THE Australian government went to Sri Lanka this week bearing gifts in the hope of winning co-operation in its bid to reduce asylum-seeker numbers.

One was material: $11 million towards de-mining the former northern conflict zone and resettling about 250,000 civilians still held behind razor wire in internally displaced people (IDP) camps.

The other was less tangible: rhetoric that pandered to the Sri Lankan view that most asylum-seekers are Tamil Tigers seeking to reinvigorate the separatist struggle from distant shores.

Both bore the whiff of appeasement.

While the EU is poised to withdraw Sri Lanka's tax exemption status for textile exports, worth $US3.3 billion annually, because of reported human rights abuses there, and the US administration has called for the camps and former conflict zones to be opened to international scrutiny, Australian officials say they prefer a more "constructive" approach.

In a joint news conference late on Monday night to announce a memorandum of understanding on people-smuggling, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith emphasised the importance of apprehending and prosecuting criminal and terror syndicates behind the people-smuggling trade.

"We face a heightened challenge from the criminal syndicates behind people-smuggling and we need to up our efforts to combat that, and that's what our agreement is about today," Mr Smith said.

Australia's latest financial contribution will provide $6m to clear mines in resettlement areas, $2m for food assistance to people who have been resettled and $3m through the UN for housing reconstruction work.

In announcing the aid grant, Mr Smith welcomed the Sri Lankan government's commitment to moving people out of IDP camps and back into their communities "with all the freedoms associated with that, particularly the freedom of movement".

That will be news to people such as Pawani, a 25-year-old Tamil woman who lost both her legs in March during heavy government shelling of Killinochchi, the administrative capital of the former LTTE-held north.

She was released into her parents' care only last month after spending five months in an IDP camp but enjoys none of the freedom of movement Mr Smith referred to this week.

Confined to her family home in a tiny fishing village in eastern Batticaloa Province, Pawani cannot even travel the few kilometres to the neighbouring village to see relatives and friends without first seeking permission from security officers.

"I have been advised by the authorities that I have to live at the one address I have been released to," she told The Australian.

"When I want to leave this village, I have to inform the authorities.

"Even to go to hospital, I have to get permission.

"I have many relations who live in neighbouring villages but I can't visit them. Even if I get permission, I am not allowed to stay the night."

Neither Pawani nor her family has received compensation for her life-changing injuries and she has no idea whether the government will help pay for artificial limbs and rehabilitation.

Colombo-based human rights lawyer Gowry Tharawasa has little faith Australia's latest aid contribution, which brings Canberra's total financial aid package since the war's end in May to $49m, will find its way to the people most in need.

"IDPs who have been released have not been given any proper facilities," Ms Tharawasa said yesterday.

"No aid has been provided. There's been big publicity about people released but they have been dropped in villages without even basic facilities."

15 abducted from transit camp

Fifteen Internally Displaced Tamil men were abducted by a group of unidentified persons clad in army uniform from the transit camp located in the complex of Eachchilampathu Sri Shenpaga Maha Vidiyalayam in Seruvila division in Trincomalee district. The abducted IDPs are married men between 25-45, according to complaints filed with the police and the civil authority by abductees relatives. A group of one hundred IDPs held in Vavuniyaa internment camp were brought to Eachchilampathu Sri Shempaga Maha Vidiyalayam transit camp. The IDPs, all former residents of villages in Moothoor east and released from Vavuniya camps, were housed temporarily in Sri Shenpaga Maha Vidiyalayam to be resettled in their villages after screening by security forces to find out whether they were involved in terrorist activity. The abductions occurred while the refugees were awaiting resettlement. (TamilNet)

54 PTA, ER arrestees remanded

Colombo Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi ordered remand till November 12 for forty-five suspects, majority of them Tamils, arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and Emergency Regulations (ER) for allegedly being involved in terrorist activities in the hill country in the central province. They were produced in court after being interrogated by the CID held under the detention order of the Defence Ministry. Some of the suspects are Muslims and Sinhalese. CID officers told court that they arrested the suspects on receipt of information that they had under gone training under Liberation Tigers in Mullaiththeevu and had been told to work for them. The suspects had even provided shelter and other facilities in the hill country to Liberation Tigers, they said. CID said they had recorded confessions made by the suspects detailing their involvement in terrorist activities and moved court to remand the suspects until the conclusion of the investigations. (TamilNet)

Colombo household checking again

The new Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mahinda Balasooriya, on his assumption of duty has reimposed checking of house holds of Tamil residents in Colombo. As in the LTTE war period, police personnel have been instructed to question any visitor lodged in a residence not registered with the respective police station in the area and to take any person living in a household unregistered into police custody. Meanwhile, police personnel attached to stations in Colombo complain that they have to perform duties of civic police after fulfilling their normal 12-hour duty. The renewed rounds of checking have drained police personnel attached to other branches due to renewed checking of households after the new IGP assumed office. According to police sources there are 10-member units of civic police in a police station and these personnel function under an officer who is in charge of a given street. The civic police functions under a DIG. (TamilNet)

IDPs suffer in flooded camps

Most of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps for Vanni IDPs in Vavuniyaa being flooded due to the current down pour many of the IDPs held in Menik Farm camp had fled from their shelters seeking refuge in the public halls and school buildings located inside the camp. Meanwhile, amid heavy rains and thunder civil authorities continue to transfer IDPs from Menik Farm during nights and drop them in public places in areas where their homes are located. These IDPs with their bags and baggage are stranded without any one to take them to safe places till they find their way to their homes in nights. (TamilNet)

35,000 students still interned

Thirty-five thousand students displaced from Vanni in the last leg of war are still being detained in internment camps in Vavuniyaa. The number of IDP students in these internment camps earlier was about 65,000. The number had dropped to 35,000 following current resettlement, education authority sources claim. UNESCO has provided 50,000 US dollars for the maintenance of these IDP students. Part of UNESCO funds would be used to improve mental health related facilities of the students and for this purpose multimedia projectors for short films, computer games, music, drawing materials and books worth about Rs.3.5 million were handed over to the education authorities. (TamilNet)

No shelter for displaced taken to Jaffna

The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) taken to Jaffna district from the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniya are suffering in pouring rain without sufficient shelter for them. Divisional Secretaries (DSs) of Jaffna district find hard to meet their immediate needs for want of funds. The ten government ministers recently appointed by the President of Sri Lanka for Divisional Secretary areas in Jaffna to function as resettlement coordinators have failed to return to Jaffna after their first visit. Jaffna district DSs are at a quandary to take decisions without the approval of the respective ministers and due to lack of funds to spend on the immediate needs of the IDPs. 3,964 persons of 1,242 families were brought to Jaffna recently. They have nothing but tarpaulins to stay in and sufficient arrangements have not been made to meet their immediate needs as rain pours down in Jaffna district. (TamilNet)

R2P reduced to "noble rhetoric"

During an invited lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of London University, Noam Chomsky, one of the world's well known intellectual and professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, said on Sri Lanka, that although there's "a lot of noble rhetoric about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), there is no particular Western advantage in protecting people who are being slaughtered, and are being thrown into concentration camps. Somehow these didn't make it in the noble rhetoric," and added Sri Lanka was a "horror story, especially towards the end." Chomsky added that in the way West acts, "there is no protection for any people who it doesn't do any good [to the West] to protect, and basically Sri Lankans [Tamils] are in that unfortunate position." On China's engagement with Sri Lanka, Chomsky said, "they [China] don't gain anything by supporting the Tamil refugees in concentration camps, so why should they do it [help]? Infact, most of the South supported the Sri Lankan Government. That's who they are," Chomsky said. On R2P, Chomsky referred to a discussion he had this summer in the UN General Assembly, and said the "hypocrisy was so profound, it was suffocating." (TamilNet)

Sri Lanka delivered its formal response to a European Union probe that found it in breach of international human rights laws and said it was hopeful of retaining a lucrative trade concession with the bloc.

The EU had set Friday November 6 as a deadline for Sri Lanka to respond to its report.

The report said that Sri Lanka was in breach of full implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The failure could spell the end, at least temporarily, of the tariff concessions.

The concession, the Generalised System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) is a special incentive scheme for sustainable development and good governance, offering tariff cuts to support vulnerable developing countries in ratification and implementation of international conventions in these areas.

It is currently worth $116 million to the island nation.

"We will be setting out to clarify the points they have raised," Sri Lankan Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told the media.

"We are continuing the dialogue with the EU and we are hopeful that finally that GSP+ is granted."

Sri Lanka had earlier criticised the report as an attempt to undermine its administration.

Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama later handed his country’s response document to all EU member states represented in Colombo, the ministry said in a statement.

The Sri Lankan government submitted a 48- page document to the EU in Colombo on November 6, titled ‘Observations of the GOSL [Government of Sri Lanka] in Respect of the Report on the Findings of the Investigation with Respect to the Effective Implementation of Certain Human Rights Conventions in Sri Lanka’.

"Minister Bogollagama expressed confidence that the observations provided by Sri Lanka would be extensively examined by the European Commission and the findings reflected in its recommendation to the Council of the European Union," the ministry statement said.

The report challenged the findings of the EU report.

It said, "in this situation, of the very foundation of the (EU) Report being in question, it would be reasonable to keep action on the document in abeyance, while the authorities of the European Commission and the Government of Sri Lanka continue a constructive engagement concerning the issues at hand," reported ICP.

The government has maintained that while not cooperating with the EU investigation, its preferred mode of negotiation was through bilateral dialogue.

"The government of Sri Lanka is taking positive action (on the GSP Plus extension)," Bogollagama had said the day before he handed over the report. "We are in dialogue with the EU."

Export Development and International Trade Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris told the Sri Lankan parliament on November 5 that the government had prepared a comprehensive response to the EU report.

Immediately after the October EU report came out, Peiris said that the government would not change its stance and subject itself to any kind of EU investigation.

The government had rejected EU requests for an investigation in October 2008 and maintained that such an investigation from foreign powers would undermine the country’s sovereignty.

The EU's ambassador to Sri Lanka, Bernard Savage, told Reuters after receiving the report that he expected a decision from the European Commission later this month.

EU diplomats have said Sri Lanka could retain the concession, if it could address concerns raised, including rapid resettlement of more than 150,000 war displaced, release of an arrested journalist, ensuring media freedom and protecting human rights.

Sri Lanka, which had initially said it would not respond, appointed a four-member panel to analyse and reply to the EU report, which had alleged human rights violations and torture.

Human Rights Minister Samarasinghe, a member of the panel, said the country had taken steps to address the "problems and challenges" confronting it in the aftermath of the end of its 25-year civil war in May, reported Reuters.

He said more than 40 percent of the 288,000 people displaced by the war, known as internally displaced persons or IDPs, had been resettled, while a national action plan to address issues such as torture and extra-judicial killings was being finalised.

"Certainly on IDPs, that's something that they were interested in, now we have a successful position to communicate to them," Reuters quoted him as saying.

Samarasinghe added that Sri Lanka's president had appointed a five-member committee of local legal and academic experts to probe a U.S. State Department report of possible war crimes at the end of the conflict.

"We have already responded 99.9 percent of the allegations with clear answers. But, we are still ready to emphasise the Sri Lankan government stance, based on the recommendations through this independent committee report," he said.

Separately, Rajiva Wijesinha, secretary of the Sri Lankan disaster management and human rights ministry, told Al Jazeera his country had responded to some of the "specifics" raised by the EU.

He said Sri Lanka "refused to submit to what is called a general investigation. But any specific thing we have said we will look at and this we are doing".

However, Wijesinha also accused the EU of being dishonest in its dealings with Sri Lanka. "I think we have a situation where the EU is under a lot of pressure. We know that there are diaspora pressures; it's just that they are so dishonest about it," he said.

"The Americans, for instance, were much more honest in telling us that there was a report on certain things that was mandated by congress. I wish there was more honesty about these things."

Sri Lanka is one of 16 countries with GSP status.

In 2008, the European Union was Sri Lanka's largest export market, accounting for 36 percent of all exports, followed by the United States with 24 percent.

Suspending the tariffs would mean EU buyers would have to pay more for Sri Lankan exports.

Globally recognised brands like Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Next could take their business elsewhere, such as China, India and Vietnam.

The move would hit Sri Lanka's textile industry hard and thousands of job cuts as a result.

Sri Lankan Chief of Defense Staff General Sarath Fonseka fled the United States, hours before he was due to attend a meeting with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discuss allegations of war crimes against Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

According to Fonseka and other Sri Lankan officials, the DHS contacted the general on October 28 during his trip to the U.S. to visit his daughters, who live in Oklahoma.

Fonseka, who holds a U.S. green card permanent-residency certificate, was asked to show up for an interview on November 4. But hours before the interview was due to take place, Fonseka flew out of the US, thereby avoiding meeting.

In the Sri Lankan parliamnent, this was portrayed as the actions of a partriotic citizen.

“In the same way this brave soldier rid the country of terrorism, he is now on his way home without betraying the nation,” AFP quoted Samantha Vidyaratne as telling the Sri Lankan parliament.

Earlier, in a letter to the Sri Lankan Embassy in Washington, Fonseka said he had been asked by United States officials to be a ‘source’ against Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

Two US officials from the DHS had reportedly made the request from Fonseka on his son-in-law’s telephone line, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported.

Fonseka said one of the officials had asked him whether he was prepared to be a ‘source’ against the ‘Defence Minister’ of Sri Lanka. Fonseka had responded by asking him whether whom he meant was the President, who is the Defence Minister, the Daily Mirror reported.

The official had then told him he had meant Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, to which Fonseka allegedly replied that he was the Defence Secretary and not the Defence Minister.

This conversation had been followed with a formal request by the Department of Homeland Security for a ‘voluntary meeting’ with Fonseka.

Later Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the US, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, had retained lawyers from a leading law firm to ‘assist’ the military commander.

Given that Fonseka is only a US green card holder and not a US citizen yet, the US authorities only have the powers to question him over matters relating to his prospective US citizenship and not human rights violation.

This is however not the case for Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who holds US citizenship.

The Sri Lankan government claimed responsibility for facilitating Fonseka’s departure from the US.

“We facilitated General Fonseka's early departure ahead of his Wednesday meeting with the DHS,” Rohitha Bogollagama told Reuters.

“General Fonseka is a high-ranking public official and our position is that he cannot be used as a source against another high ranking official. That's incriminating".

Separately reports confirmed that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was questioned by US immigration authorities on his arrival in the US as a member of the Sri Lankan delegation attending the UN General Assembly earlier this year.

“This was not revealed to the media at that time.  However, our Defence Secretary has been questioned for one hour by some US immigration officials on his arrival in the country,” National Freedom Front (NFF) leader Wimal Weerawansa told reporters.

“Nevertheless, they have no right to question him on human rights issues. Now, these foreign forces appear to have renewed their conspiracy to hound the political and military leaders who led this war to a successful completion. They are trying to use General Fonseka for this purpose,” the Daily Mirror newspaper quoted him as saying.

"It happened and I was there," Bogollagama said of the Rajapaksa interview. "We took all the necessary actions that were required."

In the U.S., the DHS's office of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), which reportedly made the Fonseka request, refused to confirm or deny the allegation.

“If there was an investigation, there's nothing we can provide. Especially in cases that are very sensitive under human-rights violations, until that person or group were fully investigated [we] would never comment,” ICE spokesman Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery was quoted as saying by Time magazine.

Fonseka is known to have made some public remarks about the war in Sri Lanka, that could have drawn the attention of the UD officials.

At an event in Ambalangoda, Sri Lanka, Fonseka was quoted as telling the audience that “the military had to overlook the traditional rules of war and even kill LTTE rebels who came to surrender carrying white flags during the war against the LTTE.”

Similarly, at a speech at a Buddhist temple in the United States, Fonseka is reported to have said: “We must deploy enough troops to provide security for these [resettled] areas. We must in these areas, this virus, there are still 1000’s of terrorists in IDP camps. We must identify these terrorist and destroy them. We must take them into custody and then resettle them. We must provide security in strength to these areas. I will only be happy that we finished the war we ended when I see this.”

The US government had initially invited Fonseka to attend an event to farewell Commander Admiral Timothy J. Keating during his visit. But this invitation was withdrawn once the US State Department filed its report into the concluding days of the war in Sri Lanka, which reported numerous allegations that might amount to war crimes.

"[T]he US action to request meeting does not augur well for Mr Fonseka's legal future in the US,” a representative for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) told TamilNet.

“Private plaintiffs are ready to file law-suits against Mr Fonseka under existing US tort statutes, if his sovereign immunity is found to be non-enforcable. When the General relinquishes his military office in Sri Lanka, he will shed the sovereign immunity, and will expose himself to legal action in the US," the TAG representative said.

TAG is a US based pressure group that filed a model indictment with the Justice Department against Fonseka and Gotabhaya Rajapakse, and is continuing to collect evidence, including Satellite evidence, for war crimes against Sri Lanka. 

Joining international calls for a full independent investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, a group of British Parliamentarians welcomed the initiatives taken by the United States in this regard and urged the UK government to support Washington’s efforts.

In a statement released November 3, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPG-T) welcomed US authorities questioning of Sri Lankan Army General Sarath Fonseka over the massacre of Tamil civilians in the closing months of the war this year.

“This is an important first step in bringing the perpetrators of alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka to justice and also begin the process of a true reconciliation between ethnic communities in the island,” the APPG-T said.

APPG-T said it will be requesting UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband to support the US Government's efforts to probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka and to also fully endorse the US Department of State’s Report to Congress submitted on 22 October 2009, which detailed alleged violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) by both warring parties during the military offensive this year.

“[The Government of Sri Lanka] must facilitate an international, independent inquiry into alleged violations of IHL in order to establish peace, justice and equality for all citizens in Sri Lanka,” the Parliamentary group said.

Apart from Colombo’s massacres during the war, the APPG-T also protested the treatment of civilians after the Sinhala government declared victory over the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam).

“When the war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ended, the Government of Sri

Lanka (GSL) gave assurances to the International Community, including Britain, that it will resettle all internally displaced people (IDPs) within 180 days. The Government’s own deadline is only a fortnight away but APPG-T has no evidence that suggests the GSL is committed to implementing its assurances to the International Community,” the group noted.

The parliamentarians called on Britain, NGOs and governments around the world to “urgently appeal” to Sri Lanka “to honour all its commitments and to immediately end the forced detention of over 250,000 Tamils in the camps.”

The US House of Representatives passed a motion calling on the Sri Lankan government to respect its commitments to care for and ensure the speedy return of civilians displaced by the fighting.

H. Res. 711 resolution, passed in the US House of Representatives Thursday, November 5, by a vote of 421 to 1, also drew attention to the approach of the 180 day deadline within which the Sri Lankan government had promised to release all the detained Tamil civilians.

That period is due to end on November 23, 2009.

Fewer than 20% of those detained have been released as of Oct. 23, 2009.

The resolution also emphasized that "the United States supports the rapid release and voluntary return of all civilian IDPs as a critical element of national reconciliation in Sri Lanka."

The resolution called on the Government of Sri Lanka to allow freedom of movement for "IDPs to leave their camps voluntarily and return in safety and dignity to their homes or, where that is not possible, to live with host families or move to open transit sites."

Congress resolved that the IDP camps needed to be 'truly civilian,' not military.

They also said it was imperative that NGOs and observers, including the ICRC have 'full access' to the camps by.

The Congress also urged the Sri Lankan government to “engage in dialogue with Tamils inside and outside Sri Lanka on new mechanisms for devolving power, improving human rights and increasing accountability."

Many Congressmen including Rep. Howard Berman, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Danny Davis, who visited all areas of Sri Lanka following the tsunami and who co-sponsored the resolution along with Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, spoke in support of the resolution before the vote was taken.

The resolution was described as 'non-controversial and non-partisan,' and attracted 32 co-sponsors from both parties.

Isolationist Rep. Ron Paul of Texas was the only one to vote against the resolution.

The resolution marked increasing signs of impatience by the international community with the slow pace of release of the Tamils detainees held against their will in military run internment camps, commented TamilNet.

Sri Lanka Police and Sri Lanka Army soldiers beat a mentally ill Tamil youth and forced him to drown near Bambalapitya, Colombo on Thursday October 29.

The attack on the mentally ill youth, who had been known to throw stones at passing vehicles, was caught on camera by a Sri Lankan news channel and shown on national TV.

Balavarnam Sivakumar, 26, had been attacked an beaten by a gang of police constables for throwing stones at passing vehicles.

He tried to escape the attack, and eventually took refuge in the sea near Bambalapitya.

At this point two police men, Dimuthu Somnas and a colleague, followed him into the sea to attack him.

As Sivakumar pleaded for mercy, the two heavily built men, who were armed with batons, charged towards the youth forcing him to back into the sea and drown.

The other policemen, who had been involved in the initial attack, stood by watching as the youth was murdered. 

Some reports said passersby were too fearful of their lives to intervene. But other reports said though a few concerned citizens had called Bambalapitya police station, no action had been taken.

So someone called the TNL News channel and alerted them of the incident. The TV station responded by filming the incident from the window of a nearby building.

“Considering the sad fate of many media institutions and personnel during the past few years, TNL TV and its personnel deserve our thanks and praise for their courageous exposure of this terrible episode,” reported the Daily Mirror newspaper, commenting on the incident. 

Somnas was allegedly remanded following the attack and a few other constables are believed to have been taken into custody.

“These arrests will predictably divert attention away from those criminals who started the whole thing by beating and chasing Sivakumar into the sea initially, and the other policemen who helped Somnas and his accomplices finish off the job by looking on, doing nothing,” commented the Daily Mirror.

The killing of Sivakumar lead to protests outside the Fort Railway Station less than a week later, on November 4.

Political parties and human rights organisations participated in the protest.

Political parties at the protest included Democratic People’s Front (DPF) led by parliamentarian Mano Ganeshan and United Socialist Party (USP) led by Sritunga Jayasuriya. Mothers and Daughters of Lanka and Platform for Freedom were among the human rights organisations at the protest.

The protesters charged that the Sri Lankan police had undermined standard norms in democratic countries as well as human rights abuses.

All speakers addressing the event said that the attack was an image of the state terrorism in practice and it is time that everyone despite political differences, race or religion, join their hands to stop the government from putting democracy, human rights and media freedom of the country in danger, reported TamilNet.

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has just been celebrated. For many, that momentous event marked the so-called end of history and the final victory of the West.

This week, Barack Obama, the first black president of the once-triumphant superpower in that Cold War contest, heads to Beijing to meet America’s bankers — the Chinese Communist government — a prospect undreamt of 20 years ago. Surely, this twist of the times is a good point of departure for taking stock of just where history has gone during these past two decades.

Let me begin with an extreme and provocative point to get the argument going: Francis Fukuyama’s famous essay “The End of History” may have done some serious brain damage to Western minds in the 1990s and beyond.

Mr. Fukuyama should not be blamed for this brain damage. He wrote a subtle, sophisticated and nuanced essay. However, few Western intellectuals read the essay in its entirety. Instead, the only message they took away were two phrases: namely “the end of history” equals “the triumph of the West.”

Western hubris was thick in the air then. I experienced it. For example, in 1991 I heard a senior Belgian official, speaking on behalf of Europe, tell a group of Asians, “The Cold War has ended. There are only two superpowers left: the United States and Europe.”

This hubris also explains how Western minds failed to foresee that instead of the triumph of the West, the 1990s would see the end of Western domination of world history (but not the end of the West) and the return of Asia.

There is no doubt that the West has contributed to the return of Asia. Several Asian societies have succeeded because they finally understood, absorbed and implemented the seven pillars of Western wisdom, namely free-market economics, science and technology, meritocracy, pragmatism, culture of peace, rule of law and education.

Notice what is missing from the list: Western political liberalism, despite Mr. Fukuyama’s claim that “The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.”

The general assumption in Western minds after reading Mr. Fukuyama’s essay was that the world would in one way or another become more Westernized. Instead, the exact opposite has happened. Modernization has spread across the world, but it has been accompanied by de-Westernization.

Mr. Fukuyama acknowledges this today. “The old version of the idea modernization was Euro-centric, reflecting Europe’s own development,” he said in a recently published interview. “That did contain attributes which sought to define modernization in a quite narrow way.”

In the same interview, he was right in emphasizing that the three components of political modernization were the creation of an effective state that could enforce rules, the rule of law that binds the sovereign, and accountability. Indeed, these are the very traits of political modernization that many Asian states are aspiring to achieve.

Asians surely agree that no state can function or develop without an effective government. We feel particularly vindicated in this after the recent financial crisis. One reason the United States came to grief was the deeply held ideological assumption in the mind of key American policymakers, like Alan Greenspan, that Ronald Reagan was correct in saying that “government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Fortunately, Asians did not fall prey to this ideology.

Consequently, in the 21st century, history will unfold in the exact opposite direction of what Western intellectuals anticipated in 1991. We will now see that the “return of history” equals “the retreat of the West.” One prediction I can make confidently is that the Western footprint on the world, which was hugely oversized in the 19th and 20th centuries, will retreat significantly.

This will not mean a retreat of all Western ideas. Many key ideas like free-market economics and rule of law will be embraced ever more widely. However, few Asians will believe that Western societies are best at implementing these Western ideas. Indeed, the assumption of Western competence in governance and management will be replaced by awareness that the West has become quite inept at managing its economies.

A new gap will develop. Respect for Western ideas will remain, but respect for Western practices will diminish, unless Western performance in governance improves again.

Sadly, in all the recent discussions of “the end of history,” few Western commentators have addressed the biggest lapse in Western practice. The fundamental assumption of “the end of history” thesis was that the West would remain the beacon for the world in democracy and human rights. In 1989, if anyone had dared to predict that within 15 years, the foremost beacon would become the first Western state to reintroduce torture, everyone would have shouted “impossible.”

Few in the West understand how much shock Guantánamo has caused in non-Western minds. Hence many are puzzled that Western intellectuals continue to assume that they can portray themselves and their countries as models to follow when they speak to the rest of the world on human rights.

This loss of moral authority is the exact opposite outcome that many Westerners expected when they celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Does this mean we should give up hope? Will the world become a sadder place?

Probably few in the West remember the last paragraph of Mr. Fukuyama’s essay. He wrote: “The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.”

Here, too, as the 21st century unfolds, we will see the exact opposite outcome. The return of Asia will be accompanied by an astonishing Asian renaissance in which many diverse Asian cultures will rediscover their lost heritage of art and philosophy.

There is no question that Asians will celebrate the return of history. The only question is: Will the West join them in these celebrations, or will they keep waiting for the end to come?

Kishore Mahbubani is dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and the author of “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.”

A young boy was drowned in broad daylight this week. Though not a single newspaper carried it, I’m told B. Sivakumaran was his name. He was “believed” to be mentally retarded and known for throwing stones at passing vehicles and trains. Approximately 100 people watched him die. One even managed to capture on film the final five minutes of his life.

That five minutes of footage could have been of a possible rescue by one of the 100 or so spectators.  Or, that five minutes of footage could have been shot at the same time a call for assistance was made to the nearest Police Station, by someone present in the crowd. This was the heart of Bambalapitiya after all, and Sri Lanka is not short of mobile phones. But instead, the five minutes of footage shows us the gory, pathetic end of a young life, for no apparent reason.

The spectators watched on intently.

Three to four men surfaced out of the water, as if from nowhere, and began to advance towards the boy, who by then was fast retreating. Two men armed with large wooden poles (more like thick tree branches) continued to advance on the boy, and thrash him, one brutal stroke at a time. The spectators watch on. The boy kept trying to head towards the shore. He even brought his hands together in a desperate plea for mercy. His persecutors however, showed no sign of it.

The spectators continued to watch.

The more he pleaded, the more vicious the attack became. Closer and closer they inched to him, thrashing him unmercifully each time he surfaced. This went on for five minutes, until at last the deed was done. He resurfaced no more.

The spectators watched on, transfixed.

A friend said to me that maybe people didn’t want to get “involved” because they thought it was some “underworld” rift. That’s a damning indictment on us, our society. This video is proof that we’ve reached a point where our “fear” overrides a sense of humanity.

I sense a pattern of sorts here.

The deafening silence on the IDP issue for example. Everyone knows they’re suffering, some even care. But, our “fear” of a “possible” threat to our lives by the “possible” re-emergence of terrorism justifies our silence. Our inaction. Isn’t it strange to have a State half-heartedly respond only when threatened by the International Community to set these people free? Doesn’t it seem strange at all that a Government must be held to ransom to look after its own people? Our paralyzing fear of dissent and our sheer capacity to rationalize the violent fate of those who do dare to is another facet of our ‘Spectator State.’

If cold-blooded murder can take place in the heart of Colombo in broad daylight, in front of a crowd, we can only wonder what happened on bloody battlefields in the Vanni, with no one left to tell the tale.

“I viewed what happened on the beach below through the lens of a camera recorder from the seventh floor of a building located next to the Bambalapitya railway station”, Assistant News Editor of TNL News channel, Sisikelum Dahampriya Balage said, giving evidence to the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s inquest into the killing of Balavarnam Sivakumar, 26.

He said that he saw a man being chased by three persons towards the sea and saw them assaulting the man they were chasing, with sticks. But he could not clearly make out the three men chasing the lone man were police officers or not.

But the witness said that it was his impression that it took place “under the supervision of the police”.

The elder brother of the victim, Balavarnam Kadirgamanathan, informed the courts that Sivakumar had mental depression for a couple of years for which he received medical treatment from a mental hospital.

“I have five elder sisters and one younger sister. He is my only brother. He had been undergoing treatment for his mental illness. When I saw him for the last time, he was wearing a black T-shirt and brown trouser. On October 30, I went to the morgue and identified the body of my brother,” he told the Magistrate.

He urged the courts to carry out a proper investigation into the killing of his brother so that justice was served. 

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed a five-member high-level committee to look into a US Congress report that alleged human rights violations by both the Army and LTTE during the last phase of the 30-year-old civil war.

The committee would be headed by legal expert D S Wijesinghe, Minister for Disaster Management and Human Rights Mahinda Samarasinghe told reporters on November 6.

The other members of the committee are Nihal Jayamanne, C.R. de Silva, Mano Ramanathan and Jesima Ismail.

Rajapaksa had earlier said that he would appoint an independent committee to comprehensively examine and provide recommendations on the report.

The report, submitted by the US State Department to the Congress, had charged that both the government and the LTTE with "serious" human rights violations in the final months of the conflict.

The 68-page report prepared by the War Crimes Office lists 170 human rights violations between May 2 and 18.

The committee will have until December 31 this year to submit its final report, Samarasinghe said. 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned Sri Lanka against issuing government bonds in order to build up foreign currency reserves, as Sri Lanka received the second instalment of a $2.6 billion loan.

"There is a difference between borrowed reserves and reserves collected from the current account (of the balance of payments), like booming exports," IMF resident representative in Sri Lanka, Koshi Mathai, told reporters.

"There is always a risk that money could go out if (global) investors change their mind," he said.

This is the second warning issued by the IMF to Sri Lanka, after Colombo earlier built up reserves by borrowing from overseas investors.

The second instalment of the loan, worth $329.4 million dollars, helped top Sri Lanka’s reserves past a record $5 billion dollars.

Earlier in the year, at the height of the civil war, foreign currency reserves fell to $1.7 billion, enough to cover just one month’s worth of imports.

Sri Lanka was also warned about its high budget deficit, which the government was told to keep at 7% of its GDP.

"The government obviously recognises this is a difficult target to meet. We will just have to see what happens and that will be an issue for future (IMF) reviews," continued Mathai.

"Sri Lanka is still a country with a high debt stock, and having high debt stock is fundamentally not conducive to good economic management."

In order to fully receive all instalments of this loan from the IMF, Sri Lanka has an agreement over a list of set conditions which it must meet.

Amongst them, the budget deficit has to be reduced to 5% of GDP by 2011, a target which seems increasingly unlikely.

In order to try and appease the IMF further, Sri Lanka has also handed in a revised program document to the IMF, pledging to keep defence spending in 2010, the same as in 2009 in rupee terms. 

The government has not yet released next year’s budget, but instead presented a “vote-on-account” in a letter of intent, pledging to limit spending in the first third of 2010.

The International Monetary Fund bailout package was granted to help ease Colombo’s balance-of-payments deficit, after the end of the 25-year war with the Liberation Tigers.

This country enjoyed a warm glow early in the life of the previous Government when it relieved Australia of some of the so-called Tampa refugees.

Green MP Keith Locke believes we should do it again, this time for asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka who have been picked up by an Australian customs vessel and returned to Indonesia, where they are refusing to disembark.

This country needs to be careful as well as compassionate.

It must do nothing to undermine Australia's legitimate efforts to control its borders. With a vast, empty coast facing Asia and the Indian Ocean, Australians naturally harbour a deep-seated fear of mass illegal immigration by sea.

The Howard Government's refusal to admit the boat-people to the Australian mainland, keeping them encamped in Nauru, Papua New Guinea or Christmas Island, may have seemed hard-hearted in New Zealand but across the Tasman it won John Howard more friends than enemies.

So much so that he was accused of exploiting his hard line for election gains.

Be that as it may, Mr Howard can now point to a measure of success in stemming the flow of sea-borne asylum- seekers during his period in power.

And for all that the Australian Labor Party criticised him at the time, the Rudd Government is doing much the same. It has shut the Nauru and PNG camps but increased air and sea patrols and maintained arrangements that deny refugee appeal rights to those held on Christmas Island.

The public, however, believes Mr Rudd has softened the line and blames him for a recent resurgence in numbers of boat-people trying to make landfall in Australia.

Two polls published this week returned adverse verdicts on his border security. Perception is probably a bigger problem than the reality. Australia accepts 13,500 refugees a year. More than 95 per cent arrive by plane.

The number intercepted at sea over the past year is about 1800. Almost 700 of them have been stopped in the past six weeks. Most come from Afghanistan, Iraq and, more recently, Sri Lanka. Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka since their defeat in that country's long civil war have created a new wave of need.

The 78 who are refusing to leave the Australian customs patrol ship Oceanic Viking in the West Java port of Merak have created an incident that dramatises both the plight of the Tamils and the Australian Government's dilemma.

New Zealand should not take any of the 78 except at Canberra's request. There is a welcome and well-established Tamil immigrant community in this country and extra numbers could easily be absorbed, but orderly procedure is important.

The Australian Foreign Minister has been in Sri Lanka this week trying to discourage Tamils from fleeing to Indonesia in the belief they can slip across to Australia by boat.

Meanwhile, Indonesia has set a deadline of Friday for the Oceanic Viking to depart. Churches and trade unions are calling for the 78 to be allowed into Australia so their need for asylum can be properly assessed.

But the Rudd Government's reluctance can be understood. It is one thing to assess an asylum-seeker who arrives on a commercial aircraft and send him away back on the next plane if his claim fails; it is a different thing entirely to bring the people in on Australian ships or aircraft and preserve the option not to let them stay.

New Zealand should make known its willingness to help, as it did in the Tampa incident, but not too loudly. There is no credit in displays of compassion from a position of comfort.

Asylum- seekers and the agents who prey on them must not imagine that a bid for illegal entry to Australia will result, at worst, in admission to New Zealand. The lucky few admitted from the Tampa did not interfere with the Howard Government's clear message. The same care would be needed again.

Australia on Sunday, November 8, urged Sri Lanka, having defeated the Tamil Tigers in May, to now embrace political reform and reconciliation to stem the flow of asylum seekers leaving the country.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith met his Sri Lankan counterpart Rohitha Bogollagama in Colombo on Monday, November 8 amid a standoff in Indonesia involving 78 Tamil asylum seekers, who are refusing to leave an Australian vessel that rescued them last month.

"I will reiterate Australia's view that having won the war, Sri Lanka now needs to win the peace through political reform and reconciliation," Smith said in a statement before his meeting with his Sri Lankan counterpart.

"Mr Bogollagama and I will discuss bilateral and regional cooperation on people smuggling and ways in which Australia will continue to assist Sri Lanka rebuild after decades of internal conflict."

The Australian statement however was not publically reiterated after Smith’s arrival in Colombo. Instead, Australia and Sri Lanka signed a legal cooperation agreement to fight people smuggling.

The memorandum of understanding will make it easier to investigate and prosecute smugglers while legal assistance and extradition measures will be strengthened, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said in a statement, without detailing specific steps.

“People smuggling remains a high priority,” Smith and Bogollagama, said in a joint statement. “It presents a threat to the integrity of border security.”

The standoff in Indonesia involves an Australian customs vessel which rescued a group of boatpeople in Indonesian waters.

It took them to the Indonesian port of Tanjung Pinang but the asylum seekers have refused to leave the vessel.

Last Friday Indonesia extended for another week a deadline for the ship to leave its waters.

The arrival in Australia of several boats carrying asylum seekers, many of them Sri Lankan Tamils displaced by the conduct and end of civil war, has ignited what is a hot-button political issue in Australia.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has had to defend his border security policy, which critics say has been softened and is attracting more boatpeople. Opinion polls show the popularity of Rudd's government has taken a tumble in the past few weeks as a result of its handling of the issue.

Almost 300,000 civilians were forced from their homes and moved into the cramped camps in the north of Sri Lanka during the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war against the LTTE which ended in May.