Sri Lanka has announced that all state owned land in the North-East, part of the former war zone, will now be up for grabs, as the government looks to sell them commercially.

Urban Development Authority Rohan Fernando told a forum on property development at the Central Bank,

"Now we are making arrangements to provide lands from Mankulam, Kilinochchi and Jaffna."

"So these lands will also come in to the market very soon for investment."

The Urban Development Authority is under the Ministry of Defence, overseen by the President’s brother Gothbaya Rajapakse.

Much of this acquired land has been under the control of various “state agencies” according to government officials.

To see where they acquired this land from read our earlier posts:

‘Takers, keepers’ (Sep 2011)

‘Government uses lifting of emergency to facilitate land grab’ (Sep 2011)

‘IDPs branded 'squatters on state land'’ (Sep 2011)

‘Diaspora Tamils have to reapply for land deeds’ (Sep 2011)

Four international human rights groups, working against the use of torture, submitted a joint report to the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) to rival the committee's customary third periodic report of Sri Lanka, due to be discussed next month.

The 22 page report was compiled by Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) based in Hong Kong, REDRESS Trust in London, Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT) in Denmark and Action des chrétiens pour l'abolition de la torture (ACAT France) in France.

The report condemns the widespread torture practised in Sri Lanka, the government's failure to adequately investigate such allegations and the "inadequate legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures taken to prevent acts of torture in territory under Sri Lanka’s jurisdiction".

The groups urged the UN to act, in order to ensure accounability and justice, given Sri Lanka's ongoing failure to make any meaningful progress on the issue.

"Should Sri Lanka continue to fail to take the requisite measures despite the availability of credible evidence of torture and ill-treatment, it is the responsibility of the United Nations and its organs, as well as the treaty bodies, to do their utmost to ensure accountability and justice for the victims of these violations."

"It is now the next logical step to call for a full implementation of the Panel’s recommendations.

"This could build on previous precedents where UN bodies have urged the Secretary-General to call for the establishment of an international accountability mechanism, namely the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

"Conversely, a failure to take action would compound the climate of impunity in Sri Lanka and would constitute a betrayal of the Convention against Torture, which was adopted ‘to make more effective the struggle against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment throughout the world’."

Further extracts are reproduced below:

Arbitary arrests and police interference

"there have been a number of incidents in which arrested or detained persons were denied effective access to lawyers of their choice, especially at the most crucial initial stages of their arrest and first interrogations by the police. Intimidation of lawyers themselves who appear for clients in cases where police officers are involved is also evident."

"[Junior medical officers] frequently find themselves subject to considerable police influence. This concerns, in particular, the police practices of refusing to leave a room or a place when judicial medical officers examine individuals who may have suffered from torture and ill-treatment, and write their reports."

"There is a significant shortage of competent Tamil-speaking judicial translators and interpreters."

"There are few Tamil-speaking police officers, prosecutors and judges, which adds to the overall situation of heightened vulnerability of Tamil detainees."

Use of Prevention of Terrorism Act and police violence on Tamil civilians

"Although the Emergency Regulations were allowed to lapse on 31 August 2011, there is no intention of the Government to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Instead, the Attorney General recently announced the Government’s plans to introduce new regulations under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The situation of total arbitrariness in which those detainees find themselves is exacerbated by the fact that they are being held in undisclosed and remote locations in the Northern Province.

In particular, such makeshift detention  centres are frequently disguised as orphanages, children’s centres, welfare centres or medical institutions.

In this situation there is no realistic opportunity for independent monitoring of those places of detention, for example, by magistrates even if they were prepared, in the circumstances, to exercise their right to do so, as they will not be able to locate the relevant de facto detention centre.

One of the recent examples of mass detention under the Emergency Regulations took place in the village of Navanthurai, Jaffna District, Northern Province, on 23 August 2011.

In a late-night operation conducted by the Sri Lankan Army more than one hundred villagers were arrested and subsequently detained.

They were severely beaten up with rifle butts and iron rods and dragged to the premises of the army detachment not far from their village.

Women and children who tried to defend their husbands and fathers were also beaten.

Those injured were initially not provided with medical treatment.

The Assistant Superintendent of Police for the Jaffna District who appeared in person in the subsequent proceedings before the Magistrate accused the villagers of “unlawful gathering”, thus suggesting the latter had been detained by the Army on the basis of the provisions of the Emergency Regulations"

Rajapaksa's regime on human rights

"the Government attempts to discredit the very idea of human rights. The authorities frequently refer to human rights as a “western concept” that is detrimental to national integrity and sovereignty."

"The totality of the Government’s comments on human rights and the individuals and bodies seeking to promote and protect human rights results in the cultivation of a negative perception of human rights and reinforce a climate of impunity. 

"Such an attitude openly expressed at the highest levels of administration seemingly contributes to an indifferent attitude towards human rights education, especially among law-enforcement personnel."

Failure to comply with convention against torture

"One of the most crucial issues severely undermining Sri Lanka’s compliance with its obligations under the Convention is its systemic failure to promptly and impartially examine credible allegations of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

 

Lack of independence and impartiality

"The lack of independence and impartiality of investigations into allegations of torture and ill-treatment, particularly by  the police, is a central factor that perpetuates the climate of impunity."

The Sri Lanka President younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, has been appointed electoral organiser of Kolonnawa on Tuesday. Basil Rajapaksa also a senior adviser of the President and Minister of Economic Development.
 
The role will involve being responsible for all political and development activities of the Kolonnawa elections.

The Kolonnawa electorate saw severe violence inflicted on rival political factions where Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra was killed alongside three of his supporters.

See '4 killed, 10 wounded in ruling party gun battle'

A trust set up by Liam Fox supposedly to help Sri Lanka’s development appears to have achieved nothing other than to pay for his trips to the country, one of his allies has told the Financial Times.

See the report here.

The Sri Lanka Development Trust consists of two funds, the “Sri Lanka Infrastructure Development Fund” and the “Sri Lanka Charitable Fund”.

Yet neither fund is up and running, according to Lord Bell, whose lobbying firm Bell Pottinger represented the Sri Lankan government until last December.

The Sri Lanka Development Trust is not registered as a charity or a company in the UK. It remains unclear who works for it, how it is funded or what it does, the Financial Times said

“I’m not aware that any activity exists yet or that anybody has invested any money in it,” said Lord Bell.

There have been discussions with the Sri Lankan government and the governor of the central bank in the country, he added.

Yet the trust paid for at least three return trips between London and Colombo – worth about £7,500 – for Dr Fox while he was in opposition in 2008 and 2009.

Emma Reynolds, a Labour MP, said it was “odd” that the Sri Lanka Development Trust “doesn’t seem to be doing any development in Sri Lanka”:

“Dr Fox needs to explain exactly what this trust is, who is behind it, where its money comes from and where the money goes.”

Lord Bell did not know how the Sri Lanka Development Trust paid for Dr Fox’s flights without other visible activities. He told the FT:

“I do not know an answer to your question. I can understand why you are asking.”

See our earlier post:

Mysterious trust funded Fox’s trips to Sri Lanka  

Award-winning journalist Allison Pearson writes in her column for The Daily Telegraph on the Fox-Werritty saga:

“It seems that our Defence Secretary hardly dared leave the country without his former flatmate coming along to hold his hand. Mr Werritty, who went on a dizzying 18 foreign trips, enjoyed access to the married minister that neglected Westminster widows can only dream of.

“‘I should not have allowed the impression of wrongdoing to arise,’ weaselled Dr Fox. No, the impression of wrongdoing arose, minister, because you did wrong and went on doing it, which either makes you reckless, arrogant or a fool, or all three. None of these being particularly desirable qualities in the UK’s Secretary of State for Defence.

“We don’t much care if Dr Fox has enjoyed some kind of tortured pash with his personal Winnie the Pooh. His private life is his own affair. But no normal person takes their best friend to work. No normal person would think they could get away with taking their friend to scores of sensitive meetings. Dr Fox has not acted normally. I long to know what the soldiers at the MoD make of him.” 

And Robert Shrimsley, the Managing Editor of FT.com, offers glimpses of what a fly-on-the-wall documentary might reveal. Enjoy here!

These are extracts of The Times’ editorial on Wednesday Oct 12:

“Liam Fox has many questions to answer about the role of a personal friend at the Ministry of Defence. But one aspect of this imbroglio is already clear: in his dealings in a particular part of the world, Dr Fox exceeded the bounds of his ministerial remit.

“The issue is Sri Lanka, on which Dr Fox appears to have been conducting his own independent foreign policy. That policy is wrong in itself and Dr Fox had no legitimate business pursuing it. But beyond that issue, he needs urgently to explain why Adam Werritty attended meetings with Sri Lankan officials.

“[T]he actions of Sri Lanka’s armed forces in response [to Tamil separatists' violence] were grotesque and criminal. The country’s political leaders lied about them at the time and lie still. President Rajapaksa has said, feebly and evasively, to The Times that his forces “never killed any civilians as such”.

“That is the political context of [Britain’s] recent Sri Lankan policy. Regardless, Dr Fox met Mr Rajapaksa last December when he visited the UK. He did so even though David Cameron and William Hague passed up the opportunity of similar meetings. For Dr Fox to circumvent the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary was, at best, to muddy what ought to have been an unambiguous message.

“These meetings were far from idiosyncrasies or mere courtesy calls. Dr Fox made four visits to Sri Lanka as a guest of its Government, accepting hospitality amounting to some £8,000, in the year before the UK general election of 2010. The MoD has confirmed that on one of those visits Dr Fox was joined by Mr Werritty, while stating that this was a private rather than official presence.

“The apparent blurring of Dr Fox’s official duties and private concerns is the central question about his relations with Mr Werritty, whose business cards declared that he was an adviser to Dr Fox even though he held no post at the MoD. The Defence Secretary’s links with the Sri Lankan Government make this question still more pressing.

“Mr Werritty is a private citizen, with no role in government, who has participated in Dr Fox’s unilateral interventions in foreign affairs. The foreign government in question has committed war crimes that it declines to allow the UN to investigate. Regardless of whether Mr Werritty acted as an intermediary, these relations are rotten.”

See also:

Channel 4: Liam Fox friend accused over Sri Lanka 'arms deal' (Oct 11)

The Guardian: Liam Fox's role in the politics of Sri Lanka (Oct 8)

The Times newspaper reports Wednesday that Liam Fox is to face new questions over his links to Sri Lanka after it emerged that three of his trips there were funded by a mysterious trust that is not registered as a charity or a company.

Three visits to Sri Lanka, which cost about £7,500 and took place when Dr Fox was Shadow Defence Secretary, were funded by the Sri Lanka Development Trust.

It has an address in Edinburgh but is unknown to the Charity Commission and Companies House.

Tuesday night Labour put down parliamentary questions demanding to know how many times Dr. Fox had visited Sri Lanka and how many trips were financed by the Trust.

Dr. Fox was a guest of the Sri Lankan Government four times in less than 12 months before the May 2010 UK election.

On Monday Dr Fox said that the Trust was his attempt to “create a mechanism that would allow reconstruction funding to occur through the private sector”.

However, the Defence Secretary’s office would not reveal who funds it, how it makes a profit and who works for it.

“On Sri Lankan issues as you remember, I have established a Panel of Experts and they have reviewed all these situations and made many recommendations.



These recommendations are something which needs to be implemented by the Sri Lankan people.

I have been waiting and waiting until the Sri Lankan government would respond, positively, to the implementation of recommendation done by Panel of Experts.”

“Just a couple of weeks ago I decided to refer this report to the Human Rights Council and my High Commissioner for Human Rights and they are now reviewing this Panel of Experts Report.” 



Sri Lanka's ambassador to Belgium, Luxemburg and the EU, Ravinatha Aryasinha, called the screening of 'Sri Lanka's Killing Fields' today an "indecent hurry" that is part of a wider "obsessive attack".

In a statement released by the embassy, Aryasinha states,

“it would appear that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group who sponsored the screening, are intent on pre-judging and discrediting the LLRC report even before it is released”. 

“This indecent hurry to host such events and to call for international inquiries, is probably due to their fear that once the LLRC report comes out, they will be short of one further excuse, with which to continue their obsessive attack on the Government of Sri Lanka”

“it is important that European States and institutions that stand for the ideals of freedom and democracy, should not be fooled by the false pretences of those elements behind such exercises”,

"The timing of this event was particularly sinister, coming on the eve of the presentation of the LLRC Report due mid-November.

"The event was also a reminder that the sponsors were driven by the compulsions of certain interested elements of the Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates who have become vote banks and pressure groups in several Western countries."

Amnesty Secretary-General Salil Shetty met with Kevin Rudd and pressed him to back calls for an independent international investigation into war crimes.

Previously Rudd had stated that Australia would await the outcome of Sri Lanka’s LLRC report before acting, but Shetty told reporters,

"We know what it's going to say because we know that the process was deeply flawed.

We've waited long enough. The time is right to call for an independent investigation."

Shetty said that the Foreign Minister was receptive to his proposals, stating,

"He understands where we are coming from. I think they're going to actively consider our request.”

Rudd met with members of the Tamil diaspora in June, telling them that allegations of war crimes should be "tested, assessed and, if accurate, substantiated".

After the screening of “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields” on Australian television in July, Rudd then tweeted that the footage was "deeply disturbing" and said,

"(The) UN Human Rights Council can't simply push this to one side. Action needed."

Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s friend Adam Werrity has been accused of discussing arms deals with the Sri Lankan Government, Channel 4 reported tonight.

Three ‘highly placed sources’ in Sri Lanka have independently told Channel 4 news team that Mr Werrity discussed ‘arms deals’ with a senior figure in Mahinda Rajapakse’s regime.

He was reportedly asked by the Sri Lankan official to lobby the British Government over the supply of ‘arms, security equipment and aviation parts’.

Emma Reynolds MP, shadow Foreign Office minister told Channel 4’s Jonathan Miller:

"It’s clearly not appropriate for the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, to visit Sri Lanka frequently if he’s sponsored by the Sri Lankan government, a government, which is under scrutiny for alleged war crimes. Questions need to be asked about the role of Adam Werritty in these visits. The Defence Secretary needs to clarify what his relationship is with the Sri Lankan government."

See Channel 4 report here.

Speaking to the Indian foreign secretary, Ranjan Mathai, during his 3 day visit of Sri Lanka and the North-East, Anandasangaree of the TULF, Sitharthan of the PLOTE and Sritharan of the EPRLF, condemned the Sri Lankan government's attempt to "change the demographic pattern of the North-East".

They added that Tamils were 'highly perturbed' by the ever increasing militarisation of the North-East.

"The government has no plans for demilitarization, contrary to which the forces are involving more and more in civil administration.

"The people cannot (hold) any function without the participation of some army personnel. The people are terrified over the presence of army personnel in every nook and corner of the north."

Highlighting the Sri Lankan government's pledge to re-register all lands, the trio described the move as "unjustfiable".

They added,

"Why should the government do it in areas where people have not yet properly settled, some have not yet identified their lands, and some had gone aboard?"

"Above all, a lot of people died during the war. What and what property and where these lands are, is still not known. The government must abandon the move."

"All this mess is created due to the government's failure to find an early solution to the ethnic problem. A solution acceptable to the minorities should be found."
 

Mr. Adam Werritty, the close friend of British Defence Secretary Liam Fox whose working relationship with the minister is under investigation by the Ministry of Defence and at the centre of a media storm, was a frontman for Dr. Fox in the latter’s dealing with Sri Lanka, The Daily Telegraph newspaper revealed Monday.

Mr. Werritty "played a central part in arranging [Dr. Fox's] contacts with members of the Sri Lankan government [in 2010 and 2011]," the paper said.

The Independent newspaper has also uncovered the same. See its report here.

British press reports revealed last week that Mr Werritty accompanied Dr Fox to meetings in Colombo and London with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and ministers. See The Guardian newspaper's report here.

The Daily Telegraph said it can now disclose that Mr Werritty was in direct contact with Sri Lankan ministers on Dr Fox’s behalf in December last year.

The minister had planned a “private” trip to Colombo on Dec 20, which was vetoed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

British diplomats believe Dr Fox’s close relationship with the Sri Lankan government, which is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, undermines UK foreign policy.

It is understood that Mr Werritty had flown to Colombo several days before Dr Fox’s scheduled arrival in December, the paper says.

When the FCO intervened, it was Mr Werritty, and not the British embassy, who told Sri Lankan ministers that the trip had been called off, the paper adds.

Prof. GL Peiris, the Sri Lankan foreign minister, is understood to have asked Mr Werritty to ensure that the trip was described as postponed instead of cancelled, and the MoD later issued a statement saying Dr Fox’s visit had been “postponed”.

Dr. Fox subsequently carried out the trip in July this year, when Mr Werritty was again in Sri Lanka.

What is not clear is why Mr. Werritty, said to have defence industry links, was acting for Dr. Fox in the latter’s interactions with Sri Lanka, not least given the latter's close links with the Colombo establishment.

See the video published by The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian newspapers of Dr. Fox and Mr. Werritty meeting President Rajapaksa in London last December:

A senior source at the British Foreign Office told The Times Sunday night that there had been disquiet at Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s links to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa since late last year.

Dr Fox sent a senior delegation of British naval officers to the inauguration of Rajapaksa in what the Sri Lankan regime believed was a gesture of support for his second term as President, the paper reports Monday.

Dr Fox then infuriated Foreign Office officials by agreeing to meet Mr Rajapaksa in person the following month, as feared that the Defence Secretary was undermining UK efforts to press the Sri Lankans to allow a UN investigation into alleged war crimes, the paper adds.

Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague turned down requests to see the Sri Lankan President during a visit to the UK only to discover Dr Fox had agreed to see him.

“It’s true we found out pretty late in the day,” the Foreign Office source told The Times.

Although Dr Fox was ordered to explain that the meeting was entirely personal, it was trumpeted by the Sri Lankan regime as a meeting between a head of state and the UK Defence Secretary, the paper noted.

The paper adds that presence of Mr Adam Werritty, whose relationship with Dr Fox is at the centre of a political storm in Britain this weekend, at the meeting with Mr Rajapaksa in London last December, and a subsequent visit by the Defence Secretary to Colombo this summer, has focused attention anew on Dr Fox’s links to the Colombo regime.

While in Opposition Dr Fox visited Sri Lanka five times in three years as a guest of the Rajapaksa government and had to apologise for failing to mention the interest when asking parliamentary questions about the country, the paper pointed out.