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  • Tutu: ‘Sri Lanka not fit to be in UN Rights Council’

    May 20
    With a terrible record of torture and disappearance, Sri Lanka doesn't deserve a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council and Colombo’s application should be voted out, argued the veteran South African human rights activist, Archbishop Tutu says.
     
     
    The full text of his letter follows:
     
    “It would seem self-evident that a country which tortures and kidnaps its own people has no place on the world's leading human rights body. Apparently not: Sri Lanka, despite repeated criticism for its human rights record, is running for re-election to the UN human rights council, with a vote to be held in New York on May 21.
     
    “Governments owe it to Sri Lankan human rights victims - and to victims of human rights abuses around the world - to ensure that the Sri Lankan bid fails. This will be an important test of the 47-member council, to show that the UN's standards for it will be honoured.
     
    “If Sri Lanka is defeated this year, that will be important not just for the Sri Lankan human rights leaders who, at great personal risk, have called for Sri Lanka's defeat, and for Sri Lankan civil society. In combination with the humiliating defeat last year of Belarus, it will send an important signal for the future: governments with track records of serious human rights abuses do not belong on a body set up to protect the victims of such abuses.
     
    “Sri Lanka has failed to honour its pledges of upholding human rights standards and cooperating with the UN since joining the council two years ago. Indeed, its human rights record has worsened during that time. The Sri Lankan idea of cooperation with the UN, meanwhile, has been to condemn senior UN officials (including the high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, and the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes) as "terrorists" or "terrorist sympathisers."
     
    “The systematic abuses by Sri Lankan government forces are among the most serious imaginable. Government security forces summarily remove their own citizens from their homes and families in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Torture and extrajudicial killings are widespread. When the human rights council was established, UN members required that states elected must themselves "uphold the highest standards" of human rights. On that count, Sri Lanka is clearly disqualified.
     
    “The separatist Tamil Tigers have used despicable tactics in their war against the government, including frequent suicide bombings. But that can in no way excuse the scale of government abuses.
     
    “Fortunately, the news from the council is not all bad. Countries running from other regions of the world have credible claims to be leaders in promoting human rights. Argentina and Chile, which suffered terribly from torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the past, have become leading supporters of human rights, and now seek to join the council. On the African slate, there are some true human rights leaders, and - thankfully - no candidacy from Zimbabwe or Sudan.
     
    “In the entire world, Sri Lanka stands out as the most clearly unqualified state seeking election to the council this year, and the place where things are getting unambiguously worse.
     
    “Defeating the Sri Lankan candidacy would be a comfort to the people of Sri Lanka. It would place international pressure on the government to respect human rights, and to accept a UN human rights monitoring mission, which it has stubbornly refused. It would help make the council a place where true human rights leaders in all regions can help lead the world towards greater respect for human life and human dignity.
     
    “An outcome, in short, that would benefit those who care about human rights in the world. Any other result would be a travesty.”
  • Blunted Tool
    That Sri Lanka this week failed to garner enough votes at the United Nations to get on to the Human Rights Council will bring cheer to many, including a coalition of international human rights groups and the three Nobel laureates who had publicly called for Colombo’s bid to be rejected. However, this moment is neither some sort of watershed in the Sinhala state’s fortunes nor of any consequence to the ongoing suffering of the Tamil people. In short, whether Sri Lanka is on the council or not, is largely an irrelevancy.
     
    To begin with, it beggars belief that Sri Lanka could even be a credible candidate, given the brazen confidence with which the Sinhala military and its paramilitary allies murder, ‘disappear’, torture and, as news reports are beginning to acknowledge, rape - assuming, of course, that the HRC is taken seriously as site of human rights protection in the first place. Remember that Sri Lanka has actually been on the council for the past two years. Whilst the concept of ‘human rights’ has for almost two decades been promoted by powerful Western states and their associated institutions and organization as supposedly a key principle of modern governance, in practice it has proven remarkably brittle. Not because human rights are still violated, but because both Western states and their developing world favourites have been able to do so without real consequence.
     
    Thus, rather than some sort of ‘universal’ principle, the concept of ‘human rights’ has, in actuality, served mainly as a tool for the West-led international community to (re)order the world to their preference. This is not to say that human rights, in themselves, are not of moral value. As a people who have endured sixty years of oppression, including thirty years of militarized violence by the Sinhala state, the Tamils have long documented and protested their suffering in the language of human rights. Our problem, rather, is the manifest hypocrisy of the West which has, whilst lecturing us solemnly on the overarching morality of human rights, steadfastly backed the state that brutalizes us.
     
    This hypocrisy has become glaring in the past three years, as the Sinhala-supremacist regime of President Mahinda Rajapakse has enjoyed every practical assistance it requires from the West. This assistance has admittedly been rendered amid much admonishment. But harsh words won’t hurt a state like Sri Lanka. No matter how brazen Sri Lanka’s abuses against the Tamils are, concrete steps against the Sinhala state will not be forthcoming: the recent assurance by the EU – which in particular makes much about ‘human rights’ - to extend its trade concessions for three more years is a case in point.
     
    Moreover, what is interesting about this week’s tussle over Sri Lanka the UN is the polarization between various state groupings. For example, whilst Sri Lanka was passionately opposed by Western human rights groups and some states, the Sinhala regime was actively supported by China, India and, according to some reports, Japan. Clearly, this is not to say these states either have no respect for ‘human rights’ nor that they believe Sri Lanka was actually qualified to be on the council. Rather, what we are seeing is interest-driven international politics at play. Indeed, amid such polarization amongst powerful states – not in the overarching sense of the West and the Soviet Union, but on selected issues – the term ‘international community’ is increasingly losing its coherence.
     
    We argued recently that, two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the emergence of new poles (with their own interests and values) has raised serious challenges to the US-led West's interests, as well as the ideological values it has promoted in the service of those interests. We also argued the Sinhala state is making a deliberate shift to the East and away from the West and that the logic behind this realignment is that Sinhala majoritarianism will inevitably always remain in tension with West’s vision of global liberalism.
     
    Sri Lanka has long been on the frontline of the West’s efforts to expand this liberal order. The Norwegian-led peace process was the most ambitious effort yet to do this. The West mistakenly believed the UNP-led government of Ranil Wickremsinghe was a partner in the project. In reality, whilst the UNP regime was prepared to go along with the Western project (of which Japan, one of the Co-Chairs alongside the US, EU and Norway, was a reticent member), and shared the project’s free-market logic the UNP had no more commitment to liberal political values than the SLFP. Rather, both Sinhala parties are committed to Sinhala majoritarianism and communalism. This has been demonstrated by the lurch towards the Sinhala right the UNP has attempted in the past three years (the Sinhala voters, however, trust the SLFP more than the UNP to safeguard their privileged position).
     
    These dynamics are also at play in the Eastern Province, where, following the laughably unabashed rigging of the Provincial Council elections on May 10, Sivanesathurai Chandrakan, alias Pillayan, the leader of the Army-backed paramilitary group, the TMVP, has been appointed Chief Minister. It was clear that the Western states were clearly hoping for the UNP would win the elections, prompting the Sinhala ultra-nationalist Champika Ranawake, Sri Lanka's Environment minister, to mockingly declare the UPFA’s election victory as a defeat for the 'West-backed Eelamists.'
     
    The point here is that repeated insistence by powerful states, especially the United States, that Sri Lanka is not a strategic concern in no way diminishes their active involvement in the micro-dynamics of the island’s politics and conflict. From the very outset, in the early eighties, of the armed resistance phase of the Tamil liberation struggle, countries such as the United States and India, for example, have sought to pursue their interests through such localized involvement.
     
    What this means for the Tamils is that their grievances only matter when taking these up serves the geopolitical and geoeconomic interests of powerful states. The long-running efforts by the wider Tamil liberation movement to ‘internationalise’ the Tamil cause has therefore not been merely to seek sympathy abroad, but to make it clear that it is not the Tamil demand for independence that makes Sri Lanka a zone of instability and disruption in the international order, but, rather it is the ferocity of the Sinhala state’s efforts to maintain its chauvinistic domination of our people.
     
    The main point for Tamils to bear in mind is this: the world’s powerful states have no more commitment to sovereignty than to human rights. Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity is no more important to them than Tamils’ freedom. It’s just more useful at this point. And as the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston put, ‘we have no permanent friends and we have no permanent enemies. We have permanent interests’. It is no different for any other state in today’s world.
     
    It is in this context the LTTE leader, Vellupillai Pirapaharan, observed in 1993: “Every country in this world advances its own interests. It is economic and trade interests that determine the order of the present world, not the moral law of justice nor the rights of people. International relations and diplomacy between countries are determined by such interests. Therefore we cannot expect an immediate recognition of the moral legitimacy of our cause by the international community. ... In reality, the success of our struggle depends on us, not on the world. Our success depends on our own efforts, on our own strength, on our own determination..."
  • Father Karunaratnam: martyred serving the Tamil people
    In our April 9th issue, in an article entitled “Iconic of the times” one of Tamil Guardian’s columnists discussed the rationale behind the Sinhala-Buddhist Sri Lankan state’s attacks on the Northeastern Church, among which was last month’s shelling of the historic Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Madhu.
     
    The columnist argued that more important than the theological differences between the Sinhala interpretation of Buddhism and Catholicism is the inevitable conflict between an oppressive state and the social justice doctrine of the modern Catholic Church.
     
    The point was exemplified within days by the assassination by Sri Lankan commandos of one of the best-loved and most prominent priests and human rights activists in the Vanni, Father Karunaratnam.
     
    His vehicle was blasted by a command-detonated landmine even as it was being towed by a recovery truck, having broken down as Father Karunaratnam returned from Sunday Mass.
     
    He was the founder and Head of the NESOHR (North East Secretariat of Human Rights), the only local Human Rights monitoring organisation in the LTTE controlled North. NESOHR has been a vocal chronicler of government aerial attacks, killings and abductions in the North East.
     
    More telling than the murder itself is the almost non-existent international response: o Other than former peace broker Norway, not a single foreign government commented on, let alone condemned, the assassination.
     
    The current tension between the Tamil Catholic Church and the Sinhala Buddhist state begins with persistent attempts, over a one-year period, by the Bishop of the Diocese of Mannar, Dr. Joseph Rajapu to have the area around the venerated Madhu Church declared a peace zone.
     
    The Madhu Church, Sri Lanka’s oldest and most prominent Catholic shrine, was at the time also one of the largest refugee sanctuaries in the Tamil north.
     
    It was also the objective of a major Sri Lankan military offensive in Mannar which began in July last year and has been inching forward amid ferocious resistance from the Tamil Tigers..
     
    According to Bishop Joseph, the LTTE had agreed for the shrine to be designated a peace zone, if the Colombo government would give a similar guarantee. However Colombo rejected the Bishop’s plea.
     
    In early 2008, the Sri Lankan military intensified its efforts to capture the Madhu Church. Its artillery barrages expanded and intensified; shells began exploding around the site.
     
    On April 2, over five thousand Tamils in government-controlled Mannar city marched in protest demanding that the Church of Madhu be declared a peace zone.
     
    As military analysts in the Sinhala South have pointed out, there is no military value in occupying the Madhu Church and there are alternative routes into the LTTE-held North.
     
    But ahead of the Eastern elections, scheduled for May 10, there was a clear propaganda benefit in capturing the symbolic Church – especially against the backdrop of the Army’s failure since July to progress in its multiple-front onslaught against the LTTE-held Vanni.
     
    Apart from the rebuilt towns of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu deep within LTTE defences, there are almost no landmark places that could be “taken” by an army to serve as for a propaganda coup - other than the Church of Our Lady of Madhu.
     
    On April 3, a day after the last of the refugees fled from the relentless shelling, the Bishop of Mannaar, ordered the serving priests and nuns to also flee and to take with them the 400-year old Icon of our Lady of Madhu. They reached Theevanpiddi, deeper in LTTE-held Tamil territory, April 4.
     
    600 school children from the nearby Roman catholic school of Adampan and Vaddakandan Tamil mixed school also fled to Theevanpiddi in the same time.
     
    According to the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation, over 12,000 internally displaced persons from the Madhu area have been relocated.
     
    For almost two months, the Army, though a short distance from the Madhu site, had been unable to close the gap due to LTTE resistance.
     
    Once the evacuations had been completed, the LTTE’s defensive units also pulled back.
     
    But to the fury of the Mahinda Rajapakse government, the occupation of an empty church was rendered meaningless by the departure of the revered Icon of Our Lady.
     
    On Sunday April 6 photographic evidence emerged of extensive damage to the Madhu complex by Army shelling, justifying the Bishop’s decision to evacuate, and illustrating the desperate efforts of the Army to capture the area.
     
    The same day, Father Karunaratnam gave a television interview on the question of the Madhu Church, saying “The Bishop of Mannaar Diocese has clearly said that this was a peace zone. Let the GoSL not cause confusion. It is a known fact that this peace zone is situated within the LTTE territory. Ranil Wickramsinghe's government may have signed the Cease Fire Agreement in 2002, … the then President Chandrika had accepted it, as did the International Community. The [Rajapkse] Government should have respected it.”
     
    Incidentally, the Bishop of Jaffna’s office also issued a formal plea that the Madhu Church be accepted as peace zone. It was clear that the Northeastern Church were sending a clear message of unity behind the Bishop of Mannar.
     
    However, within two weeks, on Sunday April 20, Sri Lanka Army commandos infiltrated LTTE-held Vanni and assassinated Father Karunaratnam, near Kilinnochi. A chilling message was being sent to Father Karunaratnam’s peers and the rest of the Tamil community.
     
    The targeted killing caused widespread grief amongst Tamils. Remembrance ceremonies and masses were held for Father Karunaratnam in the island and the Diaspora. Thousands paid homage to his remains in Kilinnochi, despite the constant threat of aerial bombing.
     
    On April 22, over a thousand people gathered in the Cathedral of Army occupied Jaffna city for a special Mass in tribute to the slain priest.
     
    Jaffna Bishop House Principal Priest, Rev. Justin Gnanapragasam who conducted the Holy Mass, said in his speech that People in the Jaffna peninsula, had for the first time since August 11 2006, when fighting resumed on the peninsula, assembled in large numbers at one place to participate in an event.
     
    On April 25 the government announced its “victorious” troops had “occupied” the Madhu Church. However the announcement was submerged by the fallout of the massive debacle the Army suffered in a major offensive in southern Jaffna on April 23.
     
    The government also declared the Church a “Security Zone” and demanded the Icon of Our Lady of Madhu be brought back. The demand was ignored by the Northeastern Church.
    On April 26 three Christian priests, including two from Tamil Nadu, were arrested and held for interrogation in Colombo.
     
    On April 27, Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka issued a public demand that the Icon should be brought back.
     
    A series of correspondence between the Army and the Bishop followed, along with media statements by both sides, whereby the government insisted the Madhu priests and the Icon return to its control and the Northeast Church refused.
     
    Meanwhile, the military said it “categorically and reservedly ridicules LTTE's blatant attempts to discredit and blame [the Army for] the murder of Father Karunaratnam”
     
    At the same time, state controlled media, began to emphasise that Father Karunaratnam, one of the Tamil country’s best known serving priests, was a staunch advocate of independence for Tamil Eelam as the only proper solution to the conflict.
     
    Father Karunaratnam expected to be assassinated by the government. He had told his sister in Canada in their last conversation that, following the assassination of Tamil National Alliance MP Sivanesan, also by a SLA command-detonated mine, he expected to be the next victim. 
     
    Father Karunaratnam had accepted the risk of martyrdom as so many have done before him in the Church
     
    In his last television interview before his death, he had focused on the Vatican’s policy.
     
    "As a seat of religion, Vatican seems to observe silence, in order not to politicize it further, earnestly hoping that the GoSL will change its position. As Catholics we believe in that."
     
    "During Communist revolutions, the communist armies destroyed Catholic churches in Russia, China and Poland. Vatican remained silent, in a spiritual way,” he said. “The Vatican is the apex body of Catholic religion, but it is also a Government. As a government they would have conveyed the necessary message to the GoSL, even if they had not publicized it."
     
    In 2004, the Pontifical Council of Peace and Justice completed the“ Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church”. Father Karunaratnam would have considered himself guided by it.
     
    The Social Doctrine states that a nation has a “fundamental right to existence”, to “its own language and culture, through which a people expresses and promotes ... its fundamental spiritual ‘sovereignty”', to “shape its life according to its own traditions, excluding, of course, every abuse of basic human rights and in particular the oppression of minorities”,
     
    Para 157 states that international law “rests upon the principle of equal respect for States, for each people's right to self-determination and for their free cooperation in view of the higher common good of humanity. Peace is founded not only on respect for human rights but also on respect for the rights of peoples, in particular the right to independence.”
     
    Para 504 states: “The right to use force for purposes of legitimate defence is associated with the duty to protect and help innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggression.”
  • Sri Lanka Army chief meets Pakistan military
    Sri Lankan Army Chief Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka, who is on a week long visit to Pakistan, will hold talks with his counterpart there on various issues including purchase of arms for his forces, embroiled in an intense battle with Tamil Tigers.

    Lt Gen Fonseka, who left for Pakistan on Sunday on an official tour, is slated to discuss several issues including defence purchases, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported.

    During his stay, the visiting Lt. Gen. Fonseka is scheduled to meet President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan Army.

    On Monday he met with Pakistan’s Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Tariq Majid and Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani

    Gen. Fonseka was accompanied by a Sri Lankan delegation comprising Major General L.A.D. Amarathunga, Director General General Staff of Army, Group Captain Ajantha Silva, Defence Advisor to the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in Pakistan and Lieutenant Colonel. R. Wijesundara, Military Assistant to Lt. Gen. Fonseka.

    General Majid told the Gen. Fonseka that Pakistan and Sri Lanka historically enjoyed excellent relations based on mutual trust, confidence and commonality of interest in maintaining regional peace, security and stability.

    He also reiterated Pakistan’s support towards the capacity building of Sri Lankan army by offering cooperation in military training and in various other fields of common interests, the Sri Lanka Army website said..

    "Reports claimed that the main purpose of the Army Chief's visit to Pakistan was to discuss the purchasing of certain required weapons and ammunition though there was no official confirmation over such claims," the newspaper said.

    A defence official said Lt Gen Fonseka is touring Pakistan on an invitation from his counterpart Kayani. "It is similar to the visit undertaken by the Army Chief to India," the official said.

    Sri Lanka has been increasing looking at China and Pakistan for weapons supplies.
  • Iranian leader in historic visit to Sri Lanka
    The strong relationship between Iran and Sri Lanka was on show last week with the high profile visit of Iranian President to Sri Lanka and the red carpet welcome that was extended to him by the Sri Lankan state.
    Iranian President Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Colombo on a Monday, April 28 on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka as part of his South Asian tour. President Mahinda Rajapakse personally received the Iranian President at the Bandaranike International Airport and the streets of Colombo were decorated with Sri Lankan and Iranian flags. Posters with slogans reading "Traditional Asian Solidarity" "The Path to Progress" were also on display along the streets of Colombo.
    Cheque book diplomacy
    Addressing a joint news conference with President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Secretariat, Ahmadinejad said: "Sri Lanka and Iran have agreed to cooperate in all spheres for the mutual benefit of each other,"
    Iranian President added that Iran was happy to assist a 'long standing friend such as Sri Lanka' and carry out 'mutual consultation and cooperation' and said that comprehensive cooperation between the two countries would provide security for both in their endeavour to 'seek justice and fair play in the world.'
    With the international community working towards isolating Iran over its nuclear program and raising concerns against the human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, both countries looking for new allies.   
    The Rajapakse administration in recent times has turned to the east towards countries like China, India and Iran, which unlike United States, Europe and Japan do not raise human rights issues as a condition for such assistance.
    Iran assistance in the energy sector is crucial to the Sri Lankan government at a time when it its finding it difficult to pay for its increasingly costly oil imports. The Goverenment of Ahmadinejad readily agreed to provide oil at concessional rates and invest heavily in improving Sri Lanka's capacity to refine oil.
    Iran agreed to invest US $ 1.5 billion in energy-related projects in Sri Lanka. One of these projects is for the production of hydel power and the other to double the capacity of an existing oil refinery in Sri Lanka. Work on the construction of the hydel project started during Ahmadinejad's visit.
    Iranian engineers have already been preparing the project report for doubling the capacity of the refinery and for modifying it to enable it to refine in future Iranian crude to be supplied at concessional rates. The existing capacity is 50,000 barrels a day.
    In addition Iran is also providing low-interest loan to Sri Lanka to enable it to purchase defence-related equipment from China and Pakistan and providing Sri Lankan Army and Military Intelligence officers.
    According to analysts, the  interest shown by Iran in Sri Lanka since last year is attributed to its desire to counter the Israeli influence in Sri Lanka and to use Sri Lanka as a base for monitoring the movements of US naval ships between the Pacific and the Gulf. Since Rajapakse came to power, the visit of US naval vessels and officers to Sri Lanka has increased. Even before he came to power, Israel had emerged as an important supplier of military equipment, particularly for the Sri Lankan Air Force.
    Analyst also pointed the fact that even at the risk of misunderstanding with Israel, Rajapakse chose to approach Iran and accepted its ready offer of assistance underlined the serious economic situation in which Sri Lanka found itself.
    In a joint statement issued at the conclusion of Iranian President's visit Sri Lanka said it supported the peaceful use of nuclear energy by Iran within the framework of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
    "The two sides confirmed the full and non-discriminatory implementation of Article IV of the NPT on peaceful nuclear co-operation." The statement read.
    It further said the two sides reiterated the importance of global nuclear disarmament, particularly the need for the nuclear powers to destroy their nuclear weapons, based on the decisions of the relevant international meetings.
    The communiqué also expressed the recognition of the inalienable rights and the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, stressed the need for security and peace in Lebanon and emphasised the need for the preservation of the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq.
    The press release further said that Iran and Sri Lanka supported, as a matter of priority, the endeavours of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to restore peace and stability.
    Explaining the importance of cultivating a close friendship with Iran, an aide close to Rajapakse said: "Iran is the sole supplier of crude oil for the only refinery in Sri Lanka in Sapugaskanda. The oil made available to Sri Lanka is given on easy payment basis and is a boon in a situation where we are compelled to spend exorbitant amounts fighting the Tamil Tigers"
    Meanwhile, government officials are busy reiterating why Sri Lanka prefers the company of its 'non-preaching' Asian cohabitants rather than the West whose critical focus on the country has only got sharper as Sri Lanka's war spirals and its human rights record further deteriorates.
    "In Asia, there is no superiority complex. Asian leaders are not obsessed with preaching like the West is," a senior government official said as economists point out that it is no secret that Sri Lanka has taken its war drained financial woes to Asia in a background where the emphatically anti- war West has threatened to cut aid and remove concessions.
  • Life in Jaffna: The seen and the unseen, the told and the untold

    When we visited Jaffna town last week, it appeared to be buzzing with life. People were attending to their New Year shopping while Tamil music blared in the background--probably from the shops that were being decorated for the festivities. Buses were plying and young girls were cycling to temple even as dusk fell.

    These are scenes that were rarely seen in the recent past. However, people still live in fear, although the government claims that troops have successfully eliminated rebels operating in the town area, ushering a sense of freedom for the people.

    A shopkeeper, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, said he and his family lived in constant fear in spite of the air of normality.“Things are normal compared to what it was. But some paramilitary groups still demand money from us. We have no choice but to give into their demands or else we would be abducted or killed. A few months ago a man who had not paid to a certain group, went missing the next day. We don’t complain to the authorities since they do little about it anyway.

    Although Jaffna peninsula was liberated during the December 1995 Operation Riviresa (Sun Rays), LTTE cells continued to operate in the region. It is argued that the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement gave the LTTE the opportunity to capitalize on the situation, by forcibly recruiting people, conscripting child soldiers, attacking government troops and organizing agitation campaigns that crippled the region.

    In the past few months the government has been claiming that troops had successfully eliminated many LTTE cells. But the ground situation tells another story. We were escorted amidst tight security in convoys of BTR armoured personnel carriers, even to the Jaffna town, which has been proclaimed safe by the government.

    In spite of government propaganda, Jaffna Security Forces commander Major General G.A Chandrasiri conceded that there were about 1000 to 1500 LTTE cadres still within the peninsula.“We have managed to bring the situation under control. People in Jaffna have started rebuilding their lives. We are in the process of clearing the region of the LTTE that has caused hardship to the people. We kill about 10-15 LTTE cadres, daily. Normality has returned to the region,” he said.

    But still the people have many woes, especially the consumers. While some traders say they are losing out on business others say they are even making profits. A merchant Arun Jayakumar said the prices of goods in Jaffna has sky rocketed due to the closure of the A-9 road and the high cost of sea transport.

    “People can no longer afford not to work even for one day. They have hardly any money, so they buy just a few essential items,” he complained. While the price of a kilo of rice at Rs. 90 and a coconut at Rs. 50 were similar to the going prices in the South now, sugar was an exorbitant Rs. 140, followed closely by dhal at Rs. 130 and flour at Rs. 120.

    With fuel rationed, black market sales were thriving openly in the market. A bottle of kerosene oil sold at Rs. 200, while petrol was sold at Rs. 300.“We have no choice but to sell essential items at high prices. We have to fight against the shortage of supplies,” a black market vendor said.

    Mohamed Raufi who is from Kathankudi, Batticaloa says he has started doing business in Jaffna as it was profitable.“In spite of the A 9 being closed I make a good profit. I buy material from Colombo and bring it here by ship. Sometimes of course I don’t make any money at all,” he said.

    However, S. Kandaiyah, a clothes shop owner said he was losing out on business. He said he is compelled to sell his goods at a high price because transport costs were high. However he lamented people were not buying clothes.

    “I have three schooling children and a mother who is sick. I don’t know how I will survive the next few weeks if I don’t get customers. People just don’t buy clothes or material anymore. If this trend continues I will have to close my shop,” he said.

    On visiting a fishing village, Gurunagar, we noticed there were no fishermen although boats had been moored. A senior military official explaining the situation said this was because fishermen avoided the scorching afternoon sun. He also added that fishing was done on a low key because the LTTE was firing artillery and mortar into the village from a locality identified as Kalmunai point (K-point). However, residents said it was the heavy security restrictions on fishermen that had virtually crippled the industry.

    The health sector in the peninsula is also facing a crisis with there being more than 1300,vacancies for nearly 86 hospitals and dispensaries.


    Muhamalai: A view from the FDL

    We are at the frontlines of Muhamalai, a deep rumbling sound of a blast is heard from the army Forward Defence Line (FDL). Seconds later thick black smoke rises into the air.“Sir do we retaliate,” a captain asks his commanding officer, a Lt. Colonel.

    In a casual tone he says, “They must have learnt about the movement of armoured vehicles. They don’t usually attack in the afternoons, other than a bit of sporadic fire and maybe a few mortars falling in front of our FDL.” This time what we heard, we are told is a mortar fired from the FDL lines of the LTTE to the FDL lines of the Army. This is followed by sounds of some sporadic gun fire that dies down within minutes.

    We are asked to put on body armour and helmets before approaching the bunkers on the Army FDLs and are warned that LTTE snipers are scanning the area to target soldiers guarding the FDL. Later the Army shells the LTTE side of the FDL, a routine afternoon operation we are told.

    “The stretch between the Forward Defence Line of the armed forces in Muhamalai and that of the LTTE, designated as no-man’s land has been successfully infiltrated by the military. Our special units have reached the edge of the perimeter beyond which the LTTE stronghold lies,” Division-55 Commander, Brigadier Kamal Guneratne says.

    He says their movements are being hampered by anti personnel mines, improvised explosive devices strung together to form a high-impact cluster bomb and booby traps. Later we hear at the Jaffna Security Forces headquarters, that a soldier who had been part of the operation in the frontlines of Muhamalai, when we visited the area, had lost a leg to an improvised explosive device.


    Asif Fuard was a member of a media team taken on a conducted tour of Jaffna by the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS)



  • Norway urges India to play decisive peace role
    Norway last week urged India to play a more proactive role in the Sri Lankan conflict by mediating between the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and said it stands ready to fully support such an initiative.

    However Sri Lanka dismissed any Norwegian involvement in future peace efforts and said it will not issue a special invitation to its ‘big brother’ to play the role of mediator.

    Speaking to Indian media on the sidelines of a Conference on Peace and Reconciliation in South Asia, organised in Oslo by Art of Living Foundation of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Norway's special envoy to Colombo Jon Hanssen-Bauer said that India was to be the "main partner" for Sri Lanka in the future, and that Oslo was in regular touch with New Delhi over the issue of peace process in its neighbouring country.

    India will play the "most decisive" role in the peace process in Sri Lanka being the "best-placed regional power" to help the island nation, Baur said.

    The top Norwegian diplomat, who was appointed the special envoy in 2006, said: "India is the main neighbour to Sri Lanka and they are always taking a keen interest in helping Sri Lanka. I think India will play the most decisive role in the peace process,"

    "India is Sri Lanka's big trade partner, it is also a political partner for a long time and they (India) would be the best-placed regional power to actually help Sri Lanka in the best way,"

    Stressing that Norway was having "very open communications" with India on the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, the envoy said: "We are consulting with them very frequently because we think India has a lot of good advice to give."

    Norwegian peace role

    Bauer also insisted it is still not the end of the road for the Norwegian’s as facilitators to the conflict and says they will resume their mediation if an invitation is extended by the parties in Sri Lanka.

    Norway brokered the now-defunct ceasefire treaty between the Sri Lankan government and the rebel LTTE in 2002 and mediated six rounds of talks between the warring parties.

    “We have always supported the Sri Lankan government and are hopeful that an invitation will soon be extended to us by both parties to re-enter the facilitation process”, Bauer added.

    “It will turn out to be vital if India can mediate and get both the Government and the LTTE back to the peace table. Norway has never abandoned the Sri Lankan Government and if India mediates, we will fully support them”

    Bauer further said no “externally designed solution” would end Sri Lanka’s dragging ethnic conflict and Oslo would be more than happy to back “any solution endorsed by the Sri Lankan people. One should not be tempted to impose externally designed solutions to conflicts, but assist the parties in defining a domestic one.

    “The common understanding between the Government and the LTTE has been that talks are aimed at finding a political solution that is acceptable to all communities in the country.”

    “For Norway, any solution endorsed by the Sri Lankan people is acceptable” he claimed.

    Although Sri Lanka has withdrawn from the Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement of 2002 with the LTTE, Oslo remains the designated facilitator between the two sides.

    Sri Lanka rejects peace role

    Reacting to Norway’s offer to continue its mediating role, Government Defence Spokesperson, Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said the Sri Lankan government would not re-extend an invitation to Norway to enter the country as mediators.

    He also said that the Sri Lankan government will not issue a special invitation to India to play the role of mediator.

    “We do not need to offer any special invitation to India. The moment we get our friends involved in the Sri Lankan conflict, it turns out to be volatile as the LTTE does not want peace in this country,” Rambukwella told the Daily Mirror newspaper.

    Rambukwella added, India has always been involved in the Sri Lankan conflict by offering its assistance to the Sri Lankan government when required and as such there was no need to invite them for any direct involvement.

    Call for Indian involvement

    The two-day conference held in Oslo was attended by H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, one of the founders of the IAHV, Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, Secreatary General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOOP), Ms. Erika Mann, General Secretary of Marumalarchchi Dravida Munneatta Kazhakam, Vaiko, Member of European Parliament, Arumugam Thondaman of Ceylon Workers Congress and a minister in the UPFA government, Jayalath Jayawardene, opposition UNP MP, Venerable Brahmanawatte Seevali Nayaka Thero from Amarapura Mahanikaya, Venerable Maduluvave Sobitha Nayaka Thero from the Nagavihara Kotte, Prof. Indra de Soysa from PRIO in Oslo and Nirj Deva, Member of European Parliament.

    Vaiko, Thondaman and Jayawardene also called for increased involvement from India to end the conflict in the island nation.

    “India is the regional superpower. Nothing can be done in Sri Lanka without the blessings of India. India needs to get involved,” Minister for Youth Empowerment and Socio-Economic Development Arumugam Thondaman said at the end of a two-day international conference held in Oslo last week.

    UNP MP Jayalath Jayawardene also called for an “active role” for India in Sri Lanka. “India is our big brother. We expect a very, very active role by India along with Norway to bring about peace in Sri Lanka,” he said.



  • TN leaders call for Indian peace role in Sri Lanka
    Tamil Nadu leaders, including Chief Minister of the state called on the Indian government to stop supplying weapons to the Sri Lankan state and assist in finding a last solution to decades long ethnic conflict.
    Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi suggested that India organise negotiations between the warring parties in Sri Lanka to bring peace to the island nation.

    "To bring about peace in Sri Lanka, the Union government should come forward to organise useful negotiations so that a proper political solution is thrashed out," he said in an interview to The Times of India.
    Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder-leader S. Ramadoss, also reflected similar sentiments when met the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi.
    Ramadoss said he had also brought to Singh’s notice the genocide of innocent Tamils in Sri Lanka.
    “The Prime Minister sympathised with the plight of the Tamils and said the government would take all measures to restore peace and tranquility in Sri Lanka. India would not supply to Sri Lanka any arms and weapons which would be offensive in nature.”
    He also drew the attention of Singh on the frequent "attacks" on Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy and asked the government to take measures to stop them.

    The general secretary of Tamil Nadu’s Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), Vaiko on Thursday met Indian Premier Manmohan Singh in Delhi and requested the Indian government to mount diplomatic pressure on the Sri Lankan government to stop its military offensive and initiate peace talks for a workable solution to fulfill the aspirations of Sri Lankan Tamils.

    Vaiko met Indian PM to brief him on his meeting with Erik Solheim and Jon Hanssen-Bauer in Oslo and the outcome of the conference organised by the International Association for Human Values (IAHV) in Norway's capital last week.

    Vaiko told the Prime Minister that the situation in Sri Lanka was becoming grave day by day, endangering the life and security of Tamils. Innocent Tamils were being killed by the military. He explained the plight and misery of Tamils living in jungles without food and medicine. While seeking the government’s intervention, he requested that India should not provide arms to Sri Lanka.

    Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told Vaiko who met him Thursday in New Delhi that there is no truth in reports on Indian supply of arms to Sri Lanka.

    Vaiko said the Prime Minister told him about India’s stand —that there could be no military solution to the problem. Singh assured him, saying: “We are not supplying arms to Sri Lanka. I will discuss the matter with the
    Foreign Minister and see what best can be done.”

    The MDMK leader also urged the Indian Prime Minister to prevail upon Colombo to abide by its earlier pledge to honor the contiguity of the traditional homeland of Tamil speaking people in a merged NorthEast.

    He also brought the grave human rights situation in Sri Lanka, where Tamils are subjected to a systematic genocide, to the attention of the Indian PM.

    He reminded the Indian PM on his earlier promise, in a meeting with him on March 10, 2007, to facilitate the transport of humanitarian supplies through the ICRC to Eelam Tamils who are heavily affected by the war and the blockade by the Government of Sri Lanka. The humanitarian supplies were collected from Tamils in Tamil Nadu.

    Urging the Indian Prime Minister to take immediate steps to dispatch humanitarian supplies he also requested Mr. Manmohan Singh to withdraw the radar equipments supplied by India to the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF), which has been responsible for many attacks on Tamil civilians. Many Tamil children have been killed and seriously injured in the attacks carried out by the SLAF, Vaiko told the Indian PM.

    He later met the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee at his residence in Delhi.

    Mukherjee told Vaiko that India had repeatedly reminded Colombo that military solution was not the option to solve the Tamil question.

    Vaiko urged Mukherjee to prevail upon Colombo to cease all military hostilities as it was the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) which was responsible for the aggression.

    Prior to his visit to Delhi, Vaiko was in Oslo attending a conference, titled "Peace and Reconciliation in South Asia," organized by the International Association for Human Values.

    In Oslo, Vaiko met Norwegian International Development Minister Erik Solheim and Jon Hanssen-Bauer, the Norwegian Special Envoy and held discussion relating to the ongoing ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.

    Expressing gratitude on behalf of the Tamils in India to the Royal Norwegian Government for its engagement as facilitator to the CFA and its continued interest in facilitating to resolve the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, his visit to Norway gave him a unique opportunity in bringing the concerns of more than 60 million Tamils in Tamil Nadu, to Norway.

    The International Community should be made aware that the Norwegian facilitated CFA had collapsed as the Sri Lankan Government seriously violated the CFA, clause by clause, and systematically scuttled it fully, before unilaterally withdrawing from the ceasefire, he said.

    The International Community, which had failed to apply timely pressure on the GoSL to honour the CFA, while the agreement was still in force, should now re-evaluate its approach to Sri Lanka based on the past experiences and adopt a strategy, which will result in restoring the diplomatic balance between the protagonists to the conflict so as to create and sustain a conducive environment for negotiations.
  • US provides aid to Sri Lanka despite abuses
    Despite continuing human rights violations including intimidation of media personnel, abductions and killings attributed to state security forces, the US has announced $ 12 million in aid to Sri Lanka.

    The U.S. government announcement comes, even as the U.S. congress ruled out Sri Lanka for a debt cancellation programme due to its human rights situation.

    The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded a five-year, $12 million contract to support regional government in Sri Lanka's eastern and north central provinces.

    Prior to the Pradeshiya sabha elections, US Ambassador Robert Blake raised his concerns of a stage managed 'election' in the Batticaloa District and emphasized the urgent need to disarm all armed groups operating in the East. He also publicly warned that US aid to Batticaloa would not be forthcoming if the elections were not free and fair.

    The elections conducted under in an atmosphere of fear and violence were won by Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), an armed paramilitary group. However deviating from its initial position the U.S. has now decided to fund the regional government headed by the paramilitary group, accused of numerous rights abuses including torture, extortion, kidnapping, and killings.

    According to USAID, the investment will expand the agency's democracy and governance work by helping to improve the areas of security, local government accountability and conflict resolution.

    "USAID remains committed to its assistance programs in Sri Lanka despite the renewed conflict," said Rebecca Cohn, USAID/Sri Lanka mission director. "We're confident our new partnership with ARD will support our goal of helping Sri Lanka and apply the best governance practices from around the world."

    The program, called Supporting Regional Governance, will build on USAID/Sri Lanka's successful democracy and governance efforts, designed several years ago to address development needs resulting from the on-going ethnic conflict after the ceasefire agreement. The new program also aims to improve regional government in eastern Sri Lanka by increasing citizen participation.

    In the meantime, the United States Congress is expected to endorse a legislative proposal shortly urging for the cancellation of debts owed by some of the world’s poorest countries but nations including Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Laos have been singled out due to their human rights situation and other financial management standard issues.

    Sri Lanka’s debt to the United States alone amounts to a whopping Rs. 53 billion while the total foreign debt is a massive Rs. 1.3 trillion according to the Central Bank 2007 Annual Report released last week.

    Jubilee USA Network, a group representing more than 80 religious denominations, development agencies, and human rights organisations from across the United States are spearheading the campaign calling for the cancellations of the debts.

    The network is of the view that the lending practices of international financial institutions are responsible for the suffering of the poor in developing nations.

    “Twenty-two countries have already received close to 100 percent cancellation of their debts to the IMF, World Bank and regional development banks,” the network disclosed.

    Sri Lanka falls under the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) programme but according to reports, the island does not meet the Jubilee Act standards in human rights and financial management standards.

    “The proposed legislation calls for ‘greater responsibility’ in lending and borrowing in the future. Supporters of the bill say current lending practices are hampering development initiatives in many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” a report filed in OneWorld stated.

    The legislation calls on the US Treasury Department to negotiate with the IMF and World Bank for an agreement for debt cancellation for several poor nations that need financial help to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by world leaders in 2000, the report added.

  • GSP plus concessions at risk
    Sri Lanka’s garment industry is worried that the duty free access it enjoys to European markets will soon be cut due to the gross human rights violations related to the government’s pursuit of a military solution to the long-standing ethnic conflict.

    An end to European Union (EU) trade concessions, known as Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP+), according to some estimates, will result in the direct loss of at least a 100,000 jobs in the pivotal garment industry and many more, indirectly.

    The GSP+ scheme allows duty free exports of almost all major Sri Lankan products, into the EU, but the garment industry has been the main beneficiary, which generates an annual revenue of $1.6 billion per year.

    Concessions linked to human rights record

    The existing concession comes up for review in later this year, in October and earlier this year a visiting EU delegation linked trade concessions to human rights record and said that the extension of the GSP+ concessions for Sri Lanka were yet to be considered.

    The EU has indicated that continuance of the GSP+ depends on how well the Sri Lankan government is seen to be implementing 27 international conventions on human rights, labour rights and environmental standards.

    "It is totally based on fulfilling these conventions. This (current review) is a technical exercise on compliance with these conventions. This means not just having the laws, but also implementing them," said Julian Wilson, head of the European Commission (EC) delegation to Sri Lanka.

    The EU has been severely critical of the government’s human rights record. There is fear that such issues as the harassment of journalists and rising political abductions, could be used as a reason to discontinue the GSP+ scheme.

    As one of the four Co-Chairs of the 2003 Tokyo Conference on the Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka, the EU helped raise pledges for post-conflict rehabilitation and development worth 4.5 billion US dollars -- but this was tied to progress in the peace process.

    Wilson denied that the EU is using the GSP+ as a political tool. "We have a commercial relationship with Sri Lanka that spans 300 years. This is not to be thrown out on a whim. So the entire exercise will be undertaken with absolute professionalism. There will be no political games.’’

    Government action

    “The extension of the GSP Plus scheme appears to be an uphill task since Sri Lanka did not fully satisfy the conditions set out by the EU such as Human Rights, good governance and environment,” according to Chairman of Sri Lanka Apparel Institute, Professor Lakdas Fernando.

    Whilst the garment industry is fearful of an end to concessions, the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse is less worried and has taken the view that compliance with international human rights laws could lead to infringement of sovreighnity.

    Speaking at the launch of the Central Bank Annual Report 2007 the President insisted that although the government is taking every possible measure to receive the GSP+ concessions, compromising the sovereignty of the country is not one of its principles.

    “If the influences of the treacherous parties in the country succeed and the European Union rejects the concessions. Our private sector should be able to increase their productivity and face these external challenges as well”.

    However, worried about the prospect of losing the concessions, last month, the government appointed a four-member ministerial team to work with the garment industry and dispel some of the concerns raised by the EU.

    In mid-March, trade minister Prof. G.L. Peiris led delegation to Europe for a series of meetings, including one with Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, on the issue.

    According to reports, Ferrero-Waldner, indicated to Pieris in no uncertain terms that Sri Lanka would qualify for GSP plus benefits only if the human rights record was put in order.

    She was also rather critical of the ongoing ethnic war and even told the Minister that; “the war will never solve any problem in Sri Lanka.”

    In January, the government unilaterally ended a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire accord with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and embarked on a military campaign to defeat the LTTE.

    According to Sri Lankan media, even as Peiris returned to the country after a failed mission in Brussels to convince the EU officials of Sri Lanka’s compliance to human rights laws and good governance, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Ajith Nivard Cabraal told the BBC that the GSP+ facility was not really necessary.

    He not only dismissed the concessions as disposable but also said he had personally advised the government the concessions were not essential to the garment industry.

    Non-compliance

    In 2005 when GSP+ came up for renewal, Sri Lanka made a plea for extension on compassionate grounds as the country had been badly hit by the December 2004 tsunami and was also recovering from the end of garment quotas offered by the United States.

    Under the original agreement between the EU and the government in 2003, Sri Lanka was obliged to 'ratify and fully implement' a set of 27 international conventions including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

    While most or all of these convenants were ratified by Colombo, far ahead of countries like China or India, it's the implementation that concerns workers. "Yes we have ratified these covenants but the implementation is the problem," Anton Marcus, general secretary of the Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees' Union said.

    Union Support

    Last month, the government gained unexpected support from local trade unions, which once said that employers and government violated core labour conventions and therefore should not be benefit from the GSP+.

    "They don't comply by the labour standards but if Sri Lanka loses the GSP+ the impact will be on the workers. So we do not want to see the GSP+ being taken away. But we do want some indication that core labour standards will be adhered to," said Marcus, last month.

    Marcus said the labour groups met a EU delegation visiting Colombo last month and said that they would back the government request for an extension of the special concession if the roadmap is implemented and international trade unions are also appointed as monitors in this process.

    "We have no problem in supporting this as long as the workers get their rights," he said, adding that one of the issues in the roadmap is the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

    "This is a key element in the core labour standards agreed by the government in 2003 to the EU which is yet to be implemented," Marcus said.

    US concerns

    Last week, U.S. Ambassador Robert Blake told a meeting of the garment trade, that while Sri Lanka is trying to convince U.S. policy makers to give preferential trade treatment, on the grounds of being a vulnerable economy and on the basis of ethical manufacturing standards, the country's negative human rights image 'eclipsed' everything else.

    The U.S. is the biggest market for Sri Lanka’s garment industry which expects to bring in three billion US dollars this year.

    Escape again

    Whilst Sri Lanka continues to commit gross human rights violation, it may, as in the past, yet again escape from any punitive measures or sanctions by the international community.

    According to local media, Roshan Lyman, EU Economic and Trade Advisor in Sri Lanka, has sent out an optimistic note to the country, informing that Sri Lanka still has plenty of opportunities to improve her human rights situation.

    “We have to first do an evaluation of all the applications and that will start only in October. Certainly, Sri Lanka has time till October”

    “We have a legal department in Brussels and only when they get all the documents for evaluation, the department will release its final results. And this will be on December 15, or so. It is after December 15 that the legal department of the EU will give out the list of countries that qualify for GSP plus benefits,” he has said.


  • Sri Lanka faces sever food shortage

    While Tamil homeland in the Northeast of the island is being subjected to a full-scale war, the Sinhala south is facing a severe food shortage and the highest rate of inflation in the history of Sri Lanka.

    An escalating war, recent heavy flooding and economic policies of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s administration are blamed for the spiraling inflation and severe shortage of food, specifically, rice, the staple food of Sri Lankans.

    With the Sri Lankan government offensives against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelma (LTTE) to capture Vanni yielding no results, the continuing war is putting a heavy burden on the island nation’s fragile economy.

    According to the Colombo Consumer Price Index (CCPI), the current rate of inflation in Sri Lanka is a dizzying 24 per cent. Even the revised index (CCPIN) estimates it at 21.6 per cent. On both counts, it is significantly higher than in other countries in the region, where the rates of inflation vary between 5 per cent and 7 per cent.

    Adding to that the rain came down heavily in March - a usually a dry month during which the rice is harvested. Tens of thousands of paddy land went under water with thousands of farmers becoming destitute overnight, unable to reap the harvest. This has created a severe shortage in supply and led to price hikes.

    Spiraling Prices

    According to The Island newspaper, the average increase in the price of rice varieties in Sri Lanka is 68 per cent. For example, the price of parboiled imported Indian rice has gone up from SLRs.40 to SLRs. 85 per kg in only a few weeks. Prices are expected to further rise because of an increasing local shortage due to bad weather, unwise import policies and increasing world prices.

    One shopper said the kilo of local rice which she bought at Rs 80 last month was being sold at Rs 112. The imported Indian rice, which two months ago fetched, a price of Rs 60 a kilo in Colombo's retail markets is now sold at Rs 100 — and the stocks are fast vanishing.

    The government is confident that it will not allow the situation to get out of hand. However traders are not so confident and predict that the prices will go up further in the coming weeks.

    Government Mismanagement

    Rice merchants blame the government for the current crisis. They say timely imports from neighboring India would have saved the country from the present plight.

    According to them, the government should have placed orders with foreign suppliers (ideally from India) when prices were low and a rise was on the cards.

    In a last minute attempt to take control of the situation, the government this week began forcing traders to sell at prices it had fixed.

    Consumer Affairs Minister Bandula Gunawardena told the BBC that selling above the price limit is prohibited under the Consumer Protection Act.


    However traders are not happy with the move and they shut down Colombo’s wholesale market on Thursday in protest against the new, uneconomical administered prices.

    Interference in private trade by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in recent times has harmed the economy and social welfare, traders added.

    The controlled price of a 65-kg sack of “samba” rice is now SLRs.4030, but the purchase price is SLRs.5400, traders point out.

    "The government has taken a hasty decision without consulting us," the president of the Old Moor Street Traders' Association, K Palaniandi Sunderam, said.

    "We can't sell at the price that the government is imposing because we have bought the rice already at a higher price."

    He also said the country's civil war was having an effect on supplies, with restrictions on movement meaning that the harvest from the north could not reach the south of the island.

    Gunawardena rejected the suggestion that there was a rice shortage in Sri Lanka and said it was a propaganda campaign that was launched before the New Year by "groups with vested interests" to artificially increase rice prices.

    Whilst Gunawardena added that traders were free to import any amount of rice, without tax, from any country, a desperate Sri Lankan government pleaded with India, Pakistan and Myanmar to sell some rice.

    Hunger hotspot

    The World Food Programme in a recent report listed Sri Lanka among eleven countries identified as "hunger's global hotspots". The other countries on the list are Afghanistan, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

    Rise in food prices is worrying because food accounts for 80 per cent of household expenditure in Sri Lanka. An average family has to spend as much as SLRs.4,000 ($37) per month on rice alone, making it unaffordable.
    Many may have to resort to cutting down on food, but this will only worsen the already worrying nutritional status of the population.

    According to the Department of Census and Statistics, only half of Sri Lanka’s total population of 20 million receives the minimum daily intake of 2,030 calories. The actual intake is 1,696 calories per day in the case of the poor, and 2,194 in the case of others.

    But according to the UNICEF, 14 per cent of children under the age of five show signs of wasting or acute undernourishment, and 29 per cent are underweight.


  • International rights panel ends work in Sri Lanka
    An international panel invited by Sri Lanka to observe the government's probe into human rights abuses shut down operations on March 31, three weeks after accusing Colombo of failing to tackle the issue.

    The International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) was formed to observe an inquiry into 16 cases of serious rights violations, including the August 2006 massacre of 17 local employees of the French charity, Action Contra la Faim (ACF).

    The panel said in a statement that they were halting their efforts to determine whether the inquiries were being conducted "in accordance with internationally accepted norms and standards."

    Earlier last month, the panel had accused the government of lacking the political will to investigate the incidents and said Sri Lankan authorities did not meet the basic minimum standards in investigating serious rights abuses.

    The IIGEPs final report is expected to be presented to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse before the panel's office formally closes on April 30, the group said.

    Key international personalities, who were earlier invited by Rajapakse to observe the inquiry proceedings, have since left the island.

    Colombo has come under fire for its rights record, with Human Rights Watch saying recently that at least 1,500 people – mostly ethnic Tamils living in the island's restive north and east – had “disappeared” between 2006 and 2007.

    The New York-based rights group said Sri Lanka was one of the world's worst perpetrators of “disappearances” and abductions, and described the situation as a “national crisis”.

    Sri Lanka's cabinet last week approved a plan to enact laws to protect witnesses to crimes and to encourage them to testify in cases of abductions and disappearances.

    International concern over the human rights situation in Sri Lanka has been mounting amid the government's escalating war against the Tamil Tigers.

    Fighting has stepped up since January, when Colombo formally pulled out of a six-year-old truce with the Tigers.

  • Iconic of the times
    Last week, as shells fired by Sri Lanka Army guns only a few miles away exploded within the Madhu Church’s complex, the resident priests followed the Bishop of Mannar’s instructions and removed the revered statue to a safer location deeper within Vanni.

    For the first time in over 300 years the presiding icon of Sri Lanka’s oldest Catholic site of pilgrimage has fled before an invading army, along with her serving priests and nuns. The last time was in 1670 when the Catholic Church fled persecution by the Protestant Dutch into the Vanni jungles.

    As Bishop Raiyappu Joseph lamented, “Our lady of Madhu becomes refugee in her own land”.

    In that way, the statue has become iconic of the entire Tamil people. Repeated Sri Lankan offensives and incessant human rights abuses over a quarter century of conflict, over a million people, almost one in three Tamils have been either internally displaced or made refugees.

    Last week’s relocation of ‘Our lady of Madhu’ is emblematic of the conflict itself.

    The targeting of the revered Madhu site is just the latest act in the Sinhala-Buddhist state’s persecution and marginalisation of the island’s other religions. Tamil-speaking Hindus, Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, and more recently, the Muslim people have been the targets of the state’s hegemonic project.

    Of course, even Sinhala Christians also face persecution, with church burnings, violence against Christian NGOs and even the repeated tabling of so-called ‘anti-conversion’ legislation in Parliament (last time the United States reportedly intervened to stop such laws being passed).

    However, Sinhala Christians have not been caught up in the state’s ethno-majoritarian onslaught in the Northeast and have not suffered the deprivations of bombardment, starvation and mass killings that the people of that region have.

    This is not the first time the Madhu church has been bombarded by the military: in 1999, as the Army fled before a Tamil Tiger offensive, retreating Sri Lankan tanks fired into the church complex, killing over thirty Tamil refugees.

    The international rules of war decree that warring parties have an obligation to protect religious sites.

    However, in the context of the state’s drive to establish an ethnocracy, non-Buddhist religious sites have in fact been the targets and objectives of military campaigns.

    The Sri Lankan state has, for example, militarised most of the major Hindu temples of the Northeast, constructing “High Security Zones” around them and separating worshippers, except on tightly regimented occasions by razor wire and machine guns.

    Even, the present fighting in Madhu stems to a great extent from the present ultra-nationalist administration’s desire to raise the Lion flag over the venerated shrine, so as to sustain its standing amongst the majority Sinhala-Buddhists who swept President Mahinda Rajapakse to power two years ago.

    The Rajapakse administration has made no effort to conceal its contempt for non-Buddhists. Consider the assassination of Tamil Parliamentarian Joseph Pararajasingham by government-backed paramilitaries, literally at the Batticaloa church’s alter in the middle of Christmas Mass in 2005. Then there was the ‘disappearance’ in 2006 of Father Brown in Jaffna and the shooting dead by soldiers of another Jaffna priest that year (even he, like so many innocent Tamils, had a grenade planted on him by his killers).

    From the beginning of the armed conflict, Tamil churches and temples have been readily targeted by the Sinhala military (as US military academic Brian Blodgett puts it, the production of Sri Lanka’s “ethnically pure” military began in 1962).

    Even during the ‘liberal’ President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s ‘War for Peace’ the Navaly church had several bombs dropped on it: almost a hundred people were killed in the airstrike in July 1995.

    The Catholic Church has been rooted for centuries in the coastal areas of the Tamil north; particularly with the arrival in Mannar of St Francis Xavier of Portugal, circa 1645.

    While militant Buddhism (as currently formulated in Sri Lanka unlike the pacifist Buddhisms practiced in the rest of Asia) - must necessarily clash with the Christian Church on ideological lines, there is another reason why the Church of the Northeast must come into confrontation with the Sinhala state.

    The Church of Our Lady of Madhu, like many other places of worship across the Northeast have given shelter to waves of refugees throughout the conflict. The Mannar site has been one of the longest-functioning sanctuaries during the war.

    In a war characterised by the state engaged in collective punishment through mass displacement, starvation by embargo and ‘scorched earth’ offensives (as conducted once again in the Eastern province during 2006-7), the Northeastern Church has sought to alleviate the very suffering and deprivation the state seeks to inflict.

    And in terms of a majoritarian state trying to crush the Tamils and their struggle for liberation, the Church’s ideological stances on key issues, including social justice and collective rights, brings it inevitably into confrontation with the Sinhala state.

    The Social mandate of the Catholic Church is enunciated quite clearly in the Vatican publication, “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” which was summarised by Pope John Paul II in his apostolic letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente (the Third Millenium).

    The Social Doctrine deals comprehensively with the social issues of our time, with chapters entitled, “The Right to work”, “The Rights of Workers”, “Private Initiative and Business Initiative”, “Foundation and Purpose of the Political Community”, “The International Community” among others.

    Perhaps the most illuminating in the context of the Tamil struggle are the chapters entitled “Political Authority” and “Human Rights”.

    Para 157 notes that “The Magisterium points out that international law “rests upon the principle of equal respect for States, for each people's right to self-determination and for their free cooperation in view of the higher common good of humanity”.[327] Peace is founded not only on respect for human rights but also on respect for the rights of peoples, in particular the right to independence.[328]”

    A nation has a “fundamental right to existence”, to “its own language and culture, through which a people expresses and promotes ... its fundamental spiritual ‘sovereignty”', to “shape its life according to its own traditions, excluding, of course, every abuse of basic human rights and in particular the oppression of minorities”,

    Para 504 of the Social Doctrine says: “The right to use force for purposes of legitimate defence is associated with the duty to protect and help innocent victims who are not able to defend themselves from acts of aggression.”

    Consequently, the persecution of the Church by an authoritarian, ethno-majoritarian state, engaged in a systematic and broad-fronted onslaught against non-Sinhala-Buddhist communities should come as no surprise.

    Of course, while the Catholic tradition, rooted in the Vatican and the living presence of the Pope, is itself under no threat due to the war in Sri Lanka, the Saivite Siddhanta tradition of Jaffna’s Hindus is unique, rooted in the ancient Tamil city and, under the onslaught of the majoritarian state, very much at risk of extinction.

    And, as it turns, out the tradition migrated, to be preserved independently of the political fortunes of the Tamil state of Eelam, its home for millennia.

    In contrast to Catholicism, there is no single organised Hindu authority: there are only an independent set of historic temples which follow the Saivite tradition.

    The acknowledged religious leader of the Northeastern Hindus is Jaffna’s Yoga Swami, whose Saiva Siddhanta sect claims its spiritual lineage from an unbroken 2000-year old line of preceptors originating in the Himalayas.

    Even as the Tamil refugees fled to the West in the eighties and nineties, the leading preceptor of Jaffna’s Hindu tradition had already laid the foundation to move the spiritual centre of the Saivite tradition to the West, their new home: in 1970 Yoga Swami, presciently as it turns out, ordained as his successor, a 22 year old American (known as Subramuniya Swami), instructing him explicitly to take his faith abroad and found a Saiva Siddhanta. It was established in Hawaii soon after.

    This decision arose out of the Saivite Hindus’ very different approach to temples, spirituality and death. The Hindus believe that the temple is the connector between the material world and the spiritual world of their gods, a connection being maintained through meditation and the rituals of Puja.

    For the faith to stay alive, the connection must be maintained unbroken at some location in the world, it matters not where. And in the temple of Siva in Hawaii founded by Subramuniya Swami, the priests have chanted prayers in Tamil and Sanskrit in an unbroken timeline since 1973, for 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

    Subramuniya Swami’s choice of America as a refuge for the Saivite tradition is no accident for as he points out: “Our constitution guarantees religious freedom.”

    Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan ethno-majoritarian state sees its war against non-Sinhala-Buddhists challengers as a campaign ‘In defence of the Dharma’ as Tessa Bartholomeuz’s detailed study of the state’s military practices is titled.

    However, Sri Lanka’s conflict is not a strictly a ‘religious war’.

    The LTTE, which spearheads the Tamils’ struggle for self-determination, is a secular organisation. It is not fighting to protect Hinduism or any other religion per se. Rather it is fighting to establish the secular state of Tamil Eelam in which all religions will be treated equally – unlike in Sri Lanka where Buddhism has ‘a first and foremost place’ as the Constitution itself makes clear.

    Indeed, the Tamils have long separated state and religion, from at least the Sangam era, as is clear from the copious literature of the era, including the Thirukkural.

    The Tamils of the Sangam age (ca. 200 BCE to 200 CE) practiced three main religions - Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Scholars find the society tolerant towards all religions, with the monarchs themselves openly encouraged religious discussions, protecting the temples and monasteries of all sects and religions, irrespective of the doctrines they themselves believed in.

    Today, as the international community continues to insist on a political solution to Sri Lanka’s conflict, they do so with a misunderstanding of the logic inherent in the state’s efforts to militarily crush the Tamil struggle for liberation.

    The international analysis of Sri Lanka as a flawed democracy trying to defeat terrorism while attempting to build a liberal state stems from the international actors’ own hopes for this goal.

    However the evidence to challenge this analysis is copious and ubiquitous, should international actors choose to look.

    For example, why did Buddhism, despite very few of the minorities practicing it, come to be enshrined in the Constitution as having a ‘first and foremost’ place?

    How did an interpretation of history which sees the Tamils as interlopers crushed and disciplined by Sinhala kings who were both valiant and devout Buddhists, come to become standard text in schools?

    Why are temples and churches attacked with abandon by the military whilst Buddhist temples and statues are rapidly erected in areas conquered by the military?

    Why are the Sri Lanka Army’s regiments (remember Sri Lanka is supposed to be a multi-ethnic state and polity) named after Sinhala kings said to have conquered the Tamils in the past?

    Why, amid the supposedly secular nature of the state, are Buddhist rituals daily practices of the military and, for that matter, the official functions of state?

    All the island’s inhabitants know precisely why. The answer lies at the heart of the Sri Lankan state and nation building project as conceived by the Sinhala-Buddhists.

    Thus, terrorism for the Sri Lankan state is essentially resistance to Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony.

    That is why journalists, academics, civil society activists and, yes, priests who challenge the state’s majoritarian practices are condemned as supporters of terrorism and become targets for murderous violence. (It is also why even the senior UN official Sir John Holmes could be denounced by the Sri Lankan government as a terrorist, without much consternation or embarrassment amongst the Sinhalese).

    Until the international community takes a close look at the logic informing the practices of the Sri Lankan state and Sinhala politics, the conflict will remain inexplicable at best and ‘senseless violence’ at worst.

    More importantly, until the international community is prepared to confront and smash the Sinhala-Buddhist project, there will be no peace in Sri Lanka.

    The Tamils are not going to accept a subordinate place in a Sinhala chauvinist order that has accorded itself a privileged position as overlords of the island.

    Not even if every non-Buddhist place of worship in the Northeast is razed to the ground.
  • Stop military aid to Sri Lanka: Indian Tamils
    Political parties in Tamil Nadu, including ones in the India’s coalition central government, have said that military aid to neighboring Sri Lanka should be stopped.

    The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), constituents of the Dravidar Munnetra Kazhagam -led DPA in Tamil Nadu, on March 13 accused the Central government India of functioning in contravention to Tamils' expectations on the Sri Lankan issue.

    "Tamils in India wanted an amicable solution to the ethnic crisis in the island nation. But the Union Government's activities are contrary to their expectations," PMK founder S Ramadoss and VCK general secretary Thol. Tirumavalavan said in a joint statement after holding a meeting to discuss the issue.

    They alleged that the Sri Lankan Government was attempting to resolve the problem through military means, by launching a 'brutal attack' on the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

    Calling for a change in the Central Government’s approach to the issue, they said India should stop providing assistance and training to the Sri Lankan Army.

    Ramadoss said both the PMK and the VCK would raise the Lankan issue in the coming budget session of the state Assembly.

    "We are prepared for any sacrifice on the issue," he added.

    Further commenting on the issue, G.K. Mani, president of PMK, which has five members in the lower house of Parliament, said an offensive by the Sri Lanka Army in the north is a matter of ‘grave concern’ as ethnic Tamils are the main target and civilians are being killed.

    “All the people who are being massacred in Sri Lanka are Tamils. They are our brethren,” he said.

    “They have already killed a lot of Tamil people. India should stop this.”

    India must stop “training officers of the Sri Lankan army and should not supply weapons,” Mani said.

    “India has a lot of members belonging to the Tamil community. People who are being killed in Sri Lanka are Tamils. People living in Tamil Nadu feel the pain. They feel as if their own people are being killed.”

    TamilNadu, the mainly Tamil state is India's sixth-most populous with 62 million people, according to the 2001 census.

    India “should ask the Sri Lankan government to find a political solution and end its military offensive,” Mani said.

    “If Norway can step in and try to solve the crisis then India should not shy away. India is Sri Lanka's neighbour.”

    In the interview, Thol Thirumavalavan, the founder of VCK, said: “India is giving moral and military support, it must stop at once.”

    “It even gave a warm welcome to the Sri Lankan military chief. This is not appropriate from our viewpoint,” he said.

    India's ban on the LTTE should be removed by holding a referendum in Tamil Nadu, Thirumavalavan said.

    “Some bureaucrats took the decision without consulting the people.”

    The Communist Party of India (CPI) also took up the issue Indian military assistance to Sri Lanka during Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian Parliament).

    The National General Secretary of the CPI, D. Raja, launched a no-holds-barred attack on the Central Government during deploring the Indian Government for “not uttering a word against the deployment of sea-mines by the Sri Lankan Government” in the Palk Straits and for giving training to the Sri Lankan army in a "clandestine" manner.

    "What is the policy of the Government of India, and why is the Government of India keeping quiet on the question of sea-mines? Why the Government of India is extending all kinds of military support to the Sri Lankan Government?" he asked.

    He sought to know why New Delhi was keen on helping a rogue nation that was "violating various international conventions" relating to land and sea mines, and asked the Indian Government to declare its policy.

    He noted that "the military offensive in Sri Lanka has been gradually turning to be a war against the Tamils" and "all sorts of human rights violations are taking place" in the war-torn island.

    Tamil National Movement leader Pala Nedumaran, along with two hundred members of the Tamil Eelam Supporters Co-ordination Committee (TESCC) staged a demonstration Saturday March 22, to condemn the Indian Government's military aid to the genocidal Sri Lankan Government.

    Nedumaran condemned the Indian Government for secretly imparting training to Sri Lankan Army personnel who were carrying out a genocide against Tamil people. He pointed out that any military support to Sri Lanka would be used only against innocent Tamils.

    Slogans condemning the Indian Government, and the Tamil Nadu Government were raised.

    Several leaders of various political and non-political organizations took part in the agitation: Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam Presidium Committee Member Anoor Jagdeesan, Devendra Kula Vellalar Kootamaippu President Pasupathi Pandian, Tamil Desa Podhuvudamai Kadchi President Maniarasan and Tamil Desa Viduthalai Iyakkam Secretary Thiaygu.

    Dravidar Kazhagam also registered its protest against Indian military assistance to the Rajapakse regime and passed a resolution demanding a change in Indian Government policy. The organisation also announced plans to stage state wide protests on March 28 to express their solidarity with Tamils in Northeast of Sri Lanka.

    The resolution further said the 80 million strong Tamil community in TamilNadu and around the world are disappointed and condemn India’s military support to Sri Lanka which contradicts with its stated policy of negotiated settlement for the island’s long dragging ethnic conflict.

    No military solution

    The central government of India, which provided $500 million aid to Sri Lanka in additional military assistance including training, repeated its customary call for negotiated political solution.

    “The way forward lies in a peacefully negotiated settlement within the framework of a united Sri Lanka acceptable to all communities, including Tamils,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a letter to a Marumalarchi Dravidar Munnetra Kazhagam, General Secretary Viako.

    In the letter dated March 5, 2008, the Indian premier further said the interests of the Tamils in Sri Lanka was of particular significance to India in the country's dealings with the island nation.

    In his letter, Mr. Singh also endorsed Sri Lanka’s move to implement the 13th amendment and refused to take action against the Sri Lankan Navy for routinely killing Indian fisherman in Palk Straits.

    Responding to the Indian premier’s letter Viako condemned Indian naval officers for endorsing "atrocious, false statements" of the Sri Lanka Navy.

    "Our naval, army and air-force officers are working hands in glove with the Sri Lanka military officers. Because of this factor, our navy officials deliberately do suppress the real facts and make false statements furnishing wrong information to the government, which is glaringly exposed in your letter," he said in a letter.

    Vaiko questioned why the Indian Government had failed in its duty to "give stern warning" to the Sri Lankan Government to stop attacking Indian fisherment. He charged that by failing to protect the lives of the Tamil Nadu fishermen from the SLN, India had betrayed the Tamils.

    Responding to Manmohan Singh's endorsement of the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, the MDMK leader pointed out that New Delhi had been easily hoodwinked by the Government of Sri Lanka.

    India should have raised serious objections when the Sri Lankan government moved Supreme Court for a demerger, he said and added that the Tamils had long ago rejected the 13th amendment.

    He pointed out that the Sri Lankan government had "sabotaged" the Norway-initiated peace talks, and was presently perpetrating a "genocidal murderous attack" on the Tamils by acquiring arms from various countries.

    On the other hand, the Tamils in Sri Lanka were dying of hunger, starvation and lack of medical aid, and yet, India had refused to give clearance to send food and medicines to the suffering Tamils.

    Vaiko also noted that it was a "matter of sorrow and shame" that the Indian Government had not condemned the murder of four Tamil Members of Parliament by the GoSL forces whereas its strategic help to Sri Lanka, through the supply of radars and military hardware, only enabled the GoSL to pursue military attacks. He labeled the red-carpet welcome to Sri Lankan Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka by the Indian Government as a black day for the Tamils.

    However according to a leading Indian academic, India's government isn't going to change its policy on Sri Lanka because of demands from Tamil political parties.

    India is providing ‘non-lethal’ weapons and trains Sri Lankan military officers, N. Manoharan, senior research fellow at the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies said.

    “This government is at the last lap of its mandate,” Manoharan said, referring to general elections due to be held next year.

    “I do not think the government will take any serious steps based on the statements made by these parties. They are going to stick to the stated policy.”

  • India risks indictment in war crimes, cautions LTTE
    The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from its Head Quarters in Vanni March 10 released a statement condemning the Indian 'State welcome' extended to Sri Lanka Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and the statements made by Indian military chiefs in this context.

    "The Indian State must take the responsibility for the ethnic genocide of the Tamils that will be carried out by the Sinhala military, re-invigorated by such moves of the Indian State," the statement said.

    "LTTE wishes to point out to the Indian State that by this historic blunder, it will continue to subject the Eelam Tamils to misery and put them in the dangerous situation of having to face ethnic genocide on a massive scale."

    The view expressed by the Indian military chiefs, "India wants to ensure that the Sri Lankan Army maintains its upperhand over the LTTE", just illustrates the efforts of the Indian State to prop up the Sinhala war machine, the LTTE statement said.

    The Indian State’s move of "propping up the politically-militarily-economically weakened SriLankan State has upset Eelam Tamils."

    "We did not leave the ceasefire agreement and we did not start the war. We are only undertaking a defensive war against the war of ethnic genocide of the Sri Lankan State."

    "We still have not abandoned the Norway sponsored peace efforts and we are ready to take part in such efforts."

    Full text of the LTTE statement follows:

    Head Quarters
    Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
    Tamil Eelam
    10 March 2008


    Is the Indian State attempting yet another historic blunder?

    The State welcome given by the Indian State to the Sri Lanka military chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who is heading the Sri Lankan State’s war of ethnic genocide against the Eelam Tamils, has deeply hurt them.

    Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) strongly condemns the Indian State action of extending a State welcome to the military chief of the Sinhala State which has unilaterally abrogated the ceasefire agreement and has launched widespread military offensives in the Tamil homeland.

    The Sri Lankan State is facing many warnings and condemnations for its attempt to seek a military solution and for its enormous human rights violations.

    Despite this, the Sinhala State ignores these warnings and condemnations and continues with its abductions, killings, and arrests of Tamils.

    The Sinhala State, keen to cover up this truth, is blaming the freedom movement of the Tamils, the LTTE, for the continuation of the war and is seeking assistance from the world for its war of ethnic genocide.

    Many of the European countries, understanding this hidden motive of the Sinhala State, have halted all assistance that could support the ethnic genocide of the Tamils.

    The Indian State also knows this truth. Yet, while pronouncing that a solution to the Tamil problem must be found through peaceful means, it is giving encouragement to the military approach of the Sinhala State. This can only lead to the intensification of the genocide of the Tamils.

    LTTE wishes to point out to the Indian State that by this historic blunder it will continue to subject the Eelam Tamils to misery and put them in the dangerous situation of having to face ethnic genocide on a massive scale. On behalf of the Eelam Tamils, LTTE kindly requests the Tamils of Tamil Nadu to understand this anti-Tamil move of the Indian State and express their condemnation.

    We did not leave the ceasefire agreement and we did not start the war. We are only undertaking a defensive war against the war of ethnic genocide of the Sri Lankan State.

    We still have not abandoned the Norway sponsored peace efforts and we are ready to take part in such efforts.

    In this context, the Indian State’s move of propping up the politically-militarily-economically weakened SriLankan State has upset Eelam Tamils.

    The view expressed by the Indian military chiefs, "India wants to ensure that the Sri Lankan Army maintains its upperhand over the LTTE", just illustrates the efforts of the Indian State to prop up the Sinhala war machine.

    The Indian State must take the responsibility for the ethnic genocide of the Tamils that will be carried out by the Sinhala military re-invigorated by such moves of the Indian State.

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Tamil asylum seekers in Australia mark 100 days of continuous protests for permanent visas

Over 200 refugees and supporters marked a significant milestone by marching 10 kilometers from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s office to the Immigration Minister’s office this week, commemorating 100 days of continuous protest.

This demonstration, which culminated in a rally and speeches in Punchbowl, highlighted the plight of refugees denied permanent visas for over 12 years. Speakers at the event shed light on the profound impact of the current system, including barriers to higher education, employment, and access to essential services.

The protest has now entered its 100th day, with Tamil asylum seekers and their supporters continuing their relentless demand for permanent protection. For 38 days, they camped outside Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke’s office in Sydney, calling on the government to end the visa limbo that has left many without basic rights and stability. Tamil asylum seekers have been in Australia for over a decade, living on short-term visas that must be renewed regularly. Without permanent residency, they are excluded from Medicare—Australia’s universal health insurance scheme—and are denied the right to work, study, travel, or access essential services. Many are also required to report to visa offices weekly.

The crisis is compounded by the controversial 'Fast Track' system introduced in 2014 by the Abbott government. According to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, this system has resulted in the rejection of around 8,500 asylum seekers' cases. It specifically targets individuals who sought asylum by sea and arrived in Australia between August 13, 2012, and December 31, 2013. Tamil asylum seekers, stuck in visa limbo for years, have launched protests nationwide, with 24-hour encampments in Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane.

Amaran - Problematic propaganda

amaran

The genre of war epic makes its grand re-entry to Tamil cinema with director Rajkumar Periasamy’s sophomore feature film, ‘Amaran.’ As is often the case with this genre, one cannot help but feel the events of the ‘true story’ onscreen have been heavily modified for easy consumption.

 

 

 

The patriotic military films of Tamil cinema had taken a back seat for a while. The subject matter is now seldom a prominent theme of a film, instead lurking in the shadows peeking through such as via the heroes in the works of Nelson Dilipkumar. The genre of war epic makes its grand re-entry to Tamil cinema with director Rajkumar Periasamy’s sophomore feature film, ‘Amaran.’ As is often the case with this genre, one cannot help but feel the events of the ‘true story’ onscreen have been heavily modified for easy consumption.

The film follows the tale of Major Mukund Varadarajan (Sivakarthikeyan) and his partner Indhu Rebecca Varghese (Sai Pallavi), who meet at college and soon become lovers. Indhu grapples with her lover’s life ambition of becoming a soldier for the Indian army, admiring his courage and more than willing to become his doting wife at home. We then watch as Mukund is stationed in Kashmir and follow along with his various missions in the volatile area. The film’s depiction of the Indian army is one solely made up of heroes rescuing civilians and looking out for the public’s interests. It is not necessary to delve too much into why this is an oversimplified and problematic portrayal.

The central performances by Sivakarthikeyan and Sai Pallavi carry the almost three hour film adequately. Despite moments where Sivakarthikeyan lacks the intensity to land highly emotional scenes, the pair deftly share the screen between them, with Pallavi picking up any slack. Another notable performance comes from Geetha Kailasam, a character actor who has featured in many films recently in the role of ‘the mother.’ ‘Amaran’ gives her another opportunity to showcase her own humorous brand of motherhood.

Technically, the film runs smoothly. The film is decently shot and edited. Other than a few overly melodramatic moments, the screenplay is solid, albeit a little superficial. GV Prakash Kumar continues his trend of matching the quality of the film with the quality of his music. The track ‘Hey Minnale’ is an earworm, but the rest of the score and soundtrack does not shine through.

Overall, ‘Amaran’ is a straightforward piece of propaganda. A shot in ‘Amaran’ depicts a soldier of the Indian army blocking a closing door with his rifle. On the other side of the door is a Kashmiri child. To appease the child, the soldier sneaks a chocolate bar through the gap in the doorway. The reverse of this tactic is what director Rajkumar Periasamy employs to hook his audience in: the sweetness of the Penelope-Odysseus relationship between Mukund and Indhu hides the intrusion of the weapon of jingoist ideology. 

Krishna's rating: 2.5 stars

___

Official trailer for film below.

UN Special Committee finds Israel warfare methods in Gaza consistent with Genocide

un_spcial

A report released by a UN Special Committee, composed of member states Malaysia, Senegal and Sri Lanka has deemed Isarel's warfare in Gaza consistent with genocide, with starvation being used as a weapon of war. 

Covering the period from October 2023 to July 2024, the report examines developments across the occupied Palestinian territory and the occupied Syrian Golan but focuses on the catastrophic impact of the current war in Gaza on the rights of Palestinians.

The Committee called on all Member States to uphold their legal obligations to prevent and stop Israel’s violations of international law and hold it accountable.

“It is the collective responsibility of every State to stop supporting the assault on Gaza and the apartheid system in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” the Committee said.

“Upholding international law and ensuring accountability for violations rests squarely on Member States. A failure to do so weakens the very core of the international legal system and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing atrocities to go unchecked.”

“Through its siege over Gaza, obstruction of humanitarian aid, alongside targeted attacks and killing of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated UN appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice and resolutions of the Security Council, Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation and serious injury, using starvation as a method of war and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population,” the Committee said.

The report documents how Israel’s extensive bombing campaign in Gaza has decimated essential services and unleashed an environmental catastrophe that will have lasting health impacts. By early 2024, over 25,000 tons of explosives—equivalent to two nuclear bombs—had been dropped on Gaza, causing massive destruction and the collapse of water and sanitation systems, agricultural devastation, and toxic pollution.

“By destroying vital water, sanitation and food systems, and contaminating the environment, Israel has created a lethal mix of crises that will inflict severe harm on generations to come,” the Committee said.

The report raises serious concerns about Israel’s use of AI-enhanced targeting systems in directing its military operations, and the impact it has had on civilians, particularly evident in the overwhelming number of women and children among the casualties.

Amid the devastation in Gaza, Israel’s escalating media censorship, suppression of dissent, and targeting of journalists are deliberate efforts to block global access to information, the Committee found. It also noted how social media companies disproportionately removed “pro-Palestinian content” in comparison with posts inciting violence against Palestinians.

The Committee condemned the ongoing smear campaign and other attacks against UNRWA and the UN at large.

The Special Committee is composed of three Member States: Malaysia, Senegal and Sri Lanka. This year the Member States are represented by H.E. Mr. Ahmad Faisal Muhamad, Permanent Representative of Malaysia to the United Nations in New York, H.E. Mr. Cheikh Niang, Permanent Representative of Senegal to the United Nations in New York, and H.E. Mr. Peter Mohan Maithri Pieris, Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in New York.. The committee called on member states to urgently act on the following 

(a) Implement their erga omnes obligations, including as they relate to the prevention and prohibition of genocide, torture, racial segregation and apartheid, and refrain from aiding or abetting the commission of all violations of peremptory norms of international law;

(b) Leverage their influence to ensure Israel ceases its policies and practices negatively affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories;  

(c) Halt all offensive arms transfers, including weapons, explosives, guns and/or ammunition, to Israel;

(d) Hold nationals, including those with dual Israeli citizenship, involved in settler violence or violations in Gaza, accountable for violations of international law;  

(e) Review financial transfer policies that allow religious and charitable organizations to fund activities in Israel, which enable the further sustenance of an apartheid system;  

(f) Support UNRWA politically and financially, including by increasing funding through the United Nations regular budget;  

(g) Protect and ensure respect for human rights in economic activities, including by setting out clear expectations for businesses in terms of responsible conduct consistent with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and exercising heightened due diligence when supporting business enterprises;

(h) Hold business entities fully accountable for complicity in violations of international law, whether through their supply of arms, provision of digital products and services and/or engagement in technology transfer and facilitation (including artificial intelligence) or links to value chains (including algorithmic-based decisionmaking systems) that enable Israel’s ongoing onslaught in Gaza and apartheid system of injustice in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem;

(i) Give full effect to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice of 19 July, by adhering to the legal obligations outlined by the Court, and considering specific measures or further measures required to put an end to the illegal presence of Israel in the occupied territories;

(j) Fully cooperate with the International Criminal Court. 

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