has to begin now," Yumkella assures.

Yumkella, who hails from Sierra Leone, says the experience of his own country in West Africa, which was devastated by an 11-year civil strife that ended in 2002, has shown the vital role economic empowerment plays in post-conflict recovery.

Generating much needed income for Sri Lanka’s war ravaged northern region is now an integral part of the recovery programme being spearheaded by the government and donor states, says Yumkella, who met with high- ranking government officials, including Prime Minister D. M. Jayarathna, to discuss the potential industrialisation of northern Sri Lanka.

A bloody civil conflict with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has left the north devastated and devoid of any major industries or investments. The conflict ended in May 2009, when the LTTE, who had fought for an independent state for the island’s Tamils, were defeated by government forces.

The last phase of the war forced over 280,000 to flee their homes and end up in welfare camps. Since late last year, tens of thousands of the displaced civilians have returned to their homes.

According to the U.N. over 214,000 civilians have either returned to their homes or are living with host families. Around 76,000 still remain in the camps set up for the displaced. The government has earlier announced plans to resettle them by August this year.

UNIDO is already assisting a livelihood recovery programme in the north and east of Sri Lanka, funded by a two million U.S. dollar grant from Japan, says Yumkella. He adds that his agency would begin a new assistance programme to provide jobs to at least 40,000 war widows in the country’s conflict-torn region.

"We have to make these areas attractive for private investments, give hope to the younger generation, the widows, the child soldiers," says Yumkella. "The next two years will be very important."

Yumkella warns that if income generation opportunities do not increase in the former conflict zone, frustrations are likely to intensify. "We have to work really hard in the next five years to fulfil the hopes in these people who have survived so much," he declares.

War affected individuals who have returned to their homes share Yumkella’s view that jobs are crucial in the erstwhile war zone.

Nagarangan Kalaiamuda, 27, is desperate for any kind of work. A native of Puliyankulam, just south of Kilinochchi town, the former administrative hub of the Tigers, she lives in a 10-by-5-foot mud hut with her two young children. Her husband is in government custody for suspected links with the Tigers.

"I find some kind of work, like helping a family that has just returned home or helping an (aid) agency with some work. But I don’t have any permanent work," she told IPS. She makes about 200 Sri Lankan rupees (about 1.76 dollars) a day when she finds work. But this means she must leave her two children with her neighbours, who are war returnees like her.

Each returning family gets 25,000 rupees (220 dollars) from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and food rations for six months from the World Food Programme.

"The assistance helps, but without jobs, we will not be able to build our houses or do other things that are essential," Kalaiamuda says.

Anton Gunadayalan, a local official, fears income generation would take sometime. "People have just started to come back; it will take some time for things to revert to normal," he says.

Gunadayalan, who is in charge of issuing construction permits in the Puliyankulam area, adds that when the reconstruction of houses and other buildings begins, there could be more employment opportunities. "There are no houses standing, so we have to rebuild everything – that is a lot of work," he says.

The U.N. estimates that at least 160,000 houses need to be rebuilt in the former war zone commonly known as the Vanni. Economists have observed that one other possible way to jumpstart the Vanni economy is to revitalise agriculture and fisheries, which accounted for over 30 percent of the pre-war regional economy.

Economist Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, who runs the Point Pedro Development Institute, a non-governmental social research outfit based in the northern Jaffna peninsula, believes it is not aid but private investments that can rejuvenate the Vanni economy.

"What Sri Lanka requires is not a ‘Marshall Plan’ of any sort. Instead, what we require is entrepreneurial capitalism. Enterprises of modest scale, as opposed to donor or government funded grandiose projects, could contribute to substantive and enduring growth," he says. 

October 2008-2009 – EU investigates Sri Lanka’s commitment to the human rights requirements to receive GSP+ trade concessions and finds that the country had significant shortcomings with regard to three covenants; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention against Torture (CAT) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). These three, among 27 international conventions are essential qualifying criteria for GSP+.

February 2010 – EU member states decide to withdraw GSP+ for Sri Lanka stating that the country had not followed through with three UN human rights conventions that were relevant to receive benefits from the scheme.

March 2010 – Sri Lanka sends a delegation to Brussels to negotiate the GSP+ withdrawal

May 2010 – The senior Sri Lankan delegation, including P. B. Jayasundara, Romesh Jayasinghe and Mohan Peiris, makes a second visit to Brussels and has several meetings with EU representatives.

17 June 2010 – Lady Katherine Ashton (EU’s Foreign Policy Commissioner) sends Sri Lanka a letter stating that the GSP+ concession could be extended for an additional 6 months, subject to a clear, written commitment by the Sri Lankan Government to carry out the 15 conditions attached to the letter.

23 June 2010 – Sri Lankan Cabinet unequivocally rejects EU conditions in reports to the media 

The following are the conditions set by the European Commission for a 6 month extension of the GSP+ benefit to Sri Lanka, with the proviso that Sri Lanka had to provide written commitment to these conditions by July 1.

1.) Reduction of the number of derogations to the ICCPR.

2.) Take steps to ensure that the key objective of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, namely to provide for independent and impartial appointments to the key public positions, is fully safeguarded, including through a Constitutional Council which adequately reflects the interests of all political, ethnic and religious groups and minorities within Sri Lankan society.

3.) Repeal of the remaining part of the 2005 Emergency Regulations, notably those Regulations concerning detention without trial, restrictions on freedom of movement, ouster of jurisdiction and immunity and repeal of 2006 Emergency Regulations (Gazette No. 1474/5/2006). If GoSL considers that it is essential to retain certain provisions which are compatible with the ICCPR or UNCAT, such as provisions concerning possession of weapons, such provisions should be transferred to the Criminal Code.

4.) Repeal of those sections of the Prevention of Terrorism Act which are incompatible with the ICCPR (in particular, sections 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16 and 26) or amendment so as to make them clearly compatible with the ICCPR.

5.) Repeal of the ouster clause in section 8 and the immunity clause in section 9 of the Public Security Ordinance or amendment or as to make it clearly compatible with the ICCPR.

6.) Adoption of the planed amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure, which provide for the right of a suspect to see a lawyer immediately following his arrest.

7.) Legislative steps necessary to allow individuals to submit complaints to the UN Human Rights Committee under the First Optional Protocol to the ICCPR and to the UN Committee against Torture under Article 22.

8.) Steps to implement outstanding opinions of the UN Human Rights Committee in individual cases.

9.) Extension of an invitation to the following Special Procedures who have requested to visit Sri Lanka (UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers).

10.) Responses to a significant number of individual cases currently pending before the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances.

11.) Publication of the complete final report of the 2008 Commission of Enquiry.

12.) Publication or making available to the family members a list of the former LTTE combatants currently held in detention as well as all other persons detained under the Emergency Regulations. Decisive steps to bring to an end the detention of any persons under the Emergency Regulations either by releasing them or by bringing them to trial.

13.)  Granting of access to all places of detention for monitoring purposes to an independent humanitarian organization, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.

14.) Adoption of the National human Rights Action Plan by Parliament and its prompt implementation.

15.)  Take steps to ensure journalists can exercise their professional duties without harassment.

AUSTRALIAN of the Year Patrick McGorry has called for the asylum seeker issue to be taken out of the coming federal election and replaced by a return to a bipartisan approach.

Professor McGorry, a psychiatrist, said he was one of a group in the late 1980s that established the first system of care for refugees who were victims of trauma and torture.

''Both sides of politics were very supportive of this welcoming approach and Australia was one of the countries that was leading the way on this issues back in the 1980s,'' he said.

It now had a situation of bipartisan bullying, he said.

He told about 2000 supporters at a World Refugee Day rally in Melbourne: ''This election, it won't be won or lost on the issue of asylum seekers.''

He said people should vote on economic issues, the health system and mental health.

''Mental health is really a huge issue that needs support and obviously refugees and asylum seekers need to be part of that whole process.''

Sri Lankan Aran Mylvaganam, 26, told refugee supporters who marched to Fitzroy Town Hall that he was 11 when in 1995, he saw the bombing of his school in Jaffna by the Sir Lankan Army and the killing of 72 Tamil school children and the wounding of more than 200.

''On that day my 14-year-old brother was cut into half and murdered in cold blood by the Sri Lankan Army,'' he said.

That same day, he came upon his close friend, ''hanging from the tamarind tree by his intestines''.

In 1997, aged 13, he came to Australian on his own and spent three months in detention.

He was treated for depression. For three years the Immigration Department refused to admit his parents until, under pressure from doctors and welfare bodies, it relented.

Mr Mylvaganam, a finance officer, told The Age, his parents arrived in 2000 but he continued to be depressed until 2006.

''The effects of war don't go away even when you have your parents,'' he said.

He said the situation facing Tamils in Sri Lanka today was much worse today than when he was there in 1996. More than 2000 youths being held as suspected Tamil Tiger supporters, faced torture.

Every day, young girls and boys disappeared at the hands of government-supported paramilitaries, he said.

''How can Australia say it is safe for refugees to return?'' he said.

Sri Lanka has reacted with characteristic hostility to the most recent international efforts to compel its Sinhala nationalist government to conduct itself in accordance with accepted international norms. Colombo’s vehement and vitriolic response to both the appointment of a UN advisory panel on the horrific war crimes in Sri Lanka and the EU’s offer to extend the GSP+ subsidy conditional on specified actions on human rights and political freedoms was, of course, utterly predictable.

However, this is not merely a peculiarity of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government, but a consequence of the Sinhala supremacist logic embedded in the very fabric of this post-colonial state. It is clear, after all, that the international community is, through its myriad actions, seeking to create the space for the peaceful and secure flourishing of the island’s long-suffering non-Sinhala communities. As such, the world is now gradually discovering what the Tamils have been experiencing for six decades: that Sinhala supremacy, not equitable governance, is the central register for Sri Lanka’s strategic decisions.

At the same time, for all the bluster and histrionics from Colombo, some international levers are discernibly disciplining the Sinhala state. For all the talk of sovereignty (and the hype of competing external donors), the IMF is slowly but steadily effecting the restructuring of the state required of economic globalization. The state has also had to accede to important, if very basic and preliminary, international steps to connect the Tamil homeland with the rest of the world. There is no doubt that the Sinhala state will vehemently resist, actively subvert and seek to rollback such changes - the defiant nationalization detailed by the island’s Sunday Times this week makes that quite clear.

What is at stake here is the very nature of the future Sri Lankan state. As several scholars have detailed over the decades – in arguments largely ignored amid the ideological blindness that infused international efforts since the mid-nineties to produce liberal democracy and market economics in Sri Lanka and elsewhere – the post-independence state has entrenched, fostered and defended a Sinhala ethnocracy. It has done so before and after the Cold War, during both war and peace. During the war, however, Sri Lanka was able to adopt the rhetoric of market democracy, without actually having to adopt it. The lack of progress could be blamed on ‘the war’ and, by extension, the Tamil armed struggle, and in this way, the active support of the international community could be secured to destroy the most potent resistance to Sinhala hegemony: the Liberation Tigers.

This Sinhala-Buddhist utopia, pursued through genocidal military violence and racist persecution, is not merely about the Sinhalese people building a bastion for Buddhism (in keeping with a self-claimed divine mandate), but the construction of a specific form of state, one dedicated primarily to fostering the wellbeing of the Sinhalese and Buddhism, at the deliberate expense of the non-Sinhala - who in this logic pose the greatest threat to this vision.

As the state protects, it must provide: the taken-for-granted state subsidies and patronage to the Sinhala majority goes hand-in-hand with the denial of economic and social space for the Tamils. The logic is evidenced in the state’s privileging of the South over the Northeast in the distribution of developmental aid, humanitarian relief and so on (the only exception, of course, has been state-funded colonization of the non-Sinhala areas.). The point here is that the Sinhala majoritarian logic that has increasingly driven the state’s economic, political and social policies since independence will readily accept international assistance when it benefits the South, but resist when it’s directed at the Northeast. The state’s sullen resistance to resettling the hundreds of thousands of displaced Tamils is a case in point.

As we have argued before, the Tamil struggle for independence is not about isolationism and exclusion, but the exact reverse: the bypassing of the Sinhala domination by the Tamil-speaking people to integrate with the rest of the rapidly globalizing world, and thereby flourish. Conversely, this is exactly what the Sri Lankan state has viciously sought for so long to prevent, actively restructuring the island’s economy, political apparatus and even infrastructural architecture to privilege South over Northeast.

However, as the dynamics of the past twelve months make clear, the Sinhala nationalist project is now being confronted by the challenge of global liberalism – and vice-versa. This is why Sri Lanka, on the one hand, seeks to replace the bogey of the LTTE with that of the Diaspora and, on the other hand, sees every international effort to compel adherence to international norms as “supporting the LTTE’s agenda”. It remains very much to be seen if the international community can indeed transform the Sinhala state. But its active efforts of late have certainly raised hopes that Sinhala supremacy can yet be denied.

Sri Lanka has refused to comply with European Union conditions for the extending of GSP+ trade concessions, calling them ‘insulting’.

The EU had called on Sri Lanka to provide written confirmation by July 1 that the country was willing to comply with 15 human rights related conditions in order for the trade concessions to be extended by another 6 months.

Sri Lanka criticised the EU's warning to withdraw the trade benefits, with the foreign ministry in Colombo complaining that Europe was setting "unattainable targets".

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa is reported to have rejected the demand at a Cabinet meeting, saying he would not compromise the country’s sovereignty for the sake of the US$ 150 million by which amount the country would benefit under the GSP + facility, reported the Daily Mirror.   

The President stated that the EU had no right to interfere in the matters of a sovereign state, reported the Sunday Leader.

He is reported to have declared the conditions to be related to “internal political matters” with “no relevance whatsoever to international trade”. 

"This is more dictatorial than how the colonial rulers of the past treated us," said Economic Development Minister and Senior Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa.

"We cannot be bullied into submission. We can stand on our own and resist these conditions," he told the Sunday Times.

The President was also quoted as having told the Cabinet that Sri Lanka does not need the GSP+ concession, even though it is estimated that 100,000 workers will be directly affected if the agreement is not extended.

External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris echoed the President’s reassurance that Sri Lanka could manage without the concession. “The garment industry is strong. When the quota period ended, many speculated that this would be the end of the industry. But, we were resilient. We have creativity and entrepreneurship; the resilience to adapt and create ways in which we can increase productivity and revenue,” he told a press conference.

Government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella said the government would arrange an alternate scheme to ensure Sri Lankan exporters do not lose competitiveness.

Peiris also informed a press meet that it was not the role of the EU to interfere in the sovereignty of Sri Lanka and that the country cannot accept the conditions put forward by the EU.

“To fulfill the conditions they are asking of us, we would have to change the constitution and brush aside the decisions of the highest court in the country,” he was quoted by the Sunday Leader as saying. “We cannot surrender our decision making power to a foreign government. I don’t think even the public will agree to this or ask us to fulfil these conditions”.

"These conditions are unacceptable. They are an insult to every citizen of this country," Rambukwella told reporters in Colombo. "We must put the EU demand in the dustbin."

The EU wanted Sri Lanka to relax some of the provisions of its draconian Prevention of Terrorism law, which was not possible, AFP quoted Rambukwella as saying. He reportedly added that the EU conditions affected internal security.

Peiris reportedly told the Sri Lankan Cabinet that Denmark and Spain took a rigid stand against Sri Lanka while Italy supported the country on this issue at the EU, the Daily Mirror said.

According to the paper, the German Ambassador and the British High Commissioner had informed Peiris that their countries were not in favour of the EU decision. 

Initially, media reports in Sri Lanka, citing government sources, in mid June claimed that the European Union had agreed to extend the GSP+ tariff concessions for a further 6 months beyond the initial cancellation date of August 15.

The reports drew a strong response from the EU, which said, "contrary to these articles, the date of 15 August on which Sri Lanka would cease to benefit from GSP Plus will not be extended unconditionally."

The EU's executive arm, the European Commission, insisted on "significant improvements on the effective implementation of the human rights conventions" for the island to continue enjoying the trade benefits.

Sri Lanka had sent two senior delegations to Brussels in March and May this year to try and negotiate the EU decision to withdraw the GSP+ concessions. While the delegations had had several meetings with EU representatives, they were unable to get the decision changed.

Following the delegations, EC Vice President Catherine Ashton wrote a two page letter to Peiris, saying "……following an assessment of the meeting with Attorney General Peiris on May 20-21 and of the further information which your Government has supplied, it is not yet possible to conclude that Sri Lanka is, at this time, effectively implementing the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention against Torture."

The letter adds, "The European Commission notes the clear willingness on the part of Sri Lanka to take further additional steps to address without delay outstanding human rights issues and stands ready to work with you on this. We are prepared to propose to the Council of the European Union that it decides to maintain GSP Plus preferences for a limited additional period subject to a clear commitment by your Government to undertake the actions listed in the annexe to this letter within a six months time frame beginning July of this year.

The Generalised System of Preference (GSP) is a trade agreement in which the European Union gives 176 countries and territories, preferential access to the EU market.

By reducing the tariff on goods entering the market, the EU’s main priority is to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development and good governance. There is no expectation or requirement that this form of access is reciprocated.

Under GSP+, Sri Lanka receives, among 15 other countries, additional benefits, which can be withdrawn if the EU finds that the country does not respect the criteria for eligibility.

The agreement, which is subject to renewal every three years, places emphasis on human rights and labour laws within the country.

Sri Lanka has hugely benefited by the opportunities offered by GSP+, especially in the clothing and fisheries sector. In 2008, the imports to EU from Sri Lanka totalled 1.24 billion Euros.  

Sri Lanka gains about 150 million dollars annually due to preferential tariffs, according to business estimates.

These benefits will be withdrawn on August 15 unless Sri Lanka makes a written commitment by July 1, according to the EU. 

LITTLE Sri Lanka is rarely a model of anything. But since it crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam its government has found itself in an unfamiliar position. Some of the world’s less savoury regimes are beating a path to its door to study “the Sri Lanka option”.

Last November, Myanmar’s military dictator, Than Shwe, who rarely travels abroad, visited the island “so that his regime can apply any lessons learned to its efforts against the ethnic groups in Burma,” says Benedict Rogers, a biographer of General Than. In May last year at a meeting of regional defence ministers in Singapore, Myanmar’s deputy minister made the link explicit, saying the world had witnessed a victory over terrorism in Sri Lanka but had forgotten about the insurgency in his country.

In October Thailand’s prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, held talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart about the lessons of the Tigers’ defeat (for handling a Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand, not the protests cleared this week in Bangkok). In March a military delegation from Bangladesh met Sri Lanka’s army chief, to swap notes on what he called Sri Lanka’s “successful completion of the war for peace”. Behind the scenes, hawkish generals and politicians from Colombia to Israel seem to be using Sri Lanka’s experience to justify harsher anti-terror operations.

Louise Arbour, head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), says the Sri Lanka model consists of three parts: what she dubs “scorched-earth tactics” (full operational freedom for the army, no negotiations with terrorists, no ceasefires to let them regroup); next, ignoring differences between combatants and non-combatants (the new ICG report documents many such examples); lastly, the dismissal of international and media concerns. A senior official in President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s office, quoted anonymously in a journal, Indian Defence Review, says “we had to ensure that we regulated the media. We didn’t want the international community to force peace negotiations on us.” The author of that article, V.K. Shashikumar, concludes that “in the final analysis the Rajapaksa model is based on a military precept…Terrorism has to be wiped out militarily and cannot be tackled politically.” This is the opposite of the strategy America is pursuing in Afghanistan. It is winning a widespread hearing.

Around 75,000 Tamils, most of them of younger generation, attended the May Remembrance of Vanni massacre and the inauguration rally of Naam Thamilar political party at Virakanoor in the city of Madurai in the Tamil Nadu state of India, vowing to fight for the creation Tamil Eelam by politically capturing the power of the Tamil Nadu state as Tamils world over observed Genocidal War Crimes Day on Tuesday, May 18,  remembering thousands who perished one year ago.

“The Tamil Eelam struggle has been transcended into the hands of Tamil Nadu Tamils and the younger generation in particular,” S. Seeman, a Tamil activist and a popular film director told media.

“War is politics with bloodshed, our way would be Politics without bloodshed,’ he told the gathering vowing to take forward the struggle for the freedom of Eelam Tamils and to voice for global Tamil freedom.

"Annan [elder brother] Pirapaharan is the national leader of global Tamils and the Icon for Tamil liberation. We are all younger brothers of our Annan. I am not a chief, but a follower, someone among you,” he told reporters, introducing the party programme of Naam Thamilar (We are Tamils) at Virakanoor in Madurai.

Mr. Seeman, Professor Dheeran, Professor P. Ramasamy who is the deputy chief minister of the Penang state of Malaysia, Thamizharuvi Maniyan and Sahul Hameed delivered inauguration speeches at the event, which was conducted in a disciplined and organised way, very differently from that of the political rallies in the recent history of Tamil Nadu.

Another notable difference was the active participation of women.

The stage was named Muthukumaran Arangkam, commemorating the young Tamil journalist who burned himself to death condemning India for failing to stop the war in Sri Lanka January last year.

Naam Thamilar party holds the view that Tamil Eelam cannot be born without the Indian state of Tamil Nadu exerting meaningful pressure on the Central Government of India and that a Tamil political leadership should take over the rule of Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Seeman dismisses the ‘Dravidian’ parties as having failed in their historic duty of supporting the liberation of Tamil Eelam, when their help was most needed, especially one year ago during the height of the war.

“Unsurrendered Dignity and Unfallen Bravery,” is the slogan of the party launched with Tiger symbol on the day of one-year remembrance of Mu’l’livaaykkaal massacre.

A week earlier introduced a Tiger flag for the new political party. Stating that the Tiger was the emblem of the Tamil Chola dynasty, Mr. Seeman claimed that he evolved the idea adopting the Tiger flag inheriting it from the Chola dynasty and from his leader "Annan" (elder brother) Pirapaharan.

Mr. Seeman, while announcing the flag of the party stated:

"India wouldn't give you freedom without fighting for it. USA wouldn't come to liberate you. China and Japan wouldn't be useful. The Sinhalese wouldn't give in that easily. No state in the world would come to support the creation of Tamil Eelam."

"It is we, Tamils ourselves, who should enforce them all to support the establishment of Tamil Eelam."

"Let me remind you that Tamil Eelam cannot be born without the Indian state supporting it, and that the Indian state wouldn't support it as long as our own Tamil state of Tamil Nadu fails to demand it."

"Tamil Eelam is not homeland to only the Tamils of Eelam. It is the homeland of every Tamil human being in this world," he proclaimed.

When a Peoples Tribunal in Ireland has passed a verdict that Sri Lanka was guilty of War Crimes and that it should be investigated for genocide, why is the state assembly of Tamil Nadu, a state within the Indian Union, is unable to pass a resolution stating that Sri Lanka is guilty of genocide, he questioned.

"18 million Sinhalese may think they have conquered Tamils. We should remember 75 millions are here," he said.

As Tamils world over mark one-year of the Indian abetted genocidal war against Eelam Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, the Hindi film industry known as Bollywood and the major Indian conglomerate of trade unions, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) are joining hands with Rajapaksa regime in Colombo in staging 11th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards weekend during the first week of June in Colombo.

The FICCI, the largest and oldest business conglomerate of India is the flagship organiser of the business event named FICCI-IIFA Global Business Forum, where hundreds of CEOs and business heads from India would be signing various investment contracts and tie-ups in the island on the second day of the celebrity and corporate event.

The announcement of Colombo as the venue was followed by some questionable humanitarian initiatives.

Salman Khan, a prominent Hindi actor, who was invited to be the brand ambassador of the IIFA Charity Initiative, made the announcement of the venue by saying that he was to build 100 houses in Jaffna for Tamil refugees with his ‘Being Human’ foundation and was named as ambassador of change. Hand for Habitat and UNICEF were also mentioned as cooperating humanitarian agencies during the announcement.

Another ‘interesting’ feature announced is the IIFA Foundation Celebrity Cricket Match, to be held between Indian celebrities and ‘Sri Lankan’ cricketers.

The cricket match, to be held on June 4, has been profiled as ‘cricket for change’ to collect funds to rehabilitate former child soldiers. The duo turned foes of Bollywood, Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan, are to play together in the cricket match.

Sri Lanka is today India’s largest trading partner in SAARC.  The Indian Establishment, locked in a corporate race with China, has been pushing Colombo to finalise the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which it wants signed when Mahinda Rajapaksa visits India on June 8, scheduled after the IIFA-Weekend.

Furthermore, India, which backed Sri Lanka's war is keen to show that Sri Lanka is in the process of normalisation following the end of war to avoid its neighbour coming under any war crimes investigation.

It is under these circumstances, the Hindi film industry is being blamed for promoting Indian corporate interests in Colombo.

However, the Indian move has sparked protests from Tamils in Tamil Nadu, Mumbai and the Diaspora.

Tamil film industry in Tamil Nadu has declared non-cooperation with the Bollywood film industry, said activists in Chennai, urging Tamils in the Diaspora to exert pressure on Bollywood market overseas.

A joint statement was issued by the film industries in South India on Friday not to release films of those Indian actors and technicians who attend the India International Film Academy' 2010 event. IIFA 2010 will be held between June 3 to 5.

Apart from jeopardising the South Indian screening of films the order also threatens the release of Tamil films that feature the actors who attend the festival.

The primary demand remains that the venue of the festival be changed, to condemn Sri Lanka for its atrocities against Tamils. An order has also been issued to not shoot South Indian films henceforth in the island country, nor hold cultural events. A 15member team from the South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce will be leaving for Mumbai on Saturday to persuade the IIFA team to shift its venue.

All Tamil actors, who received invitation from the event organizers, turned down the request, as an order was passed earlier by the Tamil film industry stating it would completely ignore the event.

China is recreating its Africa story in Sri Lanka. Little China enclaves are sprouting up in the Buddhist majority island nation in the Indian Ocean as President Mahinda Rajapaksa has spread the red carpet all the way from Colombo to Jaffna. Already he has ‘gifted’ projects worth US$ 6.9 billion in railways, ports, power plants and military cantonments by way of saying thanks to the ‘Comrade Capitalist’  flush with yuans and greenbacks for all the help provided in eliminating the LTTE scourge with over one billion worth arms on cash discounts, deferred payments and liberal credit.

Significantly, most of the Chinese works are located in the areas dominated by the Tamil Tiger guerrillas till they were wiped out in May last year.  These are high cost projects with interest rates above international norms, and inflated bills, which are hurting Lanka economy, according to Daily Mirror and Sunday Times, two Colombo publications.

Clashes, as witnessed in African countries, have begun in Sri Lanka between ‘imported’ semi-skilled and unskilled workers and local labourers. The entire Lanka project business is farmed out to four Chinese companies associated with relatives of senior leaders of the Communist regime.

China is the fourth largest trading partner of the island nation. Imports (to Lanka) have surged to $1.4 billion mark from a low base of 0.70 billion in 2004.  But exports are stagnating at $ 46.08 million thus tilting the trade balance heavily in favour of the new global ‘imperial’ trader on the block, as a Sri Lankan exporter remarked in Colombo on the sidelines of a business meet, while preferring to remain anonymous. ‘Ours is a quasi-police raj. We cannot afford to ruffle anyone’s feathers’, the businessman in his early fifties said, by way of elaboration for his preference.

A Special Economic Zone, a 1000-acre Tapioca farm, Hambantota port, 900 MW coal fired Norochcholai power plant, Colombo-Katunayake Expressway, Pallai-Kankasanthurai rail-line, Jaffna housing complex for army and a host of other projects make the Chinese portfolio envy of export economies in the meltdown.

Beijing is underwriting most of these ventures with liberal credit. The Axim Bank of China has agreed to provide a preferential credit facility of over $ 1 billion for roads and rail projects and construction of military housing projects in the predominantly Tamil speaking Northern Province where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had held sway and conducted their bloody war for close to thirty years.

Sri Lanka’s north is separated from India’s Tamil speaking province in the south of the country by narrow Palk Straits. Ostensibly for this reason, India under Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady, as she was known during her rein, had played the role of mid-wife at the time of LTTE’s birth in mid-seventies.

Real help to LTTE, however, came from China and Pakistan through gun running rackets and opium cartels. It continued even during the last phases of the war President Rajapaksa and his brothers successfully waged against Tamil Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. All this has been well documented. Yet, the Lanka President today is ignoring recent history. ‘Well, it is because unlike India, both countries helped him also materially and it tilted the scales in the War last year’, says a Colombo based foreign journalist.

IN IMPERIAL FOOTSTEPS

There is difference in help during war and after the war. While the war time supplies came with concessional prices or deferred payment facility, most of the Chinese projects for reconstructing the war ravaged economy are neither gratis nor liberally aided. ‘These are highly inflated commercial ventures’, the Daily Mirror reports. The outlay on a China project is sometimes twice the size of investment over similar projects undertaken by other countries. 

Here is an illustrative example.  China pegged the per kilometre cost of re-laying the rail track from Pallai to Kankasanthurai at more than four million American dollars. This is almost double the cost of similar projects being built elsewhere in the country mostly with local labourers.  In contrast, China is bringing its own labourers for building the 56- km long rail line with $ 245 million loan. This is not an exception but the norm.

China justifies ‘importing’ its own labourers. “Our workers are experienced; they are familiar with working processes; there is no language barrier”, said a Chinese manager on a rail project. He put the number of Chinese personnel on duty at various sites at around 25,000. ‘It is not a significant number. Look at our work volume’. 

 Analysts are not convinced though.  A parallel is drawn between the Chinese practice and the indentured labour system practiced European powers particularly the British in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Most Indians found today in Africa and Far East were transported between 1834 and 1920 to provide labour for the (mainly sugar) plantations, under the indenture system.

There are already fears in Sri Lanka that China is implementing the communist version of the indentured system. Many analysts aver that the imported Chinese labourers would not return home as a case would be made out on their continued relevance to a project in its implementation stage. Like it happened at the 36 MW power plant at Chunnakam in Jaffna. More than 50 Chinese personnel who were brought there did not go back. They along with their families are still living at the complex, ‘as their presence is needed to run the power plant’. 

Mirigama Special Economic Zone is a China venture dedicated to Chinese investors.  China is the sole authority to decide who will be allowed to set up their units in the zone. So far 29 Chinese manufacturers received the green signal to bring their investment, machinery and blue-collar workers. 

Another project for China made in Sri Lanka is a Tapioca Farm spread over 1000 acres. It will come up either in central or northern province depending on the final site selection.  The farm is backward integration for Chinese chip makers. Tapioca will be taken to mainland China where it will be made into chips and brought back for sale at stores in Sri Lanka. 

Chinese farmers cultivate Tapioca in Sri Lanka. Their compatriots make the chips at home. And Chinese companies laugh all the way to their bank as Lanka consumer feasts on the Chinese chips. Like in the good old days of East India Company registered in the British Isles with limited liability. 

In the entire chain, Lanka stands to gain a pittance – its land is taken on long term concessional lease; its labourers are engaged in low paid peripheral jobs; and its exchequer loses customs revenue as the tapioca export and chips import are allowed at concessional duty.

CHINA INSENSTIVE

China’s greed and insensitivity to local concerns is at full display at Hambantota Port, which serves its strategic maritime and security interests. Two companies, China Harbour Engineering Company and Sino-Hydro Corporation are pumping life at a cost of a $1 billion into the port, which Sri Lanka hopes will give a boost to its earnings from merchant navies passing through the Indian Ocean. For Chinese navy, it will be useful as a refuelling and docking station.

When completed in three phases (first phase will be ready by November 2010) it will be the biggest port in South Asia with facilities for ship-building, ship-repair and warehousing. As many as 33 vessels will be able to get berth at any given time.

It is stated that over 400 Chinese prisoners are brought to work as semi-skilled and unskilled workers at the Port site. They are being paid half the normal wages.   For them the only hope is the promise of ‘freedom’ once the work is over.  The port site is also witness to frequent labour unrest as the demands of local Sri Lankan workers for increase in lunch time and over time allowances are not accepted.

Two cantonments are coming up in Killinochi and Mullaitivu, both in Northern Sri Lanka under an agreement signed by Basil Rajapaksa, head of Presidential Task Force for reconstruction with China. About 500 acres have been acquired for the purpose.  China will also take up a housing project, costing $ 110 million, for about 60,000 families of armed services personnel in Jaffna, Kankesanthurai, Mullaitivu and Pooneryn.   Chinese Defence Ministry has offered a loan of $ 20 million loan for purchasing equipment needed for building military related installations, again in North Sri Lanka.

There is no official word on urgency of beefing up military installations in North Sri Lanka. And on the continued involvement of China in the war like preparations in the post-war period so close to the Indian shores. The war with the LTTE has ended and there is no danger of another LTTE clone appearing on the scene in the foreseeable future. 

Talk of a `sweet’ revenge against India for its initial support to the LTTE is a short sighted venture. It ignores the long term problems from increased presence of Chinese work force with their families.  And it is a refusal to read the writing on the wall when the African experience is there to see.

Policy Research Group brings together people from diverse backgrounds and fields to look at today and tomorrow of Asia and to offer an Asian perspective.

Refugee advocates say at least nine asylum seekers returned to Sri Lanka by the Howard government were killed and those sent back in past year have been held in police custody and some assaulted.

Australia has suspended its processing of Sri Lankan asylum seekers pending a review of conditions in Sri Lanka.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans says the Federal Government has a "major problem" returning asylum seekers who have been involved with the Tamil Tigers.

Phil Glendenning, the director of the Catholic Church's Edmund Rice Centre, has recently returned from Sri Lanka and says the country is in danger of becoming a police state.

"We found that of the 11 people removed to Sri Lanka over the course of the last year or so, that all of them had been arrested at the airport," he said.

"Some of them had been bashed, assaulted. One man has permanent hearing damage, another has had sight damaged."

Mr Glendenning says those arrested are asylum seekers sent home from Australia. "[The Australian Government sent them back] and gave them a guarantee of their safety. The thing is they arrive at the airport; they're immediately handed over to the CID, which is the Sri Lankan police," he said.

"The difficulty here is that there is a view in Sri Lanka that anybody who left the country through an unauthorised manner, of unauthorised means, is an LTTE sympathiser and if they are Sinhalese people who left, then they must therefore be traitors.

"That's the assumption. People have been put into prison and held there and the key thing is here that detention can be indefinite. There are people who were removed from Australia at the beginning of this year who are still in prison."

The refugee advocate says by returning these people, Australia has breached its refugee obligations. "Under Australian refugee law, it is a breach of the law to return people to danger, to re-foul people and we believe that has happened," he said.

"The people are put into prison; the court process is that they're heard in the prison. The magistrate continues to postpone the cases to a later date, no legal arguments are taken and so you get the situation of it just rolling forward.

"On the ground, those who are in the community, there's a danger of being regularly abducted and it's quite an established fact that groups like Reporters Without Borders have attested that Sri Lanka is not safe."

Mr Glendenning is also unconvinced by the Sri Lankan government's claims it is a democracy. "Sri Lanka would say that because it's in their interest to say that," he said.

"There is fear in Sri Lanka that anybody from the LTTE outside the country might be one of the LTTE to somehow reform it internationally. I think Sri Lanka is in danger of being seen as a police state."

He says while the Federal Government is wise to urge caution in returning asylum seekers connected to the Tamil Tigers, in the eyes of the Sri Lankan government all those who fled are branded the same way.

"I think the position taken by the Minister yesterday in urging caution about returning people who would be seen as being involved with the LTTE is a very wise one," he said.

"But of course we would see the importance of that to be extended to realise that on the ground in Sri Lanka, those in authority in the government and in the police, perceive those who left as either sympathisers or traitors and consequently sending them back is sending them back into danger."